STUDY RESOURCE - ATAR COURSE CONCEPTS
There are some key course concepts that you MUST understand before you walk into your ATAR English exam.
Your exam questions WILL include any of these terms, and if you don’t know what they mean, you are going to
struggle.
Use this resource as a study tool to help you focus on the course concepts and how they relate to the text you have
studied. Then you will be ready for any question they throw at you! There is also room for you to add your own notes
as this is by no means an exclusive list 😊
COURSE CONCEPTS
Appreciation
In what ways might we
appreciate the quality or
value of this text?
Attitudes
What attitudes are
expressed by the
director, writer or
characters/individuals in
the text?
1984 by George Orwell
•
•
For the warning it offers about totalitarian regimes and keeping our
governments honest and accountable.
For its relevance to our world today, despite it being written 69 years ago. A
timeless text.
Winston’s attitudes
• pessimistic
• fatalistic
• misogynistic – “it was always the women who were the most bigoted adherents
of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of
unorthodoxy.”
• feels inferior around women – “the sense of his own inferiority was heavy upon
him”
• suspicious of everyone
• believes himself to be as good as dead - “To be killed was what you expected”
• “Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope”
• “I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY” – repeated in the novel twice
Julia’s attitudes
• That the clever thing is “to break the rules and stay alive”
• Refuses to accept that “the individual is always defeated.”
• That the war is not happening
• Selfish
Winston v Julia - contrasting attitudes to the Party
Julia only questions the
This frightens Winston. He realises that “history
teachings of the Party
has stopped. Nothing exists except in endless
when they affect her
present in which the Party is always right.” He
directly. She doesn’t care
sees that Julia’s generation and the ones to follow
when the aeroplane was
will “simply swallow everything.” Their lack of
invented and doesn’t see
understanding will ensure their sanity. Winston,
the importance of this
however, feels like he is going insane and
detail.
questions if he is the only one left who has a
memory.
Julia is disinterested in
Goldstein’s writing.
Winston devours Goldstein’s writings.
The Party’s attitudes
• totalitarian
• oppressive
• controlling
• puritanistic attitudes towards sex
• only proles and animals are free
• “who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the
past”
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STUDY RESOURCE - ATAR COURSE CONCEPTS
Audience
Who is the director/author
speaking to through their
text?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Context
Production – the
environment in which the
text was produced
(social, historical,
political, director’s
context))
Reception – the
environment in which the
text was received (E.G. in
an Australian classroom
in a co-educational /
single sex school, in a
democratic society that
promotes equality in
2018).
In addition to this,
consider your own
personal characteristics,
beliefs, values and
attitudes that have
influenced how you’ve
responded to this text.
A post-World War II Britain
A worldwide audience
Leaders, governments and people who may have been considering Socialism
as the way forward for their societies
Potential supporters of Communism
Men and women of all classes
Young adults and upwards – the ideas and writing is too complex for children to
understand.
Production Context (Author):
• Born 1903, Orwell lived through two world wars and saw the rise of totalitarian
regimes on an unprecedented scale.
• In a letter written in 1944, he criticised “the horrors of emotional nationalism
and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth.”
• Having witnessed first-hand the horrific lengths to which totalitarian
governments in Spain, Germany and Russia would go to in order to sustain and
increase their power, Orwell wrote 1984 to warn Western nations who were still
unsure about how to approach the rise of Communism.
• At one point in then novel we read “the majority had been executed after
spectacular public trials in which they made confession of their crimes” – a
direct reference to Stalin’s public show trials between 1936 – 1938 which
Orwell will have witnessed.
• Orwell witnessed the danger of absolute political power in an age of advancing
technology.
Reception Context (Audiences in 1949)
• WW2 had just ended
• Numerous references that a post-WWII British audience in 1949 could relate to.
They may feel worry and concern that society might fall into a WORSE state of
rationing, lack of security, danger, poor living standards that they had just come
out of.
