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Copywork
About This Passage
Lying in fear after his narrow escape, Winston arrives at a bleak insight about human nature: that the real battle is never with an outside enemy but with one's own failing body. Notice how Orwell builds the idea, a sweeping general claim, then a sharp concrete example, the 'dull ache in his belly' that makes thought impossible, then a widening of the claim to 'all seemingly heroic or tragic situations.' The movement from abstract to concrete and back is how a thinker tests an idea against lived experience. Copying the passage trains a reader to follow how Orwell turns a moment of private weakness into a hard general truth about how fear and pain rule the body.
It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body. Even now, in spite of the gin, the dull ache in his belly made consecutive t...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think Orwell most wanted the reader to notice or feel about Winston's search for the past and his longing for a private life. What techniques, such as the old man's failed memory or the beautiful junk shop, did he use to achieve that effect?
Discussion Questions
- Winston writes that hope 'lies in the proles,' yet the chapter shows them absorbed in the Lottery, quarreling over numbers, and diving for cover from bombs. Why might Orwell place Winston's grand hope right beside the small, distracted reality of how the proles actually live? Defend your reading with the text.
- Winston risks his freedom to buy a useless paperweight and to dream of renting a forbidden room. Make the strongest case that these acts are a meaningful form of resistance, then give the strongest objection, that they are reckless self-indulgence risking his life for nothing. Which reading is more convincing, and why? Defend your answer with the text.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
behavior that is odd or different from the norm; the Party treats any wish for solitude as eccentricity, calling it 'ownlife' and a danger.
Item 2
something that soothes pain or numbs the mind; for millions of proles the Lottery is an anodyne, almost the only reason for staying alive.
Item 3
out of place, oddly mismatched with its surroundings; the beautiful glass paperweight is an incongruous possession for a Party member in a drab world.
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Critical Thinking
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