Paideia 111: Enduring Questions
Summer Community Read
Study Guide
This Study Guide is designed to help you prepare for your first class in
Paideia 111. For the ancient Greeks, paideia meant education, and that
meant more than “learning stuff.” A true education helped the learner
grow into a fully developed human being. The term reflects the idea that
education should both lead people to the knowledge needed for a
flourishing human life and it should cultivate good character. Paideia is
preparation for committed membership in a democracy.
By coming to Luther College, you have already dedicated yourself to a
kind of paideia, since the Luther curriculum is based on the ideals of a
liberal education, which similarly stress cultivating the whole person.
Liberal education is devoted to broad intellectual development rather
than narrow career training. In the liberal arts, students use multiple
approaches to a subject in order to reach a deeper understanding of
themselves and the world. Our version of paideia begins with Paideia 111 and 112 that lay the
groundwork for a liberal education by helping you develop skills of careful analysis and wellreasoned, articulate response. We hope this will help you develop the skills to read and understand
challenging texts, and express your views in a way that others will respect. Further, Paideia 111 and
112 invite you to seek wisdom in community by joining with others to explore enduring questions
and to share your ideas through discussion and writing.
“Paideia 111: Enduring Questions” is the required Fall Semester foundational course for all
incoming first-year students at Luther College. The faculty teaching the course have selected
important works that offer potential answers to the kinds of big questions humans have confronted
in many times and many places. The first questions we will explore this year are: “What makes us
human? What does it mean to be human? ” This seems deceptively simple, but consider the
questions a bit. Does being human mean belonging to a specific species with certain physical
characteristics? Might we be biologically a member of that species and not be “human”? To what
extent is being human the result of nature or nurture? Are we, unlike other beings, “made in the
image and likeness of God?” What about those who follow different social and religious practices
than we do? What would it take to undermine our humanity? You might note that this litany of subquestions reveals that our query can be answered biologically, cosmologically, and
sociologically/psychologically.
Your examination of the enduring question begins before you come to campus as you read the
Luther community summer reading text. This year we have selected a classic dystopian novel,
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Social theorist Erich Fromm, in his 1961 afterword to the
novel, claimed that it raised the central political question of the modern era, “[C]an human nature
be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for
love—that is to say, can man forget that he is human?” (Plume Centennial Edition, 329) This central
theme in the novel fits well with the Paideia goal of exploring enduring questions and we anticipate
great discussions of what Orwell has to say on the subject.
In 1903 George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair into the family of a British Imperial bureaucrat
who was serving in India. His father was responsible for ensuring the quality of the opium being
produced as part of the British imperial trade with China. However, most
of Orwell’s life was spent in England, where he attended a series of elite
boarding schools on scholarship. As a result of pressure from his family,
Orwell spent five years as a member of the Burmese Indian Imperial Police
before deciding to chuck it all to become a writer. This decision led to a
period of living in deprived circumstances where he became intimately
acquainted with what it meant to be poor in modern industrial society. He
also spent time in his youth fighting with the anti-fascist forces in the
Spanish Civil War. These experiences and his work as a cultural writer for
the BBC Eastern Service during WWII contributed to his political outlook.
He was fundamentally concerned with opposing social class prejudice and
preventing the rise of totalitarian government in both communist and
capitalist nations. By the time Nineteen Eighty-Four was published
Orwell was already an established writer of considerable popularity
and acclaim. This novel clinched that status.
George Orwell
The novel is set in what for Orwell was the near future, when the world had been divided into three
geopolitical zones that were in a perpetual state of war. It follows the trials of an ordinary citizen,
Winston Smith, who is employed by the Ministry of Truth. In the course of the novel we discover
that all mid-level citizens are under constant observation and the very history of the nation is
rewritten on a daily basis to serve the needs of those in power. In the end even the resistant heroes
of the novel—after repeated torture and brainwashing—submit to the ridiculous claims of the state
and betray each other in the process. It seemed to the Paideia 111 and 112 planners that we, too,
live in an era where our words can be monitored. We, too, live in a time of global conflicts and
military solutions. For these reasons and others, the planners thought that a new look at Nineteen
Eighty-Four might be enlightening. We hope that reading this novel will serve to begin the kind of
questioning that is essential to a liberal arts education: What does it mean to be human? What
rights do all human beings have? What is freedom? Can the powerless and oppressed really be free
or realize their full humanity? How does power affect those who hold it? What kind of a society
develops among people constantly preparing for or at war?
