AP Worthy?

Having finished reading 1984 last week, I’ve returned to answer the question “is 1984 AP worthy?”

There is no doubt in my mind that 1984 is of literary merit. It’s got a whole lot more than just plot. There are complex characters as seen in Winston’s constant growth from timid to rebellious to conforming, and there is complexity in Winston’s relationships, especially his love-hate relationship with O’Brien. There are symbols, such as the glass paperweight which symbolizes Winston’s hope for societal change (and upon shattering, symbolizes his hopelessness). And there’s a ton of social commentary. Throughout the novel, Orwell parallels Oceania’s clearly miserable society with those of the totalitarian regimes of the 1940s, specifically the Soviet Union.

Although “literary merit” seems ambiguous, 1984 checks all of my boxes. 1984 has sufficient merit to be taught in an AP class.

Because of its literary merit, 1984 would be incredibly helpful on the AP exam. In fact, 1984 could’ve easily been used in last year’s free choice question:

Select a novel, play, or epic poem in which a character holds an “ideal view of the world.” Then write an essay in which you analyze the character’s idealism and its positive or negative consequences. Explain how the author’s portrayal of this idealism illuminates the meaning of the work as a whole.

Winston, the main character of 1984, is determined to inspire change in Oceania’s society-- he believes in freedom of thought and speech and dreams of a world, which he calls the “Golden Country,” where he lives in total peace without fear of Big Brother. Winston thinks that this dream is possible, saying that “hope lies in the proles” (69). He believes that if the proles (people of the lower class) were to rise up against Big Brother, then personal freedoms would follow. Winston’s idealism ultimately leads to his downfall because, through his rebellion, he is caught and tortured until he loses all of his passion for life. 

1984 could also have been used for 2015’s free choice question:

In literary works, cruelty often functions as a crucial motivation or a major social or political factor. Select a novel, play, or epic poem in which acts of cruelty are important to the theme. Then write a well-developed essay analyzing how cruelty functions in the work as a whole and what the cruelty reveals about the perpetrator and/or victim.

In 1984, the cruelty of the Party inspires fear in all Party members. The Party’s cruelty is central to the theme because it is this fear that restricts the social freedoms such as speech that Orwell argues are essential for happiness and a fulfulled life. It is also this cruelty which breaks down Winston’s resolve before filling his mind with propaganda, which Orwell also firmly warns against.

While 1984 is helpful when answering AP questions, I don’t feel like it is necessary to add it to our AP Lit curriculum because it is so similar to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Winston is almost a mix of Brave New World’s main characters Bernard and John; Julia is very similar to Lenina; O’Brien is like Mustapha Mond; and, to top it all off, both books are set in a futuristic London. Both books predict a future where all personal freedom has been taken away by a totalitarian government and individuality is nonexistent. The main difference between the two books is that Orwell’s society operates on fear while Huxley’s operates on pleasure. Teaching both is unnecessary.

So which of the two should be taught? I preferred reading 1984 more because I found Orwell’s style easier to read, but I thought it was a little slow in the middle. I also thought the totalitarian regime of the Party was a little unrealistic. I liked the premise of Brave New World better, but I didn’t find the story as gripping as that of 1984. Overall, I enjoyed 1984 more than Brave New World but preferred Huxley’s ideas over Orwell’s.

Beyond simply enjoying the book, I’m glad I read 1984 because I feel more culturally literate. People throw around the phrase “Big Brother” often with increased monitoring by our governments, and I feel like I have a better understanding of the world around me because I can completely understand these references. I’m not sure if these terms come from 1984, but “sex crime” and “thought crime” are Newspeak (Orwell’s condensed English) in Oceania which makes me think that these terms came from this book. Sex and thought crimes are phrases commonly used today (but not at the time of publication) which may or may not have originated from 1984.

