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Copywork
About This Passage
Study the strange image at the center of this passage. A palimpsest is an old piece of writing that has been scraped off a page so something new can be written over it, leaving the first words gone for good. Orwell says all of history works this way in Winston's world: the past is wiped away and rewritten as often as the Party needs, with the old version destroyed. The second sentence drives home why this is so frightening, that once the change is made, no proof is left that any lie was ever told. The calm, almost scholarly tone makes the erasing of truth sound like ordinary office work.
All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had take...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter in order: Winston goes to his job at the Ministry of Truth, where his work is to change old newspapers so they always match what the Party says today; messages slide to him through tubes telling him which stories to 'rectify'; when he is done, he drops the old papers into a slot called a memory hole, where they are burned, so all of history is rewritten like a palimpsest with no proof left behind; Winston thinks about coworkers, including a woman who deletes erased people even though her own husband was erased that way; then, for his main job, he replaces a now-erased official by inventing a brave hero named Comrade Ogilvy, a man who never lived, and writes him into the record so that he becomes a 'fact.' When you reach the moment Winston invents Comrade Ogilvy, slow down and weigh what it means that he can create a person who never existed.
Discussion Questions
- Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth is to change old newspapers so they always match what the Party says now, day after day. What does it tell you about Winston's world that a person's whole job is to keep rewriting the past, and why? What part of the chapter supports your reading?
- Winston makes up Comrade Ogilvy, a man who never really lived, and writes him into the records as part of history. Why do you think the chapter treats inventing a fake person as so important, and what does it show about Winston's world? What part of the chapter supports your reading?
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Going on without any break or pause; the changing of the records is so constant that the past is updated almost minute by minute, day after day.
Item 2
Made to vanish completely, wiped out of existence; people who anger the Party are made to disappear, removed from every record as if they had never been born.
Item 3
An old page scraped clean so new writing can replace the old; Orwell calls all of history this, rubbed out and rewritten whenever the Party needs.
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Critical Thinking
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