Part Two, Chapter 4 — Teaching Companion

What it asks It asks the student to account for feeling in a song that no person wrote. The words come from a sub-section of the Music Department and were “composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator.” Winston calls them “dreadful rubbish”, yet the woman sings “so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound”, and later her voice is “very tuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy.” The student says where that feeling comes from: the voice, the listener, or the words themselves. The card must not say what the woman thinks or feels; the chapter gives only what Winston hears and imagines.

One reading

The voice. The words belong to the machine, but the sound is hers. She turns rubbish into “an almost pleasant sound”, and she knows the song “by heart”. A song is made again each time someone sings it, and no versificator can sing. The feeling is what a person adds to words that were never meant to hold any.

• But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.
• She knew the whole drivelling song by heart, it seemed.

Another reading

The listener. The feeling is Winston’s. He is waiting in a room his heart calls “suicidal folly”, for a love he expects to end in the Ministry of Love, and the song is about an “’opeless fancy” that stole a heart. He hears his own evening in it. The machine wrote the words; the man behind the curtain brings the melancholy.

• It was only an ’opeless fancy,
• Folly, folly, his heart kept saying: conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly.

Listen for

• Tracks Winston’s words for the song: “dreadful rubbish”, “the whole drivelling song”, “singing rubbish”. His view of the words never softens, only his view of the sound.
• Hears the second verse, “They sye you can always forget”. A song made by the Party’s machine is about not forgetting, in a chapter where Winston keeps meeting a past he thought was gone.
• Weighs Winston’s thought that he has never heard a Party member “singing alone and spontaneously”: it would be “a dangerous eccentricity, like talking to oneself.” His guess about the proles is “Perhaps it was only when people were somewhere near the starvation level that they had anything to sing about.” “Perhaps” keeps it a guess.
• Keeps to the page: “One had the feeling that she would have been perfectly content” is Winston’s feeling about her. The chapter never says what she feels.

If stuck

• Who wrote the song, and how was it made?
• How does Winston describe the words, and how does he describe her voice?
• Can a person put real feeling into words someone else wrote for them?

A strong answer A strong response says where the song’s feeling comes from, and argues from the two passages about the singing. One reader gives it to the voice: she turns “dreadful rubbish” into “an almost pleasant sound”, and no machine can sing. Another gives it to the listener: the words of an “’opeless fancy” fit a man waiting in a room his heart calls folly. The best answers track how Winston’s words for the song stay harsh while his words for the voice grow warm, and never claim to know what the woman feels.

What it asks It asks the student to read Julia’s pride in her bag. Packet after packet replaces a substitute: “Real sugar. Not saccharine, sugar.”, “proper white bread, not our bloody stuff”, “real tea. Not blackberry leaves.” Then: “This is the one I’m really proud of. I had to wrap a bit of sacking round it, because –”. The smell fills the room, “like an emanation from his early childhood”. “It’s Inner Party coffee. There’s a whole kilo here,” she says, and when he asks how she got it: “It’s all Inner Party stuff. There’s nothing those swine don’t have, nothing. But of course waiters and servants and people pinch things”. The student says why her pride settles on the coffee. The card must not say more about how Julia got the goods than she says herself.

One reading

The getting. The coffee is the best thing the Inner Party keeps for itself, and she has a whole kilo of it. She scorns the people who own it, and is proud to have got hold of their own coffee. The pride is in beating “those swine” at their own table.

• It’s Inner Party coffee. There’s a whole kilo here
• There’s nothing those swine don’t have, nothing.

Another reading

The giving. She guessed he would bring the substitute, and she tells him to throw it away: they will not need it. The real coffee is for him as much as for her, and later she is the one who gets up and makes it. The pride is a host’s: the coffee turns a rented room into a place where someone is looked after.

• Did you bring some of that filthy Victory Coffee? I thought you would.
• You can chuck it away again, because we shan’t be needing it.

Listen for

• Hears the pairs: “Real sugar. Not saccharine, sugar.” The good things arrive beside the substitutes they replace, and Winston had brought two of those substitutes.
• Weighs the smell. It seems to come from his early childhood, yet one still meets it now, “blowing down a passage-way before a door slammed”. The past is not gone; it is behind the Inner Party’s doors.
• Notices what the room must do with the smell. The sacking round the packet is there because of it, “But she did not need to tell him why she had wrapped it up”, and later they shut the window “lest anybody outside should notice it and become inquisitive.” The real thing has to be hidden.
• Keeps to the page: the goods come from the Inner Party by way of “waiters and servants and people” who “pinch things”, and the chapter says no more.

