Orwell’s “1984” --Prose Analysis 2 of 2

Independent Reading #2

Orwell’s “1984” --Prose Analysis 2 of 2

“He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head, you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking.” Pg. 138

It’s amazing at the amount of information you can pull from a passage…

The telescreen is a machine that records and watches what you do and say. It can hear you, see you and it even broadcasts important information (like news). In this passage the telescreen is referred to like a human and this is called personification. This machine (non-human being) is given the sense of hearing and sight. It is also given certain humanly characteristics such as cleverness and the act of spying on someone.

Delving into a deeper level, why would Orwell make Winston refer to the telescreen like a much abhorred person? Why is Winston referring to this machine like a person? In my opinion, humans are the most dangerous creatures on this planet. We are capable of many beautiful and wonderful things, but on the flipside, we are also capable of the most horrendous of things (i.e. the destruction of humanity, and the society they live in serves as an excellent example). Humans bring life and destruction. That is why Winston is referring to the telesreen as if it is a living human. By emphasizing how human it is, is Winston hinting on how the telescreen and those who monitor him become the cause of his inevitable destruction? Is this foreshadowing of what will happen to Winston?