• Readers would have just emerged from rationing in Britain and could relate to
the satisfactory nature of having real sugar, bread, jam, milk and coffee, make
up, perfume (Julia and Winston)
• Bombs falling in London and going down into a noisy Tube station for safety
would remind Londoners of the Blitz: “There were people sitting all over the
stone flagged floor, and other people, packed tightly together, sitting on metal
bunks, one above the other.”
• People were worried that Communism might spread around the world
• Audiences were facing the dawn of the nuclear age and the cold war, and the
television was not yet a fixture in the family home.
Reception Context (2018)
• In 2015 it was leaked that the National Security Agency was listening to our
electronic communications.
• Edward Snowden (2016) and his urgent calls for us to be concerned about our
privacy
• 2017 – Google is secretly listening to us through our devices and tailoring
advertisements and newsfeeds to suit us.
• 2017 - CIA discovered to be hacking into Apple iPhones
• Julia says in the novel “one knows the news is all lies anyway.” Today fake
news permeates social media and it is difficult to tell what is true and what is
not.
• Surveillance drones, CCTV, smartphones
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STUDY RESOURCE - ATAR COURSE CONCEPTS
•
•
•
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Generic Conventions
Trump’s administration has been accused of issuing “alternative facts” – sales
of 1984 went through the roof last year when this occurred.
We hear phrases like “controlling the narrative” from our governments in the
media daily. Think about what this really means!
Smartphones are the telescreens of 2017 - they control us. Social media
enslaves us. We are bombarded with images that promote slogans like “be
thin” or “get more followers”. Are we too busy Facebooking, Snapchatting,
Tweeting etc that we are missing what is happening in the world? What if we
don’t look up from our screens and pay attention to how people want to control
us?
These are just a few examples, but it’s pretty clear that what Orwell foresaw in
1949 is occurring today. That’s pretty extraordinary!
POINT OF VIEW – see notes below
STRUCTURE – see notes below
THEMES/IDEAS – see notes below
ISSUES – see notes below
LANGUAGE FEATURES– see notes below
CHARACTERISATION:
Winston
• 39 years old, small, frail, blue overalls, fair hair, ulcer above his ankle
• “Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could
give you away” - his panic helps convey the fear of the citizens living in the
society.
• Purchases a diary to record his thoughts. Winston understands he is
committing a thought crime, and that no one will ever get to read what he is
wants to express.
• “He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear”
• “Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?”
• Most significant act is a rebellious one. He has sex with Julia, not because he
loves her or is attracted to her, but because “it was a blow struck against the
party. It was a political act.”
• Slowly comes to love Julia.
• Winston’s appearance changes significantly when he begins his affair with
Julia and experiences happiness, human contact, freedom: he stops drinking
gin at all hours, put on weight, varicose ulcer subsided, fits of coughing in the
early morning stopped. “Life had ceased to be intolerable”
• Winston seems to be relieved when he is finally caught – “It was starting at
last!”
• “In the end the nagging voice is broken down more completely than the boots
and fists of the guards… It was easier to confess everything and implicate
everybody”
• Winston’s appearance changes again - emaciated, curvature of the spine, the
body of a man of 60, suffering from some malignant disease, lost 25 kg in the
hands of the party, losing his teeth and hair.
• Betrays Julia - the party breaks him in the end.
• See notes on values and attitudes.
Julia
• 26 years old, lives in a hostel with 30 other girls, uses coarse language
• grandfather was vaporised when she was eight
• no interest in Party doctrine
• promiscuous - she has had affairs “hundreds of times… with Party members.”
• Dialogue: “I’m good at spotting people who don’t belong”, “Always yell with
the crowd, that’s what I say. It’s the only way to be safe”
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•
•
“In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible
to Party propaganda.” (narrator)
Julia betrays Winston- the party breaks her in the end.
O’Brien
• appearance - large, burly man, thick neck, coarse humorous brutal face, charm
of manner
• member of the Inner Party
• “He had the appearance of being a person that you could talk to”
• Is a sort of father figure and friend to Winston
• “You knew this, Winston,” said O’Brien. “Don’t deceive yourself. You did know it
– you have always known it.”
