SE 1:
Free Response: “In your heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words.” (Orwell 52).
The reference to Oldspeak is a type of symbolism referring to the past. The destruction of words is a way of representing the crumbling past, and how the future is pulling apart old complications. Winston is one of the few people rebelling against the future of Big Brother, and the society that he is currently living in. Even though he doesn’t remember much about his past he still searches to remember what life was like before BB. Winston is a living time bomb and at one point talks about once the thought police catch you, you’re a corpse being sent back to your grave. In other ways he’s talking about the living dead, which refers to him throughout the book as he commits multiple thought crimes, and his most important crime up keeping his diary. Winston knows he’s dead, but he still continuously searches for answers. The love Winston has for the past is something I can understand. I feel as though Winston has an understanding for the eloquence of words, and thought. Not only words but knowledge is a large benefactor, in Oceania being intelligent is a threat that can entail death because thinkers could cause corruption. Winston can be related to Triss in divergent. She’s a rebel who starts a revolution within her corrupt society.
SE 2:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age if wisdom, it was the
age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of
Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we
had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were
all going direct the other way…”
-pg. 1
This quote is at the beginning of the book, A Tale of Two Cities, and it really grabs...