George Orwell's 1984
Orwell is our first major stop. The publishers have palmed off a new edition ("Centennial edition") with new page numbers to make it impossible to buy used books. READ THE FIRST 70 PAGES of the novel and the essay at the back on "Newspeak." I'll post here, or hand out, the new page numbers to concentrate on as soon as I know them. For class discussion and test purposes, as you read, be sure you can identify or explain the following: Big Brother, the slogans on his poster, the memory hole, the telescreen, newspeak, duck speak, why sex is a crime against the state, who Winston, Julia and O'Brien are, Inner Party, Outer Party, Proles, Ministry of Love (an "Orwellian inversion") the Two Minute Hate, the Anti-Sex League, doublethink, and why Winston says everything depends on being able to say that 2 + 2 = 4.
Download Kurt Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron," to use with 1984. Here's a link to it: http://www.nexuslearning.net/books/holt_elementsoflit-3/Collection%204/Collection%202/Harrison%20Bergeron%20p1.html. You guys are better at the Internet than I am, so if the link doesn't work, you're still responsible for using Google to find a free copy for yourself (it's only three pages long, so I won't assign the book).
Why you must know 1984:
Orwell's 1984 has become, I believe, the single most assigned book from the 20th century. Even a cruddy "reality" show like "Big Brother" counted on you to know a little about 1984 and know what was being implied. We'll read it for those concepts, and for the Newspeak vocabulary.
The book will be easier if you read first the general essay on Newspeak at the end. Concentrate on what he says about the "B vocabulary" and the motive for getting rid of words which get in Big Brother's way.
Lefthand numbers are the Signet Classic edition/ Righthand are Centennial edition
| 5 | 1 | Big Brother's poster |
| 6 | 2 | telescreen, Thought Police |
| 7 | 2-3 | The three slogans of the Party. "Orwellian inversions" |
| 12 | 9-10 | Julia (the girl) and O'Brien, the Inner Party and Outer Party, the Two Minute Hate lasts the next few pages. Notice "thoughtcrime." |
| 13 | 10 | Goldstein, the official Enemy (cf. Snowball in Animal Farm). Newspeak, duckspeak |
| 36-39 | the Memory Hole | |
| 46 | 52 | How Newspeak works |
| 57-62 | 64-69 | why sex is a crime; he finds the evidence; the Proles |
| 69 | 80 | two plus two equals four |
| 79-83 | 104-111 | Mr Charrington and their room |
| 88-93 | 104-108 | Julia, the affair, the antisex league |
| 103-105 | 124-127 | the affair, and the paradise of privacy |
| 110-119 | 133-143 | Julia and why the Party hates sex; "home" = "privacy" |
| 129 | 156 | "a rebel from the waist downwards" he tells her of the evidence of the Brotherhood |
| 166-167 | how history works | |
| 176-185 | doublethink, Orwellian language, Julia and Winston captured | |
| 201-213 | 243-253 | the torture 2 plus 2 "how many fingers?" |
| 243-245 | 296-299 | "He loved Big Brother" |
| 249-256 | 298-300 | on Newspeak-- particularly the B vocabulary and the motive |
With 1984, we watch:
ANIMATED FILM: George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM. Long before there were serious "anime" this cartoon version of Orwell's Animal Farm was a classic. An excellent companion to 1984.