However, if I were to choose one of the two for our curriculum, it would be Brave New World because I think the totalitarian government that relies on pleasure to keep the population passive is far more realistic. While I understand how Orwell’s society perpetuated, I can’t see people allowing it to start. On the other hand, I can easily see western society falling into the patterns of the World State in Brave New World. I think it is more important for us as American students to learn about the dangers of a trap we are more likely to fall into. For this reason and this reason alone, we should not incorporate 1984 into our AP Lit curriculum, and instead, we should read Brave New World.

The Ending!

Going into this reading, I was getting kind of bored with 1984. After reading what seemed like the entirety of “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” (a fictional rebel book), I was frankly tired and all together not enjoying myself. I also was the last one in my group to actually finish the book, and, from talking to Ellie and Katie, I was not expecting anything fantastic.

But, much to my surprise, I loved the ending. It was action packed and filled with dialogue, making it a quicker and easier read.

As much as I would have loved a happy ending, I was completely satisfied with the way Orwell chose to wrap up Winston’s story. After capturing Winston and Julia in their rented room, the Thought Police bring Winston to the Ministry of Love where he is punished for his “thoughtcrimes” and “sexcrimes.” Punished is not really the right word to use here, but I cannot think of (nor find on Google) a suitable alternative. The process is not so much punishment as it is reintegration. Essentially, they are using torture to reshape Winston’s mind so that he will naturally comply with Big Brother’s orthodoxy. O’Brien describes the torture in three major stages: “there is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance” (260).

In the Ministry of Love, O’Brien uses physical torture to force Winston into learning the Party’s ideology. The best example of this is through O’Brien and Winston’s discussion of the sum of

2 + 2. As a senior in high school, I feel fairly confident saying that 2 and 2 make 4, as does Winston. O’Brien, however, tries to drill it into Winston’s head that 2 and 2 make whatever-the-heck the Party wants them to make. 2 + 2 can be 3 or 5 or not even a number.

Like Winston, I had a little trouble not seeing O’Brien’s logic as completely flawed. Regardless of how you view it, it seems to me that if you have two sets of two, you objectively have four. You can say you have five, and that may be true to you, but you’d be wrong.


It’s like when everyone believed that the sun revolved around the Earth back in the middle ages. Just because everyone believed it doesn’t make it anymore correct. At the same time, I only now believe that the Earth revolves around the sun because that is now what everyone believes. The data was presented to me by society, and it made sense to me, so I accepted it as fact. Have I observed the Earth revolving around the sun? No. So I can’t absolutely know that it is true, and for all I know it could be the opposite.

In that sense, 2 + 2 could equal 5.

O’Brien convinces Winston of this fallacy using physical pain-- pain so intense that his vision is compromised, and he can no longer see with any accuracy the number of fingers O’Brien is holding up.

After this exercise, O’Brien and Winston move on to the understanding part of fixing Winston’s mind. To be honest, I don’t feel like understanding is the right word, but it is what O’Brien calls it and he is the expert. While this section helped me better grasp O’Brien’s point of view, it also left me thoroughly confused and a little frustrated.

To sum it up, O’Brien makes the claim that as long as there is no evidence, there is absolutely no way to disprove a fundamentally incorrect idea. Let’s use the example of gravity. Yes, we all feel it and experience its effects everyday, but without Newton naming it and writing down its laws, gravity didn’t exist. By the Party’s logic, Newton did not discover gravity-- he invented it.

In 1984, Oceania (the nation-state-like structure that the Party rules) is at constant war with either Eastasia or Eurasia. In an objective reality, the enemy changes between the two other states. However, according to the Party, the enemy is and will always be Eastasia (or Eurasia). All records of war with the other state are destroyed. Because there is no existing proof that the enemy hasn’t always been the same, if you claim otherwise, you are making it up, essentially inventing your own now-false reality. The simple observation that who you’re fighting in a major war has shifted is invented completely by the individual, just how Newton invented the apple falling from the tree.

