1984 george orwell setting analysis

1984 Summary and Analysis

Home » Literature Explained – Literary Synopses and Book Summaries » 1984 Book » 1984 Summary and Analysis

Book Introduction

The novel 1984 by George Orwell is a dystopian classic following the main character, Winston Smith, who is a socially low-ranking individual as he navigates his frustrations with the ever-watching Big Brother which forbids any sort of individuality. Crimes of individual expression and/or rebellion are punishable to the highest extent, but Winston illegally journals his hatred of the ruling party and begins a forbidden love affair in secret. His downfall comes as the oppressive ruling party breaks him down utterly and completely.

This novel was written in a direct response to George Orwell’s mistrust of governmental parties and authoritative regimes due to his observations about the Spanish Civil War. The novel is Orwell’s statement that overly authoritarian rule is closer to happening than most people might want to admit.

Literary Elements of 1984

Type of Work: Fiction/novel

Genres : Dystopian, Science Fiction

Published Date: 1949

Setting: London, 1984 (assumed because of the title but not confirmed in the text.)

Main Characters: Winston Smith, Julia, O’Brien, Big Brother

Protagonist/Antagonist: Protagonist – Winston Smith/Antagonist – The Thought Police

Major Thematic Elements: Perils of totalitarianism, psychological and physical control/manipulation, censoring of information and history, advanced technology, restrictions on language to control and manipulate, loyalty and resistance to power, revolution and independence, identity

Motifs: Doublethink, urban decay

Exposition: Explanation of Big Brother and how the new government regime has altered Winston’s life in drastic ways

Plot: Three parts, linear narrative structure

Major Symbols: Big Brother, the glass paperweight, St. Clement’s Church, the telescreens, the place where there is no darkness, red-armed prole woman

Climax: Julia hands Winston a note confessing her love and now Winston must go from passively objecting to The Party to actively committing acts of rebellion and defiance.

Literary Significance of 1984

1984 is a powerful message about the dangers of political suppression and totalitarian powers. 1984 details the dangers of the rising technological advances mixing with the wrong kinds of political leaders. Published at the dawn of the nuclear age, there were very real fears across the globe that unchecked technological advances in such times of unrest could lead to further oppression of the individuals living under oppressive regimes.

Although much of Orwell’s fears never materialized and democracy overcame oppressive government structures, the novel remains an important and widely-taught novel that serves as a warning for what could happen under the wrong circumstances. The novel is much more than a sci-fi thriller, it contains very real implications for unchecked governmental power and unbridled control.

1984 Book Summary

Winston found a diary in an antique shop in the district where the very poor (the proles) live and the Party does not monitor as closely, believing them to be insignificant. Winston writes in his diary even though he knows it is a punishable act of rebellion. Winston daydreams and when he looks down, sees he has written “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” over and over and has committed thoughtcrime, the crime of having rebellious thoughts against the Party. Winston realizes that nothing will be the same.

As time goes on, Winston continues to write in his diary, knowing full well that it will lead to his downfall. He writes that he longs for revolution against the Party and that the proles will be the key to a successful revolution since they make up such a large number of the population. He believes the Party’s oversight and dismissal of the proles is the key to starting a revolution. Winston thinks about the Party official O’Brien and believes that he may be a player in a potential rebellion effort. He dreams about O’Brien and a place where there is no darkness.

In chapter 8, Winston goes to the prole neighborhoods to try and find out what life was like before the Party but cannot get much information. He goes back to the antique store where he bought his journal and purchases a glass paperweight. The shop owner shows Winston a room above the shop with no telescreen and a picture of St. Clement’s church. On the way home, Winston believes he is being followed by Thought Police and resolves to commit suicide before they can even catch him.

Book Two begins with Winston seeing the pretty brown-haired woman at work. She falls and he helps her up. In doing this, she passes him a note that simply reads “I love you.” Winston is conflicted as he has suspected her of being a spy this whole time. This note changes Winston’s desire to find a way to commit suicide. He resolves to live. The two plan a secret meeting and find much pleasure in being alone together.

In chapter 3, Winston rents the room with no telescreen above the antique shop. This is his and Julia’s go-to meeting place. Winston begins to be frustrated with being kept apart from Julia and longs intensely for a leisurely and romantic life with her. The room with the glass paperweight and picture of St. Celement’s church becomes a symbol of the past for Winston and he thinks about it when he is working and stuck doing other things as a type of refuge.

In chapter 6, O’Brien makes contact with Winston. Convinced that he is being invited to join the rebellion, Winston accepts that he is now really going down a road that will lead to his being killed by the Party. He accepts this and agrees to meet with O’Brien anyway. Winston’s emotions are greatly stirred at this point and he remembers memories from his childhood of leaving his family behind during the political struggles. He believes his is responsible for his mother’s death. Julia and Winston begin to realize the great chances that they will be caught and tortured, and they know that they should stop renting the room but they cannot. They vow to still love each other, no matter what happens. Later, in chapter 8, Winston and Julia meet with O’Brien and declare themselves enemies of the Party.

In chapter 10, Julia and Winston are admired the red-armed prole woman who does her laundry outside their window. They believe her and her children are the keys to revolution. Suddenly, a voice speaks to them in the room and they realize that there has been a telescreen behind the picture of St. Clement’s church. Police storm the room and arrest them. It turns out the owner of the antique shop was a member of the Thought Police.

Book Three begins with Winston being contained in a bright cell that always has the lights on. Winston is tortured for some time and wishes for an opportunity to kill himself. O’Brien meets with Winston and reveals that he was actually acting as a spy and set Winston and Julia up to reveal themselves. O’Brien says that the torture will fix Winston.

After some time, Winston’s torture begins to work, and he agrees to things that he knows are not true. He is being brainwashed and even agrees that “two and two make five.” In a fit of misery after many weeks of confinement and torture, he can’t help but yell Julia’s name over and over. Winston backtracks and tells the guards that he hates Big Brother. In chapter 5, Winston’s greatest fear, rats, are used against him. As the guards prepare to strap a cage of rats to Winston’s head so that they can eat his face off, Winston gives up and tells them to take the rats to eat Julia’s face instead. O’Brien is satisfied and Winston is released back into the real world. Winston is fully in support of the Party, he has been fully broken during his time imprisoned. When Winston sees Julia again, he finds her repulsive. When he sees posters about Big Brother, he feels safe and happy.

1984 Book Summary – George Orwell

06 Mar 1984 Book Summary – George Orwell

This review aims to dissect and analyze “1984” in its entirety, offering insights into its thematic richness, narrative style, and Orwell’s vision of a world subsumed by tyranny and propaganda.

Suggested Reading Age “1984” is best suited for readers aged 15 and above due to its complex themes and some mature content.

Thesis Statement Orwell’s “1984” is not just a novel but a warning, an intricate exploration of the dangers of political extremism and the loss of personal freedom.

Short Synopsis of 1984

“1984” by George Orwell is a dystopian novel that delves into the horrors of a totalitarian society under constant surveillance. Set in the superstate of Oceania, it follows Winston Smith, a member of the Outer Party, working at the Ministry of Truth. The Party, led by the elusive Big Brother, exercises absolute control over all aspects of life, including history, language, and even thought. Winston, feeling suppressed and rebellious, begins a forbidden love affair with Julia, a co-worker, as an act of defiance against the Party’s oppressive regime. However, their rebellion is short-lived as they are caught and subjected to brutal psychological manipulation and reconditioning by the Party. The novel explores themes of totalitarianism, propaganda, and the crushing of individuality, culminating in Winston’s tragic acceptance of the Party’s dominance. “1984” remains a powerful warning about the dangers of unchecked government power and the erosion of fundamental human rights.

1984 Detailed Book Summary

“1984” is set in a dystopian future where the world is divided into three superstates constantly at war: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. The story unfolds in Airstrip One (formerly Great Britain), a province of the totalitarian superstate of Oceania, which is under the control of the Party led by the figurehead Big Brother.

Winston Smith : The novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, is a 39-year-old man who works at the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to alter historical records, thus aligning the past with the ever-changing party line of the present. Winston lives in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation.

Early Acts of Rebellion : Despite outwardly conforming, Winston harbors deep-seated hatred for the Party. He begins to express his subversive thoughts by starting a diary, an act punishable by death if discovered by the Thought Police. Through his writing, Winston explores his fragmented memories of the past, pondering the Party’s control over reality and truth.

Julia and the Love Affair : Winston becomes involved with Julia, a younger Party member who secretly shares his loathing of the regime. Their love affair is initially an act of rebellion. They meet in secret and dream of a life free from the Party’s control. Their relationship represents a profound act of personal freedom and rebellion against the regime.

O’Brien and the Brotherhood : Winston and Julia are drawn to O’Brien, an Inner Party member whom Winston believes to be secretly a member of a clandestine opposition group known as the Brotherhood, led by the legendary Emmanuel Goldstein. O’Brien inducts them into the Brotherhood, providing a copy of Goldstein’s subversive book which outlines the ideology of freedom and rebellion against the Party.

Capture and Betrayal : The illusion of rebellion is shattered when Winston and Julia are arrested in their sanctuary. It is revealed that their rebellion was a trap orchestrated by the Thought Police, with O’Brien as one of its agents.

Winston’s Imprisonment and Torture : In the Ministry of Love, Winston is separated from Julia and subjected to psychological and physical torture. The aim is to force him to confess his crimes against the Party and to break his spirit completely. Winston resists as much as he can, holding onto his inner sense of truth and loyalty to Julia.

Room 101 : The climax of Winston’s torture occurs in Room 101, where he is confronted with his worst fear – rats. In a moment of utter despair and terror, Winston betrays Julia, begging that she be tortured in his place. This ultimate betrayal represents the complete destruction of Winston’s resistance.

Re-education and Acceptance : Following his experience in Room 101, Winston undergoes a process of “re-education” where he learns to accept the Party’s version of reality and to love Big Brother. He is released back into society, a hollow, obedient citizen.

Final Encounter with Julia : After his release, Winston encounters Julia one more time. Both admit to betraying each other and realize that their feelings for each other have been eradicated. The Party’s victory is complete, with any trace of personal loyalty or love eradicated.

Winston’s Final Submission : The novel ends with Winston completely accepting the Party’s doctrine and viewing his execution as a victory – he has conformed entirely to the Party’s ideals. His final thoughts are of unquestioning love and loyalty to Big Brother, signifying the total and absolute triumph of the Party’s control over the individual mind and spirit.

Orwell’s “1984” is a powerful and chilling portrayal of a totalitarian world where freedom of thought is suppressed under the guise of state security, and the truth is what the Party deems it to be. It remains a poignant and cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked political power and the erosion of individual liberties.

The novel delves into Winston’s life as he begins a forbidden love affair with Julia and gets involved with what appears to be an underground resistance movement. However, this rebellion is short-lived as they are betrayed and subjected to the Party’s ruthless tactics of psychological manipulation and physical torture, leading to Winston’s ultimate surrender to the Party’s orthodoxy.

