1984: Part 3 Chapter 2
Hello Year 12,
I think this is my best means of setting you some work and staying in touch with you during lockdown (for however long it lasts!).
During each blog post - you will find tasks highlighted RED and, at the end, a clear due date and how I would like you to submit work will be summarised. I'd love to be in a position to conduct online lessons and to see more of you - but having two very young children is making that difficult. Please forgive me!
It seems weirdly ironic studying 1984 when the country is in this unprecedented state of lockdown and every night the Prime Minister (or another member of the government) stands behind a big red and yellow banner telling everyone to stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives. I wonder what Orwell would make of it given his views on the power of language.
Task 1: Watch the video of Boris Johnson's first address to the nation instructing us all to stay indoors. Find moments of the novel where similarly forceful language is used to control the population of Oceania. Make a table with 3 columns. One for quotes from Boris Johnson's speech, one for quotations from the novel which show a similar control over the population through language, and one for quotes from Orwell's essay on Politics and the English Language which link the two together. https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit You should aim to find 5. Feel free to discuss this with others/work in pairs or small groups using email/social media to cooperate.
Task 2: Respond to the following questions by making notes/short paragraphs on a page titled with this chapter.
Task 3: Read the following extract from The Road. Write a critical appreciation of the passage. This is a 45 minute essay (no more than 1 hour). You are ultimately being asked to analyse language and structure. You should connect any specific analysis to your understanding of the wider dystopian genre. You may make brief remarks about specific dystopian texts that we have encountered this year - but the lion's share of the marks is for your argument and your analysis. Use feedback from similar essays you have written earlier in the year. At the top of the page on which you write this essay - write your most recent EBI. At the end of your essay - highlight areas in the essay where you targeted this EBI. I will mark this essay in the next week and part of next weeks' tasks will be responding to this feedback.
It might help to structure your essay as follows:
5-10 min: read the extract and annotate key evidence of a dystopian world, make brief notes in the margins which will trigger later language analysis.
10 - 13mins: Start with a thesis statement: a few sentences which mark the direction of travel for your argument. In the past, I have given you examples of how to write these successfully by using the 'what;why' structure. You should have access to these in your folders - if this is problematic, though, ask me for an ecopy via email and I will happily oblige.
13-45 mins: Aim to write two meaty paragraphs analysing language/structure in the extract - explaining how the writer, McCarthy, has deliberately crafted the text in order to draw our attention to a dystopian trope you can identify. We have made lists of these in previous lessons - if your notes are absent or incomplete - ask someone benevolent in the class to share theirs.
Task Summary
All tasks are due by next Monday (11th) at 12:00 midday to be emailed to me at: jmatthews@salesian.surrey.sch.uk
They should be completed using one Microsoft Word document - this will make it easy for me to make typed comments on the essay and to return it. I will mark Task 3 in depth - with a grade and WWWs EBIs as usual. Please save it as your name followed by the chapter number. So if it was me - I would save it as 'jmatthewspart3chapter2'. Task 1 and 2 I will check to make sure you have spent an appropriate amount of time to complete. I think (all in) these tasks will take you 4 hours this week.
1: Complete the table (you can do this in a pair/group) and share it between you - so I don't mind if some of you have identical tables for this.
2. Some of the questions here will only require a sentence or two. Others a short paragraph. Be sensible though - and if you are taking a long time over any part of it - simply email me to ask for some guidance.
3. 45 mins - 1 hour on this essay.
I think this is my best means of setting you some work and staying in touch with you during lockdown (for however long it lasts!).
During each blog post - you will find tasks highlighted RED and, at the end, a clear due date and how I would like you to submit work will be summarised. I'd love to be in a position to conduct online lessons and to see more of you - but having two very young children is making that difficult. Please forgive me!
It seems weirdly ironic studying 1984 when the country is in this unprecedented state of lockdown and every night the Prime Minister (or another member of the government) stands behind a big red and yellow banner telling everyone to stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives. I wonder what Orwell would make of it given his views on the power of language.
