Reading and Literature Studies · Reading Literary TextsNovel Study, Part 2: Symbol, Character, Structure and Embedded Texts in Nineteen Eighty-Four
1.4 1.6 2.2About 75 minutes
Learning goals- I can analyse how symbols in Part 2 develop the novel's themes.
- I can compare characters as foils and make inferences about their motives.
- I can explain how the novel's structure and its embedded texts (Goldstein's book, the appendix) work as text features.
- I can make and defend a subtle inference about the novel's ending from the appendix.
Words to know
embedded text
A text inside another text, such as a letter, diary or book that characters read.
appendix
Material added after the main text, often explanatory. In this novel it is part of the fiction.
foreshadowing
Hints of what will happen later.
dramatic irony
When readers know or suspect something the characters do not.
foil
A character who contrasts with another, highlighting each other's traits.
oligarchy
Rule by a small group of people.
motif
A repeated image or idea that develops a theme.
Hook: a room of their own
Imagine living where every room has a camera and a microphone. Then someone offers you one small room, above a quiet shop, with no screen on the wall. You could talk freely, sleep without fear, make tea, laugh. Would you take it?
Winston and Julia do. Part 2 of Nineteen Eighty-Four is about building a private world inside a total state. It is also, as careful readers notice from the start, a trap. This lesson studies how Orwell uses symbols, characters and the novel's own structure to build that world and then break it.
Remember from Grade 11
In ENG3U you analysed symbol, setting and character in The Great Gatsby (the green light, the valley of ashes) and foils in Hamlet (Laertes and Fortinbras). The same tools work here, plus a new one: embedded texts.
Part 2 in brief
The dark-haired young woman, Julia, secretly passes Winston a note saying she loves him. They meet in the countryside, away from telescreens, and begin a relationship, which the Party forbids. They rent a room above Mr. Charrington's junk shop, where there seems to be no telescreen. Julia brings real coffee and sugar from the black market; they listen to a prole woman singing in the yard below as she hangs washing.
Winston and Julia visit O'Brien, who tells them that the secret resistance, the Brotherhood, is real, and arranges for Winston to receive Goldstein's book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, which explains how the Party keeps power. Winston reads parts of it aloud to Julia (who falls asleep).
Then a voice speaks from behind a picture on the wall: there was a telescreen all along. Thought Police burst in. The paperweight is smashed on the floor. Mr. Charrington is revealed as a member of the Thought Police. Part 2 ends with Winston and Julia arrested.
Symbols that hold the past
- The glass paperweight: an old, useless, beautiful object with a piece of coral inside. For Winston it is a small piece of the past that the Party forgot to rewrite, and a picture of the room itself: a tiny, enclosed, fragile world. When it is smashed during the arrest, the private world shatters with it.
- The room above the shop: privacy, domestic life, the past (old furniture, no screen). Its safety is an illusion.
- **The nursery rhyme Oranges and lemons: Mr. Charrington teaches Winston fragments of an old rhyme about London church bells. Winston tries to recover the whole thing, as if rebuilding memory itself. The rhyme ends with a chopper that chops off your head: a dark foreshadowing**.
- The prole woman singing: Winston sees in her strong, tireless body and voice an ordinary life that the Party cannot fully reach, and a reason for hope in the proles.
- The place where there is no darkness: in a dream in Part 1, a voice Winston believes is O'Brien's tells him We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. Winston takes it as a promise of freedom. Readers should keep asking what it might really mean.
Worked exampleLet's make a subtle inference about a symbol
What can we infer from the fact that the room above the shop contains a hidden telescreen behind a picture?
- Stated: a voice speaks from behind the picture; the telescreen was there all along.
- Implied 1: the Party knew about the relationship from the beginning. Everything that felt private was watched and recorded.
- Implied 2: the old-fashioned room was bait. The Party used Winston's own love of the past (old furniture, an old engraving, an old rhyme) to trap him.
- Reread with the inference: Mr. Charrington's friendliness, the rhyme's ending with a chopper, even the safety of the room now read as dramatic irony: signals the reader could suspect while Winston could not.
- Theme: in a totalitarian state, even nostalgia can be used as a weapon.
The hidden telescreen shows that the Party used Winston's longing for the past to trap him; the private world was never private, and the clues were there for an alert reader.
