1984 Big Brother is Watching You! Please take out paper and a writing utensil for notes.

Definitions Utopia – a perfect world… no crime, no suffering, no misery, no poverty, no famine… Dystopia/ Anti-utopia – when authority/ society tries to keep all of the negative aspects of a society away by taking away freedoms and making systems to ensure that all laws and regulations are followed – often harshly.

Definitions… Dystopia/ Anti-Utopias are a form of satire. Satire is the use of irony, sarcasm, hyperbole, understatement, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, society in general, etc. Totalitarian Government - centralized government that does not tolerate parties of differing opinion and that exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life. It exercises control over the freedom, will, or thought of others.

1984 Background… To describe writing as " Orwellian " means that it expresses a pessimistic view of a dull, uniform world where every aspect of life is controlled and organized by the State.

Setting 1984 (written in 1949) is Orwell’s vision of the future in a country of Oceania, which has been under totalitarian rule since the 1960s. This world is made up of three “super states” (notice the connotation in the word “super”): Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. They are constantly at war with one another. “The Ministry of Peace” concerns itself with the ongoing wars.

Setting: Oceania Political System: Ingsoc – a.k.a. English socialism Winston Smith's home. Comprised of North and South America, Britain, Australia, and southern portions of Africa. Newspeak is the official language of Oceania, but standard English is still spoken by many.

Setting Airstrip One - Formally called England. This term demonstrates Orwell's distain for American influence in Europe. It seems that Oceania (America, England, South America, Australia) looks upon Britain as little more than an ‘airstrip’ ... a launching ground into the European theater of war. It appears that Orwell was predicting the minor role that England would play in the global politics of the future.

Setting Eastasia - Smallest of the 3 Super states. Comprised of China and the countries to the south of it, Japan, and a large (but fluctuating) portion of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet. Eastasia was Oceania's ally at the start of the book, and by the end Eastasia had always been Oceania's enemy.

Setting Eurasia - Comprised of the whole northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait. Eurasia was Oceania's enemy at the start of the book, and by the end Eurasia had always been Oceania's ally.

Setting

Setting: Class System There are three classes of people in Oceania: 1. Inner Party: Official Party members. Upper class. About 2% of the population, possesses most of the comforts of today's middle class (with the addition of two or three servants and possibly a helicopter).

Setting: Class System 2. Outer Party: 13% of the population, mostly illiterate, poor living conditions, work in propaganda and law enforcement. Most have lost all feeling as they believe everything they’re told and do all they’re told. No need for free thought. 3. Proletariat (Proles): mostly illiterate, worst living conditions, menial work; Proles can still feel, but any intelligent people in this class are “purged” from the population.

Stalker alert: “Big Brother is watching you!” Oceania’s leader is “Big Brother” who is able to constantly watch the citizens of the Party by means of a two-way telescreen that cannot be shut off. There are also hidden microphones everywhere to monitor people’s activities.

Thoughtcrime The government’s goal is to find out what its citizens are thinking and feeling and to control those thoughts and feelings. “Thoughtcrime” is when a character thinks independently (and/or something that the government does not want one of its citizens to think). The punishment for “thoughtcrime” is “vaporization.” The ideal citizen is a “goodthinker” who has no private emotions or thoughts but who directs all his/her effort into hatred of the enemy.

two minute hate - Daily telescreen specials in which various elements of crimethink were packaged into a parade of horrible images and sounds, at which, the viewers were expected to boo, hiss, curse, and release any negative emotions upon viewing.

Paradox is a major technique in 1984 Paradox is any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature which may or may not be true. Paradox is present through “doublespeak” in slogans such as: War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.

Additional Ironies through “doublespeak” The government recreates the connotations of words by changing their labels to evoke the desired connotation. For example: “Front-leaning rest exercises” are push-ups “Preemptive counterattack” is an invasion “Controlled flight into terrain” is a plane crash “Revenue enhancement” means taxes

Other humorous/satirical diction crimestop - The faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. doubleplus- a prefix used to create the superlative form of an adjective or adverb. (i.e. - pluscold and doublepluscold meant, respectively, 'very cold' and 'superlatively cold'.

goodsex - Sex for the purpose of producing children for the party. VS sexcrime - Having sex for enjoyment. Also, even having sex in the hope to create a family of your own.

