1984 Part II: Chapter 10 and Part III: Chapters 1-3

Reading for Understanding (Review Sheet)

You may complete this review sheet for 5 points extra credit. In order to earn your points you
must answer all questions completely and identify page numbers where you found the
information.
Chapter X
1. How are Winston and Julia captured by the Thought Police?
2. Where was the telescreen?
3. Who did Mr. Charrington turn out to be? What does this mean?
4. Did the Thought Police know everything that Winston was doing from the very beginning?
How do you know?
Chapter I
5. As Winston waits in the jail cell in the Ministry of Love, he meets the poet Ampleforth and his
neighbor Parsons. What are they in for?
6. What is Room 101?
7. OBrien comes in the cell with a guard. What does Winston say? How does OBrien reply?
What does this mean?
Chapter II
8. Why does OBrien say that the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford, which he just
showed to Winston, didnt exist and that he doesnt remember it?
9. For the Party, does the past have a real existence?
10. Why does OBrien want Winston to say that there are five fingers when he is only holding up
four? Why isnt he satisfied when Winston finally says five? What lesson is OBrien trying
to teach Winston?
11. Winston wonders why they are torturing him if they are just going to kill him anyway. What is
OBriens answer?
12. OBrien says that the rule of the Party is forever. However, the appendix appears to be
written in a future time when there is no Party. Is this a contradiction in the book?
13. What, according to OBrien, is the purpose of the Party?
14. Why is OBrien spending so much time on Winston?
Chapter III
15. Winstons torture and interrogation have several stages. What techniques are used in each
stage?
16. According to OBrien, who actually wrote The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical
Collectivism? What does this mean, if true?
17. OBrien teaches that there is no world outside of the human mind, so that the Party can
control reality in the same way that he can make Winston see five fingers when there
are only four.This is Believing is seeing rather than Seeing is believing, as we would
normally say. Is it possible to so thoroughly brainwash someone that he or she will see
things that are not there?
18. OBrien says that Winston should imagine a future in which a boot is stamping on a human
face forever. Winston tries to argue that such a vision would fail. Who do you think is
right?