Name: Zoe Casis

1984 Opening Passage

Directions: Annotate the passage and answer the questions that follow.

● Take out 3 different colored highlighters or 3 different types of pens or colored

pencils
● Take out your “Dystopian: Definitions & Characteristics” handout from last
class.
● Assign one color to “Dystopian characteristics” (Setting/Society)
● Assign one color to “Types of Controls”
● Assign one color to “Protagonist” (Character traits)
● Read through the passage below

o Highlight setting details in the color you chose for “Dystopian

characteristics”
o Highlight any “Types of Controls” in your assigned color
o Highlight any details about the protagonist in your protagonist color

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston
Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind,
slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly
enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a
coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It
depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of
about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features.
Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of
times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off
during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate
Week.

The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a
varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the
way. On each landing, opposite the lift- shaft, the poster with the enormous face
gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures, which are so contrived that the
eyes follow you about when you move.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had
something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong
metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the
right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though
the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was
called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He
moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body
merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His
hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap
and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

Group Work/Discussion

1. List at least 5 things you have learned about the setting/society that Winston lives in.

- The place have many Types of Control

- They are observed everywhere by the BIG BROTHER
- The building are run-down and tiny apartments
- The society doesn’t allow freedom of speech
- Dystopian traits

2. List any potential dystopian controls that you see. It’s okay if you’re not totally sure yet;
you do not have that much information to work with. Briefly explain your idea.

- BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU - Posters

- Electric cuts
- Expressions of feeling as love is banned, a right given to the upper class
- Telescreens around the buildings

3. List 5 things that you learned about the protagonist (Winston).

- He had a varicose ulcer above his right, ankle which makes him go slower
- He is 39 y/o
- He lived in the Victory Mansions
- He works in the Truth Ministry (Minitrue)
- He is an obedient citizen

4. What important topics will be covered in this book? Remember, topics will turn into themes
once we finish the book. In other words, what major issues do you think Orwell is going to
tackle in this book, given the first page? List a few ideas.

- Revolutions towards the type of government - social organization

- Censorship - social organization/identity
- Propaganda used for control - identity/social organization
- Lack of freedom - identity/sharing the planet
- The use of technology (telescreens) - human ingenuity
5. Individual-Exit Response

In a well-formed paragraph, based on what you read in the above passage, explain why 1984
fits the definition of a dystopian novel. You must have a topic sentence (assertion), 2
pieces of exact textual evidence (no more), and a discussion of your evidence. See
rubric below and the model paragraph.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________

10 8 7 6 5
Wrote a developed Answered question but Answered question in Answered Does not
paragraph with an only used 1 piece of underdeveloped question in 1-2 answer
assertion, 2 pieces of direct, textual evidence. paragraph. Missing sentences with question. 8+
exact text evidence. Commentary (discussion direct textual no evidence grammatical
Evidence proves what of evidence) is only 1 evidence or evidence from text. 6-8 errors.
was stated in the sentence long. 1-2 does not support topic grammatical
assertion. Commentary grammatical errors. sentence. errors. Rest of Rest of
is longer than two Commentary may be a 3-5 grammatical handout fully handout fully
sentences. Commentary bit off topic and clearly errors. Rest of completed. completed.
explains why the text explain why the text is handout fully
evidence is an example an example of a completed.
of a dystopian element. dystopian element. Rest Commentary may be
Perfect grammar. of handout fully present but may not
Rest of handout fully completed. explain why the text
completed. excerpt is an example
of a dystopian
element.
Model Literary Analysis Paragraph

Topic sentence/Assertion: In the beginning, the boys view the conch as an important
symbol that unites them and gives them the power to deal with their difficult situation.
Exact text evidence 1: When the conch is first found and blown, it brings everyone
together: “Ralph found his breath and blew a series of short blasts. Piggy exclaimed,
‘There’s one!’” (Golding 16). Discussion of evidence: Here Piggy observes one boy
emerging from the jungle but soon boys conform all around. Each comes for his own
reason: some for plain curiosity, other for the prospect of rescue. They all form the first
assembly thanks to the conch. The first job of this assembly is to unite even further and
choose a leader or chief. Once again the conch plays an important part. It is Ralph who
is chosen to be chief, and the main reason for this is because he holds the conch. Exact
text evidence 2: When it is put to a vote, the boys exclaim, “Him with the shell. Ralph!
Ralph! Let him be chief with the trumpet-thing” (Golding 21). Discussion of evidence:
Because Ralph possesses the conch, a symbol of power and authority, he is chosen
chief. Thus, at first the conch is an important object bringing civilizing influences to the
boys as they work together to make the best of a bad situation.

Paragraph From:
http://hhsmchugh.weebly.com/uploads/2/6/8/6/26862264/conch-example-literary-analys
is-essay-labeled.pdf
Name___________________________________________

1984 Opening Passage

Directions:
● Annotate the passage below using SCASI. SCASI is a helpful way to
remember how to do a close reading with a fiction passage.

