Journal #3: The Wild Duck

None of the characters are without blame for the tragedy of Hedvig dying except for Hedvig herself.  Old Werle was at fault for having the illegitimate child with Gina, who kept it a secret.  Gregers tried to reveal the secret and in doing so brought about Hedvig's death.  Hjalmar was probably the least to blame out of all the main characters, yet he was the only one to blame himself after the affair was over.  The secrets were hidden from him, and one could not blame him for leaving for a short amount of time after being told that his daughter wasn't his.  In the chaos he comes to the conclusion that Hedvig faked her love for him.  He realized he was wrong after Hedvig died and blames himself.  "And I drove her from me like an animal!  And she crept terrified into the loft and died out of love for me" (215).  Hjalmar believes his actions were the sole cause of her death, yet other people were responsible for making Hjalmar act that way.  The other characters blame Gregers for bringing out the truth and ruining the family.  Relling says "[o]h, life would be good in spite of all, if we only could have some peace from these damned shysters who come badgering us poor people with their 'summons to the ideal'" (216).  Gregers is blamed by most of the characters for Hedvig's death because he revealed the truth.  Through this blame, Ibsen is trying to say that the truth should not always be said in every situation..

Journal #2: The Wild Duck

Ibsen used the motifs of decay, disease, and illness to express the revealing of the truth.  The motifs of disease and/or illness are most evident in the case of Hedvig's eyesight.  The fact that she is doomed to be blind gives evidence to her blood relationship to Werle, who is also going blind.  This situation is one that Gina tries to keep a secret, but Hjalmar eventually figures it out on his own.  "Don't come near me, Hedvig!  Keep away.  I can't bear seeing you.  Oh, the eyes!  Goodbye" (196).  Hjalmar made the connection between Hedvig and Werle's eyesight, revealing the truth.  Hedvig, because of this, feels that Hjalmar doesn't love her anymore and her eyes reflect the chaos that ensued after the truth was revealed.  "(with desperate eyes).  He's left us, mother!  He's left us!  He'll never come back again!" (196).  The chaos that happens after the revealing of a truth is also expressed earlier in Act 4 through the motif of decay.  Once Hjalmar learns that Gina slept with Werle before they were married he describes his situation with words that have the connotations of decay.  "A man's whole moral foundation can crumble under his feet; that's the dreadful thing" (186).  The revealing of the truths about Gina's past dealings with Werle and the true father of Hedvig result in the portrayal of the motifs of disease, illness, and decay.  Through displaying that the telling of the truth has these negative effects, Ibsen is trying to say that the truth should be kept a secret in certain situations.

Journal #1: The Wild Duck

Option 2:

Hjalmar has a false perception of himself.  He views himself and his family as being in a condition which they don't deserve, which may be partially true.  However, he claims that he is trying to restore his family's honor by building a great invention, although during the entirety of the play he is never mentioned to have been working on the invention.  His time is actually spent attending dinner parties, hunting with his father, and building little contraptions for the wildlife in his attic.  These things, along with taking away time that he could spend working on his invention, also distract him from his work.  The people who actually do his work are his wife and daughter, who he ironically bans from getting an education and who he labels as the members of the family who take care of the little, unimportant things.  "My general rule is to delegate the routine matters to her, and that leaves me free to retire to the living room to think over more important things" (167).  This quote captures his arrogant attitude, and his complete unawareness that the women are the ones who actually take care of the house and family.

Hjalmar has misconceptions about the women in his family.  He believes that they are dependent and devoted to him.  This belief is reinforced by the fact that both Gina and Hedvig act submissive and thankful to him whenever he is around.  This gives Hjalmar the feeling of being important and in control, when in reality he doesn't do much to help the family.  His job as a photographer is in most cases done by his wife or daughter, who also keep the house clean and keep track of money.  When Hjalmar is not around, however, Gina and Hedvig take on the more important roles that Hjalmar pretends to fill.  They do his work and Hedvig reads books, an action forbidden by Hjalmar.

Gregers is the only one who realize these misconceptions placed on Gina and Hedvig by Hjalmar.  He actively attempts to make them aware of this fact by bringing up circumstances where they do the important jobs that Hjalmar was supposed to do.  While Hjalmar is hunting with Old Ekdal, Gregers says to Gina, "[s]o we might say that it's you who runs the business" (165).  Gina immediately defends her husband by saying that she does the job when Hjalmar is busy with other things.  The truth is that Hjalmar is busy with other things that are not as important as his job.  He claims to be working on some big meaningful invention but in reality he is just being distracted by other things.  He is unaware to the fact that he doesn't get anything done and that it is the women who get it done for him.  Gregers is the only one who notices this and intervenes by trying to make these circumstances obvious to the women.

