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.
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.
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.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment