WORK UNIT ON GEORGE ORWELL’S NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

Although the Berlin Wall is down and the year of 1984 has long since passed, Nineteen Eighty-Four is worth teaching for several reasons:

(a) It is a very useful text to use at the beginning of the English A1 course as it exemplifies most of the literary features that candidates need to become acquainted with. Even the most non-literary candidate can identify and understand them in this work.

(b) There are many interesting topics for discussion that arise from this text: the nature of language (this provides links with TOK), the powers of the state over the individual, surveillance and freedom, indoctrination, love/sex/marriage, the importance of laws, and so on.

(c) It is always sensible to start the course with a book most students will like, and Nineteen Eighty-Four is always a popular work; very few candidates dislike it. It is probably the most popular choice of work for English A1 Extended Essays.

(d) Many candidates need to improve their knowledge of vocabulary before they can read difficult works, such as nineteenth-century novels. Nineteen Eighty-Four enables candidates to extend their vocabulary, without its ever being so difficult that they cannot make sense of it.

(e) Nineteen Eighty-Four can be usefully linked with other works concerned with the powers of the state over the individual. For example works by: Solzhenitsyn, Huxley, Dorfman, Atwood, Gogol, Fugard, Sophocles, and so on.

Background Knowledge and Secondary sources

Most candidates have enough general knowledge of twentieth-century history for there to be little need for any information to be given to them before they start reading. Gaps in knowledge can be filled in as they arise in class. The best other sources for understanding Nineteen Eighty-Four can be found in Orwell’s own works, especially Animal Farm and his essays. Michael Crick’s George Orwell, a life, Secker and Warburg, 1981; J. Meyer’s Reader’s Guide to George Orwell, Thames and Hudson, 1975; Peter Lewis’ George Orwell, the Road to 1984, Heinemann, 1981; Michael Sheldon’s Orwell, the Authorised Biography, Minerva, 1991; G. Holderness et al., George Orwell, Macmillan New Casebooks, 1998; are all useful books for the teacher to read. The best way to acquaint students with the events of Orwell’s life is to show them a video made for television by Granada called, The Way to 1984.

Students do need to know the precise meanings of various political terms such as: totalitarianism, fascism, socialism, liberalism, communism, capitalism, democracy, indoctrination and brainwashing.

How to begin?

Some teachers ask their students to read one or two texts before they start the course. This is most rewarding when it is accompanied by the candidates noting down their reactions to the works in their own literary journals, for this enables them to respond to the work in a personal manner before the teaching begins. A problem can arise when candidates decide they dislike the book on the basis that it is too difficult, too negative or too complex. Some students, once they have taken against a work, are hard to convince of its virtues. In the case of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is a good idea to read the first chapter aloud to the class during the first lesson on it. In this way one can stop at important points and comment on them.

Chapter 1

First sentence. Tell the class about the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice, and then ask them what clues to Nineteen Eighty-Four lie in: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” If you use the Socratic method it will not be difficult for your students to recognize the significance of the “bright/cold/April” connotations, and to note that clocks do not usually strike thirteen. In some cultures it may be necessary to point out that thirteen is an unlucky number.

Winston Smith. Ask about the contrast between the Everyman quality of the name “Smith” and the heroic association of “Winston (Churchill)”. What kind of hero is “Winston Smith” likely to be? List the words describing him. What do they tell us about him?

Setting. Ask students to list the images associated with “Victory Mansions”. How does Orwell convey the dreariness of the building? Ask students to note which senses are being evoked.

Ask them to note down the images associated with London in the novel. How is it described? What aspects are emphasized?

When Orwell was writing this book in 1948, large stretches of the city were still scarred by bomb-sites and littered with dust and rubbish, but he chose to set the events of the story in the future, in a changed world. What aspects of this future world are introduced in the first chapter?

It is important to puzzle out in class the meanings of the three slogans: War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; and Ignorance is Strength. Compare the slogan put out by the pigs in Animal Farm: “Four legs good, two legs bad”; and its amended version, when the pigs have learned to walk upright: “Four legs good, two legs better”.

Surveillance. The world of Oceania is one of constant surveillance. Ask students to list the methods used by the Inner Party to monitor all the actions of the Outer Party members. Then ask where there might be parallels in their own society. Does it matter if the state is always watching you?

Chapters 2 and 3

When students have read these two chapters ask them what they have found out about: the Parsons family (why include them?) the Spies, Thoughtcrime, Newspeak, the deliberate re-writing of the past, Ingsoc, and Orwell’s reasons for describing Winston’s dream.

Part One

By the time students have finished reading Part 1 (homework in the first week), they will have been introduced to all the main elements of the world of 1984.

To understand the text properly certain concepts have to be understood. One is “thoughtcrime”, another is “doublethink”. Most candidates find this notion very difficult to grasp at first, but it is important for them to realize that they themselves do this - we all do at times. Public attitudes to drugs/alcohol/tea/coffee can be used to illustrate “doublethink”, a word made up by Orwell, which is now part of the English language.

Another important propaganda device is “Newspeak”, dealt with in chapter 5 of the novel. Ask students to consider Syme’s words: “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.” Split the word differently, and you find “News peak”: can students think of examples where world or local news has been reported or edited in biased ways (by newspapers with different political agendas, for example).