The third and final stage is still kind of foggy to me because it is difficult for me to identify exactly what triggered Winston’s “acceptance.” It was definitely more gradual with multiple events leading to his eventual love of Big Brother. After breaking down (or at least confusing) the mind with the learning and understanding, the Ministry of Love uses primal fear to break down the soul. Miniluv (as the Ministry is affectionately called in Newspeak) exposes you to whatever horrifying thing, rational or irrational, you fear most, relying on the fact that it is impossible to stand by your moral principles in the face of pure, unadulterated terror. In Winston’s case, O’Brien uses Winston’s fear of rats to force him to turn against Julia, whose love powered him through his rebellion.

Winston is successfully reintegrated into Oceanian society.

Orwell’s process of reintegration emphasizes his warning message, especially appropriate at the time he wrote this book: totalitarian propaganda is dangerous, and words are powerful. In the learning stage, Orwell shows the introduction of propaganda; in the understanding stage, Orwell shows the slow illogical-yet-logical methods that cause people to doubt; and in the stage of acceptance, Orwell illustrates the bleak reality through Winston’s sad and passionless existence after leaving the Ministry of Love.

Yes, the ending of 1984 was kind of a bummer. The hero abandons all of his principles and morals and lives out the rest of his life joylessly and loving the society that took his humanity. However, it clearly illustrates Orwell’s warning against such totalitarian societies in a way a happy ending would not.

Chapters 13-18

So much happened in this week’s reading! Winston finally talks to O’Brien; learns about that the Brotherhood, an underground rebellion, is real; reads the Brotherhood’s handbook on the society of the Party; and gets caught for thought crime. 

While this reading was action-packed, it certainly wasn’t gripping the entire time-- reading “the book” was just plain boring because as Winston said it “had not actually told him anything that he did not know; it had merely systematized the knowledge that he possessed already” (217). I completely agree with Winston’s evaluation of the book because I feel like it just explained aspects of the Party that an observer would naturally pick up on. For example, the book explains the ironies of the four ministries, saying that “the Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation” (216). The book explains that these are contradictory because, believe it or not, peace is the opposite of war, truth the opposite of lies, love the opposite of torture, and plenty the opposite of starvation. I hate to say it, but these contradictions are addressed (albeit more subtly) on the fourth page of the novel and are built upon in the 212 pages between. The book also reaffirms Winston’s beliefs about war with either Eurasia or Eastasia (it switched to Eastasia in this reading). The book added literally nothing to my understanding of the workings of the Party; it just synthesized the conclusions I’d reached into more easily quotable ideas. 

From this, I’m wondering if the book is even really from the Brotherhood. I’m starting to think that O'Brien isn’t actually part of the Brotherhood (it seems like too big of a coincidence that Winston talks to O’Brien and is quickly caught), and he gave Winston the book almost as a test of unorthodoxy. Looking back at the reading, O'Brien didn’t seem to feel worried at all by the fact that the Party is watching, giving Winston his address “immediately beneath the telescreen, in such a position that anyone who was watching at the other end of the instrument could read what he was writing” (158). Winston also describes O’Brien as giving off “an impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged by irony” (175). My mind immediately went to dramatic irony-- O’Brien knows something that Winston does not. Unfortunately, the reader also only knows what Winston knows, so I can’t be sure that O’Brien is truly hiding something. I mean, after meeting O’Brien, Winston had “the sensation of stepping into the dampness of a grave” (159), and although Winston doesn’t link this to O’Brien, I certainly do. 

There are two options: either I’m right in not trusting O’Brien or this book has made me incredibly paranoid. I know the latter is true because I completely distrusted Julia, and she got captured along with Winston, so she cannot have betrayed him. In the next reading, I guess I’ll figure out whether I had a valid reason to distrust O’Brien. 

Another distinct element of the most recent reading was Orwell’s use of symbolism, especially with the glass paperweight and St. Clement’s. Both symbols are used in prior sections, but their meaning was unclear until now (although to be honest, I’m not sure I understand them completely now, but it is clear that I should at this point.

