1984

Part One, Chapter 2

George Orwell · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak – ‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used – had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police.

Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past. He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.

Read both passages aloud. The Times calls a boy who reports his own family a hero. Winston calls himself “the monster”. Whose eyes is he looking through?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences, a few minutes apart in Winston’s afternoon. The first closes his thoughts about the Parsons household. Its opening sentence is short and flat, and the shock is in two words, “almost normal”. The next sentence opens on a dry agreement, “And with good reason”, and then runs long: a clause about the Times, a participle, “describing how”, and an aside fenced by dashes, which sets the Party’s proud name for the informer beside the narrator’s own, “eavesdropping little sneak”. The sentence saves its blow for the end, where the informer turns on his own family. The second passage comes at the window. It opens with no verb at all, three Party terms in a row, “Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past”, as if Winston were reciting a lesson. Then a long comparison, “as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom”, turns back on him: a “monstrous world” in which “he himself was the monster”. Then a sentence of three words, “He was alone.” Last comes a balance of two matched halves joined by a comma, “The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.” Students copying them practise an aside between dashes, a sentence that ends on its heaviest words, a list without a verb, and two matched clauses joined by a comma. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who sees that the Times hands out its hero by the Party’s measure, and then asks whether Winston’s “monster” comes from the same place. One reading says it does: by that measure the boy who informs on his own family is a hero and the man who thinks for himself is the monster, the very “thought-criminal” the Parsons boy shouted at him, so Winston has borrowed the Party’s eyes. Another says he is looking with his own: in a world where an informer is a hero, a man who keeps his own mind really is the odd creature, and seeing that plainly is not the same as agreeing with it. A strong student may weigh whether he half believes the Party’s verdict: he is “alone”, and in an age of sameness the one who differs is what everyone fears.

Discussion

Narration Give a short account of the chapter, from the knock at Winston’s door to the grain of dust on the diary’s cover. Then pick the one sentence you think matters most, and say what it shows about the chapter as a whole.

Winston left the diary open, with DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER across it, because he did not want to smudge the wet ink. He calls that “an inconceivably stupid thing to have done.” Is “stupid” the right word for it? Character
As her son pockets the catapult, Mrs Parsons drags him back into the doorway. Who is she protecting, and from whom? Character
The telescreen announces “a glorious victory”, and Winston thinks, “Bad news coming.” He is right: the chocolate ration is cut. If he can see through it so easily, who is the victory news for? Inference
Winston cannot tell if O’Brien is a friend or an enemy, and it hardly seems to matter to him. Instead he feels “a link of understanding” between them. What does Winston think O’Brien understands? Character
Winston sends his greeting “From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude”. How can people who are all made alike also be alone? Theme

Make a Connection Think of a story, a moment in history, or a time in your own life when someone held on to a truth that no one else would hear. What kept them going?

Vocabulary

inconceivably: It was an inconceivably stupid thing to have done. So far past what seems possible that the mind can hardly take it in (from conceive, to form an idea; concept comes from the same root). Winston uses it on himself: a man who has trained every habit towards safety has done something he could not have imagined doing. The word measures the gap between his caution and the care for the page that overruled it.
discountenanced: (‘Mrs’ was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party – you were supposed to call everyone ‘comrade’ – but with some women one used it instinctively.) Disapproved of and quietly discouraged, without being forbidden outright (from countenance, the face, and so the look of approval on it). The Party does not ban “Mrs”; it frowns on it. The word shows the Party reaching even into how neighbours address each other, and the narrator adds that with some women one used it “instinctively”, a habit older than the Party.
impedimenta: Games impedimenta – hockey sticks, boxing gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out – lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books. Bulky equipment that gets in the way, especially the baggage an army carries on the march (Latin, related to impede, to hinder). Orwell gives a grand military word to a heap of sports gear on a floor. It is a joke, and also a hint: in this household games are a kind of drill, as the boy’s play at arrest soon shows.
demeanour: Winston raised his hands above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy’s demeanour, that it was not altogether a game. The way a person carries and conducts themselves, as others can see it (the British spelling of demeanor). Nothing the boy has said yet is more than a game, but his “vicious” demeanour, the look and bearing behind the words, tells Winston that it is not only one.
gambolling: It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. Running and leaping about in play, as lambs and other young animals do (from an old word for a leap). The word is light and playful, and Orwell sets it beside “tiger cubs” and “man-eaters”. The comparison holds both halves of what Winston sees: it is play now, and it is practice for something else.
eavesdropping: And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak – ‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used – had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the Thought Police. Listening in secret to talk not meant for you (from the eaves of a house, where a listener might stand under the dripping edge of the roof, close to the wall). The narrator’s name for the young informer is “eavesdropping little sneak”; the Times gives the same figure a hero’s name, in the aside between the dashes. Two names for one act show the Party turning spying into a virtue.
partisanship: There was a link of understanding between them, more important than affection or partisanship. Taking one side and holding to it, often without question (from partisan, a member of a party or faction). Winston sets understanding above both liking and being on the same side. In a world run by one Party, he imagines a bond that has nothing to do with sides.
mutability: Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past. The quality of being able to change (from the Latin for to change; related to mutate and mutation, and the opposite of immutable). Joined to “the past”, the word is a shock, since the past is the one thing that should not change. Winston’s greeting wishes for a time “when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone”.

Critical thinking

Winston decides the Spies turn the young into “ungovernable little savages” who still adore the Party. Their ferocity, he thinks, is “turned outwards”, against the State’s enemies. Minutes ago, a boy in the Spies hit him in the neck. How well does the boy fit Winston’s theory?
Winston writes that thoughtcrime is death and calls himself a dead man, yet right afterwards he takes more care to stay alive. Does accepting that he is doomed make him weaker or stronger?