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Copywork
About This Passage
Study how Orwell explains a chilling idea in calm, almost scientific language. The word 'systematically' tells us this is no accident: the Party deliberately uses groups like the Spies to make children wild and fierce. The strange twist comes at the end, that all this wildness produces 'no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party.' The children are savage toward outsiders but perfectly obedient at home, exactly as the Party wants. The flat, reasonable tone makes the plan feel even more disturbing.
Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organisations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this pr...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter in order: a knock at the door fills Winston with fear, but it is only his worn neighbor Mrs Parsons, who needs help with her blocked kitchen sink; Winston goes to the Parsons flat, where Spies banners hang on the walls, and kneels to clear the dirty water from the pipe; while he is there the Parsons children, in their Spies uniforms, point a toy gun at him, call him a traitor and a thought-criminal, and leap around him, and as he leaves the boy shoots him in the neck with a catapult; Winston sees a look of helpless fright on Mrs Parsons's face, afraid of her own son; back in his flat he thinks about how the Spies turn children into savages who would even denounce their own parents, remembers a voice from a dream promising 'the place where there is no darkness,' and writes again in his secret diary. When you reach the children's attack, slow down and explain why it is more frightening than ordinary play.
Discussion Questions
- When a knock comes at the door, Winston is filled with fear, yet the visitor is Mrs Parsons asking for help with her sink. What does that contrast between his fear and the ordinary visitor suggest about Winston's world, and why? What part of the chapter supports your reading?
- The Parsons children threaten Winston as if they are playing a thrilling game, calling him a traitor and a thought-criminal in their Spies uniforms. What do they seem to find exciting or worth copying in this scene, and what does that show about the world teaching them? What part of the chapter shows you why?
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Fierce, wild, and cruel, like an untamed animal; the Parsons boy yells at Winston in a savage voice, and the Spies turn children into wild little savages.
Item 2
Threatening, behaving as if about to harm someone; the boy is menacing Winston with a toy pistol, and it does not feel altogether like a game.
Item 3
Cruel and fierce, eager to hurt; the boy's manner is so vicious that Winston senses real danger behind the children's play.
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Critical Thinking
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