1984 george orwell essay introduction

George Orwell

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1984: Introduction

1984: plot summary, 1984: detailed summary & analysis, 1984: themes, 1984: quotes, 1984: characters, 1984: symbols, 1984: theme wheel, brief biography of george orwell.

Historical Context of 1984

Other books related to 1984.

• Full Title: Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel
• When Written: 1945-49; outline written 1943
• Where Written: Jura, Scotland
• When Published: June 1949
• Literary Period: Late Modernism
• Genre: Novel / Satire / Parable
• Setting: London in the year 1984
• Climax: Winston is tortured in Room 101
• Antagonist: O'Brien
• Point of View: Third-Person Limited

Extra Credit for 1984

Outspoken Anti-Communist. Orwell didn't just write literature that condemned the Communist state of the USSR. He did everything he could, from writing editorials to compiling lists of men he knew were Soviet spies, to combat the willful blindness of many intellectuals in the West to USSR atrocities.

Working Title. Orwell's working title for the novel was The Last Man in Europe .

George Orwell

• Literature Notes
• 1984 at a Glance
• Book Summary
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Part 1: Chapter 1
• Part 1: Chapter 2
• Part 1: Chapter 3
• Part 1: Chapter 4
• Part 1: Chapter 5
• Part 1: Chapters 6-7
• Part 1: Chapter 8
• Part 2: Chapter 1
• Part 2: Chapters 2-3
• Part 2: Chapter 4
• Part 2: Chapters 5-6
• Part 2: Chapters 7-8
• Part 2: Chapters 9-10
• Part 3: Chapter 1
• Part 3: Chapters 2-3
• Part 3: Chapters 4-5
• Part 3: Chapter 6
• Part 3: Appendix
• Character Analysis
• Winston Smith
• Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein
• Character Map
• George Orwell Biography
• Critical Essays
• The Role of Language and the Act of Writing
• The Purpose of Newspeak
• The Role of the Author
• The Mutability of History
• Full Glossary
• Essay Questions
• Practice Projects
• Cite this Literature Note

Introduction

George Orwell 's 1984 , like many works of literature, unmistakably carries with it literary traditions reaching back to the earliest of storytellers. Among the literary traditions that Orwell uses is the concept of utopia , which he distorts effectively for his own purposes. Utopia, or Nowhere Land, is an ideal place or society in which human beings realize a perfect existence, a place without suffering or human malady. Orwell did not originate this genre. In fact, the word utopia is taken from Sir Thomas More's Utopia, written in 1516. The word is now used to describe any place considered to be perfect.

In 1984, Orwell creates a technologically advanced world in which fear is used as a tool for manipulating and controlling individuals who do not conform to the prevailing political orthodoxy. In his attempt to educate the reader about the consequences of certain political philosophies and the defects of human nature, Orwell manipulates and usurps the utopian tradition and creates a dystopia, a fictional setting in which life is extremely bad from deprivation, oppression, or terror. Orwell's dystopia is a place where humans have no control over their own lives, where nearly every positive feeling is squelched, and where people live in misery, fear, and repression.

The dystopian tradition in literature is a relatively modern one and is usually a criticism of the time in which the author lives. These novels are often political statements, as was Orwell's other dystopian novel, Animal Farm , published in 1945. By using a dystopian setting for 1984 , Orwell suggests the possibility of a utopia, and then makes very clear, with each horror that takes place, the price humankind pays for "perfect" societies.

Historical Background

Orwell wrote 1984 just after World War II ended, wanting it to serve as a warning to his readers. He wanted to be certain that the kind of future presented in the novel should never come to pass, even though the practices that contribute to the development of such a state were abundantly present in Orwell's time.

Orwell lived during a time in which tyranny was a reality in Spain, Germany, the Soviet Union, and other countries, where government kept an iron fist (or curtain) around its citizens, where there was little, if any freedom, and where hunger, forced labor, and mass execution were common.

Orwell espoused democratic socialism. In his essay, "Why I Write," published in 1947, two years before the publication of 1984 , Orwell stated that he writes, among other reasons, from the "[d]esire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after." Orwell used his writing to express his powerful political feelings, and that fact is readily apparent in the society he creates in 1984 .

The society in 1984 , although fictional, mirrors the political weather of the societies that existed all around him. Orwell's Oceania is a terrifying society reminiscent of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union — complete repression of the human spirit, absolute governmental control of daily life, constant hunger, and the systematic "vaporization" of individuals who do not, or will not, comply with the government's values.

