Okay, I am in AP English and we recently read the book 1984 by George Orwell. For an assignment, we had to relate the following Shakespeare quote to the book:
This story shall the good man teach his son / And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by / From this day to the ending of the world / But we in it shall be remembered / We few, we happy few, we band of brothers / For he today that sheds his blood with me / shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile / This day shall be his gentle condition.
I am not good with Shakespeare, so it might as well be written in Greek. Can anyone relate this quote to the book?
2006-10-05 11:13:58 · 3 answers · asked by Dee 3 in Education & Reference ➔ Homework Help
Regardless of who you are, what you have done, at the end you are my brother and nothing will change that fact for all of time.
You shall never be far from Big Brother and that he will always be there.
2006-10-05 11:25:04 · answer #1 · answered by JuJitsu_Fan 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The quotation is from a speech given before one of the battles in Henry V by Henry V. I think its the battle of Agincourt but I could be wrong.
To paraphrase - Tomorrow is St Crispin's day. In future and forever men will tell their sons about that day. We (King Henry and the soldiers of all different ranks) will be made as close as brothers by joining in battle together and this will eliminate any difference in status that would normally set the men in the army apart. Common men will be made gentlemen in this way.
The basic thematic similarities with 1984 are presumably that there's a war going on the role and rights of the individual in wartime might be contrasted in the quotation (a heroic and enobling struggle) and in 1984 - a bleaker kind of conflict more akin to the Total War of civilians and military begun in WWII. This is antiheroic in character as it calls for the suppression of individuality (thought, sex, controlling propaganda).
The quotation is a type of propaganda, theres a lot of that in 1984 - newspeak. The speech itself is an attempt to interpret the significance of historical events to participants - in 1984 history itself is explicitly manipulated.
2006-10-05 18:35:56 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
He was giving people in his day a glimpse of the future. Sort of like how Star Trec gives us a glimpse into our future. There's your relation. He used a lot of imagination in that book to convey what the future would be like and so does star trek... Can you dig it?
2006-10-05 18:22:56 · answer #3 · answered by dww32720 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