1984 Lesson 4 The Proles PDF

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1984 The Proles Three times in the novel, twice at the beginning and once at the end, Winston writes: 'If there is hope,' he had written in the diary, 'it lies in the proles.' The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.

A major question that readers ask themselves as they read is: Will

the proles rebel?

One could write an essay about this as there is no clear answer. We will explore this question by close reading the major passages that are related to the proles. Note: this exercise should be a model when brainstorming your own essay thesis. Record the traits of the proles along with summary of the example on a large piece of paper. If the trait shows that the proles are likely to rebel put it in on the left side of the chart. If the trait shows that the proles are likely to not rebel put the trait and the example on the right side of the chart. 1) At the very beginning of the novel Winston writes in his diary about a movie he saw: April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting they didnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt it aint right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never---- (pg 8 -9)

What does this scene teach us about the Party members and the proles? How are they different? Focus on the themes of class, violence, power, love, and obedience.

2) Syme when talking about Newspeak mentions the proles. He says “The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?' 'Except----' began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say 'Except the proles,' but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say. 'The proles are not human beings,' he said carelessly. 'By 2050--earlier, probably--all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. (pg 53 -53)

What does this teach us about the proles and their relation to Newspeak? What is Syme’s view of the proles? Is Syme right? 3) Winston describes the proles in relation to sex and class: The poorer quarters swarmed with women who were ready to sell themselves. Some could even be purchased for a bottle of gin, which the proles were not supposed to drink. Tacitly the Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed. Mere debauchery did not matter very much, so long as it was furtive and joyless and only involved the women of a submerged and despised class. (pg 65)

Why do you think the proles were not supposed to drink gin? Why do you think Party members could only sleep with the proles?

4) At the beginning of Part 1 Chapter 7 Winston wakes up and says: 'If there is hope,' wrote Winston, 'it lies in the proles.' If there was hope, it MUST lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. … But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet----!

What key facts do we learn about the proles here? What words does Winston use to describe them? How does the Party view them?

5) A) Reread page 70, in Part 1 Chapter 7. Summarize the fight amongst the prole women. Copy a sentence that shows how Winston feels initially when he hears them and after he witnesses them. He then writes in his diary. Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

B) Reread page 71. Describe the history of the proles in a few sentences. What does the Party teach its members about the proles?

Winston says “In reality very little was known about the proles.” Why is this significant? What might this mean about Winston’s assumptions about them?

C)

D) What does the Party use to keep the proles in line? Do you think these would be effective tools of keeping the proles in line? Explain. E) Winston continues: A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings.

What do the bold words suggest about some of the proles? Why is this significant? F) Finally Winston writes: The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes. Even the civil police interfered with them very little. There was a vast amount of criminality in London, a whole world-within-a-world of thieves, bandits, prostitutes, drugpeddlers, and racketeers of every description; but since it all happened among the proles themselves, it was of no importance. In all questions of morals they were allowed to follow their ancestral code. The sexual puritanism of the Party was not imposed upon them. Promiscuity went unpunished, divorce was permitted. For that

matter, even religious worship would have been permitted if the proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting it. They were beneath suspicion. As the Party slogan put it: 'Proles and animals are free.'

What do these final lines teach us about the proles?

6) A)

In Part 1 Chapter 8 Winston overhears proles talking

They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. …But if there was hope, it lay in the proles. You had to cling on to that. When you put it in words it sounded reasonable; it was when you looked at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it became an act of faith.

What is Winston’s opinion of the Proles here? What positive and negative traits does he see in them?

B)

Winston speaks with the old prole man and says:

You must have been a grown man before I was born. You can remember what it was like in the old days, before the Revolution. … The history books say that life before the Revolution was completely different from what it is now. There was the most terrible oppression, injustice, poverty—worse than anything we can imagine. Here in London, the great mass of the people never had enough to eat from birth to death. Half of them hadn't even boots on their feet. … And at the same time there were a very few people, only a few thousands—the capitalists, they were called—who were rich and powerful. … They lived in great gorgeous houses with thirty servants, they rode about in motor cars and four-horse carriages, they drank champagne, they wore top hats—" THE OLDMAN RESPONDS WITH THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS "Top 'ats!" he said. "Funny you should mention 'em. The same thing come into my 'ead only yesterday, I donno why. I was jest thinking, I ain't seen a top 'at in years. The last time I wore one was at my sister-in-law's funeral. And that was—well, I couldn't give you the date, but it must 'a been fifty year ago. Of course it was only 'ired for the occasion, you understand." They liked you to touch your cap to 'em. It showed respect, like. I didn't agree with it, myself, but I done it often enough. Had to, as you might say." "You expect me to say as I'd sooner be young again. Most people'd say they'd sooner be young, if you arst 'em. You got your 'ealth and strength when you're young. … On the other 'and there's great advantages in being a old man. You ain't got the same worries. No truck with women, and that's a great thing. I ain't 'ad a woman for near on thirty year, if you'd credit it. Nor wanted to, what's more."

What can we make of this conversation? Do you think this old man represents many of the proles? Explain. 7) Winston hears an old prole woman singing in Part 2 Chapter 4 Under the window somebody was singing. Winston peeped out, … in the sun-filled court below a monstrous woman, solid as a Norman pillar, with brawny red forearms and a sacking apron strapped about her middle, was stumping to and fro between a washtub and a clothesline, pegging out a series of square white things which Winston recognized as babies' diapers. Whenever her mouth was not corked with clothes pegs she was singing in a powerful contralto: "It was only an 'opeless fancy, It passed like an Ipril dye, But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!" The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department.

What does singing symbolize? What does this teach us about the humanity of the proles?

8)

Before reading Goldstein’s book, in Part 2 Chapter 7 near the end, Winston thinks :

When once you were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no difference. Whatever happened you vanished. You were lifted clean out of the stream of history. And yet to the people of only two generations ago this would not have seemed all-important, because they were not attempting to alter history. They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself. The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to one another. For the first time in his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely as an inert force which would one day spring to life and regenerate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had not become hardened inside. And in thinking this he remembered, without apparent relevance, how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk. 'The proles are human beings,' he said aloud. 'We are not human.'

9)

Goldstein’s books refers to the proles and their patriotism:

The slightly more favoured workers whom we call 'the proles' are only intermittently conscious of the war. When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening. It is in the ranks of the Party, and above all of the Inner Party, that the true war enthusiasm is found.

What does this teach us about the difference between the proles and the Inner Party? How are the proles portrayed in Goldstein’s book? 10) Before Winston is caught he reflects on the singing prole woman The proles were immortal, you could not doubt it when you looked at that valiant figure in the yard. In the end their awakening would come. And until that happened, though it might be a thousand years, they would stay alive against all the odds, passing on from body to body the vitality which the Party did not share and could not kill. he birds sang, the proles sang. the Party did not sing. … All round the world, … everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing. Out of those mighty loins a race of conscious beings must one day come. You were the dead, theirs was the future.

What does Winston think about the proles? Are his ideas realistic or naïve?

11)

The final thing to note is in the Appendix.

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing.

What tense is it written in? What does it teach us about Oceania? Who could be writing this? How could the appendix be given to us? What might this mean about the proles?...