by Peter Huber
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER: 1984, p. 19.
nothing to set beside it: “England, Your England” (1941), Essays, I, p. 252.
emotional unity: “England, Your England,” p. 266.
found himself in a new section: 1984, pp. 185-186.
fired them at ourselves: Compare 1984, p. 154.
to destroy the products of human labor: 1984, p. 191.
we preserve the Party’s control: 1984, p. 192.
the natural, unavoidable condition of survival: 1984, p. 192.
in ways that impair military efficiency: “Looking back on the Spanish War” (1943), Essays, I, p. 200.
they have to make four: See 1984, p. 198.
kilometers away in space: See 1984, p. 195. Here, as elsewhere/, Orwell proves prescient about where technology may head./Forty years after he first metioned the “lens” weapon, “Star Wars*’ technology was very much in vogue.
not in fact advancing at all: See 1984, pp. 196, 199.
like three sheaves of corn: 1984, p. 198. “[W]e [in England] believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run,” Orwell writes. “What evidence is there that it does? And what instance is there of a modem industrialised state collapsing unless conquered from the outside by military force?” “Looking Back on the Spanish War” (1943), Essays, I, p. 200. O’Brien puts exactly the same question to Winston at the end of 1984 (p. 273).
cause comparatively few casualties: 1984, p. 187.
maintain our cultural integrity: See 1984, p. 197.
which direction is up and which is down: 1984, p. 199.
There would be a bloody struggle: See Homage to Catalonia, pp. xxi (introduction by Lionel Trilling); pp. 121-22.
grinding them down in exploitation: See Broadcast, p. 62 (quoting Churchill).
differs enormously from country to country: “England, Your England” (1941), Essays, I, pp. 252-253.
ceases to be an enemy of any account: CI Wigan Pier, p. 219: “A country like England . . . could be reduced to chaos by a few thousand well-placed placed bombs.”
mostly highly trained specialists: See 1984, p. 187.
in which people rule themselves: Cf. “Looking Back on the Spanish War,” p. 210: “No bursting bomb can ever shatter the crystal spirit of democracy.”
firmness in the truth: “Reflections on Gandhi” (1949), Essays, I, p. 177.
Chapter 12
all had to be organized: See 1984, p. 149.
suddenly appeared all over London: 1984, p. 150.
unworthy of their attention: “As I Please” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 98.
like monstrous horizontal ears: Aspidistra, p. 128.
in the corner of her room: The 1984 lovers find a hiding place in a dilapidated room above a junk shop. The room awakens in Winston “a sort of nostalgia, a sort of ancestral memory. It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in a room like this, in an armchair beside an open fire with your feet in the fender and a kettle on the hob, utterly secure, with nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you, no sound except the singing of the kettle and the friendly ticking of the clock.” 1984, p. 96. This echoes a very similar passage in Wigan Pier (pp. 117-118). At another point, Winston and Julia meet in the belfry of a mined church. 1984, pp. 129, 131. The church is borrowed from Homage to Catalonia, p. 213.
in her arms: 1984, p. 121.
rosy in the early morning light: Aspidistra, p. 97.
cracking their whips and cursing: Coming Up for Air, p. 47.
they are loyal to one another: 1984, p. 166.
evolved spontaneously from their loyalties: See Aspidistra, p. 105. A similarly upbeat market scene, equally rich in color and detail, appears in Burmese Days, pp. 126-127.
It was a political act: 1984, p. 128.
glass and water are not the same thing: “As I Please” (1947), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 267.
fawn jacket, and a mac: Shelden, p. 223.
his emaciated torso: Shelden, p. 322.
a mischievous, amused look: Shelden, p. 273.
