Orwell uses this moment to reveal a prominent theme of the novel. The fact that the girl is imitating her brother suggests the bigger theme of the book that no action is one's own. The boy is merely mimicking the spies and his sister is following suit. This is how the society lives; there is no individual thought. Describing the kids as tiger cubs relates to Winston's own life: currently, he is getting away with his journal entries and thoughts against the party but this will turn into a more immense problem just as the tiger cubs will develop into "man-eaters." Orwell's use of the phrase "man-eaters" relates to the spies of the party who "eat men" by taking away individual thought and emotion, two attributes that are often connected with human identity.
Work Cited:
Photo Credit:
"Meet the Adorable Rare Siberian Tiger Cubs Born at Romanian Zoo." Mail Online. 26 July 2007. Associated Newspapers Ltd. 26 Aug. 2010. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-471067/Meet-adorable-rare-Siberian-tiger-cubs-born-Romanian-zoo.html>.
I like how you take a seemingly toss-away moment and connect it to the bigger ideas -- it serves as evidence that Orwell truly crafted this work and that it wasn't just a bunch of happy little coincidences
ReplyDeleteMuch stronger -- take a look at how those first two sentences might be tightened into one
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