Through the Text
1984 Film (1956)
As we proceed with reading the novel, we will periodically watch parts of the 1956 black and white film version of 1984, which is available on YouTube. These viewings will be broken up by the three parts of the novel that are indicated in the text itself: Book One, which has eight chapters; Book 2, which has ten chapters; and Book 3, which has six chapters. This will break up the readings and provide students with a visual representation of the novel to supplement their understanding and interpretation of the text.
About the Spanish Civil War
Now that students have done some research on their own, I will engage in some direct instruction specifically about the Spanish Civil War. Orwell himself participated in this war, and it is the topic of his novel Homage to Catalonia, of which we will explore excerpts together. Because this war is not one of the more famous ones, I will provide students with general information about the time period and socio-political situation. We will especially focus on which side of the war Orwell was fighting; this will frame their understanding of Homage to Catalonia as well as Orwell’s perspective in this nonfiction text.
Orwell states that, “At the beginning I had ignored the political side of the war, and it was only about this time that it began to force itself upon my attention...It was above all things a political war...is intelligible unless one has some grasp of the inter-party struggle that was going on behind the Government lines” (13). Although he joined for non-political reasons, Orwell realized that there was no way to avoid the political influences on the beginning of the war and the subsequent portrayal throughout Europe. He adds, “If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered ‘To fight against Fascism,’ and if you asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered ‘Common decency’...The revolutionary atmosphere of Barcelona had attracted me deeply, but I had made no attempt to understand it” (14). In this novel, Orwell engages in a discussion of the political undertones throughout the entirety of Chapter 5.
He discusses the factions on his own side of the fight, referencing an alphabet soup of organizations: “the kaleidoscope of political parties and trade unions, with their tiresome names--P.S.U.C., P.O.U.M., F.A.I, C.N.T., U.G.T., J.C.I., J.S.U., A.I.T….It looked at first sight as though Spain were suffering from a plague of initials” (15). Orwell continues by characterizing those on the “revolutionary” side of the fight against the Fascists:
“I knew I was serving in something called the P.O.U.M. ...but I did not realize that there were serious differences between the political parties… ‘Those are the socialists’ (meaning the P.S.U.C.), I was puzzled and said, ‘Aren’t we all socialists?’ I thought it idiotic that people fighting for their lives should have separate parties; my attitude always was ‘Why can’t we drop all this political nonsense and get on with the war? This of course was the correct ‘anti-Fascist’ attitude which had been carefully disseminated by the English newspapers, largely in order to prevent people from grasping the real nature of the struggle” (16).
“From the point of view of political theory there were only three parties that mattered, the P.S.U.C., the P.O.U.M., and the C.N.T.-F.A.I., loosely described as the Anarchists...when one speaks of the P.S.U.C ‘line’ one really means the Communist Party ‘line’...the P.S.U.C. (Partido Socialista Unificado de Cataluna) was the Socialist Party of Catalonia...The P.O.U.M. (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) was one of those dissident Communist parties...a result of the opposition to ‘Stalinism’; i.e. to the change, real or apparent, in Communist policy...The Anarchist view point is less easily defined” (17).
In Ian Shapiro’s seminar, “Democracy and Inequality,” we discussed how coalitions can create complications in enacting major change in any large-scale system (18). In this case, the different subdivisions within the anti-Fascist movement was a major cause of the ineffectiveness of their war against the existing powers in Spain as percieved by Orwell. He realized that unifying ideals were not enough to carry a revolution forward because it was impossible to get everyone on the same page in execution of those ideals.
However, many portrayals of the war were attempts to simplify the issue in order to conceal the revolutionary nature of the fight: “The issue had been narrowed down to ‘Fascism versus democracy’ and the revolutionary aspect concealed as much as possible” (19), especially in the English papers that Orwell had been reading back home. Within his side of the fight, factions were forming, and they were attacking one another in the available media: “Meanwhile there was the diabolical inter-party feud that was going on in the newspapers, in pamphlets, on posters, in books” (20), which pitted these groups against one another. He expresses disappointment as the revolution appeared to die out, “But, after all, [the war] was only the beginning of a revolution, not the complete thing. Even when the workers, certainly in Catalonia and possibly elsewhere, had the power to do so, they did not overthrow or completely replace the Government” (21). From Orwell’s perspective, this was a failure.