Orwell despised the politics of the leaders he saw rise to power in the countries around him, and he despised what the politicians did to the people of those countries. Big Brother is certainly a fusing of both Stalin and Hitler, both real and terrifying leaders, though both on opposite sides of the philosophical spectrum. By combining traits from both the Soviet Union's and Germany's totalitarian states, Orwell makes clear that he is staunchly against any form of governmental totalitarianism, either from the left or the right of the political spectrum.

By making Big Brother so easily recognizable (he is physically similar to both Hitler and Stalin, all three having heavy black mustaches and charismatic speaking styles), Orwell makes sure that the reader of 1984 does not mistake his intention — to show clearly how totalitarianism negatively affects the human spirit and how it is impossible to remain freethinking under such circumstances.

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Read our complete notes on the novel “1984” by George Orwell. Our notes cover 1984 summary, characters, themes, and analysis.

Introduction

Nineteen Eighty-four is written by George Orwell. It was published in 1949 as 1984. The novel is a tale to warn the people against the backdrops of the totalitarian government. It was published by Secker and Warburg on 8th June 1949.

Yearning for the opportunity of freedom, a humble, Outer Circle administrator of the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith, musters up the boldness to record his implicit wants in his little mysterious diary, in itself an unlawful demonstration. Serving quietly at the delight of the dismal, dictatorial hyper-province of Oceania, Smith acknowledges the INGSOC`s incomparable pioneer Big Brother who keeps a close eye on him.

The totalitarian government tightens its hold on its subject. Smith comes across Julia who is also a rebel and a dangerous affair starts. There’s no turning around. This couple has to pay at some point for their relationship. The waters of rebellions also start to boil and in the midst of the storm Smith changes his loyalty and turn into a supporter of the Party.

Historical Context of 1984

Orwell believed in socialism, the immediate consequence of his administration as a militiaman on the side of Republicans against Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Francisco was a Fascist. Upon his arrival in England, he became a member of the British Independent Labor Party and started to compose against the Nazi system and Stalinism.

Orwell was affected by rebels of Soviet socialism and by the Marxist compositions of Leon Trotsky, which modeled the ousted socialist progressive and model for Emmanuel Goldstein in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In 1946 Orwell stated that each line of genuine work that he has composed since 1936 has been composed, legitimately or in an indirect way, against despotism and for popularity based communism.

Inspiration for the Book

Before writing this novel, Orwell was inspired and impacted by the authoritarian systems of Stalin`s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The two systems celebrated their separate chiefs as gods. They also required to destroy the independence so as to advance the needs of the Party over the lives of individuals, requested supreme steadfastness from their residents, and turned to savagery at whatever point unfaithfulness was suspected.

In addition, the two systems reliably slandered their adversaries; similarly, as the Party and Big Brother do in 1984, through the Hate Week, Two Minutes Hate, and everyday propaganda through telescreens. Other similarities incorporate the Thought Police as a rehash of the Gestapo, NKVD which organized fear, and the Spies and Youth League as a reexamination of the Hitler Youth and the Little Octoberists, which inculcated youngsters to the Party and urged them to report dishonesty in subjects.

The Setting of the Novel

The action of this novel happens in London at some undefined time in the future. Although the city is mentioned, the version of the city presented is totally fictionalized. In this novel, London is the center of Airstrip One, which is part of the state of Oceania.

Oceania is among the three powers of this world, it consists of the Americas, Australasia, the Atlantic islands, British Isles and parts of Africa. The other is Eastasia consisting of Japan, China, Tibet and Mongolia. The third one is Eastasia that includes Northern Europe and Asiatic regions. The title shows that the novel is set in 1984.

London is partitioned in three particular social gatherings. The Inner Party lives in relative luxury with workers and access to extravagance products. The Outer Party, of which Winston is a part, lives in distinct, flimsy conditions with next to no influence over their own property. The most reduced social gathering is called the proles that live in ghettos where the Party doesn’t endeavor to apply a lot of control.

1984 Summary

It is the year 1984, Winston Smith who is the citizen of Oceania is living in Airstrip one also called Great Britain. Smith is a follower of a party. Winston has returned home during lunch-break. His apartment is located in Victory Mansion, the Party housing building. He has returned to his apartment because he wants to write his diary. The apartment is very small. It has a telescreen. This telecasts the propaganda and information of the Party. He lives in a place which has no privacy because big brother is watching all the people.

The party is ruling Oceania. This party follows a basic principle of English Socialism which is called Ignsoc. Oceania is governed under the rule of hierarchy and is a state of oligarchy. The party is led by Big Brother. The party has members who are divided into two different categories; at the first, there are ruling elites of the party, then comes to the members of the party, they are called regular members because they are the residents of Oceania. 

