Critical QUotes

Question 1

Orwell - Propaganda

Answer 1

‘I believe deeply in the English people’
‘Disbelief in the existence of objective truth’
‘Two and two could become five if the Fuhrer wished it’

Question 2

Daniel Bell (1949) - FEAR

Answer 2

‘A human society stripped of the last shreds of community’
‘Fear and anxiety the daily staple of life’

Question 3

Atwood - Resisting tyranny similarities

Answer 3

‘The force that opposes the tyranny in my book is one in which Orwell himself… always put great store: ordinary human decency’

Question 3

James Schellenberg (1999) - Construction of Society

Answer 3

‘This big brother society is too well-constructed to break apart in the face of one man’s resistance’

Question 4

Bossche - Individual & bravery

Answer 4

‘In Winston’s struggle for emancipation he stands alone’

Question 5

John Atkins (1954) - Winston

Answer 5

‘He was a weak creature who was born to be victimised’

Question 6

Norman Podhoretz - Ideology

Answer 6

‘Orwell’s ruling passion was the fear and hatred of totalitarianism’

Question 7

Deidre Beddoe - WOMEN

Answer 7

‘She is totally incapable of understanding the motives which drive Winston to revolt’
‘Orwell’s self-proclaimed egalitarianism should have extended beyond the plight of the working-class man to the working class woman’

Question 8

Schama - Memory

Answer 8

‘The last refuge against Big Brother is memory. Romantic devotion to the past’ -

Question 9

Russian 1950s interpretation

Answer 9

Oceania is present day America. Big brother and the thought police were FBI

Question 10

Jem Berkes - Language

Answer 10

Language becomes a method of mind control with the ultimate goal being the destruction of will and imagination

Question 11

Crick - Not Prophecy

Answer 11

‘It is not a prophecy, it is plainly a satire’

Question 12

Yeo - Surveillance

Answer 12

Propaganda and surveillance are not just accidentally related, but essentially linked

Question 13

Kristoffer Rissanen - Individual v Society

Answer 13

‘The Party isolates every individual, destroying all social bonds’

Question 14

Phelan - Warning

Answer 14

Orwell’s great achievement was to convince us that O’Brien was, indeed, possible

Question 15

Kristoffer Rissanen - Winston’s willingness to rebel

Answer 15

Believes that Winston’s willingness to rebel had been planted in him BY the party the whole time.

Question 16

Orwell and Theocracy

Answer 16

‘totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy.’

Question 17

Lynch - Stalin

Answer 17

‘There are many parallels between Big Brother and Stalin’

Question 18

Gottlieb - Memory

Answer 18

The act of memory is an act of resistance against the totalitarian state

Question 18

Berkes - Power of Media (2 points)

Answer 18

‘The media is a powerful tool for manipulation both because the public is widely opposed to it and because the public trusts it’