GirouxChapter5Reaction

Giroux1984Reactions

Amanda Giroux 1-31-10 Block 8    My reaction to Chapter 5 is confusion. I didn’t understand what the point of it was. At first, I thought it was to demonstrate how Newspeak was growing stronger and how it was affecting the way people were thinking. “’Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller’” (pg 52). With fewer words the less you have to think about, therefore limiting the amount of thought which is exactly what the government wants. After reading the chapter further, I realized that that isn’t all the chapter might be about. I thought that maybe it was to show how much the people don’t realize that they are living like the lowest of the low. “…there had never been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms under heated, Tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-colored, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes insufficient- nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin” (pg 59).