Chapter 8 Poem: "Leda and the Swan"

The poem “Leda and the Swan” by William Butler Yeats is about the ancient Greek myth of Leda, who was seduced by the god Zeus while he was in the form of a swan. Their coupling resulted in the births of Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor, and Pollux. The poem alludes to the fates of the children: “A shudder in the loins engenders there / The broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead” (9-11). Helen is most well known for being the predominant cause of the Trojan War between the city of Troy and the Greek nations. After ten years of fighting, the Greeks tricked the Trojans by building a hollow horse, which they hid inside, and leaving it as an offering to the gods. The Trojans took the horse as a spoil of war and had to break their own city’s great walls to bring the horse inside. At night, the Greeks emerged from the horse and burnt the city to the ground. Once the war ended, the Greek leader Agamemnon returned to his home in Mycenae and was killed by his wife Clytemnestra because he had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war. The allusion to the destructive and murderous fates of Helen and Clytemnestra highlight the violence of Leda and Zeus’s relationship. Modern descriptions of most Greek myths about gods and mortals having children together depict the god seducing the mortal women, but according to the original myths, their relationships were often violent and resulted in rape. This sort of violence is referenced several times in the poem by the use of words such as “helpless,” “terrified,” and “brute” (lines 4, 5, and 13). Alluding to the future destruction and pain caused by her daughters emphasizes Leda’s own destruction and pain at that time because of Zeus’s actions. 

1984 Essay Outline

1984 Outline

Thesis: Winston and Julia’s reunion at the end of the novel shows the effects of the Party on society and inherent truths about humanity. 

• Elimination of passion — Winston is horrified by the idea of sex with Julia, to whom he used to be strongly attracted. He used to think about lustful thoughts about her, but the Party has completely driven that desire out of him so that he would be dedicated to only the Party. 
• Metaphorical death — Winston describes Julia’s waist as similar to a corpse, which is fitting because Julia used to be full of life and her hips were a physical representation of her vitality and passion for life. However, her hips are now like a corpse’s, showing that the Party has killed her and her desires. 
• Loyalty only to the Party — One of the Party’s main goals is to destroy any positive feelings between two individuals and replace it with a loyalty to the Party. People no longer feel anything positive for family, spouses, or coworkers. The only person an individual can now like is Big Brother. There a sense of disdain between any two people. 
• Selfishness — Humans are inherently selfish and will betray one another if it benefits them. Both Winston and Julia betrayed each other to spare themselves, even though they repeatedly promised each other that they would not betray the other. 
• Safety — At one point, Winston considered being with Julia as a safe place. The Party’s actions have made being near her unbearable, but he still craves a safe place because humans want the comfort such a place brings. Since he can no longer find that comfort with Julia, he has to find it in the Cafe. 
• Individuality — The Party detests individuality because it prevents them from completely controlling everyone. Winston and Julia both tried to be individuals, but the Party has made them conform. They now lack originality, which disables them from thinking or going against the Party. 

There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did not matter, nothing mattered. They could have lain down on the ground and done that if they had wanted to. His flesh froze with horror at the thought of it. She made no response whatever to the clasp of his arm; she did not even try to disengage herself. He knew now what had changed in her. Her face was sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple; but that was not the change. It was that her waist had grown thicker, and, in a surprising way, had stiffened. He remembered how once, after the explosion of a rocket bomb, he had helped to drag a corpse out of some ruins, and had been astonished not only by the incredible weight of the thing, but by its rigidity and awkwardness to handle, which made it seem more like stone than flesh. Her body felt like that. It occurred to him that the texture of her skin would be quite different from what it had once been.
He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. As they walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him for the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of contempt and dislike. He wondered whether it was a dislike that came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also by his bloated face and the water that the wind kept squeezing from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by side but not too close together. He saw that she was about to speak. She moved her clumsy shoe a few centimetres and deliberately crushed a twig. Her feet seemed to have grown broader, he noticed.
'I betrayed you,' she said baldly.
'I betrayed you,' he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something -- something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.'
'All you care about is yourself,' he echoed.
'And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other person any longer.'
'No,' he said, 'you don't feel the same.'
There did not seem to be anything more to say. The wind plastered their thin overalls against their bodies. Almost at once it became embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides, it was too cold to keep still. She said something about catching her Tube and stood up to go.
'We must meet again,' he said.
'Yes,' she said, 'we must meet again.'
He followed irresolutely for a little distance, half a pace behind her. They did not speak again. She did not actually try to shake him off, but walked at just such a speed as to prevent his keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind that he would accompany her as far as the Tube station, but suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed pointless and unbearable. He was overwhelmed by a desire not so much to get away from Julia as to get back to the Chestnut Tree Cafe, which had never seemed so attractive as at this moment. He had a nostalgic vision of his corner table, with the newspaper and the chessboard and the everflowing gin. Above all, it would be warm in there. The next moment, not altogether by accident, he allowed himself to become separated from her by a small knot of people. He made a half-hearted attempt to catch up, then slowed down, turned, and made off in the opposite direction. When he had gone fifty metres he looked back. The street was not crowded, but already he could not distinguish her. Any one of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers. Perhaps her thickened, stiffened body was no longer recognizable from behind. 

1984 Book Two Quotes

1. “Party members were not supposed to swear, and Winston himself very seldom did swear, aloud, at any rate. Julia, however, seemed unable to mention the Party, and especially the Inner Party, without using the kinds of words that you saw chalked up in dripping alleyways. He did not dislike it. It was merely one symptom of her revolt against the Party and all its ways, and somehow it seemed natural and healthy, like the sneeze of a horse that smells bad hay” (122).

2. “But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act” (126).

3. “He wondered vaguely how many others like her thee might be in the younger generation — people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else, accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog” (131). 

4. “There were times when the fact of impeding death seemed as palpable as the bed they lay on, and they would cling together with a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five minutes of striking. But there were also times when they had the illusion not only of safety but of permanence. So long as they were actually in this room, they both felt, no harm could come to them. Getting there was difficult and dangerous, but the room itself was sanctuary” (151).

5. “Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, ‘just to keep people frightened.’ This was an idea that had literally never occurred to him” (153).

6. “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right” (155).

7. “He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last step was something that would happen in the Ministry of Love. He had accepted it. The end was contained in the beginning. But it was frightening; or, more exactly, it was like a foretaste of death, like being a little less alive” (159).

8. “For the first time in his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely as an inert force which would one day spring to life and regenerate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had not become hardened inside. They had held on to the primitive emotions which he himself had to relearn by conscious effort” (165). 

9. “When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal disease, amputated limbs, and altered faces, it was with a faint air of persiflage. ‘This is unavoidable,’ his voice seemed to say; ‘this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly. But this is not what we shall be doing when life is worth living again’” (175).

10. “There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone” (176).