language in 1984 essay

Language as the “Ultimate Weapon” in Nineteen Eighty-Four

This processes of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets . . . Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. (42)

Works Cited

Language in Orwell’s 1984 as a Means of Manipulation and Control Essay

George Orwell’s novel 1984 is a classic of dystopian literature where a future society is presented, in which rewriting history and control over language are used to manipulate the masses. The novel became a bestseller and is widely considered a cult work of 20th-century literature. It was written in 1949 but still resonates with readers today due to its relevance and talent to penetrate the essence of contemporary societal issues. Orwell’s 1984 is a perfect illustration of how language can be utilized to control people politically and manipulate them psychologically.

One of the key themes in the novel is the control over language and rewriting history. In the world of 1984 , the government uses language as a tool for shaping and manipulating people’s thoughts and behaviors (Hama 267). In the novel, the government creates a new language called Newspeak to limit people’s cognitive abilities by forbidding the use of certain words and phrases (Orwell 6). Additionally, the ruling class rewrites history to conceal its mistakes and maintain its power. That way, the government controls the masses by manipulating their thoughts and memories.

In Orwell’s book, language serves as an important tool of power and control. The main character, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical records to fit the existing political situation (Orwell 6). This means that the past can be changed and controlled by those in power. In the novel, Orwell describes how the Ministry of Truth rewrites the history of World War II to demonstrate that Oceania has always been a Eurasian ally, not their enemy (17). The author, thus, shows that power controls not only the present but also the past, which is the foundation of people’s identity and culture. Changing the past, in turn, enables the government to control the future.

Orwell’s book also indicates that language is an instrument of thought control. In 1984 , Newspeak, the language created by the government, was adopted as the official language of the country. This language was specifically designed to eliminate people’s ability to think and express their thoughts. Hence, since individuals could not express their thoughts and feelings in the new language, they were not able to talk about those important things at all. As Hossain remarks, the language in Oceania was utilized more for “intimidation” than “regular communication” (24). Newspeak is intended to destroy all ideological thoughts that contradict the country’s political regime. One example of Newspeak in the novel is the word ‘freedom,’ which is replaced with ‘unfreedom’ (Orwell 256). Thus, it is apparent that control of language leads to the restriction of people’s feelings and thoughts.

In the novel, the government establishes a monopoly on the use of language. People in Oceania cannot speak or write anything that contradicts the government’s political ideology. One example from the novel is the ban on using words that may cause government dissatisfaction, such as ‘freedom’ or ‘truth.’ As Hodge and Fowler note, such an “extreme compression” of the language led to a total elimination of ideas (7). Hence, people were forced to use only simplified variants of words and language, which made it impossible to express themselves to the full extent.

Furthermore, the government in the novel promotes the idea of doublethink, which allows people to believe in two conflicting ideas simultaneously. One example from the novel is the government slogan, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength,” which contradicts common sense but is still accepted by society (Orwell 6). These instances indicate how the government in 1984 uses control over language and rewrites history to manipulate the masses and create their own version of the truth. As Orwell states, the control of one’s past depends “above all on the training of memory” (269). Therefore, the government took away people’s identity and history with the aim of controlling both their present and future.

Orwell also shows that the government can use information technologies to control people. In the book, the government used televisions that served as both a source of information and a means of control over people (Orwell 259). The televisions were constantly on and could not be turned off, and even when they were off, they could serve as a means of surveillance. Therefore, the novel 1984 is a criticism of totalitarianism and dictatorship, which are popular in the world. Orwell warns that if the state controls language and history, it can easily manipulate the masses, not allowing them to think and express their views freely. The author suggests that readers always remain vigilant and resist such threats to freedom.

Orwell’s 1984 is a work that leaves an indelible mark on the hearts of the audience. The novel makes the readers think about how important it is to preserve the freedom of thought and expression and also shows the horrors that can happen if individuals lose it. Although the novel was written over 70 years ago, its themes are still relevant and significant. George Orwell’s 1984 is a work that should be read by everyone who wants to understand the world in which one lives better. The book is a reminder that freedom is invaluable, and everyone must do everything possible to preserve it.

Works Cited

Hama, Bakhtiar Sabir. “Language as an Oppressive Device in Orwell’s 1984.” International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies , vol. 2, no. 1, 2015, pp. 265-277.

Hodge, Bob, and Roger Fowler. “Orwellian Linguistics.” Language and Control , edited by Roger Fowler et al., Routledge, 2019, pp. 6-25.

Hossain, Mozaffor. “Language as the Device for Psychological Manipulation in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Psycholinguistic Analysis.” European Journal of English Language and Linguistics Research , vol. 5, no. 8, 2017, pp. 25-31.

Orwell, George. 1984 . Planet eBook, n.d. Planet eBook , Web.

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"Language in Orwell's 1984 as a Means of Manipulation and Control." IvyPanda , 15 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/language-in-orwells-1984-as-a-means-of-manipulation-and-control/.

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1. IvyPanda . "Language in Orwell's 1984 as a Means of Manipulation and Control." February 15, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/language-in-orwells-1984-as-a-means-of-manipulation-and-control/.

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English Works

Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four and the control of language

Orwell’s 1984 depicts the oppressive results of a society that is no longer cohesive.

The party’s philosophy of power: “We are the priests of power” and this involves power for power’s sake. O’ Brien symbolically provides an image of the party’s complete power, which is the image of the boot stamping on the human face forever.. O Brien further explains that this symbolic boot, which is the “boot” of power” is the boot that inflicts absolute “pain and humiliation”; it is a boot that seeks absolute control over individual’s mind and their feelings and “utter submission” to the party. This boot will “tear human minds to pieces” and Big Brother will “put them back together again”…

“Power is not a means; it is an end” (276) / 302

“The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. “

The goal of Big Brother is the annihilation of the individual. The individual becomes all-powerful through merging and blending self with the Party, so that “he is the Party”. (277)

Power, is “power over human beings” , but “above all over the mind” The party controls external reality through the control of the mind, and it controls the mind, through the control of language.

Syme concludes, “Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak” (55)
Syme comments, “were cutting the language down to the bone”
Syme, “it’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words” .
Syme encourages Winston to recognise that the “whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought”. He explains, “in the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.” Syme refers to the fact that individual thought, rebellious or “unorthodox” thoughts will be impossible and so, too, will the true concept of individual freedom. Each concept will be expressed in just “one” word. Any “subsidiary meanings will be rubbed out and forgotten”. (55).
The party controls the mind through the control of language (Newspeak), the control of history (the past) and the control of war / enemies, the process of DoubleThink.

“Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought” ,. By “cutting down the choice of words” to a minimum, to “the bone”, people will be restricted in their capacity to think.

It is important that Orwell chooses the example of the word “free”. This is because 1984, is a political treatise that examines the concept of, and the importance of freedom. Contrastingly, the Big Brother dictatorship survives and thrives because it tramples on the very notion of individual freedom.

Words such as “free” are only possible in their literal application: “The dog is free from lice’. Orwell suggests that it is impossible to state terms such as “intellectually free” and “politically free” because they refer to unknown concepts.

To safeguard against individual deviation from Party doctrine and to ensure an individual does not think for themselves, (that the “party has “power over both “body” and the “mind” and over “external reality” ) the party has an elaborate system of control, ranging from Newspeak (reduction of language) to constant falsification of history to prove the infallibility of the party. Orwell believes that there is a correlation between words and thought processes. In the absence of words such as rebellion and defiance, people will not have think these concepts. To this end, language control and mental manipulation are essential in The Party’s maintenance of power. The official language of Oceania, ‘Newspeak’ was designed to reduce and narrow the range of thought so as to diminish an individual’s ability to commit Thoughtcrime. “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words”. With the reduction of words comes the reduction in the range of consciousness which becomes “always a little smaller”.

Newspeak replaces Oldspeak

At the basis of Big Brother’s propaganda machine, lies the new language, Newspeak which replaces Oldspeak.

Orwell includes in his Appendix, a discussion of “The principles of newspeak” to show how it will replace Oldspeak by the year 2050. He explain the concept of the reduction of language as a reflection of the reduction of thought processes, and a a means of control.