The Protagonist Winston is a member of the Outer Party who works at the “Ministry of Truth,” rewriting articles in old newspapers to purge any mistakes made by the government.

Background & Inspirations

Background… 1984 inspirations… During the Spanish Civil War, Orwell had seen for himself evidence of the falsification of news and the invention of false news, and he later described in an essay how " I saw history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened, according to the party ; this kind of thing is frightening to me. If a leader says of such-and-such an event that it never happened - well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five -well, two and two are five. "

Background… 1984 inspirations… Another major concern was the way in which language was being twisted and corrupted for political ends. In an essay entitled Why I Write, written in 1946, he commented: " To write in plain vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox," and one of the themes running through 1984 is the way in which the State uses language to further political control over the people who speak it.

His alarm and disgust at the way some political writers of his time (particularly those who supported and defended Stalin's policies and actions) distorted language in their attempts to justify what Orwell regarded as unjustifiable led him, in 1984, to invent the next logical step for a language twisted and corrupted for political ends: Newspeak. It is based on a theory held by many writers on language at that time, that thought is dependent on the words in which it is expressed and that therefore if a language does not possess words for certain ideas it will be impossible for the people who use that language to hold those ideas.

The aim of Newspeak is that all ideas which do not follow the principles of Ingsoc will be impossible to hold, and to this end all the politically undesirable words and meanings are being surgically removed from the language. The aim is to achieve politically sound precision of language, so that, “the vagueness and useless shades of meaning" of the old language will be destroyed, along with the works of the great writers of the past who used it.

To Orwell, who believed that anything important could and should be expressed in words which could be understood by ordinary people, the deliberate use of complicated language was one of the greatest sins; the unconscious use of complicated language was even worse, because it meant that the user had lost all contact with the truth of what he wrote about.

Many aspects of wartime life in London are incorporated in 1984; for example, the description of bombing attacks and bomb damage to the city itself and the news film of the boat of refugees being bombed. The Ministry of Truth building in the novel was modeled on the London University building used during World War II by the Ministry of Information, and on the BBC's main building, which also seems to have provided the inspiration for the canteen smelling of cabbage and the singing prole women - in this case, BBC office cleaners. His wife's work at the wartime Ministry of Food, creating publicity to encourage the public to eat the " right " types of food, seems to have suggested the use of the short crisp slogans of 1984.

The way in which the leaders of the nations who had won World War II met after the war to divide the world into zones of influence also finds an echo in 1984. Orwell predicted in an essay that the world would be divided into three armed states, and although he hoped that the common people would combine to resist this, he did not believe that it was likely. " The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped,” he wrote, and his. faith in the instincts of the common people and distrust of intellectuals is another element of 1984. Winston not only believes that any hope for the future must lie with the proles, but goes so far as to tell Julia, " The proles are human beings. We are not human. "

Throughout his writing life Throughout his writing life. Orwell worked to achieve a balance between public and private values, between creative work and necessary labor. His major concerns were public and political, yet he was equally aware of the importance of the individual's private life and the matters of everyday existence. Orwell believed that the State should provide a social framework for its citizens but not dictate how their private lives are to be lived ; if it does, they become, in a basic sense, less than human.

1984 Free writing theme verisimilitude Please take out two pieces of paper and something to write with. 1984 Free writing theme verisimilitude

Which aspects of our society would have to be controlled in order to successfully eliminate crime in our society? Write your top 10:

What kind of enforcement would be necessary to make sure all of those aspects are eliminated? What other aspects (besides crime) would be lost in order to eliminate these aspects from our society?

Write 150 words(ish) in which you explain whether or not it isworth it to change society to eliminate all crime.

Think 100 years from now… Do you think our society will have more or less crime in the future? More or less freedom? More or less poverty? Explain.

100 years from now, how will the following be impacted/changed 100 years from now, how will the following be impacted/changed? Pick three to write on: Politics Pop culture Social culture Technological culture Religion Family structure Fashion School and career preparation

1. Can people learn to love/ worship a tyrant or only to fear him/ her 1. Can people learn to love/ worship a tyrant or only to fear him/ her? Why? 2. Is a totalitarian society with no crime/ poverty better than a free society plagued with crime and poverty? Why?

Discussion Questions 3. Could a totalitarian society exist in this country? Why/ Why not?

4. Which aspects of our society would have to be controlled in order to have a successful tyranny? Write your top 10: