6/12/2020
Peter Terranova Period 3
Aim: How do the historical allusions and connections in 1984 contribute to the meaning of the work as a whole?
Classwork
The first part of the do now was “Why do new and different ideas often provoke fear?” We as a class discussed and came to the conclusion that we fear different ideas because fear invokes change, and we are somehow inherently resistant to change. Another classmate took it even further, describing the nature of our primitive past and that it was a survival necessity to resist change, especially when the current norm is (seemingly) fulfilling your needs anyway. I would add that a common phenomenon we experience, that is the older generation resisting the new cultures of the younger generation. After all, parents succeeded in growing the human population and so however they lived their life was surely good enough that change would be a risky endeavor. It is believed that this sort of thinking is as old as humanity itself, though it is true that with the exponential growth of technology in recent decades and better communications systems it has become more noticeable. Indeed, even the ancients thought in this way. The great thinker Socrates we venerate today was punished to forced suicide by the Athenian elders for corrupting the young people of the city with new ways of thinking. The second part of the do now was “Is Julia good for Winston???” It was obvious to us that Julia clearly made Winston more rebellious, actually taking criminal actions instead of simply thinking criminal thoughts. However, upon closer inspection it is also true that through his love for Julia he stopped his various self destructive habits, from excessive drinking to smoking.
The topic of today’s lesson was allusions. We first started with attempting to describe what the definition of allusion was between ourselves. Various ideas were thrown around that hovered around the definition of allegory. The true definition was:
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.
They are not explained, unlike an allegory, because it is expected that the audience already understands what it is referring to. This allusion of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden doesn’t have to be explained to its audience, which attending church would surely recognize this scene anyway. An allusion can refer to a source that is biblical, classical, literary, or historical. Allusions can be seen in modern television in shows such as Family Guy and The Simpsons. For the homework, my group and I found other allusions including that of the famous movie Lion King which alluded to the famous Shakespearean work of Hamlet, and of which the sequel continued the tradition by mirroring Romeo and Juliet.
Allusions can be used to establish a mood quickly. They can also be used to establish a theme.
Allusions can be found in various parts of the book 1984. We discussed and came to find these allusions in the novel:
Proles - Proletariat, uneducated working class
INGSOC Social Class System - A small group of content and controlling communist party members being given large concessions to control the middle class party members, which in turn oversee the larger working class.
Big Brother - Joseph Stalin, who just like Big Brother claimed to be a protector but killed many supposed enemies
Emmanuel Goldstein - Leon Trotsky, who just like Goldstein co-founded the party but was declared enemy
The Telescreens - Mass surveillance and propaganda
Junior Spies - Hitler Jugen, which were taught to only obey the Nazi Party and disobey or even rat on their parents for unorthodox thought
Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford - The Great Purges of “revisionist” party members in the Soviet Union
Thoughts on Reading
I really like the book 1984, because it highlights the dangerous reality that the greater populace of humanity has to face. For millennia humatinity was led by a chaotic mob rule of quantitative consensus. In the tribe, all members were of roughly equal in both resource production and military might. With the invention of farming the risky and grandiose nature of it required an increasingly centralized organizational presence to construct certain projects pertaining to the manipulation of the environment. With that central authority, the first vestiges of a monopolization of military power began to form in societies. The most extreme example of this in the ancient world was Sparta, where the small well trained and well equipped aristocracy ruled over the much larger slave class with threats of violence. That being said, the lower parts of society did manage to successfully revolt at times, more frequently than one would think in fact. Peasant rebellions in Medieval Europe, and ones that were successful at that, were in fact common. However, they were never enough to bring about a major societal change that would in any way shift the balance of power. The concessions were always short term, from the lowering of taxes to relieving of debts. Whenever power shifts did happen it was from a noble to another noble, from one landowner to another. The peasants were clearly not ineffective in their threats of violence, but were simply too uneducated on the true socio-political situation of their time to understand much less than anything I just explained. That slowly changed in Europe (and her colonies) only when a new class of wealth began to form not measured by tracts of land but by generation of trade and usury capital. These men through their wealth did educate themselves and threatened the nobility in the 18th century. What followed was the creation of liberal democracies founded upon most inherently the ideas of human nature laid out by Robespierre. That people are inherently good, and that if left alone they will do good things. It is true that this was a belief in stark contrast to that of the Catholic Church, which believed and taught that humans are born with a natural urge to sin and must practice to use their own will and resist such urges. In the western world at least, this idea and the institution of liberal democracy has expanded since the fall of the Soviet Union and it seems the expansion of liberal democracy is a new direction for humanity.
