Thursday, February 11, 2010

Illuminator-Pt.2 Ch.2 - Effective use of language

They were standing in the shade of hazel bushes. The sunlight, filtering through innumerable leaves, was still hot on their faces. Winston looked out into the field beyond, and underwent a curious, slow shock of recognition. He knew it by sight. An old, closebitten pasture, with a footpath wandering across it and a molehill here and there. In the ragged hedge on the opposite side the boughs of the elm trees swayed just perceptibly in the breeze, and their leaves stirred faintly in dense masses like women's hair. Surely somewhere nearby, but out of sight, there must be a stream with green pools where dace were swimming ?

" Isn't there a stream somewhere near here ? " he whispered.

" That's right, there is a stream. It's at the edge of the next field, actually. There are fish in it, great big ones. You can watch them lying in the pools under the willow trees, waving their tails. "

" It's the Golden Country - almost ", he murmured.

" The Golden Country ? "

" It's nothing, really. A landscape I've seen sometimes in a dream. "



This passage shows ffective use of foreshadowing. Not long before this scene, Winston had dreamed of this setting, the beautiful and peaceful country, which he came to call "Golden Country". As he says in the last lines of this excerpt, he talks about how this landscape is almost like Golden Country. Not only is the landscape foreshadowed, but the company is too. In his dream, he had a vision that he was with Julia at the country carelessly throwing her clothes aside. Her talk of being against the Party also related, because in his dream, he thought how the thing that attracted her to him was the how with her gesture of grace and carelessness as she threw her clothes aside, it seemed to "annihilate a whole culture, a whole system and thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm." In reality, she flung her clothes away, yet it did not annihilate the Party and Big Brother, but when they sleep together, Winston knows that "No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act."

1 comment:

  1. Thanks Annalee for pointing out this passage! George Orwell write very well and have great use of literary elements like foreshadowing.

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