BOOK 1, CHAPTER 2
NARRATIVE DEVICE
Style
PAGE
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CONTENT OF PASSAGE
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Omniscient narrator once again,
explaining Winston’s emotional
reactions and thoughts
Uses this voice to explain teh power of
indoctrinating teh young and how
complete it can be (p.25) through the
organisation called Spies
CONTRIBUTION TO THE NOVEL’S
MOMENTUM

Alerts the reader to the true
measure of Winston’s
loneliness and entrapment ina
fear-ridden society where noone felt safe
‘It was almost normal for people over thirty
to be afraid of their own children. And with
good reason for hardly a week passed in
which ‘The Times’ did not carry a paragraph
describing how some eavesdropping little
sneak...has denounced its parents to teh
Thought Police’ (p.26).

Orwell cynically drops the rationing of
chocolate in with teh declaration of
military success in Eurasia – Winston is
already expecting teh coming of bad
news the moment he hears the news
report and is proven right very quickly
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This alerts the reader to
Winston’s astuteness and
awareness of indoctrination
methods
Increases momentum because
an important revelation (one
already privy to the reader)
reflects the ideal that one
should be allowed to speak
their mind and nurture their
own thoughts
Again asserts the poverty that
the masses are forced to live
in – and accept/tolerate
‘Nothing was your own except the few cubic
centimetres inside your head’ (p,27)
Setting
THE INVITED READING ON PARTICULAR
THEME(S)

That a thorough indoctrination
program of the young could, and
would change the world – that
they are lumps of clay, able to be
moulded into anything teh state
machine wants if the control
mechanisms are in place eg
Hitler’s Youth

Orwell uses diary again to elucidate
Winston’s revelation of thoughtcrime
being death

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A run-down, grotty apartment

That governments use progress
reports of war to distract the
masses from their discomfit - that
it’s all for a glorious purpose and
that self-sacrifice now is better for
the long term well-being of the
nation (p.26)
Motif

Characteristation

Plot
p.24-25
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The Party slogan trickled back into
Winston’s mind:
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
Ignorance is strength
Winston is portrayed as a brave and
intelligent man, unwilling to secede to a
dominant government who wants to
control all human beings
Using faulty plumbing, Orwell
introduces the audience to Winston’s
next door neighbours, a poor family
with a doting Big Brother Patty member
and equally fanatical children that
Winston feels nervous around
The boy attacks Winston and hurls the
insult of ‘Goldstein’ at him
Orwell introduces the brutality of Big
Brother through the hanging of the
Eurasian soldiers and the children
chanting about witnessing the hanging –
a popular spectacle
Winston returns his diary to the drawer
but adeds a piece of white powder to
teh corner to alert him to any
interference should it occur
Winston suddenly recognises himself a
dead man
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This adds momentum to the
novel because it again shows
that even a nine year old is
capable of destabilising an
adult’s demeanour as well as
threaten the life of a person,
even an adult, such is the level
of fear
Innocence and peace have
been stripped from even the
innocent
This adds to teh momentum of
the novel because it attacks
even the innocence of
children, which serves to
further shock the reader into
desiring to know more
Arouses sorrow in the reader
for Winston –a s well as a
sense of helplessness – the
system is just too big and
powerful
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Possibly that the more oppressed
and repressed a society becomes,
the more immoral and aggressive
they become in asserting their
own moral beliefs eg Stalin and
Hitler
Perhaps a statement on teh
perceptive intuition of the young
and the power of indoctrination of
the young
Children were often so horrible
that even mothers were afraid of
their children lodging charges of
treason against them