Nineteen Eighty-Four

 Focus on Winston’s experience – create your essay through the lens of Winston’s human
experience throughout the novel – Orwell creates a limited third person narrative voice for
us to follow Winston’s experience – we read through his perspective yet the third person
creates a barrier that captures the detachment of this society
 The clash between individual desires and freedoms and society’s need to maintain power
and stability - the state manipulates the human impulse towards conformity and social
acceptance in order to maintain power, suppressing the individual experience and our very
humanity
 You must draw in a discussion of Orwell’s characterisation, narrative arc/structure and
development of dystopian setting in which to place the action (the novel form) – do this in
the first body paragraph (and embed throughout the essay where you can)

Vocabulary:

 Dark satire / darkly satirical novel

 Dystopian setting / early dystopia
 Oppressive totalitarian regime
 Conformity / autonomy
 Orthodoxy / unorthodoxy
 Propaganda
 Anomalous behaviour
 Humanity stripped away
 Speculative fiction
 Characterisation of the flawed everyman
 Narrative arc / structure
 tyrannical motivations of the authoritarian state
 hegemonic power
 oppression of individualism
 human desire for connection
 fleeting human connection
 pursuit of autonomy
 thwarted
 authoritarian control
 Stalin’s corruption of Marxist ideals
 Orwell’s socio-political milieu

Other vocabulary / key points:

Module A: The Tempest and Hag-Seed
 The module is “Textual Conversations” so it is recommended to engage with this language –
discuss the conversation begun by Shakespeare and continued by Atwood, or the dialogue
that Atwood continues; use other synonyms as appropriate, particularly in the introduction,
where you can impress the marker with your sophistication of ideas/language from the
outset
 In the case of these two texts, one is an appropriation of the other, so you need to
acknowledge that Atwood’s purpose was to transform The Tempest for a modern audience,
using a different text form – the novel – the idea of TRANSFORMATION
 Clearly the context of each text affects the values represented - so there are resonances in
the values and also dissonances – the language of ‘debate’ as we looked at in one practice
question – Atwood debates Shakespeare’s representation of particular values
 Shakespeare: Jacobean context, Christian/Rennaissance humanism, colonialism, divine right
of kings, broad audience – mixed classes, five-act Aristotelian drama structure, written for
live performance
 Atwood: twenty-first century audience, intellectual readership, postmodern novel form,
feminism, post-colonialism, psycho-social insight, liberal perspectives of
‘criminals’/prisoners; the novel form allows for increased nuance, complexity

Vocabulary

 Redemptive narrative arc  Questions of morality

 Exiled protagonist  Humanist values
 Complex and nuanced  Metatheatrical / duality of theatre
 Aristotelian tradition  Dismantling of postmodern
 Orchestrates preconceptions
 Psychological prison / psychological  Sophisticated intertextuality
insight  Social morality
 Differing zeitgeists / social zeitgeist
 Cultural shifts
 Recycles the power of theatre Other vocabulary / key points:
 Post-colonial text / post-colonial
readership
 Theatrical motif
 Renaissance humanist thought
 Advocate for the arts
 Postmodern departure from realism
 Dramatic reincarnation
 Contemporary debate
 Vitriolic dialogue
 Indigeneity
 More morally complex world
 Ethical / moral transformation
 Psychological transformation
 Omniscient third person narrative
voice
Module B: The poetry of T.S. Eliot
 You need to know each of the poems well, and be prepared to discuss textual detail from
each, depending on the question; the question should determine which poems are best to
use to answer it.
 Essentially, Eliot’s modernist poetry is a response to the modernity of the early twentieth
century – a climate of rapid change, increased commerciality of art, and consumerism
brought on by the mass production enabled by the industrial revolution. Eliot is concerned
with the sordid modern urban metropolis, the growth of the Western city, a morally-corrupt,
superficial landscape, devoid of spirituality, nature, real human connection, and
characterised by decay and destruction of aesthetic beauty. He represents the uncertainty of
the modern psyche, the ironic anaesthetised inaction and stasis catalysed by the inability of
his ‘modern man’ to adapt to a changing zeitgeist, which is characterised by banal and futile
activities designed to provide meaning, but which ironically emphasise the lack of real
meaning in an increasingly secularised and isolated society.
 You need to explore how Eliot’s modernist style is a reflection of his perspective of the
modern world – the poetry’s fragmentation of structure and imagery, rich literary and
historical allusion, objective correlative, subversion of Romantic tropes, stream of
consciousness voices and self-conscious, alienated, often-paralysed personas to reflect the
turmoil and disconnection of the modern world and the challenge of adapting to a rapidly
changing social milieu.
 You need to embed this contextual understanding through your analysis of the poetry
 Structure by ideas and integrate / synthesise your analysis of the different poems to support
your thesis
 DON’T structure by poems – 2 or 3 KEY THESIS POINTS

Vocabulary:

 Breaking from conventional literary  Frustrations with modern life

structures  Alienating force of isolation
 Modernist movement in art and  Fragmentation of social tradition
literature  Sordid landscapes
 Precise figurative comparisons  Dark, unforgiving streets
 Disturbing portrait  Impending weight of judgement
 Romantic tropes made sordid  Flaneur motif
 Spiritual vacuum / void  Imagery of stasis
 Objective correlative  Self-loathing
 Anaesthetised inaction  Discordant auditory imagery
 Modernist reaction to modernity  Secularisation
 Intellectual and social isolation of  Conflicting paradigms
Eliot’s personal context