Justification for 1984

George Orwell: Why I Write

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of five years on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious — i.e. seriously intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation. I cannot remember anything about it except that it was about a tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’ — a good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem was a plagiarism of Blake's ‘Tiger, Tiger’. At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was printed in the local newspaper, as was another, two years later, on the death of Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.

However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote vers d'occasion, semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed — at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in imitation of Aristophanes, in about a week — and helped to edit a school magazines, both printed and in manuscript. These magazines were the most pitiful burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I took far less trouble with them than I now would with the cheapest journalism. But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my ‘story’ ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf’, etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty-five, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ‘story’ must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.

When I was about sixteen I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words. The lines from Paradise Lost —

So hee with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.


which do not now seem to me so very wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone; and the spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added pleasure. As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound. And in fact my first completed novel, Burmese Days, which I wrote when I was thirty but projected much earlier, is rather that kind of book.

I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in — at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own — but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature — taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult — I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I might have written ornate or merely descriptive books, and might have remained almost unaware of my political loyalties. As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial Police, in Burma), and then I underwent poverty and the sense of failure. This increased my natural hatred of authority and made me for the first time fully aware of the existence of the working classes, and the job in Burma had given me some understanding of the nature of imperialism: but these experiences were not enough to give me an accurate political orientation. Then came Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm decision. I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:

A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;


But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.


And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.


All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.


But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.


It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.


I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;


And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.


I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?


The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.

It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let me give just one example of the cruder kind of difficulty that arises. My book about the Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is of course a frankly political book, but in the main it is written with a certain detachment and regard for form. I did try very hard in it to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts. But among other things it contains a long chapter, full of newspaper quotations and the like, defending the Trotskyists who were accused of plotting with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which after a year or two would lose its interest for any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A critic whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You've turned what might have been a good book into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in England had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.

In one form or another this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don't want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

1946

THE END

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Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park

OSP is performing Shakespeare's "A Mid Summer Night's Dream" beginning this weekend and ending Labor Day weekend. Performances are on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Yes, as Sophomores you read this comedy, and chances are, you had a fabulous instructor that led you through your second high school taste of the Bard (most likely mentioning all the dirty jokes and criticism of "love at first sight").

Alright, this is an extra credit opportunity for those students that are willing to read a brief synopsis HERE, enjoy an OSP performance, and come answer a free response Question 3 prompt addressing humor and comedy. Rarely have these been an option on the AP Exam, but Shakespeare will periodically make an appearance (and he's due for an appearance this year or next).

Make sure you save your play bill. I'll have you sign and turn them in.

I DO have to mention that all Sophomore English teachers are inviting the Sophomore class (with their parents) to join us on September 3rd. This is the final performance, and I would love to see all of 3rd hour there on that day. My underclassmen obviously look up to all of you.

You may attend any performance. Please click on the Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park link for directions, parking, etc.

The shows begin at 8, but I recommend getting there MUCH earlier. There is an intermission, and shows usually end by 10/10:30.

I hope to see you there.

Emailing Expectations

Advanced Placement Composition and Literature Clear Communication Assignment

Clear communication is an academic skill that you MUST work to attain and improve throughout the year. Most of this class is simply student-driven, clear communication through collective discourse, peer assessment, technology assistance (blogging/twitter), and one-on-one conferences.

Directions: Your first assignment will be to email me your personal responses to a list of my expectations. Begin by reading over the following questions and then formulating a sophisticated, well-written response that addresses all parts of each question should one ask for a complex answer.

1. Why are you here?

2. What is the point of reading a novel, poem, or short story?

3. What have you brought to this class and how do you intend to use that talent?

4. What will you give up to give your best to academics?

5. Are you willing to daily read 40 to 60 pages of an outside reading and/or class reading and keep an ongoing log or response to what you are reading?

6. What is your highest personal accomplishment?

By responding honestly to the following six questions, I will be able to determine what type of student you are and plan to be. If there is congruency between your email and the type of work you put forth during the first semester, I will have more than enough material for composing an outstanding letter of recommendation as many of you will be applying to colleges and for academic scholarships alike.

regan.killackey@edmondschools.net

AP Students DO and HAVE the following:

Read accurately.

Engage in intelligent discussion.

Desire to learn more than surface-level knowledge.
Listen actively.

A sense of personal and social responsibility to keep up with workload and contribute sufficient meaning to group’s efforts.

The patience to accept a variety of answers for unresolved questions as starting points for further thinking and exploring of ideas.

A basic command of language or a willingness to obtain it.

High personal expectations/ goals focused on increasing self-sophistication.

Three levels of advance placement:

flexibility

transition

accountability

Advanced Placement English Literature

Edmond Memorial High School

Summer Assignment 2011

You will have two summer assignments that will be due by the end of the first week of instruction in August; therefore, be working on these assignments throughout the entire summer—pieces at a time. We suggest that you purchase your own copy of How To Read Literature Like a Professor OR we have classroom copies available.

Time management is crucial within AP Literature in order to study the volume of work during the year.