• directs everything - the interrogation and torture
• seems to have two sides to his nature
• employs doublethink very well – whether or not he believes the contradictory
nature of the Party’s belief system we do not know, but his job is to convince
Winston to believe them.
MINOR CHARACTERS. Orwell uses them to convey aspects of society in Oceania:
Mrs Parsons – represents the powerlessness of parents in society
• “That wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and
they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy”
Mr Parsons – represents the loyal members of the Outer Party
• dedicated, loyal, enthusiastic, strictly follows all rules
• imprisoned because his daughter denounces him for talking in his sleep
• “She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the
patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for an upper of seven.”
Mr and Mrs Parson’s children – represent the Junior Spies and the danger they
present to their parents.
• blue shorts, grey shirts, red neckerchiefs
• “They’re disappointed because they couldn’t go to see the hanging”
• they set fire to an old market woman’s skirt for wrapping up sausages and a
poster of B.B
Katharine (Winston’s wife) – represents the conditioning power of the Party
• “She had not thought in her head that was not a slogan
• “She would lie there with shut eyes… Submitting”
Symes (Winston’s work colleague) – represents the desensitisation to violence
and the loss of humanity in this society.
• “It was a good hanging… I like to see them kicking… And the tongue sticking
right out, and blue… That’s the detail that appeals to me.”
Mr Charrington – represents a member of the Thought Police, a relatively normal
man who is extremely well-concealed in his identity.
• widower, aged 63, had inhabited the shop for 30 years
• “he was still recognisable, but he was not the same person any longer.”
PHYSICAL SETTINGS:
Victory Mansions (Winston’s flat)
• old, built in 1930 or thereabouts, falling to pieces
• “Always smelt of boiled cabbage”
• On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face
gazed from the wall… BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.”
• Victory Gin = like nitric acid, Victory Cigarettes = tobacco fell out
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•
shoe laces and razorblades impossible to get hold of
London, Airstrip One, 1984
• “third most populous of the provinces of Oceania”
• rotting 19th century houses, sides shored up with timber, windows patched with
cardboard, roofs of corrugated iron, garden walls sagging in all directions
• decaying, dingy city, underfed people, dust everywhere
• “about 20 or 30 [rocket bombs] a week were falling on London at present”
• “there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were
plastered everywhere”
Proles District
• cobbled streets, battered doorways, puddles of filthy water
• people swarmed, young and old
• pubs
Room above Mr Charington’s Junk Shop
• “the room had awakened in him a sort of nostalgia, a sort of ancestral memory.”
• “There’s no telescreen!” Julia says this but sadly, as they later learn, the
telescreen is behind the church picture.
O’Brien’s Flat (Inner Party living quarters)
• dark blue soft carpet, green shaded lamp
• creme paper walls, white wainscoting
• exquisitely clean
• “the whole atmosphere of the huge block of flats, the richness and
spaciousness of everything, the unfamiliar smells of good food and good
tobacco, the silent and incredibly rapid lift sliding up and down, the white
jacketed servants hurrying to and fro - everything was intimidating”
Prison Cell
• high ceilinged windowless cell, walls of glittering white porcelain
• concealed lamps flooded it with cold light, low steady humming sound
• a bench, a lavatory pan with no wooden seat, four telescreens (one on each
wall)
• “it was the place with no darkness”
Room 101
• fills prisoners with fear, contained deep underground
• the skull faced man – “I’ve got a wife and three children… You can take the
whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I’ll stand by and
watch it. But not Room 101!”
• “The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world”
Ministry of Truth (concerns itself with lies)
• “enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, 300m
into the air”
• Records Department - Winston works 60 hours a week, memory holes, rewrites
records as per instructions from the ministry
• “this process of continuous alteration was applied…to every kind of literature or
documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological
significance”
• Julia works in the Fiction Department
Ministry of Peace (concerns itself with war)
Ministry of Love (concerns itself with torture)
• “the Ministry of Love was the really frightening one”
• “maze of barbed wire entanglements, steel doors and hidden machine gun
nests…gorilla faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
• “Nothing was illegal since there were no longer any laws”
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Ministry of Plenty (concerns itself with starvation)
• The Lottery – prizes are imaginary. Only small sums paid out to winners who
are non-existent. Popular with the proles.
