1. The CHARACTER AS VEHICLE: ‘1984’ and ‘stasilanD’

2. Nineteen eighty four

3. winston winston Vehicle for ideas around:
The will of the individual to assert itself and BE – individual identity and the project to obliterate/eradicate/efface the self
The individual as the repository of memory – the power of personal history in the face of the official narrative (salvation)
The idea of sanity – “Was I sane, of a people gone mad / Or mad in a world that is sane?” (Henry Lawson) – retention of the self and one’s place in space and time
What it takes to break an individual’s humanity

4. julia julia Vehicle for ideas around:
The qualities of survival – preservation of the self in oppressive environments
Appearances vs reality
The power of love/attachment/attraction/solidarity – when 1 becomes 2
The value and price of freedom/privacy
Loyalty and betrayal

5. o’brien Vehicle for ideas around:
The power of understanding/being understood
The pupil/mentor, shepherd/disciple relationship

6. Big brother Vehicle for ideas around:
Leadership, worship, the cult of personality and the establishment of the hierarchy (the danger inherent in obedience)
Constant surveillance
Control and habitual self-regulation through fear – living with the possibility of threat
Submission of self/will to higher authority and unquestioned subordination - requires appropriation of human needs/desires (loyalty, love, sexual drives – all channeled into working for Big Brother)

7. Emmanuel goldstein Vehicle for ideas around:
The ‘other’ – scapegoating
Needing an outlet for hate
Symbolic representation of hope (resistance movement, The Book)

8. Mr charrington Vehicle for ideas around: Trust and betrayal
Refuge and haven
Nostalgia
Beauty, aesthetics vs utilitarianism

9. syme Vehicle for ideas around:
The danger posed by intelligence (thinking, the mind)
The power of language to shape thought

10. parsons Vehicle for ideas around:
The state and quality of intimate relationships/the family – the appropriation and re(mis)-direction of love, loyalty

11. Room 101 Vehicle for ideas around:
Ultimate form power is through knowledge - mind control
Unique to each individual – the self breaks in a myriad ways
The power of the physical environment to circumscribe the individual

12. katharine Vehicle for ideas around:
The unquestioning mind and the lack of the human impulse: frigidity and the automaton

13. ampleforth Vehicle for ideas around:
The threat posed by the possibility of any other belief systems

14. Aaronson, jones & rutherford
Vehicle for ideas around:
The Hollow Men

15. The washerwoman Vehicle for ideas around:
The unadulterated life-force – creation
Vitality: ignorance is strength
Beauty

16. Winston’s mother Vehicle for ideas around:
The sanctity and purity of love and relationships in times past – integrity of the individual and inviolability of essential human characteristics as we now (think) we know them (that is at threat for Orwell)
Nurture and sacrifice – true love

17. Oppositional character groups
Room 101 and Mr Charrington’s room
Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia
Winston and O’Brien
Big Brother and Goldstein
Ministries vs Victory Mansions
Proles vs Outer vs Inner Party
City vs country
Katharine vs Julia

18. Stasiland

19. Anna - author Vehicle for ideas around:
The power, place and purpose of recording history, truths, narratives – being able to contribute to the story
The observer outside of time and place – the human reaction to unfathomable circumstances

20. Anna - character Vehicle for ideas around:
The power of trusting relationships to enable people to reveal themselves
How we cope under mental duress
The ability to construct fantastic embellishments on reality, such as renaming the homeless person at the bus stop the “Winter King” in an attempt to cope.

21. miriam Vehicle for ideas around:
Living without resolution and without access to truth
The power of the past to shape not only our present and the future but who we actually become (our characteristics)
Individual acts of heroism

22. julia julia julia Vehicle for ideas around:
The human cost of resistance – what we sacrifice
The embodiment of violence – scarring
The difficulty of talking / telling one’s story

23. Frau paul Vehicle for ideas around: Courage Solidarity Sacrifice
Living with doubt – the fragmentation of the moral self

24. klaus Vehicle for ideas around:
The will of the individual to assert itself
How we cope under mental duress
The human cost of resistance – what we sacrifice
The power of trusting relationships to enable people to reveal themselves
Determination to beat the system at their own game
Resilience
Courage
Self-preservation
Truth
Living with the past
‘Vaporisation’ of the individual

25. Von schnitzler Vehicle for ideas around: GDR propaganda
Symbolic representation – face of the ‘Black Channel’
The power of language to shape thought
Control – manipulation of the truth
Ideological belief
Absurdity
Lack of Remorse
‘Ostalgie’

26. Herr bohnsack Vehicle for ideas around:
Reversals of fortune - victim of anger and aggression later, death threats, ‘traitor’, ‘no sense of belonging in the new world’
Falling into the gap between reality and fiction
The confusion of those trapped between worlds

27. Hagen koch Vehicle for ideas around: Indoctrination
Preserving the past
The betrayal of the true believer

28. Herr christian
Vehicle for ideas around:
Belief in rules and laws

29. Herr winz Vehicle for ideas around: Defenders of brutal regimes
Lack of remorse or regret
Loyalty to the past

30. Herr bock Vehicle for ideas around: Surveillance
Injustice - Stasi profiting in new system
‘Ostalgie’

31. The berlin wall Vehicle for ideas around:
Division, separation, otherness
The power of the physical environment to circumscribe the individual

32. The LIPSI Vehicle for ideas around: Symbol of GDR oppression
Cultural manufacturing
Control of youth

33. Oppositional character groups
East Berlin vs West Berlin
Women vs men
Victims vs perpetrators
Heroes vs villains
Official vs personal history
Truth vs fiction

34. Your turn: Comparative prompts
Compare the ways in which the texts use environments to convey ideas around power.
Compare what the texts suggest about the the past, the present and the future.
What do both texts suggest about leadership?
Compare the ways in which the texts reveal how fear works on the individual.
Don’t forget to include how characters are used as vehicles for ideas.