1984
A novel, a satire, a warning, a text
with many prescient and uncanny
connections…

[During Germany’s national elections of 1932] a
"summer of hate" saw daily gun battles between
Nazis and Communists on the streets of Berlin.
Christopher Isherwood [author of Goodbye to Berlin,
considered among the most significant political novels
of the 20th century and inspiring the world famous
musical Cabaret] … thought there was something
false and ritualistic about this street fighting, as
though both parties were in it mainly for publicity
purposes – “fifteen seconds, and then it was all over
and dispersed,” as Isherwood remembered it. There
was no doubt that both sides, extreme left and
extreme right, now had an interest in breaking down
public order and scaring everyone away from the
centre parties.
Tom Reiss, The Orientalist, Random House 2005, p.264
Winston Smith
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Winston

Smith
Everyman is an
English morality play
of the 15th century
which achieves a
beautiful, simple
solemnity in treating
allegorically the
theme of death and
the fate of the
human soul—of
Everyman's soul.
Doublethink

The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this
word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an
opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is
white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member,
it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party
discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that
black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget
that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous
alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought
which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak
as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two
contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting
both of them.
– Part II, chapter IX - chapter I of Goldstein's book
Newspeak

“Don’t you see that the whole range of
Newspeak is to narrow the range of
thought? In the end we shall make
thoughtcrime literally impossible because
there will be no words in which to express
it.”
Syme, chapter 5
News peak
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
Think of examples where world or local
news has been reported or edited in
biased ways (by newspapers with different
political agendas, for example)
Read Orwell’s essay, Politics and the
English Language, written in 1946
(referred to in the latest Adelaide
Independent Weekly)
Characterisation
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Julia: a different kind of rebel to Winston?
Syme: an almost obsessive intellectual?
Parsons: the submissive worker who,
despite his enthusiasm for Big Brother,
will end up as a victim (like Boxer in Animal Farm)?
Winston: hero or an anti-hero?
Character studies
With the class divided into four groups,
each will write a study of one of the
following characters:
 Julia; Syme; Parsons; Winston
Do not merely describe and analyse them,
but identify from where exactly in the
book you get your ideas.
The Language of the Third
Reich...

The German philologist Victor Klemperer made a secret
study of the Nazis' perversion of the German language.
Although he was sacked from Dresden University (where
he was professor of French Literature) in 1935 because
he was a Jew, Victor Klemperer was allowed to remain in
Dresden throughout the war years because the Nazis
classified his wife as an 'Aryan'. Klemperer risked their
lives by keeping detailed diaries in which he made a
meticulous study of Nazi rhetoric, which he codenamed
LTI, standing for Lingua Tertii Imperii.
Dr Leo Kretzenbacher on the German philologist Victor
Klemperer, ABC Radio National, Saturday 22/03/2003

Published in 1946 in what was then the
Soviet-occupied part of Germany, ‘The
Language of the Third Reich’ consists of
excerpts from the diary Viktor Klemperer
kept during a murderously insane time as
a means of keeping sane. Its immediate
appeal and eminent readability after
almost 60 years lies in its deeply personal
character.
How can a manipulated system of
language poison everyday life?

Central to Klemperer’s endeavour is the question: how and to what
extent can immersion in a completely manipulated system of
language - along with other symbolic systems - poison the everyday
thinking and speaking of ordinary people? He is amazed by the
spread of Nazi terminology, and by the willingness of people to
believe Nazi propaganda, particularly those who are not themselves
Nazis. Amongst the uneducated as well as the highly educated, …
even amongst fellow Jewish victims of the Nazis, he encounters a
large amount of vocabulary that he traces back to official Nazi use,
plus a deep conviction, right up to the end, that Hitler is going to
turn around the obviously lost war. In the afterword, Klemperer
even … asks whether he himself had been immune to the
generalisations of ‘the other’ that Nazi propaganda had drummed
into people.
Sprache, die fur dich dichtet und
denkt

Deprived, amongst so many other things, of any access
to libraries and even to newspapers as a Jew, Klemperer
starts to analyse his everyday impressions from his
intimate knowledge of the rationalist tradition of the
Enlightenment and European literature of the Classic and
Romantic periods. His main hypothesis is derived from
Friederich Schiller’s idea of ‘language that writes and
thinks for you’. His material is everything he can get
access to, such as scraps of newspapers he gets as
wrapping paper or is given by his wife, who is also able
to borrow some books from the libraries locked to him.
Aufziehen