Task 1: Watch the video of Boris Johnson's first address to the nation instructing us all to stay indoors. Find moments of the novel where similarly forceful language is used to control the population of Oceania. Make a table with 3 columns. One for quotes from Boris Johnson's speech, one for quotations from the novel which show a similar control over the population through language, and one for quotes from Orwell's essay on Politics and the English Language which link the two together. https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit You should aim to find 5. Feel free to discuss this with others/work in pairs or small groups using email/social media to cooperate.
Task 2: Respond to the following questions by making notes/short paragraphs on a page titled with this chapter.
Part
3 – Chapter 2
•How does the language effectively
show Winston’s degradation?
•Do you think that Winston can be
seen as a victim? Why?
•Winston’s inner and outer lives
converge (like they did when his mind was struggling to free itself from
official beliefs). However, what does
his dream about “laughter” and being “forgiven” suggest?
•How is O’Brien portrayed in this
section of the text? How does Winston
view him? Why does he view him in this
way?
•What does “Perhaps one did not want
to be loved so much as to be understood” suggest about Winston’s relationship
with O’Brien?
•Note down words that have religious
associations in this chapter.
•What does Orwell suggest about
religion and communism?
•How could Big Brother be seen as
God?
What
could seeing five fingers instead of four be a parody of?Task 3: Read the following extract from The Road. Write a critical appreciation of the passage. This is a 45 minute essay (no more than 1 hour). You are ultimately being asked to analyse language and structure. You should connect any specific analysis to your understanding of the wider dystopian genre. You may make brief remarks about specific dystopian texts that we have encountered this year - but the lion's share of the marks is for your argument and your analysis. Use feedback from similar essays you have written earlier in the year. At the top of the page on which you write this essay - write your most recent EBI. At the end of your essay - highlight areas in the essay where you targeted this EBI. I will mark this essay in the next week and part of next weeks' tasks will be responding to this feedback.
It might help to structure your essay as follows:
5-10 min: read the extract and annotate key evidence of a dystopian world, make brief notes in the margins which will trigger later language analysis.
10 - 13mins: Start with a thesis statement: a few sentences which mark the direction of travel for your argument. In the past, I have given you examples of how to write these successfully by using the 'what;why' structure. You should have access to these in your folders - if this is problematic, though, ask me for an ecopy via email and I will happily oblige.
13-45 mins: Aim to write two meaty paragraphs analysing language/structure in the extract - explaining how the writer, McCarthy, has deliberately crafted the text in order to draw our attention to a dystopian trope you can identify. We have made lists of these in previous lessons - if your notes are absent or incomplete - ask someone benevolent in the class to share theirs.
Write a critical
appreciation of this passage, relating your discussion to your reading of
dystopian literature.
On the far
side of the river valley the road passed through a stark black burn. Charred
and limbless trunks of trees stretching away on every side. Ash moving over the
road and the sagging hands of blind wire strung from the blackened lightpoles
whining thinly in the wind. A burned house in a clearing and beyond that a
reach of meadow-lands stark and gray and a raw red mudbank where a roadworks
lay abandoned. Farther along were billboards advertising motels. Everything as
it once had been save faded and weathered. At the top of the hill they stood in
the cold and the wind, getting their breath. He looked at the boy. I'm all
right, the boy said. The man put his hand on his shoulder and nodded toward the
open country below them. He got the binoculars out of the cart and stood in the
road and glassed the plain down there where the shape of a city stood in the
grayness like a charcoal drawing sketched across the waste. Nothing to see. No
smoke. Can I see? the boy said. Yes. Of course you can. The boy leaned on the
cart and adjusted the wheel. What do you see? the man said. Nothing. He lowered
the glasses. It's raining. Yes, the man said. I know.
They left the cart in a gully covered with the tarp and made their way up the slope through the dark poles of the standing trees to where he'd seen a running ledge of rock and they sat under the rock overhang and watched the gray sheets of rain blow across the valley. It was very cold. They sat huddled together wrapped each in a blanket over their coats and after a while the rain stopped and there was just the dripping in the woods.
