Doublethink deny the past and truths that once existed

Chapter 1 Part 1
- ‘The clocks were striking thirteen’ - nature of time, cannot ‘strike’ thirteen → dystopian world - ‘A swirl of gritty dust’ - destruction of the world
- ‘It depicted simply an enormous face…’ - symbol of dictatorship (moustache), poster of face = propaganda, picture of Big Brother - alluding to Stalin
- ‘The electric current was cut off during daylight hours’ - control, lack of freedom
- ‘Hate week’ - dedicated to a strong human emotion, if they hate Goldstein, they’ll like Big Brother more, collective hatred, unites society against common enemy, normalises hate, you cannot completely suppress human emotions, - instead, direct it somewhere, hatred is something inherent in humans → needs to be channelled
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‘Varicose ulcer’ - symbol of diseased state, once he challenges it, it goes away, human emotion = intuition: he knows something was wrong so he goes and looks to the past to see where society went wrong
- ‘BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU’ - propaganda poster instills fear into people → controls them
- ‘Telescreen’ - used to spy on people, surveillance, to give out constant propaganda
- ‘Uniform’ = sense of belonging, who you follow, what you value
- ‘Cold’ - repetition: he is suppressing everything that he should be feeling
- Lack of colour = metaphor: lack of individuality, except for posters (colour), he is what society is living for
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Repetition of caption (BIG BROTHER…) - reinforces control - Sighing in frustration = thoughtcrime, punishment = vapourisation
- ‘Squeeze out memory’ - trying to remember if there was another way to live before the world became this
- ‘WAR IS PEACE…’ - paradox: something that makes sense upon further thinking, war is peaceful because they are uniting, the collective hate against something else, sharing their views and understanding, peaceful within themselves because they all hate someone else - ‘FREEDOM IS SLAVERY’ - freedom doesn’t truly exist, it is something that we desire, not easy to be an individual with freedom of choice, become enslaved to too much freedom - ‘IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH’ - implies that you don’t know but you should know, lack of education = strength, true because they won’t question anything bigger than themselves, not knowing saves yourself
- ‘Ministry of Truth’ - rewrite history → not truth, truth = indefinite, absolute
- Doublethink = the truth needs to be changed
- Truth is distorted, manipulated, malleable, being deceived, the experience of not having control over the truth
- Disparity between what they are allegedly doing and what they are really doing
- He feels a disparity between what he puts on (facade) ‘sets his face in quite optimism’ - optimistic view of the state, disparity between that and what he really feels (pessimistic, seeing the grays of the world, tries to remember world before Big Brother)
- ‘Victory mansion’ - illusion to living a better life
- Provide people of party with gin and cigarettes so they depend on it - it is something pleasurable, relief, satisfaction, controlling people through appealing to their desire for something pleasurable
- Winston’s diary = symbol of rebellion where he writes his thoughts, personal reflection, sign of defiance
- Opening diary = thoughtcrime, accepting that he is going to die from this choice

- ‘To mark the paper is…’ - coming to terms with the gravity of the decision, the act of rebellion, feels nervous
- Humans look to the future, having children = sustaining human race, hoping better life for the future
- Writing in diary = gives Winston hope that he can do something to alter the future, it is a futile act, writing about experiences actually resonates/is valuable for other humans
- ‘Strident military music’ - propaganda
- As Winston tries to write down something, he becomes broken in his thoughts, doesn’t know what words he can use to express himself, human dilemma = not knowing how to express yourself
Writes in a stream of consciousness way
-- Woman = proll
- Child responds to film in a scared way, way of propaganda, shows what happens when you oppose the state, more attuned with their natural responses
- Inhumane act = killing children and showing that, however is is enjoyed/entertaining, people of the Party don’t question it
- The prolls have closer connections to more human/natural responses, they’re the people that can change the world
- ‘Sash’ - represents chastity, ironic as she isn’t
- ‘It was always the women…’ - women are thriving in this environment as they want to find those committing thoughtcrimes, patriarchal = using women to maintain state
- Feeling that O'Brien is unorthodox like him, sees things that others don’t
- 2 minute hate - Goldstein is turned into the enemy - allusion to Trotsky
- ‘It was impossible to not join in’ - savagery that is innate in humanity
The feeling is so powerful that we can change very quickly who the hate is directed to-- ‘She was uttering a prayer’ - felt compelled to pray even though religion is not a big part of society
- Big Brother is idealised like a God
- Bringing out people’s primitiveness (chants) - link to loss of being civilised, intentionally bringing out savage side of humans
- ‘But don’t worry I am on your side…’ - found connection/someone who sides with him- ‘Down with Big Brother’ - repetition: act of subconscious because he is dreaming
- Lost of past (setting)
Big brother’s mustache symbolises dictatorship (Stalin)
-- Controlled so much power is cut off
- Hate week shows the acceptance of hate
- Hate week pushes hate as a strong emotion to unify against a common enemy
Hate that is channelled can be manipulated
-- Ulcer is a symbol of diseased state
- Propaganda posters push fear into society which controls the people
- Uniform symbolises belonging
Lack of colour shows lack of emotion
-- Coloured posters in a colourless society shows their purpose and life is to be based around INGSOC.

