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Chapter 2 – Nineteen Eighty-Four

Summary:

  • Parsons introduced.
  • Newspeak and Doublespeak introduced.
  • Winston feels lonely and isolated in this world, writes in his diary.

Key Quotes:

  • “A colourless, crushed-looking woman” p.22
  • “Victory mansions were old flats…falling to pieces. The plaster flaked…pipes burst…the roof leaked...” p. 22
  • “boiled-cabbage smell” p.23
  • “the military music which was still issuing from the telescreen” p23
  • “…one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than of the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended.” P.24
  • “It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.” P25
  • “…this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party” p26
  • “…the worship of Big Brother” p26
  • “It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.” P27
  • “It was impossible to be sure-whether O’Brien was a friend or an enemy.” P27
  • “He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.” P28
  • “WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” P29
  • “Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed – no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” P29
  • “He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.” P30
  • “It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.” P30
  • “To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free…to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone” p30
  • “Thoughtcrime IS death” p30

Quote analysis:

Structure:

There is a build-up of dramatic tension in this chapter as Winston takes “the decisive step” of betraying the Party; by “dipp[ing] his pen” he ‘recognis[es] himself as a dead man.” As he starts to reveal his personal thoughts a sense of foreboding invades the novel. Orwell reveals the lies of the Party and its empty rhetoric by mocking the naming of “old flats” that are “falling to pieces” as “Victory Mansions”.

Symbols:

Dust: “dust in the creases of her face” p22

Decrepit buildings

Colourless/Grey “A colourless, crushed-looking woman” p.22

“the woman’s greyish face” p26

Propaganda “Victory Mansions”

Eyes- surveillance “the eyes pursued you” p.29

Time- “The telescreen struck fourteen.” (Military time, await your orders)

Observations/assertions:

  • Orwell and Funder both use setting to reflect the oppressiveness of political control.
  • Orwell depicts a bleak and dystopian world devoid of individuality and privacy in which “nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”
  • Thegenre elements of fiction, polemic and dystopia inform the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
  • Orwell makes pointed use of colour imagery to convey the negative and stifling effects of a totalitarian state over the “colourless, crushed-looking” victims of its regime.

Connections to Stasiland:

  • landscape & setting
  • inability to trust others; do not know who is friend or informer
  • surveillance
  • Stasi’s brief “shield and sword of the communist party” p59 compare with INGSOC slogans.

Sample paragraph:

In Nineteen Eighty-Four and Stasiland, the characters’ lives are completely controlled by government forces and ideology. This control extends even to the most private recesses of an individual. Orwell depicts a bleak and dystopian world so devoid of individuality and privacy that “nothing [is] your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” He employs colour imagery to convey the negative and stifling effects of such a world over the “colourless, crushed-looking” victims of its regime. Individuals are unable to live open, free and authentic lives because the Party demands absolute loyalty and absolute control over its subjects. The Party even demands uniformity of thought and total control over even the most intimate and private recesses of individuality, the mind. Winston’s decision to write his private thoughts in a diary highlight the fundamental human need for freedom of thought as it is the only vehicle available to him to “carr[y] on the human heritage.” Even the children are used as weapons to invade their parents’ privacy. They are actively encouraged to monitor their parents’ actions and betray them. Orwell’s Oceania is a world in which “It [is] almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.” Similarly, in Stasiland, Funder highlights the…