All posts by Christopher Waugh

“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.” (Katherine Mansfield)

Nineteen Eighty-Four: An Historical Context

Fragments of historical information to put into context the social/historical norms at the time George Orwell wrote “Nineteen Eighty-Four”

Further Reading

Further reading to enhance your appreciation of the dystopian Genre. Use the links to download a copy onto your phone and computer so you can read these (or at least one of them) at your leisure.

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Apple: You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984”

This advertisement, aired during the Super Bowl in 1984 shows Apple’s advertising agency tapping into the Cold War anxieties about totalitarianism to present it’s new computer products. How does this ad appear to us now Apple has become one of the world’s largest multinational companies?

Homework: Select a sample of rich language

In spite of being the author of the quotation “Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.” Orwell’s writing is rich with grammatical complexity and textured imagery. Find for yourself some examples of his deft

Nineteen Eighty-Four: How to handle a quotation

An exemplar demonstrating one way of producing the analysis required in relation to any self-selected quotation from the text.

Grammar of Satire – Writing Task

After our short study of the Grammar of Satire, it’s time to have a go at writing a satirical piece in your own right. Here are some suggestions as to how you might get going:

Novel Study: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

NCEA 3.1: Respond critically to specified aspect(s) of studied written text(s), supported by evidence

Grammar of Satire – Trident, by Frankie Boyle

I wrote a joke the other day, along the lines of: “Our greatest fear is that we die alone – which is why I intend to take quite a few people with me.”

Classification of Genre Features – Applied to Satire

We set up three categories for analysis of texts and then applied the observations we made about our own satirical pieces to this classification system

Grammar of Satire – A Postcard from Russia

The most exciting way of getting into Russia is to cross Germany in a sealed train and arrive at the Finland Station in St Petersburg to be greeted by a cheering revolutionary mob who promptly rename the city after you.