You will meet with your Paideia section during orientation to discuss these and other questions
raised by Nineteen Eighty-Four. Because orientation will be a very busy time, you need to complete
your reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four before you arrive on campus Saturday, August 30. The book
should provide a provocative summer reading experience and stimulate good conversations about
our humanity. The Paideia faculty looks forward to talking to you about your response to Orwell’s
story.
About this Guide
Below you will find questions that are based on the specific text of the novel. These questions are
intended to help you focus on what might be discussed regarding the book. You are NOT expected
to write out answers to all of these questions. They are intended to help you direct your reading
and guide your thinking about the work. To use these questions most fruitfully
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read them before you read the part of the book they cover and while you are reading keep
the questions in the back of your mind;
underline key phrases or ideas in the narrative;
jot a brief note to yourself either at the end of a chapter or in the margin of the text when
something strikes you as important;
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Finally, these are NOT the only things you might notice or discuss about this novel. It is a very richly
layered text. Keep track of whatever ideas come to you while you are reading by writing notes in a
separate notebook or at the end of each section of the novel.
Foreword by Thomas Pynchon and Afterword by Erich Fromm
It is a good idea as you try to maximize your study in college to get into the habit of reading the
supplementary materials in assigned books. In this case it will help you understand better what is
going on in Nineteen Eight-four if you read the forward by Thomas Pynchon and the Afterword by
Erich Fromm before you launch into the novel.
Thomas Pynchon is a well-known author of post-modernist fiction. His Foreword, written for the
2003 edition of the novel, provides a great deal of detail about Orwell’s life and offers insights about
the way in which the novel reveals Orwell’s commentary on his own society.
1. Create a list of the parallels Pynchon makes between Orwell’s life and the characters,
plot and devices in the novel. Refer to this list as you read the novel to help you see the
themes Orwell may be focusing our attention to.
2. Pynchon claims in his introduction that he is tired of a game that he calls “What didn’t
Orwell get right?” Why does he find this a problem? What do you think might be useful
in playing such a game?
Erich Fromm was born in Germany a few years before Orwell. As a person of Jewish descent when
the Nazi’s came to power, he fled first to Switzerland and then to New York City where he worked at
Columbia University. Fromm is recognized as one of the leading humanists and social psychologists
of the twentieth century. Fromm’s afterword was published in 1961, 12 years after the first
publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four. This essay focuses on what Orwell might be trying to say in
terms of the way human psychology can be altered by the social order in which people find
themselves.
3. List the human emotional states that Fromm thinks are being created or destroyed by a
post-World War II bureaucratic state. As you read think about the implication of this for
the novel? For what it might mean to be human in such a social state? Are Orwell’s
concerns (as Fromm describes them) about human nature justified?
Book 1
Chapters I-III
Senate House London
Model for Ministry of Truth
This section of the novel introduces us to the main
characters and the repressive society in which they
live. We learn that the political elite exercise
significant control over the lives of mid-level party
members, but have in many ways written off the
proletariat (the poverty stricken working class)
both politically and economically. It is a society of
extreme deprivation both physically and
psychologically. In these chapters, through Winston
Smith’s musings, we learn that the party has
constructed a number of methods for exerting
control over the population including constant
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monitoring through the telescreen, the creation of ironically named government Ministries,
frequent “required” public rituals and the employment of child spies. Within this repressive regime
Winston’s small acts of rebellion and the weight he ascribes to them tells us a great deal about how
thoroughly people’s humanity has been stifled by the state.
4. We know that the description of the “Ministry of Truth” is very like the building in
which Orwell’s wife worked for the British information ministry during World War II. It
still stands in London. Look for other examples of both the post World War II
sensitivities that Pynchon discussed and the effect of the state on human emotions that
Fromm outlines. Keep track of instances of each of these.
5. What does the impact of constant monitoring seem to have on people? What parallels
might there be in our time to the methods Orwell outlines here?
6. Look carefully at the ritualistic practices Orwell describes. What seems to be going on in
these moments of hate or physical activity? How do they undermine people’s humanity?
Chapters IV-VI
Here we learn about Winston’s work with the Ministry of Truth in which his basic job is to destroy
the evidence that history is being rewritten to serve the needs of the state. These chapters reveal to
us that the party is engaged in a number of acts of perversion. The Ministry of Truth produces lies.