She adored cats: See Shelden, p. 197.
can carry on where we leave off: 1984, p. 156. Again, one wonders how Orwell managed to ignore the relationship between musings like this one and telescreen technology. As 1984 makes abundantly clear, these “small groups . . . banding together” don’t stand a chance against the Ministry, the large group linked by telescreen. But why not? Orwell has to assume, at every turn, that only the Ministry knows how to use telescreens, not the dissidents.
rebel from the waist downward: 1984, p. 157.
conscious beings must one day come: 1984, p. 222.
laying its coralline beak upon them: Burmese Days, p. 57. There is, of course, a very similar scene in 1984, p. 125.
a torrent of song: 1984, p. 125.
she had been asleep: In 1984, Julia is a synthesis of other Orwellian women. In Aspidistra, “Julia” is the hero’s sister. 1984’s Julia lives in an unpleasant women’s hostel, just like the heroine in Aspidistra. “Whenever there was nothing particular to do,” Aspidistra’s Hermione “always fell asleep as promptly as an animal” (p. 96). 1984’s Julia is “one of those people who can go to sleep at any hour and in any position.”
By contrast, Winston’s estranged wife, Katharine, was “[t]he human sound track.” 1984, p. 67. Orwell’s favorite insult for orthodox Party hacks in other books is the “gangster gramophone.” See Homage to Catalonia, p. 198 (“the gangster-gramophone of continental politics”); and Wigan Pier, p. 216 (Bolshevik commissars are “half gangster, half gramophone.”).
the bells of Shoreditch: 1984, pp. 97-100, 147, 179. A bell is a telegadget too, of course. Indeed, a church bell is the original “telephone,” or “far speaker” in Greek.
a crimson silence: Shelden, p. 67.
Chapter 13
nothing to set beside it: “England, Your England” (1941), Essays, I, p. 252.
in moments of supreme crisis: “England, Your England,” p. 266.
an invisible chain: “England, Your England,” p. 266.
it must close its ranks: “England, Your England,” p. 267. See also “Notes on the Way” (1940), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 17: “If whole armies had to be coerced, no war could ever be fought. Men die in battle—not gladly, of course, but at any rate voluntarily—because of abstractions called ‘honour,’ ‘duty’ ‘patriotism’ and so forth.”
in perfect unison: “England, Your England,” p. 264. See also Homage to Catalonia, pp. 28, 59. Cf. “Review: The Totalitarian Enemy, by F. Borkenau” (1940), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 25: “[A] country . . . which is waging or preparing for ‘total’ war must be in some sense socialistic.” Lion, p. 22: “War creates a consciousness of fraternity Above all, war brings home to the individual that he is not altogether an individual.” “Notes on the Way,” p. 17: “People sacrifice themselves for the sake of fragmentary communities—nation, race, creed, class—and only become aware that they are not individuals in the very moment when they are facing bullets.”
the spirit of the church: Cf. “Review: The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adam” (1932), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 79.
Industrialism requires coordinated control: Wigan Pier, p. 188.
constant stimulation from other people: “As I Please” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 133: “If Defoe had really lived on a desert island he could not have written Robinson Crusoe, nor would he have wanted to. Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.”
by communities rather than by individuals: “The Prevention of Literature” (1946), Essays, III, p. 334.
an index to majority opinion: “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool” (1947), Essays, III, p. 421: a poem “defends itself by surviving, or it is indefensible.”
a creation of common experience: “New Words” (1940?), CEJL, Vol. 2, p. 9.
meaningless until it is shared: Burmese Days, p. 57: “Beauty is meaningless until it is shared.”
truth is indeed statistical: 1984, pp. 219, 280.
&nbs
p; then a lunatic: 1984, p. 80.
need not greatly trouble him: 1984, p. 80.
the belief might also be wrong: 1984, p. 80.
must be written in solitude: “The Prevention of Literature,” pp. 342343: “Certain kinds of poems, such as ballads, or, on the other hand, very artificial verse forms, can be composed cooperatively by groups of people. Whether the ancient English and Scottish ballads were originally produced by individuals, or by the people at large, is disputed, but at any rate they are non-individual in the sense that they constantly change in passing from mouth to mouth. . . . In prose, this kind of intimate collaboration is quite impossible.”
eternal guardians of the weak: 1984, p. 265.
cutthroat equality: See Homage to Catalonia, p. 61.
