One of the common tasks in academia (and in life in general) is to uncover information and organize it into a coherent and well-reasoned argument. Throughout the semester we have looked at a number of issues that relate to the themes that Orwell examines in Nineteen Eighty-Four. These discussions should provide a sufficient foundation on which to base additional research and continue the discussion.

Task: Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four as a warning of what could happen to society if it continued down a certain path. Bearing in mind that the specifics of the outcomes that he envisioned are unlikely to come pass, pick one of the themes in the novel and look at what other people have said about this theme, either in general terms and/or specifically in the context of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Discuss what you think is important with the theme and if Nineteen Eighty-Four is still relevant in contemporary society while incorporating the other material that you identified. You must use a minimum of five sources (in MLA format), three of which have not been used in this course.

NOTE: SINCE LITERARY TEXTS ARE FICTIONAL AND DO NOT NECESSARILY PORTRAY REALITY ACCURATELY, LITERARY WORKS ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE SOURCE MATERIAL.

NOTE: SINCE DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS OF WORDS ARE COMMON KNOWLEDGE AND COMPILED QUOTATIONS (I.E., THOSE FOUND ON WEBSITES OR IN BOOKS) ARE NOT SUBSTANTIVE AND GENERALLY LACK CONTEXT, THESE ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE SOURCE MATERIAL.

Length: 1250 1500 of your own words (5 6 pages)

NOTE: THIS MEANS THAT QUOTATIONS ARE NOT COUNTED AS PART OF YOUR WORD COUNT. ALTHOUGH YOU MAY USE QUOTATIONS, THEY SHOULD BE USED SPARINGLY RATHER THAN AS A SUBSTANTIAL PART OF YOUR ESSAY.

Grading Emphasis: developing an effective subject; writing for appropriate occasion and audience; expressing ideas; spelling; critical analysis; clear statement of conflict and each side’s position; research and use of evidence; appropriate tone; sentence variety; consistent agreement; elimination of non-rhetorical fragments; effective ordering of ideas; effective resolution; punctuation (period, question and exclamation marks, colon, dash, ellipses, parentheses, brackets); formatting; elimination of second person; adoption of formal conventions (i.e., no contractions, using one and we rather than I or you); including citations