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1984
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
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?
The tension On the slate Winston writes “TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE” “almost without a pause”; in a waking dream he cries “Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!” without meaning to. The first is chosen surrender, the second is the part of him that did not surrender.
Notice which changes Winston makes in himself on purpose and which happen to him without his choosing.
Winston is much better. The cell is more comfortable: a mattress and a pillow, baths and warm water, clean clothes, ointment for his ulcer, new dentures, good food, even cigarettes. For a long time he lies torpid, dreaming happy dreams of the Golden Country and of sitting in the sun with his mother, Julia and O’Brien. To be clean, fed and left alone is enough. Slowly he gains strength and begins to exercise. He is humiliated by what he cannot do, then proud as his body comes back. His mind grows active, and with a slate on his knees he sets out to re-educate himself. He has capitulated, he tells himself; the Thought Police watched him for seven years, and the Party must be right. He writes FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and, almost without a pause, TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE. Before GOD IS POWER there is a check, and he has to reason the line out. He accepts everything; surrender feels like a swimmer turning to go with the current. Working out O’Brien’s claim that he could float like a soap bubble, a thought bursts up: it does not really happen, it is hallucination. He pushes it under, and trains himself in crimestop, learning not to see the arguments against the Party. Stupidity, he finds, is as hard to attain as intelligence. All the while he wonders when they will shoot him, from behind, in a corridor. Once, in a blissful waking dream, he walks down the corridor toward the bullet and finds himself in the Golden Country. Then he hears himself cry out, “Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!” For a moment she seemed inside him, and he loved her more than when they were free. Horrified, he expects the boots. He sees that he obeys the Party but still hates it: he has surrendered in the mind, but hoped to keep his inner heart untouched. He resolves to hide his hatred even from himself, to feel right and dream right, and to keep it locked inside like a cyst until the seconds before they shoot him, when it will burst out an instant before the bullet, too late for them to reclaim his mind. To die hating them, he thinks, is freedom. He knows this means degrading himself, and asks himself what his true feelings toward Big Brother are. Boots come. O’Brien enters with an officer and guards, says Winston has had thoughts of deceiving him, and tells him he is improving: intellectually little is wrong with him, but emotionally he has made no progress. Asked his true feelings toward Big Brother, Winston says, “I hate him.” O’Brien says the last step is to love Big Brother; obeying him is not enough. He pushes Winston toward the guards and says, “Room 101.”
Read the chapter in three stretches: the recovery, from “He was much better” to the slate on his knees; the re-education, from “He had capitulated” to the shot from behind in a corridor; and the dream, the cry and what follows, to “Room 101.” As you go, keep two short lists: the changes Winston makes in himself on purpose, and the things that happen in him without his choosing. Do not hurry past the food, the exercises and his pride in his body; they are part of how this stage works on him. Leave open what the chapter leaves open: whether anyone heard the cry, whether Julia is alive, what happens in Room 101, and whether Winston’s plan will work.
Retell The student retells the chapter in order: the comfortable cell and the happy dreams, the exercises and his pride in his body, the slate and its three lines, accepting everything and the swimmer, the floating man and the thought pushed under, crimestop, waiting to be shot, the blissful walk into the Golden Country, the cry for Julia, the plan to hide his hatred until the end, and O’Brien’s arrival, his question and “Room 101.” Look for the check before the slate’s third line and for the exercises, which a hurried retelling skips on the way to the cry.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes a passage of their own in the same build, about giving in on something they had long resisted. It opens with a short sentence that begins “Only”, with no verb at first, and says how little giving in takes. Next comes one long comparison that turns round in its middle, as the swimmer does. Then a sentence with “except” and a colon, sliding from “I” to “you”. Then a short, flat sentence of doubt about why they ever resisted, and a sentence that breaks off before the word it cannot say. Last, set apart, one sentence that begins “It was not easy” and names the hard part.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that the plan is a real freedom, and gathers “out of their reach for ever”, “a hole in their own perfection”, and Winston’s choice to stay in the wrong because he “preferred” it. The other argues that it is another kind of defeat, and gathers the cyst, “degrading himself, mutilating himself”, the need to “feel right, dream right”, and a freedom that may last ten seconds and that no one sees. Each side must answer the other’s best line, and both must deal with “I hate him” and O’Brien’s demand for love. Neither may say what happens in Room 101 or whether the plan works.
Purpose Close on the shape of the chapter. It works from the outside in: first his body, fed and made strong; then his mind, trained on the slate and in crimestop; then his heart, which speaks in the cry. O’Brien names the same order when he says Winston is sound intellectually but not emotionally. Ask why Orwell ends on two words, “Room 101”, with nothing after them, and what the chapter has shown is still left to take. Keep the answer to what this chapter shows.
