| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of
their bloody rot?'
That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion
between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the
hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be
kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct
and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the
Party, and the Party had turned it to account. They had played a similar
trick with the instinct of parenthood. The family could not actually be
abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their
children, in almost the old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand,
1984 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: foot and dragged him into the outer court as far as the
gate-house. There he propped him up against the wall and put his
staff in his hands. "Sit here," said he, "and keep the dogs and
pigs off; you are a pitiful creature, and if you try to make
yourself king of the beggars any more you shall fare still
worse."
Then he threw his dirty old wallet, all tattered and torn over
his shoulder with the cord by which it hung, and went back to
sit down upon the threshold; but the suitors went within the
cloisters, laughing and saluting him, "May Jove, and all the
other gods," said they, "grant you whatever you want for having
The Odyssey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: Nikita silently got out of the sledge and holding his coat,
which the wind now wrapped closely about him and now almost
tore off, started to feel about in the snow, going first to one
side and then to the other. Three or four times he was
completely lost to sight. At last he returned and took the
reins from Vasili Andreevich's hand.
'We must go to the right,' he said sternly and peremptorily, as
he turned the horse.
'Well, if it's to the right, go to the right,' said Vasili
Andreevich, yielding up the reins to Nikita and thrusting his
freezing hands into his sleeves.
Master and Man |