The party is able to control an individual’s mind and their intellectual reality through language. In so far as “thought is dependent on words”, then the complete replacement of Oldspeak will mean that the party member will have absolutely no concept of terms such as “politically free” or “intellectually free”. In other words, rebellion will be unthinkable.

In the Appendix, “Principles of Newspeak”, Orwell states that the “expression of unorthodox opinions” “was well-nigh impossible”. Even the statement, “Big Brother is ungood” could “not have been sustained by reasoned argument because the necessary words were not available”. Furthermore, the “concept of political equality no longer existed”.

Newspeak is a linguistic tool to control people’s thought processes. Language is constantly reduced in an attempt to reduce thinking.

Syme makes a distinction between Oldspeak and Newspeak and praises Newspeak. He states, “it’s the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year.” (55)
As Winston knows, with the reduction in language, comes the reduction in the range of consciousness which becomes “always a little smaller”. By 2050, the language will be reduced to such an extent that no one would be able to understand a typical 1984-conversation.

Thoughtcrime and the Thoughtpolice

The main purpose of the Thought Police is to eradicate the problem of “thought crime”. A “thought crime” consists of an individual and independent thought that does not follow party doctrine. “”Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever.” (21)

Writing in his diary, recording his individual past and moments of his personal history are examples of “thought crime” that inevitable attract the attention of the Thought Police, whose extensive surveillance tactics ensure that they monitor any “unorthodox” thoughts. The thought police are capable of plugging into any “individual wire” and monitoring one’s thought processes and daily-life movements. “It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time.” “You had to live .. in the assumption that every sound you made was overhead” (5)

DOUBLE THINK (based on fundamental contradictions)

Ingsoc have devised the method ‘Doublethink’ to control people’s thought processes. Doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts whilst simultaneously believing in both of them; it is “to know and not to know”. This method of manipulation makes it possible for citizens to believe Party doctrine even while they are conscious of information that is to the contrary.

Double think, or “duck speak” which is to “quack like a duck”, enables the party to control people’s thought processes.

Syme explains that duck speak is double think. It is “one of those words that have two contradictory meanings.” (57) It can mean either abuse or praise.

Likewise, double think is “to know and not to know”. It is to know the truth and yet tell lies. “To hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out”. It is to believe in the truth and in falsehood at the same time and to be conscious of this contradiction (or conscious of this process). (p 37) It is to forget something, but to remember it when needed.

The Departments (based on fundamental contradiction)

( The Departments; (the three Ministries); Ministry of Truth is “an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred metres into the air”. It contains three thousand rooms above ground level. The size is significant which reflects absolute power but also its purpose which is to control history and thereby control the present and the future. Likewise the Ministry of Love is surrounded by “a maze of barbed wire entanglements”. (6) (The paradox of war.)

Orwell uses irony upon irony and contradictions to explore the literal attempt by the Ingsoc dictatorship to trample upon individuality and to wield absolute power.

In the Ministry of Truth, where Winston works, the party members falsify documents constantly to prove the party’s infallibility and to minimise records of comparison. During his interrogation, O’Brien displays to Winston the ease with which the Party erases inconvenient truths and ensures that the citizens are “cut off from the past’. He flushes a photo of Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford down the symbolic memory hole and thereby erases the historical memory of their existence along with the fact that Winston is adamant that they had been forced to make false confessions. (258)

From the outset, Orwell capitalises repeated references to “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” to highlight the impossibility of private and independence space . As Winston tries to find a secret corner in his room, he knows that this is impossible in a world where there are telescreens on every corner, posters on each .. and thought police who are constantly monitoring one’s “unorthodox” behaviour.

This is evident during Hate Week when The Party speaker changes the nation he refers to as an enemy and the crowd immediately accepts his words. It is through these methods that The Party is able “to arrest the course of history”. Thus, through the use of such techniques The Party was able to break down an individual’s capacity for independent thought. By controlling “reality which is inside the skull” the party is able to overcome the “laws of Nature” as well as incontrovertible truths such as 2 + 2. This ensured that it controlled which eminently demonstrated their use of power in an oppressive means.

Goldstein – enemy of Ingosc; a champion of “freedom”

As part of its attempt to control the historical war narrative and the thoughts of its citizens, Big Brother fabricates an enemy in the figure of Goldstein, who becomes the target of blame and suspicion. Orwell depicts Goldstein as the ultimate rebel, who opposes Party doctrine at every level. He champions freedom of speech and “freedom of assembly, freedom of thought” and although he ambiguously appears to have “sheeplike qualities” there is constantly the threat of the Eurasian army in the background of these Hate –related videos. As Orwell suggests, Big Brother and the controllers of Oceania deliberately fabricate the enemy, and spread rumours about the Brotherhood and the underground secret movements, in order to keep the population alarmed, and scared. By rewriting the history of war between Oceania and its enemies such as Eurasia, Big Brother is presented as the “saviour” figure who elicits considerable hysteria as a means of further controlling the emotions of the citizens. During the two-minute Hate session, the “entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical change of B-B”. As Winston notes, “it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise”.

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Doublethink Is Stronger Than Orwell Imagined

What 1984 means today

No novel of the past century has had more influence than George Orwell’s 1984 . The title, the adjectival form of the author’s last name, the vocabulary of the all-powerful Party that rules the superstate Oceania with the ideology of Ingsoc— doublethink , memory hole , unperson , thoughtcrime , Newspeak , Thought Police , Room 101 , Big Brother —they’ve all entered the English language as instantly recognizable signs of a nightmare future. It’s almost impossible to talk about propaganda, surveillance, authoritarian politics, or perversions of truth without dropping a reference to 1984. Throughout the Cold War, the novel found avid underground readers behind the Iron Curtain who wondered, How did he know?

It was also assigned reading for several generations of American high-school students. I first encountered 1984 in 10th-grade English class. Orwell’s novel was paired with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World , whose hedonistic and pharmaceutical dystopia seemed more relevant to a California teenager in the 1970s than did the bleak sadism of Oceania. I was too young and historically ignorant to understand where 1984 came from and exactly what it was warning against. Neither the book nor its author stuck with me. In my 20s, I discovered Orwell’s essays and nonfiction books and reread them so many times that my copies started to disintegrate, but I didn’t go back to 1984 . Since high school, I’d lived through another decade of the 20th century, including the calendar year of the title, and I assumed I already “knew” the book. It was too familiar to revisit.

Read: Teaching ‘1984’ in 2016

So when I recently read the novel again, I wasn’t prepared for its power. You have to clear away what you think you know, all the terminology and iconography and cultural spin-offs, to grasp the original genius and lasting greatness of 1984 . It is both a profound political essay and a shocking, heartbreaking work of art. And in the Trump era , it’s a best seller .

The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 , by the British music critic Dorian Lynskey, makes a rich and compelling case for the novel as the summation of Orwell’s entire body of work and a master key to understanding the modern world. The book was published in 1949, when Orwell was dying of tuberculosis , but Lynskey dates its biographical sources back more than a decade to Orwell’s months in Spain as a volunteer on the republican side of the country’s civil war. His introduction to totalitarianism came in Barcelona, when agents of the Soviet Union created an elaborate lie to discredit Trotskyists in the Spanish government as fascist spies.

Left-wing journalists readily accepted the fabrication, useful as it was to the cause of communism. Orwell didn’t, exposing the lie with eyewitness testimony in journalism that preceded his classic book Homage to Catalonia —and that made him a heretic on the left. He was stoical about the boredom and discomforts of trench warfare—he was shot in the neck and barely escaped Spain with his life—but he took the erasure of truth hard. It threatened his sense of what makes us sane, and life worth living. “History stopped in 1936,” he later told his friend Arthur Koestler, who knew exactly what Orwell meant. After Spain, just about everything he wrote and read led to the creation of his final masterpiece. “History stopped,” Lynskey writes, “and Nineteen Eighty-Four began.”

