English Literature books summary

by hunger, thirst, and panic; he still hopes for the razor blade; his

thoughts of Julia are distant and cannot compete with his fright of the

pain he knows he will be suffering.

The door opens again, and O'Brien enters. Winston is shocked into

forgetting the telescreen for the first time in years. "They've got you

too!" he exclaims, to which O'Brien replies, "They got me a long time ago,"

and steps aside to reveal a guard with a truncheon. O'Brien was not, after

all, the co-conspirator Winston had thought; but somehow, now, he sees that

he has always known this was the case. This thought flits through his mind

almost unnoticed as he watches the guard's truncheon..

The blow falls on Winston's elbow and he is blinded by pain. Writhing

on the floor, he cannot think of anything except that there are no heroes

in the face of pain.

Chapter 2

Summary:

For an indeterminate amount of time, Winston has been tortured, first

with frequent and vicious beatings, then with extensive interrogations

where the nagging of his questioners wore him down even more than the

beatings. He has confessed all manner of impossible crimes and implicated

everybody he knows. His memories are discontinuous and in some cases

hallucinatory. Through it all he has the sense that O'Brien has been in

charge of his life in the Ministry of Love‹that O'Brien dictates when

Winston shall be tortured and fed. Winston is not sure when it was, but he

recalls hearing a voice telling him not to worry, because "I shall save

you, I shall make you perfect." Winston is not certain whether it is

O'Brien's voice, but it is the same voice he heard in his old dream.

Winston drifts into a consciousness that he is in a room with O'Brien,

strapped to a bed. O'Brien is in control of some sort of pain-generating

device which will play a part in the current interrogation.

O'Brien begins by telling Winston that he is insane because he does

not have control of his memory, and that he recalls false events. He

mentions the photograph of Jones, Rutherford and Aaronson as a

hallucination Winston has had‹and then holds up the very photograph. Before

Winston's eyes, O'Brien proceeds to dispose of the photograph through a

memory hole and immediately deny that it ever existed. Winston feels

helpless because he realizes it is quite possible that O'Brien is not

lying, that he in fact believes that the photograph never existed.

They talk about the nature of the past and reality; O'Brien tells

Winston that reality exists only in the mind of the Party, and that Winston

has got to make an effort to destroy himself in order to become "sane." He

then asks Winston if he recalls writing in his diary that "Freedom is the

freedom to say that 2 + 2 =4," and this touches off a whole round of

torture. O'Brien holds up four fingers and asks Winston how many there are,

if the Party says there are five. Winston, for a long while, can only see

four, and suffers increasing levels of pain for it. O'Brien does not accept

Winston merely saying that he sees five; he has to actually believe it. At

last, Winston's senses are so dazed by pain that he is no longer sure how

many fingers there are.

O'Brien allows him a respite (for which Winston is lovingly grateful),

and asks him why he thinks people are brought to the Ministry of Love. When

Winston guesses that it is to make people confess or to punish them,

O'Brien suddenly becomes quite animated, and almost indignant in his

explanation. The point is not to hear about or punish petty crimes; it is

to actually change the Party's enemy, i.e. to empty him of himself and his

dangerous individualistic ideas, and to fill that void with the Party. This

precludes the possibility of martyrdom and the subsequent threat of people

rising up against the Party later. Even Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford,

O'Brien tells Winston, were in the end filled only with penitence and

adoration of Big Brother.

Winston feels that O'Brien's mind contains his own, and is not quite

sure which one of them is mad, though he thinks it must be himself since it

doesn't seem likely that O'Brien is.

O'Brien looks down at him sternly. He tells him, "What happens to you

here is for ever. . . . Things will happen to you from which you could not

recover, if you lived a thousand years." These things, notably, will wipe

out all human feeling from Winston‹in other words, they will take away his

humanity, and he will be nothing but a shell filled with the Party.

At this point, Winston is hooked up to another device which does not

pain him but seems to knock out some part of his brain, so that for a short

while he can remember nothing of his own accord but merely takes, and

believes, whatever O'Brien tells him to be truth. The effect wears off, but

it has made its point: that it is, in fact, possible for the Party to get

inside him and make him believe its truth.

The session is drawing to its close, and O'Brien mentions how he

agrees with Winston's diary entry about how it doesn't matter whether

O'Brien was an enemy or a friend because he could be talked to.

Magnanimously, he allows Winston to ask any question he desires; but his

answers are yet cruel, "truthful" only in the sense that they reference the

Party's truth.