SOCIAL & POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT OF OCEANIA:
Structure of Oceanic society:
• Big Brother at the apex of the pyramid (infallible and all-powerful)
• Inner Party (less than 2% of the population, the brain of the state)
• Outer Party (the hands)
• the proles (85% of the population, the dumb masses)
• Thought Police - no trial, no report of the arrest, people simply disappeared =
vaporised
“you had to live on the assumption that every sound you made was overheard,
and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised.”
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death”
Junior Antisex League
• scarlet sash around hips = “aggressive symbol of chastity”
• advocated complete celibacy for both sexes
Two Minutes Hate/Hate Week
• Goldstein “was the primal traitor” (scapegoat, a fictional enemy), “a lean Jewish
face”
• he abused Big Brother and the party and advocated “freedom of speech,
freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought”
• “uncontrollable exclamations of rage”
• “a hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to
smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group
of people like an electric current”
The Hangings
• once a month
• popular spectacle especially with children.
Doublethink
• The possibility of “holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind
simultaneously and accepting both of them”
• 2+2 = 4 but 2+2 also equals five because the Party says it is so
Genre
•
•
•
Ideas and themes about
topics, events, places
or people
Understandings,
thoughts, notions,
opinions, views or beliefs.
Idea v Theme – what’s
the difference?
dystopian fiction - shows the worst human society imaginable so as to
convince an audience to avoid any path that might lead toward such societal
degradation.
science fiction
political novel
Government surveillance is a tool to control the people
• telescreens allow the Government to watch, listen and monitor behaviour
• hidden microphones everywhere
• signs “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”
• Junior Spies
• “perhaps 30 people personally known to Winston, not counting his parents, had
disappeared at one time or another”
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A theme is an idea,
concern or argument
conveyed in a text.
E.G. in 1984 a theme is
the dangers of
totalitarianism.
An idea has a more open
meaning and can be
understandings,
thoughts, notions,
opinions, views or beliefs.
E.G. in 1984 could be
that governments
manipulate history
(control the narrative) to
serve their own interests
or purpose.
The dangers of totalitarianism on the individual and society
• telescreens spout propaganda, shout at individuals, one can never turn them
off.
• Party members undergo conditioning - subconscious co-operation.
• Winston is conditioned through violent physical and mental torture until he
believes the principals of the Party: “he not only did not know whether ‘yes’ or
‘no’ was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which
answer he believed to be the true one.”
• Psychological manipulation prevents independent thought – Hate Week,
newspeak, thought crime, double speak etc.
• “Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling
that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to.”
• “Chastity was as deeply ingrained in them as Party loyalty… By careful early
conditioning… The natural feeling had been driven out of them”
• “in the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you
would have to believe it.”
Totalitarian regimes are effective at enhancing their own power
• Compare Winston’s apartment (Victoria Mansions) and the proles district to the
living quarters of O’Brien – see notes in Physical Setting.
• Control of the past, ensures control of the present and future.
• Manipulation of facts
• Psychological torture and manipulation – “pain is not always enough… But for
everyone there is something unendurable”
• Conditioning
• Maintaining hierarchical class structures – High (Inner Party, Middle (Outer
Party), Low (the proles) - “Admission to either branch of the Party is by
examination, taken at the age of 16”, “proletarians who may be gifted are
eliminated”
• “we are not interested in the good of others: we are interested solely on power”
• “the first thing you must realise is that power is collective. The individual only
has power insofar as he ceases to be an individual.”
Controlling information allows Governments to have absolute power
• By controlling the present, the Party is able to manipulate the past. And in
controlling the past, the Party can justify all of its actions in the present.
• “beyond the late ‘fifties everything faded”
• “If the party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it
never happened – that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and
death”
• “the past… Had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed”
• The Party claims in its history books that it invented aeroplanes.
