1984-key-quotations

1984: Key Quotations

One of the ways to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the text is through the effective use of quotations and references to the text. This means that summarising, paraphrasing, referencing single words and referencing plot events are all as valid as using direct quotations.

Overall, you should aim to secure a strong knowledge of the text, rather than memorising a list of pre-prepared quotations, as this will better enable you to respond to the question. It is the quality of your knowledge of the text that will enable you to select references effectively.

If you are going to revise quotations, the best way is to group them by character, or theme. Below you will find definitions and analysis of the best quotations, arranged by the following key themes:

• Power and control

• Identity and individuality

• Technology

• Love and sex

Power and control

Power and control is the most significant theme in 1984 due to the totalitarian nature of the government of Oceania.

“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’” – Part I, Chapter 3

Meaning and context

• This Party slogan appears twice in the novel – once in Part I and once in Part III

• It means that control of the past ensures control of the future

• The Party creates a past that was a time of misery and slavery from which it claims to have liberated the people, thus compelling the people to be loyal to the Party

Analysis

• This slogan, along with its other forms of propaganda, is an example of the Party’s method of using false history to break down its subjects’ independence

• The Party has complete power in the present, as every history book reflects the Party’s ideology, and individual memories are blurred and diminished

• This is a further way that the Party exerts control over its people and reduces their individuality and humanity

 “The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men” – O’Brien, Part III, Chapter 3

“Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you ensure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing” – O’Brien, Part III, Chapter 3

Meaning and context

• This quote appears when O’Brien is explaining the Party’s doctrines to Winston while he oversees his torture in the Ministry of Love

Analysis

• O’Brien’s power is not only in his ability to inflict physical pain on Winston, but in the fact that he is also able to see into Winston’s thoughts

• O’Brien’s arguments are as much a weapon against the freedom of the individual as any physical weapon

• He believes in them absolutely, and as preposterous as his ideas might seem, they do hover on the edge of fantasy and what could be reality

 “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power” – O’Brien, Part III, Chapter 3

Meaning and context

• This quote also appears when O’Brien is explaining the Party’s doctrines to Winston while he oversees his torture in the Ministry of Love

Analysis

• O’Brien’s explanation of the Party’s doctrines reveals it’s ultimate purpose: to have absolute power for no other reason than to exert it

• The Party does not rule in order to make a better world, as they have no intention of ever relinquishing it

• For O’Brien and the Party, power is collective, and more important than any one individual, as through this comes immortality

Identity and individuality

Via its systems of control, the Party in 1984 destroys all sense of individuality, identity and independence of person and thought.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it” – Syme, Part I, Chapter 5

Meaning and context

• This quote appears as Syme explains the political goals of Newspeak to Winston in the Ministry of Truth

Analysis

• By narrowing and eliminating language, the population will be robbed of the ability to express themselves and their individuality

• If one cannot express their own thoughts, then all sense of one’s independence and self are removed

“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull” – Part I, Chapter 2

Meaning and context

• Winston thinks this as he considers the ever present image of Big Brother printed on everything, from coins to the wrapping on a cigarette packet

• The image of the eyes is always watching

Analysis

• The act of ownership is one way a person can express their identity and individuality

• Removing this is a further way of maintaining control via the loss of individual identity:

  • This is also one of the reasons Winston decides to buy the coral paperweight – in order to “own” something that is just his

• The quote is also ironic because, eventually, the Party is even able to own that small space inside his mind that Winston was trying to keep for himself

Technology

Technology is one of the most important tools available to the Party in order to eliminate potential rebellion and subversion.

“‘We are the dead,’ he said.

‘We are the dead,’ echoed Julia dutifully.

‘You