Quotes --> Themes

Question 1

“Though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him”

Answer 1

Technique(s): Symbolism, Foreshadowing

Theme(s): Propaganda, constant surveillance, impermeable nature of the party and its control over individuals.

Question 2

“Simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on”

Answer 2

Technique(s): Descriptive Imagery –> Imagery –> Symbolism

Theme(s): Individual freedoms, freedom of expression and action.

Question 3

“their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory”

Answer 3

Technique(s): Metaphor, Irony

Theme(s): Suppression of sexual instincts and freedoms

Question 4

“To make speech… as nearly as possible independent of consciousness”

Answer 4

Technique(s): Written in standard English. Disrupts narrative. Tone is factual and monotone.

Theme(s): Deconstruction of language.

Question 5

“The past is whatever the records and memories agree upon… the past is whatever the party chooses to make it”

Answer 5

Technique(s): Anaphora

Theme(s): Fragile and unreliable nature of memory

Question 6

[Gabriel Garcia Marquez] “what matters is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it”

Answer 6

Technique(s): (Critic Quote)

Theme(s): Fragile and unreliable nature of memory

Question 7

“mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were intolerable”

Answer 7

Technique(s): Symbolism, Oxymoron

Theme(s): Hope, innate human nature to overcome oppression.

Question 8

“Bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force”

Answer 8

Technique(s): Metaphor

Theme(s): Freedom of expression

Question 9

“The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself”

Answer 9

Technique(s): Paradox

Theme(s): Doublethink

Question 10

“Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word”

Answer 10

Technique(s): Symbolic of the extreme limitations of rebellion.

Theme(s): Rebellion

Question 11

“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious”

Answer 11

Technique(s): Paradox by chiasmus emphasises its impossibility

Theme(s): Rebellion, consciousness as an integral aspect of change.

Question 12

“the party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals”

Answer 12

Technique(s): Simile of Zoomorphism

Theme(s): Motif of proles as animals.

Question 13

“Proles and animals are free”

Answer 13

Technique(s): Zoomorphism

Theme(s): Motif of proles and animals as the spirit of humanity

Question 14

“Like birds, passion on from body to body the vitality which the party did not share and could not kill”

Answer 14

Technique(s): Zoomorphism, simile

Theme(s): Motif of proles and animals. Animals symbolic of spirit.

Question 15

“The birds sag, the proles sang, the party did not sing.”

Answer 15

Technique(s): Zoomorphism, Objective correlative of “song”

Theme(s): Singing as freedom of speech

Question 16

“passed on the secret doctrine that two plus two make four”

Answer 16

Technique(s): Metaphor, Objective Correlative

Theme(s): Logic as the basis of human intuition and sanity and language and expression

Question 17

“‘It exists!’ He cried. ‘No’, said O’brien”

Answer 17

Technique(s): Dialogue

Theme(s): Interpreting reality

Question 18

“Winston stopped reading. Chiefly in order to appreciate the fact that he was reading,”

Answer 18

Technique(s): Epistrophe

Theme(s): Deconstruction of language, Hope

Question 19

“We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves”

Answer 19

Technique(s): Metaphor

Theme(s): Power, lack of individuality

Question 20

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed”

Answer 20

Technique(s): Anaphora, hyperbole

Theme(s): Dehumanising nature of the party

Question 21

“then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?”

Answer 21

Technique(s): Symbolism

Theme(s): Innate human ability to resist oppression.

Question 22

“Everyone is cured sooner or later”

Answer 22

Technique(s): Irony of ‘cure’

Theme(s): Dehumanisation

Question 23

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” [politics and the English language]

Answer 23

Technique(s): Chiasmus

Theme(s): Cognitive thought and its relationship with language

Question 24

“We’re destroying words- scores of them, hundreds of them every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone.”

Answer 24

Technique(s): Irony, metaphor.

Theme(s): Deconstruction of language

Question 25

“In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it”

Answer 25

Technique(s): Irony

Theme(s): Deconstruction of language

Question 26

“The power of holding two contradicting beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them”

Answer 26

Technique(s): Paradox

Theme(s): Doublethink

Question 27

“If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable- what then?”

Answer 27

Technique(s): Rhetorical Question

Theme(s): Objective truths

Question 28

“It is not easy to become sane”

Answer 28

Technique(s): Irony

Theme(s): Ambiguity of reality

Question 29

“Childhood except a series of brightly lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible”

Answer 29

Technique(s): Metaphor

Theme(s): Deconstruction of familial unit

Question 30

“Dust in the creases of her face”

Answer 30

Technique(s): Symbolism

Theme(s): Freedom of expression, dehumanisation

Question 31

“He had won the victory over himself, he loved big brother”

Answer 31

Technique(s): Bathos

Theme(s): Love, family, struggle