First Assignment:
Read HOW TO READ LITERATURE LIKE A PROFESSOR: A LIVELY AND ENTERTAINING GUIDE TO READING BETWEEN THE LINES by Thomas C. Foster.

Answer the accompanying questions. This “How-to” book will better prepare you to read carefully and analytically as you begin your year in AP Literature. Having knowledge of the subjects covered in this text will give you an advantage throughout the school year and on the AP exam. We do not expect essay responses for each question. As long as you satisfactorily answer the questions, length will not be an issue.

1. Introduction: How'd He Do That?
How do memory, symbol, and pattern affect the reading of literature? How does the recognition of patterns make it easier to read complicated literature? Discuss a time when your appreciation of a literary work was enhanced by understanding symbol or pattern.

2. Chapter 1 -- Every Trip Is a Quest (Except When It's Not)
List the five aspects of the QUEST and then apply them to something you have read (or viewed) in the form used on pages 3-5.

3. Either of the following:
Chapter 2 -- Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion
Choose a meal from a literary work and apply the ideas of Chapter 2 to this literary depiction.
Chapter 3: --Nice to Eat You: Acts of Vampires
What are the essentials of the Vampire story? Apply this to a literary work you have read or viewed.

4. Chapter 4-- If It's Square, It's a Sonnet
Select three sonnets and show which form they are. Discuss how their content reflects the form. (Submit copies of the sonnets, marked to show your analysis).

Optional
Chapter 5--Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?
Define intertextuality. Discuss three examples that have helped you in reading specific works.


5. Chapter 6 -- When in Doubt, It's from Shakespeare...
Discuss a work that you are familiar with that alludes to or reflects Shakespeare. Show how the author uses this connection thematically. Read pages 44-46 carefully. In these pages, Foster shows how Fugard reflects Shakespeare through both plot and theme. In your discussion, focus on theme.

6. Chapter 7 -- ...Or the Bible
Read "Araby" (available online). Discuss Biblical allusions that Foster does not mention. Look at the example of the "two great jars." Be creative and imaginative in these connections.

7. Chapter 8 -- Hanseldee and Greteldum
Think of a work of literature that reflects a fairy tale. Discuss the parallels. Does it create irony or deepen appreciation?

8. Chapter 9 -- It's Greek to Me
Write a free verse poem derived or inspired by characters or situations from Greek mythology. Be prepared to share your poem with the class. Note that there are extensive links to classical mythology on my Classics page.

9. Chapter 10 -- It's More Than Just Rain or Snow
Discuss the importance of weather in a specific literary work, not in terms of plot.
Interlude -- Does He Mean That

10. Chapter 11 --...More Than It's Gonna Hurt You: Concerning Violence
Present examples of the two kinds of violence found in literature. Show how the effects are different.

11. Chapter 12 -- Is That a Symbol?
Use the process described on page 106 and investigate the symbolism of the fence in "Araby." (Mangan's sister stands behind it.)

12. Chapter 13 -- It's All Political
Assume that Foster is right and "it is all political." Use his criteria to show that one of the major works assigned to you as a freshman is political.

13. Chapter 14 -- Yes, She's a Christ Figure, Too
Apply the criteria on page 119 to a major character in a significant literary work. Try to choose a character that will have many matches. This is a particularly apt tool for analyzing film -- for example, Star Wars, Cool Hand Luke, Excalibur, Malcolm X, Braveheart, Spartacus, Gladiator and Ben-Hur.

Optional:
Chapter 15 -- Flights of Fancy
Select a literary work in which flight signifies escape or freedom. Explain in detail.

One of the three:
Chapter 16 -- It's All About Sex...

Chapter 17 -- ...Except the Sex
OK ..the sex chapters. The key idea from this chapter is that "scenes in which sex is coded rather than explicit can work at multiple levels and sometimes be more intense that literal depictions" (141). In other words, sex is often suggested with much more art and effort than it is described, and, if the author is doing his job, it reflects and creates theme or character. Choose a novel or movie in which sex is suggested, but not described, and discuss how the relationship is suggested and how this implication affects the theme or develops characterization.
Chapter 18 -- If She Comes Up, It's Baptism
Think of a "baptism scene" from a significant literary work. How was the character different after the experience? Discuss.

14. Chapter 19 -- Geography Matters…
Discuss at least four different aspects of a specific literary work that Foster would classify under "geography."

15. Chapter 20 -- ...So Does Season
Find a poem that mentions a specific season. Then discuss how the poet uses the season in a meaningful, traditional, or unusual way. (Submit a copy of the poem with your analysis.)

16. Interlude -- One Story
Write your own definition for archetype. Then identify an archetypal story and apply it to a literary work with which you are familiar.

17. Chapter 21 -- Marked for Greatness
Figure out Harry Potter's scar. If you aren't familiar with Harry Potter, select another character with a physical imperfection and analyze its implications for characterization.

Two of the five:
Chapter 22 -- He's Blind for a Reason, You Know
Chapter 23 -- It's Never Just Heart Disease...
Chapter 24 -- ...And Rarely Just Illness
Recall two characters who died of a disease in a literary work. Consider how these deaths reflect the "principles governing the use of disease in literature" (215-217). Discuss the effectiveness of the death as related to plot, theme, or symbolism.