If stuck

• What is in Julia’s bag, and what does each thing replace?
• What does she say about the people the coffee comes from?
• Why might someone be proud of a present they did not make?

A strong answer A strong response says why Julia is proudest of the coffee, and argues from her words over the bag. One reader hears the getting: it is “Inner Party coffee”, a whole kilo, and her pride is in having what “those swine” keep for themselves. Another hears the giving: she guessed he would bring “that filthy Victory Coffee”, tells him to “chuck it away again”, and makes the real thing for him later. The best answers hear the pairs of real and substitute, notice the sacking and the shut window, and keep Julia’s source to what she says.

What it asks It asks the student to take Julia’s make-up seriously. Winston guesses she slipped into a shop in the prole quarters and bought “a complete set of make-up materials”. “It was not very skilfully done”, but “He had never before seen or imagined a woman of the Party with cosmetics on her face.” She becomes “not only very much prettier, but, above all, far more feminine.” She wears scent, and plans a frock, “silk stockings and high-heeled shoes”, and says, “In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.” The student says what the paint does that nakedness cannot. The card must not treat the make-up as a joke, and must say no more about the woman the scent recalls than the page does.

One reading

Paint makes a self. Undressing shows what is already there; painting a face is a choice, planned, bought and put on. Nakedness is what Winston expected. The paint is new, and it says who she means to be in this room. The frock and the heels she plans go further the same way.

• He had never before seen or imagined a woman of the Party with cosmetics on her face.
• In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.

Another reading

Paint is for being seen. Nakedness is for a lover; a painted face is meant to be looked at, the way a woman once dressed to go out. In this room it is a public self that can only be shown in private, and it does not last the evening. Before they leave she must wash it off, and her verdict is “What a bore!”

• I’ll wear silk stockings and high-heeled shoes!
• I must start washing this paint off. What a bore!

Listen for

• Hears “above all, far more feminine”, and that “Her short hair and boyish overalls merely added to the effect.” The Party’s uniform is still on her, and the paint changes it anyway.
• Notices “It was not very skilfully done”. Does the clumsiness make the act smaller, or more moving?
• Weighs the scent. The violets bring back “the half-darkness of a basement kitchen, and a woman’s cavernous mouth”, another woman who wore the same scent, “but at the moment it did not seem to matter.” What do the words “at the moment” hold back?
• Keeps to the page: the chapter gives that other woman only a kitchen, a mouth and a scent.

If stuck

• What does Julia do while Winston has his back turned?
• What does she say she is going to be in this room?
• Why might a person dress up for someone who has already seen them with nothing on?

A strong answer A strong response says what the paint does that undressing cannot, and argues from the moment Winston turns round. One reader says paint makes a self: it is chosen and bought, never “seen or imagined” on a Party woman, and it carries her “a woman, not a Party comrade.” Another says paint is for being seen: a public face that can only be worn in private, and must be washed off before they go. The best answers take the paint seriously, hear “far more feminine” against the overalls, and weigh the scent that brings back another woman.

What it asks It asks the student to read the nightmare the rat opens. Julia throws a shoe at a rat in the wainscoting and talks of rats that go after babies; Winston cuts her off, eyes shut: “Of all horrors in the world – a rat!” For several moments he is in a dream that “had recurred from time to time throughout his life.” He stands before a wall of darkness with “something unendurable” behind it. “In the dream his deepest feeling was always one of self-deception, because he did in fact know what was behind the wall of darkness.” He could drag it out only “with a deadly effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own brain.” The student says how a man can fool himself about what he knows. The card must not say what lies behind the wall; the chapter never names it.

One reading

By never finishing the thought. Knowing is not the same as facing. He always wakes before he looks, and when Julia’s talk comes near the thing, he stops her in the middle of her sentence. To look would be like tearing out part of his own mind. The fooling is what keeps him whole.

• He always woke up without discovering what it was: but somehow it was connected with what Julia had been saying when he cut her short.
• With a deadly effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own brain, he could even have dragged the thing into the open.