The biographical story of 1984 —the dying man’s race against time to finish his novel in a remote cottage on the Isle of Jura , off Scotland—will be familiar to many Orwell readers. One of Lynskey’s contributions is to destroy the notion that its terrifying vision can be attributed to, and in some way disregarded as, the death wish of a tuberculosis patient. In fact, terminal illness roused in Orwell a rage to live—he got remarried on his deathbed—just as the novel’s pessimism is relieved, until its last pages, by Winston Smith’s attachment to nature, antique objects, the smell of coffee, the sound of a proletarian woman singing, and above all his lover, Julia. 1984 is crushingly grim, but its clarity and rigor are stimulants to consciousness and resistance. According to Lynskey, “Nothing in Orwell’s life and work supports a diagnosis of despair.”

Lynskey traces the literary genesis of 1984 to the utopian fictions of the optimistic 19th century—Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888); the sci-fi novels of H. G. Wells, which Orwell read as a boy—and their dystopian successors in the 20th, including the Russian Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924) and Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). The most interesting pages in The Ministry of Truth are Lynskey’s account of the novel’s afterlife. The struggle to claim 1984 began immediately upon publication, with a battle over its political meaning. Conservative American reviewers concluded that Orwell’s main target wasn’t just the Soviet Union but the left generally. Orwell, fading fast, waded in with a statement explaining that the novel was not an attack on any particular government but a satire of the totalitarian tendencies in Western society and intellectuals: “The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don’t let it happen. It depends on you .” But every work of art escapes the artist’s control—the more popular and complex, the greater the misunderstandings.

Lynskey’s account of the reach of 1984 is revelatory. The novel has inspired movies, television shows, plays, a ballet, an opera, a David Bowie album , imitations, parodies, sequels, rebuttals, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Black Panther Party, and the John Birch Society. It has acquired something of the smothering ubiquity of Big Brother himself: 1984 is watching you. With the arrival of the year 1984, the cultural appropriations rose to a deafening level. That January an ad for the Apple Macintosh was watched by 96 million people during the Super Bowl and became a marketing legend. The Mac, represented by a female athlete, hurls a sledgehammer at a giant telescreen and explodes the shouting face of a man—oppressive technology—to the astonishment of a crowd of gray zombies. The message: “You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like ‘1984.’ ”

The argument recurs every decade or so: Orwell got it wrong. Things haven’t turned out that bad. The Soviet Union is history. Technology is liberating. But Orwell never intended his novel to be a prediction, only a warning. And it’s as a warning that 1984 keeps finding new relevance. The week of Donald Trump’s inauguration, when the president’s adviser Kellyanne Conway justified his false crowd estimate by using the phrase alternative facts , the novel returned to the best-seller lists. A theatrical adaptation was rushed to Broadway. The vocabulary of Newspeak went viral. An authoritarian president who stood the term fake news on its head, who once said, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” has given 1984 a whole new life.

What does the novel mean for us? Not Room 101 in the Ministry of Love, where Winston is interrogated and tortured until he loses everything he holds dear. We don’t live under anything like a totalitarian system. “By definition, a country in which you are free to read Nineteen Eighty-Four is not the country described in Nineteen Eighty-Four ,” Lynskey acknowledges. Instead, we pass our days under the nonstop surveillance of a telescreen that we bought at the Apple Store, carry with us everywhere, and tell everything to, without any coercion by the state. The Ministry of Truth is Facebook, Google, and cable news. We have met Big Brother and he is us.

Trump’s election brought a rush of cautionary books with titles like On Tyranny , Fascism: A Warning , and How Fascism Works . My local bookstore set up a totalitarian-themed table and placed the new books alongside 1984 . They pointed back to the 20th century—if it happened in Germany, it could happen here—and warned readers how easily democracies collapse. They were alarm bells against complacency and fatalism—“ the politics of inevitability ,” in the words of the historian Timothy Snyder, “a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done.” The warnings were justified, but their emphasis on the mechanisms of earlier dictatorships drew attention away from the heart of the malignancy—not the state, but the individual. The crucial issue was not that Trump might abolish democracy but that Americans had put him in a position to try. Unfreedom today is voluntary. It comes from the bottom up.

We are living with a new kind of regime that didn’t exist in Orwell’s time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: a blend of Orwell and Huxley, cruelty and entertainment. The state of mind that the Party enforces through terror in 1984 , where truth becomes so unstable that it ceases to exist, we now induce in ourselves. Totalitarian propaganda unifies control over all information, until reality is what the Party says it is—the goal of Newspeak is to impoverish language so that politically incorrect thoughts are no longer possible. Today the problem is too much information from too many sources, with a resulting plague of fragmentation and division—not excessive authority but its disappearance, which leaves ordinary people to work out the facts for themselves, at the mercy of their own prejudices and delusions.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, propagandists at a Russian troll farm used social media to disseminate a meme: “ ‘The People Will Believe What the Media Tells Them They Believe.’ — George Orwell.” But Orwell never said this. The moral authority of his name was stolen and turned into a lie toward that most Orwellian end: the destruction of belief in truth. The Russians needed partners in this effort and found them by the millions, especially among America’s non-elites. In 1984 , working-class people are called “proles,” and Winston believes they’re the only hope for the future. As Lynskey points out, Orwell didn’t foresee “that the common man and woman would embrace doublethink as enthusiastically as the intellectuals and, without the need for terror or torture, would choose to believe that two plus two was whatever they wanted it to be.”

We stagger under the daily load of doublethink pouring from Trump, his enablers in the Inner Party, his mouthpieces in the Ministry of Truth, and his fanatical supporters among the proles. Spotting doublethink in ourselves is much harder. “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” Orwell wrote . In front of my nose, in the world of enlightened and progressive people where I live and work, a different sort of doublethink has become pervasive. It’s not the claim that true is fake or that two plus two makes five. Progressive doublethink—which has grown worse in reaction to the right-wing kind—creates a more insidious unreality because it operates in the name of all that is good. Its key word is justice —a word no one should want to live without. But today the demand for justice forces you to accept contradictions that are the essence of doublethink.

For example, many on the left now share an unacknowledged but common assumption that a good work of art is made of good politics and that good politics is a matter of identity. The progressive view of a book or play depends on its political stance, and its stance—even its subject matter—is scrutinized in light of the group affiliation of the artist: Personal identity plus political position equals aesthetic value. This confusion of categories guides judgments all across the worlds of media, the arts, and education, from movie reviews to grant committees. Some people who register the assumption as doublethink might be privately troubled, but they don’t say so publicly. Then self-censorship turns into self-deception, until the recognition itself disappears—a lie you accept becomes a lie you forget. In this way, intelligent people do the work of eliminating their own unorthodoxy without the Thought Police.

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Orthodoxy is also enforced by social pressure, nowhere more intensely than on Twitter, where the specter of being shamed or “canceled” produces conformity as much as the prospect of adding to your tribe of followers does. This pressure can be more powerful than a party or state, because it speaks in the name of the people and in the language of moral outrage, against which there is, in a way, no defense. Certain commissars with large followings patrol the precincts of social media and punish thought criminals, but most progressives assent without difficulty to the stifling consensus of the moment and the intolerance it breeds—not out of fear, but because they want to be counted on the side of justice.

This willing constriction of intellectual freedom will do lasting damage. It corrupts the ability to think clearly, and it undermines both culture and progress. Good art doesn’t come from wokeness, and social problems starved of debate can’t find real solutions. “Nothing is gained by teaching a parrot a new word,” Orwell wrote in 1946. “What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.” Not much has changed since the 1940s. The will to power still passes through hatred on the right and virtue on the left.

1984 will always be an essential book, regardless of changes in ideologies, for its portrayal of one person struggling to hold on to what is real and valuable. “Sanity is not statistical,” Winston thinks one night as he slips off to sleep. Truth, it turns out, is the most fragile thing in the world. The central drama of politics is the one inside your skull.

This article appears in the July 2019 print edition with the headline “George Orwell’s Unheeded Warning.”

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A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four , completed in 1948 and published a year later, is a classic example of dystopian fiction. Indeed, it’s surely the most famous dystopian novel in the world, even if its ideas are known by far more people than have actually read it. (According to at least one survey , Nineteen Eighty-Four is the book people most often claim to have read when they haven’t.)

