Part One, Chapter 1

1984

Mountaineers · 10th–12th

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.

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

inexorably It struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off: the voice continued inexorably.

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.

Critical thinking

1. 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?

Thesis

Objection

Revision

2. 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?

Thesis

Objection

Revision