Winston buys the glass paperweight at the same shop that he buys his diary and the same place from which he later rents a room. The paperweight is “a heavy lump of glass” with a piece of pink coral from the Indian Ocean embedded inside (95). Winston admires the paperweight because it is incredibly beautiful yet serves no real purpose. He then keeps this paperweight in the room he rents, looking at it from time to time with Julia and contemplating the world from which it came. He sees the paperweight as its own mini-world: the glass itself as the room he rents “and the coral [as] Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal” (147). The paperweight is a symbol of hope; to Winston, it embodies what he wants from life: privacy, freedom, and love. The mini-world of the paperweight (where he is truly free and unobserved, happy with Julia) is what Winston is hoping for in his acts of rebellion.

This is why it is incredibly significant that the paperweight is shattered when the Thought Police finally catch him and Julia in the room. 

A member of the Thought Police “[picks] up the glass paperweight from the table and [smashes] it to pieces” (223). As the fragments roll across the floor, Winston realizes how small the paperweight was. In this moment, the paperweight’s demise symbolizes Winston’s shattering of hope-- now, he will never achieve that dream of a peaceful, happy life with the woman he loves.

The symbol of St. Clement’s appears first as a rhyme, which Winston learns line by line, first from Mr. Charrington (the man who rented Winston the room and turned out to be a member of the Thought Police-- Yikes), then from Julia, and finally from O’Brien. I am going to quote the entire rhyme although it is revealed on multiple pages:

“Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s,

You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St. Martin’s,

When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey,

When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!” (146) (178)

At first, like the paperweight, the rhyme is a reminder of the world of the past. It’s no longer remembered by many, and even the idea of oranges and lemons is foreign to Winston. Julia doesn’t even know what a lemon is. In trying to discover the entirety of the rhyme, Winston is uncovering the world he longs to go back to.

St. Clement’s could also be a symbol of Winston’s downfall. The first and last lines are first told to Winston by Mr. Charrington (the evil Thought Police guy), and without Charrington knowing his curiosity of the past, Winston may never have been caught. Similarly, Winston learned the remainder of the lines through his acts of rebellion, whether sleeping with Julia or conspiring with O’Brien. It was this rebellion that led to him being caught. As he learns more of the poem, he is opening himself up to more risk of eventual torture and death.

Winston also focused largely on the section of the rhyme about the churches, ignoring the ominous ending. As he is captured by the Thought Police, the last line comes over the telescreen saying “here comes the candle to light you to bed, here comes the chopper to chop off your head!” (222). Winston is so focused on the beauty of the past that he doesn’t notice the horrifying, and possibly warning, message the rhyme truly has.

Ultimately, the Thought Police catch him through a telescreen hidden behind an engraving of St. Clement’s church. This completes my theory that St. Clement’s symbolizes Winston’s failure because it is the means through which his downfall arrives. Hidden behind the church (in both the poem and the engraving) is the Party, ready to torture him for his crimes, but Winston was so distracted by the beauty of the past to even notice.

St. Clement’s combines all of the mistakes Winston makes in his rebellion leading to his downfall.

Having been left on a cliffhanger, I am very excited to finish 1984! 

~ Georgia

Characters in the First Half of 1984

Hi and welcome back to my blog on 1984! Last week I responded to the first six chapters of the book, and this week I’ll be focusing on chapters seven through twelve. This reading focused largely on the budding relationship between two characters, Winston and Julia. 

Winston Smith is the main character of 1984. Winston is “thirty-nine years old... [He’s] got varicose veins. [He’s] got false teeth.” (120). He’s introduced as an out of shape, “frail figure” (2) with fair hair and ruddy uneven skin. Orwell describes him in a completely unattractive and almost gross way, making Winston appear weak and unheroic.

