 People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their

voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen
 Auditory imagery
 Drowning of the individual consciousness through the collective creation of
sounds, thus, establishing a collective experience and removing the individual
 Context/purpose: Reflective of the mindless devotion that was shown
towards Stalin and Hitler
 A desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow
through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against
one’s will
 Violent imagery + asyndeton + simile
 Demonstrates how the collective experience had eradicated individual will
and had assimilated the individual experience into the collective
 The normalisation of violent consciousness demonstrates the destructive
nature of herd mentality
 Context/purpose: Mirroring the collective police brutality and violence during
Great Purge in Russia, where the collective eradicated the individual
experience
 The fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by the
wild beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats
 Animalistic imagery + zoomorphism + juxtaposition between individual
speaker and the crowd. Dehumanises individuals in a herd mentality and the
mindless collective
 Demonstrates the insignificance and powerlessness of the individual in
comparison to the collective
 Context/purpose: Reflective of the mindless devotion that was shown
towards Stalin and Hitler that leaned towards violence
 Suddenly he floated out of his seat, dived into the eyes and was swallowed up -
Winston was swallowed up by the eyes of Big Brother
 Motif of eyes
 Demonstrates how Winston is losing his individuality and is gradually being
subsumed into the collective
 “The thing he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was
illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected… it would be punished
by death”
 Meta-fictive element + irony + paradoxical + motif + symbolism
 Diary being symbolic of his desire for rebellion and his attempt to assert his
identity by preserving his individual reality
 Context/purpose: Reflective of the Stalinist and Hitler regimes’ restrictions
on freedom of speech, consequently, eroding individuality
 Moreover, his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably
 Varicose ulcer – motif symbolic of the desire for rebellion, freedom, and
desire to assert his individuality
 DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
 Capitalisation + repetition + symbolism
 Demonstrates Winston’s desire for freedom alongside his desire to express
his individuality against oppression, symbolised in Big Brother
 Context/purpose: Satirical representation of Stalin through Big Brother,
consequently criticising the Stalinist regime.
 What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than
yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in lunacy.
 Repetition of the term lunacy in describing O’Brien
 This is indicative of Winston’s individualism and his exercising of his
individuality through cognition, showing his resistance, even upon being
tortured by O’Brien.
 Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feelings that
you had been cheated of something that you had a right to.
 Visceral imagery
 Demonstrates how the desire for rebellion is an integral and entrenched part
of humanity
 “He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. [...] It was not by
making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.”
 I'm going to get hold of a real woman's frock from somewhere and wear it instead of
these bloody trousers. I'll wear silk stockings and high-heeled shoes! In this room I'm
going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.'
 Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which
can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party,
which is collective
 Juxtaposition between “individual” and “collective”
 Directly uses the vocabulary ‘individual’ and ‘collective’. Demonstrates the
Party’s narrative of being faultless and infallible - “collective and immortal”
and by invalidating the individual: “can make mistakes”.
 Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of
the cell is the vigour of the organism
 Metaphor and analogy of the body reveals the insignificance of an individual
against a collective power, the futility of rebellion against the Party’s
insurmountable power.
 Rhetorical question emphasises the powerless nature of the individual and
invalidates Winston’s belief in the power of the individual
 The first thing you must realise is that power is collective. The individual only has
power in so far as he ceases to be an individual
 Juxtaposition between “collective” and “individual” highlights the
powerlessness of the individual against the power of the collective
 It reveals that the Party’s success is due to its self-awareness of collective
power
 Reveals loss of identity and the Party’s desire to strip humanity of individuality
in order to derive power from conformity
 If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man… Do you understand that you are
alone?
 Rhetorical question
 Orwell not only highlights the isolation of Winston and his powerlessness as
an individual but also inverts the biblical genesis idea, where Adam was first
man. Suggests the destruction of the concept of ‘humanity’ in terms of desire
to rebel and assert individuality
 Reference to Shelley’s ‘The Last Man’ dystopia, dealing with the decay of
society and human nature. Orwell draws upon this by alluding to Shelley’s
work→ the work also concerns principles of human isolation, placing the
human experience as conditionally individual and lonely
 The Party was in the right. It must be so: how could the immortal, collective brain be
mistaken? - Winston
 Short, declarative sentence + rhetorical question + tripartite structure
 Invalidation of the individual through Winston’s rhetorical question -
demonstrates Winston’s capitulation to the Party, subverts the hero’s journey
in the tripartite structure, sparking urgency and a sense of fear towards the
rise of totalitarian regimes
 He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
 Irony in the sense that he had won the victory, while in truth, he had suffered
a defeat in regard to his rebellion and desire for individuality
 The paradoxical nature of the individual self is the main challenge to rebellion
in the human experience
  Represents Winston’s final capitulation and how the individual is inevitably
subsumed into the collective, serving as a warning to the audience
 “He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear”
 Metaphor + auditory imagery + limited third person narration
 The metaphor comparing Winston to a lonely ghost and the limited third
person narration focalising on Winston’s thoughts only accentuates his
solitude and loneliness within a world where all interpersonal relationships
have been eradicated by the Party.
