Tuesday 27 September 2011

In 1984, what is the incident of "the chocolate bar" that Winston stole as a boy? What is the Newspeak dictionary?

has a dream
of the last time he saw his mother, which triggers a real memory. In this memory, he is with his
mother and younger sister and is always hungry. Because of his hunger, he is steals bits of
foods from his sister's plate, pilfers food if his mother doesn't guard it, and makes incessant
demands for more food. One day, due to rationing, his mother gets a bar of chocolate. Though it
should be split three ways, his mother gives in to Winston's demands for it and splits it so
that he gets three-quarters of it and his sister one-quarter. Even so, Winston grabs the extra
piece of chocolate from his sister's hand and runs off. After he has eaten the chocolate and
gotten hungry, he comes home, feeling a bit guilty, but his mother and sister have disappeared.
He never sees them again and wonders about what may have happened to them.


The story illustrates Winston's status as an ordinary person: he is not a saint. It
also illustrates what hunger, deprivation and the fight for survival can do to a person. It
connects to Newspeak, because it is just the sort of series of memories and thoughts that
Newspeak is designed to eradicate. Newspeak, represented by the Newspeak dictionary that Syme
discusses with Winston, means to reduce the language to the bare minimum number of words needed
for people to communicate. By reducing the number of words in the language and making them as
simple as possible, the regime hopes to eliminate as much thought as possible. This way, the
Inner Party can control people more fully. Ideally, in Newspeak, Winston would be unable to
retrieve even the relatively simple memories that lead him to think about the past and to dwell
on issues of guilt, possibility and need. 

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