HW for Tues-Wed HUAC Pre-Screening Research

As relevant social and political context to your wider understanding of the themes in 1984, during your fusion lessons this week, we will be watching a film called 'Good Night and Good Luck' which tells the story of McCarthyism and House UnAmerican Committee in the 1940's-1950's.



1. Please read the following short article.

http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/house-un-american-activities-committee#sect-background

Then

2. Read the following excerpt from House Resolution 282, the legislation that established the House Un-American Activities Committee in May 1938.  When you have finished, make a list of activities that you think might qualify as “un-American.” Be prepared to share your answers with the class. 

“Resolved, that the Speaker of the House of Representatives be, and he is hereby, authorized to appoint a special committee to be composed of seven members for the purpose of conducting an investigation of (1) the extent, character, and object of un-American propaganda activities in the United States, (2) the diffusion within the United States of subversives and un-American propaganda that is instigated from foreign countries or of a domestic origin and attacks the principle of the form of government as guaranteed by the Constitution, and (3) all other questions in relation thereto that would aid Congress in any necessary remedial legislation.”

3. Be Prepared to discuss your opinions after the screening of the film.

4. You may wish to document your thoughts here on your blog site before and after the film.

PSAT/SAT Analogies Strategies

With analogies, you are looking for similar relationships, not similar meanings. Analogy questions do not ask you to look for words that have the same meaning as the word in CAPITAL LETTERS. To answer analogy questions, you must first figure out the relationship between the two words in capital letters. Then look for the pair of words among the answers that has the same relationship. To answer analogy questions, start by making up a "test sentence" that explains how the two words in capital letters are related. Then plug in the answer choices to see which pair makes the most sense. For example: SLUGGISH : ENERGY :: (A) sheer : cliff (B) reticent : tact (C) inebriated : memory (D) trite : speech (E) satiated : hunger A good "test sentence" would be: Sluggish means without energy. ____ means without ____. Plug in the five choices and ask yourself which of the following sentences makes the most sense: (A) Sheer means without cliff. (B) reticent means without tact. (C) inebriated means without memory. (D) trite means without speech. (E) satiated means without hunger. (E) is the correct answer. When you make a "test sentence", remember the following tips: Try to make a definitional sentence because a definitional sentence can best express the relationship between the two words. "Scissors are used to cut." is better than "Scissors can kill people." Keep the definitional sentence as short as possible while maintaining a proper relationship. A long sentence tends to confuse you about the relationship. And try to use active verb as well. "A suitcase contains clothes" is better than "A suitcase has clothes". Make sure you know what parts of speech are being tested. If you don't know whether or not the capitalized pair of words are verbs, nouns or adjectives, look at the answer choices. It's a rule that all the five answer choices must offer the same two parts of speed as the capitalized pair. If you reverse the order of the stem words when you make your "test sentence", don't forget to reverse the words in the answer choices as well. Make your "test sentence" as specific as possible. Sometimes when you plug in the answer choices, you find that more than one answer choice fits your sentence. When this happens, simply make your sentence more specific until only one choice fits your sentence. Be flexible. Every once in a while, the sentence you construct will work perfectly well with the capitalized words, but then will appear not to work with any of the answer choices. In this case, try to rewrite your sentence slightly and see if that helps. Practice Tests Here: http://quizlet.com/8393038/ssat-analogies-practice-flash-cards/ http://www.testprepreview.com/modules/analogies1.htm

Concept Map Assignment; Getting Started

Some Options on how to structure your Concept Map Assignment on Literary Elements in '1984'

1. www.coggle.it
Go in and sign up (it is free!) Use your mynbps addy
CREATE and use side bar along right side to see how it works. There is a tutorial under Contact/Blogger to help.

You can then export your jpg and make it a Large poster using:
http://www.blockposters.com


2. Create a Poster drawing and pasting text

For THIS WEEK: You should complete your quotes for all the themes, answer the questions on your blog site about characters: (Winston, Julia, O'Brien), Map out the EXPOSITION and rising actions of conflict including which basic plots are relevant?

Final Concept Map Assignment is due on October 10th. Please refer to the handout for assignment overview.

Please refer to examples in class to inspire.

Character Analysis: Winston

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS:  Answer these questions by creating a post on your blog site entitled: Winston: Character Analysis

Is  Winston a flat or round character? Why do you say that?

Is Winston a static or dynamic character? Why do you say that?

What is the narrator's attitude towards Winston? How do you know this?

What does Orwell as the author, want to convey about the different characters?

How do we  build an impression of Winston? Does the author reveal important information about the character or is this withheld until later? Or is the information progressive?

Is Winston revealed by what he does, the decisions he makes or through what he thinks? Why do you say that? How do you know this? How can you demonstrate evidence of this through quotes?