• “You could prove nothing. There was never any evidence.”
• “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth”
• “The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been
changed.”
• “Reports and records of all kinds… had to be rectified at lightning speed”
The unreliability of memory
• “Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of
ancestral memory that things had once been different?”
• “Memory is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory?
You have not controlled mine”
Language as a control mechanism
• Language controls what we can or cannot talk about, but it also controls how
we talk about things.
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•
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Newspeak – designed by the Party to narrow the range of thought
“in the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will
be no words in which to express it”
“We’re cutting the language down to the bone”
Think about the significance of nuanced word choices today: anti-abortion
advocates tend to use word “baby” (an emotionally-loaded word) while prochoice advocates use “foetus” (a more scientific word and disjoint of emotion).
Think about how social media has reduced our language: yolo, btw, imo, bff,
lol, wtf, googling etc.
Creating a society founded on fear and hatred makes people easier to control
• Goldstein / Eastasia / Eurasia - to be constantly fighting a common enemy is
a way of uniting the people. The irony here is that the enemy keeps reverting
from one to the other.
• In our modern context, ISIS has had a pretty good bash at disrupting Western
societies by creating fear and hatred.
• Trump is creating unity by proposing to build a wall along the Mexican border.
• Oceania lives in a world of constant warfare. Our world today is in a constant
state of warfare – did you know there are currently 34 wars going on?! Many
of them don’t get the media coverage that the ones in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Syria get.
Impact
•
1984 is very relevant today. It has, and will continue to have, a huge impact on
readers. Right now Amazon sales of this 69 year old novel are going through
the roof!
•
It’s an important novel: due to the alarm it sounds against the abusive nature
of authoritarian governments. And for the way it explores the psychology of
power and the ways that manipulations of language and history can be used as
mechanisms of control.
•
The interrogation scenes at the end of the novel have a huge impact on any
reader for a number of reasons
• we feel empathy for Winston as his efforts to resist are futile
• We are horrified at the extent people will go to accept the doctrines of the
Party - the skull faced man gives permission for his wife and three children
to be slaughtered before his eyes.
• we are horrified by the deterioration in his physical appearance
• we admire Winston for his extraordinary human spirit – “I have not
betrayed Julia”, “he had not stopped loving her”
• we feel a deep sense of sorrow and empathy when O’Brien finally
breaks Winston in Room 101 – “Do it to Julia!”
• O’Brien’s methods for reintegration are extremely controversial - he
tortures Winston without mercy – “O’Brien wrenched the loose tooth out
by the roots. He tossed it across the cell. ‘You are rotting away…A bag of
filth.’”
• O’Brien’s statement “when finally you surrender to us, it must be of your
own free will” is extraordinarily controversial and contradictory as this is
not the situation at all.
• O’Brien reveals the purpose of the party which is highly controversial
and Orwell would hope that this would put fear into the hearts of his
readers – “if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping
on a human face – for ever.”
There are dozens of other events that occur throughout the novel which will have an impact
on readers. Many of these will result in empathy or will be controversial in nature.
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STUDY RESOURCE - ATAR COURSE CONCEPTS
Interpretation / Reading
Gender reading – patriarchal society
• Pornosec Department - all girls except the head of Department. “The theory
was that men, whose sex instincts were less controllable than those of women,
were in greater danger of being corrupted by the filth they had handled.”
• “In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.”
• Winston’s mother “took it for granted that he, ‘the boy’, should have the biggest
portion.”
Issues
Matters of personal or
public concern that are in
dispute, considered to be
problems in society.
A large number of issues (some of which have also been identified in themes and
ideas) are explored in the novel through a variety of generic conventions:
Language Features
Similes
• “a helicopter…hovered for an instant like a bluebottle… The police patrol,
snooping into people’s windows.”
