1984 Setting Assignment
Post your setting paragraphs here by 6 p.m. on Tuesday, December 4. Please read your fellow students' essays before coming to class on Wednesday.
NEW: The Depths of Degradation; a sample setting answer at Writeboard. Fourth draft is now available to read as of Wednesday night. My apologies: it is the "Outer Party" that is degraded!
Copy of Setting Assignment
Copy of Learning to Search Assignment
English 11 Student Descriptive Essay at The Pearson Buzz: The Mushroom Necklaces
16 comments:
The Depths of Degradation
George Orwell’s description of the the canteen brings us face to face with the degrading conditions in which the members of the inner party live. The canteen is first described as “low-ceilinged” and “deep underground,” creating a clinging claustrophobic atmosphere. It is “deafingly noisy” as well, and stinks of “the fumes of Victory Gin.” The workers drink gin on their lunchbreak in a room where one can barely speak above the din. Charming. It gets worse when Winston is served “a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit.” In it, he finds “cubes of spongy pinkish stuff,” which he guesses may actually be meat. Normal conversations, like the one between Syme and Winston, are interrupted by an “eager youthful voice” trumpeting out that “We have won the battle for production!” Later, Orwell give us an image of Parsons and his “huge and filthy pipe”and of Winston’s cigarette “held carefully horizontal” so to avoid spilling out the tobacco. Orwell lets us judge for ourselves at first, then has Winston ask, “Had it always been like this?” Through his eyes we see the “battered metal tables and chairs,” and the “bent spoons” and “coarse white mugs.” Our pity grows with each passing page, for Orwell has truly outlined the depths of degradation to which people have descended in his terrifying dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
—223 words; first draft
The Saddest Time
Winston meets Julia by chance in the Park after they are released from the prison; George Orwell reveals a fact that there is no hope in the future by creating a cold and hopeless atmosphere in the ending of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR. The weather is cold and hopeless. It is “a vile, biting day in March.” The earth is like “iron”, all grass seems “dead,” and there is not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which have “pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind.” They love each other and believe that they will never betray each other, but they are wrong. O’Brien cures them very well that Julia even wants to “get rid of Winston.” Her momentary glance she gives Winston is full of “contempt and dislike.” Meanwhile, Winston prefers to sit at the café than to accompany with her. Absolutely, their love is dead like the grass; their hearts are cold like the earth; their fates are as same as the dirty-looking crocuses. The saddest time of this novel is not the time in Room 101and it is this moment; Orwell successfully shows us that there is no hope in the world of 1984 by creating this atmosphere.
201 worlds
The setting of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is created in a grim, ruined atmosphere by George Orwell. He effectively depicts the condition to strength the whole despairing country. Orwell creates the imagined world and presents it in writing form carefully. To shock people in the beginning of the story, “the clocks were striking thirteen” impresses readers that a government has so powerful authority that changes the scale of clocks. In the opening setting, Orwell also brings us to a mansion where “smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats.” Even though the mansion has an elevator, “it was seldom working plus “the electric current was cut off during daylight hours” by the government. It is hard that readers know what happen to the country in opening setting, but readers already feel negative to the condition. Orwell builds a cold and inanimate government which is always “watching you” gives readers a terrifying impression of the government. Setting is significant for a story, because it gives a directive emotion effecting readers to possess in a certain mood. In “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” we are embraced in sorrows and terrors everywhere from the beginning. Homes should be the warmest place in the world, but the story whelms your understanding with the story’s background. The mansion of Winston represents every person’s home, and expresses the terrors exist in the country everywhere.-223 words
Parsons’ Flat
George Orwell’s nauseating description of Parsons’ flat shows us a slovenly lifestyle of Parsons’ family. The room is messy, and everything is “battered” and “trampled” by their undisciplined children. “Hockey sticks,” “boxing gloves,” “a burst football,” and “a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out” are littered “all over the floor.” On the table, there is “a litter of dirty dishes” and “dog-eared exercise-books.” The air is not fresh and diffuses “the usual boiled-cabbages smell,” which is “shot through by a sharper reek of sweat” of “some person not present at the home.” In the kitchen, the place the housewife works at, the pipe of sink is blocked up by human hair and the “filthy greenish water” is full “nearly to the brim.” It gives off a strong smell “worse than ever of cabbage.” Parsons is not at home, and he “won’t be back from work in time.” Parsons’ wife is at a loss what to do except finding Winston for help. Orwell’s depicting is effective. Parson’ Flat is a miniature of the whole social environment under the belief, “marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible with a twenty-four- hour-a-day devotion to duty.” Instead of judgement and criticism, we sympathize with Parson’s wife, a victim of an absurd belief.