‘Aufziehen’ is a German verb with a neutral technical
meaning such as ‘winding up a mechanical toy or a
clock’. ‘Jemanden aufziehen’ can also mean ‘to pull
someone’s leg’. Chapter 7 analyses how this verb was
hijacked by the Nazis and given the completely new
meaning of ‘setting up something on a grand scale’. This
new meaning of the verb ‘aufziehen’ survived the Third
Reich and has ever since been a seemingly harmless
exaggeration for any event that is planned and
performed on a grand scale. Nazi use of language
survived Nazi rule.
fanatisch

Much more obvious in its manipulative intention is the
emphasis the Nazis put on the adjective ‘fanatical’.
Throughout the Nazi period, ‘fanatisch’ kept the
connotation of blind irrationality it had since the
Enlightenment, while being turned into a positive word.
Thus to Klemperer, the ubiquitous use of ‘fanatisch’ and
‘Fanatismus’ in LTI is much more than just an element of
a pompous and threatening vocabulary; it signifies the
Nazis’ contempt for rationality and their idolising of
pseudo-religious blind faith.
Gefolgschaft

‘Gefolgschaft’ literally means ‘group of followers’. This
medieval term with feudal overtones was used in the
Nazi vocabulary to refer to any entourage, but more
specifically to the workforce or staff of a particular
employer. By exchanging contemporary industrial
relations terms such as ‘Belegschaft’, ‘Arbeitnehmer’ or
‘Angestellte’ for ‘Gefolgschaft’, each and every workplace
is transformed into a little Third Reich of its own,
reflecting the relationship between ‘Fuhrer’ and
‘Gefolgschaft’, ‘leader and followers’, thousandfold.
Dr Leo Kretzenbacher, Department of Germanic and Swedish Studies,
Melbourne University.
Structure
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The novel is divided into three parts with one
appendix.
In three groups, identify what the narrative
purpose is for each part (e.g. an introduction –
but to what?) and what the general focus of
each part is.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the story is told
chronologically, apart from…when? Identify any
deviations in chronological narrative for your
part and explain their effect or purpose.
Genre
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From Utopia to Dystopia

While incorporating a sense of post-1945
austerity (written in 1948, the novel reflects
the privations Britain suffered as a result of
WWII), the setting consciously inverts many
of the principles fundamental to the
construction of a utopian community
Genre
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The Utopian City

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Typically well-ordered, harmonious and perfect in all
parts, reflecting the sociopolitical ideals of the utopian
writer
The City of 1984

A decaying, bomb-shocked London of ruined skull-like
houses – the constant watchful regard of power
isolates and separates rather than unites its people:
“In our world there will be no emotions except fear,
rage, triumph and self-abasement” (p.279)
Genre
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Utopian Transparency
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All motives and functions work transparently
under the all-pervading light of rationality,
honesty and truth
Oceania’s darkness

Mirrors do not reflect; all glass is opaque; the
telescreen is really the eye of a spy
Genre
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The Newspeak appendix
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A parody of pure language, transparent in all its
parts, it rather mutilates and homogenizes to prevent
the possibility of free thought
O’Brien as utopian architect

A moralist, censor and pedagogue who wants to
reform humanity through Winston Smith – the ‘last
man’ of a generation becoming extinct – by uprooting
memory and individual identity
Point of View
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The book is written in the third person but stays
with Winston’s point of view

Does this affect one’s vision
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of what happens?
of the other characters?
Winston at first thinks that Julia is a member of the
Thought Police, while he trusts O’Brien. How does this
affect the reader?
What does this show us about different types of narrator
and the effects of changing point of view?
Could one have told this story from O’Brien’s viewpoint?
Or Julia’s? Do it, choosing your own appropriate short
scene.
“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
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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 reenacts 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

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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 pyschological
drama of betrayal.
1010101010101010101010101
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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.
Room 101
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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)
Room 101

Erika Gottlieb argues that room 101 reveals the
psychodynamics of totalitarianism:
Why Western intellectuals were susceptible to the
psychosis of nationalistic leader worship
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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: McGillQueen's UP, 2001
Room 101

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.
Re-educating the self in
Dystopian Fiction
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
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