Another reading

By going on with it awake. The self-deception does not stay in the dream. A moment later he tells Julia it is nothing, only a dislike of rats, and soon the panic is “half-forgotten”. He fools her, then himself, and he is back in the evening.

• it’s nothing. I don’t like rats, that’s all.
• Already the black instant of panic was half-forgotten.

Listen for

• Hears the two answers to one rat: Julia throws her shoe “exactly as he had seen her fling the dictionary at Goldstein” and lies down again “indifferently”; Winston cannot open his eyes.
• Notices where the nightmare breaks in: in bed, soon after he has wondered whether such an evening was ever “a normal experience”.
• Weighs “Feeling slightly ashamed of himself”. Is he ashamed of the fear, or of how he hid it?
• Keeps to the page: the thing behind the wall is only “connected with what Julia had been saying when he cut her short.” Do not name it.

If stuck

• What does Julia see, and what does she do about it?
• In the dream, what does Winston know, and what does he never do?
• Can a person know something and still keep from thinking it?

A strong answer A strong response explains how Winston can fool himself about what he knows, and argues from the paragraph on the dream and the minutes after it. One reader says he never finishes the thought: he wakes before he looks and cuts Julia off, because looking would be “like wrenching a piece out of his own brain”. Another says the fooling goes on awake: he tells Julia “it’s nothing”, and the panic is soon “half-forgotten”. The best answers set Julia’s calm beside his panic and never say what is behind the wall.

What it asks It asks the student to read one correction. Winston gives the rhyme’s first line, and “To his astonishment she capped the line”. Asked who taught her, she says, “My grandfather. He used to say it to me when I was a little girl. He was vaporised when I was eight – at any rate, he disappeared.” Then: “I wonder what a lemon was,” she adds “inconsequently”. The student says why she might trade “vaporised” for “disappeared”. The card must not say what happened to the grandfather, which Julia herself does not claim to know, and must not read a hidden message into the rhyme beyond Winston’s sense that it is “like the two halves of a countersign.”

One reading

Accuracy. She does not know what was done to him, only that he was gone. The word “disappeared” is the one thing she can be sure of. Even her own family’s past is something she can only half know, like the rhyme she can only half remember.

• He was vaporised when I was eight – at any rate, he disappeared.
• I can’t remember how it goes on after that.

Another reading

Habit. “Vaporised” names something done to him; “disappeared” names only an absence, the careful word. She has just said that in this room she will be “a woman, not a Party comrade”, yet the care with words comes in with her. Even here, the worst thing is said and then softened, and she moves straight on to lemons.

• He was vaporised when I was eight – at any rate, he disappeared.
• In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.

Listen for

• Hears “To his astonishment”: Winston had his line from Mr Charrington, and Julia answers it with lines from a grandfather who is gone.
• Weighs the lemons. Julia has seen oranges but not lemons; Winston remembers they were “so sour that it set your teeth on edge even to smell them.” Each holds part of what is lost, as each held part of the rhyme.
• Notices that she has lost the middle of the rhyme but kept its end, “here comes a chopper to chop off your head!” Keep to Winston’s sense of the rhyme: “like the two halves of a countersign.”
• Keeps to the page: the chapter does not say what happened to the grandfather.

If stuck

• Who taught Julia the rhyme, and what happened to him?
• What does she talk about right after?
• Why might someone choose a softer word for something terrible?

A strong answer A strong response says why Julia might correct herself, and argues from her few lines about her grandfather. One reader hears accuracy: she knows only that he was gone, so “disappeared” is all she can claim, as the rhyme is all she can half remember. Another hears habit: the careful word comes into the room with her, just after she has said she will be “a woman, not a Party comrade”, and she turns “inconsequently” to lemons. The best answers weigh the lemons, keep the rhyme to Winston’s countersign, and do not say what happened to him.

What it asks It asks the student to test Winston’s own verdict against the evening. The refrain comes twice: “Folly, folly, his heart kept saying: conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly.” and “Folly, folly, folly! he thought again.” Each word makes its own charge. “Conscious”: they chose it knowing, and “Both of them knew that it was lunacy.” “Gratuitous”: done without need or cause. “Suicidal”: “It was as though they were intentionally stepping nearer to their graves.” The student picks the word the evening answers best, builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say they are caught in this room, or when; Winston only expects it.