Like many novels that are more known about than are carefully read and analysed, Nineteen Eighty-Four is actually a more complex work than the label ‘nightmare dystopian vision’ can convey. Before we offer an analysis of the novel’s themes and origins, let’s briefly recap the plot.

Nineteen Eighty-Four : plot summary

In the year 1984, Britain has been renamed Airstrip One and is a province of Oceania, a vast totalitarian superstate ruled by ‘the Party’, whose politics are described as Ingsoc (‘English Socialism’). Big Brother is the leader of the Party, which keeps its citizens in a perpetual state of fear and submission through a variety of means.

Surveillance is a key part of the novel’s world, with hidden microphones (which are found in the countryside as well as urban areas, and can identify not only what is said but also who says it) and two-way telescreen monitors being used to root out any dissidents, who disappear from society with all trace of their existence wiped out.

They become, in the language of Newspeak (the language used by people in the novel), ‘unpersons’. People are short of food, perpetually on the brink of starvation, and going about in fear for their lives.

The novel’s setting is London, where Trafalgar Square has been renamed Victory Square and the statue of Horatio Nelson atop Nelson’s Column has been replaced by one of Big Brother. Through such touches, Orwell defamiliarises the London of the 1940s which the original readers would have recognised, showing how the London they know might be transformed under a totalitarian regime.

The novel’s protagonist is Winston Smith, who works at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting historical records so they are consistent with the state’s latest version of history. However, even though his day job involves doing the work of the Party, Winston longs to escape the oppressive control of the Party, hoping for a rebellion.

Winston meets the owner of an antique shop named Mr Charrington, from whom he buys a diary in which he can record his true feelings towards the Party. Believing the working-class ‘proles’ are the key to a revolution, Winston visits them, but is disappointed to find them wholly lacking in any political understanding.

Meanwhile, hearing of the existence of an underground resistance movement known as the Brotherhood – which has been formed by the rival of Big Brother, a man named Emmanuel Goldstein – Winston suspects that O’Brien, who also works with him, is involved with this resistance.

At lunch with another colleague, named Syme, Winston learns that the English language is being rewritten as Newspeak so as to control and influence people’s thought, the idea being that if the word for an idea doesn’t exist in the language, people will be unable to think about it.

Winston meets a woman named Julia who works for the Ministry of Truth, maintaining novel-writing machines, but believes she is a Party spy sent to watch him. But then Julia passes a clandestine love message to him and the two begin an affair – which is itself illicit since the Party decrees that sex is for reproduction alone, rather than pleasure.

We gradually learn more about Winston’s past, including his marriage to Katherine, from whom he is now separated. Syme, who had been working on Newspeak, disappears in mysterious circumstances: something Winston had predicted.

O’Brien invites Winston to his flat, declaring himself – as Winston had also predicted – a member of the Brotherhood, the resistance against the Party. He gives Winston a copy of the book written by Goldstein, the leader of the Brotherhood.

When Oceania’s enemy changes during the ritual Hate Week, Winston is tasked with making further historical revisions to old newspapers and documents to reflect this change.

Meanwhile, Winston and Julia secretly read Goldstein’s book, which explains how the Party maintains its totalitarian power. As Winston had suspected, the secret to overthrowing the Party lies in the vast mass of the population known as the ‘proles’ (derived from ‘proletarian’, Marx’s term for the working classes). It argues that the Party can be overthrown if proles rise up against it.

But shortly after this, Winston and Julia are arrested, having been shopped to the authorities by Mr Charrington (whose flat above his shop they had been using for their illicit meetings). It turns out that both he and O’Brien work for the Thought Police, on behalf of the Party.

At the Ministry of Love, O’Brien tells Winston that Goldstein’s book was actually written by him and other Party members, and that the Brotherhood may not even exist. Winston endures torture and starvation in an attempt to grind him down so he will accept Big Brother.

In Room 101, a room in which a prisoner is exposed to their greatest fear, Winston is placed in front of a wire cage containing rats, which he fears above all else. Winston betrays Julia, wishing she could take his place and endure this suffering instead.

His reprogramming complete, Winston is allowed to go free, but he is essentially living under a death sentence: he knows that one day he will be summoned by the authorities and shot for his former treachery.

He meets Julia one day, and learns that she was subjected to torture at the Ministry of Love as well. They have both betrayed each other, and part ways. The novel ends with Winston accepting, after all, that the Party has won and that ‘he loved Big Brother.’

Nineteen Eighty-Four : analysis

Nineteen Eighty-Four is probably the most famous novel about totalitarianism, and about the dangers of allowing a one-party state where democracy, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and even freedom of thought are all outlawed. The novel is often analysed as a warning about the dangers of allowing a creeping totalitarianism into Britain, after the horrors of such regimes in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and elsewhere had been witnessed.

Because of this quality of the book, it is often called ‘prophetic’ and a ‘nightmare vision of the future’, among other things.

However, books set in the future are rarely simply about the future. They are not mere speculation, but are grounded in the circumstances in which they were written.

Indeed, we might go so far as to say that most dystopian novels, whilst nominally set in an imagined future, are really using their future setting to reflect on what are already firmly established social or political ideas. In the case of Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four , this means the novel reflects the London of the 1940s.

By the time he came to write the novel, Orwell already had a long-standing interest in using his writing to highlight the horrors of totalitarianism around the world, especially following his experience fighting in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. As Orwell put it in his essay ‘ Why I Write ’, all of his serious work written since 1936 was written ‘ against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism’.

In his analysis of Nineteen Eighty-Four in his study of Orwell, George Orwell (Reader’s Guides) , Jeffrey Meyers argues convincingly that, rather than being a nightmare vision of the future, a prophetic or speculative work, Orwell’s novel is actually a ‘realistic synthesis and rearrangement of familiar materials’ – indeed, as much of Orwell’s best work is.

His talent lay not in original imaginative thinking but in clear-headed critical analysis of things as they are: his essays are a prime example of this. Nineteen Eighty-Four is, in Meyer’s words, ‘realistic rather than fantastic’.

Indeed, Orwell himself stated that although the novel was ‘in a sense a fantasy’, it is written in the form of the naturalistic novel, with its themes and ideas having been already ‘partly realised in Communism and fascism’. Orwell’s intention, as stated by Orwell himself, was to take the totalitarian ideas that had ‘taken root’ in the minds of intellectuals all over Europe, and draw them out ‘to their logical consequences’.

Like much classic speculative fiction – the novels and stories of J. G. Ballard offer another example – the futuristic vision of the author is more a reflection of contemporary anxieties and concerns. Meyers goes so far as to argue that Nineteen Eighty-Four is actually the political regimes of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia ‘transposed’ into London of the early 1940s, during the Second World War.

Certainly, many of the most famous features of Nineteen Eighty-Four were suggested to Orwell by his time working at the BBC in London in the first half of the 1940s: it is well-known that the Ministry of Truth was based on the bureaucratic BBC with its propaganda department, while the infamous Room 101 was supposedly named after a room of that number in the BBC building, in which Orwell had to endure tedious meetings.

The technology of the novel, too, was familiar by the 1940s, involving little innovation or leaps of imagination from Orwell (‘telescreens’ being a natural extension of the television set: BBC TV had been established in 1936, although the Second World War pushed back its development somewhat).

Orwell learned much about the workings of Stalinism from reading Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed (1937), written by one of the leading figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917 who saw Stalinist Russia as the antithesis of what Trotsky, Lenin, and those early revolutionaries had been striving to achieve. (This would also be important for Orwell’s Animal Farm , of course.)

And indeed, many of the details surrounding censorship – the rewriting of history, the suppression of dissident literature, the control of the language people use to express themselves and even to think in – were also derived from Orwell’s reading of life in Soviet Russia. Surveillance was also a key element of the Stalinist regime, as in other Communist countries in Europe.

The moustachioed figure of Big Brother in Nineteen Eighty-Four recalls nobody so much as Josef Stalin himself. Not only the ideas of ‘thought crime’ and ‘thought police’, but even the terms themselves, predate Orwell’s use of them: they were first recorded in a 1934 book about Japan.