Winston realizes suddenly that O'Brien knows what he is going to ask,

and he does: "What is in Room 101?" But O'Brien merely responds that

everyone knows what is in Room 101, and Winston is put to sleep.

Chapter 3

Summary:

Some time has passed. After innumerable sessions with O'Brien, Winston

has completed the first "stage in his re-integration"‹learning‹and O'Brien

judges that it is time for him to move on to the second, understanding.

O'Brien quotes Winston's diary entry about understanding "how" but not

"why." He mentions Goldstein's book, informing Winston that he was one of

the people who wrote it, and that it is true as a description of the world

but that its discussion of insurrection is nonsense and impossible; the

Party, he says, will rule forever, and Winston must get that into his head.

That said, he turns to the question of why the Party holds onto its

power. Winston answers incorrectly and suffers for it. O'Brien answers his

own question: "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake." Power is

defined as something that must be collective, and as power over human

beings. Almost as an aside, O'Brien says the Party already controls matter.

Winston, roused, argues that they do not, but O'Brien silences him using

plenty of doublethink, and returns to the idea of holding power over men.

Since power over others depends on making the subject suffer, the

Party's view of the future is a world based upon hatred, fear, and

destruction. All instincts of love and beauty will be eradicated and only

power, ever more refined and absolute, will remain.

Winston, horrified, again attempts to argue against the possibility

that such a world could ever last eternally. When O'Brien asks why Winston

thinks it should fail, he cites his belief that the spirit of man will

prevail. Ironically, O'Brien asks Winston if he thinks he is a man. Winston

replies that he does. O'Brien tells him that he must be the last man, and

bids him take off his clothes and go look in the mirror at the end of the

room.

When Winston sees himself, he has a nasty shock. He is a skeleton,

dirty, broken, disgusting. He is, as O'Brien cruelly emphasizes, falling

apart. He breaks down into tears. Once again, O'Brien's manner changes to

near-kindness, as he tells Winston that he can get himself out of this

state because he got himself into it. He lists the humiliations Winston has

suffered, and asks him whether there is a single degradation he has not

experienced. Winston looks up and replies that he has not betrayed Julia.

O'Brien seems to understand this, and agrees, looking at Winston

thoughtfully. Far from taking this as any sort of hint, Winston is flooded

with his old worship of O'Brien, almost grateful that he has understood

without explanation.

Chapter 4

Summary:

More time has passed, and Winston is no longer being tortured. In

fact, he is being fed and kept clean and allowed to sleep. At first he is

only interested in sleep and no conscious mental activity; he dreams

abundantly, always happy peaceful dreams, with Julia, his mother, or

O'Brien‹the three people he cares about.

Gradually he grows stronger, though he is shocked at how weak he had

become. Correspondingly, his mind becomes more active, and he sits down to

try and re-educate himself. He reviews everything he has been told, writes

down Party slogans and falsities such as "2 + 2 = 5," all the while

reflecting how easy it has been to mentally surrender, to "think as they

think."

Still, he is troubled by some mental objections, and tries to practice

crimestop, which is the conscious stopping of thought before it leads you

into thoughtcrime. He finds that it is difficult to attain the stupidity

necessary to avoid seeing blatant logical flaws. At the back of his mind,

he wonders how soon he will be shot. The only thing he knows is that they

always shoot you in the back of the head.

Winston has a dream or reverie in which he is walking down the

corridor, waiting to be shot, feeling happy and at peace. He walks into the

Golden Country..

Suddenly he bolts awake, having heard himself cry out longingly for

Julia.

He had had a fleeting sensation of her being inside him, and at that

moment had loved her more than at any previous moment. Somehow he feels she

is still alive and that she needs his help.

Despairing, Winston lies back, waiting for the tramp of boots in the

corridor. His thoughtcrime sprang from the fact that while he has tamed his

mind to the Party, he has tried to keep his innermost self‹his heart‹away

from them. He wonders how much time he has added to his torment by the cry.

Rebelliously, he decides to lock his hatred of the Party so far inside

him that it is even a secret from himself, and envisions the final moment

where, just before the bullet hits him, all his hatred would explode. This,

he feels, is the last avenue of freedom open to him: to have his final

heretical thought right before their bullet reached him.

But this will be difficult. He thinks of Big Brother and wonders what he

really feels toward him.

