1984 Part Two Ch. 4 & 5

"She only questioned the teachings of the Party when they in some way touched upon her own life" (153).

Julia and Winston may share the same views about the government and other absurd things, but Julia is more concerned about how it is effecting her own life. Winston is more concerned about the status of Oceania and the future that it holds for generations to come. Julia didn't even know what country Oceania was at war with. Since it didn't involve her, she clearly didn't care much. In Julia's perspective, the Party will always be there. It is only a matter of avoiding it when she wants to do things that would be considered Thoughtcrime. Unlike Julia, Winston wonders if the Party will ever be shut down and how strange it has made Oceania. Julia is a follower who steps out of the boundaries that have been set only when she desires something. She has slept with a lot of men because she enjoys having sex. Julia doesn't seem to care what happens to the men after she is done using them. For example, she slept with a sixty year old man who committed suicide after having sex with her because he was afraid of getting arrested. Julia didn't show any sort of sadness to this as she explained it to Winston in the previous chapter. Winston may feel that Julia is fit for him, but she is a dangerous person to be with. She could be using Winston for pleasure too.

Effigy (148): n. a crude representation of someone disliked, used for purposes of ridicule.

Febrile (148): adj. pertaining to or marked by fever; feverish.

1984 Part Two Ch. 3

"In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all" (135).

Winston has no confidence or faith in himself. He simply wishes for things to become better or wonders about them. Winston is too afraid to make a move. He should learn from Julia instead of telling her there is no hope or chance that the Party can be taken down. Winston is one of the many few that know the Party is wrong. He is not taking advantage of this! Julia can guide the way for him if he only opened his eyes more. She lives life in a different, but more reasonable manner. In order for people and especially the proles to realize the power they could have over the government, somebody needs to make them aware of what is really going on. Winston is somebody who could make that difference. It almost seems like Winston convinces himself that there will always be worse things in life when he is really living in complete disaster. No matter what failure something may turn out to be, it is still a failure. There should be no exceptions to it and Winston is making it an exception. He needs to stop thinking like this! It may be this way for now, but if somebody like him spoke up Oceania would be a happier place.

Stagnant (129): adj. stale or foul from standing or lack of development.

Furtively (130): adv. done slyly or secretly.

1984 Part Two Ch. 1

"With hands locked together, invisible among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them" (117).

How does Big Brother and his government expect people to produce children if they have made the citizens of Oceania afraid to show any sort of friendly contact among one another? The dark-haired girl and Winston were not even looking at each other because they were afraid to get caught! That is ridiculous! Big Brother has not thought some of the decisions he has made for Oceania through. He has brainwashed the citizens to the point of them not knowing what is natural from what is possibly stoppable. Katherine, Winston's wife, was brainwashed to the point of not even wanting to have children because it was considered to be impure. People are not free to feel the way they want. People are not allowed to do anything that might be GOOD for them. People are simply brought up to treat Big Brother like he is God. Since there is such a strict rule on contact between two people, citizens will secretly do it. It is inevitable. Did Big Brother not realize that? He can not brainwash every single person in Oceania. A person's feelings are something that can not be controlled. It is not fair to the citizens of Oceania. Big Brother is out of his mind.

Folly (107): n. a foolish action, practice, idea, etc.

Insatiably (116): adv. incapability of being satisfied.

1984 Ch. 7 & 8 Notes

Chapter 7:

1. The Proles:

“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in the swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five per cent of the population of Oceania, could force to destroy the Party ever be generated” (69).

a. Aren’t aware of their own strength against the government.

b. “The Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules” (71).

c. “To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them” (71).

d. “All that was required of them was primitive patriotism” (71).

e. “The sexual Puritanism of the Party was not imposed upon them. Promiscuity went unpunished; divorce was permitted. For that matter, even religious worship would have been permitted if the proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting it” (72).

f. “As the Party slogan put it: ‘Proles and animals are free’” (72).

2. The Revolution:

“The story really began in the middle sixties, the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all” (75).

a. By 1970, none of the original leaders were left, except Big Brother.

b. Goldstein and others were considered to be traitors or counterrevolutionaries.

c. Among the last survivors were Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford.

i. Were arrested, then put back into the Party, arrested, and executed.

ii. Confessed to sharing intelligence with the enemy, embezzlement of public funds, murder of various Party members, intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother, and acts of sabotage (causing many deaths).

iii. Considered to be the last figures left over from the heroic early days of the Party. (Winston knew of them before Big Brother).

iv. Rutherford: famous caricaturist whose brutal cartoons helped inflame popular opinion before and after the Revolution, and had a broken nose (just like Aaronson).

3. Other:

a. Jus primae noctis: The law by which every capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his factories. (73)

b. “He knew, with more certainty than before, that O’Brien was on his side” (80). What if O’Brien really isn’t?

c. According to Winston, the Party was wrong and he was right.

i. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows” (81).

Chapter 8:

1. The Proles Side of Oceania:

“On impulse he [Winston] had turned away from the bus stop and wandered off into the labyrinth of London [...] losing himself along the streets and hardly bothering in which direction he was going” (82).

Ø Instead of going to the evening at the Community Center, Winston ends up in the slums of Oceania.