When it had cleared they went down to the cart and pulled away the tarp and got their blankets and the things they would need for the night. They went back up the hill and made their camp in the dry dirt under the rocks and the man sat with his arms around the boy trying to warm him. Wrapped in the blankets, watching the nameless dark come to enshroud them. The gray shape of the city vanished in the night's onset like an apparition and he lit the little lamp and set it back out of the wind. Then they walked out to the road and he took the boy's hand and they went to the top of the hill where the road crested and where they could see out over the darkening country to the south, standing there in the wind, wrapped in their blankets, watching for any sign of a fire or a lamp. There was nothing. The lamp in the rocks on the side of the hill was little more than a mote of light and after a while they walked back. Everything too wet to make a fire. They ate their poor meal cold and lay down in their bedding with the lamp between them. He'd brought the boy's book but the boy was too tired for reading. Can we leave the lamp on till I'm asleep? he said. Yes. Of course we can.
He was a long time going to sleep. After a while he turned and looked at the man. His face in the small light streaked with black from the rain like some old world thespian. Can I ask you something? he said. Yes. Of course. Are we going to die? Sometime. Not now. And we're still going south. Yes. So we'll be warm. Yes. Okay. Okay what? Nothing. Just okay. Go to sleep. Okay. I'm going to blow out the lamp. Is that okay? Yes. That's okay. And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course you can. What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too.
They left the cart in a gully covered with the tarp and made their way up the slope through the dark poles of the standing trees to where he'd seen a running ledge of rock and they sat under the rock overhang and watched the gray sheets of rain blow across the valley. It was very cold. They sat huddled together wrapped each in a blanket over their coats and after a while the rain stopped and there was just the dripping in the woods.
When it had cleared they went down to the cart and pulled away the tarp and got their blankets and the things they would need for the night. They went back up the hill and made their camp in the dry dirt under the rocks and the man sat with his arms around the boy trying to warm him. Wrapped in the blankets, watching the nameless dark come to enshroud them. The gray shape of the city vanished in the night's onset like an apparition and he lit the little lamp and set it back out of the wind. Then they walked out to the road and he took the boy's hand and they went to the top of the hill where the road crested and where they could see out over the darkening country to the south, standing there in the wind, wrapped in their blankets, watching for any sign of a fire or a lamp. There was nothing. The lamp in the rocks on the side of the hill was little more than a mote of light and after a while they walked back. Everything too wet to make a fire. They ate their poor meal cold and lay down in their bedding with the lamp between them. He'd brought the boy's book but the boy was too tired for reading. Can we leave the lamp on till I'm asleep? he said. Yes. Of course we can.
He was a long time going to sleep. After a while he turned and looked at the man. His face in the small light streaked with black from the rain like some old world thespian. Can I ask you something? he said. Yes. Of course. Are we going to die? Sometime. Not now. And we're still going south. Yes. So we'll be warm. Yes. Okay. Okay what? Nothing. Just okay. Go to sleep. Okay. I'm going to blow out the lamp. Is that okay? Yes. That's okay. And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something? Yes. Of course you can. What would you do if I died? If you died I would want to die too.
The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
All tasks are due by next Monday (11th) at 12:00 midday to be emailed to me at: jmatthews@salesian.surrey.sch.uk
They should be completed using one Microsoft Word document - this will make it easy for me to make typed comments on the essay and to return it. I will mark Task 3 in depth - with a grade and WWWs EBIs as usual. Please save it as your name followed by the chapter number. So if it was me - I would save it as 'jmatthewspart3chapter2'. Task 1 and 2 I will check to make sure you have spent an appropriate amount of time to complete. I think (all in) these tasks will take you 4 hours this week.
1: Complete the table (you can do this in a pair/group) and share it between you - so I don't mind if some of you have identical tables for this.
2. Some of the questions here will only require a sentence or two. Others a short paragraph. Be sensible though - and if you are taking a long time over any part of it - simply email me to ask for some guidance.
3. 45 mins - 1 hour on this essay.
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