Gonzales, Analysa Marie

Dialectical Notes: 1984

Part One:
Chapter 1

 “…the clocks were striking thirteen,” (pg 1).  The use of military time hints politics.
 “On each landing… the poster with the Right away I thought of the word ‘dictator’ as I
enormous face gazed from the wall,” (pg 1). remembered the Nazi posters of Hitler.
 I instantly thought of Joseph Geobbel’s
 “Big Brother is Watching You,” (pg 2). successful use of propaganda during WWII*
 I noticed the capitalization of this word, and I
 “…the Party,” (pg 2). knew then that it referred to a political party.
 *Under Hitler’s rule only certain things were
 “Thought Police” (pg 2). safe to think.
 “Any sound Winston made… would be  There is a lack of privacy here. This is my first
picked up by it… [and] he could be seen as hint toward the government type. –When a
well as heard,” (pg 3). personal life is no longer personal.
 “You had to live –did live, from habit that  In other words, living in perhaps
became instinct –in the assumption that unrecognizable (by many) fear that if you said
every sound you made was overheard, and, anything even slightly incriminating, whether
except in darkness, every move you believed it or not, you’d be dead pretty
scrutinized,” (pg 3). soon.
Totalitarian- pertaining to a centralized govt. that doesn’t tolerate differing opinions and
exercises dictatorial control over many aspects of life.
Ex(s): Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mao’s China.
 (use in oxymoron’s) -> Doublethink
“War is Peace *Through the use of propaganda-induced fear,
Freedom is Slavery the Party is able to force its subjects to accept
Ignorance is Strength,” (pg 4). anything and everything they say as true
(psychological control).
 Why? –My thought to this is that the
 “…it was never possible nowadays to pin government hides info from the people…
down any date within a year or two,” (pg 7). (Going off previous entry, ‘ignorance’ comes
with a lack of knowing).
“Audience much amused by shots of a…  This quote alone told me a lot about the
man trying to swim away with a helicopter people… It was mortifying enough that they
after him… Audience shouting with laughter laughed when the helpless man was killed. It
when he sank… There was a middle aged was truly sickening, however, when the
woman… with a little boy about three years audience erupted with laughter at the sight of
old…and then the helicopter planted a 20 a woman and a child, two innocents, being
kilo bomb… and there was a lot of applause killed. Their actions are appalling and it would
from the party seats,” (pg 8-9). seem dehumanizing.
During these two minutes, a program in the
“Two Minutes Hate” (pg 11) form of a film, of which is clearly propaganda,
is played. (see pg’s 11-16)
 “O’Brien’s political orthodoxy was not  This occurred during or around the two
perfect… And again, perhaps it was not minutes hate in which his distinct and clearly
even unorthodoxy that was written in his different viewpoint was clear upon his face
face, but simply intelligence,” (pg 11). because of knowledge. (no ignorance)
 I find it interesting how in all the seemingly negative description of Emmanuel Goldstein, I am
left wondering if he is truly the ‘evil’ one… His speech makes a lot of sense to me, being that
I, unlike those under the influence of the Party, actually have those same freedoms as he.
 “…when Oceania was at war with one of  ***Refer back to ‘war is peace’ in the first part
these powers it was generally at peace with of the slogan. The oxymoron itself makes no
the other,” (pg 13). sense, until broken down…
 “The horrible thing… was not that one was Winston did not understand what made him Psychological
Control

