1984 By George Orwell 1903 1950

1984 by George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

1984
by George Orwell (1903
- 1950)

Type of Work:

Futuristic, cautionary novel

Setting

London, in the mythical country of Oceania;

1984 (in the future)

Principal Characters

Winston Smith, a rebel against society

Julia, his lover

Mr. Charrington, an elderly antique shop
owner

O'Brien, the only member of the Inner

Party Winston trusts

Story Overveiw

As Winston Smith entered his apartment
building, he passed a familiar poster. "It was one of those pictures which
are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER

IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran." Then Winston opened the door
to his flat to be greeted by a voice on his "telescreen" - a device he
could dim, but never shut off completely. Telescreens broadcasted government
propaganda and served as the eyes and ears of the Thought Police, who scrutinized
everyone for any possible deviation from acceptable thought or action.

In the flat was a tiny alcove just out
of sight from the telescreen's vision. Winston sat down to write in his
diary, an act that was not officially illegal "but if detected it was reasonably
certain that it would be punished by death . . . " While he sat writing,
a recent memory stirred in his mind; the "Two Minutes Hate," a government-sponsored
work break in which every worker at the Ministry of Truth was required
to participate, had consisted that day of an interlude when everyone raged
and screamed as the telescreen alternately flashed images of enemy Eurasian
soldiers and Goldstein, an abhorred traitor. That morning, Winston had
noticed a "bold-looking girl of about twenty-six" who worked in the Fiction

Department. This particular girl - wearing the bright scarlet sash of the
official anti-sex league - gave him "the impression of being more dangerous
than most," and Winston had that unnerving feeling that she was watching
him.

A few days later, Winston walked through
the working-class "prole" neighborhood to the antique shop where he had
bought his diary. Though class barriers stood tensely in place throughout

Oceania, Mr. Charrington, the shop owner, welcomed him and invited him
upstairs to see other items. There wasn't much there, but Winston liked
the old-fashioned room; it didn't even have a telescreen.

When Winston again slipped out onto the
street, he passed the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department. Now
he was sure she was an informant.

Back at work, as Winston walked toward
the lavatory, the girl reappeared in the hall. Then, just a few feet in
front of him, she stumbled and fell. When he offered his hand to help her
up, she slipped him a scrap of paper. Shaken, Winston decided to open the
paper later at the cubicle where he rewrote old newspaper articles, deleting
any reference to persons who had deviated from orthodoxy.

Back at his desk, Winston opened the message
and read: "I love you." Now he was intrigued - and terrified. Like writing
in a diary, an affair between party members was "legal", but punishable
by death.

Winston and the girl were finally able
to arrange a rendezvous in the country. But even there, there was always
the possibility of concealed microphones. So, after meeting at the selected
spot, the pair walked on in silence until they found a remote, heavily
forested area. Winston didn't even yet know the girl's name: "I'm thirty-nine
years old," he began. "I've got a wife that I can't get rid of. I've got
varicose veins. . . " The girl replied, "I couldn't care less." She shared
some blackmarket chocolate with him, and then they made love. Afterwards,
while the girl slept, Winston thought about what they had done. "You could
not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because
everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a
battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It
was a political act."

Winston now saw the girl - Julia - whenever
he could. She explained her survival philosophy: "I always carry one end
of a banner in the processions. I always look cheerful and I never shirk
anything. Always yell with the crowd, that's what I say. It's the only
way to be safe." For their clandestine meetings, Winston hit upon the idea
of renting Mr. Charrington's room above the antique shop. Although the
room offered them privacy, "both of them knew it was lunacy;" in the end,
they would be caught. Occasionally the lovers "talked of engaging in active
rebellion against the Party, but with no notion of how to take the first
step." They considered joining a mysterious subversive group called the

"Brotherhood," but didn't know if this legendary underground cabal even
existed.

Besides Julia, there was one person Winston
felt he could trust. For months a "strange intimacy" had been ripening
between himself and an Inner Party member named O'Brien, who worked at
the Ministry of Truth. No words had passed between them; only glances that
seemed to reflect the same brooding rebel spirit in both men. Then one
day O'Brien spoke up and asked Winston his opinion of the revised "Newspeak"
dictionary. Winston responded that he hadn't seen it yet. O'Brien invited
him to pick up a copy at his house later that week.

