# Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four | Author | George Orwell |
| Cover artist | Michael Kennar |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Dystopian, political fiction, social science fiction |
| Set in | London, Airstrip One, Oceania |
| Publisher | Secker & Warburg |
| Publication date | 8 June 1949 (1949-06-08) |
| Media type | Printed (hardback and paperback) |
| Pages | 328 |
| OCLC | 470015866 |
| Dewey Decimal | 823.912 |
| Preceded by | *Animal Farm* |

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a novel written by George Orwell in 1948.

The book is what Orwell thought the world might look like in the future. It describes a terrifying world where governments control and watch everyone's lives.

The main character is Winston Smith. He lives in a country of Oceania that is ruled by a powerful "Party" and its leader Big Brother and is a state of endless war. He dreams of changing this. He falls in love with Julia, who agrees with him, and he leads her into rebellion against the government.

The book is famous. Many of its words and phrases are also famous. Among these are *Big Brother*, *Newspeak*, *Room 101* and *unperson*. In 2005, *Time* (a magazine) called it one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

In the European Union, and the United Kingdom, the copyright of the book ran out on 1 January 2021. That means anyone can reprint the book, or use it as a basis for the story on another medium.

## Plot

The year 1984 is viewed from 1948. The world of the future is divided into three massive countries that are in endless war with each other: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Each country has a totalitarian government, meaning that the government tries to control everything that its people do. Great Britain is now named "Airstrip One" and is part of Oceania. Oceania is ruled by "the Party". They use the "thought police" and "telescreens" (two-way televisions) to spy on people. People also have to show love for the Party and its leader, Big Brother. While pictures of Big Brother are everywhere, he is never seen for real, and he may not even exist.

Winston Smith is an ordinary member of the Party. He works for the "Ministry of Truth". His job is to re-write history when the Party wants him to. The Party kills anyone whom it thinks threatens its grip on power, sometimes for reasons that make no sense. When these people are killed, the Party also hides any sign that they existed. Winston works hard and pretends to love the Party. His secret is that he hates the Party and dreams of fighting them. Winston buys a diary from a shopkeeper called Mr Charrington.

Smith hides the diary in his room, where he writes about his secrets. He falls in love with a woman called Julia. The Party will not allow this, so they go out into the countryside to meet in secret. Later, they start meeting in a room at Mr Charrington's shop. O'Brien, an important member of the Party, tells Winston that he also hates the Party. Winston and Julia meet O'Brien at his home, where he gives them a book named The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. The book is about how the Party stays in power. It says that the Party can be stopped if ordinary people rise up against it.

Winston and Julia are betrayed when the Thought Police storm the room and revealed that Mr Charrington is an undercover agent for the Thought Police. Winston is taken to the "Ministry of Love". This is the prison of Oceania. O'Brien tells Winston that he was only pretending to be his friend. Winston is hurt badly and told he must stop hating the Party and do everything they want him to do, even if he has to say that "2 + 2 = 5". O'Brien says that once this is finished, Winston will leave the Ministry of Love and will return to a normal life for some months or years. After this, they will shoot him. But first, they want to make him turn against Julia.

In the end, Winston is taken to "Room 101", where he must face his worst fear: rats. As a cage of hungry rats is pushed against his face, Winston tells them to "Do it to Julia!" After Winston leaves the Ministry of Love, he meets Julia. He says he turned against her in Room 101, and she says she did the same. Winston then sits alone in a café. The last words of the story are: "He loved Big Brother".

## Background

Orwell got the idea for the book from the London newspapers. They printed how much the country's supplies increased during World War II, while they were actually very low on supplies. He started writing a political satire of the possible condition of Britain in 50 years. He wrote it in 1948, mostly during a visit to Jura, Scotland. He sent the work to his publishers in December 1948.

## Setting

A map of the three countries that rule the world in *Nineteen Eighty-Four*: Oceania is in black, Eurasia in red, and Eastasia in yellow.
The main character, Winston Smith, lives in the town of London, United Kingdom (although in the novel, the United Kingdom is called "Airstrip One"). Airstrip One is only a small part of the mega-state (big country) of Oceania. Oceania is a very large country. The Americas, southern Africa, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand all came together to create the country of Oceania. There are two other countries in the novel - Eurasia, and Eastasia. Europe (not including the United Kingdom) and Russia make up the country of Eurasia. China, Japan, and Korea make up the country of Eastasia. The equatorial countries (the Middle East, North Africa, etc.) are not part of any of these three countries, as Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia are always fighting over these places.

People in Oceania belong to three groups:

* Inner Party: The most powerful people in the country. They live like rich people.
* Outer Party: People like Winston and Julia. They have a better life than most people. They are always being watched.
* Proles: Ordinary people. They are poor, but have more freedom than the Outer Party.