Easier Read the chapter aloud in its three stretches. Keep two lists: what Winston changes in himself on purpose, and what happens in him without his choosing. Talk through the first and last discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud, using the lists, before writing it.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions in order, then write both written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.
Harder Ask for one argued essay on the copied passages, read beside the cry for Julia. The first passage says surrender is easy and breaks off at “except –!”; the second says something is not easy after all. Does the swimmer who turns with the current describe Winston truly, or only the part of him he can choose? The essay should use “predestined”, “inscrutability” and “unrepented”, and should meet the objection that the cry comes out of a hallucination and proves nothing. It must not say what happens in Room 101, whether the plan works, or that Julia is alive.
1. 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
What it asks It asks the student to account for one name in the happy dreams of the recovery. Winston is fed, washed, given warm water and new teeth, and left alone, and he dreams “a great deal”: “He was in the Golden Country, or he was sitting among enormous, glorious, sunlit ruins, with his mother, with Julia, with O’Brien – not doing anything, merely sitting in the sun, talking of peaceful things.” The man who questioned him sits in the sun beside his mother and Julia. The student says why O’Brien belongs there. It reaches toward the last question, since O’Brien’s last demand is aimed at the part of Winston that dreams. The card must not say that Winston loves O’Brien, or that the comfort is only a trick; the page shows the comfort and the dream and leaves the reasons to the reader.
Because the comfort has done its work. In this cell peace means not being hurt, and the end of the hurting came from O’Brien’s side. A mind that has “lost the power of intellectual effort” sets the man who ended the pain beside the people it loves, and finds nothing strange in it. The dream shows how far the comfort reaches.
Merely to be alone, not to be beaten or questioned, to have enough to eat, and to be clean all over, was completely satisfying.
He seemed to have lost the power of intellectual effort, now that the stimulus of pain had been removed.
Because O’Brien already has a place in Winston that the food did not make. The dream puts him beside his mother and Julia, not among enemies. Later, alone with his secret, Winston singles out O’Brien as the one who would understand it. The place where Winston keeps what he loves has O’Brien in it already, and that is where O’Brien’s last demand will land.
with his mother, with Julia, with O’Brien
They would understand that – O’Brien would understand it.
A strong answer A strong response says why O’Brien sits in the sun with Winston’s mother and Julia, and argues from the recovery. One reader says the comfort has done its work: peace now means not being hurt, the end of the hurting came from O’Brien’s side, and a mind that has “lost the power of intellectual effort” finds nothing strange in it. Another says O’Brien already has a place in Winston the food did not make, since Winston later singles him out as the one who “would understand”. The best answers notice that nobody in the dream is doing anything, treat the comfort as part of the method, and do not claim that Winston loves O’Brien.
2. 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
What it asks It asks the student to judge what the slate shows about Winston’s surrender. When his mind grows active he sets to work “deliberately at the task of re-educating himself.” He writes “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.” “Then almost without a pause” he writes “TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE.” “But then there came a sort of check. His mind, as though shying away from something, seemed unable to concentrate.” He recalls the third line “only by consciously reasoning out what it must be: it did not come of its own accord.” He writes “GOD IS POWER.” The student says which shows he has given in more deeply: that two lines come so easily, or that he works so hard for the third. The card must not say that Winston now believes the Party in his heart; the chapter says he “still hated the Party”.
The ease. Two of the Party’s lines now come to him with no pause, the way his own thoughts would. Effort would mean something in him still pushes back; ease means nothing does. The check before the third line is a sign of a fight, and the first two lines show where the fight is already over.
Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it
How easy it all was!
The effort. The check is a gap, and he fills it himself. When the line will not come, he does not leave the gap open. He works out what the Party must think and writes it down. His own reason now works for them. A mind that only gave way would be beaten; a mind that reasons its way to “GOD IS POWER.” has joined in.
When he did recall it, it was only by consciously reasoning out what it must be: it did not come of its own accord.
set to work deliberately at the task of re-educating himself
A strong answer A strong response chooses the ease or the effort as the deeper sign of giving in, and argues from the slate and the lines around it. One reader says the ease: two of the Party’s lines come “almost without a pause”, like his own thoughts, while the check before the third is the last sign of a fight. Another says the effort: when the line will not come he reasons out “what it must be”, so his own reason now works for the Party. The best answers weigh “as though shying away from something” and “that was agreed”, and do not say that Winston now believes the Party in his heart.
3. 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
What it asks It asks the student to say why a thought Winston beats easily still counts against him. Working out O’Brien’s boast that he could float “like a soap bubble”, Winston meets a thought that bursts up “like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water”: ‘It doesn’t really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.’ He pushes it under at once, calls it a fallacy, and has “no difficulty in disposing of” it. Yet “it ought never to have occurred to him. The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself.” The student says what is still wrong if he won, and by whose measure. The card keeps to Winston’s mind, not a debate about what is real.
