How does the style and voice of this novel influence your reading of it?

How is language used throughout?

How do you come to understand the language spoken by the main characters?

What do the section and subsection titles signify?

What is going on in the inter-subsection breaks (like pages 12-13, 21-22)?

When and where are we? What clues do we get to what is going on in this world?

What role does the government play in this world? Big business?

How do you think the epigraph reflects on the novel as a whole?

Who is Titus? What kind of person is he?

What kind of a person is Violet?

What is the feed? How do you know?

Consider the first line. What is striking about it? Why start here?

What do Titus and friends think of the moon? Of space?

" É and it's just like in a commercial for jeans, or something with nougat" (4). What the hell is Titus talking about? Do you get his meaning?

What does the feed do after a party? What does it mean to be "bannered?"

Do you recognize Titus and his friends in people you know? Why or why not?

How quickly does something go out of fashion here?

Why do these characters have lesions? What do they think of them?

What "secret patriotic experiment" might Link be part of?

What attracts Titus to Violet? What distinguishes her from the others?

Why is Violet on the moon?

What does Titus think of Mars? Why does Violet find this ridiculous?

How and why are they "shut off" at the end of Part 1?

Why is this section Eden?

What is the significance of Titus's first response to being without the feed? Can you analogize this to anything you have experienced?

Why doesn't Titus like the painting of the boat? How does he think it should look? Does his appreciation of it change through this part of the novel?

What is the history of the feed? How is the feed like lungs?

How does the novel belie Titus's statement that the feed makes everyone "supersmart without ever working (39)?"

What does Titus think about corporations?

In what ways are the adults in this world similar to or different from the children?

What are salad days?

What is the significance of the garden? Of metaphor?

What are the "dead languages" that Violet's father teaches?

What makes writing strange?

How do they respond to the return of the feed?

What is Orwell's point in this essay?

How is politics linked to all this?

How does Orwell link language to thought?

What makes clear and precise language desirable? What about politics might make clear and precise language undesirable?

Think of a few examples of dying metaphors. What about a few living ones? What does a good metaphor do?

What is an operator or false limb? What kind or word does it replace?

Why might someone use pretentious diction?

What makes a word meaningless? Can you think of some examples of meaningless words?

What questions should you ask yourself when writing?

What relationship should word choice have to meaning?

What happens when someone relies on vague and clichŽd language?

Is Orwell's argument about protecting a standard English language? Why or why not?

Do you agree with Orwell? Why or why not?