When Winston and Julia arrived at O'Brien's
spacious home, their host surprised them by instructing his servant to
turn off the telescreen - one of many privileges extended to Inner Party
members. Now that they could not be overheard, Winston admitted why they
had really come: "We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy ...
working against the Party, and that you are involved in it. We want to
join .... We are enemies of the Party." O'Brien nodded his head and lifted
his glass. "To Emmanuel Goldstein," he intoned, referring to the reputed
leader of the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood existed, then! But before they
could join, O'Brien had to know the extent of their commitment. When both

Winston and Julia conceded that they would do anything to weaken the Party's
power, he gave them a copy of Goldstein's book, the "Bible" of the Brotherhood.

The next week was "Hate Week" at the Ministry
of Truth - seven hectic days devoted to stirring up hatred against the
nation of Eurasia, Oceania's current enemy at arms. Unfortunately, on the
sixth day of Hate Week, Oceania also declared war against Eastasia. This
meant that Winston, already exhausted, had to go back and re-alter news
articles to reflect the change in enemies. Finally though, he and Julia
were able to sneak away to Charrington's shop to read Goldstein's treatise.

It explained how the Party used the threat of outside aggression to control
the people, diverting their frustrations away from pandemic governmental
corruption and food shortages.

Suddenly an "iron voice" reverberated from
behind a picture in the room. "Remain exactly where your are," the voice
commanded. "Make no movement until you are ordered." Then Thought Police
burst in, with Mr. Charrington behind them, shouting orders. The two were
taken away in separate vehicles.

Standing alone in a tiny cell in the Ministry
of Love, Winston observed as other prisoners were brought in, some badly
beaten and pleading not to be exiled to "Room 101" - the room containing"the most horrible thing in the world." One man raved: "... I've got a
wife and three children .... You can take the whole lot of them and cut
their throats in front of my eyes, [but] not room 101!"

Winston had seen nothing of Julia, but
after a while, O'Brien came to Winston's cell. "They got you too!" Winston
cried. "They got me a long time ago, " O'Brien answered back with "mild,
almost regretful irony." As it turned out, O'Brien was to be Winston's
interrogator; he was charged with the task of making Winston "love Big

Brother."

For weeks Winston was beaten, starved,
and deprived of sleep. He was hooked to a machine designed to teach him
a new mode of thinking. O'Brien, acting as "teacher," would inflict greater
and greater levels of pain on Winston, and then as "savior," would benevolently
release the lever. When O'Brien held up four fingers and asked how many
there were, Winston replied four. The needle on the machine's dial shot
up, as frightening shocks vibrated through his limbs and joints. Then Winston
answered five fingers but O'Brien recognized the lie and delivered even
greater pain. "You are a slow learner," said O'Brien gently. "How can I
help it?" Winston blubbered. "How can I help seeing what is in front of
my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are
five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once.

You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane," O'Brien shrieked.

"You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him .... Room 101!"

"Can you think of a single degradation
that has not happened to you?" O'Brien asked as they reached Room 101.

Winston could only answer, "I have not betrayed Julia. . ."

In Room 101 Winston was made to confront
his personal "most horrible thing in the world" - a cage full of hungry
rats. The moment that O'Brien reached to lift the gate of the cage, Winston's"bowels seemed to turn to water," and suddenly he knew that there was one
and only one way to save himself; "he must interpose another human being
... between himself and the rats."

"Do it to Julia!" he screamed frantically.

"Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her..."

Released from the Ministry of Love, Winston
spent his time in the Chestnut Tree Cafe, drinking an endless supply of

"Victory Gin" and waiting for the day when "they" put a gun to the back
of his head and pulled the trigger. He saw Julia on occasion, but there
was really nothing left to say between them. A familiar and once sinister
refrain from prison now echoed in them both: "Under the spreading chestnut
tree, I sold you and you sold me."

And so, "everything was all right, the
struggle was finished. [Winston] had won the victory over himself. He loved

Big Brother."

Commentary

Written in 1948 and published the year
following, 1984 (the year-numbers were transposed) has provoked discussion
and controversy ever since. Though a world war had just been fought to
squelch the tyranny of a Totalitarian regime, Orwell warned that the world
was yet heading towards just such a political system. He found it especially
ironic that the champions of thought should become the chief instruments
of its suppression.

Orwell's novel was intended as an urgent
warning that political decisions in the near future could create a brutally
stifled society of "Newspeak" (where words are so abstracted from events
and actions that they take on their exact opposite meaning) and "Doublethink"
(the power to hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously). "Big Brother"
and "Room 101 " - and many other graphic coinages from its pages - remain
as standard references in our language, years after 1984 has come and gone,
an indication of the book's refound social influence

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