214-words
The Coziest Place
The coziest place in the novel, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, is O’Brien’s; by describing this place, George Orwell reminds us that how different the Inner Party member’s life and the Outer Party members’. O’Brien’s room is “long-shaped and softly lit,” “the richness of the dark-blue carpet” gives one the impression of “treading on velvet” the block of flats is “huge,” the smells of good food and good tobacco are “unfamiliar,” and the rapid lifts are “silent and incredibly.” Also O’Brien has some “white-jacketed servants!” Especially, the telescreen is “dimmed to a low murmur;” and he can turn it off if he wants to! On the other hand, Winston, an Outer Party member’s place, Victory Mantions, the hallway smells of “boiled cabbage” and “old rag mats,’ the lift, even at the best times it is “seldom” working, and at present the electric current is “cut off” during daylight hours. And there is no way of shutting the telescreen “completely.” The Inner Party member’s life can be so different with the Outer member’s that Winston feels “intimidating.” While most people are suffering hunger and poverty, the Inner Party member, like O’Brien, live in and enjoy their cozy places; all they care about is their own life and their absolute power because it is the nature of the autarchy.
214 words
Mr.Charrington lights a lamp and leads Winston up the stairs to the dark room where he and his wife used to live until she died. Winston finds this room curiously inviting, and he thought to himself of how easy and nice it would be to rent this room from Mr.Charrington , “if he dared to take the risk” that is. Winston notices “the furniture was still arranged as though the room was meant to be lived in.” “An old fashioned glass clock with a twelve-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece.” A huge mahogany bed, filled with bugs is so big it nearly takes up a quarter of the room, Mr.Charrington thinks Winston would find this bed “a little bit cumbersome.” It seemed to Winston “that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in a room like this,” “so utterly alone, utterly secure, with no body watching you.” Winston found something very odd in this room above Mr.Charrington’s shop, “there’s no tele-screen!, he could not help murmuring”
The Golden Country
In his dream, Winston often sees himself in somehow familiar place that he calls the Golden Country. By means of Orwell’s colorful description, the reader sees “the open field on a summer evening when the slanting rays of the sun gilded the ground”, elm trees "swaying very faintly in the breeze" with leaves "stirring in dense masses like women’s hair,” “clear, slow- moving stream,” and a “girl with dark hair coming across the field.” This mellow picture reveals Winston’s feeling of nostalgia for the happy moments of the past and his desperate desire for the beauty and love. The setting description includes things that are extremely necessary for a human's well–being, such as the sun, water, trees, and love. Even the name that Orwell chose for the place, the Golden Country, also gives the reader some clues. The adjective “golden” is used not only for the description of a sunlit place, but also as an association with the period of success, as it is often used throughout literature (i.e. the Golden Era). Not surprisingly, Winston “wakes up with the word “Shakespeare” on his lips” that associates with the Golden Era of the theater, art and beauty, feelings and love - all things that are so vital for everything that is human.
217 words, second draft
At the first part of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, George Orwell shows us a poor, unfree, and totalitarian place. The apartment Winston lives has no power supply “during daylight hours”; the lift “was seldom working”; and “The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats.” The big poster of “BIG BROTHER” who’s “about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache,” reminds us of Joseph Stalin. Moreover, “the Ninth Three-Year Plan” easily takes us back to Soviet Union. After the Second World War, socialist countries succeeded in Europe; the ally during the war broke; and the Cold War started. The western world looked the socialism as a great scourge. In military side, NATO antagonized WTO, and it also reflected in ideology. “Nineteen Eighty –Four is just a good example. The writer describes the personality cult and surveillance to people which had been existed in Stalin times. According to the fact subsisted, Orwell vividly depicts a more terrible future: it looks absurd, but it’s really reasonable and believable. It hints if socialism expands over the world, the people will spend such kind of bitter life. Even though it is spring, it’s still “cold”.
Comment from Lien:
The Inner Party’s Brainwashing’s Ways
In “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” the scene which an enemy, Winston is tortured in the cell is George Orwell reveals how cruel and powerful the Inner Party is in smart ways. In the vague cell, Winston’s body is “held down at every essential point,” even his head. This evil image shows it is a hell for the Inner Party’s enemy, and there is no way to escape except surrender or obedience. However, George Orwell reveals the Party’s intelligence when he includes “a dial with the numbers running to a hundred” in the novel. O’Brien doesn’t directly torture Winston, instead of using a dial. How fast a dial runs is how powerful the Party is tries to change an enemy’s mind. A dial runs to “loose Winston’s vertebrate” if he doesn’t right. O’Brien holds up his left hands with the hidden thumb, and asks “how many fingers?” Winston answers “four” and then “five”. O’Brien doesn’t accept the answer from what Winston perceives, and he sets a dial runs gradually up ninety until Winston says, “I don’t know”. Every period of torture, O’Brien acts patiently and nurses Winston in his arm, so Winston thinks O’Brien is his protector. George Orwell creates this setting to reveal how evil and powerful the Inner Party is when it tries to brain wash an enemy in the smart ways.