Character Descriptions:

• Winston Smith: Age: Approximately 39 years old. Occupation: Works at the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to align with the Party’s current propaganda. Personality Traits: Initially, Winston exhibits intellectual curiosity, internal rebellion, and skepticism towards the Party’s doctrine. He is contemplative, introspective, and carries a sense of melancholy. Character Arc: Winston evolves from a quiet dissident to an active rebel, seeking truth and love in a society devoid of both. His relationship with Julia deepens his rebellious spirit. However, after his capture and torture, he becomes a defeated, loyal follower of Big Brother, losing his individuality and spirit of dissent.
• Julia: Age: In her mid-20s. Occupation: Works on the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Personality Traits: Julia is practical, sensual, and outwardly conforms to Party norms while secretly despising its control. She is bold and pragmatic in her approach to rebellion, focusing more on personal freedom than on broader political change. Character Arc: Julia engages in an affair with Winston as a form of personal rebellion. She is less interested in the theoretical aspects of their rebellion and more in the personal joy it brings. After their capture, like Winston, she is broken by the Party, ultimately betraying Winston and accepting Party doctrine.
• O’Brien: Occupation: A member of the Inner Party. Personality Traits: O’Brien is intelligent, articulate, and initially seems sympathetic to Winston’s skepticism of the Party. He exudes a certain charm and civility. Character Arc: O’Brien reveals himself as a loyalist to the Party and plays a key role in Winston’s torture and re-education. He embodies the Party’s manipulative and brutal nature. His interactions with Winston highlight the Party’s deep understanding of human psychology and its use in breaking down resistance.
• Big Brother: Role: The symbolic leader and face of the Party. Description: Big Brother is more a symbol than a character, representing the omnipresent, all-seeing Party. He is depicted as a mustachioed man appearing on posters and telescreens with the slogan “Big Brother is watching you.” His actual existence is ambiguous, but his presence is a powerful tool in the Party’s arsenal for instilling loyalty and fear.
• Mr. Charrington: Occupation: Owner of an antique shop in the Proles district. Personality Traits: Initially appears as a kindly, old shopkeeper interested in history and artifacts from the past. Character Arc: Revealed to be a member of the Thought Police, his character highlights the Party’s extensive surveillance network and the deception employed to trap dissidents like Winston and Julia.

In-depth Analysis

• Strengths : “1984” excels in its haunting portrayal of a society stripped of freedom and individuality. Orwell masterfully uses a bleak and concise prose style to convey the oppressive atmosphere of Oceania. The intricate depiction of the Party’s manipulation of truth and history remains particularly chilling and relevant.
• Weaknesses : For some, the despairing tone and the inevitability of Winston’s defeat may come across as overly pessimistic, offering little in the way of hope or resistance against such a powerful system.
• Uniqueness : The novel’s concept of “Newspeak,” the language designed to limit free thought, and “doublethink,” the ability to accept two contradictory beliefs, are unique contributions to the lexicon of political and philosophical thought.
• Literary Devices : Orwell’s use of symbolism, foreshadowing, and irony are noteworthy. For instance, the figure of Big Brother symbolizes the impersonal and omnipresent power of the Party.
• Relation to Broader Issues : The book’s exploration of surveillance, truth manipulation, and state control has clear parallels with modern concerns about privacy, fake news, and authoritarianism, making it perennially relevant.
• Potential Audiences : “1984” is a must-read for enthusiasts of political and dystopian fiction. It is also highly valuable for those interested in political theory, sociology, and history.
• Comparisons : “1984” often draws comparisons with Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” another dystopian masterpiece, though Huxley’s work envisages a different form of control through hedonism and consumerism.
• Final Recommendations : This novel is an essential read for understanding the extremes of political control and the fragility of human rights. It’s a cautionary tale that remains profoundly relevant in today’s world.

Thematic Analysis and Stylistic Elements

The themes of “1984” are deeply interwoven and reflect Orwell’s concerns about totalitarianism. Themes include the corruption of language as a tool for oppressive power (“Newspeak”), the erosion of truth and reality in politics, and the loss of individuality. Stylistically, Orwell’s direct and terse prose serves as a mirror to the stark world he describes, emphasizing the theme of decay and dehumanization.

Comparisons to Other Works

Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” a satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism, shares similar themes with “1984,” but differs in its approach and style, using a fable-like structure. “1984” is more direct and visceral in its depiction of a dystopian society.

Chapter by Chapter Summary of 1984

• Chapter 1 : Winston Smith, a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in Oceania, returns to his flat in Victory Mansions. He begins to write a diary, an act prohibited by the Party.
• Chapter 2 : Winston recalls recent Two Minutes Hate sessions and reflects on the Party’s control over Oceania’s history and residents. He hides his diary.
• Chapter 3 : Winston dreams of his mother and sister, and then of O’Brien, an Inner Party member he believes may secretly oppose the Party. The chapter ends with Winston’s alarm waking him for the Physical Jerks, a mandatory morning exercise.
• Chapter 4 : Winston goes to his job at the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to fit the Party’s current version of events.
• Chapter 5 : During lunch, Winston discusses the principles of Newspeak with a co-worker, Syme. He observes the Parsons family and considers the effectiveness of Party propaganda on children.
• Chapter 6 : Winston thinks about his wife, Katharine, and their cold, lifeless marriage, reflecting on the Party’s repressive attitude towards sex and love.
• Chapter 7 : Winston writes in his diary about the hopelessness of rebellion and the likelihood that he will be caught by the Thought Police. He ponders whether life was better before the Party took over.
• Chapter 8 : Winston visits a prole neighborhood. He enters an antique shop and buys a coral paperweight. He talks with the shop owner, Mr. Charrington, and learns about life before the Party’s rule.
• Chapter 9 : Oceania switches enemies from Eurasia to Eastasia. Winston receives Goldstein’s book and begins reading it.
• Chapter 10 : Winston wakes up from a dream shouting, “Shakespeare!” He and Julia plan to rent the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop for their clandestine meetings.
• Chapter 11 : In the rented room, Winston and Julia continue their secret meetings, but Winston feels the futility of their rebellion.
• Chapter 12 : Winston reads to Julia from Goldstein’s book, explaining the social structure of Oceania and the perpetual war.
• Chapter 13 : Winston continues reading the book, discussing the principles of war and the Party’s manipulation of the populace.
• Chapter 14 : Winston and Julia are discovered by the Thought Police in their rented room. Mr. Charrington reveals himself as a member of the Thought Police.
• Chapter 15 : Winston is detained in the Ministry of Love. He encounters other prisoners and realizes the Party’s extensive power.
• Chapter 16 : O’Brien tortures Winston, gradually breaking his spirit. He admits to various crimes against the Party, both real and imagined.
• Chapter 17 : O’Brien continues Winston’s re-education, revealing more about the Party’s ideology and the concept of doublethink.
• Chapter 18 : Winston is taken to Room 101, where he is confronted with his worst fear—rats. He betrays Julia, proving his complete submission to the Party.
• Chapter 19 : Winston is released and spends his time at the Chestnut Tree Café. He is a changed man, devoid of rebellious thoughts.
• Chapter 20 : Winston meets Julia again, but their feelings for each other have vanished. They both admit to betraying each other.
• Chapter 21 : The novel concludes with Winston, completely broken, confessing his love for Big Brother, accepting Party orthodoxy fully.

Potential Test Questions and Answers

• Answer: It signifies the omnipresent surveillance of the Party and the constant monitoring of individuals’ actions and thoughts, instilling fear and obedience.
• Answer: “Newspeak” is designed to diminish the range of thought by reducing the complexity and nuance of language, making rebellion against the Party’s ideology linguistically impossible.
• Answer: The Thought Police serve to detect and punish “thoughtcrime,” any personal and political thoughts unapproved by the Party, thereby enforcing ideological purity and suppressing dissent.
• “George Orwell: The Prophet of the Dystopian Future,” The Literary Encyclopedia.
• “Totalitarianism and Language: Orwell’s 1984,” Journal of Modern Literature.

Awards and Recognition

“1984” has received critical acclaim since its publication and has been listed in various “best novels” lists, including the “100 Best Novels of the 20th Century” by the Modern Library.

Bibliographic Information

• Publisher: Signet Book
• Publish Date: July 01, 1950
• Type: Mass Market Paperbound
• ISBN/EAN/UPC: 9780451524935

Summaries of Other Reviews

• The Guardian: Highlights the novel’s prophetic nature and its enduring relevance in the digital age.
• The New Yorker: Discusses the novel’s profound impact on language and political thought.

Notable Quotes from 1984

• This paradoxical slogan of the Party encapsulates the use of doublethink, a process of indoctrination that requires citizens to accept contradictory beliefs, fostering a disconnection from reality and thus ensuring loyalty to the Party.
• This omnipresent warning is emblematic of the government’s pervasive surveillance in Oceania. It instills fear and obedience in the populace, reminding them of the Party’s constant monitoring of their actions and thoughts.
• This reflects the Party’s manipulation of truth and its control over what is considered knowledge. It reveals the theme of reality control and the dangers of a society where objective truth is subjugated to political agenda.
• This quote grimly summarizes the Party’s vision for the future: a world where the individual is utterly powerless, and the state exerts total control, both physically and psychologically.
• This highlights the Party’s manipulation of history to maintain its grip on power. It underscores a central theme in “1984” — the control of information and history as a means of controlling the populace.
• This defines the concept of doublethink, a crucial method by which the Party breaks down individual understanding of truth and reality, ensuring unconditional loyalty.
• This statement underscores the significance of objective truth and the resistance against the Party’s distortion of reality. It signifies the importance of individual thought and rationality as a form of rebellion.
• This conundrum highlights the challenge faced by those living under totalitarian rule, where the lack of consciousness about their oppression prevents rebellion, yet without rebelling, they cannot become fully aware of their subjugation.

Spoilers/How Does It End?

Warning: This section contains major spoilers about the ending of “1984” by George Orwell.

“1984” culminates in a harrowing and profoundly impactful conclusion that starkly illuminates the depths of the Party’s control over the individual.

• Winston’s Transformation and Betrayal : After Winston Smith and Julia are captured by the Thought Police, they are separated and taken to the Ministry of Love for interrogation and re-education. The person responsible for Winston’s capture and subsequent torture is O’Brien, whom Winston had previously believed to be a fellow dissident. This betrayal is a crucial turning point in the novel, as it shatters Winston’s last hope for an organized rebellion against the Party.
• The Room 101 Experience : Winston endures severe physical and psychological torture under O’Brien’s supervision. The climax of his torture occurs in Room 101, where prisoners are confronted with their worst fears. For Winston, this is a face cage filled with ravenous rats. Faced with this terror, Winston betrays Julia by begging for her to be tortured in his place. This moment is pivotal as it represents the complete breakdown of Winston’s resistance and the success of the Party in breaking his spirit.
• Winston’s Reintegration into Society : After his release, Winston is a shell of his former self. He has been thoroughly brainwashed and now genuinely loves Big Brother. He spends his time at the Chestnut Tree Café, where other broken rebels gather. One day, he meets Julia again. They acknowledge that they betrayed each other and that their feelings for each other have been eradicated. This meeting underscores the Party’s complete victory in destroying individual loyalty and emotion, replacing them with loyalty to the Party alone.
• The Final Act of Submission : The novel ends with Winston’s final submission to the Party’s ideology. He has a vision of being executed but realizes that he has won the victory over himself – he loves Big Brother. This chilling conclusion signifies the total and irrevocable triumph of the Party over the individual. Winston’s love for Big Brother is a symbol of the Party’s successful eradication of independent thought and the total reprogramming of the human psyche.

Orwell’s ending is stark and dystopian, offering no hope of rebellion or change. It serves as a powerful warning about the dangers of totalitarianism and the fragility of human rights and freedom under such regimes. The ending is deliberately unsettling, leaving the reader to contemplate the consequences of unchecked political power and the importance of safeguarding democratic values and individual liberties.

Share this:

(92) 336 3216666

[email protected]

Read our complete notes on the novel “1984” by George Orwell. Our notes cover 1984 summary, characters, themes, and analysis.

Introduction

Nineteen Eighty-four is written by George Orwell. It was published in 1949 as 1984. The novel is a tale to warn the people against the backdrops of the totalitarian government. It was published by Secker and Warburg on 8th June 1949.

Yearning for the opportunity of freedom, a humble, Outer Circle administrator of the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith, musters up the boldness to record his implicit wants in his little mysterious diary, in itself an unlawful demonstration. Serving quietly at the delight of the dismal, dictatorial hyper-province of Oceania, Smith acknowledges the INGSOC`s incomparable pioneer Big Brother who keeps a close eye on him.

