Part One, Chapter 7 — Teaching Companion

What it asks It asks the student to weigh the cause of the cry Winston heard. It was “a great formidable cry of anger and despair”, and his heart leapt: “It’s started!” At the stall the crowd breaks down “into a multitude of individual quarrels” over saucepans, and two women tug at one until “the handle came off”. Winston watches “disgustedly”, then asks: “Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?” The student decides whether he is right that the saucepans do not matter. The card must not say that the proles will rise: the chapter holds his hope and his doubt side by side, and nothing more.

One reading

He is right. The cry breaks up as soon as the crowd reaches the stall, and the women turn on each other and on the stall-keeper, not on the Party. The fight over one saucepan ends with a broken handle. Winston’s later reasoning fits the scene: the proles see only “petty specific grievances”, and “The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.”

• But at this moment the general despair broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels.
• For a moment they were both tugging, and then the handle came off.

Another reading

They matter. A family cannot cook without a pot, and the chapter is full of want: the Party appeals to the proles’ patriotism to make them accept “shorter rations”, and life even for a Party member is “darning a worn-out sock, cadging a saccharine tablet”. The women are angry about a real hardship. What they lack, in Winston’s account, is not a grievance but “general ideas” to tie it to anything larger.

• They were wretched, flimsy things, but cooking-pots of any kind were always difficult to get.
• because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances

Listen for

• Hears the gap between the sound and the sight: the cry “went humming on like the reverberation of a bell”, and the faces looked like “the doomed passengers on a sinking ship”. Winston’s images are huge; the cause is a saucepan.
• Notices that Winston holds both reactions at once: he watches “disgustedly”, and in the next breath hears “what almost frightening power” was in the cry. Neither cancels the other.
• Sets his hope beside the Party’s contempt: the proles could rise “like a horse shaking off flies”, and the Party’s slogan says “Proles and animals are free.” A student may ask how far Winston’s picture of the proles differs from the Party’s.
• Keeps to the page: whether the proles will ever rise is left open, “And yet –!”.

If stuck

• What did Winston think was happening when he first heard the cry?
• What were the women actually fighting over?
• Can people be right to be angry and still be angry at the wrong thing?

A strong answer A strong response judges Winston’s dismissal and argues from the scene. One reader says he is right: the cry “broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels”, the women turn on each other, and the tug-of-war ends when “the handle came off”. Another says the saucepans matter: pots “were always difficult to get”, the chapter is full of “shorter rations” and saved cigarette ends, and what the women lack, in Winston’s account, is not a grievance but “general ideas”. The best answers keep both of his reactions, the disgust and the “almost frightening power”, without letting either one decide whether the proles will rise.

What it asks It asks the student to set the textbook’s past beside Winston’s present and say what the match means. The book says London “was a dark, dirty, miserable place where hardly anybody had enough to eat and where hundreds and thousands of poor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof to sleep under.” Two paragraphs on, Winston sees “decaying, dingy cities where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century houses”. The chapter never points out the match. Winston asks only “How could you tell how much of it was lies?” The student decides what the match shows about the book. The card must not treat the book as simply false: Winston admits “It might be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution.” Nor should it say why the Party falsifies the past.

One reading

The book paints today and calls it the past. Its hunger, dirt and bare feet are what Winston sees in the London around him: underfed people in leaky shoes, in houses built before the Revolution and only patched since. The Party’s history slips the same way once, in plain words: women were forced into the coal mines, and “women still did work in the coal mines, as a matter of fact”. If the book’s pictures come from the present, they tell nothing about the old days.

• It was a dark, dirty, miserable place where hardly anybody had enough to eat and where hundreds and thousands of poor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof to sleep under.
• women still did work in the coal mines, as a matter of fact

Another reading

The book may be right about the misery. Then the match tells against the telescreens, not the book: the hunger and the bare feet it gives to the old days are still in the streets. What may be false is the claim that life has got better. No record can settle that claim, but Winston’s own eyes can set the streets against it.

• Day and night the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics proving that people today had more food, more clothes, better houses, better recreations
• Not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved.