• “it was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which
will soon grow up into man-eaters.” (Junior Spies, Mr and Mrs Parsons’
children)
• “this was concrete evidence; it was a fragment of the abolished past, like a
fossil bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological
theory. It was enough to blow the Party to atoms.” (Jones, Aaronson and
Rutherford slip of paper)
•
“her voice seemed to stick into his brain like jagged splinters of glass”
(telescreen)
• “for seven years the Thought Police had watched him like a beetle under a
magnifying glass”
• “it was like swimming against the current this week to backwards however
hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the
current instead of opposing it.” (Winston surrenders to O’Brien and the Party)
• “cut off from contact from the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of
Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing
which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are
absolute.”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Totalitarianism
Free will
Freedom of speech
governments abusing their power
the nature of memory
individual consciousness
Privacy
Independent thought
Torture
Brainwashing or psychological conditioning
The dangers of technology in the wrong hands
Metaphor
• “the room was a world, a pocket of the past we extinct animals could walk” (Mr
Charrington’s attic)
Prole dialect (captures the cockney accent of the proles)
• “I says to ‘er, ‘that’s all very well,’ I says. ‘But you ain’t got the same problems
as what I got.”’
• “Look out, guv’nor! Being over’ead!”
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STUDY RESOURCE - ATAR COURSE CONCEPTS
Irony
• “Here comes a chopper to chop off your head” – the rhyme Mr Charrington
chooses to share with Winston is ironic because he turns out to be ‘the
chopper’.
• “I bet that picture’s got bugs behind it.” Julia’s comment is loaded with irony as
she talks about the picture of St Clemen’s Church
• “when finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will – O’Brien
during the merciless torture of Winston
• Winston about the Party that “the one thing they cannot do” is make him betray
Julia.
Foreshadowing creates a sense of foreboding in the novel
• Oranges and Lemons
• “Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me.”
• Mrs Parsons children run around him in their apartment shouting “Traitor!” and
“Thought criminal!” just moments after he has writing “Down with Big Brother” in
his diary.
• Winston’s inability to read people correctly is shown when he thinks Julia is a
spy. This foreshadows his misperception of Mr. Charrington and O’Brien.
• the rat in Winston and Julia’s rented room foreshadows that they are being
watched
Allusion - Winston wakes from his dream of the naked girl in the field with the word
"Shakespeare" on his lips. While this foreshadows his relationship with Julia, it
could also be an allusion to Romeo and Juliet, representing the forbidden love he
will have with Julia.
Mood
Atmosphere or feeling in
a particular text
•
•
•
•
•
•
Point of View
Almost the entire novel is dark, pessimistic, gloomy.
The apartments and work places have foul smells, noise, lack of privacy.
Food is grey and unappetising, alcohol and cigarettes are unsatisfying and poor
quality.
Secret rented room – warmer, slower and more sympathetic to human nature
The clearing in the woods (Winston and Julia’s first encounter) is idyllic, safe,
warm and comforting.
Winston’s dreams of the Golden Country are warm and reassuring
Third person limited point of view
• Orwell uses a narrator who gives us access to Winston’s thoughts, feelings and
memories, but no other characters. This can result in Winston being an
unreliable narrator at times as we don’t get any other perspective of society,
people and events except his.
• He misreads O’Brien - “Momentarily he caught O’Brien’s eye…an unmistakable
message had passed”
• O’Brien invites Winston to collect the new Dictionary – “it had been contrived as
a way of letting Winston know O’Brien’s address.”
Third-person omniscient point of view
• Orwell uses this point of view to present Goldstein’s manifesto. It helps
deepen our understanding of the ideologies on Oceania in 1984.
Perspective
Texts can present a
particular perspective
•
Winston’s limited perspective helps us understand the Ministry of Truth,
the nature of the Party and the workings of the Inner Party. At times the reader
understands Winston better than he himself does. While he questions the
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STUDY RESOURCE - ATAR COURSE CONCEPTS
through the ideologies
(the beliefs, practices,
values and attitudes of a
society) that are
embedded in them
Purpose
Why was this text
produced?
Representations
Everything you read and
view is not REAL. It can
never be the truth
because it is someone’s
version of a place, event
or person: it is the
creator’s version of the
truth (how they see it).
