1984

Part One, Chapter 4

George Orwell · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Winston’s greatest pleasure in life was in his work. Most of it was a tedious routine, but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem – delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of what the Party wanted you to say. Winston was good at this kind of thing.

Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.

Winston finds it “curious” that you could create dead men but not living ones. What is it about a living man that print cannot make?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences, both from the last stretch of the morning. The first opens on a short, plain claim and then gives the long sentence its room. That sentence turns on “but”, from “a tedious routine” to jobs “so difficult and intricate”, compares them to “the depths of a mathematical problem”, and only after a dash says what they are: “delicate pieces of forgery”. On the way it slips from Winston to “you”, as if any skilled hand would feel the same. Then a short, flat sentence of quiet pride: “Winston was good at this kind of thing.” The second passage fences a phrase between subject and verb, “unimagined an hour ago”, so the hour that made Ogilvy sits inside the sentence that calls him “a fact”. The middle sentence turns on one antithesis, “dead men but not living ones”. The last sets “never existed in the present” against “now existed in the past”, holds its point back behind a clause about forgetting, pairs “just as authentically, and upon the same evidence”, and ends on two of the most famous names in history. Students copying them practise a long sentence held open by “but” and a dash, a simile, a short sentence after a long one, a phrase fenced by commas between subject and verb, antithesis, and a sentence that saves its weight for the end. For the talk prompt, listen for two readings. One says a living man has to be met: he eats, talks and can be seen, so the present has witnesses, while the dead have only records, and records are what the Ministry owns. The other says no living person could be Ogilvy: a man with no wife, no pastimes and “no subjects of conversation except the principles of Ingsoc” can exist only in print. A strong student may notice that even the dead man is safe only “when once the act of forgery was forgotten”, so the whole making rests on forgetting.

Discussion

Narration Give a short account of Winston’s morning, from the four slips of paper to the birth of Comrade Ogilvy. Then pick the one sentence you think matters most, and say what it shows about the chapter as a whole.

Every room in the building has a slit for waste paper. “For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes.” What is the joke in that name, and who is it on? Tone
In the next cubicle, a woman spends her days deleting the names of people who have been vaporised. Her own husband was vaporised a couple of years ago. Winston sees “a certain fitness” in this. Is that a cold thought, or a clear one? Moral reasoning
Winston hardly knows Tillotson and has no idea what he works on. By the end of the morning, Tillotson is “his rival”. What has turned a stranger into a rival? Character
Winston makes four guesses about why Withers fell. The likeliest, he thinks, is that it “had simply happened”, because purges were “a necessary part of the mechanics of government”. Why might that be the likeliest guess, to him? Character
Winston dictates in Big Brother’s style, which is “easy to imitate”. Earlier that morning he rewrote a paragraph of a Big Brother speech. If a clerk can do the voice this well, who is speaking when Big Brother speaks? Inference
In Winston’s draft, Big Brother says no one can think of Ogilvy’s death “without feelings of envy”. Ogilvy reported his uncle at eleven and vowed never to marry. Why would the Party want people to envy a death like his? Theme

Make a Connection Think of a time, in a story or in your own life, when people agreed to call something by a softer name than it deserved. Why might they do that?

Vocabulary

rectify: Winston’s job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones. To put something right, to correct it (Latin rectus, straight, as in rectangle and correct). In the Ministry it is the official word, “as the official phrase had it, to rectify”. It makes a lie sound like the mending of a mistake, so the people who tell it never have to say what they are doing.
invariably: Books, also, were recalled and re-written again and again, and were invariably re-issued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Every time, without a single exception (from vary: what is invariable never varies). Twice the chapter uses it for the work itself: books are “invariably re-issued without any admission” of change, and Winston “invariably got rid of” his instructions. The word turns a crime into a routine. Nobody ever forgets to destroy the traces, Winston least of all.
palimpsest: All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary. A page, once of parchment, whose first writing was scraped off so it could be written on again (Greek palin, again, and psestos, scraped). On a real palimpsest the old letters often still show faintly underneath, which is how scholars recover lost texts. Orwell’s history is a palimpsest with that one hope removed: nothing of the old writing is allowed to show.
incurred: More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. Brought something unwelcome on yourself, such as a cost, a debt or someone’s anger (Latin incurrere, to run into). You incur a fine or a penalty. Here people have “incurred the displeasure of the Party”, as if they had run into it, and the chapter never says how. The word lays the fault on the people who vanish and keeps the Party’s reasons out of sight.
denunciation: He might turn the speech into the usual denunciation of traitors and thought-criminals, but that was a little too obvious; while to invent a victory at the front, or some triumph of over-production in the Ninth Three-Year Plan, might complicate the records too much. A public accusation, meant to brand someone as guilty (from denounce, in the same family as announce). Winston turns down “the usual denunciation of traitors and thought-criminals” as “a little too obvious”. Yet the hero he invents denounced his own uncle at eleven. The act the Party praises in its hero is the one Winston finds too obvious to write.
unimagined: Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. Never pictured in anyone’s mind (un- and imagined). Usually it praises something beyond what people could dream of, as in unimagined riches. Orwell uses it literally: an hour ago nobody had ever thought of Ogilvy. The phrase measures how fast a fact can be made.
authentically: Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar. In a way that is real and genuine, not copied or faked (Greek authentes, one who acts on his own authority). It is a word for art dealers and historians, people whose job is to tell true from false. Orwell gives it to a forgery: Ogilvy will exist “just as authentically” as Julius Caesar, because both will rest on the same kind of evidence, print.

Critical thinking

Winston thinks his work on the figures is “not even forgery”, since the first figures were made up too. Meanwhile perhaps half of Oceania goes barefoot. When one made-up number replaces another, who, if anyone, is harmed?
Winston hates the Party’s lies, yet making up Comrade Ogilvy is the part of his day he enjoys most. Does that pleasure make him part of what he hates?