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obliged to act a part, but that it was
impossible to avoid jumping in… A hideous
ecstasy to of fear… a desire to kill, to
torture… seemed to flow through the whole
group…. turning one even against one’s
own will... The rage that one felt was
undirected.” (pg 14)
 “Thought crime” (pg 19).
 “…every record of everything you had ever
done was wiped out, your one-time
existence was denied and then forgotten,”
(pg 19).
Chapter 2
 “’Want to see the hanging!’ … Children
always clamored to be taken to see [the
hangings of Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war
crimes],” (pg 23).
 “It was almost normal for people over thirty
to be frightened of their own children,” (24).
 “Nothing was your own except the few
cubic centimeters inside your skull,” (pg 27).
 “Thoughtcrime does not entail death;
thoughtcrime IS death,” (pg 28).
Chapter 3
“[His parents] must evidently have been
swallowed up in one of the first great purges
of the Fifties,” (pg 29).
 “He could not remember what had
happened, but he knew… the lives of his
mother and his sister had been sacrificed to
his own,” (pg 30).
 “Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to an
ancient time…where there were still privacy,
love, and friendship, and the members of a
family stood by one another without needing
to know the reason…Today there were fear,
hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion,
or deep or complex sorrows,” (pg 30).
[Shakespeare quote] (pg 31).
 “…clutching his hand as they hurried down,
down, down into some place deep in the
earth,” (pg 33).
“The enemy of the moment always
represented absolute evil, and it followed
that any past or future agreement with him
was impossible,” (pg 34).
“’Who control the past controls the future;
who controls the future controls the past,’”
(pg 35).
Gonzales, Analysa Marie
Dialectical Notes: 1984
join in with the others during Two Minutes
Hate. Then, when it was explained that his
rage was indirect and switched suddenly from
Goldstein to Big Brother, and then turned to
adoration for Big brother, one he loathed, I
concluded that within the program, there must
be some form of subliminal propaganda.
Implies totalitarianism. (no differing opinions)
The moment there became available in history
a single record of one person believing
something different could always trigger the
same thoughts to another person.
 Again, I find the dehumanizing and the loss of
innocence on the behalf of the children is
mortifying. I find it sad that children are placed
in the lines of the war at all. (also pg 24)
“|“
|
A lot of irony present here… Even the space
in your head wasn’t safe (though police).
 To think otherwise what the government tell
you would mean you were going to die.
I’m beginning to notice a pattern; anything and Psychological
everything that provides a link to the truth of Control
the past is being destroyed.
The book often refers to this. I’m a bit
confused as to what exactly the importance of
this line and/or story is. Does it provide with
the effect on memories of everyone?
Of course, tragedy is defined by having loved
first what was lost. A loss cannot be a tragedy
if it is not ‘heart felt’ by another in some way,
whether that be through love or sympathies. I
find this very interesting as it was phrased just
right. It is possible to say things like love no
longer existed.
They must have burned all of his works…
He said the atomic bomb had been dropped
upon Colchester, his city of residence. I think
this place was a bomb shelter.
With only three political parties, each having
conquered about a third of the world, it would
nearly impossible to end the fued. And war is
necessary. (Read on).
People can look at the past as an example for
themselves. Altering the past can grant that
people will never learn. IGNORANCE
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 Gonzales, Analysa Marie
Dialectical Notes: 1984

 “Reality Control” = “doublethink” (pg 35) “|“

Chapter 4

 Pages 38-41 interestingly deal with the true ‘foreshadowing ability’ Big Brother claims to
have. Things happen and then they report them as if it’s future news and/or if they’re wrong
corrections are made to the history to meet the demand/criteria of the so called ‘predictions.’
(ex 1) “Books, also, were recalled and  Books were altered and burned. This is just
rewritten again and again and were like the Nazi Regime. It is clear that the quote,
invariably reissued without any admission “Who controls the past control the future…” is
that any alteration had been made,” (pg 40). true in so many ways. (Stunt on knowledge)**
(ex 2) “Statistics were just as much fantasy Does this quote suggest statistics of the
in their original version as their rectified [past/present] are merely a man’s use of
version,” (pg 41). imagination?
I find page 47 interesting… Winston makes up this entire life of a non existent man. And he
does it well; there are many hints at propaganda in this piece…
“Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in  The evidence is there, obviously. We know
the present, now existed in the past, and Charlemagne and Julius Caser were real
when once the act of forgery was forgotten, simply because of documentation… But with
he would exist just as authentically, and false documentation it is completely possible
upon the same evidence as Charlemagne or to forge an existence in history that was never
Julius Caesar,” (page 48). truly there.