The totalitarian government tightens its hold on its subject. Smith comes across Julia who is also a rebel and a dangerous affair starts. There’s no turning around. This couple has to pay at some point for their relationship. The waters of rebellions also start to boil and in the midst of the storm Smith changes his loyalty and turn into a supporter of the Party.

Historical Context of 1984

Orwell believed in socialism, the immediate consequence of his administration as a militiaman on the side of Republicans against Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Francisco was a Fascist. Upon his arrival in England, he became a member of the British Independent Labor Party and started to compose against the Nazi system and Stalinism.

Orwell was affected by rebels of Soviet socialism and by the Marxist compositions of Leon Trotsky, which modeled the ousted socialist progressive and model for Emmanuel Goldstein in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 1946 Orwell stated that each line of genuine work that he has composed since 1936 has been composed, legitimately or in an indirect way, against despotism and for popularity based communism.

Inspiration for the Book

Before writing this novel, Orwell was inspired and impacted by the authoritarian systems of Stalin`s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The two systems celebrated their separate chiefs as gods. They also required to destroy the independence so as to advance the needs of the Party over the lives of individuals, requested supreme steadfastness from their residents, and turned to savagery at whatever point unfaithfulness was suspected.

In addition, the two systems reliably slandered their adversaries; similarly, as the Party and Big Brother do in 1984, through the Hate Week, Two Minutes Hate, and everyday propaganda through telescreens. Other similarities incorporate the Thought Police as a rehash of the Gestapo, NKVD which organized fear, and the Spies and Youth League as a reexamination of the Hitler Youth and the Little Octoberists, which inculcated youngsters to the Party and urged them to report dishonesty in subjects.

The Setting of the Novel

The action of this novel happens in London at some undefined time in the future. Although the city is mentioned, the version of the city presented is totally fictionalized. In this novel, London is the center of Airstrip One, which is part of the state of Oceania.

Oceania is among the three powers of this world, it consists of the Americas, Australasia, the Atlantic islands, British Isles and parts of Africa. The other is Eastasia consisting of Japan, China, Tibet and Mongolia. The third one is Eastasia that includes Northern Europe and Asiatic regions. The title shows that the novel is set in 1984.

London is partitioned in three particular social gatherings. The Inner Party lives in relative luxury with workers and access to extravagance products. The Outer Party, of which Winston is a part, lives in distinct, flimsy conditions with next to no influence over their own property. The most reduced social gathering is called the proles that live in ghettos where the Party doesn’t endeavor to apply a lot of control.

1984 Summary

It is the year 1984, Winston Smith who is the citizen of Oceania is living in Airstrip one also called Great Britain. Smith is a follower of a party. Winston has returned home during lunch-break. His apartment is located in Victory Mansion, the Party housing building. He has returned to his apartment because he wants to write his diary. The apartment is very small. It has a telescreen. This telecasts the propaganda and information of the Party. He lives in a place which has no privacy because big brother is watching all the people.

The party is ruling Oceania. This party follows a basic principle of English Socialism which is called Ignsoc. Oceania is governed under the rule of hierarchy and is a state of oligarchy. The party is led by Big Brother. The party has members who are divided into two different categories; at the first, there are ruling elites of the party, then comes to the members of the party, they are called regular members because they are the residents of Oceania. 

The people who are very poor are not taken into the party and they live in their poverty. They are not bound by the regulations of the party. The city of London has various types of images and pictures of Big Brother displayed on the walls. The walls are inscribed with Big Brother is watching you. The Party has three slogans that say “war is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and Ignorance is strength.”

Winston loses his parents and sister in the period of revolution that ruined capitalism and established Ingsoc principles in Oceania. He grows in the orphanage of the Party. He is then selected into the Party. He serves the Party by working in the Record Department in the Ministry of Truth. This department is working on the propaganda of the Party. It also changes the old records so that the Party could not be questioned.

There are three more Ministries as well. One is the Ministry of Love; it deals with the prisoners of the Party. The second is the Ministry of Peace and it deals with wars. The third is the Ministry of Plenty and it deals with the goods of the Party.

Winston does not like the system of the Party and thinks that the system of the Party must be changed. The dilemma is that he cannot talk about it openly because there is a fear of death. He knows that this is a serious crime and the penalty is torture and death.

Winston writes a number of notes in his diary. He expresses all his anti-feelings about the party. He knows that this could have severe repercussions but he gives vent to his feelings in the diary. He is writing in a diary when someone knocks at his door. He gets frightened with the thought that he has been caught but it is his neighbor Mrs. Parsons. She needs some help and Winston happily helps her. She has two children and they are working for the Spies and Youth league of the Party.

Winston returns to write his diary but he is getting late and has to reach in time for his work. While working, he finds a newspaper clip that proves the innocence of the young men. When he examines the clip, he finds that the party is wrong in this case. This means that he has got the true evidence about the wrongdoings of the party. He then destroys the clip and stuck it in the internal furnace of the building.

Winston is always surrounded by members who are loyal to the Party and he keeps watch so that he could not be perceived by the others for his anti-feelings against the Party. Winston is supposed to observe two minutes of hate daily for the enemy of Oceania, Eurasia. This hate is also against the opposition leader Emmanuel Goldstein. On the screen, the propaganda is very powerful and Winston has to join his members in that.

Winston gets curious to know the facts of the past and he roams around in the streets. He goes to the locality of Prole. He thinks the rebellion can only come from these proles and without them there cannot be any hope of rebellion.  In one of the prole pubs, Winston goes to an old man and enquires about life prior to Revolution. But the conversation with the old man frustrates him because the old man narrates his personal memories rather than the facts of the Revolution.

Winston ends his conversation with the old man and returns to the shop where he has bought a personal diary. The owner of the shop is Mr. Charrington and he is a very kind man. The owner of the shop talks to him about the room which is above his shop and Winston considers it to be rented that could give him an escape from being constantly watched by the Telescreen.

When he is working in his department and then during his walk, he notices a girl who seems to be the loyal member of the Party is observing Winston. Winston gets frightened because he thinks that the girl might be a Thought Police. After a few days, the girl slips a note to Winston which states that she needs the help of Winston. The note also has written that the girl loves him and this excites Winston. He thinks that is to be kept secret because the Party does not allow any sort of conjugal pleasure.

The Party approves the liking of a person to another person but it must be a marriage and there is an approval which is required from the Party.

The Party wants a full devotion of energies for the Party. Winston has remained in one such marriage. Katharine remained his wife. She remains very loyal to the Party. She has to make schedules and Winston is supposed to go on time for sexual pleasure. She knows that it is a duty to the Party to bear children.

Winston tries very hard to keep his new affair secretive. One day. The girl tells him the place and time of their first meeting. The girl’s name is Julia. She tells him that they are going to meet in a country area where there are dense woods. They meet there, know about their ideas regarding the Party and then start their love affair. Winston looks around the place and realizes that it is the same place he has been dreaming. He calls this place the Golden Country in his dreams.

Winston and Julia continue to meet in such secretive places. The two fall in love with each other because they both have a higher degree of hate for the Party. But because they are constantly watching, they get little time to talk and communicate. They usually meet in public places and they have formal talks there.

Winston thinks that the rebellion is possible which will end the rule of the party. Julia, on the other hand, is happy with the life she is having because she knows that death is always around the corner due to the strict system of the Party. She feigns to be very loyal to the Party. She is a member of a league that advocates Anti-sex agendas. She is also a volunteer to the Party in various activities. But in heart, she hates the party and she knows that the Party is playing with their lives like a game. She also knows that she cannot change the system and rule of the Party.

After some time, Winston talks to Mr. Charrington and rents his room above the shop. The room is simply furnished. The Party asks the citizens to have a twenty-four hour time clock but Winston puts a clock that has hours. This shows his resentment towards the Party. In this new room, he often meets Julia.

 The room has an image of St. Clements Dane which was an old Church of London. The owner of the shop teaches him a few lines of the poem written about church and Julia knows a few more lines of the poem. The window which opens to the outside shows that on the opposite side a prole woman is always having a wash and she sings the prole songs. These songs are composed in the Ministry of Truth by machines.

Outside their window, a middle-aged prole woman is constantly changing her wash and singing simple prole songs, many of which have been created by machines in the Ministry of Truth specifically for the proles.

Afterwards, another member of the Party comes into the life of Winston with an important role. He is O`Brien.  Winston has observed working in the Ministry of Truth. He is an intelligent man with good wisdom. Winston thinks O’Brien shares the same feelings of hatred for the Party as Winston has.

One day, during the break of two minutes of hate, Winston observes his eyes and reads them carefully that affirms the anti-Party feelings of O’Brien. Winston has heard a voice in his dream telling him that he is going to meet him in a place where there is light and he believes that the voice is of O`Brien. Winston also looks at him from the perspective that he could help him in the underground movement of rebellion.

The Party has launched a dictionary for Oceania and the language of Oceania is Newspeak. One day, O’Brien comes to Winston to discuss something about the edition of the Dictionary. Winston is given an address which is of the house of O`Brien. It is given to him so that he can come to his home and take the new book in advance. Winston takes the paper with amazing secrecy. He believes that O`Brien has come to him because he might be working underground against the Party. Winston thinks that the rebellion is on its way against the Party.

O`Brien is a member of the Inner party and he has been given a very comfortable apartment, and servant. He has also been facilitated in a way that he can turn off the telescreen whenever he wants to. Winston, O`Brien and Julia start meeting in secrecy. In one of the similar meetings, Winston tells them that he is going to renounce the Party. He starts his faith in the Brotherhood that is working against the Party. O`Brien welcomes Julia and Winston into the brotherhood. He also tells them that they must be ready to do any task to work against the Party. Both of them agree that they are ready but they tell O`Brien that they want to see each other because they love each other.

O`Brien then tells them that he is going to give a book of Goldstein to Winston and then they will chalk out the activities for the proceedings. Soon the meeting ends and they vow to meet in a place where there is no darkness.

A week of Hate comes and the enemy of the Party changes from Eurasia to Eastasia. Winston is supposed to work a lot in the weekdays because the previous publications of the Ministry were favoring the war against Eurasia but now they are to publicly make the things announced that they are to go on war with Eastasia. This implies that they are to make the people believe that the Party is at war with Eastasia and it has been continued for many years.

This week, a man brings Winston a briefcase that contains the book which O`Brien promised him. Winston soon finishes his work for the Party and goes to the rented apartment of Mr. Charrington to read the book. Julia comes to the apartment, too. Winston reads the book aloud that has the history of Oceania. It also details the ideas of Capitalism against Totalitarianism and the purpose and motto of the Party. The book is actually the articulation of Emmanuel Goldstein. Winston knows many of the facts of the book.

After reading many parts of the book, both of them get to sleep. After waking up, they look at the window outside. He sees outside and hears an echo that comes from a telescreen hidden behind the image of the church. The echo tells him that he is dead. It means that he is badly caught by the Party. Suddenly, Thought Police enter the room. Mr. Charrington enters the room with Thought Police and it becomes very clear that he is working for Thought Police. They get arrested. They are then separately dragged to the Ministry of Love.

In the cell, Winston sees a lot of people who have been brought for Thought Crimes. He sees a person who has read some verses to his daughter against the Big Brother. In the cell, Winston observes that there is a room which the prisoners are constantly afraid of. The room is referred to as Room 101.

One day O’Brien arrives and Winston gets to know that he has been arrested through O’Brien because O`Brien serves the Ministry of Love. Soon, the torture of Winston starts. The torture at the start is very brutal and he is made to confess many of the crimes that Winston is not even aware of. These crimes include murders as well. Slowly the brutality decreases and O`Brien comes to torture Winston.  He tells Winston that his memory is damaged, that is why he is thinking of rebellion and this has made him insane.

