Section B: Mark Scheme & Model Answer (CIE IGCSE English Literature)

AO1

• Demonstrate your knowledge by incorporating well-selected reference to the text skillfully and with flair in your answers
• This means using quotations and indirect references to the text to support your views or arguments

AO2

• Sustain a critical understanding of the text by showing individuality and insight
• This means showing that you understand the main ideas, settings, events and characters, and that you appreciate the deeper meanings of the text

AO3

• Respond sensitively and in considerable detail to the way the writer achieves her/his effects
• This means that you are able to explore how writers use language, structure and form to convey impressions and ideas

AO4

• Sustain a personal and evaluative engagement with the task and text
• This means that you are able to give a personal response to the question and text, and support your response with references to the text

Orwell makes this moment in the novel so memorable and significant because it draws upon several key themes, such as the relationship between Winston and Julia, the significance of dreams, and the passage of time. It also foreshadows Winston’s eventual torture at the hands of O’Brien in Room 101 in The Ministry of Love.

The passage is memorable because Winston and Julia experience a temporary moment of happiness and peace. Winston does not “stir” because he does not want to disturb the moment. The writer describes a “yellow ray” from the “sinking sun” creating a dream-like quality to the moment, which is juxtaposed with the water in the pan “boiling fast”, reflecting the swift passage of time. This reminds the reader that Winston and Julia’s peace cannot last, as Winston knows that his betrayals of Big Brother will be discovered in the end.

Furthermore, the differences in Winston and Julia’s characters are highlighted in that Winston is reflecting on the moment and wondering about how things might have been in a time before Oceania, with people doing normal things and going about their normal lives, “simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside”. Julia, however, stays asleep, unconcerned that some of the make-up she had applied in a parody of normality had rubbed off. This is memorable because it reminds the reader that Winston is the epitome of “thoughtcrime”, whereas Julia appears just to live in the moment and not concern herself with the consequences.

The passage is also memorable because it starts by describing the scene almost like a dream, with the sounds from outside floating in “the cool of a summer evening”. This contrasts with Winston’s description of his recurring nightmare, in which he is standing “in front of a wall of darkness” knowing that on the other side there was “something unendurable”. What is behind the wall is both symbolic and real, as behind the metaphoric wall is Winston’s fate, and behind the real wall in the room is the hidden telescreen. 

Winston goes on to reveal that he knows what is behind the wall, but that he practises “self-deception”, pretending that he doesn’t. This mirrors the self-deception he is currently practising in pretending that his affair and rebellion against Big Brother will not be discovered and punished, even though he knows, deep down, that it will. Later on in Part 2, just before he and Julia are arrested, Winston declares that “We are the dead”, revealing that he knows that his time is running out.

The passage is significant because Julia sees a rat “stick his beastly nose out of the wainscoting”. This reveals to the reader that Winston is terrified of rats more than anything else, as he states “Of all the horrors in the world – a rat!” This foreshadows Winston’s breaking point later in the novel, as O’Brien uses a cage of rats to break Winston’s spirit in Room 101, a place where prisoners are sent to confront their deepest fear. The presence of the rat is a further indication that their safe refuge might not be so safe after all. Julia, always practical, offers to “fix” the problem by “stuffing the hole with a bit of sacking before we go”, but Winston knows there is ultimately no fixing the situation.

In addition, Julia’s reaction to the rat, flinging a shoe at it, is compared to her flinging the dictionary at “Goldstein, that morning during the Two Minutes Hate”. She goes on to start to describe how prole women “daren’t leave a baby alone for two minutes”, implying the significance of that amount of time in which horrible things can happen. Orwell links the rat to something that can inflict pain and terror, just like Big Brother. The fact that Winston’s deepest fear is rats is also significant, as rats are associated with people who betray other people, which is exactly what happens to Winston and Julia, as they are betrayed by Mr Charrington, the owner of the shop.

Overall, this passage offers a significant revelation to the reader, and a taste of Winston’s eventual fate, as well as being memorable for it being reflective of the themes of time and dreams versus reality.