Winston works for the Ministry of Truth, editing already published media from the past so that it accurately represents the present and making it impossible to fact check Big Brother’s propaganda. Winston’s job gives him a unique perspective on the Party’s propaganda; he can be certain that the news given by the Party is fake because he made it up himself. However, even knowing that all of the Party’s history is made up by people like him, Winston still struggles with what the truth is. Although he is aware that the “truth” of the party isn’t accurate, Winston believes that “if all records [tell] the same tale-- then the lie [passes] into history and [becomes] truth” (34). Although doubtful, Winston still falls into the trap of propaganda even though he knows it’s not true, showing a mentally weak character that matches his physical appearance. 

While he is directly described by Orwell as a weak person, Orwell develops Winston’s strength not through description but through his actions. Although he is constantly in fear of getting caught by the “thought police,” Winston consistently rebels and intentionally goes against party rules. He starts by buying a journal (which is strictly forbidden) and hiding in an unobservable corner of his apartment. Not only is the sheer act of writing forbidden, but the content of his journal is also anti-Party-- “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” (18) repeated over and over. He is incredibly nervous, assuming every knock on the door is the thought police and every person is spying on him, and yet he continues to do it, showing that Winston is truly brave. He is willing to risk his life for his principles. 

Winston also rebels by visiting the “proles,” the working class, non-Party members of society. Although not prohibited, the Party does not approve of Party members mixing with non-Party members, which Winston does frequently. Prior to the story, Winston sleeps with a prole prostitute which is not supported by the Party (he also writes about this in his journal, further incriminating himself). Winston visits a prole pub to question a near eighty-year-old man about the “vanished world of capitalism” (86). He asks for the truth about the days before the Revolution, questioning the authenticity of Big Brother’s claims of “terrible oppression, injustice, [and] poverty” (89). Even doubting the validity of the Party’s ideology would be considered heresy, and Winston has the courage to incriminate himself simply to discover the truth. 

I discussed the role of sex in the society of 1984 in my last blog post, but the general conclusion was that the Party did not allow or approve of sex unless it was for the purpose of reproduction. Winston also breaks this rule in his relationship with Julia. Julia and Winston quickly develop a passionate romance, which is strictly forbidden among Party members.

Julia is nearly the opposite of Winston, appearing strong but lacking the desire for change that Winston has. First introduced as the girl with dark hair, Orwell begins to characterize her through Winston’s first impression. Winston first views her as a “bigoted [adherent] of the Party, the [swallower] of slogans, the amateur [spy] and noser-out of unorthodoxy” (10). Julia wears the scarlet chastity sash of the Junior Anti-Sex League, and she actively participates in The Hate (a two-minute video attacking Party enemies). Only when Winston receives her note saying “I love you” does he realize that she is against the Party. Julia has well adapted to hide feelings and present the perfect orthodox image; she is well guarded. 

Julia is also very methodical and practical which is shown by her well thought out plans to get away with her affair with Winston. Julia plans their meetings in incredible detail, knowing exactly how to meet up unobserved. Before their first excursion Julia details the plan to Winston, giving him a mental map of “a half-hour railway journey; turn left outside the station; two kilometers along the road; a gate with the top bar missing; a path across a field; a grass-grown lane; a track between bushes; a dead tree with moss on it” (115). Orwell uses her precision and attention to detail to characterize her as a logical and systematic character. 

Julia’s practicality is a trait she developed to satisfy her own selfishness. Julia is able to plan so methodically because she wants to appease her own desires. Julia is attracted to Winston, so she creates an elaborate plan to enable her to sleep with him. She has rebelled against the Party in this way “scores of times” (125), sleeping with Party members often. Julia believes that the Party simply wants “to rob you of your pleasures” (131), and she doesn’t really care about her lack of freedom in regards to anything else. All she wants is to be content. She doesn’t see the point of revolting against the Party when she can get what she wants by breaking a few rules and evading the law. Both Julia and Winston rebel against the Party, but Julia does it for pleasure while Winston does it because he disagrees with the principles of the party.

Although I’ve been given no reason to distrust her (especially since she is putting her own life at risk), I’m incredibly wary of Julia; in my mind, she’s going to get Winston killed, whether it’s because she’s a member of the thought police or because she’s an irresponsible 26-year-old. I wish the best for Winston (but not necessarily Julia) in the coming chapters.

