Analysis of Prose Passage #1

Passage #1 From Novel (Re-type or photo copy the passage in this column) George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four

Analysis of Close Reading (Essentially a prose passage or poetry essay; synthesize the texture of the passage to the left.)

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth. Just once in his life he had possessed -- after the event: that was what counted -- concrete, unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification. He had held it between his fingers for as long as thirty seconds. In 1973, it must have been -- at any rate, it was at about the time when he and Katharine had parted. But the really relevant date was seven or eight years earlier. The story really began in the middle sixties, the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all. By 1970 none of them was left, except Big Brother himself. All the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and counter-revolutionaries. Goldstein had fled and was hiding no one knew where, and of the others, a few had simply disappeared, while the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials at which they made confession of their crimes. Among the last survivors were three men named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. It must have been in 1965 that these three had been arrested. As often happened, they had vanished for a year or more, so that one did not know whether they were alive or dead, and then had suddenly been brought forth to incriminate themselves in the usual way. They had confessed to intelligence with the enemy (at that date, too, the enemy was Eurasia), embezzlement of public funds, the murder of various trusted Party members, intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother which had started long before the Revolution happened, and acts of sabotage causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people. After confessing to these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important. All three had written long, abject articles in The Times, analysing the reasons for their defection and promising to make amends. Some time after their release Winston had actually seen all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He remembered the sort of terrified fascination with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were men far older than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost the last great figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The glamour of the underground struggle and the civil war still faintly clung to them. He had the feeling, though already at that time facts and dates were growing blurry, that he had known their names years earlier than he had known that of Big Brother. But also they were outlaws, enemies, untouchables, doomed with absolute certainty to extinction within a year or two. No one who had once fallen into the hands of the Thought Police ever escaped in the end. They were corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave” (Orwell 86-87).

·         Through a censorship of contemporary novels, language, advertisements, our personal thoughts and our private lives the Party is able to conceal what Winston Smith believes to be “unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification” (Orwell 86). ·         Time, usually an indicator of how we have progressed in our moral character throughout our lives, remains trivial to Winston, who confesses that “the really relevant date was seven or eight year earlier” when referencing the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford (Orwell 86). ·         George Orwell foreshadows how the totalitarian dictatorships following World War II will inevitably fail when having Winston acknowledges that there was a “period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out” (Orwell 86). ·         Nineteen Eighty-Four o       Publication date was 1949, four years following the conclusion of World War II ·         Opposition to the Party would be undermined through extensive interrogations, resulting in the criminals “incriminat[ing] themselves in the usual way” (Orwell 86). ·         Contrast between the actual truth and the Party’s manipulation of the truth o       Winston astutely observes that “at that date, too, the enemy was Eurasia” (Orwell 86-87). o       Winston, differentiating himself from the devout followers of the Party, is able to speculate on the pervasive hypocrisies prevalent throughout the statements being made by the members of the Party ·         The disillusionment initiated by the propagandistic devices and the Party’s unrelenting manipulation of factual evidence enhances the image of Big Brother o       Endearing sentiment that the government is identical to one of your family members, who wants to protect you o       Eventually, this investment of trust in the Party deprecates the morality of the individual who begin to analyze “the reasons for their defection and promising to make amends” (Orwell 87). ·         Existentialism becomes increasingly apparent to Winston Smith, who theorizes that once you were captured by the Thought Police, you were “doomed with absolute certainty to extinction within a year or two” (Orwell 87). ·         Consideration of the prospect of death o       Winston postulates that the only factor in his life that he can control is his mortality as a human §         Sense of empowerment that you could end your life on your own terms, immunized against the Party