One reading

Gratuitous. The room answers a need, not a whim. The idea grew out of “a deep tenderness” on the street, when Winston wished for a place to be alone together without having to make love every time. The evening gives them that: sleep, talk, a bed, real coffee, and Julia’s painted face. Something wanted for that reason is not done for nothing.

• He wished above all that they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met.
• In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.

Another reading

Conscious. The chapter shows how little of the choice is fully awake. The idea did not come from thought; it “floated into his head” as a picture of the paperweight. The end he is choosing comes and goes in his mind. They know it is lunacy, but the knowing is never held for long.

• Actually the idea had first floated into his head in the form of a vision of the glass paperweight mirrored by the surface of the gate-leg table.
• It was curious how that predestined horror moved in and out of one’s consciousness.

Listen for

• Hears whose verdict it is: “his heart kept saying”. The same heart felt “a deep tenderness” on the street and wished they were “a married couple of ten years’ standing”.
• Weighs the page’s reason, given right after the second “Folly”: “the temptation of having a hiding-place that was truly their own”. The refrain never stops, and neither does the choice.
• Tests “suicidal” against “It was inconceivable that they could frequent this place for more than a few weeks without being caught” and “as surely as 99 precedes 100”. A thesis that sets that word aside has to answer both.
• Revises by asking whether one word can fail while the folly still stands. Keep to the page: Winston only expects to be caught.

If stuck

• What does each of the three words say about the room?
• What did Winston wish for on the street, and does the evening give it to him?
• Can someone choose a danger knowingly and still not quite face it?

A strong answer A strong response names the word that fits worst, argues from the evening, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says “gratuitous”: the room grew out of “a deep tenderness” and a wish for a place to be alone together, and the evening gives them that, down to Julia’s “a woman, not a Party comrade.” Another says “conscious”: the idea “floated into his head”, and the horror moves “in and out of one’s consciousness”. The strongest objection is Winston’s own count, a few weeks “without being caught”, which keeps “suicidal” standing whichever word falls. A good revision tests whether one word can fail while the folly still stands.

What it asks It asks the student to judge the picture that ends the chapter. As the room darkens, Winston gazes into the paperweight. “The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself.” The glass is like “the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete.” He feels he is inside it, with the bed, the table, the clock and the engraving. “The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.” Earlier he called it “a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter”, and, waiting on the bed, he saw the cellars of the Ministry of Love “fixed in future time.” The student builds a thesis on whether the picture is hopeful or frightening, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say what becomes of the room, the paperweight or the lovers; the chapter does not tell.

One reading

Hopeful. The glass is a sky over a world complete in itself, and the room is inside it with them. The paperweight is a piece of history “they’ve forgotten to alter”; to be fixed inside it is to be kept, out of reach, as the coral has been kept since “a hundred years ago”. Julia’s painted face, the coffee and the rhyme are what the glass now holds.

• It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete.
• It’s a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter.

Another reading

Frightening. The word “fixed” is the one Winston used, earlier that evening, for the cellars “fixed in future time.” The coral cannot move. The room that holds them also holds the rat and the nightmare it opened, and the clock has been counting the evening down. To be fixed in it forever is to have no way out.

• There it lay, fixed in future time, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100.
• The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

Listen for

• Hears “fixed” twice: the cellars “fixed in future time”, the coral “fixed in a sort of eternity”. Does the second answer the first, or repeat it?
• Notices “a sort of”: Winston does not say eternity, only a kind of it. What does that hedge allow?
• Sets the evening’s two faces side by side: Julia’s painted face, “a woman, not a Party comrade”, and the rat that sends Winston back to “a wall of darkness”. Both happened in the room, so both are inside the glass.
• Weighs what Winston likes in the paperweight: “I don’t think it was ever put to any use. That’s what I like about it.” Revises by asking whether something useless can keep anything safe. Keep to the page: Winston only expects to be caught.

If stuck

• What does Winston see when he looks into the glass at the end?
• What else in the chapter was “fixed”?
• Can being kept forever be a good thing and a bad thing at once?

A strong answer A strong response states whether the last picture is hopeful or frightening, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says hopeful: the glass is “the arch of the sky” over a world complete, a piece of history “they’ve forgotten to alter”, and the lovers are kept inside it like the coral. The strongest objection is the word “fixed”, which Winston used for the cellars “fixed in future time”, and the rat and the nightmare that are in the room too. A good revision might hold that the picture is both at once, safety and a trap, and weigh what “a sort of” leaves open.