- ‘’Winston woke up with the word ‘Shakespeare’ on his lips.’’ - Allusion: shakespeare symbol of freedom representing words, creativity, love, questioning power, encouraging thought.

Another indication that Winston wants to challenge the society
- ‘’ If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, IT NEVER HAPPENED—that, 44 1984 surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?’’ rhetorical question: this corruption is worse than individual torture, challenging the distortion of truth. Truth according to the party is absolute but Winston is starting to question this → doublethink
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‘’All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.’’ - deny the past and truths that once existed. Human capacity to train the brain to do things it does not consciously want to do - Doublethink: ‘’To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 45 moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself’’ technique: complex sentence, accumulation of contradictory phrases

Chapter 6 Part 1
- The party acknowledges that human instinct is hard to control however they deemed it necessary to control it
- ‘’The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act.’’

- ‘’The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it.’’ In shifting the sex instinct away from marriage and love they can make it a dirty act so that the society will not lose sight of who it really needs to love, big brother
- Desire → Thought crime
- Winston craves love (human experience)
- Winston craved maternal love too
- Letting animalistic instincts take over itself was an act of rebellion.

- Confident tone, he is thinking logically about the physical experiences that he has had- ‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows’ - maths exists beyond our minds, it is something that is greater than us like time

Chapter 8 Part 1
- Intro of ‘OWNLIFE’ - not actually a word, Orwell is inventing language, part of Newspeak, he is showing the reduction of words → thoughts → crimes, taste for solitude may be experienced when going for a walk through nature
- ‘’OWNLIFE, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity’’
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Everything people do must help the state somehow and to not be unproductive. - Symbolic imagery ‘’He was walking up a cobbled street of little two-storey houses with battered doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were somehow curiously suggestive of ratholes. ‘’
- Reference to ulcer, it has been throbbing
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Ulcer = symbol of the sickened diseased state - Desires to remember what life was like - reconnect with humanity
- This ancestral memory is about all humans, connection to all humans
- Drawn to past, to the world before the state was in control
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Comfort, homeliness - ‘Utterly alone, utterly… ‘ - repetition
- Repetition of ‘no’ - readers sympathise with Winston
- Foreshadowing his own death
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It is more courageous to give up hope now - he doesn’t have to go to the Ministry of Love and experience torture, he would be biologically useless
- Pain and fear are not useful because it freezes you - ‘inertia, it stops you from thinking…’ - foreshadowing of ending: overrides rationality, makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do
- Julia has been following him, he sees her, rather than doing something, he froze and she left - ‘In this moment, he lost the power to act’ - one is fighting against themselves, not others, he is his biggest enemy, because you overthink, doubt, make yourself vulnerable, think about future and reconsider past, humanity’s weakness is themselves
- State has increased this weakness because they make you fear the state so much that you don’t do anything, you freeze
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State has removed this weakness because you don’t have any thoughts about any individual, you shouldn’t be questioning yourself
- Rhetorical question - it’s not a question of fear itself, he fears the torture, the future the prolonged death
- ‘Groveling on the floor’ - graphic imagery, connotes power, you are powerless
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‘Screaming for mercy = absolute torture - ‘Why do they have to endure this?’ - rhetorical question: make them orthodox, is more tortuous than being dead, why not kill them quickly, don’t stop until they are orthodox, ruling them by terror, it is making you in the hands of Big Brother
- If you prolong this inevitable death, Big Brother won’t stop until they become absolutely brainwashed into the way that they should be thinking

Chapter 3 Part 2
- ‘’Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.’’ - irony - Patriarchal society, men according to this state are more animalistic
- ‘Like the sky’ - the Party is natural, it is natural that they want to stop people from enjoying things in life, they evade it ‘like a rabbit dodges a…’
- ‘’What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship.’’ - deprivation will make them worship the party more
- Family wasn’t abolished and raised in the traditional way. They would get kids to turn against their parents and spy on them. Using the feeling of parenthood to manipulate the kids to turn against them.

