Monday, August 22, 2011

1984 1

"And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger path and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken houses?" (3)

Even though this is within the first few pages and is part of establishing the setting, it stuck out. There hadn't been any previous mention of the horrible war that'd been going on. Before these lines, a reader gets the sense that Oceania is a very clean, sterile place, particularly after talking about the various Ministries. Orwell emphasizes the bombed sites to take away from the feeling of physical sterility, but at the same time reinforcing the emotional sterility that everyone seems to possess.  The sentences following these also set Winston apart from the otherwise emotionless followers of Big Brother. Winston is trying to remember what everything looked like during his childhood - before the bombings - at no avail.

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