The efforts to create physically pure human beings heightens sexual desire and undermines
psychological health. The creation of Newspeak claims to clarify language as it changes meaning
and obscures reality. In fact the entire system of doublespeak requires a new kind of doublethink
that defies common sense.
7. Much of the content of these chapters explores Orwell’s deeply held idea that how we
use language actually shapes who we are as human beings. To some extent Orwell
argued that words created reality and if there were no words for something then it
couldn’t really exist. In this chapter look for the ways in which language is being
manipulated to create a new reality.
8. Can you think of ways in our contemporary society in which language or methods of
communication have altered our understanding of either human nature or reality? Does
language control us or do we control it?
Chapters VII-VIII
Winston, having come to grips through his diary with his own rejection of the society in which he
finds himself, engages in further acts of resistance. He imagines that a revolution might start among
the proles. He reads an unedited children’s history book. He strolls into the poor sections of the city
trying to find accurate information about the past and to feel at one with potential rebels. Though
his efforts help him to free his own mind from the control of the state, he does not find any true
allies among the poor who are equally as deluded by the intellectual pap the state feeds them as his
middle-class colleagues are. Still Winston fears that even this mild resistance will bring the Thought
Police down on him.
9. In a way Winston seems to be looking to the past for answers regarding his response to
the social order: he writes down his own past, he reads a history book, he visits an
antique shop. Why is Winston obsessed with history? What is he looking for in this
exploration of what went before?
10. Why is seeking information about the past a dangerous endeavor that might end in a
session with the Thought Police?
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Book 2
Chapters I-III
In these chapters Winston and Julia hook up and begin their sexual affair.
Their interaction provides us with a deeper understanding of their
individual characters and of the way in which the state manipulates
fundamental aspects of our humanity to serve its own ends. Still, in many
ways these chapters are about the resilience of human beings in the face
of significant oppression. We see how the most basic of human
expressions can be a political act.
11. What does it take in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four to
connect on an intimate level with another human being? Why
would the state want to undermine all forms of human intimacy? How in this section
does sexual intercourse become a political act?
12. Compare the two characters of Winston and Julia. What outlook about life does each
have? What understanding of the state does each develop? How do they see and express
their human nature? Which approach seems more likely to have an impact on improving
either themselves or society?
13. One contemporary satirist, Gary Shteyngart in Super Sad True Love Story, has suggested
that rather than the sexual repression we see in Nineteen Eighty-Four the internet’s
overly sexualized licentiousness marks contemporary society. But he sees this to be
equally as manipulative of true human expression as the puritanical approach in
Airstrip One. What do you think? Is our society hyper-sexualized? If so, does this
undermine true human intimacy?
Chapters IV-VI
The weather heats up and so, too, does Winston and Julia’s affair. This section of the story reveals to
us the heightening of Winston’s alienation from the social order and the limits of Julia’s. A number
of incidents foreshadow what is to come, including the revelation that Winston has a deep-seated
fear of rats. Symes, the Newspeak editor, disappears. The O’Brien character finally makes contact
with Winston. Still, O’Brien remains a mysterious figure filling Winston with both hope that a
broader political movement might exist and dread that the invitation to join O’Brien at home is a
trap destined to end in torture and death at the hands of the Thought Police.
14. There is a lot of emphasis on the glass paperweight (which first appeared in Book 1
when Winston visited the antique shop). What does the paperweight seem to signify?
Why a paper weight?
15. We have three songs that are featured in this section of the novel: the prole woman’s
pop tune, the children’s singing of the state sponsored “Hate Song” for “Hate Week” and
the repeat of the “Song of St. Clements.” There are a number of versions of this last folk
song that Orwell could have been using to make his point. The one below is the most
commonly cited. Each verse names a specific church until the last refers to the public
executions common in early modern Britain (though some sources suggest the last lines
refer to the experiences of some of Henry VIII’s wives). What do these several songs
reveal to us about Winston’s world?
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Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's.
When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.
Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head
You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's.
I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow.
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.
Chapters VII-VIII
We begin to see the naiveté of Winston and Julia in these chapters. During one of their trysts in the
apartment over the antique shop they vow that no matter what the state does to them they will continue to
love each other. They go along to O’Brien’s apartment and confess they are rebels against the state and go
through an “initiation” into the Brotherhood. Winston in all of this is torn between an optimism that things
might change and his normal fatalism that the state is too powerful to be overcome.
16. Read Winston’s memory of his mother and sister carefully. What does this memory reveal to us
about the state? About Winston’s sense of what it means to be human?
