Monday, April 12, 2010

URGENT: 5 Key events for Chapter 8 in George Orwell's 1984?

I have many homework assignments to get done tonight. For College English class, I have to write down 5 key events for George Orwell's 1984 (the book we are reading in class). We just read chapter 8, it's a long chapter, and there's no telling what pages the events are on. If you have read the book, post a response and tell me what you know about the events in Chapter 8 of 1984. Post a response as quickly as possible, the sooner the better, no later than 8 pm. Simple answers like "I don't know", "It's not my homework do it yourself", or answers with other references that have nothing to do with the book or whatever will not be rated.

URGENT: 5 Key events for Chapter 8 in George Orwell's 1984?
Winston gravitates toward forbidden history.





He shows courage by skipping the Community Centre meeting for the second time in three weeks and ventures out on his own. He witnesses a fight inspired by the Lottery "with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention."





Winston hurries into a bar, and in talking to an old man Winston discovers "They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written records were falsified - when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested."





The junk shop was a repository of history, which was slowly going out of business due to lack of inventory. The shop owner explained, "Furniture, china, glass it's all been broken up by degrees."





Winston and the shopkeeper, who in his old fashioned way has no telescreen, stumble over a picture. Winston says, "I know that building...It's a ruin now. It's in the middle of the street outside the Palace of Justice. "





" That's right. Outside the Law Courts. It was bombed in - oh, many years ago. It was a church at one time, St. Clement's Danes, its name was.





The shopkeeper remembers several other churches that have been re-purposed. Winston has been convinced that the knowledge he craves is unattainable. "One could not learn learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Statues, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of streets - anything that might throw light upon the past had been systematically altered."





Winston later discovers that "the girl from the Fiction Department, the girl with dark hair" is spying on him. He considered tracking her down and killing her but decided it would be too much effort.





He went home, began to read the diary and dreaded the inevitability of being caught and tortured by the Thought Police.


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