Possible thesis:
Throughout 1984, Orwell uses repetition of the governmental slogan "war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength". By doing so, he highlights the unquestioning belief in it by citizens of the society, ultimately expressing the the idea that humans find it easier to conform to an idea presented by others than to follow their own individual beliefs.
Please, please, please help make this better :). If it doesn't make sense, go ahead and fix it, or add any other thesis ideas you have. For this one, I was thinking that maybe places in the book where it is used are situations in which citizens of Oceania are showing some sort of agreement with it, like one time when it is used is during the Two Minutes Hate at the beginning of the book. This topic is kind of hard to analyze though. So I'll keep thinking.
King Lear Journal #4: Response to passage
14 years ago
Maybe we could also possibly use a thesis involving the motif of the statement "We are the Dead", like you mentioned earlier. It talks about how "Our only true life is in the future" (145) so maybe we could bring up the Brotherhood and the state slogan and analyze the author's views of the characters' lifestyles, which might be something along the lines of that citizens are only able to establish individuality if they don't conform to the ideas presented by the Party.
ReplyDeleteThis obviously needs more development, but it's a start and an idea. I do like where yours could go, though!
I like your idea better! I think the slogan one would get too complicated, and I'm not quite sure what we would be trying to prove. I think we should use the motif of "We are the Dead"...it makes sense with the idea of not being able to truly live individually if one only conforms to the ideas presented by others. Could you write a loose thesis for that topic? I will too.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Katie where areeeeeeeee you? :)
Ok, how about:
ReplyDeleteBy using the motif of the dead in 1984, Orwell expresses the idea that one is not able to truly live as an individual if they disregard their own decisions and instead conform to the ideas presented to them by others.
I like yours a lot, but here's my "loose" thesis:
ReplyDeleteThrough the repetition of the statement "We are the Dead" (or just the repetition of the dead) in the novel 1984, Orwell expresses that the citizens of the society are only able to establish individuality if they do not conform to the ideas presented by the party.
Yours is good too! I think we should be able to combine them pretty easily tomorrow. I wrote mine down, so if you write yours down too and bring it we should be good to go.
ReplyDeleteIf Katie agrees.....haha