The scene when Julia and Winston visit O’Brien at his office, at the Inner Party, is a masterpiece of “intimidating” atmosphere. Orwell uses a strategy to create a realistic sensation of fear. The visual images are doublet by the hearing, smelling and touching senses. The room is spacious, “long-shaped”, the telescreen speaks “to a low murmur”. There is a “smell of good food and good tobacco”. An unusual abundance is created in contrast with the misery of outside world. Winston didn’t see “a passageway whose walls were not grimy”, didn’t taste “natural wine”, didn’t imagine that somebody can shout down the telescreen. Moreover the characters become part of the setting. O’Brien’s servant is “expressionless face”, and even O’Brien’s actions are inhuman. He didn’t looked at Julia and Winston, to make them to feel more intimidated, like they didn’t exist or they didn’t belong to that reach world. “He had no bothered to look up” when they entered […] for perhaps twenty seconds he sat without stirring”. The setting creates the tension by giving to the characters unnatural personality. The picture is an authentic model for terrify.
Hope in dystopia
Re: page 33, 129, 130
The Golden Country in Winston’s dream shows readers that Winston’s mind is full of dreams of freedom and happiness from the Party’s oppression. The Golden Country has “a clear, slow moving steam where dace were swimming in the pools under the willow trees.” Also, he sees a girl who takes off her clothes and throws away them very freely in this field. Winston describes this scene, saying “With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought.” When Winston sees the girl’s naked body, he doesn’t feel any sexual desire as a man. The girl’s careless gesture symbolizes freedom from the oppressive Party, and it means resistance to the Party, because the party extremely restricts sexual relations that are human’s instincts. Through this description, we can read Winston’s desire for freedom. Ironically, this setting is connected to the place that Winston makes love with Julia. When Winston meets Julia in a forest, he murmurs “It’s the Golden Country-almost,” and “A landscape I’ve seen sometimes in a dream.” This place represents Winston’s hope in his mind. Through the Golden Country’s beautiful nature and the girl’s unbounded gesture, George Orwell creates the atmosphere of hope, freedom and love in the dystopia.
The Golden Country
(A setting description on pages 129-130)
George Orwell describes the beauty of a landscape from Winston’s dream,
which represents for him freedom and happiness, in this short passage. “The sunlight, filtering through innumerable leaves,” the murmur of a chill stream and the lovely song of a thrush create a harmonious and peaceful atmosphere. The old pasture seems to invite Winston to run across, barefoot, toward “the stream with green pools,” leaving the imprint of his feet on the grass. Winston and Julia are fascinated by the music of the boastful thrush – virtuoso, as if it is unreal to see a singing bird in such a totalitarian time where everyone considers himself the living dead. George Orwell has included this passage in the novel to show that O’Brien is wrong, saying that there is no distinction between enjoyment of the process of life and ugliness of Party’s principles. Despite of strong efforts of the Party “to make the laws of Nature,” the beauty of woods, wind, water, and birds will never change, no matter how much happiness or pain the people know. This is the wonder, the secrets of nature that cannot be altered by human feelings. No wonder, Winston calls this landscape “The Golden County “and watches the singing thrush “with a sort of reverence.” He knows that, finding himself in this wonderful place, is like making his farewell for the lost dream that was full of freedom and hope for future.
236 words
Tien's Comment:
The Most Horrifying Thing
The most horrifying thing in "Nineteen Eighty-Four," Orwell's totalitarian world, is the constant spying. The helicopters "skimmed down between the roofs" and "snoops into people's windows." Oceania people can't avoid being watched, "Big Brother is Watching You"___ "the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall," are almost displayed on every building and every hallway. Moreover, people are forced to install the telescreens in their flats where the party uses for broadcasting its orders and propaganda. By keeping its citizens under surveillance, day and night, the party uses this device to listen to their every word, watch their every movement even when they are asleep. Meanwhile, the telescreen's voices are so abrasive and hysterical that feels like the mob crashing their weapons, and its images are often with dizzing graphic, too; as a result, people are nervous, stressful and restless. However, Winston thinks it is an accident that he can write his diary in "a shallow uncove" of his flat outside the direct view of the telescreen. Actually, he firmly and constantly expects that one day he will be arrested and "vaporized". When finally "the picture falls to the floor" and reveils the hidden telescreen following by Mr.Charrington and the gun men storming his rented room by the stairs and windows, it truely turns the safe heaven into a place of horror. Thus, the most frightening thing in Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is not only the monitoring tools but the people who betray people as well. --246 words
The room above the old man store.
Orwell's description of the room that Julia and Winston meet in changes as the story goes on. When i first read about the room in my mind i pictured this old, run down, small,dirty and cold room that vermon dont even want to live and i would never have wanted as a room to make love in but i guess desprate times call for desprate measure. As the story goes on my thought on the room changes. With Julia and Winston always going there it becomes more homie. The way that they lay in bed make it there own and cook things over a fire. That little ordament that Winston has sitting on the table makes it kind of like he lives there because it is his and he chooses to keep it there. When there in their room we find out they have niebourghs, the singing lady hanging up landuary. The when they get busted in the room and get taken away it goes back to being a dark and lonely place again
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