We all see the world
differently and our view of
the world is shaped by
our experiences. So our
representations (truth)
will always be subjective
or biased – i.e. OUR
view. For example, my
representation of drinking
(destroys families) in a
text, could be different to
yours (a way to have fun
and bond with mates).
Stylistic Features
world around him, we see his gradual dehumanisation of a system designed to
rob citizens of their individuality and free will.
•
Goldstein’s manifesto gives us a different perspective of how Oceania’s
society functions. As Winston reads sections of the manifesto aloud, we can
make up our own mind about what Winston’s experiences mean, and not just
rely on his own limited perceptions.
•
1984 presents George Orwell’s perspective about the abuses of technology,
totalitarian governments, communism and his perspective of what the future
could look like.
•
To warn readers how miserable life will be if totalitarian governments are
allowed to prevail
To warn against the dangers of a totalitarian society
To warn us about the dangers of technology should that be abused
To teach us about the power of language
•
•
•
O'Brien represents the Party
• contradictory and cruel
• His character allows the reader access to the into the inner chambers of the
Party so that its mechanisms can be revealed.
• He represents the way the Party has conditioned and brainwashed its citizens
The Proles (proletariats – make up 85% of society)
• not considered to be human beings
• no attempt to indoctrinate them
• divorce permitted
• promiscuity unpunished
• passionate about The Lottery
• religious worship would have been permitted if they had wanted it
• “all that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be
appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working
hours or shorter rations”
• “until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have
rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
• “if there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles”
Orwell’s writing style is straightforward and uncluttered. The language is
oppressive and dull – probably a conscious choice to show life under Party rule
(everything is ugly and grey)
Newspeak – “times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusun-good refs
unperdons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling” shows the deterioration of the English
language in Oceania. In order to prevent rebellion and thoughtcrime, the Party are
slowing corroding the English language and therefore disabling people’s ability to
express their thoughts.
Diary entry style - uncapitalized, unpunctuated, and with run-on sentences,
mirroring his racing thoughts and his lost ability to express his thoughts clearly
anymore.
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STUDY RESOURCE - ATAR COURSE CONCEPTS
Use of symbols
• Big Brother symbolises the face of the Party and represents the
Government. He is a constant reassurance and an open threat - “the eyes
pursued you” from coins, stamps, covers of books, banners, posters, wrapping
of a cigarette packet – everywhere.”
• Telescreens symbolise the Party’s constant monitoring of its members –
“hideous, grinding screech”, “it was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts
wander when you were…within range of a telescreen”, “the most deadly danger
of all was talking in your sleep”
• The Paperweight symbolises his attempt to reconnect with the past –
what appealed to Winston about it was “not so much its beauty as the air it
seemed to possess of belonging to an age quite different from the present
one.”
It shatters on the floor when the Thought Police catch him
The tiny fragment of coral symbolises the fragility of human relationships
“the fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink like sugar rosebud from a cake,
rolled across the Matt. How small, for Winston, how small it always was!”
The paperweight can also symbolise Winston and Julia – a fragile relationship
in a room protected from the forces around it.
• Picture of St. Clement’s Church representation of the lost past but it also has
a telescreen behind it. This symbolises the Party’s corrupt control of the past.
• Winston’s dreams of his mother – symbolise his guilt. He took the food, ran
out and never saw his mother again. He believes his actions caused her
disappearance: “deep down beneath him” on a sinking ship, looking up at him
through the darkening water”, “he was out in the light and air while they were
being sucked down to death”
• Winston’s dreams of Golden Country – symbolises the beauty of the
countryside he remembers from his past.
• Winston’s dreams of the girl – symbolise his sexual appetite and desire he is
having to repress - “what overwhelmed him... Was admiration for the gesture
with which she had thrown her clothes aside”
Dialogue - uses regular speech and cockney accents to differentiate the proles
from the Party members and point out class differences. Despite the Party’s
supposed commitment to social equality, the old British class system is still in full
effect.
Orwell represents the proles lack of significance in society by leaving their collective
noun uncapitalised.