One of the key questions Winston asks himself in Nineteen Eighty-Four is what the Party is trying to achieve. O’Brien’s answer is simple: the maintaining of power for its own sake. Many human beings want to control other human beings, and they can persuade a worrying number of people to go along with their plans and even actively support them.

Despite the fact that they are starving and living a miserable life, many of the people in Airstrip One love Big Brother, viewing him not as a tyrannical dictator but as their ‘Saviour’ (as one woman calls him). Again, this detail was taken from accounts of Stalin, who was revered by many Russians even though they were often living a wretched life under his rule.

Another key theme of Orwell’s novel is the relationship between language and thought. In our era of fake news and corrupt media, this has only become even more pronounced: if you lie to a population and confuse them enough, you can control them. O’Brien introduces Winston to the work of the traitor to the Party, Emmanuel Goldstein, only to tell him later that Goldstein may not exist and his book was actually written by the Party.

Is this the lie, or was the book the lie? One of the most famous lines from the novel is Winston’s note to himself in his diary: ‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.’

But later, O’Brien will force Winston to ‘admit’ that two plus two can make five. Orwell tells us, ‘The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.’

Or as Voltaire once wrote, ‘Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust.’ Forcing somebody to utter blatant falsehoods is a powerful psychological tool for totalitarian regimes because through doing so, they have chipped away at your moral and intellectual integrity.

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4 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four”

1984 is a novel which is great in spite of itself and has been lionised for the wrong reasons. The title of the novel is a simple anagram of 1948, the date when the novel was written, and was driven by Orwell’s paranoia about the 1945 Labour government in UK. Orwell, a public school man, had built a reputation for hiself in the nineteen thirties as a socialist writer, and had fought for socialism in the Spanish civil war. The Road To Wigan Pier is an excellent polemic attacking the way the UK government was handling the mass unemployment of the time, reducing workers to a state of near starvation. In Homage To Catalonia, Orwell describes his experiences fighting with a small Marxist militia against Franco’s fascists. It was in Spain that Orwell developed his lifelong hatred of Stalinism, observing that the Communist contingents were more interested in suppressing other left-wing factions than in defeating Franco. The 1945 Labour government ws Britain’s first democratically elected socialist governement. It successfully established the welfare state and the National Health Service in a country almost bankrupted by the war, and despite the fact that Truman in USA was demanding the punctual repayment of wartime loans. Instead of rejoicing, Orwell, by now terminally ill from tuberculosis, saw the necessary continuation of wartime austerity and rationing as a deliberate and unnecessary imposition. Consequently, the book is often used as propaganda against socialism. The virtues of the book are the warnings about the dangers of giving the state too much power, in the form of electronic surveillance, ehanced police powers, intrusive laws, and the insidious use of political propaganda to warp peoples’ thinking. All of this has come to pass in the West as well as the East, but because of the overtly anticommunist spin to Orwell’s novel, most people fail to get its important message..

As with other work here, another good review. I’m also fascinated that Orwell located the government as prime problem, whereas Huxley located the people as prime problem, two sides of the same coin.

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A Psychoanalytic and Marxist Reading of Orwell’s Language in 1984

George Orwell’s 1984 is a work that has embedded itself into the cultural ethos since the time of its publication. The dystopia he presents is nightmarish, but the true nightmare vision of his work is the process by which this world where five means four and freedom means enslavement comes to exist. Many perspectives have been offered on Orwell’s masterpiece, and many critics have lauded their particular positions. Two of the most fruitful avenues of investigation for 1984 are Marxist and psychoanalytical criticism. Both theories offer a unique yet complimentary position on the use and effect of language on the individual and the whole. Through the lenses of psychoanalytic and Marxist theories, George Orwell’s 1984 exemplifies a totalitarian dystopia in order to display the effect of the use and abuse of language upon the human experience.

Related Papers

bakhtiar hama

Abstract This paper is a critical study of “1984”, a novel by George Orwell. It specifically aims to study how language is used by the dominant authority in the fiction to oppress and to exert power over the population in the country. The analysis focuses on how the totalitarian system limits conversations and prevents freedom of speech through imposing on the characters to speak a language which is strange to them and very limited in terms of vocabulary. To achieve this objective, the study will focus on the sentences and paragraphs which show how language is used to frighten and oppress people. In certain cases, the dialogues which occur between the characters will be explored so as to clearly manifest the role of language in controlling the actions and the minds of the population. To manifest the relationship between language and power, the analysis is conducted within the framework of stylistics and critical discourse analysis. The researcher explores the linguistic features in some paragraphs and dialogues selected from the entire text so as to show how the government of Oceania controls the minds and actions of its inhabitants. Through such a framework of analysis, the thesis concludes that the totalitarian government manipulates language to dominate people, and language is not a social practice but it has political dimensions and regarded as a threat to the government if people can use it freely. Keywords: 1984, stylistics, critical discourse analysis, language, power

Md Mozaffor Hossain

Language is the unique human talent that works amazingly in molding one's thoughts and deeds. If grown unrestricted, it can help people widen their notions about things and issues in and around them. On the other hand, if shrunk and chained, it hinders the flourishing of ideas and information. The blossoming as well as the limiting power of language has been very perspicuously illustrated by George Orwell in his dystopian novel, 1984. How linguistic constituents hold the absolute ability to do and undo human thoughts has been portrayed in the novel in the most striking manner. Orwell has shown how language can manipulate psychological functions supreme-handedly. To lead popular thought to a certain target, language has to be engineered in the required mechanism. It does so, and attains complete control over people's mind. This paper examines how language sets a demarcation line for human psychological processes. It attempts to dig deep into the linguistic treatment in 1984 and comes up with a vivid description of the dominance of language on people's mental procedure. It investigates the manipulations of the 'Newspeak' and strives to grasp a psycholinguistic analysis of the novel.

IJHCS IJHCS

This paper is a critical study of “1984”, a novel by George Orwell. It specifically aims to study how language is used by the dominant authority in the fiction to oppress and to exert power over the population in the country. The analysis focuses on how the totalitarian system limits conversations and prevents freedom of speech through imposing on the characters to speak a language which is strange to them and very limited in terms of vocabulary. To achieve this objective, the study will focus on the sentences and paragraphs which show how language is used to frighten and oppress people. In certain cases, the dialogues which occur between the characters will be explored so as to clearly manifest the role of language in controlling the actions and the minds of the population. To manifest the relationship between language and power, the analysis is conducted within the framework of stylistics and critical discourse analysis. The researcher explores the linguistic features in some paragraphs and dialogues selected from the entire text so as to show how the government of Oceania controls the minds and actions of its inhabitants. Through such a framework of analysis, the thesis concludes that the totalitarian government manipulates language to dominate people, and language is not a social practice but it has political dimensions and regarded as a threat to the government if people can use it freely. Keywords: 1984, stylistics, critical discourse analysis, language, power

Journal of International Social Research

Mehran Shadi

Turkish Journal of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation

Mamta Bansal , Dr. Divyajyoti Singh

Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm by George Orwell are texts that draw attention to breakdown of communication and disruption of normal social interactions. The narrative reflects on the use of language by the state to impose norms and conventions that cater to a particular hegemonic group that is reigning in the State. An artificial language like 'Newspeak' in 1984 and a narrative that is undercut by ironies operating on the level of language and action in Animal Farm, alerts the reader to the discursive charge that any language may be made to carry. George Orwell's 1984, set in the fictitious state of Oceania, presumably reveal the scary vision of future by exposing the state apparatus which was shifting to the totalitarian form. Similarly, he tried to alert his readers to the psychological and social wreckage that would be consequential to an adoption of socialist ideology in England or America. To critique the propaganda employed by communists or an English nation preparing to embrace socialism, Orwell shows how it is overtly bowdlerized and how it is systematically constructed to stall free thinking. At the same time, although Orwell is critical of communist discourse and hegemony, he systematically and deliberately fails to critique imperial and capitalist practices. So though quite ironically inspired by BBC media glossary, Newspeak is assumed to be a reflection on communist propaganda rather than capitalist out of which it actually originated and therefore, the present authors find Marxist critical theory quite useful in decoding Orwell's texts though his narratives are primarily read as critique of communist discourse. This strategy is corroborated by Orwell's background and affinities as also his proclaimed political leanings away from communist system which was proper for an intellectual belonging to his particular geographical and temporal coordinates-imperial discourse was not so pernicious to him as communist excesses. In fact, at times these narratives abet and support the imperialist regimes' assertions of their supremacy. Hence, this paper refers to essays by Louis Althusser, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault and also Fredric Jameson.

