Concepts HL language and literature Nineteen Eighty-Four
Concepts explored in the novel:
Control, Rebellion, love, politics, sex
Slide 18 - Slide
Winston - add information Part II
Inside: Winston’s physical characteristics and personality traits
Outside: significant points relating to his physical surroundings or environment, as well as any relationships he has formed
and his attitudes to significant aspects of his world.
short quotes and page numbers from the extracts presented.
timer
1:00
Slide 19 - Slide
What reactions do we have to Winston and Julia’s emerging relationship?
Slide 20 - Open question
What does Orwell want us to think or feel about this turn of events?
Slide 21 - Open question
Consider the distinctions between love and sex. Fill out a form like this in your exercise book.
Love is ...
Sex is ...
.
Slide 22 - Slide
Goals for today
Compare chapter 1 part I and chapter 1 part II
Consider an extract from Part II
Orwell's diction choices and intentions in Part II, chapter II
Setting and symbolism in Part II chapter III
Slide 23 - Slide
AWL list 2
Slide 24 - Slide
On the left of the extract
On the right of the extract
On the left of the extract for each paragraph write your understanding of the content. What is happening? What idea or concept is being highlighted? What is the function of this paragraph?
On the right of the extract highlight diction choices, literary, stylistic and syntactical choices.
Link the purpose to the authorial choices.
Slide 25 - Slide
Linguistic investigation. Looking closely at diction.
Find in your text these linguistic techniques and examples which link to the following headings…
Sexual or sensual language
Emotional language
Nature imagery
Jarring or unexpected language
Stylistic and literary devices
Slide 26 - Slide
Nature diction
• "dappled light and shade"
• "pools of gold"
• "bluebells"
• "heart of the wood"
• "ring-doves"
• "bushes"
• "flowers"
• "leaves"
• "May sunshine"
• "grassy knoll"
• "saplings"
The imagery appeals to multiple senses: visual ("pools of gold"), auditory ("droning of ring-doves"), olfactory ("faint sickly scent"), and tactile ("The air seemed to kiss one's skin").
The setting is fertile, vibrant, and uncontaminated this sharply contrasting with the urban world Winston usually inhabits.
Nature and Spring become symbols of freedom from Party control. There are "no telescreens" in this environment, making it a temporary space of privacy and rebellion.
Slide 27 - Slide
sexual/sensual diction
• "The air seemed to kiss one's skin."
• Winston picks flowers to offer the girl.
• "A hand fell lightly on his shoulder."
• The description of her "strong slender body."
• The "curve of her hips."
• The secluded "natural clearing" hidden within the woods
The language creates anticipation before the lovers meet. The woodland setting resembles a traditional romantic retreat, separated from social rules and surveillance. The imagery of touching, kissing, curves, flowers, and fertility links desire to the natural world. (Golden Country)
The clearing in the woods can also be read symbolically as a private, intimate space where Winston and the girl can express impulses forbidden by the Party. Nature therefore becomes associated with both love and resistance. (Sex as a political act)
Slide 28 - Slide
Unusual diction ETIOLATED
Etiolated: definition
(adj) a plant growing pale, weak, and elongated due to a lack of light. In a formal or literary sense, it can also describe a person or thing that is feeble, drained of energy, or lacking vigor.
• Winston has been deprived of a natural life. <div>• The Party has cut him off from healthy human growth. </div><div>• Nature exposes how damaged and unnatural his existence has become</div>
Why this metaphor?
What does it suggest about Winston's existence?
Slide 29 - Slide
Symbolism
What could these objects or ideas symbolise in the context?
• Bluebells
• Flowers
• The wood
• Springtime
Slide 30 - Slide
Juxtaposition and contrast
Nature
sunshine
flowers
birdsong
freedom
growth
Party controlled society
surveillance
Patrols
microphones
control
repression
Slide 31 - Slide
Write a response to this question
How does Orwell construct the opening of Part II chapter II to explore the concepts of refuge and desire and highlight Winston's increasing resistance to Big Brother's control?
Put your paragraph in homework dropbox.
Slide 32 - Slide
Purpose Winston and Julia in Part II, chapter II
Allowed to understand Winston’s feelings through free indirect discourse once more.
Natural imagery becomes a symbol for his own feelings and emotional state.
Normally description relies on simile but in the presence of Julia Winston’s feelings are intensified and Orwell employs metaphor with increasing regularity – ‘pools of gold’ and ‘misty with bluebells’
Significant contrast with the previous chapter and links to the ‘Golden Country’ of Winston’s dreams
Realism is injected with Winston’s temporary impotence. Could this imply distrust in the relationship?
Julia is only able to explain her attraction as reading his face and knowing his rebellion. Is it as easy for the Thought Police too? Desire is unexplained, and her access to real chocolate begins to be questioned by the reader. Do we trust Julia?
Slide 33 - Slide
What are Orwell's intentions?
Julia is more important to show us Winston’s development as a character than as a figure in her own right.
Links to the proles, only seen through Winston’s eyes and not allowed to be a developed idea or a possible overthrow of the system.
Act of tearing off her sash reduces Julia to a symbolic figure, reflecting Winston’s view of life – his rebellion is not actually to do with love but with seeing sex as a political act and a means of undermining the party
Irony – by using sex as rebellion and not actually for love, Winston is in fact following party doctrine – Orwell questions nature and function of love