1984 Part I, Chapter 4

Journal 4  What do you want to do when you grow up? Why do you think you will like this job? What are reasons why people like their jobs? What are some reasons people do not like their jobs?

Part 1: Chapter 4  Winston goes to work…  Sighs, even with a telescreen right there  Office has three tubes  Written messages (assignments)  Delivery of newspapers  Waste: Memory holes  Assignments are given in Newspeak  To rewrite newspapers to support current party position, predictions match reality, projected numbers always outpaced  Implicit in this is the need for the party to always be RIGHT

Part 1: Chapter 4  Process:  Winston corrects the article  All the magazines are collected and destroyed  The magazine is reprinted with the corrected article and returned  “Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.”

Worksheet  Questions 2 – 6  Vocabulary: Speakwrite, memory holes  Page B, WO 41, WN 40

Part 1: Chapter 4  Winston realizes adjusting the numbers is not FORGERY  Merely substitution of one piece of nonsense for another  Example: Boots  In reality – very few boots are made  Projected – 145 million boots  “Actual” output – 62 million boots  Rewritten forecast – 57 million boots  So as to claim higher production rates than expected

Worksheet  Questions: 7 – 8  Page: B, WO 41, WN 41

Part 1: Chapter 4  Tillotson is working on similar projects  Sandy haired woman tracks down and deletes names of people who have been vaporized  She would have deleted her own husbands name after he was vaporized  Ampleforth rewrites poetry to match ideologically with the party

Part 1: Chapter 4  Other departments in the Records Dept.  Printing shops  Faking photos  Telescreen program  Reference clerks  Places to destroy old text  Those in charge of the whole process  Records Department is only one branch of the Ministry of Truth

Part 1: Chapter 4  Records were produced at a lower level for the proletariat  Pornosec – “engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it, was permitted to look at it.”

Part 1: Chapter 4  Winston’s greatest pleasure in life was in his work.  Sad state of his life? Truly find enjoyment in his work?  Winston could lose himself in the intricate and difficult problems, like solving a mathematical problem  Winston is good at this forgery  He is entrusted with sensitive projects

Part 1: Chapter 4  Big Brother’s speech recognizes FFCC  Comrade Withers is recognized  FFCC was dissolved, disgraced for unknown reasons  WITH NO PUBLIC TRIAL

Worksheet  Questions 9-12  Page B, WO 45, WN 45

Part 1: Chapter 4  Winston assumes Tillotson is working on the same job  Tricky pieces are never left to one person  But a committee to get the best response would recognize the forgery  All reports would be submitted, a member of the Inner Party would select the best, rewrite it, and cross reference it

Part 1: Chapter 4  Who knows why Withers was disgraced  Corruption, incompetence, rival, opposed the government, or just part of a purge  “Unpersons” means that Withers is dead  Arrested people could be held for a while, reappear to implicate others, then disappear forever

Part 1: Chapter 4  Winston rewrites with complete fantasy  Big Brothers speech is easy to imitate  Why would it be necessary for it to be easy to imitate? What else might this imply?  Comrade Ogilvy  At 6 joined the Spies, at 9 a troop leader, at 11 turned in his uncle, at 17 part of the Junior Anti-Sex League, at 19 designed weapons, at 23 died as a soldier taking government secrets to the grave  Believed marriage and the care of the family to be incompatible with devotion to the party

Part 1: Chapter 4  “It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.”  “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.”

Worksheet  Questions  Page B, WO 48, WN 48