1984 Text

!984 by George Orwell 

Please read chapters 1 - 4, and answer questions below:


1984 Close Reading Questions
Part 1 Chapters I-III (pages 1-37)
1. What do you learn about George Orwell from his biography page?

2. What do you learn about Winston in the first chapter?

3. What do you learn about the society in which Winston lives in the first chapter?

4. Who are the “Thought Police”? What is “Thoughtcrime”?

5. “He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like
this…But it was no use, he could not remember” (3).
“To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two” (7). (6). What literary terminology does this exemplify? Explain.
Consider your parents, grandparents…do they tell childhood memories? Do they know what used to be where? What is wrong with Winston/society given these two passages?

6. What is “Newspeak”? How does it work?

7. Explain the 3 party slogans.

8. What is ironic about the 4 ministries?

9. Why would the Party allow the vices described on page 5?

10. “This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably
certain that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp” What literary terminology does this exemplify? Explain.

11. “Actually he was not used to writing by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything into
​the speakwrite…” (7). What are the pros and cons to written versus oral communication?

12. Anything disturbing about what Winston writes in the diary? What significance does the diary have?

13. Why does Winston have a conflict with women?

14. Contrast how the narrator describes the girl of 27 and O’Brien.

15. What is the Two Minutes Hate? For what purpose would a government have it?

16. Who is enemy #1? For what purpose would a government show his face? What is the name of the underground
​resistance group? What is the name of the resistance leader’s literature?

17. “A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought
Police” (13). “…in spite of the endless arrests and confessions and executions, to be sure that the Brotherhood was not simply a myth” (17). For what purpose would the government find agents of the Brotherhood if there wasn’t one?

18. How does Goldstein, who existed long before know Newspeak, use it more than any Party member normally
​would?

19. What does it mean to be vaporized?

20. How does the Party use children?
21. “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness” (25). This is an example of what literary device?

22. What is INGSOC and its sacred principles?

23. How are his mom and sister significant to Winston?

24. According to page 34, explain the war situation.

25. “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” What does this passage
mean?

26. Explain “doublethink”.

27. What is Winston’s problem with the Party’s claims?