1984

Part Two, Chapter 3

George Orwell · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Any kind of organised revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. He wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation – people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog.

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.

Winston pictures people like Julia not fighting the Party but “simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog.” Would Julia see herself in that rabbit?

For the educator Two passages, seven sentences, both from the afternoon in the belfry, and both show Winston thinking about Julia. The first is his picture of her. Its first sentence tucks a judgment inside commas, “which was bound to be a failure”, so the reader cannot tell whether it is Julia’s view, the narrator’s or Winston’s. The second is short and plain and turns on its last three words, “all the same”. The third opens on Winston’s thought, “He wondered vaguely”, turns at a dash to the people he means, stacks three phrases (“knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky”), sets “not rebelling” against “simply evading”, and ends on a comparison with “as”. The second passage is Winston taking up an idea of Julia’s. It opens on a short agreement, “That was very true, he thought.” The next sentence joins two abstract nouns with two adjectives, “a direct, intimate connection”. The third is a question that expects no answer: it opens on “For how could”, lists three things the Party needs (“the fear, the hatred and the lunatic credulity”), holds back its verb, and answers itself with “except by” and two phrases, “bottling down” and “using it”. The last sentence names “the Party” on both sides of “and”, once as the thing endangered and once as the one who profits. Students copying them practise a clause set off by commas, a short sentence with a turn at the end, a dash, a “not” set against a “but”, a closing comparison, a question that argues, a list of three and a balanced sentence. Set side by side, the passages show what Winston does with Julia: she puts the Party’s rules in terms of feeling happy, and he builds them into a theory of “political orthodoxy”. For the talk prompt, listen for more than one reading. One says yes: Julia dodges and does not fight. She “made no general criticism” of the Party, takes it as given, “like the sky”, and thinks the clever thing is to stay alive. Another says no: a rabbit only runs, and Julia plans, leads and strikes. She picks every hide-out, believes she can build “a secret world in which you could live as you chose”, and, hearing the quarry story, says of Katharine, “I would have.” A strong student may notice whose picture it is: Winston “wondered vaguely”, and Julia, who knows “the kind of person” better than the word for it, might not accept it. Keep to the page: Julia has never heard of the Brotherhood and belongs to no group.

Discussion

Narration Tell back the chapter, from Julia’s instructions for the journey home, through the month of meetings in the streets, to the afternoon in the belfry. Keep Winston’s story of the quarry, and end on the map Julia draws in the dust.

Julia tells Winston, “Never go home the same way as you went out.” She says it “as though enunciating an important general principle.” Is the narrator smiling at her, or has she found a real principle? Tone
When the bomb falls, Winston sees Julia’s white face and thinks she is dead. Then he finds he is kissing a warm, living face. The passage could end there. Instead it ends, “Both of their faces were thickly coated with plaster.” What does that last sentence add? Author's choice
Julia calls her Party work camouflage: “If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones.” She talks Winston into cover of his own, one evening a week making what are probably parts of bomb fuses. How small are those rules, really? Moral reasoning
Julia spent a year in Pornosec, where the Party makes cheap booklets for the proles. The young proles who buy them think they are buying something illegal. Is Julia’s rule-breaking any more real than theirs? Theme
Lost on a hike, Katharine feels that being away from the crowd is wrong. She wants to hurry back. Instead Winston calls her back to the cliff edge to see a flower, and there a thought strikes him. Was she wrong to feel uneasy? Character
Early on, the narrator tells us, “As it happened they never went back to the clearing in the wood.” The chapter ends with Julia planning to go back there. How does knowing that change the way you hear her plan? Plot structure

Make a Connection Think of someone, in a story, in history or in your own life, who lived in real danger for a long time. How did they live with it from day to day?

Vocabulary

demeanour: As soon as she woke up her demeanour had changed. The way a person carries and shows themselves: manner, face and bearing (Old French demener, to conduct oneself). The moment Julia wakes, “her demeanour had changed”, and she is “alert and businesslike”. The word is about the outside, and Julia can change hers at once, which is part of how she stays safe.
instalments: Julia appeared to be quite used to this kind of conversation, which she called ‘talking by instalments’. Parts of something paid or delivered one at a time, with gaps between. Julia’s name for their street talk, “talking by instalments”, borrows the language of paying off a debt bit by bit. A conversation that cannot be had all at once is paid in pieces, and she is “quite used to” it.
furtively: There she had remained for a year, helping to produce booklets in sealed packets with titles like Spanking Stories or One Night in a Girls’ School , to be bought furtively by proletarian youths who were under the impression that they were buying something illegal. Secretly and guiltily, trying not to be seen (Latin furtivus, stolen, from fur, thief). The young proles buy Pornosec’s booklets furtively, as if they were stealing them. Their guilt is real, but the crime was arranged: the Party made the booklets to be bought that way.
puritanism: Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. A strict belief that pleasure, above all bodily pleasure, is wrong and must be kept down (from the Puritans, English Protestants who wanted a plainer, stricter church). The narrator says Julia, not Winston, “had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism.” The word makes the Party’s rules sound moral; Julia sees what they are for.
orthodoxy: There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. Holding the approved, correct beliefs (Greek orthos, right, and doxa, opinion). Winston sees “a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy”: in his theory, a body kept from pleasure makes a mind that believes what it is told.
credulity: For how could the fear, the hatred and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? Readiness to believe things without good reason (Latin credere, to believe, the root of credit and incredible). The Party needs “lunatic credulity” in its members, and Winston thinks bottled-up desire keeps it “at the right pitch”. Its opposite, incredulity, means disbelief.
prosaically: ‘We’re not dead yet,’ said Julia prosaically. In a plain, matter-of-fact way, with no poetry in it (from prose, ordinary writing as against verse). To Winston’s “We are the dead”, Julia answers prosaically. The word sets her flat, everyday voice against his grand one, and leaves the reader to weigh which is closer to the truth.
vigour: Her body seemed to be pouring some of its youth and vigour into his. Strength and energy; being full of life (Latin vigere, to be lively). As Julia presses against him, “Her body seemed to be pouring some of its youth and vigour into his.” Minutes after he has called them both dead, life passes from her to him like something poured.

Critical thinking

Winston says pushing Katharine “would have made no difference.” Yet he is sorry he didn’t, “Only because I prefer a positive to a negative.” What would that push have given him?
Winston thinks it wiser to see himself as a corpse, and Julia thinks it wiser to enjoy being alive. Which of them understands their danger more truly?