Chapter 5

“’I like to see them kicking. And above all, at
the end, the tongue sticking right out, and
blue-a quite bright blue. That’s the detail
that appeals to me,’” (page 50).
“’We’re destroying words… hundreds of
them, every day. We’re cutting the language
down to bone,’” (pg 51).
“’…Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its
useless shades of meaning,” (pg 52).
“’Don’t you see the whole aim of Newspeak
is to narrow the range of thought?’” (pg 52)
“’…Freedom is slavery,’” (pg 53).  reality, psychological slavery. (works oppos.)
“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 the right to,” (pg 59).
“…the physical type set up by the Party as
an ideal-…blonde-haired…-existed and
even predominated,” (pg 60).
This quote disturbed me… What is accepted
in their society is very different from our own;
and it would seem those, other than Winston,
are both ignorant and inhumane…
I realize why they are cutting down the
language (to limit what people have the
capability to think). This appeals to me in so
many ways. Oldspeak, as they call it is
anything but vague; vagueness itself defines
the destruction of words… (As of the last
quote, I rest my case). 
I think I understand this quote now. To be
under their control is ‘freedom’ though it is, in
 As the reader we know this is true (ironic). I
find it peculiar as to whether their memories
have slipped because of just age or horror.
One must wonder if the other characters,
besides Winston, have this feeling…
Blonde-haired was the detail that clued me in;
I specifically remember, during Hitler’s regime,
he believed blondes were of a ‘supreme race.’

Chapter 6

This chapter is composed of a diary entry; a painful memory he has of once paying a
prostitute. It provides insight to his character history with women and his wife.

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Chapter 7
“[The evidence] was enough to blow the
Party to atoms, if in some way it could have
been published to the world and its
significance made known,” (pg 78).
“If both the past and the external world exist
only in the mind, and if the mind itself is
controllable-what then?” (pg 80).
Chapter 8
“The older generation had mostly been
wiped out in the great purges of the Fifties
and Sixties, and the few who survived long
ago been terrified into complete intellectual
surrender,” (pg 87).
“The hunting-down and destruction of books
had been done with the same thoroughness
… everywhere else,” (pg 97).
“He thought with a kind of astonishment of
the biological useless of pain and fear, the
treachery of the human body which always
freezes into inertia at exactly the moment
when a special effort is needed,” (pg 102).
“The place where there is no darkness was
the imagined future…” (pg 104).
Gonzales, Analysa Marie
Dialectical Notes: 1984
Clearly if Winston had the chance to make this
one slip known, the chance to leak out this
vital piece of information, he would. His fear,
however, is the only thing that roots him.
This suggests helplessness in everyone,
including you. You could never deny
something even if you knew it to be false.
I bet they were killed because they were a link
to the past; the REAL past and the truths of
the true history.
The burning of the books by the Nazis… **
When a person of today is asked what kind of
weapons governments use against people,
fear is the one thing they forget. Once a
person falls into fear’s grasp, they can’t
remove themselves. They are forever trapped.
Poetic almost. The light is a world he loves…
(at least in the end…)
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 Gonzales, Analysa Marie
Dialectical Notes: 1984

Part Two:
Chapter 1

“In front of him was an enemy who was  It’s interesting to see so early on that even
trying to kill him; in front of him, also, was a thought Winston lives in a time of hatred, he
human creature… He had instinctively still maintains those few things that make him
started forward to help her,” (pg 106). humane, that separates him from everyone.

Chapter 2

“’I hate purity, I hate goodness. I don’t want Isn’t that backwards? –What one strives for in
virtue to exist anywhere…’” (pg 126). their world is what gives them their virtue.
“No emotion was pure b/c everything was People’s lives were overrun with the practice
mixed up with fear and hatred,” (pg 126). of hatred toward others rather than love.

