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Copywork
About This Passage
Winston longs to meet the dark-haired girl, but in his world even arranging to see someone is almost impossible. Notice how Orwell captures that hopelessness with a sharp comparison: trying to meet her is 'like trying to make a move at chess when you were already mated,' that is, already beaten, with no winning move left to make. The last sentence shows exactly why, 'Whichever way you turned, the telescreen faced you,' so there is no safe direction at all. Copying these sentences lets a reader feel how the Party's constant watching turns even a simple, hopeful wish into a trap with no way out.
But the physical difficulty of meeting was enormous. It was like trying to make a move at chess when you were already mated. Whichever way you turned, the telescreen faced you.
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
In your own words, tell the story of this chapter: how the dark-haired girl falls and hurts her arm in the corridor, how Winston helps her up and she secretly hands him a note that says 'I love you,' how the note fills him with a sudden wish to live but meeting her proves almost impossible under the telescreens, and how they finally whisper a plan in the canteen and a crowded square before she squeezes his hand goodbye.
Discussion Questions
- When the girl falls and cries out, Winston instinctively rushes to help her, even feeling her pain 'in his own body,' though moments before he had thought of her as an enemy. Why might Winston's first instinct be to help, even toward someone he believed wanted to destroy him? Use the chapter's details about the fall to explain.
- The note holds only three words, 'I love you,' yet at the sight of them 'the desire to stay alive had welled up in him.' Why might so small a message have such a huge effect on Winston, and what does that reveal about the life he has been living? Use the chapter's details about how Winston changes to explain.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
Silently asking for help or sympathy.
Item 2
A state of nervous, restless worry.
Item 3
Silly and pointless.
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Critical Thinking
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