Week 1

Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-mustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house front immediately opposite. Big Brother Is Watching You, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. (pg. 2)

1984 is a classic novel, and within the first 2 pages that I read, I found multiple important passages. However this passage stood out most to me. The first rhetorical device I saw was alliteration: "Wind were whirling", "Commanding corner", and "Big Brother." I feel that commanding corner and wind whirling needed to be emphasized to explain the setting of the story, and by repeating the consonant sounds the author is successful. I also noticed a lot of imagery. For example "the sun shining and the sky a harsh blue." This gives the reader an image of the setting outside Winston's apartment. By describing the sky as "harsh," it implies that the weather is bad, which implies that the outside world is not a good place. The next image that one pictures is the billboard on the house that says "Big Brother is Watching You." At this point in the story, the reader doesn't know why these people live such harsh lives or who big brother is, but by describing his image before his person, the reader thinks that this big brother figure is actually the reason why life is so terrible.