O'Brien enters at that moment with an officer and guards. He orders

Winston to stand up and examines him. He asks Winston what he feels towards

Big Brother. Winston replies that he hates him. The last step, O'Brien

tells him, is to learn to love Big Brother, and he orders Winston to be

taken to Room 101.

Chapter 5

Summary:

Winston has been taken to Room 101 and strapped into a chair. O'Brien

enters and tells him what is in Room 101: the worst thing in the world,

which varies between individuals but is always something unendurable to the

person in the chair. For Winston, it is rats.

A mask with a cage attached to it is brought in. From its

construction, it is clear that the mask is designed to fit over Winston's

face, and at the pulling of a lever, the rats inside the cage‹enormous,

ravenous brutes‹will be free to attack him.

O'Brien casually mentions Winston's recurring nightmare, and tells him

what he already knows: that behind the dark wall of his nightmare were

rats. Winston, beyond panic, begs O'Brien to tell him what he wishes him to

do. O'Brien does not answer, but engages in a sort of ponderous mental

torture by bringing the contraption closer and pedantically musing on rats.

Winston's terror increases, but at the last moment it occurs to him

what must be done, and that is to beg that this be done to Julia rather

than to him.

He has saved himself; O'Brien shuts the cage door rather than opens

it.

Chapter 6

Summary:

It is 15:00 and Winston sits alone in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He is

anxiously listening for news of the war with Eurasia.

However, Winston is not able to keep his mind on one topic for very

long these days, and he gulps down his glass of clove-flavored gin. He is

fatter and pinker now‹to the point of looking unhealthy. Without being

asked, a waiter brings him the current issue of the Times, opened to the

chess problem, and a chessboard; he sees that Winston's glass is empty and

refills it. The waiters know Winston's habits and bill him irregularly

(and, he suspects, they undercharge him), though with his new higher-paying

job this wouldn't have presented a problem either way.

An announcement from the Ministry of Plenty reveals that Oceania is in

the midst of the Tenth Three-Year Plan. Winston starts to attack the chess

problem. The telescreen announcer advises everyone to listen for an

important announcement at 15:30, which Winston knows must be about the

fighting in Africa. He has the sinking feeling that it will be bad news;

the thought that this could lead to the end of the Party triggers a

powerful but unclear reaction in him. He imagines a mysterious force

assembling to the rear of the Eurasian army, cutting off its

communications, and feels that by willing it he can bring that force into

existence.

His thoughts wander; almost unconsciously he traces the equation "2 +

2 = 5" on the table. He recalls Julia saying "They can't get inside you,"

but knows she is wrong; he remembers O'Brien saying "What happens to you

here is for ever," and knows he is right.

He had encountered Julia one freezing, dead March day in the Park.

Knowing that the Party no longer cared about what he did, he had followed

her, but not very eagerly. Something about her had changed. She had not

been particularly excited about having him around, but resigned herself.

They walked. He had put his arm around her waist; she did not respond. He

had realized that the change in her was not so much the scar across her

face or her pallor, but that her waist had thickened and stiffened into

something like a corpse or marble.

They did not speak or kiss. When Julia looked at him, it was with

contempt and dislike. They seated themselves on a bench and finally Julia

had said, "I betrayed you." He told her he had betrayed her as well. From

her explanation‹that they threaten you with the unendurable and you place

your loved one inside it instead of yourself, thereby changing forever how

you feel about the person‹it seems apparent that she, too, had been taken

to Room 101.

There was nothing more to say, and they had parted uncomfortably, with

empty words about meeting again, but really only the desire to get away

from one another.

Recalling Julia's words about betrayal, Winston reflects that he had

really wished for her to be devoured by the rats instead of himself‹but

before he can even get to the word "rats" in his thoughts (which we know he

will never do anyway), a voice from the telescreen starts to sing, "Under

the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me . . ."

Winston's eyes fill with tears. A waiter passes by and refills his

glass; he thinks about how dependent he has become on gin, drinking it

every hour of the day. No one cares how he spends his days. His "job"

involves dealing with trivialities that arise from the current work being

done on the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. His sub-sub-

committee consists of four other people like himself.

He thinks briefly again about the struggle in Africa, then picks up a

chess piece, and somehow triggers a memory of his childhood. His mother,

after entreating him to be good, had bought him the game Snakes and

Ladders, and although he had not been interested in it at first, he was

soon captivated, and the three of them had a happy, enjoyable afternoon.

