Nineteen Eighty-Four

Table of contents:

1. Biographical notes on George

Orwell p. 3

2. Plot

summary

p. 3

3. Description of the main

characters

p. 5

3.1. Winston

Smith

3.2.

Julia

3.3. O'Brien

4. Comment on language and

style

p. 6

5. Comment on main

themes

p. 7

6. Personal

opinion

p. 9

7.

Bibliography

p. 10

7.1.Primary sources

7.2.Secondary sources

1. Biographical notes on George Orwell

George Orwell, whose real name is Eric Blair, was born in India in 1903,

and was educated at Eton. From 1922 to 1928 he served in Burma in the

Indian Imperial Police. For the next two years he lived in Paris, and

then he came to England as a school teacher. Later he worked in a

bookshop. In 1937 he went to Spain to fight for the Republicans and was

wounded. During the Second World War he was a member of the Home Guard

and worked for the BBC. In 1943 he joined the staff of a newspaper and

was sent to France and Germany as a special correspondent. He suffered

very much sickness and poverty during his life and died of tuberculosis

in 1950.

His works include: Down and Out in Paris and London, Burmese Days,

The Road to Wigan Pier, Coming Up For Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

and Homage to Catalonia. Animal Farm made Orwell famous when it was

published in 1945; Nineteen Eighty-Four had a similar success later.

2. Plot summary

Winston Smith, who works in the Records Department in the Ministry of

Truth, can vaguely remember a time when his parents were alive and life

was different; he hates the present regime. He dares to buy a diary,

although writing is forbidden, and he writes down his free thoughts. He

also knows that the propaganda consists of lies and that the confessions

made by enemies of the Party are not true, as he has seen old newspaper

articles by chance in his records office. Normally all old records and

books are destroyed or changed to suit the purposes of the Party. He

notices an intelligent-looking Party member at his Ministry called

O'Brien, and he thinks that he is on his side, but does not dare to

speak to him.

A girl called Julia, who works at Winston's Ministry, and whom he

distrusts, slips a paper one day into his hand with the words "I love

you"1 on it. This starts a secret love affair between the two. They meet

secretly, as often as they can. One day the expected sign from O'Brien

comes. He tells Winston he wants to see him about his work and invites

him to his house. Julia and Winston go there and O'Brien tells them that

he is a secret member of the Brotherhood; they swear that they will do

anything in their power to overthrow the Party. Some days later Winston

is secretly given the forbidden book by Emmanuel Goldstein, "The Theory

and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" (1984, p.191). This describes

the true state of the world and the terrible methods of the Party and it

expresses what Winston already knows and feels.

He and Julia meet secretly above the antique shop of a kind old

man, Mr. Charrington. Suddenly, one day, the house is surrounded and the

couple are arrested by the Thought Police, led by Mr. Charrington,

changed, younger and without his wig of white

hair. Winston

is imprisoned in the Ministry of Love and meets many old acquaintances.

O'Brien comes in and Winston thinks that he, too, has been arrested, but

O'Brien turns out to be the head of the Ministry and is responsible for

the torture.

Winston confesses to everything he is accused of, including

assassination and sabotage. At last he is taken to a room where O'Brien

directs the worst tortures of all. Every time he speaks the truth,

painful electric shocks are run through his body, so that at last he

swears that 2 + 2 = 5 and really believes it. But O'Brien is still not

satisfied, because although Winston has betrayed Julia often under

torture, he has not stopped loving her. So Winston is brought into the

dreaded "Room 101" (1984, p.295), where people are tortured by the

"worst thing in the world" (1984, p.296) which varies from individual to

individual. In Winston's case it is a cage of enormous starving rats

which is fixed to his face, the doors ready to open and let them out. In

his horror he shouts out "Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! [...]

Not me!" (1984, p.300). This is what O'Brien is waiting for the final

betrayal.

Winston is free again; one day he meets Julia again in the Park. But she

has betrayed him too, and they have changed towards each other.