- Humans are always going to be powerless to someone/something higher
- Hierarchies have always existed
- Contrast between Winston and Julia
- Winston: there is no such thing as happiness - defeated mindset, existentialism
- Paradox of human experiences- feeling hopeful and hopeless
- ‘We are the dead’ - inclusive language, bigger metaphor, everyone in this State is dead - they are no longer real humans, they are either dead inside or will die from committing a crime- ‘’But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.’’ - when you are alive you are thinking about death, the futility of life itself when you are born in this state in particular you are already dead

- ‘’ The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don’t know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories.’’ - only certain of your own thinking, of your own mind
- He is not certain that anyone thinks like him
- There is nothing that is objective in this world, only what the Party sees and what they believe- ‘But one can imagine little knots of resistance springing up here and there… so that the next generation can carry on where we leave off’ - Winston is concerned about future of humanity as a whole, his morality/ethics, he believes in goodness beyond himself

Chapter 6 Part 2
- O’Brien finds Winston
- ‘He knew that sooner or later he would obey O’Brien’s summons’ -
- Imagery of the grave: dampness, tactile sense of a grave
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He didn’t intend for this to happen (open his diary) - There is something that challenges society
- ‘The end was contained in the beginning’ - paradox: the end was always there, he is himself and therefore is always going to have this involuntary thought
- Part 1 is concerned with death
- Relationship with Julia gives him hope and meaning to not die
- Met O’Brien, he has met his death

Chapter 8 Part 2
- Goes with Julia to O’Brien’s place
- Extra luxuries of Inner Party, clear hierarchy - he has a servant
- ‘We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some kind of secret organisation working against the Party, and that you are involved in it. We want to join it and work for it. We are enemies of the Party’ - Winston’s declaration of his rebellion, he admits to everything, ‘he is a thought criminal’, he will do anything for the promise of a better future
- Gets given wine - hierarchy
- ‘Wine was a thing that he had read and dreamed about’ - nostalgic about wine, reminds him of the past, brings him closer to what society was like before Big Brother
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‘You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail… if, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child’s face - are you prepared to do that?’ - imagery - ‘You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never see one another again?’ - can agree to murder of innocent children but not to be separated
- Repetition of darkness - ‘you will always be in the dark’
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O’Brien’s assertion about the Party makes Winston worship O’Brien - O’Brien says ‘we are the dead’ - echoes Winston’s words

- ‘Our only true life is in the future’ - raise glasses up a second time, make a toast to the past, only through the past are we able to make a better future, if they can access the past, they can shape the future, present is fixed

DOUBLETHINK lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.’’
- Habit to tell yourself to change your memories but to do so unconsciously - you are not thinking about it/questioning it because that would be a thoughtcrime, feel guilty about it

- You need to alter what you know based on the new present the Party has told you
- ‘If human equality is to be forever averted… then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity’
- ‘This motive really consists…’ - ellipses - Orwell doesn’t give us the answer to ‘why’-
‘There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad’
- Sun = warmth, connection (lying with Julia)
- ‘Truth and untruth’ = newspeak
- Asserting his own view on the world

Chapter 4 Part 3

Chapter 5 Part 3
- Rats are lurking in the subconscious of the text
- ‘By itself, O’Brien said, pain is not always enough’
- We instinctively do anything to survive
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‘If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. If is the same with the rats.For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you’
- Rats attack face
- Face is chosen because it is the most unprotected place
- Most sensory body parts are on face
- ‘Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!’
- Betrays Julia and has given up. He has been selfish
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Repetition of “not me” shows his selfishness and sacrifices Julia for survival - We become so focused on our survival that we sacrifice themselves