O`Brien tells Winston that the purpose of the Party is to seek absolute power. It can do anything for power. This is the reason that this world is controlled by the party and it has the power to exercise the power. Winston stops arguing with O`Brien because he knows that he would not be believed. Winston thinks that the past has never existed and everything is false. However, in order to be released from this torture, Winston needs to fight against his own insane mind.

Winston in the prison gets to experience severe beatings and machine shocks. He is also starved in prison. He gets to know that this is actually the way of the Party to make the prisoners feel these tortures. O`Brien tells Winston that he needs to believe everything that the Party tells him so whether it is right or wrong. He does not have the option to argue with the principles of the Party.

Winston tries to argue but he sees himself in the mirror and is afraid to see because he has turned into a skeleton. He is just a bone and nothing else. He thinks that this might turn into his death.  So he agrees to be re-educated by the Party. When he agrees, he is given good food and proper sleep. He is not tortured afterwards. Slowly, he regains his health.

Winston starts accepting all the principles of the Party. He makes progress in making his understanding clear about the party. But he still remembers Julia and his love for her. One day, while he is asleep, he dreams and in the dream, he starts calling Julia, Julia…..

The last attempt at O’Brien is to force Winston to cheat Julia. Winston is taken in Room 101.  In this room, Winston experiences one of the worst things in this world. Winston also says that the worst things vary from individual to individual. The worst thing for Winston is rats. He is tied with a chair.  O`Brien attaches a cage to the mask of Winston that has a huge rat. This not only threatens but endangers Winston. The fear is to an extreme level and Winston shouts that O’Brien could put Julia in his place to stop his sufferings. This implies that O`Brien has got successful because he has made Winston betray Julia.

Winston is released into this world but he is a broken man with no ideas and feelings. He then meets Julia but there is no love in between them and they feel estranged. The tortures of the prison have changed both of them. They feel that there is a hope of love between them.

After coming into the normal world, Winston gets a new job and is paid well for the job. He starts spending his time playing chess. In the final part of the novel, Winston is shown to be waiting for a report which would state the invasion of Eurasia by Oceania. Winston is happy because he thinks that Eurasia might break the defense of Oceania. This might give Eurasia the opportunity to take over and end the strict regime of the Party. This would result in better lives for the people. The success of Eurasia would mean that the regime of the Party has ended.

Before the report gets published, Winston is very happy and Winston reminiscence a day from his childhood he played chess with his family. The report is published and it states that Oceania has got successful. The advances of Eurasia have been stopped and they are made to go back. The jubilation and the celebrations are televised on the telescreen and there are celebrations in the streets as well. Winston in the street sees a big poster of Big Brother and he realizes that he has not changed in the re-education of Big Brother. He now loves Big Brother and is very much feeling loyalty for the Big Brother because Big brother is watching him.

Themes in 1984 by Orwell

The dangers of totalitarianism.

1984 is a political novel composed to caution the audience of the risks of authoritarian government. Orwell had a good idea of the totalitarian governments in Russian and Spain. He also knew that to sustain it for a longer period of time these governments could go to any extent of horror and terror for control. Thus he composed this novel to warn the people of this horror of authoritarian governments.

In 1949, the Cold War had not yet arisen.  Numerous American people favored socialism, and the diplomatic conditions between communist and democratic states were uncertain. The Soviet Union was regularly depicted as an extraordinary good experiment by the press of America. Orwell was upset by the savageries and persecutions he saw in states governed by Communism and appears to have been worried by technology in empowering abusive governments to control their residents.

In 1984, Orwell depicts a society governed by an authoritarian government with a supreme force. The title of the novel is intended to demonstrate that this novel portrays opportunities for the future. Orwell states If tyranny of totalitarian governments were not contradicted then the world in the novel could turn into a reality in just thirty-five years.

Orwell depicts a state wherein the government screens and controls each part of human life to the degree that in any event, having an unfaithful idea is illegal. As the novel advances, the defiant Winston Smith embarks to challenge the constraints of the Party’s capacity, just to find its capacity to control and oppress its subjects. The readers comprehend through Winston’s eyes that The Party utilizes various procedures to control its residents, every one of which is its very own significant topic in the novel.

Psychological Manipulation

The Party blasts its subjects with mental upgrades intended to overpower the brain’s ability for autonomous ideas. The telescreen in each resident’s room shoots a steady stream of promulgation intended to cause the disappointments and weaknesses of the Party to seem victorious. The telescreens monitor conduct like wherever they go, residents are persistently reminded, particularly by ways like “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” that the specialists are investigating them.

The Party disregards family structure by drafting kids into an association known as the Junior Spies, which indoctrinates and urges them to keep an eye on their folks and report any occasion of unfaithfulness to the Party.

The Party powers people to stifle their sexual wants. The Party at that point channels individuals’ repressed disappointment and feeling into extraordinary, brutal showcases of disdain against the Party’s political foes. A considerable lot of these adversaries have been created by the Party explicitly for this reason.

Resistance and Revolution

In 1984, Winston investigated unsafe and critical demonstrations of obstruction against the Party. In Book One: Chapter VII, Winston sees that rebellion implies a look at without flinching, an articulation of the voice; and no more, an infrequent murmured word. Winston develops these minor uprisings by submitting individual demonstrations of rebellion, for example, keeping a diary and purchasing a paperweight. In the long run, he heightens his defiance through his sexual affair with Julia.

The relationship is a twofold resistance, as it incorporates the thoughtcrime of want. Winston doesn’t accept his activities or the activities of others  because this will prompt the obliteration of the Party inside his lifetime. However, before he is arrested by the Thought Police he holds out the expectation that later on somebody will have the option to glance back at Winston’s time from a world that is free.

Winston’s trust in real unrest against the Party lies with the socially marginalized of the city- proles. He sees that the proles have a prominent population than the Party and that the proles have the solidarity to complete an upheaval if they would ever arrange themselves. The issue is that the proles have been dependent on poverty for such a long time that they can’t see beyond the objective of endurance.

The very idea of attempting to construct a superior world is a lot for them to think about. These perceptions are set against the setting of the Party’s own way of life as the result of transformation. As indicated by Winston, the Party is made during the mid-1960s in a revolution that toppled the social order of Britain. The Party guarantees that the Revolution has not yet finished and that it will be satisfied once they have unlimited authority.

Independence and Identity

Controlling history is one of the essential devices for controlling the masses by the Party. The Party controls autonomy and personality. For instance, the essential qualities of setting up one’s character are inaccessible to Winston and different residents of Oceania. Winston doesn’t have a clue about his age. He is not aware about his marital bond. He has no information about the life of his mother. None of his memories of childhood are dependable, in light of the fact that he has no photographs or reports to assist him with arranging genuine recollections from envisioned ones.

Rather than being interesting people with explicit, distinguishing subtleties, each individual from the Outer Party is indistinguishable. All the members of the Party wear a similar dress, smoke similar cigarettes, drink similar gin, etc. In that capacity, shaping a feeling of individual character isn’t just mentally testing, yet strategically troublesome.

Wealth vs. Poverty

The culture of Oceania presents a reasonable division in everyday environments. The little Inner Party lives richly, with hirelings and comfort and furnished apartments. The Party individuals live in apartments with a single room without any comforts and low-quality food. The proles live in outright destitution. The gorge distance between poor people and rich people in the novel is striking and is generally recognizable during Winston’s entering into prole society. The living buildings of the proles are rotting, and the city of London is full of ruins. While the Inner Party solaces itself with extravagance, the residents of Oceania are made to suffer.

Orwell presents this division to show how authoritarian social orders advance the wealth of the ruling party while diminishing the personal satisfaction for every single citizen. These governments frequently express their desires for building up an equivalent society when as a general rule the division between their day to day environments and those of the residents is huge. Winston watches out toward the city and sees  London dying. O’Brien watches out on the city of London and sees a general public caught in a solitary minute in time, characterized and constrained by the Party.

  Technology

Technology and innovation is a critical apparatus that the Party uses to keep up command over its residents. Without telescreens, the Thought Police might not have been so powerful, there would have not been beneficial aspects of Propaganda. The consistent supervision of the telescreen viably detains residents of Oceania in their day to day lives which implies that they are constantly under perception.

  Different territories of technological advancement are strikingly stale. For instance, the printing machines in the Ministry of Truth are still very essential, and each state keeps on building similar bombs that were utilized a long time ago. Logical advancement has ended, aside from where it serves the Party’s objectives, for example, in new strategies for mental control. In the realm of Oceania, there is nothing as progress for progress; there is just force for power. At the point when mechanical improvements serve this force, they are energized. At the point when they don’t, they are halted.

The Party is energized by loyalty, and in this manner requests that its residents bolster all moves it makes in seeking to make Oceania great. For the Party, steadfastness implies tolerating beyond a shadow of a doubt or faltering. Incidentally, when Winston vows his devotion to the Brotherhood, he consents to acknowledge the objectives and prerequisites of the Brotherhood beyond a shadow of a doubt or delay.

Winston consents to do anything the Brotherhood demands, regardless of whether that implies killing honest people. Nonetheless, Winston is faithful to Julia, and won’t be isolated from her till eternity. This unwaveringly split of loyalty is the thing that isolates Winston from the other Party individuals. Party individuals are faithful to the Big Brother, The Party and Oceania. Individual connections are of no significance.

While in the Ministry of Love, O’Brien notices this shortcoming in Winston’s psyche and adequately expels it. Through excruciating physical torment, O’Brien first instructs Winston that the Party’s point of view is the exact viewpoint. Next, by undermining him with meat-eating rodents, O’Brien breaks Winston’s dependability to Julia. In the last scene of the novel, Winston at long last comes to cherish Big Brother, and his change from split loyalties to a more noteworthy single dependability to the Party is finished.

1984 Characters Analysis

Winston smith.

Winston lives in London and he serves the Party. He is an intellectual with a thin and fragile personality.  He is thirty-nine years old. He does not like the system of totalitarianism imposed by the Party. He dreams of gathering a rebellion against the Party to achieve freedom but he fails in the end.

Orwell’s main objective in 1984 is to exhibit the unnerving prospects of tyranny. The reader encounters the dark world that Orwell imagines through the eyes of Winston. His own inclination to oppose the smothering of his distinction, and his scholarly capacity to reason about his obstruction, empowers the peruser to watch and comprehend the brutal mistreatment that Big Brother, the Party and the Thought Police establish. Winston is incredibly meditative and inquisitive, to see how and why the Party imposes its force in Oceania. Winston’s reflections allow Orwell to investigate the novel’s significant subjects, including language as brain control, mental and physical terrorizing and control, and the significance of information on the past.

Apart from his thoughtful nature, Winston’s main attributes are his rebelliousness and his fatalism. Winston hates the Party and wants to test the limits of its power. He commits innumerable crimes throughout the novel. He develops an illicit relationship with Julia. He goes against the Big Brother. The effort Winston puts into his attempt to achieve freedom and independence ultimately underscores the Party’s devastating power. By the end of the novel, Winston’s rebellion is revealed as playing into O’Brien’s campaign of physical and psychological torture, transforming Winston into a loyal subject of Big Brother.

One purpose behind Winston’s disobedience, and inevitable destruction, is his feeling of submission to the inevitable by believing the Party will get and rebuff him. When he states “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” in his personal diary, Winston is certain that the Thought Police will rapidly catch him for carrying out a ThoughtCrime. Feeling that he is vulnerable to his fate, Winston permits himself to face pointless challenges, for example, confiding in O’Brien and leasing the room over Mr. Charrington’s shop. He realizes that these dangers will expand his odds of being arrested by the Party. He even confesses this to O’Brien while in jail. But since he accepts that he will be arrested regardless of his actions, he persuades himself that he should keep on rebelling. Winston lives in a world in which real confidence is difficult, he gives himself false expectations, completely mindful that he is doing as such.

Julia is the lover of Winston in this novel. She is a dark-haired girl. She works in the Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth. Julia likes intimate relations. She has many affairs with the Party members. She is an optimistic lady. She does not like the authority of the party. Her rebellion against the Party is not ideological but personal.

