Blog #63 - David Yang - Period 3 - 06/12/2020

Blog#63

6/13/20

David Yang Period 3

Aim:How do the historical allusions and connections in 1984 contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole?

For the DoNow, we had to answer these two questions:

For the first question, our class said that we fear new and different ideas because new and different ideas bring change. It is easier for us to stay how we are than adapting to a new change of events. We also said that humans naturally fear the unknown and because we don't know what will happen with these new ideas, we will be afraid of it. For the second question, we said that Julia was good for Winston. That is because after meeting Julia, Winston became more carefree. Julia is more optimistic than Winston. She also does very risky things.

Next we defined what allusions are.

Allusion: (N) Is a brief and indirect reference within a literary work to a historical, literary, or biblical character, place or event, which is NOT explained.

Notes:

• Allusions can be person, place, event, literary work, author, work of art, historical event, musical work, film or movie
• They are NOT explained because writers intend the audience will recognize and understand them, usu. through prior experience.
• They can help to create the mood or can contribute to the theme.

Types of Allusions

-Biblical: referring to the Bible or a religious work

-Classical: referring to Classical Literature

-Literary: referring to another literary work

-Historical: referring to an event in history

This allusion refers to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

For our group work, we talked about the different allusions from 1984. We said that the Proles in 1984 represented the proletariat. Proletariats are the working class people. In 1984, the proles were making up the majority of the population. Another example is in 1984, Big Brother, the leader of Oceania alludes to Stalin. The telescreens allude to the KGB because both allow spying on people. The Junior spies alludes to the Hitler Youth.

Regarding the virus, the number to cases has still been rising at a steady rate. The USA is still getting a lot of new cases. According to worldometers.info, the daily deaths in June is around 5,000 per day. It was much worse in April with a daily death that goes as high as 8,000. If you look at the chart of the total cases, the rate seems to slowly flatten out which is a good sign.I believe that it will start to go down and this situation will hopefully be resolved soon. I am getting more and more used to working at home. Because home is where I am most comfortable, I used to delay my homework to the last day then do it. Now I am handling it better and properly managing my time.

Reflection

I learned many things from this lesson. I learned about what allusions are and how often it is used. Allusions are everywhere from TV shows to poems. Allusions are very important because they allow an author to be able to create a certain mood or contribute to the theme of their writing. I usually will not notice these small references in writing but knowing about it, I believe I will start to notice more allusions and appreciate it.