G. Thompson
Let's talk about the National Anthem. Last year Colin Kaepernick and, later, a few of his 49er teammates knelt during the Star-Spangled Banner to protest the killing of African-Americans by police (Black Lives Matter). Kaepernick hasn't been signed to a pro team, though that could change; on Sunday at NFL games, dozens of players knelt during the anthem, others (including coaches and owners) locked arms in solidarity with the protest, and almost the entire team of the Pittsburgh Steelers stayed in the locker room until after the anthem. This was in response to tweets from President Trump chastising professional athletes for "politicizing" sport. (Steph Curry announced that he would not visit the White House with the Golden State Warriors, whereupon Trump disinvited the team.)
There's a lot of pressure associated with the symbols of patriotism / national unity. In a crowd, it's hard to avoid standing up, holding your hand over your heart, saluting the flag; it's hard to be the one non-participant in the Pledge of Allegiance. Imagining ourselves in that position may give us a better feel for Winston and others during the Two Minutes' Hate--the power of social conformity is considerable.
Kneeling during the anthem--Tim Tebow did that when he was playing professionally, and no one objected. Why?
The NFL is late to the party in objecting to racism: it took many years past Brown vs. Board of Ed for there to be a black quarterback in the NFL--with the Washington Redskins the last to bring in black players, at LBJ's insistence.
Sports in Nineteen Eighty-Four are part of the diversions for the proles, beneath Orwell's attention--but in our time they tie in with public issues, and are part of the mixture of discourse that feeds into propaganda.
Comments on the informal writing--see above. We should have warm-up writing on Wed. for the next informal, but not parceled out as we did last week. Focus for Wed. will be more on The Book, so reread those sections. Today we will probably deal more with plot events: Winston hooks up with Julia; how do they evade capture (until they don't); how does Julia oppose the Party; what is the meeting with O'Brien like; comments on the prole woman and her singing.
In-class writing--to start discussion.
Name three things from book two that we should discuss in today's class, and write briefly about their importance. Include page numbers (if our edition) (3-5 min.) Bold face below are mine.
105-106 The girl stumbles--look less of pain than of fear. She gives him a slip of paper, which he contemplates reading in the WC, but saves to put casually on his desk. He reads it, but cannot find a good time to talk with her.
Later--is it love if it's an act of resistance against the Party?
113 Planned meeting in Victory Square--they can talk in the crowd.
115 Eurasian prisoners--plans . .
117 Dangers in travel
120 Winston is 39, not in good health--she doesn't care.
122 Julia uses coarse language, which surprises Winston
125 Julia has done this before; sex is "a political act" (126)
129 "If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones."
Why do they get caught? I don't mean because they booked the room with Mr. Carrington. Do they overreach? Or was their capture predetermined, because the Party captures everyone?
130 Books were just a commodity that had to be produced . . . that sounds like Barnes and Noble or Amazon.
Julia produces porn, sold secretly
131 It's a game for her--break the rules and don't get caught. Revolt is pointless.
132 Winston's wife is goodthinkful--"meaning naturally orthodox, incapable of thinking a bad thought." It would be interesting to consider a book written from the POV of Katherine.
132-33 Sexual privation brings about hysteria, which is used to whip up fervor for political uses.
134 Winston remembers thinking about giving Katherine a good shove into the quarry.
136 Dispute over "we are the dead." See later use.
Winston's taken Mr. Charrington's room. Talk about the need for privacy. Prole woman singing a song furnished by the Party--drivel written by machine. Discuss--if the woman likes it, and gives it almost a good performance, isn't it art? Elitism on Orwell's part? Can there be good art from a machine?
140 Julia brings some real coffee, sugar, etc.
144 Julia sees a rat--Winston's reaction
145 They talk about the coral paperweight--it has no particular use.
take the picture down and clean behind it . . . just as well they didn't yet.
147 Syme has vanished. Name crossed off the chess committee list.
148 Activities for Hate Week--top-to-bottom propaganda
Bombs--useful for motivating people. Why no atomic bombs? [explained later] Julia thinks the bombs are from Oceania itself (153)
151 rhymes
The room itself was sanctuary
152 Possibility of joining the Brotherhood--but how to find them?
153-54 Julia isn't as interested as Winston in the truth. Doesn't matter--the news is all lies anyway.
156 She's only a rebel from the waist downwards. [What if Julia became pregnant?]
Discuss Julia's attitude--why be concerned about truth and lies? Discuss both as an effect of propaganda and as a practical attitude.
157 Contact from O'Brien. Reference to an unnamed friend--Syme, presumably. Pretense to give Winston his address and a purpose to call.
I wonder whether anyone ever moves from Outer Party to Inner Party.
