1984

Part One, Chapter 8

George Orwell · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

They remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister’s face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago: but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision. They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written records were falsified – when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.

The thought flitted through Winston’s mind that it would probably be quite easy to rent the room for a few dollars a week, if he dared to take the risk. It was a wild, impossible notion, to be abandoned as soon as thought of; but the room had awakened in him a sort of nostalgia, a sort of ancestral memory. It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in a room like this, in an armchair beside an open fire with your feet in the fender and a kettle on the hob: utterly alone, utterly secure, with nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you, no sound except the singing of the kettle and the friendly ticking of the clock.

The first passage calls these memories useless. Then it lists them with great care, down to a dead sister’s face and the dust of one windy morning. What does all that care do to the word “useless”?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences. The first is Winston’s verdict on the old man in the pub, widened to every survivor of the old world. It names “a million useless things” and then lists four, each with its own small picture, growing longer and gentler as it goes, from a quarrel to a face and the dust of one morning. Then a colon, and a “but” that sweeps the whole list aside: “all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision”. The next sentence is a short simile, the ant that sees small objects but not large ones. The last is the longest. It opens with a clause, “when memory failed and written records were falsified”, breaks off at a dash and says it again in brief, “when that happened”, before the main verb arrives. Near its end, “and never again could exist” stands between commas and holds back the subject, “any standard”. The second passage is the room upstairs. Its first sentence says the thought “flitted” through his mind, and holds its condition to the very end: “if he dared to take the risk”. The next drops the idea and keeps a feeling: a semicolon and “but” join “a wild, impossible notion” to what the room has woken, and “a sort of” comes twice, reaching further back the second time, from “nostalgia” to “ancestral memory”. The last sentence moves from “him” to “your feet” and “you”, so Winston’s wish becomes anyone’s. After the colon comes a pair, “utterly alone, utterly secure”, then three things that are absent, and it ends on the two sounds that are left, the kettle and the clock. Students copying them practise a list dismissed after a colon, a short simile after a long sentence, a clause restated after a dash, a condition held to the end, a repeated phrase that deepens, a shift from “him” to “you”, and a list of what is absent. For the talk prompt, listen for two readings. One says the care undoes the word and argues against Winston: the narrator calls the memories useless and then makes the reader see each one, so the sentence quietly gives them a worth his verdict denies. The other says the care sharpens the verdict: the memories are vivid and still settle nothing, and “relevant” is measured against one question, whether life was better, which none of them can answer. A strong student may set the list beside the second passage. Winston’s own “ancestral memory” of the room is of a feeling, not a fact, and of a life he never lived.

Discussion

Narration Give a short account of Winston’s evening: the walk, the rocket bomb, the Lottery quarrel, the talk in the pub, the junk shop and the room upstairs, the girl in the street, and the night at home. Then pick the one sentence you think matters most, and say what it shows about the chapter as a whole.

After the rocket bomb, Winston finds a human hand in a little pile of plaster. It is so white it looks like “a plaster cast.” He kicks it into the gutter and walks on. What do you think he is doing when he kicks it? Character
One of the men quarrelling over the Lottery has kept two years of winning numbers “wrote down on a piece of paper.” Winston knows the big prizes go to “non-existent persons.” What is that careful record worth? Inference
“It isn’t very important about the top hats,” Winston says. But the old man has just said he wore one himself, hired for his sister-in-law’s funeral. Does that story back up the history book, or quarrel with it? Inference
The first thing the old man does in the pub is argue for a pint. He knows just what one is: “a pint’s the ’alf of a quart, and there’s four quarts to the gallon.” The young barman has “Never heard of ’em,” and the room laughs at the old man. Later Winston decides there is no “standard” left to test the Party against. Where in the pub does the pint stop being a standard? Inference
Winston is sure the dark-haired girl followed him. It was “not credible,” he thinks, that she came up the same backstreet by pure chance. But that evening his own feet brought him there “of their own accord.” What does that do to his argument? Inference

Make a Connection Mr Charrington says the church was called St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, “though I don’t recollect any fields anywhere in those parts.” Think of a place you know whose name no longer fits it. What does the name remember that the people there may not?

Vocabulary

palpable: The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity. So plain it can almost be touched; obvious to anyone (Latin palpare, to touch gently). Winston calls his hope in the proles both “a mystical truth” and “a palpable absurdity”. The first is believed without being seen; the second can be seen at once. The chapter sets them side by side and does not choose between them.
anodyne: It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Something that dulls pain without curing its cause; a painkiller, and so anything that soothes (Greek anodynos, without pain). The Lottery is the proles’ anodyne: it eases a hard life without changing it, and the big prizes it promises go to people who do not exist.
falsified: And when memory failed and written records were falsified – when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested. Changed so as to say what is not true (Latin falsus, false). In this chapter not only records are falsified: statues, inscriptions and “the names of streets” have been “systematically altered”. Once memory fails as well, Winston thinks, nothing is left to test the Party’s claims against.
convoluted: At the heart of it, magnified by the curved surface, there was a strange, pink, convoluted object that recalled a rose or a sea anemone. Twisted and folded in on itself, coiled; of an argument, hard to follow (Latin convolvere, to roll together). Winston cannot name the thing in the glass at first. The word gives its shape, like a rose or a sea anemone, before Mr Charrington gives its name: coral.
flitted: The thought flitted through Winston’s mind that it would probably be quite easy to rent the room for a few dollars a week, if he dared to take the risk. Moved lightly and quickly, without settling (from flit). The thought of renting the room only flits through Winston’s mind and is called at once “a wild, impossible notion”. Yet it does not stay gone: as he leaves, the same project “flashed momentarily through his mind again”.
reconnoitring: He got away from Mr Charrington and went down the stairs alone, so as not to let the old man see him reconnoitring the street before stepping out of the door. Looking over a place with care before going into it, as a scout does before an army moves (French reconnaître, to recognise). Winston goes down alone so that no one will see him reconnoitring the street. Then, in a few seconds of joy, he forgets to, and steps out “without so much as a preliminary glance through the window”.
lassitude: A deadly lassitude had taken hold of him. A heavy weariness of body and mind, when even wanting to act takes too much (Latin lassus, weary). After the girl passes, a “deadly lassitude” takes hold of Winston, and all he wants is to get home. The word names the body that, in his own theory, fails a man at the moment he most needs it.
knell: Like a leaden knell the words came back at him: The slow, single stroke of a bell rung for a death or a funeral. The chapter’s bells begin in an old dance rhyme that Winston hears only in his head. It ends with the Party’s three slogans coming back to him “Like a leaden knell”: heavy as lead, and tolling.

Critical thinking

Winston thinks that when danger comes, “the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe.” Test that on his own night at home, with the gin, the fear and the ache in his belly. By the end of the chapter, what has he forgotten, and what has he kept?
Winston gives up on the old man in the pub but buys the glass paperweight at once. Which of the two tells him more about the world before the Revolution?