S=setting (one color)- time & place

C=character (another color)
A=action (yet another color)
S=style (literary devices and techniques...yet ANOTHER color)
I=ideas (potential themes/messages...yes...you need another color).

We are doing a “close reading,” so I want you to go CRAZY with your annotations,
but you will not do this for the whole book.

● When you are done annotating, answer the questions below.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile
wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though
not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with
him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a
coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It
depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a
man of about forty five,
with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston
made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it
was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during
daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate
Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and
had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times
on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-
shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of
those pictures, which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when
you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to
do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque
like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall.
Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still
distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but
there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a
smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue
overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face
naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and
the cold of the winter that had just ended.

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street
little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun
was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except
the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black moustachio'd face gazed down
from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately
opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes
looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one
corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word
INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for
an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the
police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however.
Only the Thought Police mattered.

Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about
pig-iron and the over-fulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received
and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a
very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within
the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as
heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any
given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any
individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all
the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had
to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound
you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew,
even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work,
towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought with a sort of
vague distaste -- this was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most
populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory
that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always
these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of
timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron,
their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the
plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble;
and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up
sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could
not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux
occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.

The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different from any
other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white
concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where
Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant
lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level,
and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three
other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the
surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four
of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the
entire apparatus of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned
itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace,
which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and
order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their
names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all.
Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it. It
was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating
through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun
nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced
guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.

Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression of quiet
optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen. He crossed the
room into the tiny kitchen. By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed
his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except
a hunk of dark-coloured bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow's breakfast. He
took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid with a plain white label marked
VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice spirit. Winston poured
out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of
medicine.

Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was like
nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the
back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the burning in his
belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful. He took a cigarette from a
crumpled packet marked VICTORY CIGARETTES and incautiously held it upright,
whereupon the tobacco fell out on to the floor. With the next he was more successful.
He went back to the living-room and sat down at a small table that stood to the left of
the telescreen. From the table drawer he took out a penholder, a bottle of ink, and a
thick, quarto-sized blank book with a red back and a marbled cover.

For some reason the telescreen in the living-room was in an unusual position. Instead
of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole
room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window. To one side of it there was a
shallow alcove in which Winston was now sitting, and which, when the flats were built,
had probably been intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping
well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as
sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed in his present position
he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual geography of the room that had
suggested to him the thing that he was now about to do.
But it had also been suggested by the book that he had just taken out of the drawer. It
was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its smooth creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, was
of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years past. He could guess,
however, that the book was much older than that. He had seen it lying in the window of
a frowsy little junk-shop in a slummy quarter of the town (just what quarter he did not
now remember) and had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire to
possess it. Party members were supposed not to go into ordinary shops ('dealing on the
free market', it was called), but the rule was not strictly kept, because there were
various things, such as shoelaces and razor blades, which it was impossible to get hold
of in any other way. He had given a quick glance up and down the street and then had
slipped inside and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he was not
conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose. He had carried it guiltily home in his
briefcase. Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising possession.

The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was
illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain
that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour
camp. Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The
pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured
one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful
creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched with
an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by hand. Apart from very short notes,
it was usual to dictate everything into the speakwrite which was of course impossible
for his present purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a
second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act.
In small clumsy letters he wrote:

April 4th, 1984.

In what way does Winston fit or not fit the description of a dystopian
protagonist? List at least 3-5 traits in each column.

Seems like a Dystopian Protagonist Does Not Seem Like a Dystopian Protagonist

2. Make a prediction about Winston’s future. What will become of him by the end of
the book?
3. What are 5 motifs or symbols that could possibly reappear throughout the
book? List 5 objects, patterns, or ideas that you think will repeat themselves later
in the book.

4. What are five literary techniques you see? Make sure to clearly label these
in your annotations.
Device Purpose/Effect
(What does the devices highlight about Winston or his world?)

5. Write me a great paragraph!! Having read this passage, what sort of

inferences (educated guesses) can you make about the potential themes of the
story? Explain using textual evidence and your knowledge of dystopian
elements. Topic sentence/evidence/commentary-repeat!
Rubric

10 8 7 6
Wow! You did go crazy You can improve the Either annotations, Incomplete
with your depth of your close questions, or annotations
annotations.Very few lines reading annotations. I paragraph and/or
were left untouched or see some gaps! Get rid incomplete. paragraph &
unanalyzed. of those! questions.
Paragraph does not
Analysis paragraph does Analysis paragraph does answer question.
not have to be exactly not have a theme but Paragraph
spot-on in ideas, but you instead has a topic. Turn demonstrates an
should have a clear theme your topic into a emerging
(message) and ideas to message and use exact understanding of
support it. text evidence to develop theme.
it.