Listen for

• Matches the pictures word by word: “dirty” and “dingy”, “hardly anybody had enough to eat” and “underfed”, “no boots on their feet” and “leaky shoes”. The houses are “nineteenth-century”, so they are themselves left over from the old days.
• Follows the top hat: the book calls it “the uniform of the capitalists”, Rutherford’s cartoons still draw “capitalists in top hats”, “an endless, hopeless effort to get back into the past”, and Winston ends unsure there was ever “any such garment as a top hat”. What he doubts most, a law, a creature, a hat, is what nothing in front of him can show.
• Weighs the only other witness Winston has: “the mute protest in your own bones”, the feeling that “at some other time they must have been different”. His bones say the past was better; the book says it was worse. Neither is proof.
• Keeps Winston’s doubt open, as the chapter does: the match does not settle “how much of it was lies”.

If stuck

• What does the book say London was like before the Revolution?
• What does Winston see when he looks at London now?
• If a story about the past sounds just like today, what might that mean?

A strong answer A strong response sets the book’s old London beside Winston’s London now and says what the match shows. One reader says the book paints the present and calls it the past: “hardly anybody had enough to eat” and “no boots on their feet” are today’s “underfed people” in “leaky shoes”, and the Party’s own history slips once with “women still did work in the coal mines”. Another says the book may be right about the misery, and the match tells against the telescreens’ claim of “more food, more clothes, better houses”, a claim the chapter says could never be proved or disproved. The best answers keep Winston’s admission that people “might” be better off now, and notice that what he doubts most, the top hat, is what nothing around him can show.

What it asks It asks the student to stand inside Rutherford for half a minute. The music changes to “a peculiar, cracked, braying, jeering note”, which Winston calls “a yellow note”, and a voice sings of the spreading chestnut tree. Then: “The three men never stirred. But when Winston glanced again at Rutherford’s ruinous face, he saw that his eyes were full of tears.” The student says what the song might mean to him. The card must not explain the broken noses: Winston shudders “not knowing at what he shuddered”, and the chapter does not say. Nor should it say who chose the song, or why.

One reading

His own betrayal. The three men were arrested together, vanished together and confessed together. The song names what such confessions are: each one selling the others, and being sold in turn. The tears are shame, or grief for the men they were in the “heroic early days”.

• I sold you and you sold me
• As often happened, they had vanished for a year or more, so that one did not know whether they were alive or dead, and then had suddenly been brought forth to incriminate themselves in the usual way.

Another reading

The mockery. The note is “jeering”, the song comes out of the telescreen, and its third line sounds like a graveyard: “There lie they, and here lie we”. Winston already thinks of the men as “corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave”, and the song seems to tell them so. The tears belong to a man who knows he is finished and hears it laughed at.

• It was a peculiar, cracked, braying, jeering note: in his mind Winston called it a yellow note.
• They were corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave.

Listen for

• Notices how still the table is before the song: gin brought “Uncommanded”, and a chessboard “with the pieces set out but no game started”. Nothing moves, and then the one thing that moves is Rutherford’s eyes.
• Hears what the song does with “you” and “me”: a man who sold and was sold may be weeping for both at once.
• Weighs the man before the tears: once, Winston supposes, “immensely strong”, now “breaking up before one’s eyes, like a mountain crumbling”. A student may ask whether the tears are something left of the old Rutherford, or more of the crumbling.
• Leaves the broken noses as Winston leaves them: he notices them “with a kind of inward shudder”, and a good answer can feel their weight without saying what they mean.

If stuck

• What changes in the café when the song begins?
• Who might the “you” and the “me” be, for Rutherford?
• Have you ever heard a song that seemed to be about you?

A strong answer A strong response says what Rutherford might hear and argues from the half minute in the café. One reader hears his own betrayal: “I sold you and you sold me” names what the confessions were, and the tears are shame or grief for the “heroic early days”. Another hears mockery: the note is “jeering”, the third line sounds like a graveyard, and the men are already “corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave”. The best answers notice how still the table is until his eyes fill, and leave the broken noses as Winston leaves them, felt and not explained.

What it asks It asks the student to explain how Winston ranks two fears. “Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.” Once it was mad “to believe that the earth goes round the sun: today, to believe that the past is unalterable.” He may be alone, “and if alone, then a lunatic”. That does not trouble him much. What does is the chance that he is wrong. The student says why the second fear is the worse one. The card must not say why the Party falsifies the past: Winston has just written “I do not understand WHY”, and the chapter gives no answer.

One reading

A fear about himself. Mad is only a name the many give the one, and Winston has lived with it for a long time. Wrong would be a fact about his own mind: his eyes and memory failed him, and everything he has risked, the diary, the stand, rests on nothing. A man can bear being called mad if he is right. He cannot bear having been a fool.

