Kayla provided the class with a quotation to explore:
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they will never become conscious.”
We decided to approach this quote from a range of different perspectives:
MEANING:
Jack and Lachlan and James provided us with this expansion on the logic of the quote:
They (the proles) don’t know what’s happening or what has happened within the state and they have no way of finding out unless they rebel, but without this knowledge they have no reason to rebel or nothing to rebel against, and these reasons would only be revealed after they rebelled.
In short: the proles are trapped.
We acknowledged that this thinking has a connection to Marxism, which is a political theory we will investigate further.
LANGUAGE:
We went on to explore the use of language in the quotation. While there was no figurative language, this in itself could be seen as a feature – the quotation, an extract of what Winston wrote into his illegal journal, reads like a political treatise, straight out of the books of Karl Marx. The logical loop in the structure of the two clauses, and the repetition of terms within it (for example, the rearrangement of the words ‘rebel’ and ‘conscious’) reflects the meaning of the passage – that the Proletariat are trapped within the rules and structures of their society.