Julia is a person whom Winston believes that she loathes the Party and wishes to oppose it as like Winston. Though Winston is eager, fatalistic, and worried about social issues, Julia is logical, sensual, and by and large lives in moments to enjoy life. Winston aches to join the Brotherhood and read Emmanuel Goldstein’s dynamic statement while Julia is increasingly worried about sensual relationships and making pragmatic arrangements to abstain from getting captured by the Party. Winston considers his relation with Julia to be a transitory, and due to his fatalistic disposition he is unable to envision his relationship with Julia as long-lasting. Julia adjusts herself to pick types of little scope resistance against the Party. She confesses  having illicit relationships with different members of the Party. She has no expectation of ending her pleasure chasing, or of being arrested. Julia is a striking complexity to Winston: aside from their common sexual wants and contempt for the Party, a large portion of their qualities are unique, if not conflicting.

O`Brien is a mysterious character in this novel. He works for the Party and is a member of the Inner Party. He traps Winston and then tortures him so that he can become loyal to the party.

One of the most intriguing parts of 1984 is the way wherein Orwell covers the depiction of a totalitarian world in a cryptic atmosphere. While Orwell provides the reader a chance to investigate the individual existence of Winston Smith, the readers look at Party life from the perspective of Winston. Therefore, a significant number of the Party’s internal activities stay unexplained, as do its birthplaces, and the characters and inspirations of its pioneers. 

This feeling of riddle is brought together in the character of O’Brien, an amazing individual from the Inner Party who stunts Winston into accepting that he is an individual from the progressive gathering called the Brotherhood. O’Brien accepts Winston into the Brotherhood. Afterward, however, he shows up at Winston’s prison cell to manhandle and indoctrinate him for the sake of the Party. During the procedure of this discipline, O’Brien concedes that he presented himself to be associated with the Brotherhood only to trap Winston in a demonstration of open unfaithfulness to the Party.

This disclosure brings up a bigger number of issues about O’Brien rather than giving answers. Instead of creating as a character all through the novel, O’Brien really appears to be an undeveloped character of the novel. When Winston inquires as to whether he has also been caught by the Party, he replies that they caught him a long time ago. This answer implies that he might have remained a rebel. One can likewise contend that O’Brien claims to identify with Winston just to pick up his trust. Likewise, one can’t be certain whether the Brotherhood really exists, or it is basically a Party creation used to trap the unfaithful and give the remainder of the masses a shared adversary. The book doesn’t address these inquiries, yet rather leaves O’Brien as a shadowy, emblematic riddle on the edges of the much progressively darker Inner Party.

Big Brother

Big Brother is the leader of Oceania, the pioneer of the Party, a cultivated war legend, an ace innovator and scholar. He is the first instigator of the insurgency that brings the Party to control Oceania. The Party utilizes the picture of Big Brother to ingrain a feeling of devotion and dread in the people. The picture shows up on currency, on telescreens, and on the banners which are spread all around the city with the trademark that Big Brother is watching you. The novel shows that a great part of Big Brother’s temperament is unclear and liable to change. Indeed, an aspect of Winston’s responsibilities is to take out old articles and alter the statements of Big Brother that are stated to coordinate what he states in the on-going present.

 Although he controls the whole of Oceania yet he never appears in the novel. Winston never gets an opportunity to communicate with Big Brother in any capacity. The concern of Big Brother is to keep the individuals living in a condition of dread, and the way that nobody appears to have ever observed him makes him considerably successful as a pioneer. The text of the book recommends that Big Brother either doesn’t exist or has never existed as a real individual. When Winston is arrested and put in the Ministry of Love, he has a discussion with O’Brien about Big Brother. Winston inquires whether Big Brother exists; he is given an answer that he does exist. When Winston inquires whether Big Brother will see death, O’Brien says that Big Brother cannot die.

 Mr. Charrington

Mr. Charrington owns a second-hand shop. His shop is located in the prole area. He is 60 years old. He has dark white hair. Winston believes that he might have been a musician or writer in his youth. He provides a number of crimes that can lead to rebellion against the party because the Party has not been good. He sells a notebook to Winston that becomes his personal diary. He also rents his room above his shop to Winston where Winston and Julia secretly meet. He is sympathetic towards Winston in the start and indirectly encourages him for rebellion but in the end, he becomes the source through which Winston gets arrested because Mr. Charrington is a member of Thought Police.

1984 Literary Analysis

Does the novel end on a note of pessimism or optimism?

Winston is broken down badly by the rats in room 101.  In order to get released from the torture he offers Julia for torture. Winston gets released in the last part of the novel.  Readers are informed that Winston lives a life of simplicity.  One day, he encounters Julia and they both confess that both of them offered to be released from the torture and the lover could be replaced.   This means that now they do not feel any sort of love for each other. In the actions of the novel, Winston experiences a picture of Big Brother and encounters a feeling of triumph since he presently cherishes Big Brother. Winston’s acknowledgment of Party rule denotes the end is in the direction he has been on since the opening of the novel. Regardless of Winston’s different types of dismissal and obstruction toward the Party, he had consistently been sensible about how his decisions would unavoidably prompt his capture, torment, and possible death.

Despite the fact that Winston’s destiny is troubled and the closure of the book may appear to be skeptical, the end of the novel can be pursued as hope for trust. The Party needed to go to extraordinary measures to break Winston, utilizing a whole cast of characters and deploying incalculable hours following Winston and later investigating him. 

The measure of exertion the Party places into separating only one individual would not be conceivable for a huge scope: there are lesser numbers of Party individuals and an excessive number of individuals for them to screen. In the event that the Party needs to consume an indistinguishable measure of assets on each dissident from it spent on Winston, it will always be unable to totally get rid of dispute among the individuals. 

For each nonconformist like Winston who gets captured and broken by the Party, another might not be detected. Were the Party ready to create a proficient method to extract the conflict, instead of taking out protesters individually, at that point the end of the book would be really sad. However, the way that Winston has the option to oppose as long as he does, and that it takes the Party such unprecedented endeavors to cut him down, shields the novel from being totally miserable.

What do Big Brother and Goldstein depict?

Emmanuel Goldstein and Big Brother are the pioneers of the restricting powers in Oceania. Big Brother rules Oceania while Goldstein leads the adversaries of Big Brother and has formed the Brotherhood. Orwell doesn’t clarify whether they really exist or not and this makes them quite similar.

O’Brien discloses to Winston Smith that Big Brother may or may not exist. Big Brother exists as the exemplification of the Party. However, he might not die forever. O’Brien won’t reveal to Winston whether Big Brother and Goldstein exist, yet all things considered, both are just the propaganda of the Party. For example the way that O’Brien confesses  having composed Goldstein’s book is a sign of this.

Big Brother is another name for control in Oceania because it is a name of trust, security, and fondness. The Party, or, Big Brother, is not like Stalin or Hitler. Orwell gives Emmanuel Goldstein a Jewish name that is reminiscent of the force structure in World War II. Important is that Emmanuel actually signifies God.

It has no effect in Winston’s life whether these two powers exist. Winston’s destiny is fixed, similar to the destiny of the general public in which he lives, paying little heed to their reality. Goldstein and Big Brother exist in the minds of the people, and that is the main thing that is an issue for Winston. Orwell proposes for these portray Totalitarian force structures because they are both the equivalent. O’Brien, in his manifestation as a Brotherhood chief, inquires as to whether they are happy to carry out outrage against the Party, huge numbers of which are the same that the Party submits against its subjects. Orwell portrays that Political radicalism isn’t certain under any name.

Interpreting the language: Newspeak:

Orwell was certain that the language`s decline is because of economic and political factors. Despite the fact that he had no strong evidence, he assumed that the dialects of nations under autocracies. For  example, the Soviet Union or Germany had decayed under their individual systems. Orwell writes in one of his articles that when the general environment is awful, language must endure. He adds whenever thought taints language, language can likewise degenerate ideas. Here is the very idea of driving the development of Newspeak.

To show this thought that language can degenerate ideas and that authoritarian framework use language to confine thoughts. Orwell made Newspeak that served as the official language for Oceania. In that language, a word like freedom did not exist.

In his Appendix, Orwell clarifies the grammatical game plan and the historical background of the Newspeak. A language that is alive like English has the capacity of different articulation tends to pick up words and in this manner widen the mindfulness and information of its speakers. Newspeak loses words, by evacuating words that can be used for rebellion and can give a thought to resistance. Thus, for instance, on the grounds that great presumes something contrary to awful, so awful is pointless. 

Correspondingly, all degrees of goodness can be communicated basically by adding standard prefixes and postfixes to this one root word: ungood (awful) and plusgood (generally excellent) and doubleplusgood (magnificent). In this manner, Newspeak takes out unnecessary words, yet it encourages a narrowing of thought and being aware. The thought behind Newspeak is that, as language must turn out to be less expressive, the brain is all the more handily controlled. Through making Newspeak, Orwell cautions the reader that a legislature that makes the language and commands how it is utilized can control the brains of its residents.

  History can be re-written:

In 1984, the possibility that history is variable or alterable is highlighted.  The fact is that whatever the Party considers it to be right, is made the basis of the standards of things to come in the future. Some German Fascist leaders flaunted that when people lie frequently enough, others will acknowledge it as truth. The Stalinists consummated this business as usual by re-composing individuals and occasions all through history or misshaping verifiable realities to suit the Party’s motivations. The party slogan in 1984 is that whoever has control over the past has control over the future and whoever has control of the present has control of the past.

Winston Smith’s situation in the Ministry of Truth is that of making the past events unrecognizable to any individual with an exact memory so every fraud becomes a notable reality. In a moment, Oceania is and consistently has been engaged in war with one adversary, the following moment it is and has consistently been engaged in war with another, and the individuals of Oceania acknowledge the data as obvious. It is an embellishment of wonder that Orwell saw it while writing the novel way before 1984 and detailed with genuine lucidity in 1984: People promptly accept what they can accept easily.

This book differentiated between truth and Facts and afterward investigates the social-political-moral good subtleties of the underhanded control of realities so as to control people and social orders for political benefits. Orwell was worried that the idea of truth was becoming dim in the world. In the field of human intercourse of which governmental issues is a section, what is accepted is significantly more impressive than what is real. In the event that the pioneers of countries are the individuals directing the what, when, where, how and who of history, there can be little inquiry that lies discover their way into the books of history, that those falsehoods are instructed to students, and that they in the end become authentic actuality.

This worry is very clear in 1984. During Orwell’s time as an opposition warrior in Spain, he encountered this revamping of history directly. He saw that news stories were frequently erroneous. There were regular reports of fights where no battling had happened or no report at all of the fights where many men had faced deaths. Orwell yielded that quite a bit of history was falsehoods, and he was baffled by the way that he accepted that history could be precisely composed.

This re-writing of occasions isn’t saved for the governments of totalitarianism. Indeed, candidates for governments like the President, recollect things in an unexpected way. It seems as though an occasion can be removed from history as if people do not recall it. At all levels, vague or uncertain language is utilized to shade or change genuine occasions to support candidates or belief systems. With each period, our sages are disavowed, and history books revamped. As the way of life and the philosophy change, it changes history. Here and there these mutilations are honest and harmless contrasts of point of view; different occasions, they are fatal perilous.

Propaganda and Fear are used to Control the Subjects:

In “1984”, untruths, fantasies and wrong data control the thinking and perceptions of the residents. The Party deploys Propaganda as a weapon to control its subjects. Propaganda increases the confidence of residents in the party and makes them feel that whatever the party advises them to do is in every case right. There are for the most part two sorts of propaganda, one changes truth, known as doublethink, and another makes dread. 

