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Revision Notes for A LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Revision Notes for George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four
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OCR English Literature – dystopian fictionLearners are required to read widely and independently in their chosen topic of study. Learners are
required to demonstrate close reading skills in analysing unseen prose extracts. Learners are required to
identify and consider how attitudes and values are expressed in unseen extracts. Learners are required
to communicate fluently, accurately and effectively their knowledge, understanding and judgement of
unseen extracts
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid’s Tale
H G Wells: The Time Machine
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange
J G Ballard: The Drowned World
Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor
P D James: The Children of Men
Cormac McCarthy: The Road
Further reading:
Cormac McCarthy: Outer Dark
William Faulkner: Light in August
Lois Lowry: The Giver
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We
Veronica Roth: Divergent
Octavia Butler: Parable of the Sower
Key Terms For Studying Nineteen Eighty Four
,Utopia: a place or world of ideal perfection, particularly in law, government and social
conditions for the people.
Dystopia: the opposite of utopia, a place or world in total disharmony, in which there is the
conditions and quality of life only perpetuate suffering. As a literary genre, it describes a subset
of speculative fiction, setting a vision of a future of the worst kind. In many cases, dystopian
stories are cautionary tales that force us to re-examine and ponder our own actions and place in
the wider world.
Speculative fiction: currently used as an umbrella term for genres of literature that offer
engagement with a speculative vision of the world or possible worlds.
Authoritarian: demanding complete obedience, refusing to allow freedom. This is a term
generally applied to governments or rulers to describe their approach to control.
Fascism: a political system based on extreme pride in a country and race, where a singular
leader has fa-reaching state control and in which political opposition is not tolerated.
Capitalism: a political and economic system characterised by economic competition in a free
market, private and corporate ownership of goods and industrial production. Great Britain and
the United States are two of the world’s largest capitalist economies.
Socialism: a political and economic system that advocates for the means of industrial
production, distribution and exchange to be owned collectively by the people or the state.
Communism: a political and economic system that aims to replace private property and a
profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of the natural resources, as
well as the major means of industrial production and consumption. This was the official state
policy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Dehumanisation: the process of removing human qualities from a person, e.g. denying capacity
for individual thought, consideration for others, reducing people to the status of things.
Anarchy: a situation in which there is no centralised organisation or control and no effective or
practising government.
Dissent: the voicing of a strong difference of opinion, but especially in response to popular
beliefs or official policy.
Surveillance: the close observation of people and places. Initially used in the context of policy
and crime, surveillance can be undertaken by the police, the state or the general public depending
on the context. “it was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any
public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away”…”to wear
an improper expression on your face…..was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word
for it in Newspeak: facecrime it was called”
, Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian social science
fiction novel and cautionary tale . It was published in 1949.
Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass
surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within
society. Orwell, a democratic socialist, based the authoritarian state in the novel
on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism, and Nazi Germany. More broadly, the
novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which
they can be manipulated. The opening sentence alerts us that statements
presented as truth should be called into question: “It was a bright cold day in April
and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
The story takes place in an imagined future in an unknown year believed to be 1984,
when much of the world is in perpetual war.
This novel when it was published was, and still is today, read as a social comment
and even as a prophecy. Totalitarianism at the time the book came out was a
stalking fear. Nazi Germany in the recent past, Russia and China in the present,
framed the Western political consciousness.
Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the
totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader
supported by a cult of personality created by the Party's Thought Police. Through
the Ministry of Truth, the Party engages in omnipresent government
surveillance, historical negationism* (historical denialism), and
constant propaganda to persecute individuality and free thinking.
Historical negationism:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been re-written,
every picture has been re-painted, every statue and street and building has been
re-named, every date has been altered……History has stopped.” (Nineteen Eighty-
Four)
“the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it” (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
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