Quotes Flashcards
Winston as an unlikeable anti-hero
O’Brien asks if he’d be willing to “throw sulphuric acid in a child’s face” if the Brotherhood asked
Winston immediately says “Yes”
he is just as bad as the Party if he’s willing to commit such evil acts
description of O’Brien
“large, burly man with a thick neck and brutal face”
love and loyalty being destroyed
“There will be no loyalty except loyalty to the Party. There will be no love except the love of Big Brother” — O’Brien
destruction of all emotion except fear, rage, etc
“In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self abasement. Everything else we shall destroy” — O’Brien
Winston and Julia betraying eachother
“Do it to Julia”
“Tear her face off”
“she betrayed you… immediately, unreservedly”
destruction of the family
“We have cut the links between child and parent and man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child any longer” — O’Brien
Parsons daughter turning him in for whispering in his sleep
“she listened at the keyhole”
Goldstein
“the Enemy of the People”
Winston’s memory
“he could not remember, nothing remained of his childhood”
“even the date of the year had become uncertain”
the Party’s rewriting of history
“every record has been destroyed…. every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted”
the Party vaporising people
“every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out and your existence was denied”
“you were abolished, vaporised”
O’Brien describing Winston as the last man, alone in the world
“If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man”
“Do you understand that you are alone?”
lack of hope for the future + indoctrination of children into the Junior Spies
“nearly all children nowadays were horrible”
“systematically turned into ungovernable little savages”
“they adored the Party”
“‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy”
Winston being alone
“He was alone… what certainty did he have that a single human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure forever?”
Winston’s fatalism
“We are the dead”
“he was already dead”
“from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse”
Julia rebelling purely for her own enjoyment, possessing no capability or ambition to free herself from her oppression
“a rebel from the waist down”
Winston’s naivety and judgment being clouded, even when things are obvious
“they’ve got you too!”
foreshadowing Winston’s defeat
“and here comes a chopper to chop off your head”
the Party’s control of the present, future and past — absolute control
“who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past”
“The Party controls all records and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?”
constant surveillance, even body language can give someone away
“even a back can be revealing”
inescapable propaganda, constant surveillance, a reminder that WInston is being watched constantly
“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”
Winston writing rebellious thoughts in his diary
“DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER”
the Party slogans
“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength”
control of the mind and reality, no such thing as objective truth
“in the end the Party would announce that two and two make five, and you would have to believe it”
Julia’s thoughts on rebellion and revolution
“any kind of organised revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid”
“the clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same”
freedom of the mind
“freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four”
so when Winston writes 2+2=5 in the table and the end of the book, it symbolises his defeat and complete lack of freedom
Winston’s hope in the proles
“if there was hope, it lay in the proles”
last line of the book, Winston’s defeat, lack of hope
“he loved Big Brother”
no escape from the Party
“sooner or later they were bound to get you”
the power of physical pain and torture, turning people on eachother, destruction of love and loyalty, selfish human nature
“You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself”
destruction of language to quell rebellion
“we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”
Winston and Julia’s belief in their love for eachother
“if they could make me stop loving you — that would be the real betrayal”
Winston and Julia’s naive belief that the Party cannot control your mind, which proves to be wrong
“they can make you say anything… but they can’t make you believe it, they can’t get inside you”
inability to question the Party
“the simple question ‘was life better before the Revolution than it is now?’ would have ceased once and for all to be answerable”
significance of the coral paperweight
“what appealed to him about [the coral paperweight] was…. the air it seemed to possess of belonging to an age quite different from the present one”
“the paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal”
rewriting of history — impact on the human mind, how this keep the Party in control, inability to question the Party
“the Party member, like the proletarian, tolerates present day conditions because he has no standards of comparison”
“when memory failed and written records were falsified…. the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted”
“there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested”
sex as rebellion
“the sexual act… was rebellion, desire was thoughtcrime”
“it was a blow struck against the Party, it was a political act”
Winston’s reaction to Julia having multiple sexual partners
“the more men you’ve had, the more i love you… i hate purity, i hate goodness, i want everyone to be corrupt to the bones”
eradication of independent thought
“there will be no thought, as we understand it now”
orthodoxy means….
“orthodoxy means not thinking…. orthodoxy is unconsciousness”