Gadarene swine in times of peace: “England, Your England” (1941), Essays, I, p. 265.
so that he might then run to friends for help: When the Spanish police were pursuing Orwell, they arrested his wife Eileen “as a decoy to help them apprehend . . . her husband.” Shelden, p. 270.
was a beehive: Wigan Pier, p. 216.
a handful of stoats: Wigan Pier, p. 216.
as a sort of keystone: “London Letter to Partisan Review” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 81.
really a waxwork: “London Letter to Partisan Review,” p. 81.
the price of civilization: 1984, p. 205.
hierarchy and regimentation: 1984, p. 205.
quickly merged into large ones: See “England, Your England,” p. 269.
hosts of petty traders: “England, Your England,” p. 273.
steel and concrete nests: “Review, Angel Pavement, by J. B. Priestley” (1930), CEJL, Vol. 1, p.25.
Obliteration of the Self: See 1984, p. 198.
actually not possible to keep them: “Such, Such Were the Joys” (1947), Essays, I, p. 5.
unrelated and unintelligible facts: “Such, Such Were the Joys,” p. 9.
only true feeling was hatred: “Such, Such Were the Joys,” p. 26.
did not teach science in any form: “Such, Such Were the Joys,” pp. 8, 18.
principles of Ingsoc: 1984, p. 194.
a dual system of astronomy: 1984, p. 269.
no weeds, no poverty, no pain: Wigan Pier, p. 189. See also Orwell’s own summary of Oscar Wilde’s utopianism in “The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde” (1948), CEJL, Vol. 4, pp. 426-428.
an efficient world: Wigan Pier, p. 190.
more organization, more telescreens: Wigan Pier, p. 193.
uniformity of opinion on all subjects: 1984, p. 207.
had ever forged unity before: Orwell believed this completely. He had said it many times before. The new totalitarianism was different because it was backed by more powerful technology. “[W]e are different from the persecutors of the past,” O’Brien boasts. In Coming Up for Air, George Bowling saw that too. “Old Hitler’s something different. So’s Joe Stalin. They aren’t like these chaps in the old days who crucified people and chopped their heads off and so forth, just for the fun of it. . . . They’re after something quite new—something that’s never been heard of before.” Coming Up for Air, p. 185. What they’re after, of course, is man’s mind. They are the Thought Police.
Cf. “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad” (1946), Essays, III, p. 341: “The despotisms of the past were not totalitarian. Their repressive apparatus was always inefficient, their ruling classes were usually either corrupt or apathetic or half-liberal in outlook, and the prevailing religious doctrines usually worked against perfectionism and the notion of human infallibility”
that machines made history: Orwell himself embraces this view in the Blythe essay in the middle of 1984. He has presented this argument before. The steady advance of “the machine” was creating wealth for all, which might readily have been shared all around. Wigan Pier, p. 171; “Looking back on the Spanish War” (1943), Essays, I, p. 203; “As I Please” (1946), CEJL, Vol. 4, p. 249.
and yet still not live alone: 1984, p. 29.
self-contained space: A. Koestler, Darkness at Noon (New York: Bantam, 1989), p. 211.
start out on his backbone: Coming Up for Air, p. 271; 1984, p. 62.
a ruling group can fall from power: See 1984, p. 208.
fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants: See 1984, p. 187.
the great nebula in Orion: Cf. Broadcast, p. 80.
discontent can now become articulate: 1984, p. 208.
journalists, and professional politicians: See 1984, p. 206.
the linking together of opposites: See 1984, p. 217.
this principle that will defeat us: 1984, p. 273.
touching to see such love: See 1984, p. 259.
the suspicions he had long possessed: 1984, p. 218.
I have almost ignored: 1984, p. 218.
definitely pleasant thrill: “Such, Such Were the Joys,” p. 27.
Chapter 14
on the sixth day: 1984, p. 180.
Big Brother had been overthrown: Compare 1984, p. 180.
admission that any change had taken place: 1984, p. 181.
slipped into the speaker’s hand: See 1984, pp. 181-182.
understanding rippled through the crowd: 1984, p. 182.
thrown into the melting pot: See “Politics and the English Language” (1946), Essays, I, p. 164.
governed by love and reason: “Politics vs Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels” (1946), Essays, III, p. 385. Also, “[t]hey had reached, in fact, the highest stage of totalitarian organisation, the stage when conformity has become so general that there is no need for a police force” (p. 385).
without even breaking the syntax: 1984, p. 182.
shooting out slogans: In 1984, Winston attends a huge rally. It’s both a mesmerizing scene and a wonderfully clever parody of Party propaganda. It is also lifted pretty much word for word from Coming Up for Air, p. 175, written ten years earlier. Wigan Pier, pp. 175-176, contains another much shorter account of what may be the same episode.