Chapter 3

“There was a direct, intimate connection
between chastity and political orthodoxy,”
(pg 133).
“…People were encouraged to be fond of
their children in almost the old-fashioned
way. Their children… were systematically
turned against their parents,” (pg 133).
“The family had become in effect an
extension of the Thought Police.
The Party must truly fear what comes out of
the act of sex… This quote is one I find most
interesting as it’s apparent in the story.
People were encouraged to trust in their
children, telling them much, however, they’re
living in complete fear that their children will
give in their name.
This is powerful as family is something you
would think would be so strong…

Chapter 5

“Another bomb fell… and several dozen Why ‘children?’ Why not ‘people?’ Is the a
children were blown to pieces,” (pg 149). sign of innocence being taken away?
Some of the lines in the story do surprise me. For instance on page 152, Julia talks about
how she thinks the Party makes up a lot to get you to think a certain way. She says the most
important thing one must do is ‘pretend to believe in [it].’ I wasn’t sure if there were more
people like Winston, who realized the use of propaganda.
“It was true that she regarded the whole war How could someone not notice that? This kind
as a sham; but apparently she had not even of thing makes me wonder how the system
noticed that the name of the enemy had works. If a war was going on, you would think
changed,” (pg 154). one would remember the enemy…
“’History has stopped. Nothing exists except The Party extends its power in a way that it
an endless present in which the Party is controls time through media and propaganda.
always right,” (pg 155). And whatever they say happened, happened.
“By lack of understanding they remained  Had they known what the Party was doing, or
sane. They simply swallowed everything, rather, had they been fully aware, the just
and what they swallowed did them no harm, might have gone insane. Perhaps the only
because it left no residue behind,” (pg 156). thing keeping their sanity was indeed the lack.

Chapter 7

“The proles had stayed human… They had I wonder if the proles knew what was
held on to primitive emotions,” (pg 165). happening. This explains prole law.
“’ If you can feel that staying human is worth It makes sense. –Everyone has ultimately lost

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 Gonzales, Analysa Marie
Dialectical Notes: 1984

while… you’ve beaten them,’” (pg166). their humanity to the Party.

Chapter 8

 Page 168 describes the rich lives of those in the Inner Party. I find this interesting mainly
because I was given the idea that the Party disliked having everyone poor except a few…
The irony involved in the following pages of Winston meeting with O’Brien is so great. His
questions and his overall observing of Winston and Julia works both ways, whether one
knows he’s against them or not…(*)
*Ex: “’I assume that you have a hiding place  O’Brien asked this simply so he would catch
of some kind?’” (pg 177). them later in the story.

Chapter 9

“…when the general hatred of Eurasia had
boiled up… it had been announced that
Oceania was not at war after all with
Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia.
Eurasia was an ally. There was, of course,
no admission that the change had taken
place,” (pg 180).
“Any detailed report of events demanded
care and imagination,” (pg 183).
“Secondly, there is no longer, in a martial
sense, anything to fight about,” (pg 187).
“The world of today is a bare, hungry,
dilapidated place compared with the world
that existed before 1914, and still more so if
compared with the imaginary future to which
the people of that period looked forward,”
(pg 188).
“It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a
society in which wealth, in a sense of
personal possessions and luxuries, should
be evenly distributed, while power remained
in the hands of a small privileged caste,” (pg
190).
“In the long run, a hierarchical society was
only possible on a basis of poverty and
ignorance,” (pg 190).
(Continued)
“The essential act of war is destruction, not
necessarily of human lives, but of the
products of human labor,” (191).
“…it is also necessary that he should be a
credulous and ignorant fanatic whose
prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation,
and orgiastic triumph,” (pg 192).
“If [man] were allowed to contact with
foreigners he would discover that they were
creatures similar to himself and that most of
what he has been told about them is lies.
 Does this mean that the three central parties
change enemies and allies when their
populace’s hatred for the enemy has ‘boiled’
to a certain temperament? Also, why do they
leave no record of ever having been enemies
with the other party? I understand how but not
necessarily why.
I’m sure they had to make sure they didn’t add
in details from earlier and now obsolete prints.
Hadn’t each country a vast expanse of
materials for economical purposes? Why war?
Perhaps the greatest imagery to the future
would be the aspect of technology. But the
chapter in Goldstein’s book explains clearly
that technology didn’t ever really evolve. If the
world came to such trash, then what other
reason than power kept it together?
Clearly this paragraph speaks of communism.
The Party states that this form of government
could never work, yet isn’t that how their
system works in a sense? Nobody has
anything and there is in a sense a caste
system. You either have power or you don’t.
 True, any well educated populace would
know this would never work and would of
against it. But a poor/uneducated person
would assume they would be granted more.
So the Party already has everything it needs
economically but that’s not enough.
Destroying the people won’t rid them of them.
I take this as a way of saying the person must
be sane, but barely, as if on the verge of going
insane. –As if knowledge itself, if gained,
would destroy their mind.
The people must believe that those who are
enemies of the Party are inhumane. Gaining
this knowledge would destroy the imaginary
world constructed around them. The Party

