Thinking Writing 3.1 English I

1. Required Question:

Is doublethink something that we all practice, a commonplace sort of self-deception that is so ubiquitous among us that we are rarely, if ever, conscious of it, a practice that the Party has raised to a political art form? Plainly, I think so, but you may not agree. I would really like to know what you think and how you generally understand doublethink.

Here is the definition of doublethink from 1984:

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink. (56)

Respond to at least two of the following questions:

1. Puzzle: Winston has a dream seven years ago of a walking through a pitch-dark room and hearing, ‘We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.’ (25) The voice is that of O’Brien. Later, O’Brien will say these words as if he recognized them. (106) Have these words been somehow implanted unconsciously in Winston’s mind?

  1. Write a dialogue or sketch a scene in which doublethink occurs.
  1. Discuss the “ultimate subtlety” of doublethink mentioned in the quotation above.
  1. Propose “an inner party” of your own and sketch out its teachings and practices.
  1. Are you a thoughtcriminal? I definitely am
  1. What is duckspeak? (see pages 56, 319) Give your own examples.
  1. Use the online text of 1984 and explore what you can discover about ‘dust’ or ‘light’.
  1. Expand on your in class writing about the importance of privacy.
  1. Choose and comment upon any passage or sentence in chapters 1-5.
  1. Does the fact that Winston thinks “he is already dead” at the very beginning of the novel suggest that he is already a victim of the Party? Isn’t this an example of Doublethink: he thinks of himself as dead but clearly he is alive and exercising his free will? Isn’t that exactly what the Party wants those who think for themselves to believe: that thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.” Is not that the same sort of contradiction as “Freedom is slavery”? We might put it like this: Life is death. Has not the “long hoped for bullet” already entered his head?

11. Write about whatever is in your heart or on your mind today.