Julia and Winston as foils. Their differences show two kinds of resistance: living privately against the system, and trying to understand and overthrow it. (The phrases summarize the novel; they are not quotations.)Characters and motives
Julia rebels for pleasure and survival. She is practical, enjoys breaking rules, and is uninterested in the Party's theories or in history. Winston teases that she is only a rebel from the waist down; she takes it as a compliment. She is sharper about daily survival than Winston is: she knows how to look loyal while breaking rules.
Winston rebels from ideas: he wants to know why the Party does what it does, to recover the true past and to see the system overthrown.
O'Brien is the novel's great ambiguity in Part 2. He seems intelligent, cultured and sympathetic, and he gives Winston the book. Readers who have been paying attention to the room, the rhyme and the dream may already suspect him.
Inference question: why does Julia fall asleep while Winston reads Goldstein's book aloud? On the surface, she is bored by theory. Underneath, Orwell may be suggesting that understanding how power works is not the same as being able to resist it, and that the book is less important than it seems.
Embedded texts as text features
Two texts inside the novel deserve special attention.
Goldstein's book. Orwell includes long extracts from The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, in a dry, analytical style very different from the novel's narration. It explains the three superstates, permanent war (war is peace), the class structure, and doublethink. As a text feature, it gives the reader the world's logic directly, in the form of a political essay. Later, in Part 3, O'Brien claims that he helped write it. So the reader must ask: who wrote this explanation, and why?
**The appendix, The Principles of Newspeak. It explains Newspeak's grammar and vocabulary in a calm, scholarly voice. But look at its tenses: it describes Newspeak and Ingsoc in the past tense, as if from some later time when they are history. Many critics, including the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood**, have argued that this suggests the Party eventually fell. The appendix is a text feature that may contain the novel's only hope.
Worked exampleLet's analyse a text feature
Analyse how the appendix's past tense changes how we can read the novel.
- Observe the feature: the appendix explains Newspeak as a system that was used; it speaks of Ingsoc and Oceania as if they belong to the past.
- Ask who could be writing: someone living after Oceania, in a world where Newspeak can be studied calmly, in standard English.
- Inference: the Party did not last forever; someone survived to write its history honestly.
- Counter-reading: others argue that Orwell simply wrote it as an explanation and that we should not read too much into tenses.
- Evaluate: the tense is consistent throughout the appendix, and Orwell was a careful writer, so the hopeful reading has real textual support, but it remains an inference.
The past-tense appendix supports a subtle inference: the Party eventually fell and its language became history. It offers a faint, structural hope outside the story's bleak plot, though readers disagree about how much weight it can bear.
Just for funFunny-but-true: Julia falls asleep while Winston reads aloud the most important political book in Oceania. Every student who has nodded off during an assigned reading now has a famous literary ally (though we recommend staying awake for this one).
Hands-on activityMap the symbols of a room
You need: a room at home that matters to you (your bedroom, a kitchen, a cottage, a grandparent's living room), paper and coloured pens.
- Sketch the room from above (a simple floor plan).
- Mark three objects in it that carry meaning beyond their use (an old photo, a trophy, a plant, a quilt).
- For each, write what it stands for (memory, achievement, family, comfort) and what would be lost if it were broken or taken away.
- Now compare: list the symbolic objects of the room above Mr. Charrington's shop (the paperweight, the old engraving of a church, the bed, the window onto the yard). What does each stand for to Winston?
- Write a paragraph: How does Orwell use one room to show what the Party wants to destroy?
What to look for: clear symbolic meanings (not just descriptions) for both rooms, and a paragraph linking the room's objects to the past, privacy and love.
Your turn
1What does the glass paperweight symbolize, and what happens to it?
A fragile piece of the past and of Winston and Julia's private world; it is smashed during the arrest, as their world is destroyed.
2Why is the room above the shop important, and why is its safety an illusion?
It gives Winston and Julia privacy and a taste of ordinary domestic life and the past; but a telescreen was hidden behind a picture and Mr. Charrington belonged to the Thought Police.
3How is the nursery rhyme Oranges and lemons used as foreshadowing?
It ends with a chopper coming to chop off your head; a cheerful old rhyme hides a threat, just as the cosy room hides a trap. It predicts the violent end of Winston's private world.
4Compare Julia's and Winston's reasons for rebelling.
Julia rebels for pleasure and survival, breaking rules in practical ways without caring about theory. Winston rebels from ideas, wanting to understand and overthrow the system and recover the truth about the past.
5What is Goldstein's book, and why is its authorship a problem?