Winston is sitting in a cafe, on the telescreen news of another

great victory is broadcasted. He looks at the huge portrait of Big

Brother. He has won the victory over himself. He loves Big Brother.

3. Description of the main characters

3.1. Winston Smith

Winston Smith, a member of the Outer Party, is a thirty-nine years old

man who is filled with an impotent rage at those who control his life.

He is a loner and a loser, a prospectless member of the lower

upper-middle class. He thinks and works against the Party because he

feels responsable for the next generation. But in the third part

Winston, "The Last man in Europe"2, is dehumanized and swayed in any

direction ideologically because he was exposed to sufficient physical

torture. At the end he loves Big Brother.

3.2. Julia

Julia, also a member of the Outer Party, is a sympathetic an pleasing

character. It is possible that she contains something of Orwell's first

wife, Eileen, who died in 1945. Certainly Julia has a solididity and a

touch of humour that are lacking elsewhere in this novel. The biggest

relief is to discover that politics bores Julia stiff:

" 'I'm not interested in the next generation. [...] I'm only interested

in us.' 'You're only a rebel from the waist downwards,' he [Winston]

told her. She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms round

him in delight." (1984, p.163)

But at the end she is also dehumanized like Winston. She betrayed him,

too.

3.3. O'Brien

O'Brien is a member of the Inner Party. He is an intellectual construct:

not a flesh-and-blood human being at all, but the ultimate black image

of totalitarism. During the novel he always behaves in the way of a

teacher or parent. Not only does he try to make Winston betray Julia,

but also stop loving her. This is the complete surrender which O'Brien

works for. He and his Party are the only winners.

4. Comment on language and style

In Orwell's novel, there is used a new and interesting language; it is

Newspeak. Newspeak is a new form of English in which the vocabulary has

been gradually reduced in power. Words that are inoffensive and

inarticulate are foisted as the correct way to speak. Newspeak is the

deliberate use of words that are ambiguous or deceptive in an attempt to

control public opinion. The partly use of this language may be the

reason that Nineteen Eighty-Four has its literary weakness, its lack of

subtlety in his characterisation and its crude plot.

Using Newspeak works well as entertainment, but it has limitations

as art. The narrative lacks development, the dialogue is sometimes weak,

and most of the people are two-dimensional, existing only to explain a

political point or permit a side-swipe at a species in the real world.

If Nineteen Eighty-Four is an accessible novel, that is because of the

lucidity of Orwell's writing.

The novel is written partly in third person and partly in first

person seen through the main character's eyes.

5. Comment on main themes

Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is written in 1949, is a nightmare picture

of life in totalitarian England as it might be in the next generation.

Orwell puts forward the horrible theory in Nineteen Eighty-Four that

people can be dehumanized and swayed in any direction ideologically if

exposed to sufficient physical torture. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a vision

of the future as nightmare rather than paradise. Orwell's police state

is terrifying, life in it is grim and miserable. The book is a warning

of what might happen if totalitarianism covered the whole world.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four the world is divided up into the three

super-states of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, each in a permanent state

of war with the other. Britain is part of Oceania and has the name of

Airstrip One. It is governed by the Party through the Ministry of Peace,

which runs the war, the Ministry of Love, which accommodates the

headquarters of the secret police, the Ministry of Plenty, which deals

in scarcities, and the Ministry of Truth, which handles propaganda. The

Leader, who is never seen in person, is Big Brother and his face looks

down from every wall. In every room there are telescreens which not only

broadcast propaganda but can see what the people are doing in their

private lives. No one is allowed to criticise the Party and

"thoughtcrime" (1984, p.30) is punished by terrible torture and certain

death. Living conditions are bad, everything is scarce, and of bad

quality. The enemy of the people is Emmanuel Goldstein, who directs the

activities of the Brotherhood, Oceania's enemies in the other

super-states. Every day there is a "Two Minutes Hate" (1984, p.13),

during which the face of Emmanuel Goldstein is shown on screens and the

population is whipped up into a frenzy of fury against him.