Character Analysis

Winston Smith is the common man, easy for the reader to identify with, easy to sympathize with. Thirty-nine-years-old, he is frail and thin, and is employed as a records editor or propaganda officer in the Records Department at the Ministry of Truth. An Outer Party member, Winston leads a squalid existence in an apartment at Victory Mansions: he wears blue overalls, eats synthesized food – including black bread, bitter chocolate, and fake saccharine – rationed out by the Party, drinks industrial grade Victory Gin, and smokes Victory Cigarettes. He coughs violently in the mornings. He hates group exercising. He suffers itching and inflammation from a varicose ulcer above his right ankle – the symptoms of which grow worse the more sexually repressed he becomes, yet are alleviated once he starts the love affair with Julia. We’re already feeling sympathetic.

A thoughtful and observant intellect, Winston is very concerned with Party philosophy, and in particular its control of history through the manipulation of records, a process in which he participates daily. Resentful of the Party’s oppression of, um, everything under the sun, Winston spends much of his time accounting for the real past and musing on his rebellious tendencies. He is thankful for the alcove that escapes the watchful surveillance of the telescreen in his room, and starts a journal cataloging his anti-Party thoughts. He also enjoys strolling in the prole district, looking for connections to the past, Piña Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. The problem is, he’s not so great at doing anything about it.

More than anything, Winston seeks the unadulterated truth – and the only way to attain that is by rebelling against the totalitarian rule of the Party. From the moment he starts the journal, to the moment he consummates his love with Julia, to his first encounter with O’Brien, Winston holds on to his dream of freedom and independence. That unwavering individuality and the accompanying fervent rebelliousness are Winston’s strengths. However, combined with his unique sense of fatalism, they are also his downfall. Winston is extremely and deservingly paranoid, and his overriding belief that the Party will ultimately catch and punish him becomes gospel. Believing that he is helpless in evading his fate, Winston takes unnecessary risks, and is eventually (surprise, surprise) apprehended by the Thought Police.

Political and Social Context of Orwell

Show evidence of solid research into the difference between socialism, capitalism, communism, and fascism. Also, research the McCarthy Era Trials in the U.S.

 How does this relate to the political and social context of Orwell? One example of a research site to get you started: http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl_258/lecture%20notes/capitalism%20etc%20defined.htm

Gathering Quotes on Themes: An example

What are  the THEMES in '1984'  Find quotes that are evidence of THEMES in '1984' I have given you some examples to get you started. Please keep track of your work on your blog site. 

Rebellion

Momentarily he caught O'Brien's eye. O'Brien had stood up. He had taken off his spectacles and was in the act of resettling them on his nose with his characteristic gesture. But there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met, and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew- yes, he knew!- that O'Brien was thinking the same thing as himself. An unmistakable message had passed. It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes. 'I am with you,' O'Brien seemed to be saying to him. 'I know precisely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side!' 

Paranoid but fanciful, Winston imagines an encounter with O’Brien that might deepen their rebellious tie.

Book 1, Chapter 1

Manipulation:

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they called it: in Newspeak, "doublethink."

Winston believes that as long as a person’s perception (or memory) of the truth can be externally verified, then even a lie can become truth. Such is the Party’s method of control.

Book 1, Chapter 3

Technology and Modernization

He took his scribbling pad on his knee and pushed back his chair so as to get as far away from the telescreen as possible. To keep your face expressionless was not difficult, and even your breathing could be controlled, with an effort: but you could not control the beating of your heart, and the telescreen was quite delicate enough to pick it up. 

The Party’s chief monitoring device, the telescreen, is so sensitive that it can detect the rapid beatings of a person’s rebellious heart.

Book 1, Chapter 7

Memory and the Past: What appealed to him about it was not so much its beauty as the air it seemed to possess of belonging to an age quite different from the present one […]. The thing was doubly attractive because of its apparent uselessness […]. Anything old, and for that matter anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect. 

Winston is strangely drawn to objects from the past because of his fascination with the memory aspect of existence.

Book 1, Chapter 8

Christopher Hitchens 'Why Orwell Matters' on YouTube

Please watch from 10 minutes into video, through his speech, but not the Q& A part at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY5Ste5xRAA

Book One: Chapter 1 '1984'

