State of the Union Newspeak Translation

original text: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29431

Comrades:

I touch with goodest plushappy the think that presents self doubleplusgood comrades on now good bellyfell. The late addition of North Carolina to Oceania (prescribed data collected), ascent mention and reputability of Oceania, the general and addition good testament to ministries of Oceania, and consort, war, and lot with which all sanctify is setting in high standard to Oceania.

Startagain reference to Oceania you no take plushappy from picture that counts other meeting doubleplusnogood to factor as big and hard of work done. Later to know prospects and save good words Big Brother has given is good for session of Ingsoc.

With plusgood objects which attract eyes giving defense will be watched. Ready for war plusgood ways of control.

Comrades yes be equipped, but controlled; constant and plusgood plan vital; and security and concern is all should help factories incline to lower them liberated of others for vital, secure, things.

Right build of army nogood thought of. In provisions made about it is good stop relax support of officer and soldiers know money.

Way to like actions used with thought to the Brotherhood pleased people of south and west Oceania from attacks, but comrades see strategy secure in paper I show you (getting word of bellyfeel of Virginia) comrades must ready buy safety to parts of Oceania, and attack the Brotherhood.

Thoughts of Oceania is action with Eurasia helped by foods give me finish work way conditions think purify plusgood comrades, and return make to comrades be work, giving surroundings of things, clear Ingsoc, and able money given paying things in matters.

Many thoughts purify useful words Eurasia known to comrades fast learned by Big Brother.

Equality in money, masses, and things no approval; but I no hold back fear comrades help show new and useful things abroad works skill and smart make at dwelling, and helping contact Eurasia.

Freedom is Slavery

Memory Storage #53

Date: November 16, 2156

Name: Jason Silver

Breathing is stable, no upsetting hiccups to disrupt sleep. Muscles are relaxing at a good pace.

Eyes open.

Blink. Blink.

Dialogue Storage #183, Inner Monologue Unit #1:

            I recall the day I was taken out of the burden of mentation. I was three years of age, still a babe in my mother’s arms, and it was my natal day. It was also the day I would be released from my prison. I do not recall much of the procedure except that it was successful and I would be home within a fortnight. This event happened not but ten years ago and I do enjoy the recollection of the memory. In fact, it is the first memory I have stored.

System Check Complete: no damage to be reported. Free to start the day.

            My savior, I thank you. I must always thank my savior. He is the one who pulled me out of the darkness and made me free. My savior is my metallic spine that was given to me on my natal day ten years past. Once it was installed, I no longer had to control my body. Every movement is made and recorded in the spine, and every year I am given a new version. (The technology is still being developed, but it is worth it to be in the test subject generation.)

            Freedom is Slavery. Before the spines were created, the world was at war with themselves. No one had the capacity to make choices to better the human race. Then one glorious day, before I was born, Dr. Harrison Shredder created this wonderful technological advancement. He first tested it on himself and it was, in his own words, “Liberating to not have to control my own body anymore.” Once he gained enough funds, he began to liberate the people. At first he was only liberating adults because he didn’t know what would happen to children. That’s where the test subject generation comes in. You see at first, once someone had become twenty-five that was when they received the procedure but the people began to resist. So, Dr. Shredder began his research on children. Unfortunately, many of them died before being freed from their human bond. Luckily, my generation did not die during the procedure. I’m not entirely sure why we survived, but I do know that we are continuing Shredders great work.

            Now the details of the procedure are not entirely clear to me. All I know is that we had to wait until we were four years of age and then we were given the procedure. My mother said it has something to do with the maturity of our brains, but she is usually wrong about most things. She is still stuck in the old ways of thinking for herself, therefore she does not understand the complexities of Dr. Shredder’s research. She could not afford the procedure for herself, but she wanted me to further enhance my life by letting me have it. I cannot feel emotion, but I would suppose that I love her for that.

Admiring the World

I watched the rain. Watching the rain on the roof is like observing paint drip off a canvas. The smell of wet grass swelled across the suburb. There the city is – bright, diffused, modern, vintage, still, opaque, or lively, and always beckoning with an air of mystery ‘See what you can find.’ Tonight’s was different, as the rain blurred the boundaries of the city, distorting it to a new state of beauty. The rhythmic patter filled the air in a swell of musicality that deafened all other sounds with its majesty. The edge of the enormous metropolis, so faded as to be almost transparent, speckled with shades of black, ran curved, like a track field, far, far away along amber roads whose light was dimmed by an unknown light board operator. The rain was sharp, the land seemed to sparkle and harden with ice. As the cold water poured down on my face, the more it felt like little pin needles than refreshing droplets. But the crisp cool air softened the droplets into comforting feathers lightly dusting all that it touched. Here and there silverish-goldish stars brightened up the edge of city, with a pointed tower over them perhaps. Buildings only some decades old, and yet older than the history of most of the people living there. Every other day the city looked the same, as though it were in a picture; but now it has transformed into a sparkling wonderland of fast paced stars lighting up the night.