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, an analysis of how the Party keeps power. In Part 3 O'Brien says he helped write it, so the reader cannot be sure whether it is resistance or Party manipulation.
6What is unusual about the appendix's tense, and what might it suggest?
It describes Newspeak in the past tense, as if from a later time, suggesting that the Party eventually fell.
7What is dramatic irony in Part 2? Give one example.
When readers suspect something the characters do not. Example: the reader may suspect the room or Mr. Charrington is not safe, while Winston feels secure.
More practice: warm-up
The dark-haired young woman Winston once feared was a spy; she becomes his lover and fellow rule-breaker.
2What is the full title of Goldstein's book?
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.
3Who turns out to be in the Thought Police at the end of Part 2?
Mr. Charrington, the shop owner.
4What is an embedded text?
A text inside another text, such as a book characters read.
5What does Winston hear from the yard below the room?
A prole woman singing as she hangs out washing.
More practice: on your own
1Why might Orwell have Julia fall asleep while Winston reads the book?
It shows her lack of interest in theory, contrasting the foils; and it suggests that understanding power is not the same as resisting it, which undercuts the book's importance. It may also show Julia's practical realism.
2Explain how the prole woman becomes a symbol of hope.
Her strong body and tireless singing show ordinary life and vitality that the Party cannot fully control; she connects to Winston's belief that hope lies in the proles, the large majority.
3Make an inference about O'Brien from Part 2 alone, with evidence.
Model: he may not be what he seems. Evidence: he is a powerful Inner Party member who can switch off his telescreen, he arranges for Winston to receive a dangerous book very easily, and the dream promise of no darkness is vague. A careful reader suspects a trap.
4How does the novel's three-part structure support its meaning?
Part 1 shows a man alone and doubting; Part 2 builds a private world of love and hope; Part 3 destroys it. The structure raises hope in order to destroy it, making the Party's power feel total.
5Explain why Margaret Atwood's argument about the appendix is an inference rather than a fact.
The novel never states that the Party fell; the argument rests on an implied clue (the past tense and the calm historical voice). It is well supported but must be argued from evidence, not assumed.
Challenge
1Write a thesis linking a symbol in Part 2 to the novel's theme of the past.
Model: Through the fragile glass paperweight, a scrap of the past that the Party forgot to rewrite, Orwell shows that private memory is both precious and defenceless in a totalitarian state, and its shattering at the moment of arrest marks the destruction of the past's last refuge.
2Is the appendix the novel's real ending? Argue either side.
Model (yes): the novel's story ends in defeat, but the book's last pages speak calmly about the Party in the past tense, so the structure reaches beyond Winston's fate to a world after Oceania; that is a deliberate, structural hope. (No): the appendix is an explanatory device; the narrative ending is the emotional and thematic conclusion, and reading hope into tense risks softening Orwell's warning. Look for textual evidence and a clear position.
3How does the hidden telescreen change the meaning of everything Winston and Julia did in the room? Use the term dramatic irony.
It reveals that every private moment was watched, so their acts of love, rebellion and memory were known to the Party all along. On rereading, the scenes become dramatic irony: the reader knows that the freedom they feel is being recorded by the power they are resisting, which makes their happiness both moving and terrible.
Quiz
1. The glass paperweight is mainly a symbol of...
2. Why do Winston and Julia rent the room above the shop?
4. Who is revealed as a member of the Thought Police?
5. The appendix is written in the past tense, which may suggest...
6. A nursery rhyme ending with a chopper is an example of...
What this lesson teaches: ENG4U Reading 1.4 (making subtle inferences), 1.6 (analysing how symbols, characters and structure communicate meaning) and 2.2 (text features: the novel's part structure, its embedded book and its appendix).
How to help at home:
- Ask your teen to show you the appendix and explain why its tense matters. It is a good test of close reading.
- Ask: Which symbol in Part 2 would you choose for a book cover, and why?
Content note: Part 2 includes a sexual relationship described briefly, without explicit detail, and ends with an arrest.
Common difficulties:
- Skimming Goldstein's book. It is dense; encourage reading the chapter titled War is Peace closely and summarizing each paragraph in one line.
- Missing the clues. Rereading the Charrington scenes after the arrest reveals how much was foreshadowed.
Facts used: Goldstein's book is titled The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism; the novel's appendix is The Principles of Newspeak. Margaret Atwood discussed the appendix's past tense as a sign that the regime fell in her 2003 essay Orwell and Me (The Guardian). Quotations are short; events are paraphrased.