Preview
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter in order: Winston writes in his secret diary, trying to push out a painful memory, and confronts a chilling truth, that in his world your own body can be your worst enemy, since a twitch or a word spoken in your sleep could give you away; he recalls a man in the street whose face suddenly twitched and felt certain that man was 'done for'; he reflects that the Party does not merely forbid disloyalty but works to drain private life of love and feeling, permitting marriage only without attraction and treating having a child as 'our duty to the Party'; he remembers his wife Katharine, whose mind held 'not a thought... that was not a slogan'; and even after confessing it all to his diary, he finds the act 'made no difference.' When you reach Winston's sense that even private feeling has become a kind of rebellion, slow down and weigh why a total state would set out to govern what its people feel.
Discussion Questions
- Winston reflects that the Party's true aim is not only to stop people forming loyalties it cannot control, but to drain private life of love and feeling itself. Why might a regime treat private love and feeling as a threat to its power, and what does that suggest about how total its control aims to be? Support your reading with the text.
- Katharine speaks in slogans and treats marriage as 'our duty to the Party,' while Winston records this painful memory in his diary instead of letting it disappear. What does the contrast between them reveal about what the Party can shape in a person and what it still struggles to control, and why? What part of the chapter points you there?
+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 7 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free