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Component 2 : Comparative & Contextual Study (Dystopia) > ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ Quotes > Flashcards

‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ Quotes Flashcards

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1
Q

Syme of Newspeak

A

“ The whole aim of newspeak is to narrow the range of thought… In the end, we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”

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2
Q

Party Slogan about History

A

“ Who controls the present controls the past”

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3
Q

‘facecrime’ in Nineteen Eighty-Four

A

“to wear an improper expression on your face … was itself a punishable offence”

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4
Q

Winston on orthodoxy

A

“orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness”

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5
Q

Winston on the proles

A

‘if there is hope…it lies in the proles’, ‘the swarming disregarded masses’ who could ‘become conscious’ and rebel,

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6
Q

Michael Sherborne

A

…is about the human condition ; Winston as “mentally and physically malnourished he aspires to health”

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7
Q

Free indirect discourse

A

“an 18th-century nobleman” and “Saint Sebastian” are narrator ; distances from Winston reader discouraged from completely identifying with him

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8
Q

Poster Big Brother

A

1914 Lord Kitchener (Secretary if War) recruitment posters (‘Your country needs YOU’)

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9
Q

Two minutes hate

A

distasteful inversion if 2 min silence held annually 11 Nov ; it “caricatures religious and political fanaticism” - Michael Sherborne

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10
Q

Ministry of Truth

A

appearance & size like senate house at Uni of London where ministry of information during WW2 ; telegraphic address ‘miniform’ and the Minister Brendan Bracken known to subordinates as ‘BB’

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11
Q

Britain absorbed into superstate dominated by USA

A

only military use as ‘Airstrip One’ ; piece of satire in Britain’s changing place in the international order

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12
Q

‘Sacred principles’ of ‘Ingsoc’

A

are ‘Newspeak…doublethink….the mutability of the past’

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13
Q

‘Squalid horror of life under Big Brother’ epitomised by the Parsons

A

‘man of paralysing stupidity’ and children as spies shows that the world “is not only squalid but sinister” - Michael Sherborne

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14
Q

Reality

A

“His sense of reality seems to be under attack both from without (the states intrusions and propaganda) and from within (his dreams)” - Michael Sherborne … “His rebellion is a political one but it also has a psycological dimension’

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15
Q

Golden Country

A

as a pastoral landscape Stony imagery & metaphors of the Golden Country ‘pools of gold’ ‘misty with bluebells’

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16
Q

Eurasia vs Eastasia

A

who is ally / enemy reflects USSR during war

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17
Q

Book opens

A

“at the decisive moment when his thoughts pass from dissatisfaction to rebellion” - Michael Sherborne

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18
Q

Morning exercises

A

“Parodying the exercises which in the 1940s the BBC broadcast before the 7 o clock news”

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19
Q

“Shakespeare” on his lips

A

depicts natural world rounded characters and tragedy ; not possible anymore / creator of language ; Winston won’t ever be hamlet or or hello a tragic hero who makes powerful speeches full of insights about the human condition his death will have no dramatic impact - he is one of millions REMINISCENT of BNN ; John savage quotes Shakespeare to attack the world state

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20
Q

Orwell’s wife worked in the government censorship department

A

boost allied morale and mislead enemy ; technique now known as ‘disinformation’ ; word made in the newspeak fashion +prefix

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21
Q

Satirised crude political writing

A

which Orwell attacked in essays like ‘The Prevention of Literature’ - Winston’s job & article on Comrade Ogilvy

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22
Q

1947 while Orwell was writing

A

tinned meat ration cut to twopence worth per week due to an economy drive

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23
Q

Syme’s sadistic relish at a hanging & open callousness concerning executions in chapter 5

A

Orwell shocked by casual references to murder to media despite being soldier ; attacked such attitudes in essays ‘inside the whale’ 1940 & Raffles & Miss Blandish (1944)

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24
Q

‘Diary’ is a misnomer

A

most of what he writes is past reflections & general philosophising ; no expectation he will live long enough to look back ; writes with OBrien as reader when addressing “freedom is the freedom to say that 2 plus 2 makes 4” (empiricist view)