• He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic.
• He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic.

Another reading

A fear about the world. If he is only mad, the world is still there, solid, whatever anyone says. If he is wrong, the past really can be changed, and the world is whatever the Party says it is. That is the fear the next paragraph spells out: not that they would kill you, “but that they might be right”.

• And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.
• If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

Listen for

• Weighs his own example: once it was mad to believe the earth goes round the sun, and the mad were right. One student may hear comfort in it; another may say it shows that being outnumbered proves nothing either way.
• Notices the word “also”: Winston does not say he is not mad. He allows that he may be both.
• Sets the fear beside the line just before it, “I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.”: a man who cannot see the reason for the lie has one less way to be sure it is a lie.
• Keeps the WHY open, as the chapter does.

If stuck

• What does Winston think a lunatic might simply be?
• Which belief might make him a lunatic today?
• Would you rather be thought mad and be right, or be thought sane and be wrong?

A strong answer A strong response explains why the second fear is worse and argues from this paragraph and the next. One reader says it is a fear about himself: mad is only a name for being outnumbered, “a minority of one”, but wrong would mean his own mind failed him and all he has risked rests on nothing. Another says it is a fear about the world: being wrong would mean the Party “might be right”, and that the past and the world “exist only in the mind”. The best answers test the earth-and-sun example and notice “also”: Winston never says he is sane.

What it asks It asks the student to read one word in the chapter’s last line. Winston writes “With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom”: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” “Granted” can mean allowed, as a ruler grants a right, or agreed, as one grants the first step of an argument. The student decides who would have to grant it. The card must not say that O’Brien is on Winston’s side: “He knew, with more certainty than before” is Winston’s feeling, not something the chapter shows.

One reading

Someone with power. A freedom to say something is only real if no one punishes you for saying it, and the Party is the one that would. Its “final, most essential command” is to reject the evidence of eyes and ears. If the Party granted that two plus two make four, it would give up that command, and “all else follows”: the rest of its lies would fall with it.

• The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
• It was their final, most essential command.

Another reading

One other person. Winston is not writing to the Party. He is writing to O’Brien, in a letter “addressed to a particular person”. A truth held alone is the lunatic’s “minority of one”. If one other mind agrees that two plus two make four, there are two, and a shared world can be built from there.

• He was writing the diary for O’Brien – to O’Brien: it was like an interminable letter which no one would ever read, but which was addressed to a particular person and took its colour from that fact.
• Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

Listen for

• Hears “axiom”: an axiom is a starting point no one has to prove. Winston calls his line one, yet writes “If”, as if even the starting point has to be allowed.
• Takes “two plus two make four” as more than a sum: it stands for “the evidence of your eyes and ears”, and for the truisms he has just told himself to hold on to.
• Sets the last line beside the first: the chapter opens on “If there is hope” and closes on “If that is granted”. Both hopes hang on an “if”.
• Keeps O’Brien where the chapter keeps him: his face comes “not called up by any obvious association”, and what Winston knows of him is a feeling.

If stuck

• Who is Winston writing to when he writes the last line?
• What does it mean to grant something?
• Is a truth yours to say if nobody is allowed to hear it?

A strong answer A strong response says who must grant the axiom and argues from the last page. One reader says someone with power: the Party’s “final, most essential command” is to reject the evidence of eyes and ears, so only the Party could grant the freedom, and if it did, its lies would fall. Another says one other person: Winston writes “to O’Brien”, to “a particular person”, and a truth shared by two is no longer a lunatic’s “minority of one”. The best answers hear both senses of “granted”, allowed and agreed, and keep O’Brien’s loyalty as Winston’s feeling.

What it asks It asks the student to test what Winston leaves off his list. He first asks: “For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable?” A page later, after “Truisms are true, hold on to that!”, he names the plainest truths he can find: stones, water and falling objects. Two plus two returns in his last line. The past does not return. The student builds a thesis on whether the gap means anything, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say why the Party alters the past: Winston writes “I do not understand WHY”.

One reading

He has only left it out. The past belongs with the stones. Winston already holds that “the past is unalterable”, even if that makes him a lunatic, and he set it beside sums and gravity in one breath. The Party attacks all of them in the same way, because its philosophy denies “the very existence of external reality”. “The solid world exists, its laws do not change” covers what happened as surely as what falls.