Colonization is all a Game

              Earlier this past week, we played a game about colonialism. For the game, we needed a deck of playing cards and our groups. The first step in the game was to pick how we are going to win the native people’s trust either guns a blazing, or peacefully. After we made that decision, the game began. Each group had to take twelve more turns, symbolizing the twelve months in a year, in order to gain a surplus of supplies. Whenever a group took a turn, we would have to randomly choose what type of weather we would have, whether or not the natives would retaliate, and whether or not we would press them for supplies. And everything that we chose impacted the next part of the turn. The goal of the game was to be the group with most surplus supplies after a year.
               For my group, we decided to start off the peaceful way. We didn’t start to press the natives for supplies until the third month. Then we started to press then every other month. In the end, after some bad weather and some difficult choices during that bad weather, we ended up with a surplus of three which was two more than what we started with.
              The reason why we chose to start off peacefully was that we wanted to create a lasting bond with the native people so that we could collect more supplies in the future. Even though we started off peacefully, we still established our dominance, but in a passive way. (We didn’t want the people to retaliate.) Even though this wasn’t a real expedition to colonize a foreign land, we tried to make it more realistic by keeping that mindset. And it all worked out in the end.
              After playing this game, I realized that trying to colonize a foreign place is a game of chance. The reason why I say this is because the “mother country” only knows what is going on in their part of the world. They don’t know what kind of weather happens on another hemisphere, nor do they know how the natives will respond to them. It’s all just a matter of “what ifs.” For example, what if there’s not enough room for farming, what if there’s a drought and everyone dies, what if the native people retaliate, etc.
              I think that if I were to change anything within the game would be to add in a portion where each group would have to keep a specific amount of native people alive in order to thrive as a colony. I think that would make the game a bit more realistic because in order to have a successful colony you need to have people. I’m not sure how to add that part into the game, but somehow it can be done.
             This game, to me, seemed like a correct representation of how colonization happened. You’re playing with forces that you can’t control nor do you fully understand them. It’s all a game of chance.

What? We're all going to die?!

           Practically every main character in a well written work of literature has some sort of epiphany, or anagnorisis that changes their choices or outlook on the world. Some are more noticeable than others, but it doesn’t matter if it can be seen or not the moment just has to have some kind of an impact. For Macbeth, there is a major impact.
           In Act 5, scene 5, Macbeth is preparing to charge into battle against Malcolm’s forces when he is given the news that his wife has died. It can be inferred that she killed herself. This is not expected in Macbeth’s world. He states, “She should have hereafter” (5.5.20). In his mind, his wife is this strong woman or in other words she is like him and doesn’t let guilt consume every moment, eventually leading to madness. In an earlier scene, when the doctor tells Macbeth that Lady Macbeth is, “Not so sick my lord,/ As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies/ That keep her from her rest” (5.3.46-47). Macbeth does not accept that his wife is having nightmares, “thick coming fancies.” He simply tells the doctor, “Cure her of that” (5.3.49). His conscience and his humanity are turned off. He cannot understand that his wife feels guilt. After all it was her idea to commit high treason, but her only role was to make the guards drunk. She wasn’t supposed to see Duncan’s bleeding body. “Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?” (5.1.41-42). That image haunts her until her death.
              So, in reaction to the news of his wife’s death, Macbeth pauses from ordering his army into battle and ponders what has happened. He realizes that he cannot escape death: “And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/ The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!” (5.5.25-26).

Here, he is calling for life to end because he sees the future as tediously crawling towards death and he wants to meet it head on. He has cheated Fate so much, but he sees that it all leads to the same place: death. This is his anagnorisis. He sees that, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more” (5.5.28-30). He is now “the poor player” and he senses that “his hour upon the stage” is coming to an end. He describes life as being “a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing” (5.5.29-31). All of his ambition, the deaths that he has intentionally (Duncan, Banquo, Lady Macduff, etc.) and unintentionally (Lady Macbeth) caused have been for naught.
              Hearing that Birnam Wood appears to be moving towards the castle and that the witches’ prophecy is becoming a reality, Macbeth now prepares to meet his Fate. He says, “I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun/ And wish th’ estate o’ th’ world were now undone” (5.5.55-57). The news of Lady Macbeth’s death has brought his own mortality into perspective. He is not just tired, he is “aweary,” exhausted, yet impatient, and dissatisfied with life as he knows it.