17. Look for signs in these chapters that Winston and Julia are being set-up. Where are the signals
that O’Brien is not to be trusted? That their vows to each other are in vain?
18. Why does O’Brien do all of the things he does in this chapter? What do you think is the point?
Chapters IX-X
In these two chapters Winston becomes more fully conscious of the workings of the state. First, when the
nation switches enemies he is forced to work overtime rewriting the public history of the nation. The
absurdity of this is brought out most clearly during a hate week speech in which the haranguer has to
switch the names of the enemy as he is speaking. Then Winston’s work is placed within the context of
Goldstein’s The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, given to him by O’Brien. As he and Julia lie
in bed together above the antique shop they contemplate the possibility that they (and other members of
the middle classes) are fully consumed by the state—they say “we are dead.” Still, they believe that the
proletariat have the potential to be fully alive and overthrow the state. This realization is almost
immediately disrupted by the discovery that a telescreen is hidden behind the picture of St. Clement’s
Church and that the shop owner is a member of the Thought Police. The chapter ends as troops pour into
the room to seize them.
19. What does Goldstein’s The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism tell us about the way
in which the state preserves its power?
20. As they lay in bed Julia and Winston both see the prole women in the courtyard as a source of
hope for the future revolution. To what extent does the woman represent the possibility of
freedom? Is she really as fully human as they perceive her to be? Or is their faith in the
proletariat misplaced?
21. Why have them arrested just after they have become fully aware?
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Book 3
Chapters I-III
Winston awakens in the “place where there is no darkness” where he encounters characters who reinforce
the truly arbitrary nature of the party’s exercise of power. In addition to Winston’s neighbor (whose
children had turned him in), there is a prole woman who speculates that she might be Winston’s mother.
There is a state poet who inadvertently left the word God in a Newspeak translation of a Kipling poem.
Through these characters we learn the nature of this place, particularly the existence of Room 101 where
unfathomable horrors are said to occur. None-the-less Winston clings to the hope that the Brotherhood will
save him by providing him with the means to commit suicide. This hope ends when O’Brien reveals he is an
operative working for the Ministry of Love. O’Brien then begins to torture Winston with the aim of “curing”
him.
22. In the course of his torture Winston begins to love O’Brien. Here Orwell is exploring a
psychological mechanism known as capture-bonding (also called the Stockholm Syndrome after
a 1973 hostage incident). How does this capture bonding seem to work? What does it tell us
about the fragility of the human psyche? In what ways does pain affect the human mind and
give emotional power to the torturer?
23. In the course of the torture O’Brien asserts that Winston knew the moment that he put pen to
paper that it would end in capture and pain. Is this a fair accusation? If so why did Winston do
it?
Chapters IV-VI
In these final chapters of the novel, we find Winston beginning to recover from his physical torment.
Though he appears on the outside to have submitted to O’Brien (and the Party’s will) he continues to hate
Big Brother and resist the state. He attempts to hide his internal resistance from O’Brien, but in the end
shouts out his real feelings. This leads to the final torture in Room 101 where his greatest fear is used to
push him over the edge into denouncing Julia and offering her as a victim in exchange for himself. Winston
has been broken and in the last chapter we see him fully submitting to the nonsense of doublespeak and
the power of the state.
24. What do we learn from this novel about the
dangers totalitarianism might pose to the human
psyche? How might it undermine our basic human
natures? What would it take to be able to resist
abuse of power by those in power?
25. Some scholars speculate that Winston doesn’t
really want to overthrow the state. Instead they
posit that Orwell is presenting us with a character
who, knowing he cannot be fully human in this
state, wants the state to kill him. What do you
think? Does Winston have a death wish?
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Appendix: The Principles of Newspeak
This is a fictional scholarly article on the nature and function of Newspeak. In it Orwell develops his idea
(mentioned earlier) that language can be perverted in a way that distorts reality. As a result it can become a
tool of oppression and undermine our human nature.
26. As you read this fictional essay note how Newspeak works. Are there ways in which it
resembles current changes in English language usage? For example, is the term “Friendly Fire”
used by the military to describe someone killed by their own people a form of Newspeak? Does
Twitterspeak function like Newspeak even though it is not government imposed? Or should we
LOL at this satiric jab at scholars?
27. By the way, it is interesting that this essay was written in the past tense, as though Newspeak
were a dead language being studied by a future generation in an era after the fall of Big Brother.
Does it create a more hopeful ending for the novel?
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