2011 Junior IB English: Topic Topic Topic

2011 Junior IB English: Topic Topic Topic: "Leave a new comment under the IOP sign up post for your novel (found below this post) with the topic for your IOP. This will be your chance..."

I would like to focus on Orwell's biography and how it relates to his writing of 1984

Journal #21: Topic C

Through the conflicts and societal structure created in 1984, an influential and stunning vision is created. One filled with fear and total domination by the government. The themes present in this book are precariously slipped in to the book, which makes it all the more believable. George Orwell warns us of a time taken over by communism that seems vague and cliché on the surface but the novel provides all of the different angles to a communist world. When 1984 was originally published, worldwide Communism was a real possibility for some of the world. I believe that George Orwell was a genius in this sense because he some of what he predicted has come true at times and in some parts of world. However, his premonitions seem far-fetched now, they were not back in the middle decades of the 20th Century. In the 50's, people thought that the book was a real possibility because of how accurate it seemed. The potential of his predictions have been mitigated over time but they still have a certain lust about them. Orwell gives us little to hope for in his novel, which makes it so powerful. The protagonist slides under the radar only for a time, doing whatever he can to rebel. This only works for a little while however and he is eventually caught and mentally annihilated.

Journal #20: Topic B

Winston Smith is a weak and feeble middle-aged man who feels alone in his totalitarian world. Winston has a job in one of the several ministries and he does a mindless and menial task day after day. Winston lives in fear when he interacts with his comrades because at any moment he could be betrayed because of an out-of-the-ordinary facial expression or spoken phrase. Winston feels that he is alone in thinking that there is something horribly wrong with his society. He questions the way things are run within his society and the power that they display. He can remember when things seemed to be different and constantly comments on how things should be different. Winston is made to do exercises when he clearly has an illness and everyone is made to go to community centers to interact with other comrades. Buying certain things is against the law and sex cannot be done in a pleasureful way, only to create more people for "the good of the Party". Winston resists this by buying meaningless things that the Party wouldn't necessarily approve of. He has sex not to create babies but for fun and skips out on the gatherings. He is very successful for a time until the Thought Police arrest him, torture him, and brain wash him. This is a very bad consequence.

Journal #19: Topic A

"All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother [...] for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hour? Yes, they swallowed it [...] Had it always been like this? Had food always tasted like this? [...] Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different?" (Orwell 52).

The government has essentially brainwashed the Society in which Winston lives into believing everything they hear. They do not question the government and take everything without thinking. This happens because of what the government has done with Society. They have scared them into not thinking through the "Thought Police" and the secretive societies that are meant to strike fear into the people. The Party manipulates them and forces the society into a totalitarian state. Winston seems to be the only person who remembers a time before this was the way things worked. No one in Winston's world remembers a time when it was different from the one it is in right now because they are taught not to think. The government ca do whatever it wants because it has complete control over the past, present, and future. In this section, there is a report about how the production of every product is at a record high and how all of the people in the city are praising Big Brother. The passage talks about how the certain rations of chocolate have been raised. Winston, however, remembers that it was only yesterday when the announcement had been made to lower the ration. Yet, the people praise BB because they "know" that it has been raised from what ever it was before. Everyone including Winston take this without showing outward emotion. On the inside, Winston knows that everything is a lie.