1984

Part Two, Chapter 8

George Orwell · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

More even than of strength, he gave an impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged by irony. However much in earnest he might be, he had nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic. When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal disease, amputated limbs and altered faces, it was with a faint air of persiflage.

We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone.

The first passage describes O’Brien in long sentences that save their point for the end. The second lets him speak in short, blunt ones. Why might Orwell describe the man one way and let him speak the other?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences: first O’Brien’s manner as Winston watches him pace, then three sentences from the heart of his account of the Brotherhood. The first passage is built on three openings that hold back the main clause: “More even than of strength”, “However much in earnest he might be”, and a long “When” clause carrying a list that runs from murder to “altered faces”. Each time the main clause lands on something lighter than what came before it: “irony”, “nothing of the single-mindedness”, “a faint air of persiflage”. The weight of the list and the lightness of its ending pull against each other, and that pull is the point. The second passage is plain where the first is ornate. Two short sentences set death against life, “We are the dead.” and “Our only true life is in the future.” A third gives that future its only picture, “handfuls of dust and splinters of bone”, two nouns of ruin joined by “and”. Students copying them practise the periodic sentence, a concessive opening, a list that ends on a turn, antithesis in two plain sentences, and a closing image that makes an abstract word concrete. For the talk prompt, listen for more than one reading. One says the long sentences move the way Winston watches: each opens on something heavy and lands on something light, so the reader is carried, as Winston is, from murder and “amputated limbs” to “a faint air of persiflage”. The style does what the manner does. Another says the plain speech sounds like truth: a creed or an epitaph needs no ornament, and a man who promises only death and dust does not seem to be flattering anyone. A third notices whose words they are: the first passage is Winston’s view of O’Brien, told by the narrator, and the second is O’Brien’s own, so a reader can weigh the man and his message apart. That habit serves the last written question, which asks what Winston is truly fighting for: the man in front of him, the idea that man speaks for, or the woman beside him. Keep to the page: the chapter gives O’Brien through Winston’s eyes and gives no proof either way about him or the Brotherhood, and none of Winston’s promises is tested here.

Discussion

Narration Tell back the visit to O’Brien’s flat, from the soft carpet as they come in to O’Brien’s hand on the telescreen switch as Winston leaves.

O’Brien stops by the telescreen and presses a switch. There is a sharp snap. He says, “We have that privilege.” How much does that one act really prove about O’Brien? Inference
O’Brien tells Martin he can stop being a servant for ten minutes. Martin sits down “quite at his ease, and yet still with a servant-like air”. Is there still a man under the part, or has the part become the man? Character
For most of the visit O’Brien has almost ignored Julia. She has just refused to part from Winston. Now O’Brien turns to her. Even if Winston lives, he says, he may have a different face, different hands, even a different voice. She goes pale, but she faces him and seems to agree. What is she agreeing to? Character
When O’Brien speaks of murder and altered faces, his voice “seemed to say” that this is not what they will do “when life is worth living again.” He never says those words out loud. Whose words are they? Author's choice
To Winston, wine belongs to “the vanished, romantic past”. When he tastes it, it is “distinctly disappointing.” Later O’Brien offers toasts to humanity and to the future, and Winston drinks to the past. Why does he still choose the past? Theme

Make a Connection Think of someone, in history, in a story or in your own life, who worked for something they knew they would never see finished. What kept them going?

Vocabulary

imaginings: Nothing but a flash of the eyes and a single equivocal remark: beyond that, only his own secret imaginings, founded on a dream. Pictures and stories made up in the mind, often hopes or fears with no proof behind them (from imagine). Before this visit, Winston’s whole case for O’Brien is “a flash of the eyes and a single equivocal remark: beyond that, only his own secret imaginings, founded on a dream.” The plural makes them many small pictures built up over time, and “founded on a dream” sets them against evidence.
demoralisation: You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases – to do anything which is likely to cause demoralisation and weaken the power of the Party? The breaking of people’s spirit, so that they lose courage, hope and discipline; in an older sense, the corruption of their morals (de-, taking away, and moral; American spelling demoralization). O’Brien’s list aims at “anything which is likely to cause demoralisation and weaken the power of the Party”. Both senses fit the list: drugs, disease and corrupted young minds break people’s morals as well as their spirit, and it is people, not the Party, who would be broken.
single-mindedness: However much in earnest he might be, he had nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic. Fixing the whole mind on one aim and shutting out everything else (single, mind, and -ness, the state of being). It can be praise, for a worker who will not be distracted, or a warning. Here it is a warning: it “belongs to a fanatic”, and Winston is reassured that O’Brien has “nothing of” it. Ask what a man who is in earnest, yet not single-minded, keeps room for.
persiflage: When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal disease, amputated limbs and altered faces, it was with a faint air of persiflage. Light, teasing talk that treats serious things as if they were small; banter (French, from persifler, to tease, built on siffler, to whistle). O’Brien speaks of murder and amputated limbs “with a faint air of persiflage”. To Winston the lightness shows a man who is no fanatic; a reader may also notice how much the lightness makes bearable.

Critical thinking

O’Brien says that for now nothing is possible “except to extend the area of sanity little by little.” Before that, Winston agreed to corrupt the minds of the young. He even agreed to throw acid in a youngster’s face, if it would serve the cause. Can a fight for sanity be fought that way?
Winston says yes to murder for the Brotherhood but no to leaving Julia. Which answer shows more truly what he is fighting for?