The Shared Study of Paired Texts:
Nineteen Eighty-four and V for Vendetta
 By studying one text in relation to
another, students can see that the
same idea, experience, emotion, or
opinion can be treated in different
ways. Students may explore ideas
of intertextuality as their
interpretation and understanding
of the texts chosen for study are
informed by their awareness of
other texts. Each of the texts being
studied forms part of the
intertextual context for the other.
 Nineteen Eighty-four’s dystopian
narrative of totalitarianism, as well
as its intertextual connection to V
for Vendetta through the film’s Big
Brother characterisation of the
British Prime Minister (reinforced
by casting John Hurt, who played
Winston Smith in the 1984 film
adaptation of Orwell’s novel),
make significant connections.
 V for Vendetta’s adaptation of a
1989 graphic novel, an Orwellian
satire of Margaret Thatcher’s
Britain, employs comic-book
cinematography to graft a revenge
melodrama onto a Matrix style
political thriller, layered with
intertextual allusions.
 While setting and subject matter
make V for Vendetta almost a
mirror of Orwell’s dystopian vision,
the film self-consciously transforms
the novel’s bleak warning of a
totalitarian future into a wish
fulfilment fantasy of political
liberation, lead not by Winston
Smith’s tragically doomed
Everyman, but an avenging
superhero.
 common themes, ideas, or topics
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the power of the state over the individual
voyeurism
human vulnerabilities and victimization
sacrifice and redemption
 historical or literary periods
 mid to late 20th C. modernism & its abuse of
political power vs. post-9/11 cynicism & the
‘war on terror’
 genres
 feature film vs. novel
 political thrillers
 revenge quest vs. dystopia
 cultural perspectives
 English (intellectual) vs. American (Wachowski
pop-psychology)
1984
A novel, a satire, a warning, a text
with many prescient and uncanny
connections…
“God is power” (p.276): 1984’s metaphysical
paradox

If God is power, he had to create the world so as
to be perceived

Winston Smith’s rebellion is created by O’Brien
in order for the party to reaffirm the reality of its
power, by creating the consciousness of its
power: “a boot stamping on a human face – for
ever” cannot exist without a face
2+2=5

The only point in making Winston believe that
two and two equals five is to break him:

Denying a belief for no reason (to act without reason) is
a first step towards losing a sense of self – it makes you
irrational in the precise sense of being unable to justify
yourself to yourself.
Room 101


Why are rats Winston's deepest fear?
What is the psychological source of this
fear?
101

In his selfish and uncontrollable
hunger as a child, Winston denied
his mother and tore himself away
from the primary bond of
belonging, loyalty and love.

In his uncontrollable fear of the
rats, Winston re-enacts that first
act of betrayal: he offers up the
body of the only person he loves,
as a surrogate for his own. When
he screams, "Do it to Julia" offering her as a human sacrifice
to the hungry rats - he
symbolically devours the one he
loves.
101

In Room 101 he can no longer stay "in front of" the wall
of darkness: he is forced to get over to "the other side"
(p.297). And as the walls of the private self are being
destroyed, he feels that he is falling "through the floor,
through the walls of the building, through the earth,
through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer
space, into the gulfs between the stars - always away,
away, away from the rats" (p.300)
Room 101

O'Brien's experiment was successful: man is
nothing but a beast who can be degraded until
he is deprived of his will to become an
instrument in the hands of the Party.
Room 101

BUT the starved rats, just like the child Winston,
were themselves the victims of the Party's
brutality. Ultimately the real face behind the
mask-like cage of the rats is the face of Big
Brother himself - who turns his subjects into
ferocious, hate-filled beings like himself, forcing
them to act out the ritual of his own prime
betrayal as human sacrifice.
Room 101

In effect, all the citizens of Oceania are kept in
their cage, systematically starved, deprived of
food, love, sexual and emotional satisfaction, so
that the Party may channel all their pent-up
energy into the hysterical quest for new victims,
leading to the equally hysterical worship of their
leader.
101

But if Room 101 had always
been waiting for Winston as he had often guessed and
we now know - then where
is the shame and personal
responsibility?

Here is the novel's complex
moral paradox.
101

For thirty years Winston's sense of guilt has
been a burden, but it also served as a reminder
that he still had a sense of personal loyalty and
could feel shame. In fact, it was this mysterious
sense of guilt or shame that made him start his
search for the Truth in the past, the search
which led ultimately to moral regeneration.
101

Significantly, once he
repeats his act of betrayal,
he no longer carries the
burden of guilt - free of his
sense of humanity and
basic moral attitudes
defining the private self.
Once reborn, united with
the collective self of
Oceania, he is incapable of
regret or guilt because he
has no further claim to a
private conscience.