“Doublespeak” can be seen much of the time in the realm of 1984. The slogan of the Party “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” is a genuine example. The possibility of the slogan is to persuade the residents that what they need is the thing that they already have. No one but war can make harmony and agreement, so harmony is no longer harmony, it turns into war. Any individual who is slaved and needs freedom, he already possesses Freedom.  One can reinforce himself by not knowing about things and being oblivious.

The motto changes truth and causes the residents to accept that anything they need other than what their administration needs can just make them despondent, along these lines, nobody will consider insubordination since they accept the Party’s method for overseeing is the best and just way. “Big Brother IS WATCHING YOU” is another center motto. It is almost everywhere in the state and for the most part, introduced underneath the image of Big Brother on a banner. It makes dread of wrecked protection among residents by alarming them that they are observed constantly. 

Simultaneously, the trademark focuses on Big Brother’s capacity to tell the residents that they are to be sure sheltered and protected. 

The Party utilizes this to cause them to accept that inside the Party nothing can turn out badly, and without Big Brother, they won’t have such lives. Everybody thinks he is protected in Oceania due to Big Brother.

Law for Control:

The law is another integral asset for administrators in the novel to curtail the freedom of the citizens. No gatherings, no dates, no adoration, no residents stroll on road after check-in time, laws are all around in Oceania. In spite of the fact that these are carefully executed, they can’t be called laws hypothetically on the grounds that they are not written in a framework. 

There is no composed law in the novel, there is nothing of the sort as constitution or court, and however, that is actually how dread is made, as residents are continually living in vulnerability. There is no law that characterizes Thoughtcrime. However, Winston could be captured whenever for perpetrating Thoughtcrime by even a little action proposing rebellion and his sensory system truly turns into his greatest adversary. Since there is no composed law, the Party can alter and adjust the laws unreservedly as it needs, residents can’t be sure whether they have carried out any wrongdoing, in this way nobody is sufficiently courageous to oppose the Party by any level, so dread is made. Likewise, “Newspeak” is another law that is upheld to set the control of the Party. 

People use language to communicate their thoughts, by reducing words and words for feelings, for example, “incredible”, “awesome” and “phenomenal” by a solitary word “good” and its relative degrees “plusgood” and “plusplusgood”. Bunches of contemplations are really constrained on the grounds that they can’t be shaped semantically in individuals’ brains. Residents at that point can’t have their own basic reasoning, and just do what they are advised to do; they work similarly as computers, which shockingly are operated on two words.

More From George Orwell

• Animal Farm
• Shooting an Elephant

Themes and Analysis

By george orwell.

There is a range of themes one should consider when analyzing George Orwell’s novel '1984', such as technology and the past.

About the Book

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

The majority of these revolve around Orwell’s attempts to convey the true horror of a successful totalitarian regime . Through the novel, he sought to warn the reader of what’s at risk and how easily notions of democracy, human rights, and privacy can be forgotten.  

1984 Themes

Technology  .

As a theme, technology in 1984 is all-encompassing. It appears, through the design of the Party, everywhere. Winston knows that he’s   being surveilled at all times. This includes while he’s sleeping, in the restrooms at the Ministry of Truth where he works, and even in the woods where he meets with Julia for the first time. The “ telescreens ” which are located in the home of every Party member, are the most obvious symbols of technology. They cannot be turned off or avoided. As Winston states early on in the novel, one never knows when they’re being watched or listened to. For all he knows, the Thought Police could be observing everyone all the time.  

The Past  

The past is an obstacle the Party tackles head-on in Air Strip One. It is necessary for them to control the past if they want to control the future. This takes shape through Winston’s department in which he, and many others, rewrite events, crafting them to show Big Brother in a better light or a specific party member in a worse one. The past haunts Winston throughout the novel. He is constantly looking for answers, searching his brain for some memory of the days before the revolution, and even once quizzing an old “prole” man about his youth.  

Totalitarianism  

This is perhaps the most obvious of 1984 ’s myriad of themes. Without the totalitarian government that rules over Air Strip One and all of Oceania, there would be no novel. The government is ever-present and always aware of everything that goes on within its bounds. No one ever goes anywhere without being monitored by government figures and no one speaks out against the government for fear of reprisal.   No one is meant to care about anything with any seriousness that is not related to INGSOC /Big Brother. The government requires adoration and complete subjugation from its citizens.  

Some other themes one will encounter in 1984 are music, love/sex, and language.  

Analysis of Key Moments in 1984  

• Winston Smith goes to the antique shop, run by Mr. Charrington , and purchases a diary. This act condemns him in the eyes of the Thought Police and he knows at that point that he’s already dead. He writes “Down with Big Brother” several times in the diary, all while hiding from the telescreen in his room.  
• While walking in the “prole” section of London, Winston is inspired to confront an old man about his memories. He tries to determine what in the history books is true and what is false. After this, he returns to the antique store and buys the glass paperweight.  
• Julie slips Winston the note reading “I love you” and they begin their affair.  
• Winston decides to rent the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop so that he and Julia might meet more easily. The two spend more time together over the following months and Winston tries to figure out how the two might stay together.  
• Winston and Julie meet O’Brien at his apartment. They accept the dangers of the meeting and commit to joining the Brotherhood in rebellion against the government. This results in the two reading The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein .  
• It is revealed that Mr. Charrington was a spy for the Thought Police and turned the couple in. They are arrested in the room above the shop.  
• VII. Winston is taken to the Ministry of Love where he sees his neighbor Parsons. He is tortured and then taken to Room 101 where he confronts his biggest fear, rats. It is also revealed that O’Brien is in charge of the Ministry.  
• VIII. After months of torture, Winston turns on Julia and is eventually released.  
• The book concludes with Winstonreminiscing on the past and confessing his newfound, brainwashed, love for Big Brother.  

Style, Tone, and Figurative Language

Orwell’s novel 1984 is noted for the direct way that Orwell confronts totalitarianism and reveals the terrors one might face under its governance. He accomplishes this through very straightforward language that is generally devoid of intricacies and flourishes.  

Additionally, throughout the novel, Orwell makes use of a tone that is very dreary and pessimistic. There are only a few scenes within 1984 (such as when Julia and Winston are in the woods) that the dirty, grimy, misery and desolation of London is not emphasized. Always, Orwell makes sure to remind the reader that it is cold, rainy, and terribly unpleasant. No one has enough to eat and everyone is dirty. A great example is in Parson’s apartment when Winston notes the dust in Mrs. Parson’s wrinkles. The food is tasteless, the company dull and infuriating, the telescreens are unceasingly loud and those who are not part of the Party, the proles , are impoverished.  

Analysis of Symbols  

The paperweight  .

When Winston first comes upon the paperweight it appears to him as an emblem of the past. It was made in a time in which people made beautiful things for the sake of it. He states that he was attracted to it for its uselessness. The paperweight, and the tiny bit of coral preserved inside it, represent a hope for the past and that it has not been destroyed in its entirety.  

Emmanuel Goldstein  

It is never made clear in 1984 if Emmanuel Goldstein, or even Big Brother for that matter, really exists. Whether he was created by the Party as another enemy to fear and fight back against, or if he was a real man, he stands in the novel as a symbol of opposition. Therefore, he exists as a symbol of hope for Winston and one of terror and terrorism for all those who have been successfully brainwashed by the Party.  

The place where there is no darkness  

The line “the place where there is no darkness” came into the novel via a dream Winston Smith had. In it, he meets with O’Brien. It is partially due to this dream that Winston places his trust, foolishly, in O’Brien as someone who is just as much against the party as he is. The “place where there is no darkness” ends up being quite different from that which Winston imagined. While he’s imprisoned, he realizes that his cell, in which the light is never turned off, is the destined meeting place. The “place” symbolizes the future and the hope that Winston can’t help but hold onto, despite his knowledge of the Party’s powers, that someday things will be different.  

About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

George Orwell

George Orwell is remembered today for his social criticism, controversial beliefs, and his novels ' Animal Farm ' and '1984'.

Orwell Facts

Explore ten of the most interesting facts about Orwell’s life, habits, and passions.

Orwell's Best Books

Explore the nine books George Orwell wrote.

Democratic Socialism

Was George Orwell a Socialist?

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell

Cite This Page

Baldwin, Emma " 1984 Themes and Analysis 📺 " Book Analysis , . Accessed 5 April 2024.

It'll change your perspective on books forever.

Discover 5 Secrets to the Greatest Literature

There was a problem reporting this post.

Block Member?

Please confirm you want to block this member.

You will no longer be able to:

• See blocked member's posts
• Mention this member in posts
• Invite this member to groups

Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete.

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors.

Now streaming on:

George Orwell made no secret of the fact that his novel 1984 was not really about the future but about the very time he wrote it in, the bleak years after World War II when England shivered in poverty and hunger. In a novel where passion is depicted as a crime, the greatest passion is expressed, not for sex, but for contraband strawberry jam, coffee, and chocolate. What Orwell feared, when he wrote his novel in 1948, was that Hitlerism, Stalinism, centralism, and conformity would catch hold and turn the world into a totalitarian prison camp. It is hard, looking around the globe, to say that he was altogether wrong.

Michael Radford's brilliant film of Orwell's vision does a good job of finding that line between the "future" world of 1984 and the grim postwar world in which Orwell wrote. The movie's 1984 is like a year arrived at through a time warp, an alternative reality that looks constructed out of old radio tubes and smashed office furniture. There is not a single prop in this movie that you couldn't buy in a junkyard, and yet the visual result is uncanny: Orwell's hero, Winston Smith, lives in a world of grim and crushing inhumanity, of bombed factories, bug-infested bedrooms, and citizens desperate for the most simple pleasures.

The film opens with Smith rewriting history: His task is to change obsolete government documents so that they reflect current reality. He methodically scratches out old headlines, obliterates the photographs of newly made "unpersons," and attends mass rallies at which the worship of Big Brother alternates with numbing reports of the endless world war that is still going on somewhere, involving somebody. Into Smith's world comes a girl, Julia, who slips him a note of stunning force. The note says, "I love you." Smith and Julia become revolutionaries by making love, walking in the countryside, and eating strawberry jam. Then Smith is summoned to the office of O'Brien, a high official of the "inner party," who seems to be a revolutionary too, and gives him the banned writings of an enemy of the state.

This story is, of course, well known. 1984 must be one of the most widely read novels of our time. What is remarkable about the movie is how completely it satisfied my feelings about the book; the movie looks, feels, and almost tastes and smells like Orwell's bleak and angry vision. John Hurt , with his scrawny body and lined and weary face, makes the perfect Winston Smith; and Richard Burton , looking so old and weary in this film that it is little wonder he died soon after finishing it, is the immensely cynical O'Brien, who feels close to people only while he is torturing them. Suzanna Hamilton is Julia, a fierce little war orphan whose rebellion is basically inspired by her hungers.

Radford's style in the movie is an interesting experiment. Like Chaplin in " Modern Times ," he uses passages of dialogue that are not meant to be understood -- nonsense words and phrases, garbled as they are transmitted over Big Brother's primitive TV, and yet listened to no more or less urgently than the messages that say something. The 1954 film version of Orwell's novel turned it into a cautionary, simplistic science-fiction tale. This version penetrates much more deeply into the novel's heart of darkness.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Now playing

Dad & Step-Dad

Carlos aguilar.

Tomris Laffly

Dune: Part Two

Brian tallerico.

The Greatest Hits

Matt zoller seitz.

Asphalt City

Glenn kenny.

Mary & George

Cristina escobar, film credits.

1984 (1984)

Richard Burton as O'Brien

Suzanna Hamilton as Julia

Cyril Cusack as Charrington

Gregor Fisher as Parsons

Directed and written by

• Michael Radford

Produced by

• Simon Perry

Photographed by

• Roger Deakins
• Tom Priestley Music

Based on the novel by

• George Orwell

Latest blog posts

​Criterion Celebrates the Films That Forever Shifted Our Perception of Kristen Stewart​

The Estate of George Carlin Destroys AI George Carlin in Victory for Copyright Protection (and Basic Decency)

The Future of the Movies, Part 3: Fathom Events CEO Ray Nutt

11:11 - Eleven Reviews by Roger Ebert from 2011 in Remembrance of His Transition 11 Years Ago

1984 Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: 1984 is the story of a man questioning the system that keeps his futuristic but dystopian society afloat and the chaos that quickly ensues once he gives in to his natural curiosity and desire to be free.

