Anthony Chen PD7
5/20/20 Blog #2
Introduction: May 18th, 2020 Class
In today's lesson, we discuss the 1984 chapters 2 and 3. We are still in the beginning of the book and adapting to it so as of right now, our information on it is very limited. In these two chapters, we learn a little about Winston’s past and his mother, as well as his diary in which he keeps his thoughts. We also learn that Winston is extremely fearful of the thought police. To summarize, us as readers are basically learning about his character as a whole still.
Aim: How and why does Winston manage to resist the manipulative power of language and mob mentality?
Today’s aim takes a swing at how exactly Winston is just different from his peers and everyone else. We discuss in class that Winston has thoughts of his own and is obviously against the party. However, he is in a very high risk situation considering he will be executed if the party finds out he is not in line with their policies and their agenda, which he is not.
Do Now: “Comrades” you have been selected for re-education by the Party. To begin, I want you to observe 3 citizens and write everything they do and what you believe they are thinking. Do not let them know you’re watching them! You have 5 minutes!
In today’s Do Now we almost pretend we are in 1984 as we just pick and choose people and analyze their behavior. We are basically all playing big brother on each other. I chose Talha and observed that he had his hood up, indicating he got a haircut and he chose me and noticed how I was constantly touching my hair. We learn from this activity that this is basically how the people in 1984 lived. They were constantly watched without their knowledge and every step they took was monitored, which is scary to think about.
Big Brother & 1984: In this section, we discuss big brother and how the party manipulates people into thinking what they want them to think. It is completely unfair and we as a class also discuss how they use fear to enforce this. This is what the thought police are for. In my opinion, I believe that the thought police are more of a fear factor rather than actual law enforcement. The people are not necessarily scared of the thought police, but rather what would happen if they were caught thinking differently and were not to conform. They are simply just for making people scared and making sure they are in line.
Thoughtcrimes/ INGSOC: In this section of our lesson, we dig deeper into what a thoughtcrime is and what exactly their language is. We as a class identify that a thoughtcrime is when you think differently and have thoughts that go against the party, even if they are minimal. We then go on to discuss INGSOC, which is the newspeak word for “english socialism”. To recap, newspeak is their language. The direct definition however is:
The use of censorship by limiting language limits the possibilities of thoughtcrimes. If you are lacking the words for what you are thinking, then in the
government’s POV, you can’t think to betray them by thinking something they don’t want you to think or know.
I interpreted this as the party basically just fed you information. Everything you know is what they want you to know. The truth or the outside never touches your mind because the party enforces hard censorship and makes sure your entire information is from them. This is so that everyone stays in line. The final part of this section was when we discussed the quote “WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
The quote was direct oxymorons. We then as a class discussed what we thought the quote meant and how exactly it is significant. I as well as other classmates said that this quote basically meant that everyone in the society believed that two complete opposite ideas could coexist and they would believe in both.
Team Activity: Imagine you’re the Mayor for NYC. Create “3” slogans/mottos for NYC, which you believe exemplify doublethink (contradictory/opposing statements).
For the final part of our lesson, we do this team activity. It was more so individual rather than a team activity but we did discuss in class afterwards. My first slogan was “unity in division”. This is because if everyone decided to divide and social distance, we would technically be coming together to stop the spread of covid-19. Everyone is universally agreeing to separate, so that the situation in NYC could get better. I didn’t get the chance to come up with another 2 but a bunch of my classmates and group mates came up with good ones.
Conclusion: To summarize, I felt that today’s class was pretty good. It was the last lesson before our AP tests that we had to hyperfocus on. We did a lot of class activities and a lot of the class consisted of discussion rather than just straight reading. It was definitely somewhat enjoyable with the activities we did as everyone was engaged for today’s class. We also touched on a lot of important topics like Winstons’ rebellion and the language of newspeak. This will be important for the future as we have learned a lot about the world of 1984 and already came up with theories of how things will end up.
No comments:
Post a Comment