On Teaching 1984

[freesqueeze]

ANy ideas on themes from 1984. I'm teaching it now and I'm having problems keeping my politics from spilling out on the floor.

What does this book mean to you?

What are some more subtle ties to modern times?

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength

[Captain Angry]

1. It's important to listen to what is said, and then make sure it's true.

There is no point in taking someone's word as the truth, be it the President, your teacher or even your parents. Trust what is said, be respectful of the source, but make sure the information is true.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

If a group of people is mad at something, figure out why they're mad, and who told them to be mad about it. Is there more to the story than what you've been told?


Just a few thoughts for you.



Edit: SOMEBODY doesn't know how to use punctuation properly.

[freesqueeze]

4. Thank you Captain...

This idea of malable history would be an interesting sureal class learning moment. I could just tell them that we did something on Monday and when they argue, I could show my appointment book fixed to fit my new lie.

I also love your point of asking angry people who told them to be angry about it. But, are manipulated people aware of the manipulation?

[Captain Angry]

6. I think the appointment book idea is excellent.

But you'd have to do it with something small. If time allowed shift it twice to show how you can change things if you do it in small ways with things people don't pay full attention to.

And the chocolate rations issue could be handled in a similar way. We're increasing the time available on your test to 45 minutes.

"But didn't it used to be 50 minutes?"

Love it.

[Eric J in MN]

2. Alberto Gonzales wants internet companies to record

...every website their customers visit, so that law enforcement can access that information.

That will be Big Brotherish if they agree to it.

[whistle]

3. I would have great difficulty seperating politics from social meaning

...only because I think Orwell wrote the book specifically because he feared all forms of totalitarian governments and the means which they employed to maintain control and power over their societies. In my teens I saw the B&W film which was released in 1956 starring Edmond O'Brien and Jan Sterling:

Directed by Michael Anderson
Produced by N. Peter Rathvon
Written by Ralph Gilbert Bettison
William Templeton
George Orwell (novel)
Starring Edmond O'Brien
Jan Sterling
Music by Malcolm Arnold
Cecil Milner
Cinematography Pennington-Richards
Editing by Bill Lewthwaite
Release date(s) 1956
Running time 90 min.
Country UK
Language English


There is also an excellent discussion about the book here:

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

[CGowen]

5. It's not like Orwell was the only one.

His experiences in war and media etc., shaped him and showed him where the world is heading.



Here is an interesting article comparing Brave New World, Kafka and 1984 with now
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070311_future.htm

[ChairmanAgnostic]

7. mention that there are 294 surveillance camera zones in

a central area of Chicago's loop (inside the L tracks) By camera zones, I mean digital, roaming, zooming, and apparently several views at the same time.

In Central London, ignoring the Tube Station cameras, there are more than 1100 surveilance video cameras. They can follow a pedestrian (forwards and backwards), a car passenger and a bus rider every single instance they are in the area.

The NSA checks each and every email that crosses this country's borders, using AI technology for codes (A red flag) content, and recipient information.

THere is no place to hide from big brother.

[sarge43]

8. Concentrate on language then and how it can be twisted to

manipulate people and in the process become debased. Orwell wrote several essays on the subject. You should find them useful.

edited for typo.

[Whoa_Nelly]

9. There are all sorts of online lesson plans for 1984

Such as:

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/orwell.html

http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/programs/1984/

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=933

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/science-fiction/activity/3305.html

[jwirr]

10. Propaganda can be tied to commercials and other media programs.

Students should learn how to tell the difference. One of my favorite teachers said the only thing we needed to learn about propaganda was to ask, "How do you know?" He was referring to the validity of the sources.

[Boojatta]

11. Why not simply gather points until you see themes emerge?

Before Winston had met Julia and she secretly handed him a folded piece of paper with a message on it, why did he think that the paper must have had a political meaning, that she was either a member of the Thought Police or a member of the underground Brotherhood?

Winston Smith's job is fabricating and falsifying information for the government. Why is he impressed when he has in his hands a scrap of newspaper that shows that information is falsified by the government?

Julia says she is not interested in the next generation, but only in "us" (meaning herself and Winston). Why does she join Winston in going to visit O'Brien?

