3/29 Artem Yatsenko

Aim: How does Orwell use symbols and imagery to demonstrate protest in 1984?

Do Now: Creatively describe the most foul-tasting concoction you can imagine (while remaining appropriate) (Hide this from your team!)

After thinking of a recipe, the next step of the do now was to pair up and tell each other their favorite food. After this, we would take the neighbor's favorite food and see what it was taste like after combining it with the foul-tasting recipe from the first step.

Imagery appeals to at least one of your senses, stimulating your memory in that area. The do now activity represented the steps taken to eradicate the flavor of food by the party in 1984, as the flavors might bring back dangerous memories and ideas. This explains Winston's description of ration chocolate in Chapter 2, where he characterized it as having a taste similar to "the smell of burning rubbish".

Winston's memory of chocolate is an example of a Constructed Symbol, representing the steps taken by the party to tighten their indirect control over people's memories and thoughts. Universal Symbols embody universally recognizable meanings wherever used, and Constructed Symbols are given symbolic meaning by the war an author uses them in a literary work. Motifs are any recurring symbols. While Universal symbols can be used in any work and usually picked up by most readers, Constructed Symbols are created to be used later on in the book.

Winston's dream in chapter 2 uses Constructed Symbols, such as the scarlet sash from the Junior Anti-Sex league, which is intended to represent the young, brainwashed party members in Winston's mind. In his dream, the girl ripping off the sash represents rebellious thoughts and the rejection of the party value of chastity.

Allusions are indirect references to outside events. An example of an allusion is Emmanuel Goldstein, who is used as a scapegoat by the party, and is the main target of the two minutes' hate. This alludes to the antagonizing of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.

At the end of the lesson, we were asked to find ways to incorporate the important symbolic messages of didactic literature into our own theme lesson projects.