1984

Name: ____________________________________________________________ Date: _____________

Part One: IV, V, VI

1. What happens to the rewritten news articles after Winston puts them into the pneumatic tube?

     Why is this significant?

2. Winston thinks that what he is does is not forgery. What does he think it is?

3. What is Winston’s greatest pleasure in his life, and why is it so?

4. Describe the aim of Newspeak and how it works.

5. What is Syme’s observation about Winston’s appreciation of Newspeak?

6. Winston is at lunch when the message on the telescreen relates the good news about increases in

     production, including that the chocolate ration has been raised to twenty grams a week. What is

    Winston thinking as he hears this message?

7. What is facecrime? Give an example.

8. Who is looking at Winston during lunch? How does this affect him?

9. What is the aim of the Party with regard to male-female relationships and sex?

10. What is the Party’s policy on marriage, divorce, and children?

Prereading Vocabulary Worksheets 1984

Part One: IV, V, VI

Part I: Using Prior Knowledge and Contextual Clues

Below are the sentences in which the vocabulary words appear in the text. Read the sentence. Use any clues you can find in the sentence combined with your prior knowledge, and write what you think the italicized words mean in the space provided.

1. In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices.

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2. Each contained a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated jargon- not actually  

    Newspeak but consisting largely of Newspeak words-which was used in the Ministry for internal

    purposes.

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3. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, . . . to

    every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or

    ideological significance.

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4. And the ministry not only had to supply the multifarious needs of the Party, but also to repeat the

    whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat.

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5. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning

    rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.

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6. At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away.

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7. Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that

     things had once been different?

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8. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was

    announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense.

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9. Tacitly the Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed.

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10. They were all impregnable, as the Party intended that they should be.

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Part II: Determining the Meaning: Match the vocabulary words to their dictionary definitions.

___ 1. orifices                                     A. having a harsh sound

___ 2. jargon                                      B. the opinions of a person or political movement

___ 3. ideological                                C. too much to be endured

___ 4. proletariat; proles                     D. understood without being openly said

___ 5. subsidiary                                E. not giving in to force or persuasion

___ 6. strident                                    F. openings; holes

___ 7. intolerable                               G. not ready to believe

___ 8. incredulous                              H. the lowest economic or social class

___ 9. tacitly                                      I. language of a special group

___ 10.impregnable                           J. secondary