Summer Reading Journal - Book Report/Review Example

Download file to see previous pages Tableaux: A picturesque grouping of persons or objects; a striking scene: 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.
Clandestine: Kept or done in secret, often in order to conceal an illicit or improper purpose. There were also whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there.
In this chapter, the best scene is when Winston's neighbor, Mrs. Parson's children attack him, because it works on two levels. On one hand it emphasizes the guilt Winston feels at having written the diary, and on the other it brings out the blind faith and calculated savagery the Party has managed to inspire in children, who would be the next generation of society. From this chapter one gets a foreshadowing prediction that Winston would be caught and punished for being a "traitor", the childish accusation becoming a warning for the real thing. Mrs. Parsons here reminds me of my own neighbor whose unruly children terrify her to the extent that she has given up on disciplining them at all. Brought up on violent video games, and a father who is into drinking and soccer, the children refuse to obey this lady or behave themselves under any circumstances.

Gambol: To skip about, as in dancing or playing; frolic. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.
Clamour: A vehement expression of desire or dissatisfaction, uttered noisily. Children always clamoured to be taken to see it.
Unorthodoxy: Any opinions or doctrines at variance with the official position. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy.
Reverberating: To reecho or resound. Somewhere far away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating roar.
Annihilation: Total destruction. And in front of him there lay not death but annihilation.
Part 1, Chapter 3
This sentence in the chapter 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' is the most impressive, because it shows how our knowledge can be manipulated: even the knowledge of our past can be changed through propaganda and manipulation of records. Once the knowledge of the past was given shape, the entity that did it could shape the future based on the newly created image of the past, a diabolical possibility indeed. Something I find difficult to understand in this chapter is the concept of "doublethink". The idea of making history disappear and then making people forget that history was made to disappear seems to be a strange and very difficult concept in our modern times with freedom expression and recording of truthful events as they occur.

Purge: To ...Download file to see next pagesRead More