ASPECT Conference 2018: Doing Interdisciplinarity

Benjamin B Taylor

This paper uses George Orwell’s theorization of Newspeak in 1984 to argue that disciplinary society is not primarily about spatiality but instead the restriction of semantic play. In his “Postscript on Societies of Control,” Gilles Deleuze argues that “Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt” and that the Foucauldian analysis of disciplinary society is inadequate for capturing the techniques of “societies of control,” which are concerned with the abstract quantification and management of the data that composes “dividuals.” By examining the techniques of totalitarian control theorized in Orwell’s writings, we can see that spatial and semantic delimitations are only ever two elements of the same process: enclosure is always partially constitutive of and constituted by historically contingent forms of linguistic rationalization that restrict both the practices and the potential interpretations of practices available to subjects. The tendency of disciplinary society is thus to simulate a metaphysics of substance that generates the fictive interiority of conceptually and spatially self-contained subjects and objects. As Orwell demonstrates through the passionate affair between Winston and Julia, the investment of eros thus poses the greatest risk to disciplinary society, not because there is some sort of ontologically primary desire that always haunts systems of meaning but because erotic attachment, understood broadly, tends to destroy the artificial distinction between subjects and objects on which disciplinary society — of which both totalitarian and control societies are variants — depends.

Andrea Porcheddu

SUREN ZOLYAN

Th e domain of reference of political discourse is not autonomous from language; this domain is a construct generated by the discourse itself. Such an ap- proach to the relation between language and political reality was expressed in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Concepts of modern semantics and pragmatics allow to explicate how language acts as both a form of constructing real- ity and a special type of social verbal behaviour. Language has become exclusively modal and intentional; any utterance expresses the relations of obligation, possibili- ty, etc. and may be interpreted in intensional and, hence, in referentially non-opaque contexts. However, the semantics does not lose its referential force. In contrast, this force is multiplied, becoming a transworld relation. In this respect, the semantics of political discourse is akin to poetic semantics; however, the multidimensionality of the signifi ed referents is hidden because referential discourse is a precondition for eff ectiveness. Political discourse, as a description of “world as it is”, presupposes a hidden reference to other modal contexts “world in the future” (or “in the past”); “how the world should be” (or “should not be”), etc. Th e domain of the interpreta- tion of political discourse is a set of possible worlds.

Pedro Luis Luchini

Rose Kulsum-Binder

This research paper aims to analyze George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) using stylistic tools in order to reveal the author’s literary aims in creating its dystopian ambiance, namely its sense of hopelessness and disturbance. What readers of literature feel in response to a text is usually reliant on the language and its crafting by the author. Lexis and syntactic devices are two areas that will be investigated as having been manipulated by Orwell in order to achieve his literary aim. Lexical items which include nouns, adjectives, verbs, and other elements convey negativity and despondence, while the vocabulary of Newspeak is a special creation that contributes to the sense of disturbance in this fictional world. The syntactic devices of negation, modals, and linking verbs also serve to reinforce the sensation of helplessness and simultaneous dystopian force within the novel.

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Explore Newspeak

1 Newspeak Definition
2 List of Newspeak Words
3 Examples of Newspeak in 1984
4 Related Terms in 1984

Newspeak Definition

Newspeak is a controlled, simplified version of English. It removes “subversive” concepts from the language that the Party wants its citizens to avoid.

These include expressions of personal identity, free will, or anything resembling a rebellion. It focuses on the ideology of INGSOC and the belief that the Party is all-knowing.

Through the use of Newspeak, the Party is attempting to control what one is capable of thinking. It is one of the three tenants of INGSOC. The other two are doublethink and the mutability (or changeability) of the past.

Orwell writes about Newspeak several times, stating that the language had a very specific purpose that complimented the use of doublethink.

It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.

The Party sought to eliminate undesirable words and strip those words of “all secondary meanings whatever.” Orwell cites “free” as a good example. The word exists in Oceania but only in the context of something being “free” of trouble. For example, “The dog is free from lice.” There is no secondary meaning, such as “intellectually free.”

List of Newspeak Words

Below are a few of the many Newspeak words Orwell invented.

Doubleplusgood

Doublethink

He wrote that Newspeak was designed to:

not to extend but to DIMINISH the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.

The alphabet was divided into different vocabularies, such as the “A” vocabulary that included words needed for “the business of everyday life.” This included words for eating, working, drinking, and riding in vehicles. These were words like “run” and “tree.”

Words, Orwell noted, were also interchangeable. For example, adjectives were created by adding “ful” to the end of terms. For example, “speedful” means fast or rapid.

Examples of Newspeak in 1984

The ministry names .

The four ministries: The Ministry of Peace , The Ministry of Plenty , The Ministry of Truth , and The Ministry of Love, are introduced at the beginning of the novel. Their Newspeak abbreviations are some of the first Newspeak words that the reader is exposed to. They are Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty, as described by the narrator.

Doublethink is one of the most essential Newspeak words in 1984. It refers to a type of cognitive dissonance where one is capable of bailing two things at once. These two things should, if one’s reasoning is clear, cancel one another out.

The party slogans are one of the clearest examples of doublethink. It purports that one thing is another, even though those reading/hearing the slogan know it means something else entirely. For example:

WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Winston’s Work Messages

When Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, he’s responsible for revising old documents to make them fit the Party narrative. He receives simplified messages that instruct him on his task. Orwell writes:

Each contained a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated jargon—not actually Newspeak, but consisting largely of Newspeak words—which was used in the Ministry for internal purposes. They ran:

times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

Related Terms in 1984

INGSOC : newspeak for English Socialism, the governing system used throughout Oceania.
Doublethink : cognitive dissonance. Or the act of thinking two contradictory things at once. Or believing that the two things are true.
Ministry of Love : responsible for brainwashing the citizens of Oceania.
Ministry of Truth : the ministry responsible for changing history to suit the Party.
Thought Police : the group responsible for arresting those charged with thoughtcrime .
Room 101 : a room to which Winston Smith, and others, are taken when they are within the Ministry of Love. It contains everyone’s worst fears. For Smith, this is rats.

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.

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Introduction of 1984

The novel , 1984, was published back in 1949 in June, is a dystopian fiction by George Orwell . It spellbound generations and it continues to do so since its first appearance. The novel was a myth breaker, but it also proved prophetic in giving out the truth and the predictions and forebodings of futuristic political instability, especially mass surveillance. The novel revolves around Winston Smith and his co-worker, Julia, who hated their Party. However, they could not leave it on account of constant surveillance of ‘Big Brother’. They even prove tools to surveil each other.

Summary of 1984

The novel starts in 1984 when the world, after having witnessed wars and revolutions, is finally having a break. There is peace in the three states, among which Oceania is one, where the Party is in the government. Its Ingsoc is being led by Big Brother, an elusive party demagogue, who is meant to watch everybody. This is the condition of Airstrip One, an Oceania province. To uproot dissidents, the Thought Police is active through Telescreens, removing dissidents from the scene.

Winston Smith, a middle-class worker of the Outer Party, is now living in the London urban center and doing a job in the Ministry of Truth. His job is to revise history to conform to Ingsoc’s demands. His task involves revising The Times, a magazine, and destroying its older versions. Interestingly, he harbors dreams of changing or opposing the rules of the Thought Party but also feels guilty of being a ‘thought-criminal’. He is aware that someday he is vulnerable to arrest. It happens that his meeting with Mr. Charrington, an antique connoisseur, leads him to write an anti-party and anti-Big Brother diary, saying that hopes lie with the public.

