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Copywork
About This Passage
Study how Orwell shrinks the whole truth down to a single fragile point. The first sentence states a plain historical fact and names the man who holds it, 'He, Winston Smith,' as if to insist that he, personally, is the witness. The short middle question, 'But where did that knowledge exist?', then exposes how defenseless that fact is, and the last sentence delivers the crushing answer: the truth survives only inside one mind, a mind that 'must soon be annihilated.' In three sentences Orwell shows that under the Party, a fact with no outside record is only as durable as the person remembering it.
He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter in order: Winston dreams first of his mother and baby sister sinking away beneath him while still looking up at him with love, and he senses that deep love and sorrow belonged to a vanished age; then of a beautiful place he calls the Golden Country; a piercing whistle wakes him for the Physical Jerks, led by a sharp woman on the telescreen; as he exercises, Winston struggles to recover his real childhood and reflects that the Party can rewrite the past, since whoever controls the past controls the future, and that the only proof against its lies lives in his own soon-to-be-annihilated mind; the voice screams '6079 Smith W' and orders him to bend lower, and Winston, his face inscrutable, finally touches his toes. When you reach Winston's reflection on doublethink, slow down and weigh what it costs a person to think that way.
Discussion Questions
- In his dream, Winston watches his mother and baby sister sink away beneath him while they keep looking up at him with love. Why do you think that dream matters so much to him, and what does it help him understand about his life now? Support your reading with the text.
- Winston describes doublethink as holding two contradictory beliefs at once and sincerely accepting both. Do you read doublethink mainly as a trick the Party forces onto people from outside, or as something people learn to do to themselves in order to survive? Defend one reading with evidence from the chapter, and explain why it fits the text better than the other.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
At the same moment; doublethink requires a person to hold two opposite opinions simultaneously, knowing they cancel out yet believing both.
Item 2
To reject or deny something completely; doublethink lets a person repudiate morality while still claiming to be moral.
Item 3
The act of deliberately altering something to make it false; just once Winston held proof of the falsification of a historical fact, but he could prove nothing.
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Critical Thinking
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