I. The Pub:

i. Winston sees an old man much older than himself and decides to ask him how life was when the old man was a child.

ii. The old man does not tell Winston what he wants to hear, but mentions how there are no pints or top hats nowadays.

iii. The old man also mentions the term “Lackeys” and The House of Lords.

II. The Lottery:

i. “The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention.

ii. The running of the Lottery was managed by the Ministry of Plenty.

iii. Only small sums of money actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes were nonexistent people. (It was mostly all imaginary.)

III. The Junk Shop:

“He had sworn never to come near the place again. And yet the instant that he allowed his thoughts to wander, his feet had brought him back here of their own accord” (93).

i. The proprietor, Mr. Charrington, remembered Winston from the last time Winston came into the shop.

a. Mr. Charrington is sixty-three year old widower, who lives above his shop (with no telescreen!).

ii. Winston buys coral and thinks of it as a paperweight.

iii. Winston leaves deciding he will come back to purchase some more items and visit Mr. Charrington in a month.

iv. As Winston walks out of the store, he notices the dark-haired girl.

a. “There was no doubting any longer that the girl must have followed him here, because it was not credible that by pure chance she should have happened to be walking on the same evening up the same obscure back street, kilometers distant from any quarter where Party members lived” (101).

2. Other:

a. “In principle Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping, he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreations” (82).

i. Newspeak: ownlife: individualism and eccentricity. (Not good!).

b. A “Steamer” the nickname for rocket bombs given by the proles. (83)

c. Beer was the only drink in prole pubs. There was no gin. (88)

1984 Ch. 7 & 8

"It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings" (71).

Clearly, Big Brother and the Parties know what power the proles hold. The government of Oceania is lucky that the proles do not know what they are capable of doing. Somebody like Winston needs to have the courage to make these proles realize they are stronger than they think. The proles may live in filth, but that is only because the government is afraid to expose them to life outside the slums. The proles even know when a bomb is going to come down. Winston would not have known if it weren't for the man in the black suit alerting everybody. The proles may seem illiterate, but their minds work much better than the ones of Party members. If the proles were brought out of their living conditions and into the world of the comrades, there would be a lot more uproars and people would not be afraid to speak what they are feeling. Big Brother and the Thought Police would not be able to control them. Winston knows what lies in the hands of the proles and he needs to help them realize this.

Convoluted (95): adj. twisted; coiled.

Incongruous (99): adj. out of keeping or place; inappropriate.

1984 Ch. 5 & 6

"The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck" (54).

"Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest. A feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to" (59).

Big Brother has formed the comrades of Oceania into a bunch of mechanical creatures that only speak the words that are fed to them. Nobody has there own brain in this book. The people only speak the words of Big Brother and his government. Fortunately, Winston has not transformed into one of these monsters, but the sad part about this is that he needs to hold himself back from even looking like he may have something to say in protest or opposition. Winston is like a caged bird fighting to get out. He is stuck. Winston has the option of converting into another one of Big Brother's toys or to be taken out of existence. There are two extremes Winston would have to choose between, but he is confused and alone. Citizens of a country or state are supposed to have freedom of speech. Big Brother refuses to even consider letting the comrades think for themselves. He has completely brainwashed them!

Protuberant (48)- adj. bulging out beyond the surrounding surface; protruding.

Fulminating (54)- v. to explode with a loud noise; detonate.

1984 Ch. 4

"And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain" (41).

"It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living" (47).

In Oceania, the people do not seem to matter to the Parties, Ministries, or Big Brother. It is completely fine for children to show their loyalty to the Thought Police by helping them turn in their own parents and adults to be scared to express their feelings. Once Big Brother and his system wipe out people like Winston, what will happen? There will not be anything left, except to kill more people in war. Big Brother and his government have no idea what this issue could lead to. They can not be killing people off and changing history just because an outcome does not happen the way Big Brother said it would occur. He has made so many mistakes already. Oceania and its people need to accept defeat and stop this war. The entire government is a fraud. There is no point in even keeping Oceania. What is Big Brother going to gain by teaching the citizens and children ignorance, war, and slavery are all good things? The government needs to get there heads straightened out because if they don't, people in Parties and Ministries will slowly begin to realize the deeds of Big Brother are very wrong!

Labyrinth (39)- n. an intricate combination of paths or passages in which it is difficult to find one's way or to reach the exit.

Abject (44)- adj. utterly hopeless, miserable.

1984 Ch. 2 & 3

"Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the Park that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month, and was a popular spectacle. Children always clamored to see it" (23).

It is disgusting to see how people and especially children find death and war amusing. Children should not be exposed to any of that. The Thought Police, Big Brother, and the Ministries are corrupting these children's minds with nonsense. Who teaches there child that fighting is a good thing? It's ridiculous! It is also scary to see what will happen in the future of Oceania once these children grow older. They are even turning their own parents in. Big Brother and his government are taking control of these children. The children have become dangerous little creatures walking around. Parents even fear them! The supposed guilty war crimes that have been committed are most likely the things Oceania needs to bring the real peace to its citizens. Big Brother is putting fear into the minds of adults, preventing them to distinguish what is right from what is wrong and taking advantage of the youth's innocence.

Armaments (24)- n. the arms and equipment with which a military unit or military apparatus is supplied.

Myriad (27)- adj. innumerable.