Text Structure
Novel divided into three parts:
• Part 1 – introduces us to Winston and the world he lives in (London, Airstrip
One, Oceania)
• Part 2 – his developing relationship with Julia and affair, his connection to
O’Brien, Goldstein’s manifest
• Part 3 – his torture and brainwashing by O’Brien, reintegration into society as
an unperson.
Inclusion of Winston’s journal entries
Inclusion of Goldstein’s Manifesto
• the longest chapter in Orwell’s book and is an exploration of political economy
and class struggle in Oceania
• draws on works from Trotsky and Marx (in keeping with Orwell’s political novel)
• “three kinds of people in the world, the High the Middle and the Low”
• “the problem of overproduction… Is solved by the device of continuous warfare”
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STUDY RESOURCE - ATAR COURSE CONCEPTS
Tone / Voice
Tone: describes the way
the voice is delivered
(angry, persuasive)
Voice: Authorial voice,
narrative voice.
Orwell’s tone in the narrative is relentlessly dark, pessimistic, bleak. Even during
Winston’s affair with Julia, Orwell’s diction is still cold and monochromatic. The
novel ends, depressingly, with Winston being crushed.
Throughout the novel, the tone of Winston’s thoughts is frustrated, confused,
defeated.
There is an underlying sense of hopelessness at Winston’s struggle throughout
the entire text. We know he cannot win.
Orwell’s underlying voice cautions readers of 1949 that if they aren’t careful, life
may go back to the hardships and misery of wartime. His novel gives him a medium
to protest the loss of memory (history), loss of language and warn us about giving
governments too much power.
The proles are deprived of an independent voice and remain at the narrative’s
margins, just as they do in Oceanic society.
Values and beliefs
Sociocultural - this term
refers to the values and
beliefs that make up a
society in a particular
time. E.G. America,
Afghanistan.
Ideologies – values,
beliefs, customs etc
Values and beliefs can
also be explored with
regard to a specific
character, person, group,
community or country.
Of the Party
• slogan - war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength
• values conformity
• permission for marriage is refused “if the couple gave the impression of being
physically attracted to one another”
• believe that sexual intercourse is “a slightly disgusting minor operation” and
promote the value of chastity – “by careful early conditioning… the natural
feeling had been driven out of them.”
• believe that sex should only take place to make a baby and is a “duty to the
Party”
• believe that there is no need for family - “all children were to be begotten by
artificial insemination and brought up in public institutions”
• believe that children can be an extension of the Thought Police and
systematically turned them against their parents to spy on them and report
them.
• believes that failed Party members can be reintegrated through the three
stages of learning, understanding and finally acceptance
• believe that readjusting the past is needed to “safeguard the infallibility of the
Party.”
• “a Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police”
• a Party member has no freedom of choice in any direction whatever… is
expected to have no private emotions and no response from enthusiasm”
• believe that Party members must be “cut off from the past, just as he must be
cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he
is better off than his ancestors.”
Of Winston
• values individuality
• values freedom
• values truth
• values love – “at the sight of the words I love you the desire to stay alive had
welled up in”
• values privacy – “everyone wanted a place where they could be alone
occasionally”
• values individual relationships - Winston realises that the proles are “not loyal
to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another… The proles
had stayed human… held on to primitive emotions.” For the first time in his life
he no longer despises them.
• Believes that “the proles are human beings. We are not human.”
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STUDY RESOURCE - ATAR COURSE CONCEPTS
•
•
Winston believes that confessing his affair with Julia to the Party would not be a
betrayal – “if they could make me stop loving you – that would be the real
betrayal”
He wants to stay ‘human’
Of Julia
• values rebellion
• values sex and femininity (make up, perfume etc)
• values relationships
• Believes that “it was somehow possible to construct a secret world in which you
could live as you chose.”
Power Relationships
•
•
•
•
•
•
Winston v Big Brother
Winston v O’Brien
Winston v the Party
Julia v the Party
Mr and Mrs Parsons v their children
Government v People (Party members, Proles)
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