By the Party’s rule, the thought itself is the fault. Winning an argument means he had one, and a cured mind would not need to. The blind spot is meant to work by itself; his still has to be worked by hand. What is wrong is that the cure is not finished, and he sets to work on crimestop at once.
The process should be automatic, instinctive.
He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop.
The thought came up on its own. Wreckage that breaks the surface was under the water all along, and pushing it under does not sink it for good. He can win every argument and still not choose what his mind brings up. What is wrong is that part of him has not gone along, and it does not ask his leave.
Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind
He pushed the thought under instantly.
A strong answer A strong response says what is still wrong if Winston won, and argues from the paragraph and the one after it. One reader says it is wrong by the Party’s rule: the blind spot should be “automatic, instinctive”, so having to argue at all means the cure is not finished, and he goes straight to crimestop. Another says the thought rose on its own, like wreckage that was under the water all along, and he can win every argument without choosing what his mind brings up. The best answers follow the water from the swimmer to the wreckage, weigh what the thought actually says, and keep to Winston’s mind rather than a debate about reality.
4. 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
What it asks It asks the student to account for what is missing from the happiest moment in the chapter. Winston knows the tradition that they shoot you “from behind: always in the back of the head, without warning, as you walked down a corridor from cell to cell.” Then, once, “he fell into a strange, blissful reverie. He was walking down the corridor, waiting for the bullet.” “Everything was settled, smoothed out, reconciled. There were no more doubts, no more arguments, no more pain, no more fear.” His body is strong, he walks “with a joy of movement”, and the white corridor becomes the sunlit passage and then the Golden Country. Later, after the cry, he plans the same walk to end the other way: “bang! would go the batteries of his hatred. Hatred would fill him like an enormous roaring flame.” The student says where the hatred is in the dream: given up, buried, or pushed out by something else. The question sets up the last written question without asking it; whether the plan is a freedom stays there. The card must not say whether or how Winston will in fact be shot.
Given up. The dream is surrender finished. Hatred is a kind of argument with the Party, and in the dream every argument is over. That is why it feels like bliss. The swimmer has turned with the current, and the hatred went downstream with everything else. The bullet is part of the comfort.
Everything was settled, smoothed out, reconciled.
There were no more doubts, no more arguments, no more pain, no more fear.
Pushed out by something stronger. The dream walks him out of the Ministry and into the Golden Country, a place the Party never built. What rises in him there is not hatred but love: a moment later he is crying out for Julia. What comes up in Winston on its own is love. The hatred is something he will have to plan.
He was not any longer in the narrow white corridors of the Ministry of Love
He was in the Golden Country, following the foot-track across the old rabbit-cropped pasture.
A strong answer A strong response says where the hatred has gone in the dream of the corridor, and argues from that paragraph set beside the plan. One reader says it has been given up: the dream is surrender finished, with “no more doubts, no more arguments, no more pain, no more fear”, the swimmer carried all the way. Another says it has been pushed out: the dream leaves the Ministry for the Golden Country, and what rises in him is love, not hatred, since the cry for Julia comes next. The best answers weigh “reconciled”, notice that the strong body carrying him is partly the cell’s work, ask whether a hatred that can vanish is hidden or gone, and do not say whether Winston will be shot.
5. Winston hears himself cry out for Julia. He calls it a “moment of weakness”. Weak by whose standard?Character
What it asks It asks the student to find whose judgment the word “weakness” carries. Winston starts up “with a shock of horror”: “He had heard himself cry aloud”: “Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!” For a moment she seemed “not merely with him, but inside him”, and “he had loved her far more than he had ever done when they were together and free.” Then: “What had he done? How many years had he added to his servitude by that moment of weakness?” He expects the boots, and thinks they would know “that he was breaking the agreement he had made with them.” The page also says he had hoped to keep his inner heart untouched, and “It was all confessed in that single foolish cry.” The student says by whose standard the cry is weak: the Party’s, Winston’s own, or both. The card must not say that anyone heard the cry, or that Julia is alive and needs him; Winston “knew” that during a hallucination.
The Party’s. Winston judges the cry by what it costs his servitude and by the agreement he made with them. He speaks of it the way his keepers would: a slip that breaks the terms. That he can call the strongest love he has ever felt a weakness shows how far their way of seeing has reached into him.
How many years had he added to his servitude by that moment of weakness?
They would know now, if they had not known before, that he was breaking the agreement he had made with them.
His own. Before the cry he already had a hope of his own: to give up the mind and keep the heart. The cry did not betray the Party; it betrayed his secret. By his own standard it was weak because it showed what he meant to keep hidden. That is why he calls it foolish as well.
in the mind he had surrendered, but he had hoped to keep the inner heart inviolate
It was all confessed in that single foolish cry.