The Party's goals can be summed up in their mottos. "WAR IS PEACE,

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH." (1984, p.6)

War Is Peace is the belief that when two countries are perpetually

at war they are perpetually at peace. Both countries are gaining a few

cities at a time, and then losing them. The war never endangers any of

The Party's inhabited land. When this happens both sides citizens are at

peace and not threatened by war. The only reason, then, for war is to be

used as a destruction of produce. Overprotection of goods can cause

equal distribution of them. This is bad because with equal distribution

of goods comes true socialism. The Party was never interested in this

idea. The Party sees that throughout all of recorded history there has

been three distinct classes of citizens, the High, the Middle, and the

Low. The High always wishes to stay high. The Middle is never contempt

with being the middle, and eventually displaces the high. The Middle

then breaks off into the high and middle again and the process is

started over again. The Low usually wants to destroy all such

classifications and create true socialism. Ingsoc, which means English

socialism, knows what it wants. It is the high, it wishes to stay high.

The way it does it is by keeping its middle and low in constant

drudgery. They falsify information to make it seem as if it is always

getting better, and through twists in double speak, it is.

Freedom Is Slavery means that as an individual you will die off. As

a group you are immortal. You are part of a collective culture that will

live on forever.

Ignorance Is Strength is the idea that by keeping the people

ignorant, they will not realize what is really going on. The Party keeps

The Outer Party ignorant by constantly changing The Truth, and

destroying all data that could prove the situation otherwise. The Party

keeps The Proles ignorant by keeping them content. They are allowed

certain liberties like love, having a family, and sexual relations,

frankly because they are considered stupid animals. They are of no

menace to The Party because they are incapable of intelligent thought.

6. Personal opinion

I was fascinated how Orwell succeeded in presenting such a terrifying

picture of life under constant surveillance and of complete

dehumanisation. I am deeply impressed by the control the totalitarian

regime of Big Brother is able to occupy. Orwell demonstrates in a lucid

way what will happen if the individuum loses his majority, if Big

Brother takes control of human beings. I guess the novel wants to impart

the understanding that it depends now on the individuum not to let come

true such a future. But the problem seems to be that in our present the

individuum and the whole society is more and more apathetic, indifferent

and gullible, so it will be possible to take control over the world, if

you take advantage of this weakness.

In order to change the future and the present you do not need to

own a time machine. You simply have to control the past. In 1984 the

government, or The Party, controlled the past. They were able to destroy

all proof that something did or did not happen. If at the beginning of

the year The Party published an estimate that 10 million shoes would be

produced that year, and only 5 million were produced they would destroy

all evidence of them ever having estimated 10 million. They would find

all of the newspapers with this and destroy it. The Ministry of Truth

would have someone change the estimate to something like 3 million

shoes. Then the next newspaper article would state that they actually

over-filled their quota.

This is a very scary thought. The Party in the book was able to

destroy all of the references that something, even a person, ever

existed. Although you knew he had, you could never find proof that it

was true.

The really scary part about this is that we could do this with even

greater ease today. Since most information is now kept on disks, and

backed up onto even more magnetic media, one could simply destroy all

areas where the data said that someone had existed. The only problem

would be finding the newspapers and other references, which could be

taken care of by agents of the government.

7. Bibliography

7.1. Primary sources:

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,

1989.

Orwell, George. Animal Farm. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971.

7.2. Secondary sources:

Atkins, John. "George Orwell". Collier's Encyclopedia, XVIII. USA:

Crowell Collier and Ma

cimilian, 1967.

Kindlers Neues Literatur Lexikon, XII. München: Kindler Verlag GmbH,

1998.

The Pelican Guide to English Literature, VII. England: Penguin Books

Ltd., 1973.

A Short History of English and American Literature. Stuttgart: Klett

Verlag, 1996.

.

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