Journal #3: 1984

Motifs:  Orwell uses the motif of food to represent Winston's hope of a better way of life.  The higher quality of the food coincides with his beliefs that people are supposed to live a better life.  In the beginning of the novel, for example, the quality of the food is very bad.  Him and his Party members live off of stale bread and thin soup.  This low quality food relates to Winston's belief at the time that their way of life was worse than it should have been, and he believed that at some point in the past it had been better.  Later in the book, when Winston starts meeting up with Julia, she starts to smuggle in higher quality food to their hiding place.  It is at these times that Winston believes that their style of living was how people were supposed to live. "He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside" (146).  This thought of Winston's comes after he had some of the higher quality food.  This prompts him to think that his present lifestyle is of a better quality than what he had previously been experiencing, and that all people should be allowed to live like him.  Later in the book after Winston was captured by the thought police, a starving man is placed in the cell with Winston.  Another inmate tries to offer him food but the guards stop him.  This shows how the Party is controlling the quality of life in the prison.  Good food has represented a better, freedom filled lifestyle for Winston so the thought police are depriving him of that by putting him under constant surveillance and depriving him of food altogether.  Orwell uses food to represent Winston's hope of a better way of life.  The quality of food changed throughout the novel, showing Winston's struggle to find a better way of life, his success in finding a better way of life, and then his loss of that lifestyle when the thought police captured him.  Orwell uses food to show this because it is something that is essential for human life, and he believes that a free lifestyle is essential as well.

Setting:  The setting in the last third of the book is very restricting.  Winston is either physically restricted or under surveillance at all times.  This differs from the first two thirds mainly because Winston is now in prison, where he can no longer avoid the eyes of the thought police.  The oppressive state of the prison is shown in the first page of part three as Winston is examining his cell. "Concealed flooded it with cold light, and there was a low, steady humming sound which he supposed had something to do with the air supply.  A bench, or a shelf, just wide enough to sit on ran around the wall, broken only by the door and, at the end opposite the door, a lavatory pan with no wooden seat.  There were four telescreens, one in each wall" (231).  The connotations of the words concealed and cold gives off a very oppressed feeling, and that feeling is verified by the fact that there is four telescreens watching Winston at all times.  The loss of his ability to express himself due to the restrictive setting takes away Winston's individuality, and allows him to ultimately be brainwashed like all the other Party members.  After a long time in confinement, he starts believing the things O'Brien tells him because he doesn't have the option to oppose any argument that he is given.  Through this restrictive setting, Orwell is trying to show the reader that an oppressive society is bad because it takes away people's individuality, making them prone to the brainwashing that happens in Totalitarian societies.  Orwell included this because he saw parts of the world heading in that direction, and he wanted to warn the world of what might happen.

Language:  Orwell uses irony in the description of O'Brien to express the irony within the whole society.  Winston has always viewed O'Brien as an intelligent individual who had the mental capacity to see through the lies of the Party.  He believes this even more once O'Brien reveals that he is on Winston's side in the battle against the Party.  Yet in the end, O'Brien really was with the Party all along, and was blind to the lies which the Party portrayed.  Winston first realizes this when he is being interrogated by O'Brien. O'Brien had just destroyed an incriminating piece of paper, and Winston responded "'it did exist!  It does exist!  It exists in memory.  I remember it.  You remember it.''I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.  Winston's heart sank.  That was doublethink" (255).  Winston discovers that O'Brien practiced the Party term doublethink, and therefore is not even aware that he is practicing it.  This is ironic because O'Brien is portrayed as a very insightful and intelligent man, yet he is blind to how the Party has brainwashed him.  This irony is present in the rest of the society in 1984.  The people in the society constantly celebrate the successes of the Party, but in reality the quality of life has been deteriorating.  Orwell, through his use of irony, has shown how a Totalitarian government could corrupt and brainwash even the most intelligent people into  believing the government's ideals.  He shows that a whole society could be corrupted as well, and therefore be blind to the fact that their quality of life is slowly getting worse.  Orwell opposed Totalitarian governments because of this, and he wrote this book as a warning because he saw such groups as the British Labor Party, USSR, and the Nazis as exhibiting the start of the behaviors that he wrote about in his book.

Journal #2: 1984

Motifs:  The glass paperweight with the piece of coral in it is a motif for privacy.  Winston  feels that the coral on the inside is shielded by the layer of glass, protecting it from the outside world.  Winston constantly strives to achieve a similar condition as that piece of coral by finding places where he is protected for the watchful eyes of the telescreen and the Party members.  "He had the feeling that he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself.  The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal" (Orwell 150).  Winston acts on his desire for privacy, and rents out the bedroom from Mr. Charrington.  Winston and Julia now have their own secluded world where they are shielded from the rest of society's judgements.  Winston realizes this is just like the coral which is its own little world inside the glass.  He realizes he is just like the coral in the fact that he has his own privacy in the room, and in the room he and Julia live the life that Winston thinks people have the right to live.  This shows that Orwell is trying to say that privacy is something that everybody should have a right to.

