1st Hour 1984 Scribe

The class started off with a few question on the blog. It is a good idea to respond to the blog as quick as possible. Mrs. Moritz didn't read the blog until 8:00 p.m. last night so use your time as you would like in responding to the blog.

Next, we talked about Damien and Allison's blogs. They did a great job so you can refrence off of their blog if you're still confused on scribing.

Once we were ready, we took the quiz over pages 37 through 69 in 1984. There were ten questions.

The presenters today were Erika, Melissa, Katie, and Jordan. Their opening question was: What is the reason that newspeak is used? Many people had responses. Someone pointed out that like Syme said, with less words there is less room for thought. Because if we don't have words that are used to express ourselves in our language, then there it is impossible. Another person said that many people don't even use it. Winston just used it to change the past. Once kids get older and have grown up with the Newspeak language, then it will be more common to hear it. But it will be hard in changing the present generation because they haven't grown up with it.
Prollies also came up in discussion because someone was confused on what they were. They are commoner who aren't really members of any party. They are the lowest level in the social status. It is refering to the proletariat working class. Someone made a very good connection in the way we teenagers sometimes speak to each other. We say JK and LOL and our grandparents don't really understand the meaning of those words. So it is kind of like newseak.
Even through socialsim there is racism and different statuses that occur naturally. The socialism in this book is kind of backwards because the proletariat class is they favored class. In this book some people thing that it doesn't appear that way. Some say its totalitarianism instead of communism. This book was written in 1949 so we do need to keep in mind that, that was the beginning of the red scare and there might be some connections to that. Another question that was raised was: Will book be gotten rid of if their content keeps changing? MAny people said no because it is roof that the government needs to keep their status true. Maybe the books will become just a chain of events without any details. Movie's sometimes ruin books by leaving alot of details out of it. That was a connection that was reltated to today's world. Previous generations without technology have relied on books to entertain and now we have destroyed that. Some say Syme might get caught because of his intelligence. People also brought up the fact that we don't know that there are other people besides Winston who is writing in a journal. But then again we don't know. Katherine and Winston weren't right for each other and so maybe that's why they split. The odd thing about Syme is that he likes the details of hangings yet he wants to get rid of the adjectives in Newspeak. The Parson's are an intresting family and many people think they will be a good family to follow through out the book. Big brother was the end of the discussion and that we weren't really sure on whether it was just one person or a group of people. Some say it would be imposible because their ads say he will live for a thousand years and one person can't live for a thousand years. So many people think its a group of people.

This was the end of the discussion and class.



-Kaley


Question to blog:

What do you think of Winston's dream? What does it say about him? Do you think this could foreshadow something?