1984

Part One, Chapter 1

George Orwell · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.

The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink-pencil.

Read both passages aloud. The first says the horrible thing about the Hate is not the acting but the joining in. Why is it worse to truly feel what you are told to feel than to fake it? Is there anything in the second passage the Hate could not reach?

For the educator Two passages, five sentences, one about a crowd and one about a man alone. The first is the narrator’s account of the Two Minutes Hate. Its opening sentence is a balance, “not that” set against “but that”: the horror is not the acting but the joining in, and the second half carries the weight. The next sentence is short and flat, an eight-word verdict: “Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary.” The third is the longest. It opens on a heap of nouns and a run of infinitives that grow more violent, “a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer”, holds its verb back behind them, compares the feeling to “an electric current”, and ends on two participles, “grimacing, screaming”. The fourth opens on “And yet” and turns the paragraph: the rage has no fixed object and can be aimed, “like the flame of a blowlamp”. The second passage is one long sentence from the diary scene, a few pages earlier. It opens on a plain claim, “The pen was an archaic instrument”, adds a qualifier, “seldom used even for signatures”, then turns on “and” to Winston’s own act. That act is fenced by commas around two manner phrases, “furtively and with some difficulty”, and the sentence ends on a reason that is all feeling: the paper “deserved” a real nib. Students copying it practise commas around inserted phrases and a sentence that saves its point for last. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who sees why the weight falls on the second half of the first sentence: a man who fakes a feeling still has his own mind behind the act, but a man who cannot help joining in has nothing held back. On the second passage, some will say the Hate could not reach Winston’s care for the paper, which “deserved” a real nib; others will notice that even that care is carried out “furtively”, under the same watch. Both can point to the sentences.

Discussion

Narration Give a short account of the chapter, from Winston’s climb to his flat to the knocking at the door. Then pick the one sentence you think matters most, and say what it shows about the chapter as a whole.

Before he turns round to the telescreen, Winston sets his face in a look of “quiet optimism”. At the knock on the last page, his face, “from long habit, was probably expressionless”. Is that face still a mask he puts on, or has it become part of him? Character
For weeks Winston had been getting ready, and “it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage”. When he sits down to write, what else turns out to be missing? Inference
In his first entry, Winston calls a film of a ship full of refugees being bombed “very good”. Whose voice is speaking in those words? Tone
In the Hate, Winston turns his hatred onto the dark-haired girl and pictures killing her. Then, the narrator says, he sees more clearly than before why he hates her. Why does that clearer reason come to him in the middle of the Hate, and not before? Character
Winston realizes that a glance from O’Brien in the morning’s Hate is why he came home to begin the diary today. Yet he is soon “uncertain whether it had happened”. What can a look he cannot trust give him that years of private hatred did not? Inference
Winston’s last entry says “i dont care” over and over. Then he sits back, “slightly ashamed of himself”, and lays down the pen. Who is he ashamed in front of, when no screen could see him write? Character

Make a Connection Think of a story, a moment in history, or a time in your own life when someone kept a private record that no one was meant to read. Who was it really written for?

Vocabulary

sanguine: His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended. Ruddy and healthy in colour (from the Latin for blood); more often, in everyday use, cheerful and hopeful. Here the narrator means the colour of Winston’s face, but the second sense sits close by: a few paragraphs later he must set that face “into the expression of quiet optimism” for the telescreen. The word lets the reader feel the gap between the face he has and the hope he is made to show.
scrutinised: You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised. Looked at closely and carefully, as if searching for a fault (the British spelling of scrutinized; related to scrutiny). It is the last word of the narrator’s account of life under the telescreen. Being seen is not the worst of it; every movement is inspected, and that is why Winston must manage even his back.
archaic: The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink-pencil. Belonging to an earlier age and no longer in ordinary use (from the Greek for ancient, as in archaeology). The pen is “an archaic instrument”, kept by almost no one now that everything is dictated into the speakwrite. Choosing it ties Winston’s diary to an older world, and makes the hand that writes it his own.
furtively: The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink-pencil. In a secret, sly way, trying not to be noticed (from the Latin for thief, as in a furtive glance). Winston gets his nib “furtively and with some difficulty”. The word turns buying a pen into something done like a theft, and shows how a man under watch must act even in small things.
interminable: All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years. Going on so long it seems it will never end (from the Latin for without limit; related to terminate and terminal). Winston expects the endless talk in his head to pour onto the page. The word sets up the shock of the next lines, when at the page “even the monologue had dried up”.
orthodoxy: Much more it was because of a secretly-held belief – or perhaps not even a belief, merely a hope – that O’Brien’s political orthodoxy was not perfect. Holding exactly the approved beliefs, with no departure from them (from the Greek for right opinion). Winston hopes O’Brien’s “political orthodoxy was not perfect”. In this chapter belief itself is watched: the young women Winston fears are “nosers-out of unorthodoxy”, and a flaw in someone’s belief is what he searches faces for.
specious: And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein’s specious claptrap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army – row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. Seeming true or reasonable on the surface, but false underneath (from the Latin for fair-looking). The narrator calls Goldstein’s speech “specious claptrap”, which is the Party’s verdict on it; a few lines earlier the same speech is “just plausible enough” to alarm. The word lets the reader ask whose judgment the narration is carrying at that moment.
inexorably: It struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off: the voice continued inexorably. In a way that cannot be stopped, slowed or moved by pleading (from the Latin for not to be moved by prayer). The girl’s dictionary hits Goldstein’s face on the screen and bounces off, and the voice goes on. The word shows that nothing a viewer does reaches the screen; it is the viewers who are moved.
heretic: Thus, at one moment Winston’s hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party and the Thought Police; and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies. Someone who holds a belief that the ruling faith calls false, and is cast out for it (from the Greek for choice). For a moment in the Hate, Winston’s heart goes out to Goldstein as “the lonely, derided heretic”, and the next moment it turns again. The word’s root, choice, is pointed in a chapter about how little of his feeling Winston chooses.

Critical thinking

Before Winston writes a word, the narrator says, “To mark the paper was the decisive act.” Later, Winston decides that keeping the diary “made no difference”. What did that first mark really change?
In the Hate, Winston shouts with the crowd though part of him loathes Big Brother. At the diary, his hand writes DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER before he decides to. Which of these moments shows the real Winston?