The Death of Truth
These articles all take a different angle on Nineteen Eighty-Four, but what they have in common is their acknowledgement of George Orwell’s prescience. It could be said that his only mistake is that he got the date wrong…
Weekly Plan – Term Two, Week Two
This week we continue our analysis of Nineteen Eighty-Four. We will expand our exploration of Marxist Literary Theory and you’ll be asked to work with another student to develop a presentation looking into an aspect of the context of the novel.
Apple: You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984”
This advertisement, aired during the Super Bowl in 1984 shows Apple’s advertising agency tapping into the Cold War anxieties about totalitarianism to present it’s new computer products. How does this ad appear to us now Apple has become one of the world’s largest multinational companies?
Weekly Plan – Term Two, Week One
This week we begin our analysis of Nineteen Eighty-Four in Earnest. We explore the historical contexts of the novel, you will be introduced to Marxist Literary Theory and we will examine opportunities for further reading.
Literary Theories: Marxism
An introduction to Marxist criticism including a starting sample of ‘what Marxist literary critics do’
Nineteen Eighty-Four: An Historical Context
Fragments of historical information to put into context the social/historical norms at the time George Orwell wrote “Nineteen Eighty-Four”
Nineteen Eighty-Four Further Reading
Further reading to enhance your appreciation of the dystopian Genre. Use the links to download a copy onto your phone and computer so you can read these (or at least one of them) at your leisure.
Holiday Learning
Your focus over the holiday break should be on completing your reading of our core text, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Friday 27 March – Analysis in the Hangout
Today we’ll meet together in the class hangout for the last period of this term. The main focus will be examining your written analysis – and planning for our Easter reading.
Thursday 26 March: Read, Write, Reflect
After yesterday’s excellent conference, we’re all in a good place to move forward. Here’s today’s plan.
Thoughtcrime Podcast
Listen to this course's companion podcast to help make sense of everything you find published here
Course Content
Choosing Thoughtcrime as your English programme for Level 3 means that, you probably find the darker, more dystopian aspects of world literature attractive; you’re somehow inexorably drawn to the unusual and deep down you sense that something is rotten in the state of… This programme will take a media-savvy journalistic approach. You’ll need to think fast, question everything and be willing to speak up. You will be asked to challenge yourself, take risks and show ambition.
We’ll be reading the work of some of the 20th Century’s greatest satirists, poets and activists. We’ll explore modern text communication, political and online language and compare this with our own speech to learn how the wool can be so easily pulled over our eyes. We’ll look at the grammar and style of a range of journalistic writing and publish our own. We’ll explore how our very language itself can control our thoughts and – if we’re not careful – limit our freedom. We’ll read one of the 20th Centuries most disturbing political novels, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four and explore modern anti-heroes such as Donnie Darko and A Clockwork Orange’s Alex De Large. Throughout, you will be practising the key skills required to succeed in your NCEA programme.
In parallel to this everyone will be completing for homework their own longitudinal genre inquiry by investigating links between self-selected books, films and art and presenting these in documentary form.
Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
GEORGE ORWELL