The people who are very poor are not taken into the party and they live in their poverty. They are not bound by the regulations of the party. The city of London has various types of images and pictures of Big Brother displayed on the walls. The walls are inscribed with Big Brother is watching you. The Party has three slogans that say “war is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and Ignorance is strength.”

Winston loses his parents and sister in the period of revolution that ruined capitalism and established Ingsoc principles in Oceania. He grows in the orphanage of the Party. He is then selected into the Party. He serves the Party by working in the Record Department in the Ministry of Truth. This department is working on the propaganda of the Party. It also changes the old records so that the Party could not be questioned.

There are three more Ministries as well. One is the Ministry of Love; it deals with the prisoners of the Party. The second is the Ministry of Peace and it deals with wars. The third is the Ministry of Plenty and it deals with the goods of the Party.

Winston does not like the system of the Party and thinks that the system of the Party must be changed. The dilemma is that he cannot talk about it openly because there is a fear of death. He knows that this is a serious crime and the penalty is torture and death.

Winston writes a number of notes in his diary. He expresses all his anti-feelings about the party. He knows that this could have severe repercussions but he gives vent to his feelings in the diary. He is writing in a diary when someone knocks at his door. He gets frightened with the thought that he has been caught but it is his neighbor Mrs. Parsons. She needs some help and Winston happily helps her. She has two children and they are working for the Spies and Youth league of the Party.

Winston returns to write his diary but he is getting late and has to reach in time for his work. While working, he finds a newspaper clip that proves the innocence of the young men. When he examines the clip, he finds that the party is wrong in this case. This means that he has got the true evidence about the wrongdoings of the party. He then destroys the clip and stuck it in the internal furnace of the building.

Winston is always surrounded by members who are loyal to the Party and he keeps watch so that he could not be perceived by the others for his anti-feelings against the Party. Winston is supposed to observe two minutes of hate daily for the enemy of Oceania, Eurasia. This hate is also against the opposition leader Emmanuel Goldstein. On the screen, the propaganda is very powerful and Winston has to join his members in that.

Winston gets curious to know the facts of the past and he roams around in the streets. He goes to the locality of Prole. He thinks the rebellion can only come from these proles and without them there cannot be any hope of rebellion.  In one of the prole pubs, Winston goes to an old man and enquires about life prior to Revolution. But the conversation with the old man frustrates him because the old man narrates his personal memories rather than the facts of the Revolution.

Winston ends his conversation with the old man and returns to the shop where he has bought a personal diary. The owner of the shop is Mr. Charrington and he is a very kind man. The owner of the shop talks to him about the room which is above his shop and Winston considers it to be rented that could give him an escape from being constantly watched by the Telescreen.

When he is working in his department and then during his walk, he notices a girl who seems to be the loyal member of the Party is observing Winston. Winston gets frightened because he thinks that the girl might be a Thought Police. After a few days, the girl slips a note to Winston which states that she needs the help of Winston. The note also has written that the girl loves him and this excites Winston. He thinks that is to be kept secret because the Party does not allow any sort of conjugal pleasure.

The Party approves the liking of a person to another person but it must be a marriage and there is an approval which is required from the Party.

The Party wants a full devotion of energies for the Party. Winston has remained in one such marriage. Katharine remained his wife. She remains very loyal to the Party. She has to make schedules and Winston is supposed to go on time for sexual pleasure. She knows that it is a duty to the Party to bear children.

Winston tries very hard to keep his new affair secretive. One day. The girl tells him the place and time of their first meeting. The girl’s name is Julia. She tells him that they are going to meet in a country area where there are dense woods. They meet there, know about their ideas regarding the Party and then start their love affair. Winston looks around the place and realizes that it is the same place he has been dreaming. He calls this place the Golden Country in his dreams.

Winston and Julia continue to meet in such secretive places. The two fall in love with each other because they both have a higher degree of hate for the Party. But because they are constantly watching, they get little time to talk and communicate. They usually meet in public places and they have formal talks there.

Winston thinks that the rebellion is possible which will end the rule of the party. Julia, on the other hand, is happy with the life she is having because she knows that death is always around the corner due to the strict system of the Party. She feigns to be very loyal to the Party. She is a member of a league that advocates Anti-sex agendas. She is also a volunteer to the Party in various activities. But in heart, she hates the party and she knows that the Party is playing with their lives like a game. She also knows that she cannot change the system and rule of the Party.

