Part Three, Chapter 4

1984

Mountaineers · 10th–12th

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.”

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

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

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

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

5. 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.

predestined Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case.

presupposed It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a ‘real’ world where ‘real’ things happened.

conformity In the old days he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of conformity.

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

unrepented The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach for ever.

stimulus He seemed to have lost the power of intellectual effort, now that the stimulus of pain had been removed.

Critical thinking

1. O’Brien tells Winston, “Intellectually there is very little wrong with you.” Is he right about Winston’s mind?

Thesis

Objection

Revision

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?

Thesis

Objection

Revision