Nineteen Eighty- Four

Structure

AO3 Show detailed understanding of the ways

in which writers' choices of form, structure and language shape meanings

A Grade:AO3 exploration and analysis of key

aspects of form, structure and language with perceptive evaluation of how they shape meanings

Coursework question foci

1. Love and sex

2. Control of individual by the state

3. Utopias and dystopias

4. Individual response to totalitarian regimes

Structure

Use your timelines from last lesson as reference

To describe the structure is to describe how it grows or develops.

For 1984, we must consider:

Plot, character and symbolism

Plot- Recall

• Three main movements

• 1- Creates the world of 1984

• 2- Deals with the development of his love for Julia

• 3- Deals with Winston’s punishment

Plot- Linked to coursework questions

• Simple

• Rebel, love affair with a like minded girl, capture, torture and horror of instruments of torture, the capitulation

Major characters: Winston, Julia, O’Brien

No attempt to create a range of social behaviour, complex social interactions- all traditional concerns of a novel

One of the points is that there life has become totally uniform, so the old fashioned novel dealing with the variety of life would be unthinkable.

Plot (c/w links) continued

Winston alone retains the individuality which is the novelist’s concern

Plot revolves around the inner life of one character. Allows him to place emphasis on the workings of Winston’s mind, and so focus on the reaction of the individual to totalitarianism, love and cruelty

It is clear that Orwell is making a political and artistic point out of the very narrowness of the plot in 1984- Winston is the ONLY one worth writing about- all the rest are half-robots already.

Character

The development of Winston’s character, and our understanding of it is the main structural

force of the book

• Hero who is outside of society, who finds its values repugnant.

• He is outside that society because he is what we would regard as fairly normal.

• He is brought into it at the end, made acceptable, but at a terrible human cost.

Exploration

Work together to summarise Winston’s development as a character in 8-10 stages

Use your timelines as guidance

ONLY Winston’s development as a character

Further Exploration

• Each pair/three will be given a passage/section

• Read your section and complete the following activities

• Which section of Winston’s development does this reflect/belong to?

• How do you know this?• Pick out 2/3 key quotes from this passage and analyse

the ways in which they reflect this stage in the character’s devlopment (try to be as interpretative and analytical as possible)

Character of Winston- Stages of development

• 1. Winston has a sense that there was once a time when things were better

• 2. He is concerned with individual freedom and expression- starts diary

• 3. His love for Julia expands a world of feeling, almost makes his dreams come true

• 4. It opens up life for him, so he starts to remember- mother

• 5. He is captured and undergoes the three stages of ‘reintegration’

6. (Reintegration) Learning• 7.(Reintegration) Understanding• 8. (Reintegration) Acceptance

Stage 1

• Pg 62

• Something in Winston revolts against depressing reality of life in 1984 ‘mute protest in your bones’- understands that life has not always been like this.

Stage 3

• In the novel Winston attempts to recapture some fragments of his ancestral memory in his love affair with Julia

• Wants to recall his humaNity, the good, the bad and himself

Stage 4

• Chapter 7 -Pg 170- ‘his mother drew’ to end.

• Gesture stands for distinctve loyalty

• Love protection, kinship- all things we don’t NEED but matter

• Love with Julia awakens him to himself- puts him in touch with the past

• Healing- leg heals up- recalls humanity

‘Reintegration’

• Stage 6 PG 270 Learning- actually see four fingers instead of five- learns it

is possible for reality to be controlled , and for him to see it in the party’s way

• Stage 7 PG 283 AND 285 Understanding- if he is the man- he is the last man

‘guardian of the human spirit’ is now a rotting wreck of humanity- condition of the last European humanist-values of humanism that give a man dignity’ Power is not a means, it is an end’- party exists for power and only power.

• Stage 8 299-300 Acceptance- Ulitmate degredation his betrayal of her.

Section Three- Note

• Tragic-one of the great modern versions of tragedy

• He has, through love attained dignity of humanity –stature necessary for tragedy, plunged into degredations of Ministry of Love

• If it had not been so steeply and fully developed, the descent would not be as tragic

• Pitiful and terrible waste

NB

• It is through the explorations of Winston’s development that the political ideas and the human elements of the book are drawn together

• Orwell’s approach is narrow but effective- he wants to examine how the human spirit might fare under the worst conditions, so he does it by showing the interior life of one man. The human spirit it may be said, does not fare well in Orwell’s imagine totalitarian world.

Symbolism

• Effective device in the construction of the novel• Draws themes together

•Golden Country•Paperweight

•Proles

Task

• In groups, work together to produce an analytical poster exploring the symbol you have been assigned

Golden Country

• 1. It is a version of the old European landscape, which Winston sees in his dreams. Place of great beauty, peace, unity, where the observer can be at one with his surroundings

• 2. When Wisnton and Julia meet alone for the first time, he finds that the landscape at the edge of the wood is exactly the one is dreans. This is a sign of the fulfilment she is to bring.

• ‘Shakespeare’- major part of Western culture- kinship, caring, understanding and the value of love’ no dignity of emotion no deep and complex sorrow

• She brings back all the values for which shakespeare stands

Paperweight

• Associated with the past and continuity

• ‘a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter’

• Constant despite Ingsoc

• Stands for world of Julia and Winston –pg 154

Proles

• ‘If there is hope it lies in the proles’• Only they have the strength- one day will realise

and overthrow• Symbol of the warmth of humanity pg 144• Symbol of natural vitality that will strike back• Last section of the novel is a powerful negative

comment on this idealism• Proles symbol of hope- perhaps pathetic and

ultimately, unconvincing