1984 Quotes

Question 1

Opening

Answer 1

• ‘if there’s hope, it lies in the proles’
• ‘There seemed to be no colour in anything, except the plastered everywhere’
• ‘victory mansions’
• ‘boiled cabbage’
• brown-coloured slums’
• ‘richness of the dark blue carpets’
• ‘the richness and the spaciousness of everything’
• ‘who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer’
• ‘it was a bright cold day in April, the clocks were striking thirteen
• ‘above the grimsy landscape’
• ‘swirl of gritty dust’
• ‘vile wind’
• ‘BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU’
• ‘which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall’

Question 2

Ministry of Love

Answer 2

• ‘you are the last man; you are the guardian of the human spirit’
• ‘a bowed, grey-coloured, skeleton-like thing was coming towards him’ ‘his body was grey all over with ancient, ingrained dirt’ ‘the barrel of the ribs was as narrow as that of a skeleton’
• ‘you are rotting away; you are falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. (..) do you see that thing facing you? That is the last of man. If you are human, that is humanity.’

Question 3

Memories and Thoughts

Answer 3

only the thought police mattered’
• ‘a single flicker of the eye could give you away’
• ‘but he did remember his Fathers’ hand clutching his as they hurried down’-
• ‘the two of them must have been swallowed up in one of the first great purges of the fifties’
• ‘had been sacrificed to his own’
• ‘had been tragic and sorrowful in a way that was no longer possible’

Question 4

symbols

Answer 4

• ‘a narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior anti-sex league’
• ‘Its smooth creamy paper’
• that wasn’t made less than a hundred years ago… it’s a beautiful thing’
• ‘Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearthstone (…) how small, thought Winston, how small it always was!’
• assassination”, “sabotage” and even “[murdering] his wife”
• 2+2=5

Question 5

characterization

Answer 5

his hair was almost white, but his eyebrows were bushy and still black’
‘he was wearing an aged jacket of black velvet’
‘his accent less debased than that of the majority of the proles’
‘nevertheless worked a complete transformation’
‘syme ceased to exist’
‘syme swallowed it’
‘they got me a long time ago’
‘mass of imbecilic enthusiasm’
‘fat, obnoxious and old’