Favorite quote from the author:

“The best books are those that tell you what you know already,” Winston Smith concludes as he finally leafs through the pages of a forbidden book he’d been dying to get his hands on. In that sense, 1984  by George Orwell is indeed a great book: Most of us know the word “totalitarian” indicates something bad, but only after reading a dystopian classic like this will we truly understand what an absolute government might look like in practice.

Orwell had been an Imperial policeman in Burma (modern-day Myanmar) and fought in the Spanish Civil War. He later worked as a journalist during World War II. As such, he had seen the terrifying impact of governments with complete control both first- and second-hand in Spain, Russia, and Germany.

Published in 1949, 1984 was his warning to Western nations not to succumb to then-popular communist ideas. Despite leaning more left than right himself, Orwell feared unquestioned socialism would, ultimately, escalate into a government practicing systematic oppression — and could do so within the next 35 years.

The book has since become an often-quoted literary classic, taught in classrooms around the world. It is routinely praised for its important themes, strong symbolism, and, in some cases, accurate vision.

I recently read the book for the first time. Here are three lessons from this hall-of-fame piece of English literature:

• The most powerful way to either control or empower humans is language.
• Freedom is the ability to say what’s true, to say what you think, and to make your own choices.
• Totalitarian governments succeed when they turn off our individuality via gaslighting.

Note : Since this is a historically important book, we decided to give it twice the word-space of our usual reads. We hope you think the extra length is worth it. We tried to include the most relevant plot points as well as teach you some valuable lessons along the way. Let’s discover some of the great ideas from 1984 !

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: Language is the defining way in which humans are either empowered or controlled.

The book is structured into three parts, and in the first, we get to know the protagonist Winston Smith. At nearly 40 years old and in bad physical shape, Winston is somewhat of an anti-hero. He works in the Ministry of Truth in London, which is part of Oceania, one of three large superstates , who are constantly at war with one another.

Winston’s job at the record department is to, ironically, falsify historic records. The goal is to erase everything that contradicts or makes “the Party,” the governing political power, look bad. Originals are burned in giant furnaces, and every newspaper article gets rewritten every time the Party decides a new reality is in order.

One of Winston’s colleagues works on the Party’s latest edition of the “Newspeak” dictionary. Newspeak is a language devised specifically to eliminate rebellious thinking at the root. Think about it: If you didn’t have the vocabulary to express an idea, wouldn’t that also make you less likely to think of that idea in the first place?

For example, if the word “freedom” was erased from the English language, would Americans still understand it the way it was meant in the Constitution? In the book, the word “free” still exists, but by means of deleting many other words associated with it, future “Newspeakers” would only be able to use it “in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice.'” Political or intellectual freedom “no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless.”

The form of language shapes how we can express ourselves, and how we can express ourselves shapes how and what we think. Therefore, language may be the single-most important way to either empower or enslave humans. This concept is called linguistic relativity . It’s a little overstated, but in a way, “if you have no means of saying it, you can’t think it.”

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” Winston notes at one point. Cherish your words, and be mindful of them.

Lesson 2: Freedom means being able to say what’s true, what you believe, and to make your own decisions.

Besides altering language and falsifying history, the Party also controls its citizens via more direct means. For one, everyone could be a spy, and children regularly report their parents to “the Thought Police,” a sort of Gestapo which makes inconvenient people vanish at a moment’s notice.

Another theme in the book is using technology to practice mass surveillance . Every home has a “telescreen,” a monitor that’s both recording and broadcasting at all times, and there are cameras and microphones everywhere.

In a society like that, rebellion starts with little acts, such as Winston writing into a diary in a corner of his apartment that’s hidden from the screen. In the second part of the book, however, he takes his disobedience to the next level by starting an affair with Julia, a coworker.

At first, Winston thinks Julia is a spy, but when she gives him a love note, the two begin meeting in secret, sleeping together, and commiserating about how much they hate the Party. There is, however, one key difference between them: Julia has no interest in overthrowing the Party. “If you keep the small rules you can break the big ones,” she observes, and as long as she can do what she wants right under the Party’s nose, she is happy .

Winston, however, more desperately wishes for a better future — not that he could do much to bring one about. Julia’s definition of freedom begins and ends with her choices, whereas Winston thinks freedom also means being able to think and say what is true and what you truly believe. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows,” he writes into his diary. “To die hating them,” the Party, that is, “that was freedom.”

If a government allows its citizens limited means to form an identity and actualize themselves, its people still isn’t free. Freedom includes permission to speak both facts and lies, to say what you think irrespective of whether it is right or wrong, and without these freedoms, all the others mean significantly less.

Lesson 3: A totalitarian state wins when it can gaslight its citizens into giving up their individuality.

In 2020, just as the pandemic came into full force, Julio Vincent Gambuto told us to “ prepare for the ultimate gaslighting .” “Pretty soon, as the country begins to figure out how we ‘open back up’ and move forward, very powerful forces will try to convince us all to get back to normal.” Of course, normal had disappeared, Gambuto warned. The future would — and probably should — look very different, but if we let greedy, marketing-savvy corporations  steamroll us yet again, we’d gain nothing from the great pause we had been given.

In this case, the evil Gambuto referred to was consumerism, but gaslighting, defined as “manipulating someone using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity or powers of reasoning,” is also what totalitarian governments use to bend citizens to their will.

Just before, in the last part of the book, the inevitable happens — Winston and Julia get caught by the Thought Police — Winston concludes that “sanity is not statistical.” What he means is that “there is truth and there is untruth, and if you cling to the truth even against the whole world, you are not mad.” If your government can make you think you’re mad, however, it just might get you to give up the truth in favor of a lie that’s more convenient for them. This is how totalitarian governments win: They get you to reject not just the truth but any kind of individual thinking whatsoever.

After their capture, Winston and Julia are separated, and both are tortured into not just compliance but becoming mindless Party drones like everyone else. As it turns out, Winston’s coworker O’Brien, whom he thought to be a fellow secret rebel, is actually a high-level Inner Party member, eager to brainwash him into loyalty to the Party.

Having had little individuality to begin with due to the short material leash the state kept him on, Winston is now forced to give up his last shred of self thanks to months of physical and psychological abuse. O’Brien doesn’t just get him to lie about basic reality, such as claiming he holds up five fingers when he’s only holding up four, but also to pretend Oceania has always been at war with the same enemy when, in fact, telescreens frequently announce differing warring factions.

The ultimate gaslighting, however, happens when he makes Winston doubt reality altogether and, as such, the importance of thinking for himself: “If he THINKS he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously THINK I see him do it, then the thing happens,” Winston muses. “It doesn’t really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination. What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.”

This is Winston’s final admission of defeat. After all, if the Party can rewrite history as it sees fit, it can dictate “whatever happens in all minds” and, therefore, what “truly happens.” When he returns to the real world, he is happy to drink the same gin he has always been drinking, sit at the same bar he’s always been sitting in, and no longer cares about expressing himself in any way whatsoever. Not with Julia. Nor in a diary. Not even through rebellious thoughts. Deep down, he still knows the state propaganda is nothing but lies, but from now on, he’s happy to go along with it, no longer strong enough to resist.

When other people gaslight us, it’s annoying and sad. When our governments do it, it’s dangerous, an immediate sign to take a stand and cling to the truth with all we’ve got. Always think twice about what your government does and says. Big Brother is watching.

1984 Review

Besides the fact that it is well-structured, relatively easy to understand, and successfully relies on a few strong characters to drive its points home, 1984 has held up incredibly well over time, and not just because of its predictive powers. If you read the book today, you’ll hardly feel transported to a different century. While Winston isn’t exactly carrying around a smartphone, the book’s everyday backdrop still feels technologically close enough to today to make it easy to immerse yourself in its world.

All in all, this is an outstanding book with several important, cautionary messages, some of which we should heed today. What happens if news blogs change their headlines after publication? What role does misinformation play in elections? Can our smartphones listen to us while we sleep? All of these are questions Winston Smith would ask were he alive in our world today. Reading his story will help us answer them.

While I would recommend this book to anyone, you’ll find it an especially great read if you’re concerned about freedom and sovereignty . For more context on its publication and Orwell’s ideas, check out Wikipedia . You can also dive into our list of the best and most important quotes from the book . Final fun fact: It is one of the top 15 books recommended by Jordan Peterson .

Who would I recommend our 1984 summary to?

The 17-year-old climate activist who’s not happy with how their government is handling global warming, the 55-year-old who thinks their government will surely take care of them in retirement, and anyone who’s suspicious of technology’s long-term impact on our mental and societal health.

Last Updated on September 29, 2023

Niklas Göke

Niklas Göke is an author and writer whose work has attracted tens of millions of readers to date. He is also the founder and CEO of Four Minute Books, a collection of over 1,000 free book summaries teaching readers 3 valuable lessons in just 4 minutes each. Born and raised in Germany, Nik also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration & Engineering from KIT Karlsruhe and a Master’s Degree in Management & Technology from the Technical University of Munich. He lives in Munich and enjoys a great slice of salami pizza almost as much as reading — or writing — the next book — or book summary, of course!

*Four Minute Books participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising commissions by linking to Amazon. We also participate in other affiliate programs, such as Blinkist, MindValley, Audible, Audiobooks, Reading.FM, and others. Our referral links allow us to earn commissions (at no extra cost to you) and keep the site running. Thank you for your support.

Need some inspiration? 👀 Here are... The 365 Most Famous Quotes of All Time »

Share on mastodon.

George Orwell

Everything you need for every book you read..

Paid content is paid for and controlled by an advertiser and produced by the Guardian Labs team.

How well do you know Orwell’s 1984? Take the quiz to find out

Are you more of a blagger than a member of the Brotherhood? To celebrate Audible’s new audio dramatisation of 1984, our quiz will test your knowledge of George Orwell’s dystopian classic

Many of us will have referred to or quoted George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece 1984, particularly when defending the concept of truthfulness. But it turns out that we are often less than honest about our relationship with it. Some years ago, a UK World Book Day survey found that 1984 is the book people blag about the most , with 42% of respondents admitting they’d lied about having read it when in fact they hadn’t.

The main reason for doing so was to impress people. But perhaps it’s more than that. 1984 is a cultural touchstone and many of its coinages, iconography, and quotes are so familiar that some people may feel as if they’ve read it even though they haven’t. Memory is fallible, so perhaps they assume they read it when they were younger, because so many people did. As Orwell writes in the novel: “Every now and then he’s troubled by false memories” – a line spoken to chilling effect by actor Andrew Scott, who stars in a new dramatisation from Audible alongside Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo and Tom Hardy.

But whether the untruths people tell about 1984 are deliberate or false memories, they are amusingly ironic given 1984’s key themes of truth twisting and memory editing.

So, to sort out the pretenders from the Party members, we’ve devised a quiz to give you an indication of how well you really know 1984. And even if you’re an Orwell aficionado, you might learn something new. Remember, no cheating – Big Brother is watching you.