Chapter 25 -- Don't Read with Your Eyes
After reading Chapter 25, choose a scene or episode from a novel, play or epic written before the twentieth century. Contrast how it could be viewed by a reader from the twenty-first century with how it might be viewed by a contemporary reader. Focus on specific assumptions that the author makes, assumptions that would not make it in this century.
Chapter 26 -- Is He Serious? And Other Ironies
Select an ironic literary work and explain the multivocal nature of the irony in the work.

20. Chapter 27 -- A Test Case
Read “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield, the short story starting on page 245. Complete the exercise on pages 265-266, following the directions exactly. Then compare your writing with the three examples. How did you do? What does the essay that follows comparing Laura with Persephone add to your appreciation of Mansfield's story?

Optional:
Envoi
Choose a motif not discussed in this book (as the horse reference on page 280) and note its appearance in three or four different works. What does this idea seem to signify?



Second Assignment:

Reread your favorite novel or play that has literary merit and be ready to write about it. As you reread, select five passages (half a page to a full page). Copy or photocopy these passages and analyze them considering the following questions:
1. Why did you select the passage?
2. What was it about this particular passage stood out to you?
3. How significant or important is this particular passage to the novel?
4. What do you learn as a reader from this particular passage?
5. After finishing the novel, does this particular passage seem more or less significant?

Of course, AP English covers many other aspects of English besides the study of novels and plays. Since the tangible outcome of the class is to take a test in May, many of the activities prepare you for success. We congratulate you on your decision to take advanced placement classes.

Sincerely,


S. Vandagriff & R. Killackey

P.S. “A room without a book is like a body without a soul” (Cicero).

Journeying Through 12 Years

The Nostalgia Box

Justification: Throughout AP Literature, you have had the chance to read, analyze, and synthesize a wide array of poetry, crossing genres and time periods. During first week of class you were asked to explain William Blake’s “A Poison Tree.” Most of you had no idea where to begin or how to unlock what seemingly read as a child’s play, but ended as an in-depth gaze into human nature [insert 7 deadly sin here]. I used Blake to spring-board into what this class is about and how much effort MUST be used for keen analysis. What I am asking you to accomplish, as this year fizzles away, is to dive into the poetry of the most eccentric Romantic poet, William Blake, connect with his poetry on a personal level, rekindle emotions and feelings of years past (grammar school—high school), display your own charisma and charm through creative prowess, and use the hand-made film Coraline to discover the importance of being an individual.

Step 1: Understand Intertextuality. The ONE STORY concept MUST be at the forefront of your thinking through this entire assignment.

Step 2: View the film, Coraline, based on the novel by Niel Gaiman. Take notes over ANY minute detail that will be classified as “intertextuality.” This time the definition will expand to include film. Yes, I know that this is a film based on a book, but I want you to be thinking about MANY things that can and will be applied to TEXT (William Blake’s poetry specifically)

Step 3: Go to aplitkillackey.blogspot.com Scroll to the bottom. Click on the poetry archive. Search for William Blake. Browse his poetry. You have more than enough to choose from. Select a poem that speaks to you on a nostalgic level. I want you to see yourself within his poetry through symbolic reference, connected on a personal, nostalgic level. Read it. Understand it. TPCASTT it if you need further clarification. All your analysis skills apply here. Annotate your copy.

Step 4: Go to coraline.com Go to the Other Mother’s Workshop. Create a photograph of you with BUTTONS for EYES. Print it (with a color printer preferably). Go to the Garden. Design a three-tiered flower that represents YOU. Keep in mind that you are selecting imagery that will SYMBOLIZE you and your growth through the last 12 years.

Step 5: Creating the box. When promoting this film, creators designed, developed, and created 50 boxes, each having its own separate theme connected with the film. Each box was sent to 50 top film bloggers. You are to create, design, and develop your own.

1. Go to http://superpunch.blogspot.com/2008/11/ten-coraline-boxes.html to look at the Coraline Boxes.
2. Gather materials that would best suit your box. Be resourceful. Think of a personal theme that agrees with the tone of your Blake Poem, Button Picture, Flower…YOU
3. DO IT YOURSELF: create your BOX.

Step 6: What goes in the box.
1. William Blake Poem—with annotations
2. Photograph of yourself with BUTTONS for EYES
3. Photograph of your personalized, three-tiered flower. On the back of your printed flower, write a sufficient explanation for each pedal selection. (use markers or crayons)
4. Objects and keepsakes representing YOU which further strengthen the tone of your selected theme. (notes to friends, concert tickets, toys, fortune cookie fortunes, drawings, miniature figurines)

Things to think about:

Keep asking why this multi-genre investigation (with William Blake’s poetry at the forefront) will help you define your individuality—charisma—charm. I am asking you to hold on to the joy that makes the childhood experience so inspiring and memorable. Coraline is tempted, therefore fallible. You are fallible. We are attracted to her character because of her innocence and experience. William Blake would have been as well. Intertextuality works with TONE. Think about it…

Get creative. Dive back through the years. Get nostalgic.