Nineteen Eighty-Four

Summary

Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Airstrip One, the former Britain, now a province of the superstate Oceania. Oceania is ruled by the Party, whose ideology is called Ingsoc and whose face is Big Brother, a leader who may not exist. Telescreens watch every room, the Thought Police hunt for dissent, and the history of the past is rewritten to match the Party's present needs. Oceania is permanently at war with one of the two other superstates, Eurasia and Eastasia, and the enemy can change overnight without anyone admitting that it has. Winston Smith, a minor Outer Party member, works at the Ministry of Truth altering old newspaper articles. He begins a secret diary, an act punishable by death, and starts an illicit love affair with Julia, a young woman from the Fiction Department. They rent a room above the junk shop of Mr. Charrington, believing themselves unobserved. Winston becomes convinced that O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, belongs to the Brotherhood, the underground resistance said to be led by Emmanuel Goldstein. O'Brien gives him Goldstein's book, which explains how the Party keeps power through permanent war, controlled scarcity and doublethink, the habit of holding two contradictory beliefs at once. The trap closes. Mr. Charrington is an agent of the Thought Police, and O'Brien is a loyal servant of the Party. Winston is taken to the Ministry of Love, where O'Brien tortures and re-educates him over a long period, insisting that reality exists only in the collective mind of the Party and that power is pursued for its own sake. In Room 101, faced with the thing he fears most, Winston betrays Julia. Released, broken and indifferent, he meets her once more without feeling. The novel's final line records that he has come to love Big Brother. An appendix, written as if from a later time, explains the principles of Newspeak, the official language designed to make unorthodox thought impossible by shrinking vocabulary. Orwell's coinages, including Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak and the memory hole, have entered ordinary English, and the adjective Orwellian is widely used for official deception and surveillance. The novel is one of the most widely taught books in English, and Orwell described it as a warning about where totalitarian ideas could lead, not a prediction.

Top Lessons

• Control of the past

  The Party rewrites records so that it is always right. Students can consider why the novel treats memory and accurate records as a form of freedom.

• Language and thought

  Newspeak shrinks vocabulary so that dissent cannot be expressed. The novel invites discussion of how words shape what people can think and say.

• Truth under pressure

  O'Brien insists that two and two make five if the Party says so. The novel asks what it means to hold on to plain facts when power demands otherwise.

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