• 1. What was George Orwell’s alternative title for 1984? Big Brother. The Last Man in Europe. Who Controls the Past Controls the Future. Reveal
• 2. What is found in Room 101? Your greatest fear. The worst pain you will ever feel. Total sensory deprivation. Reveal
• 3. Many phrases and words from 1984 have become part of our everyday language, but which of the following phrases doesn’t actually appear in 1984? Newspeak. Doublespeak. Unperson. Reveal
• 4. Actor Andrew Scott is well cast as the alluring and menacing O’Brien in Audible’s new dramatisation. But in which film did a character played by Scott attempt to create an Orwellian-style global intelligence alliance? The James Bond film Spectre. All of Us Strangers. Code 46. Reveal
• 5. Who really wrote the book that O’Brien gives to Winston? Emmanuel Goldstein. O’Brien. Syme. Reveal
• 6. Orwell famously wrote the novel in a race against time as he was dying of pulmonary tuberculosis. The feat of finishing it worsened his illness. How old was when he succumbed to it? 71. 35. 46. Reveal
• 7. How does Winston define freedom? The freedom to be able to say two plus two equals four. The open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit of human dignity. Slavery. Reveal
• 8. The physical relationship between Winston and Julia is central to their resistance against the Party. But where do they first make love? Worsley House. The upstairs room above Mr Charrington’s shop. In a natural clearing of trees in a rural woodland outside London. Reveal
• 9. By what numerical designation is Winston Smith also known? Number 6. 90210. 6079. Reveal
• 10. What activity does Winston participate in almost immediately after getting out of bed? The Two Minutes Hate. The Solidarity Service. The Physical Jerks. Reveal

Meeting O'Brien – a clip from Audible's new dramatisation

Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen $https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2024/03/12/audible_5.mp3

Audible’s new dramatisation of George Orwell’s classic tale stars Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy, with an original score by Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri. Listen now . Subscription required. See audible.co.uk for terms.

Audible and the Audible logo are trademarks of Audible, Inc or its affiliates

• advertisement features

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience and security.

Sunday, 07 April 2024

Agenda - The Sunday magazine

• Cover Story
• Entertainment

Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo star in Audible adaptation of George Orwell's ‘1984'

British stars Andrew Garfield and Cynthia Erivo are part of Audible's adaptation of renowned author George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece “1984”.

The three actors, along with popular stars Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy have lent their voices for the new take, which premiered on Audible's platform on Thursday. The company specialises in producing audio entertainment content.

The novel, which was published in 1949, is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation.

The province is dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government's invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as 'thought crimes'.

Garfield leads the adaptation as the protagonist Winston, with Erivo as Winston's lover Julia, Scott as the alluring, mysterious and dangerous O'Brien, and Hardy as the infamous Big Brother.

Garfield, best known for movies such as “Hacksaw Ridge”, “Angels in America”, “Under the Silver Lake” and “99 Homes”, said he is grateful to have got the opportunity to be playing Winston in “1984”.

“I'm very grateful to Audible to be a part of this new incarnation of Orwell's radical, political classic, 1984. A classic that, disappointingly, humanity seems to need to be constantly engaged with. To keep ourselves awake and remembering that we each have a soul, and that that soul is full of beauty and value.

"And how vital it is for each of us to resist the forces that wish to subdue and strangle that collective soul. The cast and crew is clearly the best of the best of British and Irish talent. It was truly a joy to tell this story for an audience hungry for their own liberation,” the Oscar-nominated actor said in a statement.

The audio version is directed by BAFTA award-winning Destiny Ekaragha and penned by Olivier Award-nominated writer Joe White.

According to Audible, the show stays faithful to the original text, leaning into the horror of the dystopian setting, whilst going deeper into Winston and Julia's love story.

In a world where love and sex are forbidden, Winston and Julia are the last lovers on earth, the official synopsis read.

“1984” cast also includes Romesh Ranganathan as Parsons, Natasia Demetriou as Mrs Parsons, Chukwudi Iwuji as Charrington, Francesca Mills as Syme, Katie Leung as Ling, and Alex Lawther as Ampleforth, among others.

The Audible Original adaptation has been officially authorised and endorsed by the Orwell Estate.

Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri serve as co-creators of the soundtrack of “1984”.

Trending News

Pak says it will resolutely safeguard its sovereignty; criticises rajnath singh's statement.

Liverpool goes back to top of Premier League. Man United stunned by 4-3 loss at Chelsea

RCB, RR look to tackle similar worries to make headway in IPL

RBI holds repo rate at 6.5 pc for 7th consecutive time

Mustafizur-less CSK face unpredictable Sunrisers Hyderabad

Arsenal goes back on top of Premier League and Man City routs Aston Villa to stay close

Without Messi, Inter Miami unravels late, falls 2-1 to Monterrey in Champions Cup

Al-Nassr: Cristiano Ronaldo nets another hat trick in Saudi Arabia

Taiwan's strongest earthquake in nearly 25 years damages buildings, leaving 4 dead

How RCB's planning unravelled against LSG and Mayank Yadav

Kumara claims 4 wickets and Sri Lanka wins 2nd test to sweep series over Bangladesh

AIFF suspends Deepak Sharma for alleged physical assault of two women players

State editions, left’s decline in up: a journey from red strongholds to saffron dominance, yogi: india setting a paradigm of development, welfare programmes, your dream is modi’s resolve: pm, senior leaders of sp, bsp and congress join bjp in up, delay in announcement of candidates sparks speculation in bjp, weather to remain changed for four days in state capital, sunday edition, how about breakfast at tiffany's, thich nhat hanh | a guide to mindful citizenship, peace, and enlightenment, guruspeak | shiva the most beautiful aspect of consciousness, astroturf | control the monkey mind, immigration takes centre stage in us president primaries, the ungandhian | anna hazare, e-mail this link to a friend..

• Newsletters
• Investigations
• Environment

Want some assistance?

Contact us on: [email protected]

1984 reasons conservatives should stop quoting George Orwell

All Orwell references are equal, but some are more equal than others for News Corp papers lifting the writer's words for right-wing ends.

Charlie Lewis

Apr 05, 2024

Which highbrow literary reference is the most overused in journalistic commentary? Yeats’ “The Second Coming” would be a candidate — Joan Didion used it so evocatively in the late ’60s that it echos in newspapers every time “things fall apart” and the “centre cannot hold” (which is how the vast majority of 21st-century life has felt).

Or perhaps it’s Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s summary of Voltaire’s view (always incorrectly attributed to Voltaire himself ) that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” — rarely used for any concrete examples.

Locally, writers can’t get enough of Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country formulation of Australia’s leadership as “second-rate people who share its luck”, when a government they disagree with holds office.

All are sturdy and reliable bulking agents for any political writer seeking literary heft. But surely no writer has produced more phrases that can be “tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house” than George Orwell.

Earlier this week, for example, The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen recounted the plot of Animal Farm , and concluded :

Orwell might have been writing about the obvious dangers of the new religion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Two significant reports — one in Australia, the other in the UK — suggest the new DEI oppressors may be worse than the oppressors they want to replace.

Yep, after reading research by the Close the Gap research group — which argues Indigenous academics are judged by easier criteria than non-Indigenous scholars — Albrechtsen has concluded that this, if true, represents a similar horror and affront to our collective humanity as Soviet-era repression. 

Albrechtsen’s invocation of the “all animals are equal but some are more equal than others” line echoes Peter Dutton’s rhetoric on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

In the past year in News Corp papers, Orwell has been invoked to describe:

• Labor’s misinformation bill ( many times )
• Queensland drivers’ registration fees being used to pay for the Queensland government’s $3,000 zero-emission vehicles rebate
• Guardian Australia’s coverage of Stan Grant (Albrechtsen again)
• COVID-19 restrictions
• Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian’s relationship with Daryl Maguire
• Labor’s “ Nature Positive Plan ” 
• Gender Pay Gap Reporting (Albrechtsen again)
• Defence of Sam Kerr
• Pretty much everything that anyone on the modern left has ever thought
• LGBTQIA+ support for Gaza
• Referring to trans women as women
• Big W’s announcements of support for the Voice
• Supporters of the Andrews government’s ban on gas for new builds
• Labor’s opposition to small nuclear reactors
• The Albanese government’s silence on the 70th birthday of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
• Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza ( many times), 
• Denials that US President Joe Biden is mentally declining

Thank Christ Anna Funder’s Wifedom detailed Orwell’s personal flaws, including misogyny and homophobia — if Orwell could be described as “woke” it might break News Corp apart at a cellular level like if the Ghostbusters crossed their proton pack streams .

Interestingly, this cavalcade of pieces drops down to single digits once you filter out results that fail to mention his political views.

Here’s Orwell in “ Why I Write ”:

The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.

Horrified by Western inaction at the military coup — backed by the fascist governments in Germany and Italy — against the left-wing government in Spain, Orwell involved himself in the Spanish Civil War first as a reporter, then as a soldier with a regiment of the Party of Marxist Unification. Though he never officially joined the party, he took a bullet in the throat for his troubles.

In his book about the war, Homage to Catalonia , he looks at Barcelona, seized and collectivised by its workers, and says: “There was much in it that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for.”

And while Orwell’s critiques of the left intelligentsia, and their wilful blindness towards Soviet crimes, is catnip for News Corp commentators, they rarely mention, say, his consistent criticism of conservative appeasement of Hitler — from his review of Mein Kampf :

It is a sign of the speed at which events are moving that Hurst and Blackett’s unexpurgated edition of  Mein Kampf , published only a year ago, is edited from a pro-Hitler angle. The obvious intention of the translator’s preface and notes is to tone down the book’s ferocity and present Hitler in as kindly a light as possible. For at that date Hitler was still respectable. He had crushed the German labour movement, and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. 

And when they describe Orwell’s moral clarity and foresight, they rarely mention his calls for “classless, ownerless” society and “a fundamental shift of power” in “ The Lion and The Unicorn ”.

Further, we have to marvel at the sloppiness of some of these quotes. Extra marks for this one , which appears to weld together two different quotes frequently attributed to Orwell that aren’t actually found anywhere in his writing — Orwell did not say “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”, nor “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it”, so we’re not sure from where she sourced: “George Orwell was right when he said in a time of deceit, telling the truth becomes hate speech”.

But, hey it’s not like Orwell was a stickler for precise language or anything.

Any other overused literary references come to mind? Let us know by writing to  [email protected] . Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

About the Author

Tips and Murmurs Editor @theshufflediary

Charlie Lewis pens Crikey's Tips and Murmurs column and also writes on industrial relations, politics and culture. He previously worked across government and unions and was a researcher on RN's Daily Planet . He currently co-hosts Spin Cycle on Triple R radio.

• Chris Kenny
• george orwell
• Janet Albrechtsen

Crikey is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming . We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while we review, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.

The Crikey  comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.

The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.

Add to the imbroglio of RWNJ domestic literary misappropriation Dorothea McKellar’s My Country. If I hear another (usually Boomer) cite Australia being a land “of drought and flooding rains” as a means to negate pretty much the entirety of climate scholarship, I’ll scream.

Does it to me too. While I really enjoyed the poem in Primary School in the sixties, I tend to refer to current NASA satellite data (and other sources) rather than a 100 year old poem

Thanks Charlie for calling out their projection.

Excellent short summary of various ways Orwell’s ideas and beliefs are traduced by those he would have loathed. Orwell of course warned about the power wielded by controlling the past; those who lie, misrepresent and quote Orwell out of context are at least demonstrating some understanding of his ideas.

What is your take on “Proles and animals are free”?

The problem is that those on the Right seem to view Orwell’s, 1984 , as a user guide, rather than a work of fiction.

Exactly e.g. Heritage Foundation’s (Koch Network) Daily Signal (& Daily Caller, Wire & Sceptic), FoxNews, GBNews, SAD/OZ RW MSM, Breitbart, SpikedOnline etc.

They often run not just the same RWNJ themes, but underpinned by Orwellian doublespeak and doublethink that is projected onto the centre, to mask the right’s guilt of what they complain about; e.g. anti-white racism is the issue…..

I would have thought that the jingoistic use of the phrase “the Lucky Country” was more prevalent than reference to the rest of his quote, which was that it was “run by second-rate people who share its luck”. The lack of a sense of irony in those who refer to the Lucky Country never ceases to amaze me.

Send to their inbox

Share this with friends.