Setting:  The setting in the second third of the book constantly depicts objects representing freedom.  This reflects the fact that Winston has started to find places where he can speak and act freely.  In Winston and Julia's first hiding spot in the bushes, Winston listens to a singing bird.  "The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself, almost as thought the bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity... Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence.  For whom, for what, was that bird singing? (Orwell 126).  Winston realizes that the bird feels the freedom to sing whenever and wherever it wants, a privilege that is denied to the humans in his society.  Winston develops a lust for this type of freedom, and it leads on to him later renting the bedroom from Mr. Charrington.  There Winston watched out the window as a prole started singing a song as she hung up clothes to dry.  He concludes that all hope lies in the proles because they are the only humans left who still exhibit a kind of freedom by singing whenever they feel like it, whereas all aspects of the feeling of freedom have been eliminated from people in the Party.  This all shows that Orwell believes people deserve freedom because it is natural to just want do something just for the sake of doing it.

Language:  Orwell uses longer syntax when Winston is thinking about love. This shows that the feeling of love is quite knew to Winston, and he is devoting a lot of thought towards what it means.  Near the middle of the novel, Winston suddenly feels very angry when Julia says she can not meet with him that day.  He realizes that "when one lived with a woman this particular disappointment must be a normal, recurring event; and a deep tenderness, such as he had not felt for her before, suddenly took hold of him" (Orwell 142).  The long syntax highlights Winston's long thought process when he is trying to decipher what it feels like to be in love.  The society he lives in is so deprived of it that he doesn't know what to expect, and therefore must analyze his own feelings toward Julia in different situations.  In the situation from the quote, he at first feels jealous and angry that he can't be with her, and then he realizes that he just misses her because he loves her.  The feeling of deep tenderness gives this away to him.  Orwell is trying to say that love can be felt by people who have been deprived of knowing what it is their whole life.  Therefore love is a natural feeling, and shouldn't be taken away from society.

Journal #1: 1984

Motifs:  A reappearing motif in the novel is the cigarette.  George Orwell always describes Winston's interactions with cigarettes whenever he stops to smoke.  Most of the time the cigarettes are of low quality, and the poor tobacco usually falls out of the cigarette if Winston is careless enough to tip it over.  The purpose of this motif is to mirror the situation of the society.  The poor quality of the cigarette relates to the present condition of the society.  Whenever Winston manages to poor out the tobacco, or makes a negative remark about its quality, it coincides with something that is depreciating within the society around him.  At the start of the book, Orwell portrays the setting as deteriorating and of a fake and low quality.  At the end of this description, Winston "took a cigarette from the crumpled packet marked VICTORY CIGARETTES and incautiously held it upright, whereupon the tobacco fell out onto the floor" (Orwell 5).  This shows how the cigarette mirrors the quality of the society around it.  The cigarette is portrayed more positive than it really was, just like how the Party portrays life in society as better than what reality is like in the society.

Setting:  The extent to which the setting is described directly relates to how safe and free Winston is feeling.  In the Totalitarian society in which Winston lives, he is almost always under watch.  Therefore, he puts lots of effort into not doing anything out of the ordinary, and only focusing on the one thing which he is supposed to be doing.  When Winston is out of view of the telescreen, however, he feels free enough to observe and appreciate the beauty he finds in his surroundings, a dangerous act performed under surveillance.  Winston was on one of his usual walks, when he decides to duck in a shop in the "prole" part of the city.  He feels free in this shop because there is no surveillance, so he displays his freedom by taking in his surroundings.  "Winston noticed that the furniture was still arranged as though the room were meant to be lived in.  There was a strip of carpet on the floor, a picture or two on the walls, and a deep, slatternly armchair drawn up to the fireplace.  An old-fashioned glass clock with a twelve-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece.  Under the window, and occupying nearly a quarter of the room, was an enormous bed with the mattress still on it" (Orwell 99).  The fact that the setting is always described through Winston's eyes due to Orwell's use of first person narration results in a much more detailed description of the setting when Winston feels free.  His happiness at being able to act as he wants in these situations tends to result in the setting being described by him as being more positive, while the setting when he is under surveillance tends to be negative and drab.  In the quote, his feeling of freedom leads to a very detailed description of the setting by Winston, and the setting takes on a warm, homely feeling because Winston feels happy that he is momentarily free.

Language:  Orwell, through first person narration and dialogue, shows when Winston fears he is being watched.  When Winston fears he is under surveillance of a telescreen or Party member, he keeps his talking to a minimum, and we are aware of his thoughts due to first person narration.  However, when Winston feels free of being watched, he says his thoughts out loud.  In the first third of the novel, Winston enters a pub full of proles in search of an escape from the constant watch of the telescreens and in search of some political information.  He finds an old man and asks him "'Do you feel that you have more freedom now than you had in those days?  Are you treated more like a human being?'" (Orwell 93).  If Winston had been in a setting where he felt he was under surveillance, he would have thought of those same questions, but he would have kept them inside his head.  Therefore, the reader can tell whether Winston feels fearful of being watched or not by noticing whether he portrays his opinions by thought or by dialogue.