https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916 Place two or three interesting points on this wall. Remember to reference your readings en-us 2018-09-03 05:51:38 UTC 2023-03-27 01:03:19 UTC hello@padlet.com aidencope2k https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277395441 "If Man would behave decently then men would be decent.]]> 2018-09-04 01:53:28 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277395441 aidencope2k https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277395774 Major plot failure - principal action does not begin until Part 2. It is not until Part 2 that Winston and Julia begin their fated affair. The explanatory nature & long build-up of Part 1 renders the plot itself fairly predictable. Thus the conflict between Winston & Julia and the Party, the inevitable force, is seriously weakened and the conclusion loses a necessary tragic dimension. ]]> 2018-09-04 01:55:58 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277395774 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277395777 Focuses the effect of the perspective (the fact it in third person and the POV of Winston) of the book and the choice of language to represent the power, powerplay and people power. Rooney also focuses on the power of ‘three’ i.e.  triads, slogans, superpowers (Oceania, Eurasia, Eastasia)]]> 2018-09-04 01:56:00 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277395777 aidencope2k https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277396767 1984 contextually became an embodiment of all the postwar terrors; appearing after the atomic bomb, during first years of UN, just as Soviet Union was approaching full nuclear capability. ]]> 2018-09-04 02:02:47 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277396767 stewart_mcgowan https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277787061 http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/george-orwells-six-rules-for-writing-clear-and-tight-prose.html]]> 2018-09-04 23:44:13 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277787061 stewart_mcgowan https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277787452 "The more work they do, the less visible they are"

Orwell's relationship with the working class drew criticism in his lifetime from communists because he saw them as being 'ordinary' rather than a revolutionary force. Orwell's attitidude undercut Communist rhetoric. ]]> 2018-09-04 23:47:06 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277787452 stewart_mcgowan https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277787808 'Not only do the two main characters suffer because of the overabundance of machinery, but they themselves lack real depth or complexity' (Outside the Whale, Kubal)

Is this fair? Aren't complex characters part of the view of literature as art? Orwell's purpose is didactic rather than artistic.]]> 2018-09-04 23:49:29 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277787808 stewart_mcgowan https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277788393 In 'Outside the Whale', Kubal was critical of Orwell for the weaknesses in the characterisation of Winston and Julia. He maintained that they lacked 'real depth or complexity'. However, this comments ignores Orwell's purpose: he did not wish to create an artistic novel, well-made according to the conventions of the novel, but a didactic one. His desire to have an impact on English society explains the inclusion of the excerpt from Goldberg's writings in the text of the novel, and the appendix that follows the end of the book. ]]> 2018-09-04 23:53:10 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277788393 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277789079 “My recent novel is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralised economy is liable and which have already been partly realised in Communism and Fascism.”

-Orwell, defending his work from misinterpretation, shortly after its publication

(An Anti-Utopia - Meyer]]> 2018-09-04 23:57:09 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/277789079 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278221851 It was from his time making wartime broadcasts to India for the BBC that Orwell began to concentrate on the idea of history and falsification. He could see events being mutated into propaganda before his very eyes.

This is a slight but definite prefiguration of the scenes in the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where certain political figures are suddenly deemed to be “unpersons” and where rapid changes of wartime allegiance necessitate the hectic re-writing of recent history.]]> 2018-09-05 23:12:45 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278221851 aidencope2k https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278222521 If 1984 directly opposes the dream of human perfectibility, it also explicitly dramatises the underlying but never realised dread of all tragedy. In the classic form of tragedy, this dread; the doubt about man's essential worth, is put to rest - if not always easily - at least in the final movement; Orwell, on the other hand carries the tragic uncertainty in his last novel to its logical and inevitable conclusion. And that end is shown most poignantly in the scene where O'Brien seeks to destroy Winston's belief in humanity.
To confute him the inquisitor describes Winston's terrifying emaciation and then says, "You are rotting away'...'you are falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn round and look into that mirror. Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity. Now put your clothes back on again." (p.278). In response Winston insists that he has at least maintained his integrity; he has not betrayed Julia. Because he is no longer convinced of his humanity, however, it is only a matter of time until he does. ]]> 2018-09-05 23:16:51 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278222521 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278222576 -1984 combines the political theme and polemic purpose of Animal Farm with the human characters of the social novel
-Orwell flirted with communism, but had no intention of giving up his class privilege, with the instinctive patriotism and basic decency of the british working man
-1984 brings home to England the experience Koestler and countless others who suffered in the totalitarian regimes of Eastern Europe

]]> 2018-09-05 23:17:12 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278222576 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278223025 Orwell's novel uses particular narrative strategies to develop the readers sense of terror and fear about what power is and how it is wielded in this future world. Winston's lack of knowledge about his arrest is a source of dramatic tension that drives this sense of terror. 

]]> 2018-09-05 23:19:38 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278223025 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278223173 To create an illusion of a future historical and political reality, the symbol of the school textbook Winston reads presents a parody of Marxist propaganda and reinforces his despair at the impossibility of ever knowing what life before the revolution was really like.
Insisting that London is ‘now’ beautiful, not dark, dirty and miserable.
The Party paints a consistently false picture of now, in Oceania, no one believes anything announced by the authorities, yet everyone must appear to believe it.
A textbook example of Doublethink at work.

-Meyer]]> 2018-09-05 23:20:25 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278223173 stewart_mcgowan https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278223177  The Soviet Union had a peak stockpile of 45,000 nuclear warheads in 1986. It is estimated that from 1949 to 1991 the Soviet Union produced approximately 55,000 nuclear warheads. (wikipedia)

The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948–12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post–World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. ]]> 2018-09-05 23:20:26 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/278223177 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/279128820 2018-09-09 04:27:32 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/279128820 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/279128850 2018-09-09 04:28:02 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/279128850 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/279128929 2018-09-09 04:28:38 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/279128929 https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/279129051 2018-09-09 04:30:14 UTC https://padlet.com/stewart_mcgowan/p7thi93fw916/wish/279129051