There is a girl at work who Winston hates. He hates her because she is young, beautiful, and belongs to the Anti-Sex League. He wants to have sex with someone attractive and alive, unlike his estranged wife, and this girl has dedicated her life to making this impossible. One day she falls in the hallway next to him, and as he helps her up, she slips him a note. He reads it at his desk and it reads simply "I love you." (108) 

Quote: I chose this quote because it is monumental. If I were reading an escapist romance, I would obviously not consider a confession of love monumental, but that it came out of the gray, listless world of "1984" is astounding. I can imagine that this is why Orwell included this plot. The introduction of humanity is what gives us hope for Winston, but it is ultimately the center of the bleak message of "1984." The purpose of this quote is to create a rose growing in the cracks of the cement.

Analysis: In literary terms, this could be considered the beginning of the "rising action." After Winston and Julia (the name of the girl, we learn later) hook up, the plot accelerates quickly. The writer's craft for this quote is interesting. While in and of itself, "I love you" is not exactly a novel phrase, in this instance they are incredibly exciting. Orwell creates this using suspense, first shocking us with the note being slipped, then building up Winston's curiosity as he must wait to read it to avoid suspicion from the Thought Police, and, finally, letting us read the note, with Winston. Orwell also presents the words from the note in the same way that he presents the Party Slogan: centered and separated from the text by at least one line, except that he put in cursive, which effectively conjures handwriting, and that it attempts to refute everything that the Party Slogan stands for.  

"WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" 
(16)

Quote: This is the Party slogan. They fully believe that these apparent paradoxes are the key to everlasting civilization. They maintain national security through constant war, they believe that individual thought is so limiting to you that it might as well be slavery, and they believe that knowledge causes self-doubt and lack of conviction. I chose this quote because it is a centerpiece of the book, and a cornerstone of Orwell's vision of the future's worst case scenario, emblazoned onto everything. 

Analysis: This uses repeated oxymoronic phrases of increasingly invasive implications to give you a feeling of indomitablity.  The use of capital letters and short phrases helps to reinforce the sense that these are immutable truths, the kind of basic ideas that everyone understands, like "fire is hot." Also, as far as writers craft goes, the choice to center this is a very effective way to give a poster vibe without using a picture. These phrases are disturbingly close to the campaign slogans that politicians across the globe use everyday. Short, often nonsensical, they are repeated with the idea that after enough tries eventually everyone will believe them. Orwell would seem to agree with them.

Winston's introductory display of unorthodoxy in "1984" is writing in a diary. This is incredibly dangerous, if the Thought Police found out he would be sent to the Ministry of Love immediately to be tortured and killed. At one point he writes about a trip to the movies "...then the helicopter dropped a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went up like matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a childs arm going up up up... but a woman in the prole part of the house suddenly suddenly started kicking up a fuss... nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never ---" (9)

Quote: I chose this quote because it is horrible. It's all the more horrible because of the way that Winston talks about it. He says that a disembodied child's arm is "wonderful." This quote is an introduction to the kind of social warping that has occurred even in our protagonist. 

Analysis: This is a jarring quote, due to characterization and dialogue. The grammar is intentionally missing as is capitalization, reflecting the hurried, stream-of-thought way that Winston was writing. Also the indirect characterization is well done. A character is a different perspective so when you write for him as an author, you can use the way the character views things to show the character's personality and beliefs. In this case Orwell shows that Winston has been totally desensitized to the horrific violence, and goes as far as to reproach someone who objected to its being played in a public theater. This is eerily similar to the way we glorify violence today. Games like Ninja Gaiden and Gears of War are praised for their copious gore and violence. People love action movies, the premises of which are almost always person vs. more people, all of whom have big guns. This is not the way that society behaved when Orwell was writing, either. If you showed a kid from the '50s an action movie like ours they would be mortified. The steady progression towards the reality that Orwell predicted is unsettling, and I think that a lot could be gained from some introspection on this problem.

Orwell, George. 1984. New York: Penguin, 1949. Print 

Quote: In "1984," when Winston is given the manifesto for the underground movement in Oceania, the author of the manifesto writes "The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison they never even become aware that they are oppressed." (207) 

I chose this quote because this is the most important part of the book, in my  opinion. Orwell has created a way to talk plainly and without pretense of story about his beliefs about politics. Since "1984" is intended largely as a political statement, that means that the transcript of "the book" is the section most clearly representing what Orwell wants to say about where he feels that society is going. I do not think that reading this foreshadows any drastic change in Winston's demeanor, though, as he certifies his agreement with the book intermittently.

 
Analysis: This quote, especially the oppression by standards part, is a deep insight. This idea could be applied to explaining the Arab Spring last year. As those countries became more connected and saw more of the world (often via the internet) they decided that their lives were unsatisfactory in comparison. This is also an illustration of the fine difference between revolutionary and oppressor. The manifesto that this is an excerpt of essentially condones the actions of and justifies the Party. Even as the author criticizes the cyclical nature of power, he furthers it himself. The futility of idealism is a theme that is prevalent throughout "1984." 

Quote: Near the beginning of the book, the main character, Winston, remarks to himself that "it was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children." (24) Winston talked about this as a result of his neighbor's children being vicious little creeps, who have been brainwashed by The Party, the name for the dictatorial group in charge of where Winston lives. This quote illustrates Orwell's use of matter-of-factness to shock you when he mentions as sad an idea as being afraid of your children. Children are a subject that pretty much everyone feels ought to be inviolate, which makes the message of indoctrination through school and environment much scarier.

Analysis: This is an example of the ease with which you can affect a child through total environmental submersion. This is part of the ongoing theme throughout the book that if you have the power to write history and control peoples' lives, you can make them believe anything. I also think that this may foreshadow Winston being turned in to the Thought Police by the children. There are also alarming similarities to North Korea in the present. Their environment is controlled and filled with propaganda, their leader is presented as superhuman, and reality is bent to support the needs of the dictatorship.