It is an interesting exercise to ask students to see how they can convey messages or ideas without using words. Ask them if it is possible to think about something there is no word for. They might also be asked to rewrite sentences in “Newspeak”. Apart from being a link with TOK, this encourages students to think about the nature of language and its importance. Its worth asking candidates to read all, or parts of, Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language, written in 1946.

The role of the “proles” should be discussed, particularly the idea that hope lies in the proles. Does it?

The Novel as a whole

As already mentioned, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a useful book for introducing literary features and devices. Setting has already been considered in chapter 1, and the different settings in the rest of the book are equally significant.

Structure. The novel is divided into three parts with one appendix. The first part consists of an introduction to the world of 1984 (each chapter tends to focus on a new aspect of that world) and to the main characters. The second part is the story of Winston and Julia’s love-affair, and the third part is the account of Winston’s torture and brainwashing. The appendix gives extra information about Newspeak.

Identifying a straightforward structure such as this is, is a basis for understanding more complex structures which will be found in other works in the syllabus. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the story is told chronologically, apart from the times when Winston is dreaming or remembering events from the past (for instance, seeing Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford in the Chestnut Tree Café).

Digressions. The nature of digressions in the narrative can be shown in the use of Goldstein’s book which Winston reads to Julia just before they are arrested. What is the effect of including it at this point? Another digression is the story of Ogilvie. Why is this included?

Point of View. The book is written in the third person but stays with Winston’s point of view; does this affect one’s vision 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? Here is an opportunity to talk about the different types of narrator and the effects of changing the point of view. Could one have told this story from O’Brien’s viewpoint? Or Julia’s? Let your students try.

Foreshadowing. Orwell does not cheat his reader. All the main events of the book are foreshadowed. Some examples:

In Chapter 2: “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”

In Chapter 5: “ One of these days.... Syme will be vaporized”.

In Chapter 7, in the scene where Aaronson, Rutherford and Jones are drinking gin in the Chestnut Tree Cafe before they are shot, look carefully at the song, “Under the spreading Chestnut Tree”, and in particular the line “I sold you and you sold me”.

In Chapter 8: “It would probably be quite easy to rent the room...”. What is the peculiar significance of the nursery rhyme,”Oranges and lemons”? What is the last line of the rhyme?

Symbolism. The paperweight is a key symbol which Orwell uses in a number of different ways. It is both beautiful and fragile; it represents the past, and the life Julia and Winston have in the rented room (note: it is broken when they are arrested); it also represents our way of life which Orwell wishes to warn us is also fragile.

Other symbols worth analysis (and there are more) are the “Golden Country”, chocolate, and “2+2=4".

Imagery and leitmotif. Orwell uses certain images repetitively to create atmosphere and set the tone. Examples are: colours (such as grey and blue), dust, things being broken, eyes, posters and pictures of Big Brother, the word “Victory”, rats, the smell of sweat, pain and illness and so on.

Characterisation. It is useful to introduce E. M. Forster’s definitions of “round” and “flat” characters (to be found in Forster’s The Art of the Novel). Notice the different ways in which Orwell introduces his characters and motivates them. Julia is a rebel like Winston but of a different kind. Syme represents the intelligent, almost obsessive intellectual, while Parsons (like Boxer in Animal Farm) represents the submissive worker who, despite his enthusiasm for Big Brother/Napoleon, will end up as a victim. In such a society no one is safe. Is Winston a hero or an anti-hero?

If your students have never written a character study this is a good time to ask them to try. The class can be divided into groups, each with a character; ask them to not merely describe the characters but to identify exactly where in the book they get their ideas from.

Language and style. Compare descriptive passages with dialogue. Do characters speak differently? How does Orwell convey a scene? Is the syntax simple or complex? Is the language easy to understand ? Does Orwell use jargon? technical terms? Look at the use of the senses in descriptive passages; the sound of the wind flapping posters against the wall, the taste of the gin, the smell of boiled cabbage, the pain of hunger; as well as all the visual images. Winston’s description in Chapter 1 of the war-film of people being machine-gunned in the water (and the audience’s response) is particularly worth close analysis.

Themes and purpose. Lord Acton’s comment: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, can be compared with O’Brien assuring Winston that a picture of the future is, “a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” Orwell’s message is very clear: totalitarian governments are only interested in maintaining power for themselves; they have no interest in the well-being of their citizens. However, Orwell clearly stated on more than one occasion, that Nineteen Eighty-Four was a satire, a parody, not a prophecy of the future.

In his The Novel Now, Anthony Burgess writes: “It is possible to say that the ghastly future Orwell foretells will not come about, simply because he has foretold it; we have been warned.” That is what Nineteen Eighty-Four is primarily: a warning against allowing governments to have too much power. This warning is as valid today as it was when Orwell wrote his book in 1947-8.

It is interesting to note how often Orwell’s work is misunderstood; perhaps because of a reader’s political position, or perhaps because, as T. S. Eliot puts it, “humankind cannot bear very much reality”. Some people say that Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer relevant because the Berlin wall has come down and communism is a spent force. But it is clear that Orwell was not attacking the left or the right. He was attacking any government that sought to take over complete power. Orwell would include those who increase their powers of surveillance and arrest in the name of security.

There are other themes in the book concerning the nature of law, language, family life and so on, but all are subordinated or contribute to the main theme: the danger to the individual, and to basic human decency, of an all-powerful oligarchy.