Slides about the historical context of the Spanish Civil War and Orwell’s take on it will be presented to students in the form of a Pear Deck, and they will be taking notes in their physical notebooks as well as interacting with the slides. There will also be an additional mini-documentary provided in Google Classroom about the Spanish Civil war for students who have a particular interest in the history of this event.
Homage to Catalonia Excerpts
Students will read two excerpts from Homage to Catalonia. First, they will read Chapter 1, which introduces Orwell as a player in the war itself and provides an examination of the Spanish people, which foreshadows their difficulties later in the novel. However, this chapter also shows several positives of the socialist ideals that have been put into action on a smaller scale. Second, they will read Chapter 5, where Orwell pauses to provide a description of the political situation in the Spanish Civil War as well as the fragmentation on his own side of the war, which was an important part of his growing disbelief in the ability of socialism and anarchism to create a successful revolution. He sees that his side has already fragmented as they are trying to fight this seemingly hopeless war. I will also provide a PDF of the whole text in Google Classroom for students who are interested in reading it.
Then, students will begin gathering evidence together as they decide what they believe to be Orwell’s viewpoint on the war as well as his own involvement and experience in the war. This will take place as a Jamboard discussion, where students will create virtual post-its with their own opinions on a collective virtual whiteboard. This will allow students to read the responses of their peers, and we will have an informal classwide discussion on this topic as well.
Writing as a Revolutionary Act
In Orwell’s own essay, he wrote that two of the reasons people write are for “Historical impulse” and “Political purpose” (22) and we will discuss whether Winston is doing one, the other, or both in these particular passages. We will also discuss the overarching concept of whether writing is indeed a revolutionary act, even in our reality, and connect it to the concept of reading being a revolutionary act in Fahrenheit 451, which we will have examined in part at the beginning of the semester for the students who did not do the optional summer reading of the novel. The question we will explore, in the form of a journal followed by a Fishbowl Discussion, is as follows:
- Orwell suggests that one reason that people write is for “political purpose”: does this make writing a revolutionary act? Why or why not? Use evidence from the text, your own experience, or another source to support your argument.
- The Fishbowl Discussion prompt will be a statement for students to agree or disagree with: Orwell suggests that one reason people write is for “political purpose,” but writing is not a revolutionary act.
The journal will be completed in student notebooks with ample time for students to gather evidence; when students are writing journals, they will not know who will be participating in the actual Fishbowl. Students participating in the Fishbowl will be chosen based on anonymous students volunteering or my encouragement to volunteer, which will be brought up during a private conversation with the student.
The Proles
Next, we will turn our attention to the proles, the lower class of people in the society of 1984. Personally, as I listened to 1984 during the summer of the initial lockdown of the 2020 pandemic, I was shocked at how absolutely they were mirroring issues that I was observing in the world outside. Even seventy-one years after its publication, many themes in this book unfortunately ring true. The world of 1984 serves as a metaphor for the systemic oppression that is still present in America today. I, like Winston, saw the proles as a symbol of hope. Winston concludes that, “If there was hope, it MUST lie with the proles...85 per cent of Oceania...But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies” (23). Despite our faith in the proles, they would be unable to achieve the awareness needed to rebel, according to Winson. This is why education is so important in our own society, an idea that I want to revisit after we finish the novel. With the aforementioned quote in mind, I will ask students to work in pairs to answer the following question:
- Does this quote apply to the world today? Why or why not? Use an example from recent or current events to support your argument.
Then, we will tag responses by creating a list on the board as a class while we discuss the connections we see between the proles in the novel and recent or current events.
