The Principles of Newspeak, from the novel 1984, by George Orwell

GEORGE ORWELL, a short biography

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. He drew the inspiration for this pseudonym from the River Owell and from the patron saint of England.
He was born in 1903 in India and died at the age of 46 in London as a result of tuberculosis.
His most famous books are Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm and Homage to Catalonia.
When he was one year old, his mother took him and his sisters to England. As a child, he attended a Catholic school, and later he studied at Eton, the famous boarding school for the elite. There, Aldous Huxley taught him French.
As he wasn’t a particularly good student, his parents decided he should apply to the Indian Imperial Police. He went to a training police school in India, and then he worked as a policeman there.
After contracting dengue fever, he went back to England, having spent five years in India. He decided to leave the police force and to become a writer. He started with a memoir of his days in India with a book called Burmese Days, which he managed to publish several years after: at the time his manuscript was refused by all the publishers.
In 1927 (he was 24), he went to live on Portobello Road, where you can find a plate bearing his name.
The following year he went to Paris, where he wrote some articles for Le Monde, whose editor was Henri Barbusse. After six months, he went back to England, this time to Suffolk, where his parents were living. He went on trying to publish articles and sending his writings to various editors, but they were rejected.
At 29, he started working as a teacher at a boy’s secondary school in London. While working there, he was able to publish A Scullion’s Diary, a report on his visits to the London slums; then he also got published Down and Out in Paris and London, a book about his experiences in both cities. He got ill again and stopped teaching forever.
His new job was in a second-hand bookshop; there he began his novel A Clergyman’s Daughter, inspired in his days as a teacher. In the bookshop he contacted with Esperantists and with the Independent Labour Party. He also wrote literary reviews for some magazines. His book The Road to Wingan Pier was an investigation into the living conditions of the working class in the Northern England.
At the age of 33, he got married, but the same year he came to Spain to fight against the fascists, and he joined the POUM, a Trotskyist party; he fought in the Aragon Front, where he was wounded. He was taken to a hospital in Barcelona, where he witnessed the violent clashes between the Communist Party and the rest of leftist groups in May 1937. He was arrested, but he managed to escape and flee from Spain and the Stalinist agents. He told his experiences in the Spanish Civil War in his Homage to Catalonia.
Due to his serious health problems, his friends sent him to the French Morocco for recovery, but he came back before the start of the WWII.
During the war, he worked for the BBC, wrote articles for newspapers and finished Animal Farm. In 1945, he was appointed editor of the Tribune, but the following year he moved to an isolated farm to try to recover from his deteriorating health and to finish his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949, some months before his death.

THE PRINCIPLES OF NEWSPEAK

The text we’re going to discuss is a kind of summary of the new language invented by George Orwell for the dystopian society depicted in the novel 1984.

But first, let’s talk a little bit about the novel. A dystopia is an imaginary place or time where people live in subhuman conditions. It’s a kind of opposite to utopia, where people live happily as in a paradise.

In the 1984 novel, the world is divided in three superstates in perpetual war with each other, but it’s a war of low intensity and the battles usually take place on the borders, and the alliances shift frequently, but none of the belligerents can achieve a definite victory, so the war never ends.

Our protagonist lives in a group of regions forming the state of Oceania under a totalitarian regime. The only political party with his leader, Big Brother, controls everything and everybody, and its ultimate objective is the absolute control of the human mind.

All the time, the regime tells its subjects that they live in the best of the worlds, but you know all are lies that everybody believes without question.

Our hero, Winston Smith, is a kind of civil servant who becomes aware of the big falsehood of the system and the tyrannical nature of the government, and wants to rebel against the establishment. He has a lover, and together they try to get in contact with the opposition, a Brotherhood whose leader is Goldstein. But the Thought Police is always watching.

The Thought Police is the most efficient police of the world, and its goal is to uncover any form of heterodoxy and suppress it. The only way to remain all the time orthodox is through Doublethink, that is, being able to think at the same time two opposite and excluding statements, i.e., “two and two is four, but sometimes two and two is five”, and genuinely believing that both are true. It isn’t hypocrisy, that is, thinking one thing and saying another, but really believing there isn’t a contradiction between both declarations.

The Party is working to maintain orthodoxy, and the way to reach this goal is the Newspeak, a new language designed to keep all the thought between the limits of goodthink. This new language will reduce all possible ambiguities eliminating unnecessary words such as synonyms or opposites, and simplifying grammar and spelling. So, the new Dictionary will contain fewer and fewer words each new edition. At the end it would be impossible to commit crimethink because the worlds to express such thoughts will no longer exist.

QUESTIONS

-How do you see the future of Humanity? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about it? Why do you think so?

-What is solipsism? Do you think reality exist out of our minds, or it's only an invention of our minds?

-In your view, are we spied and controlled all the time? According to you, is it good or bad for people?