BOOK ONE: CHAPTER 1

• It all starts on a cold, bright day in April 1984. At 1 p.m., Winston Smith, a small, frail man of 39 years drags himself home for lunch at his apartment on the 7th floor of the Victory Mansions.
• The face of Big Brother, the leader of the Party and a heavily mustached and ruggedly handsome man of about 45, appears on giant, colorful posters everywhere in Airstrip One, Oceania. (This is still London, though.) "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU," runs the caption.
• "INGSOC" (the merging of the words "English" and "Socialism") is another poster seen ubiquitously.
• Except in undisclosed areas, two-way telescreens are installed in every public and private room in Oceania. Yes, even the bathrooms. We learn that the Party monitors its citizens through these screens (both visually and by sound), that the screens themselves spout propaganda 24/7. They cannot be turned off except in the homes of privileged Inner Party members.
• Oceania is heavily policed and monitored by these two-way telescreens, the Police Patrol and the Thought Police.
• Winston is employed as an editor (read: creator of propagandistic lies) in the Records Department at the Ministry of Truth, about a kilometer (.62 miles) away from his apartment.
• From his window, Winston sees the four governing branches of the Party: the Ministry of Truth, which deals with historical records; the Ministry of Peace, which wages war; the Ministry of Love, which is basically the White House; and the Ministry of Plenty, which plans economic shortages. Seriously. They plan them.
• The three slogans of the Party grace the façade of these buildings: War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; and Ignorance is Strength. Literary people call this "irony."
• The Party allocates certain vices to its members: Winston drinks Victory Gin and smokes Victory Cigarettes.
• There is one place in Winston’s apartment that is hidden from the view of the telescreen: the alcove. Winston starts writing a diary in the alcove.
• It is amusing that Winston cites the location of the alcove and the aesthetic beauty of the diary itself as reasons for starting the illegal journal. More substantive reasons include: the intense hatred and sexual desire he has for a dark-haired female co-worker, and the irresistible intellectual attraction he feels for O’Brien, an Inner Party member he brushed shoulders with at work that morning.
• Keeping a diary in 1984 Oceania is punishable by death, or at least by 25 years in a forced-labor camp.
• Winston has a varicose ulcer above his right ankle that itches and gets inflamed often. This may be a sign of sexual repression.
• The Party’s chief enemy is Emmanuel Goldstein, whose "lean, Jewish face" flashes across telescreens multiple times a day and serves as the subject of the "Two Minutes Hate" episodes.
• Even before he ever wrote "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER," Winston knew that he was going to die a painful, painful death. Why? Thoughtcrime. Thinking about doing something wrong is not allowed.

Orwelldiaries.wordpress.com

http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/

Check out Orwell's diaries posted 70 years later in blog format.

Little Brother is Watching: Blog about how technology has changed our culture.

1. FOCUS YOUR BLOG RESPONSE WITH THESE EQ: HOW MANY SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS ARE YOU ON EVERY DAY? FOR HOW MANY HOURS? DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THE ARTICLE YOU HAD TO READ FOR HOMEWORK 'LITTLE BROTHER IS WATCHING'? WHY DO YOU SAY THAT? HOW HAS TECHNOLOGY IMPACTED OUR CULTURE?

2. NOW IN PAIRS RESEARCH THESE TERMS ONLINE AND ADD AN AGREED DEFINITION INTO YOUR BLOG SITE: DOUBLETHINK; THOUGHTCRIME; MEMORY HOLE, NEWSPEAK, ORWELLIAN, BIG BROTHER

3. READ THIS ARTICLE http://www.care2.com/causes/how-schools-use-computer-chips-to-monitor-your-kids.html

Thinking about 1984 in 2014

How would your lives change if all of you were forced to be the same? What would you like and dislike about this idea? How would your lives change if our government watched everything you did? Are there any things you feel you would no longer be able to do? Would any of your Constitutional rights be violated?

1984 vs 2014; why do you say that?

Blog  a list of all of the ways you could think of that the society represented in “1984″ is similar to ours.

Sunday Post September 7th IB SL 1

English IB SL 1 Mrs. Metaxas Sunday Post Week Sept 7th  https://sites.google.com/a/mynbps.org/metaxas-english-class-page/home  http://ibsl1class.blogspot.com Essential Questions: How have communication technologies — including Facebook, Twitter, cellphones, smartphones and Web cams — changed our culture? How are the themes explored in the book commenting on the human condition? How might you evaluate the narrative techniques used in the novel?
Day	In Class Work	Homework Assignment
Monday	Looking at PSAT strategies and vocabulary. Intro to interactive vocab site.	Vocab creative essays submitted today! -Reading Book One Chapter 1 pp. 1-20 George Orwell’s 1984 for Thursday. -Read word doc Autobiography on Orwell  by Thursday.
Tuesday/Wednesday	Completion of analysis of Woman at Point Zero and in class writing assessment.	Print and Read this article and annotate; b e prepared to summarize in Thursday’s class.
Thursday	Introduction to George Orwell’s “1984” Comparing Orwell’s vision 1984 to 2014.Connotations of words: Doublethink, Thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Memory hole, Orwellian.	Work on vocabulary site 20 minutes for homework. - Read this link for tomorrow, print and annotate; be prepared to discuss.
Friday	Winston as Narrator and looking at key quotes and passages.	Work on vocabulary site 20 minutes independently.