1984 Flashcards
(14 cards)
Purpose - didactic warning
“Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or in directly against totalitarianism”
Winston’s characterisation as an “Everyman”
“So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing”
Personification of pain
“In the face of pain there are no heroes”
Form - prose
“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought”
Paradoxical party slogans
“Freedom is slavery. War is peace. Ignorance is strength”
Motif of thoughtcrime
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death”
Motif of newspeak
“Orthodoxy means not thinking… orthodoxy is unconsciousness”
Audience - intellectuals
“Syme will be vaporised. He is too intelligent”
Symbol of Big Brother
“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”
Symbol of chess
“Winston looked up at the portrait of big brother. White always mates… always without exception it is so arranged”
“His soul white as snow”
Setting of Airstrip One
“Though the sun was shining and the sky harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything”
Romanticisation of the Proles
“She would have been perfectly content… to remain there for a thousand years”
Paradox of progress
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious”
Concluding stasis
“The long hoped for bullet”
“He loved big brother”