~ Georgia

Chapters 1-6 of 1984

Hello and welcome to my blog on George Orwell’s 1984!

Going into this book, all I knew about was the idea of “Big Brother,” an omnipresent being that observes your every move. I’ve heard Big Brother mentioned in the discussion of the PATRIOT Act in whether or not it should be legal for the government to have the ability to see everything on our phones. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa constantly listen to what we say, waiting for specific voice cues, and this too has been linked to Big Brother’s ever-listening “telescreens.” With technological improvements, privacy in our society has gotten scarcer and scarcer, and at any point, someone has the ability to listen in on our lives. 

This was Orwell’s prediction for the year 1984, and while he was off by three decades, the picture he paints is not just fiction.

1984 begins by painting a grim picture of London, overgrown and gritty excluding the four “glittering white” ministries on which the three slogans of the “Party” are written:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH (7)

This immediately made me think of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and the motto of the World State: “Community, Identity, Stability.” After reading Brave New World, this motto is clearly ironic as there is no sense of community because there are no emotional connections between any of the people; there is a false sense of identity because the identities people do have are conditioned into them from birth; and while the World State may appear stable, all of its members are so unhappy that they rely on drugs to avoid the reality of their situation.

In my opinion, Orwell is employing a similar strategy with his slogans in 1984. Each slogan directly contradicts what people typically think. War and peace are complete opposites, so how can war be peace? The Party uses “war is peace” in an attempt to brainwash society into thinking their constant wars with Eurasia and Eastasia are good. By telling people that a traditionally bad thing that is happening is a good thing, you make it easier for them to accept and feel comfortable with that bad thing. The same is true with “ignorance is strength.” Ignorance is usually not a great thing while strength is, so it makes the people feel better about knowing nothing about what is going on around them, even though this slogan directly contradicts the common saying “knowledge is power.” The second slogan confused me at first. I initially thought it should have been the other way around: slavery is freedom. That would follow the structure of the other two and make slavery look like a good thing. However, in this case, the Party isn’t trying to make slavery look good; they are trying to make freedom look bad. The Party wants to minimize independence of opinion, so making freedom appear horrible like slavery would ideally eliminate people’s desire for their 1st Amendment freedoms (speech, assembly, petition, press, and religion-- all of which are “thought crimes”).  

Orwell intentionally uses the irony in these direct contradictions because it makes the slogans seem like total nonsense and clearly illogical to the reader. However, these slogans are actually effective in this society, and the fact that sayings so ridiculous are effective emphasizes the incredible amount of fear created by Big Brother’s propaganda. 

While reading, I also compared the role of sex in the society of 1984 to that in the World State of Brave New World and Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale. Sex is generally frowned upon by the Party, although they see it as a necessity for making children. “Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema.” (65). This reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale where the handmaids were only supposed to have sex during the ceremony, which I would feel comfortable describing as a “disgusting minor operation.” There is definitely no passion or love, and at least for Offred, there was no physical attraction. The importance of having a child is also a common factor between these two books, although the reasons differ. Both Gilead and the Party strip sex of love and leave it simply as an action to produce children.

At first, the World State’s policies around sex appear vastly different from those of the Party. The World State encourages people to have sex all the time because the society functions on pleasure and momentary happiness. This seems to contrast the ideas of the Party; however, it really isn’t all that different. Because it is so casual and common, sex in the World State is almost meaningless. Lenina, a highly conditioned member of the World State, is very promiscuous and is willing to have sex with nearly anyone, including Bernard, to whom she has no attraction. In both Brave New World and 1984, no one has sex because they are passionately in love with someone. It is done for a purpose, whether it’s to distract from the emptiness of your shallow lifestyle or to have a kid.

I enjoyed reading the first 70 pages of 1984, and I’m excited to see what happens in the readings to come!

~ Georgia

Orwell, George. 1984. New York, Penguin Group, 1977.