Nineteen Eighty- Four

Structure
Excerpts taken from York Notes on Nineteen Eighty Four
Longman Literature Guides
1983
 Focus

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 distinctive 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- Notes
 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
 Ingroups, 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 Winston 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
 ‘Ifthere 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