101

Room 101 provides the
climactic scene of the novel
in which all betrayals are
brought together in a series
of symbolic reversals


Face-to-face through zero:
reduced to nothingness
through fear and shame,
Winston faces the rats in
himself
Repetition after a reversal:
repeating the childhood trial,
Winston reverts to another
state of childhood
101

Room 101 is at the heart of the novel, wherein
all betrayals are brought together in a series of
continuous, repeated reversals:

At the centre of the mythical (Oedipal), political
(totalitarian), and psychological drama of betrayal.
1010101010101010101010101


It is here that any victim is turned victimiser by betraying his bond
of private loyalty. Paradoxically, it is precisely at this point that he
will finally be trapped, 'chained' to become a true victim, willing to
stay in his cage forever.
Ironically, it is by adjusting to the norm of the majority that Winston
has now become, finally, insane. Having joined in the collective
insanity imposed on the population by Big Brother, Winston now
willingly joins the other rats in their cage.
 Alan Kennedy argues that 1984 is not a
prophecy or a warning but a challenge to our
ability to read critically
 Room 101 represents the enactment of the
state’s power – as an absolute bondage
between the state and its victim
 Reading against the grain of the novel, we may
reject O’Brien’s version of power by
questioning the claim that all reality is in the
mind or available in the form of knowledge
 ‘The Inversion of Form: Deconstructing 1984’, in George
Orwell, ed. by Graham Holderness, Bryan Loughrey and
Nahem Yousaf (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1998)
 Erika Gottlieb argues that room 101 reveals
the psychodynamics of totalitarianism:
 Why Western intellectuals were susceptible to the
psychosis of nationalistic leader worship
 Winston’s ordeal is that of Everyman – our
common humanity in confrontation with the
dehumanising forces of totalitarianism
 The mask-like rat’s cage symbolises loss of face
and Winston’s guilt for denying the
fundamental values of the private self
 Dystopian Fiction East and West: Universe of Terror and
Trial. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2001
 The efficiently repressive state induces in its
subjects a perpetual state of guilt formed from
the knowledge of betrayal – betrayal of the
self, of others and ultimately of Big Brother.
Room 101
 In the 1930’s, U.S. psychologist B.F. Skinner
extended the work of Ivan Pavlov on
conditioned reflexes in animals, by training a
laboratory rat to press a small lever protruding
from one wall of his specially designed box in
order to obtain a pellet of food.
 In 1948 he published one of his most
controversial works, Walden Two, a novel on
life in a utopian community modelled on his
own principles of social engineering.
Room 101
Re-educating the self in
Dystopian Fiction
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
&
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Irish Catholic resistance
Appropriating the Shoah
The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes
Critical theory and spirituality –
Slavoj Žižek
Theoretical
approaches to V
for Vendetta
“Grounds“ for
comparison…
Narrative POV
Revelations
Tone
Stylistic features
Narrative context

where does it appear in the
plot &/or narrative
structure?
References to other
works, ideas or images

literary; political; artistic
What you notice in the
Nineteen Eighty-four
passage
What you notice in V for
Vendetta passage
What does the
comparison reveal?
 Comparison by ‘tone’
 The novel’s bleakness is still present
in this passage but it is modulated by
the sense of security and freedom
that Charrington’s room brings, with
its association with the forbidden
past and Julia’s love. The freedom of
the past and the despair of the
present are linked on p.150 when
Winston contemplates ‘whether in
the abolished past it had been a
normal experience to lie in bed like
this… making love when they chose’.
And the doubts become focussed
when the rat appears to invoke
Winston’s nameless childhood terror,
only to be forgotten by the
sensuality of the present moment.
 Comparison by ‘tone’:
 The same ‘split’ in tone between the
abject fear of Evey’s captivity and
the nostalgia tinted memories of
Valerie’s past run through the film
episode. The literal tone of actors’
voices reflects this with the
harshness of the faceless
interrogator and the gentleness of
Valerie’s voice-over narrator, which
is paralled by the contrast in lighting
(dark blue shadows vs. golden
orange light) and camera movement
(still, claustrophobic C.U. vs. flowing
pans, zooms and occasional long
shots)..
 pp.103-107: ‘Winston knew the place well…’
to ‘IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH’

When Evey first meets V and he demolishes the
Old Bailey
 pp.128-133: ‘The first fragment of
chocolate…’ to ‘It was a political act.’

Valerie’s story up to and including meeting Ruth
on The Salt Flats set
 pp. 186-189: ‘On the sixth day of Hate
Week,…’ to ‘… an opportunity to look inside
it.’

Prothero’s ‘voice of London’ on TV, while V and
Evey put on their makeup.
 pp.150-154: ‘Presently they fell asleep…’ to
‘…at the heart of the crystal.’
 pp.230-234: ‘The birds sang,…’ to ‘…a
member of the Thought Police.’
 pp.296-300: ‘ “The worst thing in the
world,”…’ to ‘…shut and not open.’

Parts of Evey’s incarceration, up to and including
the roof top scene in the rain
 Evey Hammond’s imprisonment
Critical reading of
a film sequence
2. Compare the ways in which the
authors of two texts explore the idea
that it is important to have something
to hope for.
3. Compare the ways in which the
authors of two texts explore the idea
that redemption can be found even in
the most adverse circumstances.
5. If your study involved paired texts of
contrasting text types, compare the
ways in which the authors use the
conventional features of each text
type to explore similar ideas.
6. Compare the ways in which the
authors of two texts use hostile
environments as a context for the
exploration of ideas
10. How does the author of a prescribed
text explore the idea that it is
essential to confront the truth about
the past?
12. How does the author of a prescribed
text explore the idea that freedom is
worth the cost?