1984

How long has Mr. Charrington known that Winston was a traitor to
the party? Did he really know from the start or was his behavior only
an adaptation to his discovery later on?
Mr. Charrington = member of the thought police
o Old man who owns the antique shop where Winston buys his diary and
paperweight and where Winston rents the room above the shop
Nor did he (Mr. Charrington) seemed shocked or become offensively knowing when it
was made clear that Winston wanted the room for the purpose of a love affair
o Why is Mr. Charrington not shocked?
o Possibilities: He is a parole and therefore is used to an uncaring or uncivilized
lifestyle OR he already knew that Winston was coming
Winston has had many visions of the future (OBrien, Julia in the Golden Country)
o How is it that he can predict all this?
o Isnt there a stream somewhere? he whispered. Thats right, there is a
stream.
o The party controls many things, so what if it also can control your dreams
Dreams being implanted into citizens to provoke them into rebelling and
thus allowing themselves to get caught
Party sets up false hope so that it can be crushed, thus destroying
his morale
The Diary
o Charrington sold Winston the diary
o This may have set the thought police to watch over Winston: they needed to keep
an eye on him so they set him up to act on instinct (see point above)
o Everything was meticulously calculated by the Party to capture Winston
How else could have Charrington known about Winstons inevitable betrayal?
o Telescreen?
Maybe Winston has sleep-talked which can be picked up by the Party and
Charrington was simply a man that knew
Foreshadowing Winstons capture:
o Book 1:
And yet, the instant, that he allowed his thought to wander, his feet had
brought him back here on their own accord. I t was precisely against
suicidal impulses of this kind that he had hoped to guard himself by
opening the diary. (pg.97)
His (Mr. Charringtons) accent was les debased than that of the
majority of proles
The old man, whose name, he discovered, was not Weeks as one
might have gathered from the inscription over the storefront but
Charrington. (pg. 103)
Alludes to a disguise or different identity
o Book 2:
It was lunacy. It was as though they were intentionally stepping nearer
to their graves. (pg. 146)
To talk to him was like listening to the tinkling of a worn-out musical
box (pg. 158)
Like a well-rehearsed criminal BUT the role is reversed
What is the significance of Winstons fear of rats? What do the rats
symbolize within George Orwells fictional world?
Of all horrors in the world a rat!
Rats represent a rat race in which everything is uniform and nobody wants to break free or
change the system
o Winston fears nothing more than to become like everyone else to lose independent
thoughts and actions
o The rats symbolize the citizens meaningless, mindless, and multiplying for the sake
of reproduction rather than desire
Rats used in experiments as pawns or disposables similarly to the humans in
Oceania
A rat race is an endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit
o Conjures up the image of the futile efforts of a lab rat trying to escape
Winston and other rebels are the rats trying to escape the Partys doctrines
Rats symbolizes depravity
o Humans associate rats with disease, filth, misery (BUBONIC PLAGUE)
o Seeing the rat in the room foreshadows the depravity that Winston and Julia will
experience in the room when they are caught by the thought police
Rat = bad luck
What is the significance of the line, The proles stayed human?
The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in this condition. They were
not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one anotherThe proles
stayed human. They had not become hardened inside. (pg. 172)
The proles are human beings, we are not human (pg. 173)
Winstons epiphany
Winston realizes that the proles experience the most freedom of individuality out of all
the citizens of Oceania
o Lights his desire to experience private loyalties that one did not question,
individual relationships, an embrace, a tear, basically any action that would hold
value
o Once you were in the grip of the Part, what you felt or did not feel, what you
did or refrained from doing, made literally no difference.
Winston decides that no matter what happened, during the inevitable circumstance when
him and Julia are both capture, the important thing that matters is that they dont betray
one another
o Their loyalties to each other is a rebellious act against the Party
o Helps them remain human
o The one thing that the Party cannot control is human feeling which the true reason
why the only hope in overthrowing Big Brother lies in the proles. They are more
close to being human than the Outer Party and the Inner Party.
The only hope for the future lies in the proles.
HOWEVER this is all foreshadowing the end of the book. Winston and
Julia believe that the Party cannot alter feelings and therefore will never be
able to obtain full control of their people but this is later revealed to be not
true.
Is a war against Eurasia or Eastasia truly occurring or is it simply a form
of propaganda for the Party to control its citizens?
Propaganda:
o The use of a variety of communication techniques:
That creates an emotional appeal to accept a particular belief or opinion
To adopt a certain behavior
To perform a particular action
o Applied to dishonest messages
She startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening.