When for the first time in his life, Winston is looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police, who is he looking at?

Why is Winston surprised to see that Parsons was arrested? What message is there in the fact that Parsons was arrested?

Why does Winston trust O'Brien so much that, when he first meets O'Brien after being arrested, he cries out, "They got you too"?

Near the beginning of the book, Syme says that Proles aren't human beings. Near the middle of the book, Winston says, "The proles are human beings. We are not human." Why do these characters say these things?

O'Brien says that the heretic will always be there so that he can be defeated and humiliated again. However, he also tells Winston that if Winston is a man then Winston is the last man. Is there a contradiction in that?

O'Brien says that the German Nazis and Russian Communists didn't have the courage to recognize their own motives. Why does he say that?

O'Brien says that the proles will never revolt and that Winston Smith knows the reason why. What is the reason?

What is the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism?

[valerief]

12. Prolefeed.

What are modern examples of prolefeed (which divert the citizenry from becoming aware of what and who controls their daily lives)?

The eternal war and Iraq. Any similarities?

[idgiehkt]

17. yes.

I think that that is a very important part of that book. How Orwell portrays the proles as being easily controlled and that could be tied in with the attempts by the right to increase the size of the proletariat, which has been going on since the 'trickle down' 80's beginning at least with Reagan's cutting Pell Grants so student don't have as many educational options.

[freesqueeze]

18. Yes, the Proles'

lack of interest in anything meaningful is interesting. I asked the class how many Americans dies in Iraq last week ...... silence. Then I asked who got voted off American Idol .... passionate and thoughtful discourse.

He who controls the present controls the future.

[Igel]

13. There are a couple of external things I'd point to.

Petr Fidelius (pseudonym) wrote a book called "Language and Power" (in Czech: Jazyk a moc). It circulated in samizdat before, late in the game, getting printed in an underground edition. In it, among other things, he examines the speeches of Czechoslovak politicians and newspaper articles. The "people" and "the party" shift imperceptibly in the course of many speeches and articles, where the the country = people = the party = the party leadership, and then the entire sequence gets turned around. In 1968, it seems, a majority engaged in a vast act of self-repression mediated by their politicians: the people = the leadership imposed draconian and unpopular measures on the people, and the people were told it was for their own good where "their" refers to the party leadership (in violation of every binding principle).

You see the same thing in the writings of many politicians and political types, where the "people" only includes those of the correct political or economic or classist bent; it's a clever way of linguistically disempowering and dehumanizing the other. Sapir-Worf tried to say that our surroundings and behavior are largely (if not entirely) determined by our language; something that an English prof I talked to in 1996 believed was cutting edge linguistic theory, and which I had to point out had few serious followers since the '60s, and many detractors even then.

The other point is the whole range of dystopian novels that resulted from rapid change, economically, politically, and technologically. I'll be teaching a course on Russian lit this summer (if sufficient students sign up), and I'm seriously toying with the idea of including Zamyatin's "We".

One question to ask: Is it obvious if Orwell was talking about the National Socialists, the "agrarian reformer" in the works in China, or the wonderful Soviet system, or what they all have in common?

[Berry Cool]

14. One good theme is the one about controlling thought by controlling language.

The idea that if there is no word for something, people will no longer be able to think about it. So you can control what people think about and what they don't think about simply by rewriting the dictionaries to take away the words for things you don't want people to think.

[freesqueeze]

15. That is an interesting idea

I recently read a biography of Isaac Newton. It claimed that he had his theories of motion worked out in his head first and then spent a few years creating and popularizing the terms he needed to explain them before publishing.

If there's not a word for it, does it exist?

[smoogatz]

16. Start with some background.

Talk about dystopian novels in general--why write one? What's the point? Dystopian novels are really a genre apart from most literary fiction, in that their authors intend to impart a political "moral." If you talk about Orwell's intent, there's really no way to seperate the discussion of the book from discussion of politics--unless they're complete dolts, your students will see the connnections immediately. Let the students take the lead in that discussion as much as you can; just keep asking questions (what's Orwell saying about a government that spies on its own people? How does the Big Brother government use war to justify totalitarianism?). Remember that "1984" is a parable or cautionary tale--what's Orwell warning us about?