However, his disappointment reaches new heights when his visit to a prole transpires him about these crackpots . He talks to an old man, who seemed to be suffering from amnesia. As Julia is working with him on a novel, he suspects her for espionage against him. Even his boss, O’Brien, too, is a suspect of doing the same. However, he seems to be a formal member of the Brotherhood, the resistance movement against the Party organized by Emmanuel Goldstein, the opponent of Big Brother. When Smith talks to Syme, another worker, who is engaged in revising Newspeak, comes to know that he would disappear. He seems intelligent and has learned the prospect of revising a newspaper, whose objective, he states is to reduce the thinking capacity of human beings. Following this, he meets his neighbor, Parsons, from whom he learned about the Hate Week preparation.

Winston is immersed in these thoughts when Julia hands over to him a letter confessing her love for him. However, their love affair proves stifling, for intimacy minus descendants is merely an exercise they go through every day. He comes to know that Julia is also a secret opponent of the Party, though, she has no desire to put a political front against the Party, as she knows it is futile. After they believe that they may get caught for their love and meeting, they start dating in a room they rent above the shop of Mr. Charrington. During these love meetings, he also recalls his family and the disappearance of his siblings during the civil war. Although he is a married man having no love for his wife, Katharine, and he cannot divorce her. He knows that the Party does not approve of it. Soon he comes to know that Syme has also disappeared after which O’Brien visits him to invite him to his residence.

When Winston visits him, he is impressed by his luxurious flat but is stunned to know that O’Brien is an active dissident of the Party and the Brotherhood member. Finding no response, O’Brien, later, sends him Goldstein’s book to learn about oligarchical practices. When the Hate Week of the country arrives, suddenly Winston observes the change of enmity toward Eastasia from Eurasia after which the minister recalls him to make new changes in the historical records. Following this, Winston meets Julia and reads the book about how the Party keeps hold of the people, how it moves the people through sloganeering, and how it manages wars to make people stay busy. The main argument , however, lies in that it also seeks to overthrow the Party through proles, though, the book lacks the answer why.

As expected, soon Julia and Winston are arrested when Mr. Charrington is revealed to be an agent of the Thought Police. Although Winston comes into interaction with his other arrested colleagues, he soon meets O’Brien, who proves another agent of the department, having part of the operation to hook him in this supposed crime. During his imprisonment, he undergoes severe torture, starvation, and treatment that intends to indoctrinate him. During this new indoctrination, Winston learns from O’Brien that the Party demonstrates the authority to display their undeniable power . Though, Winston argues his case that he accepts everything but that the Party has not succeeded in coercing him to betray Julia to whom he is associated. He also thinks that he would emerge even after his execution that would be his moment of triumph against the Party.

Infuriated, O’Brien brings him to 101 room where indoctrination reaches its final stage of re-education. Here the prisoner is forced to confront his worst fear or paranoia. Winston soon sees facing a cage full of rats, a creature he is afraid of. He expresses his willingness after this punishment to betray Julia and work for the Party. However, when he comes face to face with Julia, he feels that she betrays the same feelings. On the other hand, Oceania’s victory against Eurasia is announced through media at which Winston echoes indoctrination in his slogan that he loves Big Brother.

Major Themes in 1984

Totalitarianism: 1984 shows totalitarianism in its true shape and also warns the readers of its consequences of robbing human beings of the very emotions that make us. The curb on civil liberties and personal freedom are reflected through Julia and Winston’s love affair that, though they try their best, yet their consummation is the betrayal from both sides. Another feature of this totalitarianism prevalent in Oceania is the one-party system of the Party where all and diverse groups are involved in worshiping the elusive Big Brother. Everything can be compared to having a cult personality. Everybody proves an agent of the Party, spying on everybody else with no room for peaceful co-existence. The final slogan of Winston that he loves Big Brother is his frustration at having no freedom.
Propaganda : The novel also shows the use of organized mass propaganda initiated by the Party through its Ministry of Truth where revision of history books and old magazines is underway. It is Winston’s and his friends’ responsibility to twist facts and create fictions to make the Party seem true. The public feeding system has a very strong establishment to continue with which the Party and Big Brother want to feed the public.
Love/Sexuality: The loss of love and suppression of sensual desires is another thematic strand that runs throughout the novel. When Winston shows an inclination to befriend Julia, he also shows his neutral feelings toward his wife. On the other hand, Julia, too, does not show the same passion and soon forgets him when he is trapped in trouble. In fact, love and intimacy have undergone depersonalization through an excessive passion for “duty to the Party” which is a means to give birth to the party loyal workers rather than having it enjoyment of the conjugal life. Failure of Winston’s conjugal life with Katharine and unfortunate love for Julia points to this theme .
Independence : The theme of personal freedom and independence is too obvious through the character of Winston who, though, works independently, does not feel that every other person could be the Party agent. Even O’Brien and Julia belong to the group who yearn for freedom. Though Winston considers O’Brien sympathetic to his ideas in the beginning.
Identity: The novel shows that most of the characters have names but no identities. The most popular is Big Brother who has the power to know the ideas, thinking, and percepts of the subjects of Oceania. When Winston asks O’Brien that after all, he is a man during his torture, he responds to him with his own argument that he is the last one on this earth. It shows how totalitarian regimes rob a person of his identity and freedom to think.
Political Loyalty : The surveillance of Big Brother is powerful, inescapable, and intrusive. When Winston starts thinking about rebellious ideas, everything starts working against him. When he comes to know that Mr. Charrington’s flat is bugged, Winston is horrified and then it turns out that Charrington is also the Party agent including O’Brien who is his co-conspirator. That is why seeing no way out by the end Winston raises the slogan of loyalty to Big Brother.
Poverty vs. Wealth : Although it is a socialist system, the Party shows this contradiction in the living standard through its inner and outer circles in that the inner circle lives in luxury and wealth with servants and other gadgets at their beck and call , while the inner circle is trapped in a routinized lifestyle. The ordinary members have to lead a low-quality life with ordinary food, devoid of love, and family pleasures. That is why Winston finds new love and O’Brien looks at London with nostalgia .
Technification of Society : The novel also shows the theme of the technification of society in such a way that the people are not immune to propaganda. They do not have an option to think freely. The Thought Police have intrusive sources of telescreens to measure public thinking and change it likewise. However, it is ironic that despite showing such technological progress, some of the mechanical tasks are still lying in the realm of human beings such as Winston’s revision of history, printing machines in the Ministry of Truth, and living in apartments. Perhaps, as the book was written before the technology was discovered the author had given his best guess regarding today’s technical advances. Now, we have GPS and it is easy to trace anyone.
Use and Abuse of Language: The novel shows the use of language in controlling the public. The party uses several sources such as the Ingsoc system, Newspeak magazine, and doublethink strategy to change the thinking of the people. Winston and O’Brien are employed for this very task in the Ministry of Truth to abuse language to hoodwink the public.

Major Characters in 1984

Winston Smith: Winston Smith, is the protagonist and main character of 1984. He is a 39 years old man, working in the Party office in Oceania. His task includes correction of errors in the documents of the Party and revision of the history in the old magazines. However, his lurking animosity for the Party’s authoritarianism leads him to befriend the Party agents who pose them as rebels working to overthrow Big Brother. Despite his marriage, he falls in love with Julia and has an affair, another Party worker, though this affair ends prematurely. Winston is caught, and he does not seek disagreement when he is given up by agents. He undergoes severe physical and mental torture. Seeing no way out, he secures his release by raising a slogan in support of Big Brother. He knows that with excessive surveillance nobody can slip out of the Party clutches. Though he carries his old feelings, after the release he suppresses it and becomes animated just like everyone.
Julia: Julia, a young woman, and the Party Worker, also works with Winston in the same department and almost in the same capacity. Although she responds to Winston’s advances with positive overtures, her frigidness, demonstrated later, shows that she might have alerted the Party high command about Winston’s rebellious nature. Despite demonstrating some opposing ideas, she does not think it an ideal course of action to stage overthrow of the Party. That is why she also undergoes torture but demonstrates much improvement after they win release. She also proves more loyal than before after her release.
O’Brien: O’Brien is the inner party member and holds a top position. He suspects that Winston might be rebellious, and he becomes alert. He immediately plans to hook Winston through his espionage and gets him arrested. Working as a dedicated government servant, O’Brien has various natural contradictions in his character except for his fidelity and loyalty to the Party and Big Brother.
Big Brother: Big Brother is an elusive character and the main leader of the Party. He is also the ruler of Oceania, who is popular for his omnipresent surveillance capabilities. The phrase “ BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU ” is the catchword in Oceania. Although some of the citizens, like Winston, think that he does not exist, it seems that somebody has adopted this name to terrify the population into submission. He seems the symbol of the all-powerfulness of the ruling faction.
Parsons: Mrs. Parsons is the second female character after Julia. As a neighbor of Winston, she seems to be tired of this rule despite being a mother of the two children working in the Spies and Youth Language. She later, hands over both of their parents to the Thought Police for their political edification.
Tom Parsons: Tom Parsons’ significance in the novel lies in his being a jolly and simple neighbor of Winston. He despises Parsons for his all-acceptance mentality. He becomes the victim of his children’s espionage activity who hands him over to the Thought Police for the edification of his political ideas.
Charrington: Charrington’s significance in the novel lies in his secretive nature of work for the Thought Police. Surprisingly and sadly, Winston, he seems a simpleton antique shopkeeper. Winston does not know his reality when he meets Julia in the apartment on the upper floor of his shop. However, the truth is only revealed after their arrest.
Katharine: She is Winston’s wife, though he does not discuss her much and she appears only when his flirtation with Julia starts. Katharine is loyal to the Party and the government and is only interested in childbearing responsibility.