Winston sees that the proles are distracted systemically by the media. At his work, the Ministry of Truth, “There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs” (24). The proles are fed sensationalized content, unlike the news articles that Winston and his department work on (which are falsified themselves and is a whole separate issue), and hence the proles are completely unaware of any semblance of what is going on in the world of Oceania, true or false. This is like a student scrolling through TikTok or Instagram under their desk while an educator is attempting to provide them education. To many students, the educator will not likely be more interesting than the content through which they are scrolling on their phones, but I would argue that education is the more powerful of the two inputs--perhaps Orwell would make that argument as well.
Additionally, there is a lack of awareness of social problems from this same metaphorical student who is glued to their phone, and there are certainly social problems to discuss in any community, especially at our school. Like the proles in 1984, most of my students in the community that attends Mt. Pleasant are in the lower class, and hence will likely draw parallels between their own experiences and what has been experienced by the proles and even the Party members who are suppressed by Big Brother. Many of my students have the experience of specific issues firsthand, such as poverty, hunger, racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and of course class discrimination and stereotyping. This will help solidify those connections and fuel the drive to propose possible solutions later in the unit.
Government Systems in 1984
As we had examined the types of government before we started reading, I would ask students to reflect on their notes and discuss what kind of government is present in 1984 and how it is subjugating its citizens, both the proles and even the more elite Party members. Is this a true totalitarian system, or is it a totalitarian system attempting to masquerade as a democracy? Even in advanced democracies such as our own, there is a disturbing correlation between the passage of time and the amount of inequality.
There has been a clear pattern between what is viewed as “progress” in civilization and the presence of inequality. One historical transition took place during “The Industrial Revolution, beginning in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, initiated the economic growth that has been responsible for hundreds of millions of people escaping from material deprivation,” but along with this beacon of progress came what was known as the ‘Great Divergence,’ when Britain, followed a little later by northwestern Europe and North America, pulled away from the rest of the world, creating the enormous gulf between the West and the rest that has not closed to this day. Today’s global inequality was, to a large extent, created by the success of modern economic growth” (25). These seemingly conflicting realities look disturbingly like the conflicting realities within the society of 1984, even if they are not entirely parallel issues. However, even though the novel features structured inequality (there’s Big Brother, the inner Party, the Party, and then the proles beneath everyone else), it has similar characteristics to the upper, middle, and lower class strata that we have in many of our current democratic societies. Then, once students have established their thoughts about the fictional government, we would connect those oppressive systems to ones that are present in our reality today in the form of a Jamboard matching activity as well as an expository paragraph.
Students would be working in a Jamboard on Google Classroom in which they would have an assortment of images/words associated with the various systems of government. Once students have matched the system to the world of 1984, students would compose an expository paragraph in the space provided beneath the matching section. Including a matching element in the activity appeals to visual and kinesthetic learners, which will account for most students in the classroom. In a separate activity, we will have already reviewed the structure of an expository paragraph.
Animal Farm
A mini-lesson incorporated into the “through” portion of the unit would be a book recommendation, which I plan to do throughout the year, but this recommendation would be for George Orwell’s novella Animal Farm. Even in striving for socialist-style equality, the animals naturally find themselves unequal: one of the rules painted on the wall in the barn says “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” We would examine a passage together and explore some connecting themes--revisiting the idea of governments, inequality, cruelty, etc.--and I would encourage students to choose it as independent reading, especially if they had a particular interest in history.
Notes on Civic Education
After we finish reading 1984, we would have a more in-depth discussion of the role of education, especially considering what we examined before and throughout the text itself. This goes back to the idea of Civic Education, as mentioned by Dahl in On Democracy: “One basic criterion for a democratic process is enlightened understanding: within reasonable limits as to time, each member (citizen) must have equal and effective opportunities for learning about relevant alternative policies and their likely consequences” (26). We will consider this statement from both the viewpoint of the novel as well as students’ own perceptions, and this will serve as a transition from reading the text and exploring the issues to writing about possible solutions.
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