Advanced Placement (AP)

DISSENT, ASSENT, AND THE BODY IN 19841. On page 7, Jacobs says, "his dimly-felt rebellious impulse could be brought to consciousness only through an independent act of the body." Do you agree? Can you find examples in the text that prove or disprove this statement?2. On page 12, Jacobs writes about how torture is used by various regimes to show-off their power to do so. She continues by saying that in 1984, the Party only tortures in private: "Privately, the regime exhibits the effects of torture only to the subject of that torture." If this is true, then how does the destruction of Winston's body, only privately, reveal the Party's true intent? Further, can we argue that the Party's torture is actually private? Winston knew about it beforehand, but wasn't supposed to know about it. Do others know? Are we tainted because we're only reading from his perspective?3. On page 14, Jacobs concludes that, through the novel, "we are told that resistance is doomed. In this is the great failing of Orwell's great novel. For we know-as, of course, did Orwell himself-that minds do not always break under torture, that some people suffer appalling pain and fear and yet refuse to betray their loved ones and their comrades in arms." Discuss this... Did the Party torture, or represent torture, of a different kind than we have seen in reality? Is this exclusion of history a failing of the novel, or was Orwell making a different point successfully? Since Orwell writes Winston's ending as he does, what is he ultimately saying about humanity's ability to resist the subtler, more nuanced, forces of oppression?