 “Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?”
 Rhetorical question + limited third person
 Winston’s despair at his solitude and his lonely possession of a memory in a
world where individual relationships have been destroyed and controlled by
the totalitarian government. Orwell demonstrates how individuals often
experience emotions of loneliness when genuine emotions and relationships
have been eradicated, as amplified through the limited third person narration.
 Context: the manipulation of truth through government propaganda and
reports in the Soviet Union
 Winston was alone and had been alone for hours - (before Room 101)
 Repetition of “alone”
 The repetition of “alone” highlights how individuals are rendered powerless
and lonely after the loss of genuine interpersonal connections and
relationships
 What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an
embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself.
 Listing
 The listing depicts Winston’s realisation at the valuable nature of human
emotions and interpersonal relationships, simultaneously demonstrating
Winston’s jealousy at not being able to acquire genuine interpersonal
relations as a result of the Party’s oppression. Orwell subsequently
demonstrates human beings as empathetic creatures who desire genuine
relationships and emotions.
 They were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another
- (Winston admiring the proles)
 Repetition, polysyndeton
 The repetition of “loyal” heightens the difference between patriotic loyalty and
the strong, binding force of individual loyalty. Winston’s admiration of the
proles for their genuine relationships portrays human beings as empathetic
creatures who take comfort in relationships.
 Context: Excessive patriotism and nationalism in the Soviet Union
 The proles had stayed human. They had not hardened inside. They had held on to
the primitive emotions
 Short, brisk, high-modality sentences
 Through the short, high-modality sentences, Orwell depicts Winston’s
admiration for the Proles’ continuous and genuine relationships, consequently
demonstrating humanity’s desire for genuine relationships and emotions.
 Context: Loss of trust and interpersonal relationships between individuals in
the Soviet Unions as a result of individuals being encouraged to betray their
family to the government
 I don’t care who it is or what you do to them. I’ve got a wife and three children… you
can take the whole lot of them cut their throats in front of my eyes and I’ll stand by
and watch it. But not room 101! - (skull-faced man)
 Violent imagery + polysyndeton
 Orwell portrays the man’s ardent desire to escape from the torture of Room
101 through the polysyndeton alongside his apathetic nature towards the
death of his family, as established through the violent imagery. Consequently,
 Orwell demonstrates the self-centred nature of humanity, who are willing to
sacrifice others for self-benefit.
 Context: Loss of interpersonal relationships and genuine, sympathetic
emotions as a result of the violence in the Soviet Union
 Winston “was insane, a screaming animal… he must interpose another human being,
the body of another human being, between himself and the rats”.
 Here, the metaphor comparing Winston to an animal demonstrates how fear
dehumanises individuals and causes them to lose their humanity in their self-
preservation and as they succumb to the internal human quality of
selfishness.
 Context: the spreading of fear throughout the Stalinist regime as a means of
curbing political dissent
 Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia!
 Repetition of “Do it to Julia!” and exclamatory language + tripartite structure
 Winston’s apathetic response to Julia’s death in his fear of torture in Room
101, through which Orwell depicts the violent extent that individuals would
betray others in order to secure their own safety.
 Winston’s drastic betrayal of Julia demonstrates his tragic descent from an
individual desiring genuine relationships to capitulation and selfishness, an
aspect accentuated by the tripartite structure
 I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me!
Julia! Not me!
 Violent, visceral imagery coupled with the short, exclamatory phrases +
tripartite structure
 Winston’s fear of Room 101 is demonstrated here alongside humanity’s self-
centred nature and willingness to sacrifice others for their own security.
Tripartite structure accentuates Winston’s capitulation and the paradoxical
and inconsistent human nature.
