1984

Part Three, Chapter 4

George Orwell · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Only surrender, and everything else followed. It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was easy, except –!

It was not easy to preserve inscrutability when you did not know what your face looked like.

The first passage breaks off at a dash: “except –!” What word won’t Winston let himself say?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences. The first, five sentences, comes from the middle of Winston’s re-education, just after the slate; the second, one sentence, comes after the cry, as he makes his plan. The first opens clipped: “Only surrender”, with no verb, and then a clause that makes everything else follow from it. The second sentence is one long simile that turns round in its middle, as the swimmer does. Its first half struggles, “however hard you struggled”; its second half “suddenly” goes with the current. The third uses a colon to set a small change against a fixed end. In these two sentences the narration slides from “he” to “you”, as if the rule were for everyone. The fourth is short and flat, and the last breaks off at a dash. “except” comes twice: the first time it names the one thing that changed, his attitude; the second time it names nothing at all. The second passage answers the first on its own word. “Everything was easy”, the first ends; “It was not easy”, the second begins, and the hard thing now is keeping a face that shows nothing. Students copying them practise a clipped opening with no verb, a long simile that changes direction halfway, a colon that joins a change to its result, a slide from “he” to “you”, a sentence that breaks off at a dash, and a later sentence that turns an earlier word round. For the talk prompt, listen for more than one answer. One student says “Julia”, and can point to the cry later in the chapter. Another says his hatred, or his heart. A third notices the earlier break, “Only –!”, just after “learning to think as they thought”, and asks whether both dashes hide the same word. Some will say the point is that he will not let it be named, which is what he later decides a secret needs. Each helps with the last written question. Keep to the page: the passage shows a mind giving in, and the chapter says he “still hated the Party”.

Discussion

Narration Tell back the chapter in order, from the comfortable cell where Winston grows stronger to O’Brien’s last words, “Room 101.”

While his body heals, Winston dreams of sitting in the sun with his mother, with Julia, and with O’Brien. Why is O’Brien in that dream? Inference
Winston writes the first two lines on the slate almost without a pause. The third he has to reason out. Which shows he has given in more deeply, the ease or the effort? Character
Winston beats the thought “It is hallucination” with no trouble. Yet he sees that it “ought never to have occurred to him”. If he won, what is still wrong? Inference
Winston dreams he is walking down the corridor toward the bullet, and he is happy. Later he plans that same walk, with his hatred bursting out at the end. In the dream, where has his hatred gone? Theme
Winston hears himself cry out for Julia. He calls it a “moment of weakness”. Weak by whose standard? Character

Make a Connection Think of a time, in a story, in history or in your own life, when obeying was not enough and someone was asked to mean it too. Can anyone fairly ask for that?

Vocabulary

alterable: The past was alterable. Able to be changed (Latin alter, other: made other than it was). It is one of the things Winston now accepts about the past, and the next sentence stands beside it: “The past never had been altered.”
predestined: Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. Decided in advance, so that it will happen whatever anyone does (Latin prae, before, and destinare, to fix). In Winston’s picture of surrender, the end is the same whichever way the swimmer faces.
presupposed: It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a ‘real’ world where ‘real’ things happened. Took for granted beforehand, as something an argument quietly depends on (Latin prae, before, and supponere, to place under). Winston says the thought he pushed under rests on one hidden assumption: a real world outside the mind.
conformity: In the old days he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of conformity. Behaving as the rules and everyone around you expect; fitting the required shape (Latin con-, together, and forma, shape). For Winston it was once a cover: the outside fitted while the mind did not.
inscrutability: It was not easy to preserve inscrutability when you did not know what your face looked like. The quality of being impossible to read or see into, above all in a face (Latin in-, not, and scrutari, to search closely). Winston needs a face that shows nothing, and no longer knows the shape of his own.
unrepented: The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach for ever. Never regretted or taken back; not repented of (Old French repentir, from Latin paenitere, to regret, with un-, not). It stands in a list of what Winston’s last thought would escape.
stimulus: He seemed to have lost the power of intellectual effort, now that the stimulus of pain had been removed. Something that rouses a body or mind to act (Latin stimulus, a goad, the pointed stick used to drive cattle). Here the goad was pain, and once it is gone his mind goes still.

Critical thinking

O’Brien tells Winston, “Intellectually there is very little wrong with you.” Is he right about Winston’s mind?
Winston plans to keep his hatred hidden, even from himself, until the moment he is shot. Is that plan a real freedom or another kind of defeat?