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The sealed world in which he lives would be
broken, and the fear, hatred, and self
righteousness on while morale depends
might evaporate,” (pg 196).
“The invention of print, however, made it
easier to manipulate public opinion, and the
film and the radio carried the process
further,” (pg 205).
“In a Party member… not even the smallest
deviation of opinion on the most unimportant
subject can be tolerated,” (pg 210).
“For it is only through reconciling
contradictions that power can be retained
indefinitely… If human equality is to be
forever averted… then the prevailing mental
condition must be controlled insanity,” (216).
Gonzales, Analysa Marie
Dialectical Notes: 1984
probably fears an uprising that has happened
throughout history… An example of this would
be the Americas breaking off from Great
Britain (Common Sense by Thomas Paine).
Clearly this is talking of the propaganda and
its many forms. Technology was used solely
for this purpose so when they came out other
forms might not have been needed.
Everyone must agree with the leader says,
with what is expected of them. This is the
definition of a totalitarian state.
If the “High,” as they are called, wish to
maintain their places above all the rest of
society, using contradictions like ‘War is
Peace’ and “The Ministry of Peace (involved
in War)” is very much necessary.
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 Gonzales, Analysa Marie
Dialectical Notes: 1984

Part Three:
Chapter 2

“He confessed that he had murdered his
wife, although he knew, and his questioners
must have known, that his wife was still
alive,” (pg 242).
“’You are mentally deranged. You suffer
from a defective memory. You are unable to
remember real events, and you persuade
yourself that you remember other events
which never happened,’” (pg 245).
“It was the photograph. It was another copy
of the photograph… he had chanced upon
eleven years ago and promptly destroyed.
For an instant it was before his eyes, then it
was out of sight again…
’It does exist. You remember it!’ (Winston)
‘I do not remember it.’” (O’Brien) (pg 247).
Though it doesn’t really matter what’s true or
false, the point is to free them of all bad
thoughts… I wonder if his confession was
really was of what he did in his thoughts?
I’m surprised as I am sure this would surely
drive Winston mad. Yet until the very end,
Winston managed to cling to the little bit that
still made him human. He was able to hold
onto what made him different from the drones.
Right here it was made clear that the Party
was built solely upon psychiatric control. Fear
and pain and hatred was induced physically
and mentally. Keeping them somewhat
uneducated and exposed to propaganda was
the only power they truly have. Power over
one’s mentality equals strength over all.

Chapter 3

“’Power is not a means; it is an end,” (p 263) (?) I’d like to discuss this quote.
“’…Power is power over humans. Over the They can only win over the people through he
body-but, above all, over the mind,” (pg 264) minds through fear.
“’Nothing exists except through human And when O’Brien states that he never saw
consciousness,’” (pg 265). the picture, he demonstrates this matter.
“’Power is in tearing human minds to pieces As I stated previously, keeping people on the
and putting them together again in new verge of total insanity is the Party’s means for
shapes of your owns choosing,’” (pg 266). mentality of the populace.
 On page 269, Winston says “I know you will fail; there is some principle…’” I think this
principle he believes exists is this: An ending to even the greatest of civilizations is inevitable.
In the end, humans are, as O’Brien said, ‘destined to fail.’ In a sense both are right.
On 271, O’Brien insists that though Winston might feel his morals make him more human,
that he is alone as the only humane human left. Then he shows him his reflection. It was a
message to Winston that though he considered himself humane, he looked anything but
human. “’If you are human, that is humanity,” (272).

Chapter 4

“Sanity was statistical,” (pg 277).  He accepted everything. The degradation of
this one man has haunted me.

Chapter 6

“The Chestnut Tree was almost empty” (pg  Symbolism: “Under the spreading chestnut
287) tree, I sold you and you sold me.”