1984

Part Two, Chapter 7

George Orwell · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

He knew that he was starving the other two, but he could not help it; he even felt that he had a right to do it. The clamorous hunger in his belly seemed to justify him.

It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert the child’s death or her own; but it seemed natural to her to do it.

The boy “felt that he had a right” to grab the food. To his mother, holding his sister “seemed natural”. Both are feelings. How different are they, really?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences: first the boy, then the mother, each as the grown Winston remembers them. The first is two sentences about the hungry years. Its long first sentence turns twice: “but he could not help it”, then the semicolon and “he even felt that he had a right to do it”, so it moves from knowing, to excuse, to claim. The short second sentence gives the hunger a voice of its own: it is “clamorous”, and it is the hunger, not the boy, that “seemed to justify him.” The second passage comes from Winston’s thoughts after Julia falls asleep. It opens on a careful distinction, “ineffectual” against “meaningless”, then states a rule in plain words that repeat themselves (“you loved him”, “you still gave him love”), then gives one picture, the mother holding his sister, and ends on a long sentence that lists everything the embrace failed to do before a single “but”. Students copying them practise a sentence that turns on “but” and a semicolon, a short sentence whose subject is a feeling, a distinction between two near words, a rule stated through repetition, and a list of denials held back by one clause at the end. For the talk prompt, listen for more than one reading. One says they are far apart. The boy’s feeling comes from his belly and serves only himself: the passage says the hunger “seemed to justify him”, and “seemed” lets the grown man doubt it. The mother’s comes from inside her, from the “private” standards Winston praises just before, which “could not be altered from outside”, and it is spent on someone else. Another says they are closer than they look: neither rests on a reason, and the boy “could not help it” any more than she could have been argued out of her love. Neither reading should shrink the passage into a lesson against greed; the chapter dwells on hunger. Keep to the page: the last copied sentence speaks of death, but the chapter says Winston does not know “with any certainty” that his mother is dead, and it gives his sister more than one possible fate. It shows the boy’s guilt, not that he caused what happened to them.

Discussion

Narration Tell back the chapter, from Winston waking in tears to his last thought about the inner heart. Keep the chocolate, the severed hand and the talk about confession in their places.

The whole meaning of Winston’s dream seems to sit in one gesture of his mother’s arm. The woman in the news film makes it too, over a small boy. His mother sometimes held Winston as well, “for a long time without saying anything.” In the dream, who is under that arm? Inference
When the chocolate comes, Winston hears himself demand the whole piece, “as though he were listening to somebody else.” Where does that voice come from? Character
Half asleep, Julia says he must have been “a beastly little swine in those days.” Winston answers, “Yes.” Why doesn’t he argue? Character
As a hungry boy, Winston picked the ribs of cabbage leaves out of rubbish heaps. A few weeks ago he kicked a severed hand into the gutter “as though it had been a cabbage-stalk.” What has happened to him between the two? Character
Winston says aloud, “We are not human.” Julia wakes and asks, “Why not?” He thinks for a little while. Then he asks if they should “walk out of here” and never see each other again. What does his question have to do with hers? Moral reasoning
For years Winston kept the memory of the chocolate out of his own mind, until a dream brought it back. The chapter ends on the thought that the heart is “mysterious even to yourself.” Is a heart like that a strength against the Party, or a weakness? Theme

Make a Connection Think of someone, in a story, in history or in your own life, who remembered something they had long tried to forget. What brought it back, and what did they do once they remembered?

Vocabulary

sodden: He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmosphere of the dream. Soaked through and heavy with water (an old form of seethed, boiled or steeped). Winston lies with his eyes shut, “still sodden in the atmosphere of the dream”: the dream has soaked into him and has not yet dried off. The word fits a dream in which his life stretches out “like a landscape on a summer evening after rain”.
clamorous: The clamorous hunger in his belly seemed to justify him. Loud and insistent, demanding to be heard (from clamour, a loud outcry). In “The clamorous hunger in his belly seemed to justify him”, the hunger has a voice, and it shouts. A few lines on, the boy’s own voice booms out, demanding the whole piece of chocolate.
remonstrance: There was a long, nagging argument that went round and round, with shouts, whines, tears, remonstrances, bargainings. A strong protest, pleading with someone to stop what they are doing (re-, again, and Latin monstrare, to show). The fight over the chocolate goes round “with shouts, whines, tears, remonstrances, bargainings”. The list mixes the boy’s noise with his mother’s pleading, as when she tells him “not to be greedy”.
ineffectual: It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. Not producing the result you want; useless for getting anything done (in-, not, and effectual, that works). Winston thinks it “would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless.” He keeps the two words apart: in his view an act can fail to work and still mean something.

Critical thinking

Winston tells Julia, “Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter: only feelings matter.” But the memory he woke with is of something he did. Test his claim against that memory.
Winston's mother held his sister even though “it changed nothing.” Can a gesture that changes nothing still matter?