After some time, Winston talks to Mr. Charrington and rents his room above the shop. The room is simply furnished. The Party asks the citizens to have a twenty-four hour time clock but Winston puts a clock that has hours. This shows his resentment towards the Party. In this new room, he often meets Julia.

 The room has an image of St. Clements Dane which was an old Church of London. The owner of the shop teaches him a few lines of the poem written about church and Julia knows a few more lines of the poem. The window which opens to the outside shows that on the opposite side a prole woman is always having a wash and she sings the prole songs. These songs are composed in the Ministry of Truth by machines.

Outside their window, a middle-aged prole woman is constantly changing her wash and singing simple prole songs, many of which have been created by machines in the Ministry of Truth specifically for the proles.

Afterwards, another member of the Party comes into the life of Winston with an important role. He is O`Brien.  Winston has observed working in the Ministry of Truth. He is an intelligent man with good wisdom. Winston thinks O’Brien shares the same feelings of hatred for the Party as Winston has.

One day, during the break of two minutes of hate, Winston observes his eyes and reads them carefully that affirms the anti-Party feelings of O’Brien. Winston has heard a voice in his dream telling him that he is going to meet him in a place where there is light and he believes that the voice is of O`Brien. Winston also looks at him from the perspective that he could help him in the underground movement of rebellion.

The Party has launched a dictionary for Oceania and the language of Oceania is Newspeak. One day, O’Brien comes to Winston to discuss something about the edition of the Dictionary. Winston is given an address which is of the house of O`Brien. It is given to him so that he can come to his home and take the new book in advance. Winston takes the paper with amazing secrecy. He believes that O`Brien has come to him because he might be working underground against the Party. Winston thinks that the rebellion is on its way against the Party.

O`Brien is a member of the Inner party and he has been given a very comfortable apartment, and servant. He has also been facilitated in a way that he can turn off the telescreen whenever he wants to. Winston, O`Brien and Julia start meeting in secrecy. In one of the similar meetings, Winston tells them that he is going to renounce the Party. He starts his faith in the Brotherhood that is working against the Party. O`Brien welcomes Julia and Winston into the brotherhood. He also tells them that they must be ready to do any task to work against the Party. Both of them agree that they are ready but they tell O`Brien that they want to see each other because they love each other.

O`Brien then tells them that he is going to give a book of Goldstein to Winston and then they will chalk out the activities for the proceedings. Soon the meeting ends and they vow to meet in a place where there is no darkness.

A week of Hate comes and the enemy of the Party changes from Eurasia to Eastasia. Winston is supposed to work a lot in the weekdays because the previous publications of the Ministry were favoring the war against Eurasia but now they are to publicly make the things announced that they are to go on war with Eastasia. This implies that they are to make the people believe that the Party is at war with Eastasia and it has been continued for many years.

This week, a man brings Winston a briefcase that contains the book which O`Brien promised him. Winston soon finishes his work for the Party and goes to the rented apartment of Mr. Charrington to read the book. Julia comes to the apartment, too. Winston reads the book aloud that has the history of Oceania. It also details the ideas of Capitalism against Totalitarianism and the purpose and motto of the Party. The book is actually the articulation of Emmanuel Goldstein. Winston knows many of the facts of the book.

After reading many parts of the book, both of them get to sleep. After waking up, they look at the window outside. He sees outside and hears an echo that comes from a telescreen hidden behind the image of the church. The echo tells him that he is dead. It means that he is badly caught by the Party. Suddenly, Thought Police enter the room. Mr. Charrington enters the room with Thought Police and it becomes very clear that he is working for Thought Police. They get arrested. They are then separately dragged to the Ministry of Love.

In the cell, Winston sees a lot of people who have been brought for Thought Crimes. He sees a person who has read some verses to his daughter against the Big Brother. In the cell, Winston observes that there is a room which the prisoners are constantly afraid of. The room is referred to as Room 101.

One day O’Brien arrives and Winston gets to know that he has been arrested through O’Brien because O`Brien serves the Ministry of Love. Soon, the torture of Winston starts. The torture at the start is very brutal and he is made to confess many of the crimes that Winston is not even aware of. These crimes include murders as well. Slowly the brutality decreases and O`Brien comes to torture Winston.  He tells Winston that his memory is damaged, that is why he is thinking of rebellion and this has made him insane.

O`Brien tells Winston that the purpose of the Party is to seek absolute power. It can do anything for power. This is the reason that this world is controlled by the party and it has the power to exercise the power. Winston stops arguing with O`Brien because he knows that he would not be believed. Winston thinks that the past has never existed and everything is false. However, in order to be released from this torture, Winston needs to fight against his own insane mind.

