Common Module

Question 1

Orwell introduces the Party’s hold over Winston’s morals and beliefs as he delightedly writes about the “good” war film which featured a refugee mother and her son.

Answer 1

She was “covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him.” Before being bombed in a “terrific flash” and commenting on the “wonderful shot of a child’s arm going up up up right up into the air.”
DICTION - perceptions align with the Party’s intended response

Question 2

However, as Winston soon delves into his subconscious thoughts, Orwell implies that writing facilitates the deeper discovery of oneself.

Answer 2

Winston recounts the revelation of his hate for the Party as “though by automatic action” he began repeatedly writing “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER…”
REPETITION+UPPERCASE

Question 3

Orwell explores the power of relationships to enrich our human experience through the conception of Winston and Julia’s love affair.

Answer 3

After Julia discreetly hands Winston a slip of paper which reads “I love you”, Winston realised that “At the sight of the words I love you the desire to stay alive had welled up in him”.
METAPHOR - immediately improves Winston’s spirits

Question 4

During Winston and Julia’s rendezvous, despite their attraction, they also see their relationship as political resistance.

Answer 4

“You could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays… Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory.”

METAPHOR - demonstrates the political intent of relationship

Question 5

Party does not want you to have private relationships or loyalties

Answer 5

The terrible thing that the Party had done was “to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account”

Question 6

The capitulation scene in Room 101 depicts the fall of Winston’s fragile identity through the process of “reintegration”.

Answer 6

“Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia!… Tear her to shreds, strip her to the bone! To Julia! Not me!”

REPETITION+EXCLAMATION MARKS - he even provides suggestions smh

Question 7

Opening the book, Orwell depicts a desolate society in the opening scene of 1984.

Answer 7

Winston escapes the “vile winds” and “gritty dust” to enter his “Victory Mansion”, ironically contrasting the name “victory” with the hallways that smelt of “boiled cabbage” and “old ragmats”. Airstrip One was bare save for the coloured posters that were in each “commanding corner” captioned “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”.
MULTI-SENSORY DESCRIPTIONS - understand the depressive state

Question 8

In Winston’s ethereal description of the “Golden Country”, Orwell demonstrates a sharp shift in setting through inclusion of figurative language which highlights the contrast between the pastoral, natural and the decaying urban Airstrip One.

Answer 8

Winston describes the “close bitten pasture, with a footpath wandering across it” and uses metaphors to describe the leaves of the elm trees that “stirred faintly in dense masses like women’s hair”.
DICTION+FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE - sense of freedom and connotes intimacy (wOMEn)

Question 9

In the construction of the Party’s slogans and activities, Orwell demonstrates the importance of becoming aware of what external factors created for evil are influencing our thoughts.

Answer 9

Doublethink which is encapsulated in the Party slogans: “WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”.
LITERARY PARADOX

Encapsulated in the Party slogan, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”
CHIASMUS - highlight party’s power

Question 10

Newspeak

Answer 10

The Party enforces a new iteration of the English language “Newspeak” which serves to control the population’s freedom of thought and expression by removing and redefining creative and expressive words that incite strong emotions such as “terrible” is replaced by neologism such as “ungood”.“Every year the number of words is less and less” accompanying the “range of consciousness becoming smaller and smaller”.

Question 11

Erasing and rewriting history and our memories is a powerful form of control and suppression. It has a profound role in shaping the community, history and our individual and collective identities

Answer 11

When the party announces a rise in the ration of chocolate which is contradictory to Winston’s memory that it had been reduced to twenty grams, Winston notices the man on the table next to him to appear like a “eyeless creature who swallowed it frantically and passionately”.
METAPHOR - blind

Question 12

GREED FOR POWER~

Answer 12

“always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtle.”

ANTITHESIS - highlights the growing power gap in Airstrip One

Question 13

Party’s goals to detach the population from all forms of stimulation include the appreciation of beauty to establish a mundane life that is not really worth living for.

Answer 13

“There will be no art, no literature, no science… There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life.”

Question 14

Part of the construction and discovery of our individuality includes the appreciation of things that hold value yet are useless in practical terms. These include culture, art, literature and in Winston’s case, a paperweight with a coral inside, in a society where paper cannot be freely used.

Answer 14

Winston experiences a dream inside the coral paperweight that he bought for its “beauty and uselessness”. The coral paperweight is a symbol used by Orwell to embody Winston’s want for freedom and self-identity, by purchasing this useless item in secret as a defiant act against the Party.