Writing Style 1984‎

George Orwell is popular for his pithy, symbolic, and well-knit writings as a seasoned writer and a veteran political commentator. His authorial intrusions in his narratives are prominent, as he often employs foreshadowing about political predictions and future events. The most important is the use of symbols, phrases, and suitable diction that make his narrative effective though this futuristic outlook sometimes looks far-fetched. It has won him a great readership across the globe. His style is also marked with the short, curt and concise slogans, which have now become popular catchphrases in the political circles.

Analysis of Literary Devices in 1984

Action: The main action of the novel comprises the conflict of Winston Smith with the oppression of the Party in Oceania. The rising action occurs when he starts dating Julia and meeting O’Brien about dissidence and resistant movement. The falling action occurs when he faces arrest and subsequent torture with the final sloganeering in support of Big Brother.
Adage : It means the use of a statement that becomes a universal truth. The novel, 1984, shows this use of the statement in its famous sentence given in all capitals; “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” (Chapter-1)
Allegory : 1984 shows the use of allegory in its political story that demonstrates that totalitarianism is unsuitable for human beings, power brings corruption and absolute power brings absolute corruption. It also shows that some characters may not exist without their ideational representation such as Big Brother, while others have been made to represent abstract ideas. Surprisingly, this allegory is very much applicable to current times.
Antagonist : At first, it appears that Big Brother is the main antagonist of 1984 in the opening chapters. However, as the story progresses O’Brien is revealed to be the antagonist later when he leads the arrest of Winston Smith after becoming his confidant in resistance against the Party.
Allusion : There are various examples of allusions given in the novel, 1984. However, some of these may be modern allusions Orwell might not have in mind when writing it such as surveillance tools used by the internet companies, the rise of Communism, and the implementation of the communist system. The references of Ingsoc, Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia are to the Russian communist system, while the three states refer to the Managerial Revolution written by James Burnham and published in 1941.
Conflict : The are two types of conflicts in the novel, 1984. The first one is the external conflict that starts among Winston Smith, the Party, and its agents in which he faces defeat when he faces arrest after O’Brien betrays him. The second is the internal conflict that is going on in his mind about his ideas of freedom and rights, and the system of the Party in which he is living and working.
Characters: 1984 presents both static as well as dynamic characters. Winston Smith is a dynamic character who changes, though, he becomes the same again. However, all the rest of the characters are merely puppets of the Party. Hence, they are all static or flat characters .
Climax : The climatic in the novel occurs in the second chapter when the love of Julia and Winston reaches its peak and both start dating each other, but the Thought Police arrest them.
Foreshadowing : The first example of foreshadowing in the novel occurs when the first chapter opens as “It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week” (Chapter-1). The slogan of “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” is also a type of foreshadowing which heralds the use of telescreens, the Thought Police, and the siblings spying on the parents.
Hyperbole : Hyperbole or exaggeration occurs at several places in the book. For example, i. The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting three hundred million people all with the same face. (Chapter-1) ii. He knew what it meant, or thought he knew. The place where there is no darkness was the imagined future, which one would never see, but which, by foreknowledge, one could mystically share in. (Chapter-1)
Imagery : Imagery means the use of five senses for the description. For example, i. The person immediately ahead of him in the queue was a small, swiftly-moving, beetle-like man with a flat face and tiny, suspicious eyes. (Chapter-1) ii. From over scrubby cheekbones eyes looked into Winston’s, sometimes with strange intensity, and flashed away again. (Chapter-1) iii. The sunlight, filtering through innumerable leaves, was still hot on their faces. (Chapter-1) The first example shows images of sight, the second one of sound and color, and the third one also shows of color.
Metaphor : 1984 shows good use of various metaphors . For example, i. Chocolate normally was dullbrown crumbly stuff. (Chapter-1) ii. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour” (Chapter-1) iii. Folly, folly, his heart kept saying: conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly. (Chapter-1)
Mood : The novel, 1984, shows a satirical tone . However, it also shows characters to be sarcastic and ironic at times according to the circumstances and contexts . It, however, becomes tense during the love affair of Winston and Julia.
Narrator : The novel, 1984 is told from a third-person point of view . It is also called an omniscient narrator who happens to be the author himself as he can see things from all perspectives . Here George Orwell is the narrator of 1984.
Personification : Personification means to attribute human acts and emotions to non-living objects . For example, i. ‘If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture. (Chapter-1) ii. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. (Chapter-4) iii. Both of these examples show the Party and power personified.
Protagonist : Winston Smith is the protagonist of the novel. He enters the novel from the very start and captures the interest of the readers until the last page.
Paradox : 1984 shows the use of paradox in slogans such as war is peace , freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength (Chapter-1)
Rhetorical Questions : The novel shows good use of rhetorical questions at several places. For example, ‘Why should it be? And if it were, what difference would that make? Suppose that we choose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death? The party is immortal.’ (Chapter-4) This example shows the use of rhetorical questions and their answers given by the same character, O’Brien.
Theme : A theme is a central idea that the novelist or the writer wants to stress upon. The novel, 1984, not only shows the futuristic thematic idea but also demonstrates human sufferings, love, hate, political ideals and several others.
Setting : The setting of the novel, 1984, is further Oceania state and its city of London.
Simile : The novel shows good use of various similes. For example, i. His tiny sister, clinging to her mother with both hands, exactly like a baby monkey. (Chapter-1) ii. He clung to O’Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm around his shoulders. (Chapter-2) The first simile compares the girl, Winston’s sister, to a tiny monkey and second Winston to a baby.

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Exploitation of Language in George Orwell's 1984

Categories: 1984 Dystopia George Orwell

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A brief inspection of the language, language’s effect on mind, exploitation of perception of language, propaganda in 1984.

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Animal Farm

The use of language in 1984 and animal farm anonymous 12th grade.

The evolutionary aspect of the human race which sets it apart, in knowledge and complexity, from the rest of the animal kingdom, is its ability to express ideas through language. Arguably, our ability to manipulate language in order to negotiate, disseminate and create ideas, has allowed the human race to survive and prosper more than any other. And while it is often asserted that language is merely a tool to express our thoughts, language itself help conceptualize ideas. In addition to setting humans apart from the rest of the kingdom, it creates distinctions within classes of human society. George Orwell, an English novelist during the 20th century, discusses the importance of language in the social hierarchy of a society across his many eminent works. He posits that language factors into a society’s social hierarchy, an idea that manifests itself in two sub-arguments: that ruling powers can manipulate language to restrict thought, and that those without a strong understanding of language can easily be oppressed.

Orwell argues that language is a key component of thought; therefore, if language is manipulated in any way, will be compromised. In the novel 1984, one of Orwell’s key ideas is that language is a vital component of...

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Language in Orwell’s 1984 as a Means of Manipulation and Control Essay

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