| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of
as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of
forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors,
misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the
interests of accuracy.
But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's
figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one
piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing
with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of
connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much
a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great
 1984 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald: people either dragged theirs after them as a liability, or else
distorted it to artificial geniality, and of course there were
the ever-present prig and Pharisee(but Amory never included them
as being among the saved).
ST. CECILIA
"Over her gray and velvet dress,
Under her molten, beaten hair,
Color of rose in mock distress
Flushes and fades and makes her fair;
Fills the air from her to him
With light and languor and little sighs,
 This Side of Paradise |