Orwell, who stood six feet two, did not particularly care for short people. See, for example, Coming Up for Air, p. 14: “The floor-manager was an ugly little devil, undersized, with very square shoulders and a spiky gray moustache. . . . Do you notice how often they have undersized men for these bullying jobs?”
her dreams were slogans: Coming up for Air, p. 172.
stick inside a swill-bucket: Aspidistra, p. 50.
the same old invective: “Politics and the English Language,” p. 161.
dump of worn-out metaphors: “Politics and the English Language,” p. 159.
a prefabricated hen house: “Politics and the English Language,” p. 159.
lackey-flunkey-mad-dog-jackal-hyena-headed: “As I Please” (1944), CEJL, Vol. 3, p. 109.
all the factories, and all the money: 1984, p. 73.
blood-bath: “As I Please,” pp. 108-109.
the lifeline of the network: 1984, p. 90.
Fascism . . . Democracy . . .: Coming Up for Air, p. 153.
malfunctioning old gramophone: Cf. Homage to Catalonia, p. 198 (the “good party man,” the “gangster-gramophone of continental politics”); Wigan Pier, p. 216 (“Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone)”).
hammering down on your brain: Coming Up for Air, p. 156.
in the tone of her voice: Coming Up for Air, p. 156.
won’t smash our poor ones: See also “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool” (1947), Essays, III, p. 420.
principles of Blytheism—that, etc. etc.: 1984, p. 54.
The stinking corpse: “As I Please,” p. 109.
offal from a rentier class: “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali” (1944), Essays, IV p. 31.
poisoned the imagination—on life itself: “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali,” p. 24.
filthy stew of words: “As I Please,” pp. 109-110. See also “Politics and the English Language,” p. 166: “[B]estial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free pe
oples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder.”
through a viscous sea: Burmese Days, p. 252.
menacingly above her head: 1984, p. 181.
Chapter 15
with unmerciful clarity: “The Spike” (1931), CEJL, Vol. I, p. 39.
Winston Smith of course lands in a cell in 1984. We’ve read about that cell before. Orwell himself in fact occupied it, in London’s Bethnal Green police station. There are several descriptions of the same cell in Down and Out (p. 146), in Orwell’s essay “Clink” (1932), CEJL, Vol. 1, p. 87, and in Aspidistra. The walls are “glittering white porcelain,” and the prisoners while away time by counting the bricks. They sit on a plank “shelf” rather than a bench or a bed. There’s a spy-hole in the steel door. There’s a single open toilet in the cell, which prisoners use abundantly; they “can’t help it.” The toilet doesn’t flush properly. The cell then stinks “abominably.” It’s all exactly the same in each of Orwell’s three accounts. See 1984, pp. 223, 225, 229, 233, 237; compare Aspidistra, pp. 179, 183, 187; “Clink,” pp. 87, 89, 90. See also Homage To Catalonia, p. 31 (“The position stank abominably, and outside the little enclosure of the barricade there was excrement everywhere”); Burmese Days, p. 75 (“It was very dark, stifling hot, and quite unfurnished, except for an earth latrine that stank to heaven”); Burmese Days, p. 217 (“It [the badly cured leopard skin] also stank abominably”); Down and Out, p. 199 (a tramps’ hostel has a “common chamber-pot” that “stank abominably”). Compare 1984, p. 237 (“Parsons used the lavatory, loudly and abundantly. It then turned out that the plug was defective, and the cell stank abominably for hours afterwards”).
Even one of the other inmates—a man dying of starvation—is a repeat. He’s “a commonplace, mean-looking man who might have been an engineer or technician of some kind.” 1984, p. 238: “But what was startling was the emaciation of his face, . . . The man was dying of starvation.” Here he is in Down and Out, p. 156: “I had time to see his face, and it looked agonised. Quite suddenly I realised, from the expression of his face, that he was starving.”
eyes looked disproportionately large: 1984, p. 238; compare Down and Out, p. 97.
said the voice: 1984, p. 239.
solitude, and persistent questions: See 1984, pp. 102, 167.