Bloody City

            In Macbeth, murder and death are a common motifs. Macbeth is a war hero and doesn’t exactly know how to control himself once he has started on a killing spree. This is Macbeth’s hamartia, or fatal flaw. The reasoning behind this is because he kills Duncan’s servants after the lords find Duncan’s dead body. That was not part of his original plan. At this point, he is improvising because he feels that he has to kill more people in order to protect his lie. He doesn’t know when to stop killing people, so he just keeps doing it. He’s a soldier; all he knows is to kill the people in his way, but he doesn’t know when to stop.
            Now, hamartia doesn’t just apply to Macbeth. No, hamartia applies to any tragic hero/villain. An example that comes to mind is Sweeney Todd from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In the play, Sweeney is seeking revenge on Judge Turpin who falsely put Todd in jail because Turpin wanted his wife. So, Todd changes his name from Benjamin Barker to Sweeney Todd and returns to London to carry out his fifteen year old grudge. Along the way, Todd runs into Mrs. Lovett who runs a meat pie shop underneath where Todd used to work. She figures out that Todd is really Barker and pledges to help Todd in his quest for revenge. So, in order to attract Turpin, Todd must acquire the title of being the best barber in London, but there is someone in his way of that title: Adolfo Pirelli. Todd’s plan is to humiliate Pirelli in front of the entire town square, which is successful, but it is discovered later that Pirelli is really Todd’s former assistant. When Pirelli threatens to blackmail Todd, he murders Pirelli by slitting his throat with his straight razor. This is the first person that is seen killed. After this murder, a long string of murders occur to innocent people who just want a clean shave. Todd’s hamartia is his lust for vengeance. He isn’t taking it out on the person that he wants to take out, but on the random people that come into his parlor.
            Todd, like Macbeth, doesn’t know when or how to stop murdering innocent people that get in his way. That is his flaw. He is so consumed by vengeance that he doesn’t realize that no matter how many people he kills, he cannot bring back his wife or free his daughter from captivity. Similarly, Macbeth kills Duncan to gain the thrown. Then, from the murder of the servants, to his best friend Banquo and finally with the slaughter of MacDuff’s entire family, he has become completely insane trying to control the narrative.



           These two characters become blinded by either power or revenge and don’t know another way of dealing with it than killing a finite amount of people. But by killing all these people, they lose more and more of their humanity and their attachments to the physical world. Their flaw consumes them and leaves a hollow shell of the honorable men that they once were.

They Let Us Read This Stuff in School?

            Sexual imagery is everywhere in literature. They can be very subtle, like a bowl with a key inside of it or they can be not so subtle, like a curtain blowing in the wind. But I was surprised that Shakespeare was not mentioned with the examples in the chapter; his plays are filled with sexual references. An example of one is in The Taming of the Shrew when Kate and Petruchio meet for the first time. They have a very quick witted exchange that has subtle hints of flirting woven in. In the exchange, Kate calls Petruchio “a join’d-stool,” which has three legs implying that the third leg is Peturchio’s penis. Since Petruchio is a well-educated man, he immediately understands the meaning and asks Kate to sit on his lap because he is a stool. So, just in this part of the exchange, there is one implication about having sex.

            Another example is in Flowers for Algernon when Charlie thinks back on his childhood and his mother. He remembers his mother threatening him that if he did anything to his sister or any other woman she would “cut off his peanuts.” She is seeking to prevent a taboo (incest) by promising to emasculate her own son who has the mental abilities of a toddler. His sexual instincts are just that, instincts. But when he gains intelligence, and wants to pursue a relationship with Alice, his former teacher, he is emotionally crippled by the memories of his mother which is prompted by seeing a knife on a table.
            Often considered one of the greatest romantic novels in American literature, The Great Gatsby contains no real love scenes. There are implied love scenes, but there aren’t any written in the novel. Tom has a “woman in the city” which is code for a mistress, but rather than cover it up he flaunts it like a trophy. Nevertheless, Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, is very earthy in comparison to Daisy. Fitzgerald never specifically describes Tom and Myrtle’s sexual relationship, but, in the scene where Nick accompanies Tom to the city with Myrtle to their apartment, Tom buys Myrtle a puppy. Since Tom and Myrtle can’t have children together, the puppy serves as a substitute baby. Later, when Wilson, Myrtle’s husband, discovers the dog leash and collar he now has proof of Myrtle’s sexual infidelity.
           The “great romance” of the novel is between Daisy and Gatsby. Their affair is only implied by Gatsby when he dismisses the servants and stops his famous party to spend time with his lost love. There is no big consummation scene as all of the movie adaptations feel obligated to add in. But Gatsby’s illusion of Daisy is ultimately shattered when he is introduced to Daisy’s daughter. He pictured Daisy as an untarnished flower that had waited for him to come back, but her child is tangible evidence that she had sex with her husband. Ultimately Gatsby is killed by Myrtle’s husband Wilson who is convinced that it was Gatsby who had killed her in order to cover up their affair, and he is convinced by Tom who was actually having the affair with Myrtle. But Myrtle was really killed by Daisy, who was having the affair with Gatsby and unknowingly killed her husband’s mistress. So really, The Great Gatsby isn’t about the American Dream, it’s all about sex.