HSC English. The smart way to prepare for your HSC.

This one-day HSC English preparation course focuses on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) for the Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences.

The review of the novel begins with context: Orwell’s response to the Cold War period led to a dark, dystopian, science fiction satire that is both a puzzle about the history of Communist Russia and a warning against totalitarianism. Analysis and discussion of selected passages focuses the representation of totalitarianism and raises questions about the relevance of propaganda, socialism and capitalism to the present.

Analysis of Winston’s story and its range from realism to fable and dream focuses conformity, dissent, and surveillance and technology. Detailed analysis of selected passages focuses exploration of doublethink, Room 101, O’Brien’s vision of a future of propaganda and torture, whether the proles offer any hope, and pessimism versus optimism.

Comparison to other texts further encourages personal responses about individual and collective human experience. For example, the White Rabbit exhibition Republic of Jing Bang – influenced by Nineteen Eighty-Four - raises the issue of the construction of identity in relation to the present world of television, news and social media.