-Our languages, are becoming poorer and poorer?

VOCABULARY

lice, root, arising, utter, telescoped, devised, rook, severed

The Enormous Radio, by John Cheever

 

John Cheever at the Wikipedia

The Enormous Radio at the Wikipedia

Audiobook

Missoury Waltz, by Johnny Cash

The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

Whiffenpoof Song

Oranges and Lemons

Biography, by Begoña Devis

 

John Cheever was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1912. His father was the owner of a shoe factory, which went bankrupt with the crash of 29, and the family fell into relative poverty. After this fact, the father left the family, and the young Cheever lived for a time in Boston with his brother. During that period he survived by publishing articles and stories in various media.

He was expelled from the academy for smoking, which ended his education and this was the core of his first short story, Expelled, which Malcom Cowley bought for the New Republican newspaper. From that moment, Cheever devoted himself entirely to writing short stories that progressively found space in several magazines and newspapers, and finally in the famous magazine The New Yorker, with which he maintained, until the end of these days, an intense relationship.

He was called the Chekhov of the suburbs, because many of his stories occurred in the middle class neighbourhoods that were born around New York during the recovery of the economy after the Second World War.

In 1957 he won The National Book Award for his first novel, and in 1971 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his compilation of stories. He wrote primarily about the decline of the American dream, alcoholism and homosexuality, and sometimes his characters had dubious moral.

A movie was made from his short story The Swimmer in 1957, played by Burt Lancaster. At the time it was unsuccessful, but now it is considered a cult film by cinephiles.

John Cheever died in New York in 1982 at the age of 70.

The story

Many of Cheever's stories, like this one, revolve around the people who live in large cities in the second half of the twentieth century, and the particular strains this imposes upon them. In The Enormous Radio, Jim Wescott decides to buy a new radio as a present for his wife, without knowing the dramatic effect it would have on her life or what it would reveal about the lives of the people living in the same block as them.

QUESTIONS

In the first paragraph there are a lot of mentions to numbers, averages and statistics. What effect do you think the author wants to give?

What is your opinion about statistics?

The first paragraph defines the class which Jim and Irene, and their neighbours, belong to. But on page 3 there are more details: Can you tell us which are these other details?

Describe the main characters:

           Jim Westcott

Irene Westcott

Describe the new radio (appearance and “personality”).

How does the new radio change Irene’s way of looking at people? Give some examples.

Why do you think Irene Westcott went on listening to the radio?

When Irene saw a group of Salvation Army people in the street, she said they were much nicer than a lot of people they knew. What do you think she meant by this? Why are they nicer?

What do we learn from the story about the way of life of middle-class Americans in the 4os?

What differences in personality do you notice between Jim and Irene Westcott?

What worries them most: to hear the other people or to be heard by the other people?

How do you think you would react if you bought a radio like the one in the story?

Think about what can happen when you give a present and the person who gets it doesn’t like it, or the present turns out badly (e.g., a gremlin).

Irene tells her husband to stop a man beating his wife. Would you interfere? What would you do?

Give some information about the different families/houses.

What differences and similarities can you see between this radio and the screens in the novel 1984?

Can you give some information about...

           Schubert

Chopin
Missouri Waltz
Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo
Whiffenpoof Song
Oranges and Lemons
Salvation Army
Mayo Clinic
Ode to Joy
Il Trovatore

Nassau

 

VOCABULARY

fitch, Andover, handyman, uncrated, fuse, vacuum cleaner, whir, give them hell, nursery, station, overshot, overdraft, draft, forthright, overdrawn, halting, briefing, slipcover, Christly

The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson at the Wikipedia: click here

The Lottery at the Wikipedia: click here

The Lottery: study guide

The Lottery: audiobook

The Lottery: review

The Lottery, short movie:

Presentation, by Remedios Benéitez

Biography

Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco, California, in 1916, and spent her childhood in Burlingame, California, when she began writing poetry and short stories as a young teenager. Her family moved east when she was seventeen, and she attended the University of Rochester, New York.

She entered Syracuse University, N.Y., in 1937, where she met her future husband, the young aspiring literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman. Both graduated in 1940 and moved to New York’s Greenwich Village, where Shirley wrote without fail every day. She began having her stories published in The New Republic and The New Yorker.

In 1945 her husband was offered a teaching position at Bennington College, and they moved into an old house in North Bennington, Vermont, where Shirley continued her daily writing while raising children and running the house.

Her first novel The Road Through the Wall was published in1948, the same year that The New Yorker published her iconic story The Lottery.

She composed six novels, including The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two memoirs and more than 200 short stories.

She was a heavy smoker and suffered numerous health problems. In 1965, Shirley died in her sleep at her home in North Bennington, at the age of 48.

