January 31-February 3

1. January 31-February 3 1984

2. Monday, January 30(morning) • MC Practice • Sample exam III, 13-27

3. Monday, January 30 (afternoon) • Persuasive Essay 2

4. Tuesday, January 31 • Word • Part III questions • Important Quotations • Test review

5. Word of the Day • Hackneyed (adj.) overused, cliché • HAK-need • No matter how many times I say to avoid hackneyed phrases, my students still use them as if they are going out of style.

6. Part III questions 1. What is the difference between common criminals and political criminals? (ch.1) 2. What is the purpose of describing Winston’s long wait (including all the people who come and go?) (ch.1) 3. How do Winston’s captors combine physical and psychological torture? (ch. 2) 4. From what exactly does Winston suffer, according to O’Brien? (ch. 2) 5. Why is it necessary for Winston to fully believe in the Party’s doctrines before he is killed? (ch. 2&3) 6. Based on Winston’s condition, how would the original title The Last Man in Europe have been appropriate? (ch. 3) 7. Why is it necessary for Winston to go to Room 101? (ch. 5) 8. How could the ending be read as a happy one? (ch. 6)

7. 1. If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles…it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflexion of the voice, at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning…

8. 2. Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that his playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty….Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

9. 3. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing…The German Nazis and Russian Communists came very close to use in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise a where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end....The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

10. 4. All through his interrogation, although he had never seen him, he had had the feeling that O’Brien was at his elbow, just out of sight. It was O’Brien who was directing everything. It was he who set the guards onto Winston and who prevented them from killing him. It was he who decided when Winston should scream with pain, when he should have a respite, when he should be fed, when he should sleep, when the drugs would be pumped into his arm. It was he who asked the questions and suggested the answers. He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend.

11. 5. “By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed…. Even the literature of the party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ’freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be not thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

12. 6. The woman down there had no mind, she had only strong arms, a warm heart, and a fertile belly. He wondered how many children she had given birth to. It might easily be fifteen…and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, darning, cooking, sweeping, polishing, mending, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty unbroken years. At the end of it she was still singing....It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everyone, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same...people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.

13. 7. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston…went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

14. 8. From where Winston stood, it was just possible to read…in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

15. 9. His eyes refocused on the page. He discovered that while he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action… DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER over and over again, filling half a page….He could not help feeling a twinge of panic…[but] whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed—would still have committed…the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

16. 10. “…The one thing that matters is that we shouldn’t betray one another, although even that can’t make the slightest difference.” “If you mean confessing,” she said, “we shall do that, right enough. Everybody always confesses. You can’t help it. They torture you.” “I don’t mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you—that would be the real betrayal.” She thought it over. “They can’t do that,” she said finally. “It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything—anything—but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.” “No,” he said a little more hopefully, “no; that’s quite true. They can’t get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worthwhile, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them.”

17. Questions? • All multiple choice • No vocabulary • About half from notes/questions • About half from reading passages • Probably 40-50 questions • We will test in here

18. Reading Assignment • 45 days remaining • Make sure you write reflections over each part as you read them • Don’t forget to look for important quotations

19. Wednesday, February 1 • 1984 test • Word

20. Word of the Day • Debunk (v.) expose a falsehood, esp. while ridiculing • dee-BUNK • People attempting to debunk the famous 1969 moon landing make compelling claims, but they are not enough to convince most Americans.

21. Thursday, February 2 • Word • Discuss 1984 tests • Work on independent reading projects

22. Word of the Day • Censure (v.) to criticize or disapprove • SEHN-shur • (can also be used as a noun) • Though I often censure students who refuse to study, my harsh words usually fail to inspire them.

23. Friday, February 3 • Health survey • Word • Folders

24. Word of the Day • Cupidity (n.) greed • kyoo-PID-i-tee • Many people are disgusted by the cupidity of professional athletes who demand millions of dollars for playing a sport.