1984 Daily Journal Questions

November 5 Analyze the Party’s Slogan: War is Peace Freedom is Slavery Ignorance is Strength

November 6 Explain your thoughts on the significance, meaning, and/or relation to our modern world of the following quote from Chapter II: “It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.”

November 12 Explain your thoughts on the significance, meaning, and/or relation to our modern world of the following quote: “All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half of the population of Oceania went barefoot.”

November 13 Explain your thoughts on the significance, meaning, and/or relation to our modern world of the following quote: “Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.”

November 16 How does our modern world “change history” similarly to or differently from the way the government rewrites history in 1984?

November 17 Explain your thoughts on the significance, meaning, and/or relation to our modern world of the following quote: “If there is hope it lies in the Proles.”

November 18 Explain your thoughts on the significance, meaning, and/or relation to our modern world of the following quote: “He slid a coin out of his pocket and looked at it. The face gazed up at him, heavy, calm, protecting, but what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache?”

November 19 Make 3 predictions for what will happen in the remainder of the novel.

November 23 Explain your thoughts on the significance, meaning, and/or relation to our modern world of the following quote: “It was impossible that this affair should end successfully; such things did not happen in real life.”

November 24 Explain your thoughts on the significance, meaning, and/or relation to our modern world of the following quote: “In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it.”

December 2 Explain your thoughts on the significance, meaning, and/or relation to our modern world of the following quote: “No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred.”

December 3 Do you watch Reality TV? If so, what shows do you watch and why do you watch them? If you don’t watch them, why don’t you?

December 4 Explain your thoughts on the significance, meaning, and/or relation to our modern world of the following quote: “The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world.”

December 7 Do you agree or disagree with the following quote taken from Goldstein’s book? “Throughout recorded time, and probably since the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude toward one another have varied from age to age; but the essential structure of society has never altered.”

December 8 Make THREE logical predictions of what will happen in the remainder of the novel.

December 11 O’Brien tells Winston: “…reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” What are your thoughts on this quote?

December 10 Winston says, “Nothing in the world is so bad as physical pain” Do you agree with this statement, or do you believe that there are worse things in the world? Why?

December 14 “What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?” Describe such a situation and how you should/could act.

December 15 Were you satisfied with the ending of the novel? Why or why not?