The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government
of Oceania itself just to keep people frightened (pg. 160)
o The Party can make their citizens feel unified under one rule
They believe that their leader is fighting for a cause and their general hate
for their enemy is what brings them together (Hate Week)
o Keeping people frightened is how the Party maintains their power
When people are scared, they will go with whoever can protect them
(THE PARTY)
o Having no real enemy allows the Party to instill fear forever (enemy cannot die so
the citizens must look to the Party to fight against them, who also seemingly
never dies)
War is peace
o Slogan of the party
o Example of doublethink
Use of psychological manipulation to control the people of Oceania
o Common goal or common enemy unites the people, therefore providing peace
amongst the nation
Saves the citizen from civil war or civil rebellion at the cost of war
Evidence that the rocket bombs are from Oceania:
o They increase in number and kill more people as Hate Week approaches
Generates hate, anger, and fear towards Emmanuel Goldstein and the
enemies of the Party
As though to harmonize with the general mood, the rocket bombs had
been killing larger numbers of people than usual. One fell on a crowded
film theatre in Stepney, burying several hundred victims among the
ruins Another bomb fell on a piece of waste ground which was used
as a playground, and several dozen children were blown to pieces. There
were further angry demonstrations (pg. 156)
Do Winston and Julia truly love each other?
His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it: he wished it had been hundreds-
thousands. Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope. (pg.
131)
o Winston doesnt care that Julia has slept with others only that she and many
other men have committed acts of rebellion
o Taking down the Party is all that consumes his thought even the instinctual
desire of sex is not enough to take his mind off of it
The more me youve had, the more I love you. (pg. 132)
o Not loving Julia for her, but for the acts shes done
You could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because
everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the
climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.
o Winston cannot love Julia because the Party still control him
o The Party has eliminated the animal instinct of sex and thus controls their citizens
by forcing their one and only loyalty to Big Brother
By saying that sleeping together was a political act, Winston is implying
that there was no love between them because love no longer exists
In Book 3:
o Winston betray Julia to escape torture from OBrien
Their love was not as strong as his fear which dominates his entire life
and being. There is no escape from the fear that the Party emits.
Julia does not take interest in the things that Winston is passionate about
o When Winston is reading The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
Julia falls asleep despite Winstons excitement
o Very little common interest purely physical relationship
Does the future lie with the proles?
They have numbers and strength that Winston believed would one day change into
consciousness
o Winston admired their perseverance:
She had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red
and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, darning,
cooking, sweepingfirst for children, then for grandchildren, over
thirty unbroken years. At the end she was still singing. (pg. 229)
Winston believes that Goldsteins final message was that the future belonged to the
proles
o They will create a world of equality and sanity
The proles were immortal
o They can stay alive against all odds because they continue to reproduce, passing
on from body to body the vitality which the Party did not share and could not kill
You were dead; theirs was the future. But you could share in that future if you kept
alive the mind as they kept alive the body, and passed on the secret doctrine that two
plus two make four.
Is Winston really as great of a person that he believes to be?
He is only unhappy because he is not ignorant
He hates virtue and wishes for corruption
o I hate purity. I hate goodness! I dont even want any virtue to exist anywhere.
I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.
o 7 virtues:
Prudence
Justice
Justice is a concept built by the people in power so, by the Partys
standard, Winston is just about the most unjust man ever
He has already committed several acts of crime
Temperance
Courage
Faith
Hope Winstons hope is distorted as he hopes for corruption
Charity (love)
o 7 sins:
Wrath
Winston has shown himself to be a violent man several times in the
book NOT A GOOD THING
I hated the sight of you. I wanted to rape you and then murder
you afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing
your head in with a cobblestone. (pg. 127)
Greed
When Winston was younger, he was greedy and stole food from
his own family which inevitable starved him (all to satisfy his own
hunger)
At every meal, she (Winstons mother would beseech him not
to be selfish and to remember that his little sister was sick and
also needed food, but it was no use. He would cry out with rage
when she stopped ladling, he would try to wrench the saucepan
and spoon out of her hands, he would grab bits from his sisters
plate. (pg. 169)
He knew he was starving the other two, but he could not help it;
he even felt that he had the right to do it. (pg. 169)
Sloth
Pride
Lust
Winston seeks out Julia as a physical companion and as a method
to rebel against the Party
He once wanted to rape Julia
When he and Julia cannot sleep with each other (plans are
cancelled), he becomes visibly angry
She had become a physical necessity, something that he not
only wanted but felt he had a right to. (pg. 146)
Envy
Gluttony
After eating his entire familys chocolate ration, he only felt
somewhat ashamed despite knowing that he was starving them
Always asked for an extra heaping of food because he believed
that his hunger was more important that his familys survival
o Aged 12 = about 7
th
or 8
th
grade