 Context: Reflective of the self-preservation of individuals in the violent
atmosphere of the Soviet Union
 “The thing he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was
illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected… it would be punished
by death”
 Meta-fictive element + irony + paradoxical + motif + symbolism
 Diary is symbolic of his desire for rebellion and his attempt to assert his
identity by preserving his individual reality
 Context/purpose: Reflective of the Stalinist and Hitler regimes’ restrictions
on freedom of speech, consequently, eroding individuality
 Moreover, his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably
 Varicose ulcer – motif symbolic of the desire for rebellion, freedom, and
desire to assert his individuality
 DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
 Capitalisation + repetition + symbolism
 Demonstrates Winston’s desire for freedom alongside his desire to express
his individuality against oppression, symbolised in Big Brother
 Context/purpose: Satirical representation of Stalin through Big Brother,
consequently criticising the Stalinist regime.
 What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than
yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in lunacy.
 Repetition of the term lunacy in describing O’Brien
 This is indicative of Winston’s individualism and his exercising of his
individuality through cognition, showing his resistance, even upon being
tortured by O’Brien.
 Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that
you had been cheated of something that you had a right to.
  Visceral imagery
 Demonstrates how the desire for rebellion is an integral and entrenched part
of humanity
 Suddenly he floated out of his seat, dived into the eyes and was swallowed up -
Winston was swallowed up by the eyes of Big Brother
 Motif of eyes + tripartite structure emphasising Winston’s trajectory into
capitulation
 Demonstrates how Winston is losing his individuality and is gradually being
subsumed into the collective
 I'm going to get hold of a real woman's frock from somewhere and wear it instead of
these bloody trousers. I'll wear silk stockings and high-heeled shoes! In this room I'm
going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.'
 The diary
 The diary is symbolic of Winston’s rebellious attempt to write down his
thoughts to establish his individual reality and to create his memory in a world
devoid of purpose
 Portrays the individual’s attempts to seek the power of memory and the past,
which is representative of freedom and individuality
 Context: Influenced by the loss of freedom of speech and thought within
Stalin and Hitler’s regimes as authoritarian societies attempt to root out
political dissent
 He tried to squeeze our some childhood memory… were there always these vistas of
rotting nineteenth century houses…?
 Rhetorical question
 Power of memory as a means of enhancing the comparative thinking of
individuals, enhancing individuality and freedom of thought, thus, allowing
them to rebel against their totalitarian regime
 Winston was dreaming of his mother
 The motif of Winston dreaming of his mother + symbolism
 Motif is symbolic of Winston’s attempt to rebel against the oppressive
totalitarian regime which inhibits genuine collective experiences by seeking
the complex humane connections
 Symbolic of Winston’s belief in the objective truth of his past and the powerful
nature of the past in the way that it symbolises complex human emotions and
the power of familial bonds
 The paperweight… it’s a chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter
 The paperweight is symbolic of history and Winston’s fascination with the
paperweight is symbolic of his attempt to reconnect with objective truth and
his memory, consequently presenting his rejection of the Party’s forced reality
and his rebellious nature
 Tragedy… belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love
and friendship
 How could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record
outside your own memory?
 Rhetorical question demonstrates Winston’s belief in the power of the
individual memory
 Context: The loss of truth in public records or history as a result of political
manipulation
 Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?
 Rhetorical question demonstrates Winston’s belief in the power of the
individual memory
 Coupling the terms “memory” and “alone” highlights WInston’s belief in the
strength of memory in establishing his individuality, thus, attempting to utilise
his memory and belief in objective truth as a means of rebelling against his
totalitarian regime.
  Context: the manipulation of the past and history in the Stalinist and Hitler
regimes, leading to uncertainty and the loss of truth
 Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral
memory that things had once been different?
 Rhetorical question demonstrates Winston’s belief in the power of the
individual memory in generating a constructive and comparative view of one’s
life
 I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to
prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence
ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind
 When one knew that any document was due for destruction…it was an automatic
action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in
 Memory hole is symbolic of the destruction of history and the past by the
Party, paradoxically eradicating objective truth and manipulating the
collective.
 Context: Reflective of the Stalinist and Hitler regimes’ manipulation of history
and truth
 Unending series of victories over your own memory … he won the victory over
himself
 Irony + repetition of victory
 Demonstrates how the malleability of one’s memory and how ironically, it can
be weaponised by the government to become a vulnerability against the
individual
 Militaristic connotations emphasise the government’s conquering of one’s
memory and the past
 Ministry of Truth
 Paradox + irony
 All history was a palimpsest scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was
necessary
 Metaphor comparing history to a palimpsest demonstrates how easily history
can be erased and re-created, idea that the erasure of history and language
allows the Party to manipulate collective and individual memory
 Context: Reflective of the Soviet Union’s manipulation of history and their
falsified recounting of events in reports
 The fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink like sugar rosebud from a cake, rolled
across the mat. (broken glass paperweight)
 Simile comparing the paperweight to a sugar rosebud
 Accentuates the fragility of Winston and Julia’s human connections alongside
the fragility of history and the past
 Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you nor your actions were ever heard
of again. You were lifted clean out of the stream of history
 The metaphor of history as a river
 Everything melted into mist. Sometimes indeed, you could put your finger on a
definite lie
 ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘ controls the future: who controls the
present controls the past.’
