1984

Part Three, Chapter 2

George Orwell · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him.

The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.

Every sentence in the first passage begins with “We.” By the last sentence, who belongs to that “We”?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences: O’Brien on what the Party does with a heretic, and Winston under the dial with the four fingers before him. The first passage is built on one word. Each of its four sentences opens on “We”, and each verb goes further than the one before: “destroy”, then “convert”, “capture” and “reshape”, then “burn” and “bring him over”, and last “make him one of ourselves”. Its first sentence turns on a colon and a reversal, “so long as he resists us we never destroy him”. Its third holds a semicolon and an antithesis, “not in appearance, but genuinely”, then closes on a doubled phrase, “heart and soul”. The last sentence is the shortest, and it saves “before we kill him” for the end. The second passage is a picture seen through pain. Its first sentence fills the frame with two things, the face and the fingers. Its second piles up a simile and three loose adjectives, “like pillars, enormous, blurry and seeming to vibrate”, and then sets “but unmistakably four” against all of them. Students copying them practise anaphora that climbs, a colon that turns a sentence round, an antithesis inside a semicolon, a short sentence that ends on its sharpest words, and a long sentence whose last two words hold out against everything before them. For the talk prompt, listen for more than one answer. One student hears only the Party: O’Brien and the men around him, speaking as one. Another hears the heretic pulled in by the last sentence, “one of ourselves”, for a moment before he is killed. A third may notice that Winston, strapped to the bed, is the “him” of every sentence. Each helps with the last written question, since the passage says what the Party wants from the man who counts the fingers. Keep to the page: the chapter does not show Winston converted, and it does not say how his story ends.

Discussion

Narration Tell back the chapter in order, from the first blow on Winston’s elbow to the needle that sends him to sleep.

Winston confesses to murdering a wife who is still alive. Then we read, “Besides, in a sense it was all true.” Whose voice do you hear in that sentence? Inference
During the questioning, Winston feels O’Brien behind everything: “He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend.” Once O’Brien is in the room, which of those four words fits him best? Character
When O’Brien says he does not remember the photograph, Winston thinks that if he could be sure O’Brien was lying, “it would not have seemed to matter.” Why would a lie be easier to face than a real forgetting? Inference
Winston says no one can control memory, then cries, “You have not controlled mine!” O’Brien answers, “you have not controlled it.” Who understands Winston’s memory better, Winston or O’Brien? Theme
Near the end of the test, Winston says, “in all honesty I don’t know,” and O’Brien answers, “Better.” What has Winston given him that “Five! Five! Five!” did not? Character

Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time in history, when people were made to say in public what they did not believe. Did saying it change them over time, or did they stay the same inside?

Vocabulary

heretic: We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. Someone who holds a belief that the ruling church or party has declared false (Greek hairetikos, able to choose; related to heresy). O’Brien borrows the old church word for a Party that has no God, and in his sentence the heretic is Winston, strapped to the bed below him.
unmistakably: The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four. In a way that cannot be taken for anything else (un-, not, and mistake, with -ably, in a way that can be). It comes after three words that make the fingers less clear, “enormous, blurry and seeming to vibrate”, and it still holds: whatever the pain does to his sight, he can count.
prevaricate: If you tell me any lies, or attempt to prevaricate in any way, or even fall below your usual level of intelligence, you will cry out with pain, instantly. To dodge the truth without quite lying, by hedging, stalling or giving a slippery answer (Latin praevaricari, to walk crookedly, to straddle). O’Brien sets it beside lies as something the dial will punish, so even a careful half-answer is not safe.
deranged: You are mentally deranged. Out of one’s right mind; disordered in thought (Old French desrengier, to throw out of line or rank). It is O’Brien’s first diagnosis, given in the voice of “a doctor, a teacher”, and it names Winston’s memory as the illness.
metaphysician: ‘You are no metaphysician, Winston,’ he said. A thinker who studies the deepest questions about what is real and what it means for something to exist (from metaphysics, the part of philosophy beyond physics). O’Brien says it with a faint smile, just after Winston cannot say whether the past is real.
overt: The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. Done openly, where it can be seen (from Old French ovrir, to open; the opposite of covert, hidden). O’Brien sets the overt act against the thought, and says only the hidden one matters to the Party.
eradicate: It set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it. To destroy something completely, so that it cannot grow back (Latin e-, out, and radix, root: to pull out by the roots). In O’Brien’s account the Inquisition tried to root heresy out and only spread it, because it burned men who had not changed their minds.
forsook: There were times when his nerve so forsook him that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began, when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes. Left, abandoned, especially when most needed (past tense of forsake). Here it is Winston’s own nerve that walks out on him, before a single blow lands, and the confession pours out after it.

Critical thinking

Winston decides that O’Brien’s mind “contained” his own, and so “It must be he, Winston, who was mad.” Where, if anywhere, does that reasoning break?
Winston tells O’Brien he wants really to see five fingers, not just say it. Is that answer a surrender or a kind of honesty?