There are many reasons to think otherwise, and I will not go into that. But what 1984 shows is that this perfect world of freedom and self governance isn’t a sovereign destiny for humanity, but instead a fragile thing that can be taken away abruptly. In truth, over the 5000 year span of civilization, it is clear that autocracy is the norm. And what George Orwell shows is that this world of autocracy is not one that can only exist in the age of kings and emperors and pharaohs, but very well in our own societies. And the message is not that some random figure will take the whole world on hiatus and in a couple generations or so everything will be back on track either. Orwell warned of what can only be described as Orwellian in nature, that is, the very control of information not just in what is shown on television but on the very way we think, in the case of 1984 the control of language. One of the reasons for the new rise of what we would call the middle class in the 18th century, and liberal democracy in the 19th and 20th, was the introduction of mass media. Suddenly people were more informed about the world they lived in and with that they no longer demanded meager concessions but greater change. The old powers were no match. But in Oceania depicts the reclamation of the old order, the putting of the rebellious powers on a leash. That leash was Newspeak. INGSOC itself also highly resembles modern cults in other ways, which is also true for the Nazi Party, which I cannot get into right now. But language was now controlled, and soon with it the very thoughts we have itself. 1984 doesn’t describe a grim world for humanity that could never truly happen, but a logical next step in the saga of humanity’s self enslavement for the last 10,000 years.
In 3000 BC there was a monopolization of military power. In 1984 there was a monopolization of thought.
But, as many readers have pointed out, there seems to be hope in the fact that the book itself is written in Oldspeak or Modern English. I considered that possibly Oceania and company are destroyed in the future, possibly due to some ecological disaster on a global scale, but that seems unlikely. The Ministry of Plenty has clearly shown that a decrease in rations could not deter the will of the people toward INGSOC. And so unless this probable disaster kills an unfathomable amount of humans, in which case I think people would forget how to read and write anyway, I don’t see it likely. Winston in the book repeatedly shows hope that the Proles could rise up and overthrow the state. Proles alone could not do it, for the very same reason that medieval peasants alone could not do it. I tried to avoid spoilers because we are still in the middle of the book.
The World and Reactions
The world and especially the immediate USA is spiraling into what can only be described as madness. What the riots show is that history is not behind us. We think that all the tensions and injustices and violence and chaos is a thing of the past, that we are a civilized nation where such a thing could not happen. But the recent events clearly show that they are happening. History is not behind us. People seem to not care for history anymore, but we can clearly learn from history as recent events have shown we are no exception to it.
Personal Experience
The quarantine was certainly an interesting experience that I doubt I will ever experience again nor will future generations will experience for probably at least 100 years. I like the idea that I have all day to complete work. It's very nice, since everything is online it is also a little easier to keep myself organized with what is due and what I have to do. I do find though that it is easier to procrastinate. I try to keep myself busy on off days but it can get boring at times. I recently took my first ever AP exam in obviously less than stellar circumstances. It was hard to study entirely on my own because I felt a little lost and didn’t know where I was in terms of progress. However, with that fear I ended up studying way more than I needed to. It was stressful leading up to it, but now that it is over it’s all good now. Overall remote learning is a very foreign experience that taught me certain things such as the purpose of personal responsibility.
Reflection
I learned that an allusion is a reference to an outside source, whether biblical, classical, literary, or historical. I learned that they are not allegories as they never explain the connection. I learned this because, pertaining to the novel we are reading, 1984 has many allusions, specifically historical allusions. Many aspects of the novel allude to the historical events and aspects in Stalinist Russia and other totalitarian regimes in history. I will use this new knowledge of allusions to better improve my writing by using it to establish mood. I will also use it to better understand the works of others and their intentions. The class as a whole and my team also expressed similar ideas.
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