THE LOTTERY

It is a short story by Shirley Jackson published in the magazine The New Yorker on June 26, 1948. Reaction to the post from readers was negative, who sent protest messages to the magazine, but later it was accepted as a classic short story subject to interpretations. Now it’s considered as “one of the most famous short stories in the history of American literature”. It has been adapted for radio, theatre and television.

 Argument:

The lottery takes place on a beautiful summer day, June 27, in a small town of 300 inhabitants, where all residents gather for a traditional annual lottery.

Although the event seems festive at first, people show a strange and gloomy mood, and it soon becomes clear that no one wants to win the lottery.

The draw is carried out between the heads of the family. The Hutchinsons are chosen and then the draw is made within the chosen family, getting chosen Tessie (the mother), so she is stoned to death by all the neighbours of the town, including his own family. This is a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest, according to the beliefs of the community.

I think that this is a story about the human capacity for violence. It explores ideas such as communal violence, individual vulnerability and the dangers of blindly following traditions.

We rely on collective violence in those circumstances that we would not be able to consider individually.

ISSUES

The quid of the story is that the people seem normal, nice and even happy, and they go to the square as they would go to the market, with an informal attitude, they chatter and gossip; even the day is sunny, the children don’t have school because they start the summer holidays and the procedures of the lottery are simple and common. So the jewel of the story is the ending; we don’t imagine that something horrifying is going to happen. The villagers aren’t afraid, although we suspect that something surprising can happen, because there’s too much happiness, and we have had some hints, e.g., they collect stones, there is somebody missing, Mrs Hutchington says “it isn’t fair”, etc. So in this case we have a story that loses all its effect when we know the end; the story has a punch, but as soon as we know that it’s going to hit us at the end, we are alert and don’t get hurt (symbolically) any more. A similar classical and very famous story of this kind is Monkey’s Paw, by W.W. Jacobs. I strongly recommend its reading if you like these kind of stories: it’s short and easy to read with a lot of dialogue.
👉So, what kind of stories do you prefer: the ones with a clear ending or the ones without?

I think the main topic of the story is tradition, what we do with tradition. According to the dictionary “tradition is a custom or way of behaving that has continued for a long time in a group of people”, but, for me, another definition is also possible: tradition is what you do because someone before you did, not because it’s reasonable to do. So you don’t think about the action and its consequences, you don’t think about the reason why. Accordingly, tradition is opposite to progress.What is your point of view about traditions? Do you remember the tradition in Julian Barnes’s story, that one about sleeping on a mattress in a barn on the wedding night? And I particularly remember the tradition of burying the mother’s placenta when there is a birth (as someone in my family told me).
👉Can you tell us a very unreasonable tradition you know? 

Something similar happens with proverbs and sayings. A typical case of a saying that can be false is “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't”. And in the story there is also a saying: “Lottery in June / corn be heavy soon.”
👉Are all sayings clichés? Can you explain a saying that isn’t exactly true? I give you some examples:

The pen is mightier than the sword.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
 Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
You are what you eat.
A watched pot never boils.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Time heals all wounds.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Slow and steady wins the race.
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
Love is blind.
You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.

 

...

In the story, the tradition has lost some parts of the ritual, or some things have been changed, e.g., using papers instead of pieces of wood for the draw. Do you think that this is because traditions tend to keep the essential parts and forget the less important ones?
👉What is your opinion about rituals? Are they necessary for our everyday lives? And are they useful for ceremonies, social situations as a wedding or a funeral?

The story is situated in a small village of 300 inhabitants.
The smaller the society the stronger and less sound are the traditions?
👉What is your view on this?

Mrs Hutchington says “it isn’t fair”. Why? Because she thinks something in the procedure wasn’t correct, or because she knows she’s going to be stoned?
👉In which societies they did lapidation and in which countries they're still doing now?

So being lucky is another important theme in our narration. There’s a wonderful story about the fortune (in the classical or Greek sense) or the destiny ruling our lives: La loteria en Babilonia by Jorge Luis Borges. In the Æneid, they say: Fortune helps audacious people, that is, “chance is something you don’t have: that’s something you must look for”. Or: you cannot wait your chance sitting down, you have to stand up and go for it.
👉In your opinion, do our lives depend most on luck or most on our personal decisions?

Another topic you can find in The Lottery is the question of the scapegoat; that means that, when there are catastrophes or phenomena you aren’t able to explain, you attribute them to some sin or bad action someone has done, and so this person has to pay for it, and, if you don’t know the guilty one, you’ll have to choose someone (using a lottery, e.g.) to pay for it. That will stop new disasters. Religion explains this as a sacrifice: you have to do a sacrifice to soothe the gods, and that means killing an animal or a person. You already know the legend of Saint George and the Dragon: every year they had to choose a maiden to feed the Dragon.
👉Can you remember other examples of scapegoats?