• At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the earth goes round the sun: today, to believe that the past is unalterable.
• Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

Another reading

A different kind of truth. Anyone can drop a stone again tomorrow. Nobody can go back to the day of the photograph. The past lives only in records and in memory, and the chapter shows both giving way: the photograph burns, the confessions are very likely rewritten again and again, and Winston’s own memory blurs. The Party can burn a record. It cannot stop a stone from falling.

• Very likely the confessions had been re-written and re-written until the original facts and dates no longer had the smallest significance.
• Winston could not now remember how he had come to be in the café at such a time.

Listen for

• Hears what the truths on the list share: anyone can test them today, with “the evidence of your eyes and ears”. The past cannot be tested again. It needs a record or a witness.
• Notices that the witness gives way in this very chapter: “facts and dates were growing blurry”, and of the later charges “two, three, he could not remember how many”. As the chapter puts it, “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”
• Weighs his fear that “any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate”: a truth he can point to, like a stone, may be easier to hold than one he must argue for.
• Revises by pulling two claims apart: that the past cannot change, and that we can know what it was. The first may stand beside the stones while the second does not.

If stuck

• How could you check, today, that a stone is hard?
• How could Winston check what happened on the day of the photograph?
• Can something be true if no one can ever check it again?

A strong answer A strong response states whether the gap in Winston’s list means anything, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says he has only left the past out: he already holds that “the past is unalterable”, and the Party attacks it with the rest, since its philosophy denies “the very existence of external reality”. The strongest objection is that stones can be tested again tomorrow while the past lives only in records and memory, and the chapter shows both giving way: the confessions very likely “re-written and re-written”, and Winston unable to say how many charges there had been. A good revision might hold that the past cannot change but our hold on it can, so his first list mixed a fact about the world with a fact about what we can know, and his second keeps only what the senses can still test.

What it asks It asks the question Winston puts to himself: “Was the Party’s hold upon the past less strong, he wondered, because a piece of evidence which existed no longer had once existed?” He held the photograph “between his fingers for as long as thirty seconds”, covered it, let what he judged to be ten minutes go by, and dropped it into the memory hole “without uncovering it again”. It was “concrete evidence”, enough “to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have been published to the world”. Now, he thinks, “the photograph might not even be evidence.” The student builds a thesis on whether having held it still matters, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say why the Party falsifies the past, or that the proles will rise.

One reading

It matters. Knowing the confessions were lies was nothing new; holding proof was. Once he had seen it, no rewriting could make him unsee it, and the feeling of it has lasted more than ten years. And he is not the man who dropped it: today, he thinks, he would probably have kept it. The proof is gone, but the man who held it is still writing.

• It was curious that the fact of having held it in his fingers seemed to him to make a difference even now, when the photograph itself, as well as the event it recorded, was only memory.
• Today, probably, he would have kept that photograph.

Another reading

It no longer matters. Proof that no one else can see proves nothing to anyone. The photograph is ash, the enemy has changed, the confessions have very likely been rewritten, and even if it came back from its ashes it might prove nothing. What is left is a memory, and memory is what the Party can wipe away.

• But today, supposing that it could be somehow resurrected from its ashes, the photograph might not even be evidence.
• The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.

Listen for

• Hears “after the event: that was what counted”: the proof came after the confessions, so it was not a rumour he had believed but a fact he had met. As the chapter puts it, “this was not in itself a discovery”; the proof was.
• Weighs the fossil bone, which “destroys a geological theory” because geologists accept evidence. A student may ask whether the image still works against a Party that does not.
• Sets the photograph beside the market: the women’s cry has “almost frightening power” and spends it on saucepans; the photograph could “blow the Party to atoms” and goes into the memory hole. Both are force with no way to be used.
• Revises by asking whom it matters to: the Party, the world, or the one man who ends the chapter by writing down a plain truth. A student may hold that it matters to him alone, and then ask whether that is enough.

If stuck

• What exactly did the photograph prove?
• Why did Winston drop it into the memory hole?
• Can you know something for certain that you can never show anyone?

A strong answer A strong response states a thesis on whether having held the proof still matters, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says it matters: the lie itself was “not in itself a discovery”, but holding “concrete evidence” was, it “seemed to him to make a difference even now”, and today “he would have kept that photograph”. The strongest objection is that proof no one else can see proves nothing: the photograph is ash, the confessions have very likely been rewritten, and now “the photograph might not even be evidence”. A good revision might hold that it no longer matters as evidence against the Party but still matters as the ground of Winston’s own stand, and then ask whether a truth held by one man is enough.