Recalling himself, Winston shakes this off as a false memory, and is

picking up the chess piece again when a trumpet-call from the telescreen

startles him. The trumpet-call always signifies a victory, and excitement

spreads through the cafe and the streets like wildfire. The announcement is

that the very strategy Winston had imagined has taken place, utterly

defeating Eurasia and giving Oceania control of all of Africa.

Caught up in the excitement of this news, Winston looks up at the

portrait of Big Brother, overwhelmed, and feels the "final, healing

change": He loves Big Brother.

Appendix

Summary:

The Appendix details the underlying principles of Newspeak

(essentially that it was designed to limit the range of thought), and

details the word classes as follows:

The A vocabulary consisted of everyday words used in the expression of

simple thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical actions.

The B vocabulary consisted of words created to hold political

connotations and impose a politically desirable state of mind upon the

user. These were all compound words, like "Ingsoc" or "doublethink." Many

meant the opposite of what they really were, in keeping with the concept of

doublethink.

The C vocabulary consisted of scientific and technical terms which it

behooved no one but scientists and technicians to use.

The grammar of Newspeak had two notable characteristics:

There was an almost complete interchangeability between different parts

of speech. A noun and verb were basically the same, and formed the

root for all other forms of the word. Adjectives were formed by

tacking "-ful" onto the end of the word; adverbs, by adding the suffix

"-wise." Any word could be negated by the prefix "un-," and other

prefixes like "plus-" and "doubleplus-" could strengthen the word.

The grammar was exceedingly regular, with very few exceptions. All past

tenses were formed using "-ed," all plurals with "-s" or "-es," and

comparatives with "-er" and "-est."

Euphony was privileged above everything, including grammatical

regularity, except precision of meaning. This is because the end goal was

to produce words that could be spoken so quickly that they would not have

the time to prompt thought; in other words, so that people could speak

without thinking at all.

The meanings of Newspeak words were carefully controlled so that in many

cases most connotations were destroyed. For instance, the word "free" still

existed, but only in the sense of something being "free from" something

else, e.g. "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used with

reference to political freedom, as this meaning had been drilled out of the

word.

This also precluded the ability to argue heretical opinions. Though, for

instance, it would have been possible to say "Big Brother is ungood," there

were not the words necessary to defend or argue this assertion. Through

this process, Oldspeak would become not only obsolete but impossible to

understand or translate, since its words hold meanings and can express

ideas that would be inexpressible in Newspeak (except using the single word

"crimethink").

Animal Farm by G.Orwell

Chapter One: Summary

As the story opens on Mr. Jones's farm, the farm animals are preparing

to meet after Mr. Jones goes to sleep, to hear the words that the old and

well-respected pig, Old Major, wants to say to them. The animals gather

around as Old Major tells them that he had a dream the previous night and

senses that he will not live much longer. As the animals prepare for his

speech, the narrator identifies several of the animals which will become

more important in the story: the cart-horses Boxer and Clover, the old

donkey Benjamin, and Mollie the pretty mare. Before he dies, he wants to

tell the animals what he has observed and learned in his twelve years. Old

Major goes on to say that animals in England are cruelly kept in slavery by

man, who steals the animals' labor and is "the only creature that consumes

without producing". He describes his vision of an England in which animals

are free and live in complete harmony and cooperation, free of the tyranny

of man and his evil habits.

Old Major tells the animals that they must all band together to fight

the common enemy, Man, and rise up in rebellion when the opportunity comes.

He exhorts them to remain true to their animal ways, and then leads them in

a rousing song of revolution, called "Beasts of England". They are stirred

into a frenzy by Old Major's speech and sing the song five consecutive

times, until Mr. Jones stirs and fires a shot into the air to quiet them

down. Soon the whole farm falls asleep.

Chapter Two: Summary

Three days later, Old Major dies and is buried. His revolutionary

fervor lives on, and the animals begin to flesh in the revolutionary

ideology with which they will overthrow Mr. Jones. Two of the pigs,

Snowball and Napoleon, emerge as the leaders of the animals. Snowball is

naturally vivacious, while Napoleon "has a reputation for getting his own

way". Another pig named Squealer also becomes prominent for his persuasive

speaking ability. These three pigs create a system of tenets and name it

"Animalism," and begin imparting it to the rest of the animals, often

simplifying and slowly reasoning with the less-intelligent animals such as

the Sheep, or the frivolous animals, like Mollie the white mare. The cart-

horses Boxer and Clover are the most responsive of all the animals, and

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