Question 15

Part of the construction and discovery of our individuality includes the appreciation of things that hold value yet are useless in practical terms. These include culture, art, literature and in Winston’s case, a paperweight with a coral inside, in a society where paper cannot be freely used.

Winston’s dream

Answer 15

In the “vast, luminous dream” which his “whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening after rain” this change in language to describe this ethereal moment. He dreams of his mother which he associates with this flood of “clear soft light in which one could see into interminable distances.” This description of the wide expansive landscape gives Winston a sense of hope and vision for the future and what is to come.

Question 16

During the struggle as the Thought Police detain Winston and Julia, the glass coral paperweight falls to the ground and shatters, revealing the coral enclosed.

Answer 16

“How small, through Winston, how small it always was!”
Used as a symbol throughout the novel to explain its relevance and existence as the result of Winston’s desire for personal freedom and ability to explore and express self-identity.
Winston realises that his fascination was a trap and that that his perceptions had been misguided. The breaking and revelation that the coral was small symbolises that Winston’s desire of personal freedom and self-identity was in fact misguided and clouded the by the glass that surrounded the coral much like the totalitarian regime that enclosed him.

Question 17

Your existence could just be removed

Answer 17

“Once you were in the grip of the Party, you could be “lifted clean out of the stream of history.” This metaphor demonstrates the ease that your existence could be removed and the insignificance of the power individual in the face of the collective.

Question 18

When Winston pledges his allegiance to the Revolution, agreeing to do very disturbing things for the revolution without a second thought. As the party has constructed this party, Winston demonstrates his capabilities of being a loyal devoted follower.

Answer 18

“’You are prepared to commit murder?’
‘Yes.’
To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people?’
‘Yes.’
…
‘You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming frugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases – to do anything that is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the party.’
‘Yes.’
‘If for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child’s face – are you prepared to do that?’
‘Yes.’”

Question 19

Orwell uses mathematical terms to categorically define the truth. However, by depicting Winston’s integration that left him believing “2+2=5”, Orwell alludes to the power of fear to change one’s perspective.

Answer 19

Winston previously defined in his diary that freedom as the “freedom to say that two plus two make four.” This AXIOM also a recurring motif throughout the book, finally appearing in the last scene as Winston traces out “2+2=5” as he whispers “I love Big Brother.”

Question 20

Orwell creates an atmosphere of omnipotence as the Winston constantly keeps himself in line, thinking about Party’s widespread suppression and inevitable punishment of free expression.

Answer 20

The symbolism of the telescreen which has been reimagined to not only broadcast but also receive information “was quite delicate enough to pick up” the beating of one’s heart. Winston is hyperaware of the surveillance as he carefully determines his positioning outside the view of the telescreen when he writes in his diary. Furthermore, Winston’s thoughts even follow him to the pastoral Golden Country where he imagines some “beetle-like man was listening intently” to the microphones placed in the Golden Country.

Question 21

the future of humanity under totalitarian rule

Answer 21

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

ANALOGY

Question 22

how winston is after his sess at Ministry of Love

Answer 22

O’Brien describes Winston after his time at the Ministry of Love “forlorn jailbird face… a nobbly forehead running into a bald scalp”
GRAPHIC IMAGERY

Question 23

Orwell warns that fear is a powerful opponent to resistance and plays an important role in the totalitarian regime to subdue dissent.

Answer 23

Winston falls “through the walls,,, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars- always away, away, away from the rats.”
ANAPHORA+INCREASING MAGNITUDE

Question 24

During the Two Minute Hate, Orwell is able to explore the power of the collective and thus the ease of influencing a group.

Answer 24

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in”.

“A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current.”

Question 25

Orwell uses Winston’s journey through the book to show that the Party’s manipulation and control over the population has resulted in citizens that are unable to truly feel emotionally despite being intellectually aware.

Answer 25

In Winston’s dream of his mother that occurs in the glass paperweight, Winston remembers how his mother had given her children her portion of food instead of eating it. Even as Winston attempts to “relearn by conscious effort”, his inability to relate his insight of his mother’s sacrifices as “a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable” with her actions when there was no food left and “his mother had clasped the child in her arms.” Which he remarked “was no use, it had changed nothing.”

Question 26

After dreaming of his mother, he also remembers the refugee woman again

Answer 26

She had “also covered the little boy with her arm” that “was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of paper”.

Question 27

Winston’s unemotive response to this memory allows the reader to understand that his external influences have had an adverse effect on his humanity.

Answer 27

Winston then remembers “without apparent relevance” how he had seen a severed hand and “kicked it into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage stalk.”

Question 28

power obrien monologue

Answer 28

power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing