Dialectical Journal For 1984 Part 1

Ariana Dalmau
Mrs. Stevenson
Pre AP English II
July 13, 2015
1984 Part One, Chapter One
Summary
An occurrence at work that morning pushes Winston to start writing an illegal diary.
“He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with balks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions?” (Orwell 3) The above quote develops the setting and theme in 1984 because it demonstrates the physical ways the Party controls its denizens. Denizens in Oceania face poor living conditions. Winston regards London

It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing” (Orwell 3). This quote represents Winston very well because it shows his fatalistic nature. Knowing his is constantly under surveillance, he tries to retain what little privacy he has. He knows his every move is being watched and analyzed, yet he still tries to give as little away from his body language as possible. In a sense, it is as if Winston is turning from Big Brother himself. By being reluctant to show his face to the telescreen, he is showing he has things to hide and does not want the thought police to know them. His keeping his back the telescreen foreshadows his future, more major revolts against the Party. Winston represents the protagonist, the underdog the reader follows throughout the novel. His purpose in the novel as a main character is to show the reader what it is like to live in a society with a totalitarian government. The government controls every aspect of his life, except his mind. When he rebels, they take even that from him and bend it to their will. He shows the reader the dangers of a totalitarian

Throughout the novel, the Party systematically destroys and information they say is not correct and replaces it with information they say is. For example, the Party claims they invented the airplane, but the reader knows they were created by the Wright brothers. Winston himself has a job in the Ministry of Truth “rectifying” Times articles. By controlling the past, the Party is able to justify the wrongs they do in the present. This creates the mentality in denizens that the Party can do no wrong because there is no proof of their wrongs. The Party is always right. Even if they are not right, they just adjust history so that what they say is