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25
Misogyny
Sterotypical figures of Katherine & old prostiture AND misogyny which might be manifestation of sexual restriction ; reader doubts whether “Winston is sufficiently detached to give us a full view if the world” - Michael Sherborne
26
Proles
0.85
27
“Opioid of the masses” reflects in chapter 7
gambling on lottery distraction
28
Senses mixed up
wants someone whose judgment he respects like a substitute for god who can assure him his vide of life is correct ; OBRIEN
29
Proles
‘like animals’ ‘like cattle’ If they were to rebel ; ‘like a horse shaking if flies’ ; image reminiscent of Boxer in Animal Farm ; symbolises working class in Animal Farm
30
Kicking human hand & convo with old man in pub
“comically demonstrates the gulf between his ideas and theirs” ; satire on distance between radical intellectuals & masses
31
Manipulation of history
epitomising by renaming of Trafalgar Square to Victory Square ; built to celebrate British defeat of Napoleon commemorating Horatio Nelson ; on column replaced by Big Brother commemorating the Battle of Airship One a ‘rewriting’ of Battle of Britain WW2 AND Statue ‘which was supposed to represent Oliver Cromwell’ is presumablyKing Charles I Cromwell’s greatest enemy
32
Julia’s character stats two-dimensional
conforming to male fantasy (ripping off the sache pulling him down on her) ; likened her swearing to ‘the sneeze of a horse’
33
‘The abolished past’
34
Prole woman
representing hope & humanity - singing a song created by a machine
35
Winston’s health & varicose ulcer
improves with emotional happiness with Julia
36
German V1 and V2 missiles
hit London during 1944 killing around 5500 people before Allied troops
37
Constant feeling of prolepses
‘the sensation of stepping into the dampness if a grave’
38
Julia is not Winston’s ‘soul mate’ to share thoughts & soul
looks for this in O’Brien hence his anxiety to meet when invited to his to look at new dictionary
39
‘In shirts all the same colour’
recalls totalitarian organisations Fascist brown shorts & Nazi blackshirts ; Orwell saw the British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley address a public meeting in 1936 and was horrified by his NaCl-shirted followers & how they were allowed to attack hecklers
40
Dreams role in 1984 parallels Night sections
thought rebellion. George Woodcock ‘dreams and nightmares…suggests that Orwell was very much aware of the importance of the extra-rational elements in human life’
41
Winston’s comment that he hoped
“the inner heart….remained impregnable” to others is cynically proven wrong
42
Hierarchy and priveledges
members of inner party (as seen in part 2 chapter 8) can turn off telescreens has servants (O’Brien’s Martin)
43
Faith & hope necessary for human survival
Winston has a feeling ‘almost of worship’ for O’Brien
44
Winston’s rebellion as a form of terrorism
In light of attacks like 9/11 (World Trade Center in New York in 2001 killing 3000 people) a reader may interpret Winston’s “Yes” to whether he would throw sulphuric acid in a child’s face as terrorism ; fault if rebels or party?
45
“Coolies”
are non-white labourers
46
‘The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism”
explains the purpose of war: not to secure victory but to create a siege mentality & material conditions which enable a small caste if people to remain in control external conflict used to justify centralisation of power & scarcity of goods increases importance which possessions have as markers of privilege making society more steeply hierarchical ; draws on James Burnham’s book ‘The Managerial Revolution’ (1941)
47
Sudden change of enemy from Eurasia to Eastasia
ridiculous satirising diplomatic inconsistency (‘The Prevention of Literature’ (1946) by Orwell comments that in the 1930s a British communist went from having to hate Hitler to feeling sympathy after the Nazi-Soviet pact of September 1939 then was then reversed when Germany invaded Russia 20 months later June 1941)
48
Part of the party's method to systematically break down Winston’s world view
is first to demoralise & dehumanise him placing him in primitive shared conditions (prison in chapter one) to undermine his sense of self-worth removed autonomy through the telescreens orders
49
Unreliable narrator
Winston predicted Parsons would never be punished
50
Love easily overshadowed
‘he felt no love for her and he hardly even wondered what was happening to her’ ; purely physical / or just enjoyment in the act of rebellion (‘perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood’)
51
The degradation & brutalisation Winston experiences
allows O’Brien to wipe away his identity to be “replaced by a Party Substitute”
52
O’Brien
god-like in torture scenes when he can seem to read Winston’s mind - ‘a doctor a teacher even a priest’: semantic field of religious words (‘confession’ ‘priest’ ‘martyrdoms’ ‘thou shalt not’ ‘penitence’…) in place of religion O’Brien sets up the love of power (‘We are the priests of power’); …“An unforgiving Big Brother has replaced a potentially merciful God”
53
Drawing on & asserting historical beliefs
earth is the Center of the universe looks back to fundamentalist Christianity & the Inquisition.
54
Comparison to Russia
According to Lyon’s Assignment in Utopia (1937) Russian citizens were exhorted to achieve the soviet 5-year plan in four years by a campaign proclaiming ‘2+2 equals 5’
55
Brutality
‘A boot stamping on a human face - forever’
56
Comparison to BNN
Like Mond the World Controller in Huxley’s novel O’Brien asserts there is no God whatever’s humans are brought to believe is truth - similar structure discussion of ideas near the end before the main character is destroyed by the world he seeks to escape
57
Disconnect between dream and reality
near the end when Winston tries to convince himself he supports the party subscribes to its views and ‘was much better’ his dreams expose the truth - shouting Julia in his sleep
58
Book ends at ‘The Chestnut Tree’
he sits in his ‘usual’ seat implying he has been a patron there for some time and thus will be executed soon
59
The Appendix
The Principles of Newspeak elaborates on the description of Newspeak given by Syne in Part One Chapter 5 - The use of the past tense & oldspeak in it could imply this was written from the future
60
Sudden arrest by secret police
recalls Russia where from 1936 Stalin held ‘show trials’ in which his victims confessed to treachery often claiming they worked by movements like the Brotherhood led by his rival Leon Trotsky
61
Original Title
The Last Man in Europe
62
The Party’s objective
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power” – O’Brien, Part III, Chapter 3
63
Identity and Winston’s Belief about his Mind
“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull” – Part I, Chapter 2
64
Goldstien’s Manifesto about Technology
technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty”
65
Love in 1984
“‘If they could make me stop loving you – that would be the real betrayal’ She thought it over. ‘They can’t do that,’ she said finally. ‘It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything – anything – but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you’”
66
Human Flaws being Desirable to Winston
‘I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones’”

Component 2 : Comparative & Contextual Study (Dystopia) (6 decks)

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