160 Dream about his mother--demands for more food--grabbing chocolate.
164 "The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world."
166 Julia--"I'm rather good at staying alive." Discussion about what they will do once arrested--they will of course betray the other. But "They can't get inside you" to make you stop loving the other person.
167 Julia and Winston arrive at O'Brien's flat.
168 O'Brien dictates a message in Newspeak.
169 O'Brien can turn off the telescreen.
170 O'Brien serves them some wine. Toast to Goldstein; what are they prepared to do? Catechism.
174 Description of conspiracy--isolated from anyone else, for everyone's protection. ". . . an understanding tinged by irony." Nothing holds the Brotherhood together except an idea.
177 Copy of the Book.
178 "in the place where there is no darkness."
179 Back to work for the Party.
Fatigue from Hate Week--Oceania is at war with Eastasia--everything has to change. "The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed. "
184 The Book--large chunks reproduced here. Exegesis of the Party's slogans. This is exactly what cannot be reproduced in film adaptations (that and the appendix about Newspeak).
186 War is limited--no real ideological differences. There's nothing to fight about.
187 Area they are fighting over--natural resources.
188 The purpose of the war is to use up products without increasing the general standard of living (!). Advances depended upon empirical thought, which is not in the interests of those in power.
190 If everyone becomes wealthier, social hierarchies will disappear.
193 Search for new weapons is where real research is done.
The party wants to extinguish independent thought.
Psychologists--means of better interrogations.
Atomic bombs--stockpiled against the possibility that others will use them. Orwell is quite prescient here.
196 Can't conquer territory without killing or absorbing the inhabitants
Ideologies have different names (Neo-Bolshevism, Death-worship). Same social structure--three levels of society, personality cult, economy based on continuous warfare.
197 The key feature of Ingsoc and other systems is denial of reality.
201 Julia arrives, Winston begins to read aloud from the beginning. The High want to stay where they are; the Middle wants to change places with the High. The Low wants to abolish all distinctions. The Middle makes common cause with the Low, and then shafts them.
Socialism loses its idealistic character and its adherents want to freeze things as they are.
"By the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian." (204)
205 New aristocrats--"bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians." The people Trump supporters consider to be elite (except that there aren't listed any celebrities). More open-minded, dedicated, cruel. That's what happens when you don't have a competing ideology such as religion to soften the edges.
"The invention of print . . . made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further." Then television and the two-way technology of the telescreen. No privacy any more.
206 new owners as a group, not individuals. Supposedly this is collectivism, but controlled by the Party for the sustaining of its own power. This is a reasonably fair description of the USSR during the communist period. Now there is an oligarchy and authoritarian regime, but without ideology.
207 Fall from power--conquest from outside, inefficient governance and revolt of masses, or middle group takes over, or loss of willingness to govern. Only the last is a real danger.
208 No one has ever seen Big Brother--he's just a face on the telescreen. "Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world." At least Lenin and Stalin and Hitler were real people who could die. A fictional character, like a corporation, could be immortal.
Inner Party--6 million, or 2% of Oceania's population (which must therefore be 300 million).
Outer Party--"hands"--this would be 13%
Proles--85%
208 To get to the Inner Party you have to pass examinations. No racial barriers. Ambitious members of the Outer Party are allowed to rise.
English as lingua franca (define)--that must have caused problems for Latin America.
209-10 "adaptive organizations such as the Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years."
210 Proles are kept ignorant so they cannot become a danger.
210-11 Party members are always under observation by the Thought Police. (How many of them are there?)
211 No formal structure of law--you are supposed to know, without instruction, what is appropriate.
Newspeak words crimestop, blackwhite, doublethink. See 212 ff.
"Applied to an opponent, [blackwhite] means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this"--also to believe it and to know it.
Doublethink--alteration of the past. "The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc." (213) It's a matter of mental discipline. Cf. Lewis Carroll, thinking three impossible things before breakfast.
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."
Conscious deception along with firmness of purpose (214).
215 "In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane." War hysteria increases as you go higher up.
216 Transgression of everything socialism stood for--contempt for the working class, etc. Names of ministries "exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts." Exercises in doublethink.
216 Why? Why do this? Here's where Winston stops reading.
218 Nap, waking to woman singing. The stove is off. (Uh-oh.) The woman is "beautiful," even though she's a meter across the hips.
220 Winston surmises that the book's secret is that the future belongs to the proles.
221 Believe that 2 + 2 = 4. "We are the dead." . . . "You are the dead." Timing.
Why do they spring apart? I would hold on until the last second.
Rhyme--"Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head."
Police are arriving.
223 Broken paperweight.
224 Mr. Charrington comes in--reaction to paperweight.