 Repetition of “past” and “control”
 Highlights how the past is malleable and is weaponised by the Party as a
method of control over the collective experience
 Context: Influenced by the propaganda common in the Stalinist regimes as a
means of indoctrinating the citizens
 Comrade Ogilvy
 Symbolic of the fragility and malleability of history the past
 Context/purpose: Reflective of Stalin and Hitler’s erasure of social and
collective memory through the manipulation of history
  Context: The Soviet Union’s manipulation and forging of truth and history
· Moreover, his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably
o Varicose ulcer – motif symbolic of the desire for rebellion, freedom, and desire to
assert his individuality
o The varicose ulcer acts as a motif emphasising the
· DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
o Capitalisation + repetition + symbolism
o Demonstrates Winston’s desire for freedom alongside his immense feelings of
hatred and anger towards the oppression represented through Big Brother
o Context/purpose: Satirical representation of Stalin through Big Brother,
consequently criticising the Stalinist regime.
· Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you
had been cheated of something that you had a right to.
o Visceral imagery
o Reflective of Winston’s own anger towards the oppression of the totalitarian
regime, ultimately driving him to desire rebellion
· The mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived
in were intolerable
o The personification of “protest” draws the attention to the idea that
· People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices
in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen
o Auditory imagery
o Through the collective creation of violent sounds, Orwell heightens how
o Context/purpose: Reflective of the mindless devotion that was shown towards
Stalin and Hitler
· A desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow
through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s
will
o Violent imagery + asyndeton + simile
o Demonstrates how the collective experience had eradicated individual will and
had assimilated the individual experience into the collective
o The normalisation of violent consciousness demonstrates the destructive nature
of herd mentality
o Context/purpose: Mirroring the collective police brutality and violence during
Great Purge in Russia, where the collective eradicated the individual experience
· The fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by the wild
beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats
o Animalistic imagery + zoomorphism + juxtaposition between individual speaker
and the crowd.
o Dehumanises individuals in a herd mentality and the mindless collective,
demonstrating how personal emotions of anger can be manipulated and altered
by authoritarian sources into violent patriotism.
o Context/purpose: Reflective of the mindless devotion that was shown towards
Stalin and Hitler that leaned towards violence
· I don’t care who it is or what you do to them. I’ve got a wife and three children… you can
take the whole lot of them cut their throats in front of my eyes and I’ll stand by and watch
it. But not room 101! - (skull-faced man)
o Violent imagery + polysyndeton
o Orwell portrays the man’s ardent desire to escape from the torture of Room 101
through the polysyndeton alongside his apathetic nature towards the death of his
family, as established through the violent imagery. Consequently, Orwell
demonstrates the self-centred nature of humanity, who are willing to sacrifice
others for self-benefit.
o Context: Loss of interpersonal relationships and genuine, sympathetic emotions
as a result of the violence in the Soviet Union
· was insane, a screaming animal… he must interpose another human being, the body of
another human being, between himself and the rats
o Here, the metaphor comparing Winston to an animal demonstrates how fear
dehumanises individuals and causes them to lose their humanity in their self-
preservation and as they succumb to the internal human quality of selfishness.
o Context: the spreading of fear throughout the Stalinist regime as a means of
curbing political dissent
· Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.
o Personification of “panic” emphasises the immense fear that the Party instils in the
individual, ultimately pushing the individuals to conformity and capitulation
o Context: Referencing the extreme methods of torture and threats that the Stalinist
and Hitler regimes took to enforce conformity
· Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia!
o The tripartite structure emphasises Winston’s tragic trajectory from his love for
Julia to her betrayal of her for self-preservation
o Repetition of “Do it to Julia!” and exclamatory language + tripartite structure
o Winston’s apathetic response to Julia’s death in his fear of torture in Room 101,
through which Orwell depicts how individual emotions can be weaponised against
them to establish conformity
o Winston’s drastic betrayal of Julia demonstrates his tragic descent from an
individual desiring genuine relationships to capitulation and selfishness, an
aspect accentuated by the tripartite structure