Party workers belong to four *ministries*:

* Ministry of Truth: They tell people what to think. They also make all of the country's art and propaganda and manipulate past records to align with the narrative of the party.
* Ministry of Peace: They run the military
* Ministry of Plenty: They run the economy and food rationing
* Ministry of Love: A prison and responsible for policing

The leader of Ocenia is Big Brother. His picture is seen everywhere, along with the words "Big Brother is watching you." However, it is not clear if he is a real person. Emmanuel Goldstein and O'Brien both say that the main role of Big Brother is to be a symbol for the Party. O'Brien also says that Big Brother will never die.

## Ideas

The book was an attack on totalitarianism (when a government tries to control people's lives) and dictatorship (rule by one person).

George Orwell was a democratic socialist who was against any form of dictatorship steming from personal experience including his service in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republicans. He once wrote:

> "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".
>
>

 Later he repeated that idea, writing about *1984*

> as a show-up of the perversions . . . which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism
>
>

### Newspeak

Newspeak is a fictional language (artlang) that appears in the book *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. It is the official language of Oceania. At the end of his book, George Orwell described Newspeak. It started out as the English language, but the number of words gets smaller each year. The Party are trying to stop people from rebelling, so it destroys words like "freedom" and "love", saying that people cannot think of it if there is no word for it. In the society, this is supposed to prevent thoughtcrime, which is thinking against the Party, or thinking about the past.

For example, a person could not say "I want to be free", because there was no word for "free" any more, so the person could not describe what he or she was feeling. Some conservatives now use the term Newspeak to describe "politically correct" speech. "Thoughtcrime" made fun of censorship. "Newspeak" is also used for military reasons, such as Oceania's Ministry of Peace (in Newspeak: "Minipax"), really the war department. Words like "Peace", "Truth", "Love", and "Plenty" were used in Newspeak a lot to mean their exact opposites. Another "Newspeak" word, *joycamp*, means "forced labor camp". Other "Newspeak" words were used for political reasons. Words like "*crimethink*" were defined by the "Party", and became laws of the land.

### Others

* **2 + 2 = 5:** The idea that if a government is so powerful, it can make people think that "2 + 2 = 5".
* **Big Brother:** The leader of Oceania, though he is never seen and he may not even be real. Emmanuel Goldstein (who may not be real either) says that the Party makes people think Big Brother is its leader because people find it easier to love one person than a group of people.
* **doublethink:** When someone can think that two opposing things are true (e.g., "Oceania is winning the war." "Oceania will lose the war unless it sends more soldiers.") the most famous is the slogan "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength".
* **endless war:** These large wars are being fought just to keep people busy. The sides in the wars sometimes change. When this happens, they pretend there was no change and that the sides were always the same.
* **Ingsoc:** This is short for "English socialism". This is the Party's idea on how Oceania should be run.
* **memory hole:** A hole that things can be thrown down, which leads to a furnace.
* **Room 101:** A room in the Ministry of Love where someone faces their worst fear.
* **telescreen:** A type of television. People can watch things on the telescreen, but it is also has a camera for watching people.
* **Thought Police:** A police who catch people who commit *thoughtcrime*.
* **thoughtcrime:** When someone has thoughts that the Party does not want them to think.
* **unperson:** A person who has been killed by the Party. When this happens, all signs that this person existed are destroyed.
* **vaporized:** When someone is turned into an *unperson*.

## Reception

*Book* magazine ranked the character of Big Brother as #59 on its "100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900" list.

Nineteen Eighty-Four's movie adaptation received a 74% (from critics) on Rotten Tomatoes, and on Metacritic received a 67.

## Related pages

* Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984 movie)
* *Le Monde'*s 100 Books of the Century

* Aubrey, Crispin & Chilton, Paul (Eds). (1983). *Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984: Autonomy, Control & Communication*. London: Comedia. ISBN 0-906890-42-X.
* Hillegas, Mark R. (1967). *The Future As Nightmare: H.G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians*. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-0676-X
* Orwell, George (1949). *Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel*. London: Secker & Warburg. Archived 2012-05-04 at the Wayback Machine
* Orwell, George (1949). *Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel*. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Archived 2012-05-04 at the Wayback Machine
* Orwell, George (2003). *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. Thomas Pynchon (Foreword); Erich Fromm (Afterword). Plume. ISBN 9780452284234. *Afterword* by Erich Fromm (1961) pp. 324–337. ISBN 0452284236

Orwell's text has a "Selected Bibliography", pp. 338–9; the foreword and the afterword each contain further references.
* Michael Shelden (1991). *Orwell: The Authorised Biography*. Pearson Education New Zealand Limited. ISBN 9780434695171.
* David Smith; Michael Mosher (1984). *Orwell for Beginners*. Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative. ISBN 9780863160660.
* Steinhoff, William R. (1975). *George Orwell and the Origins of 1984*. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472874002. ISBN 0472874004
* Tuccille, Jerome. (1975). *Who's Afraid of 1984? The case for optimism in looking ahead to the 1980s*. New York: Arlington House. ISBN 0-87000-308-9.
* West, W. J. (1992). *The Larger Evils – Nineteen Eighty-Four, the truth behind the satire*. Edinburgh: Canongate Press. ISBN 0-86241-382-6.

## Other websites

* On-line comic version of *1984* Archived 2007-03-13 at the Wayback Machine