A strong answer A strong response says by whose standard the cry is weak, and argues from the paragraphs after the cry. One reader says the Party’s: Winston measures the cry by the years added to his servitude and by the agreement he is breaking, so their way of seeing has reached into him. Another says his own: he had hoped to keep his inner heart hidden, and the cry gave it away, “all confessed in that single foolish cry.” The best answers weigh the love he felt in that moment against the word he uses for it, notice that he “heard himself” rather than chose, and do not say that anyone heard him or that Julia is alive.
1. O’Brien tells Winston, “Intellectually there is very little wrong with you.” Is he right about Winston’s mind?
What it asks It asks the student to test O’Brien’s verdict on Winston’s mind against the first half of the chapter. O’Brien takes him by the shoulders and says, in a gentler tone, “You are improving. Intellectually there is very little wrong with you. It is only emotionally that you have failed to make progress.” Before that, the page has shown the slate, the swimmer who turns with the current, “He accepted everything”, the thought pushed under, and the drills in crimestop, which need “great powers of reasoning and improvisation” and “a sort of athleticism of mind”. The student builds a thesis on whether O’Brien is right about Winston’s mind, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card keeps to the mind; the hatred and the plan belong to the last written question. It must not say that Winston believes the Party in his heart.
He is right. Winston has done every task set for his mind. He accepts that the past can be altered, that Oceania was always at war with Eastasia, that the photograph never existed. He trains himself not to see the arguments against the Party. Whatever is left in him is not an argument but a feeling, and O’Brien puts it exactly where the chapter does.
He accepted everything.
He remembered remembering contrary things, but those were false memories, products of self-deception.
He is wrong, or right only on the surface. The mind O’Brien calls nearly cured has to work hard to stay that way. Crimestop takes great reasoning just to stop reasoning, and a mind that uses logic at one moment and forgets it the next is not healed but split. A mind with nothing wrong with it would not need the drill.
It was not easy. It needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation.
an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors
A strong answer A strong response states whether O’Brien is right that there is “very little wrong” with Winston’s mind, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says he is right: Winston accepts everything, calls his own memories “false memories”, and trains himself not to see the arguments, so what is left is a feeling, not a thought. The strongest objection is that the cure has to be kept up by force: crimestop needs “great powers of reasoning” to stop reasoning, and a mind that uses logic one moment and forgets it the next is split, not healed. A good revision weighs “Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence”, asks what it means that the Party’s sums are “beyond his intellectual grasp”, and leaves the hatred to the last question.
2. 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?
What it asks It asks the student to judge Winston’s last plan. After the cry he sees where he stands: “He obeyed the Party, but he still hated the Party.” He decides that “if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself”, that he must “feel right, dream right”, and keep his hatred locked up inside him “like a ball of matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst.” When they come to shoot him, from behind, in a corridor, ten seconds would be enough: “bang! would go the batteries of his hatred”, and almost at once “bang! would go the bullet”. “The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach for ever. They would have blown a hole in their own perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom.” Then O’Brien asks for his true feelings toward Big Brother, Winston says “I hate him”, and O’Brien answers that obeying is not enough: “you must love him.” The student builds a thesis on whether the plan is a real freedom or another kind of defeat, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say what happens in Room 101, whether the plan succeeds, or what the book finally decides about an inner freedom.
A real freedom. It is the one act the Party cannot punish or undo, because it comes too late for them to reach. Winston has given up everything else; this he keeps, and it costs them the thing they care about, their perfection. A freedom that lasts ten seconds is still a freedom, and he chooses it with his eyes open.
The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach for ever.
They would have blown a hole in their own perfection.
Another kind of defeat. To keep the hatred he must bury it so deep that he never thinks it, and live every day feeling and dreaming as they want. He names the price himself: degrading and mutilating himself. The hatred becomes a cyst, a lump of him cut off from the rest. A freedom no one sees, and that he may not feel until the last ten seconds, is the Party’s victory with a private ending.
It was a question of degrading himself, mutilating himself.
a ball of matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst
A strong answer A strong response states whether Winston’s plan is a real freedom or another kind of defeat, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says a real freedom: the hatred would be “out of their reach for ever” and would blow “a hole in their own perfection”, the one act the Party cannot punish or undo. The strongest objection is the price Winston names himself: he must degrade and mutilate himself, feel and dream as they want, and carry his hatred as “a kind of cyst”, cut off from the rest of him, for a freedom no one sees. A good revision weighs “too late, or too early” and “I hate him”, reads O’Brien’s demand for love as aimed at the hidden place, and does not say what happens in Room 101 or whether the plan works.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.