Winston in the prison gets to experience severe beatings and machine shocks. He is also starved in prison. He gets to know that this is actually the way of the Party to make the prisoners feel these tortures. O`Brien tells Winston that he needs to believe everything that the Party tells him so whether it is right or wrong. He does not have the option to argue with the principles of the Party.

Winston tries to argue but he sees himself in the mirror and is afraid to see because he has turned into a skeleton. He is just a bone and nothing else. He thinks that this might turn into his death.  So he agrees to be re-educated by the Party. When he agrees, he is given good food and proper sleep. He is not tortured afterwards. Slowly, he regains his health.

Winston starts accepting all the principles of the Party. He makes progress in making his understanding clear about the party. But he still remembers Julia and his love for her. One day, while he is asleep, he dreams and in the dream, he starts calling Julia, Julia…..

The last attempt at O’Brien is to force Winston to cheat Julia. Winston is taken in Room 101.  In this room, Winston experiences one of the worst things in this world. Winston also says that the worst things vary from individual to individual. The worst thing for Winston is rats. He is tied with a chair.  O`Brien attaches a cage to the mask of Winston that has a huge rat. This not only threatens but endangers Winston. The fear is to an extreme level and Winston shouts that O’Brien could put Julia in his place to stop his sufferings. This implies that O`Brien has got successful because he has made Winston betray Julia.

Winston is released into this world but he is a broken man with no ideas and feelings. He then meets Julia but there is no love in between them and they feel estranged. The tortures of the prison have changed both of them. They feel that there is a hope of love between them.

After coming into the normal world, Winston gets a new job and is paid well for the job. He starts spending his time playing chess. In the final part of the novel, Winston is shown to be waiting for a report which would state the invasion of Eurasia by Oceania. Winston is happy because he thinks that Eurasia might break the defense of Oceania. This might give Eurasia the opportunity to take over and end the strict regime of the Party. This would result in better lives for the people. The success of Eurasia would mean that the regime of the Party has ended.

Before the report gets published, Winston is very happy and Winston reminiscence a day from his childhood he played chess with his family. The report is published and it states that Oceania has got successful. The advances of Eurasia have been stopped and they are made to go back. The jubilation and the celebrations are televised on the telescreen and there are celebrations in the streets as well. Winston in the street sees a big poster of Big Brother and he realizes that he has not changed in the re-education of Big Brother. He now loves Big Brother and is very much feeling loyalty for the Big Brother because Big brother is watching him.

Themes in 1984 by Orwell

The dangers of totalitarianism.

1984 is a political novel composed to caution the audience of the risks of authoritarian government. Orwell had a good idea of the totalitarian governments in Russian and Spain. He also knew that to sustain it for a longer period of time these governments could go to any extent of horror and terror for control. Thus he composed this novel to warn the people of this horror of authoritarian governments.

In 1949, the Cold War had not yet arisen.  Numerous American people favored socialism, and the diplomatic conditions between communist and democratic states were uncertain. The Soviet Union was regularly depicted as an extraordinary good experiment by the press of America. Orwell was upset by the savageries and persecutions he saw in states governed by Communism and appears to have been worried by technology in empowering abusive governments to control their residents.

In 1984, Orwell depicts a society governed by an authoritarian government with a supreme force. The title of the novel is intended to demonstrate that this novel portrays opportunities for the future. Orwell states If tyranny of totalitarian governments were not contradicted then the world in the novel could turn into a reality in just thirty-five years.

Orwell depicts a state wherein the government screens and controls each part of human life to the degree that in any event, having an unfaithful idea is illegal. As the novel advances, the defiant Winston Smith embarks to challenge the constraints of the Party’s capacity, just to find its capacity to control and oppress its subjects. The readers comprehend through Winston’s eyes that The Party utilizes various procedures to control its residents, every one of which is its very own significant topic in the novel.

Psychological Manipulation

The Party blasts its subjects with mental upgrades intended to overpower the brain’s ability for autonomous ideas. The telescreen in each resident’s room shoots a steady stream of promulgation intended to cause the disappointments and weaknesses of the Party to seem victorious. The telescreens monitor conduct like wherever they go, residents are persistently reminded, particularly by ways like “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” that the specialists are investigating them.

The Party disregards family structure by drafting kids into an association known as the Junior Spies, which indoctrinates and urges them to keep an eye on their folks and report any occasion of unfaithfulness to the Party.

The Party powers people to stifle their sexual wants. The Party at that point channels individuals’ repressed disappointment and feeling into extraordinary, brutal showcases of disdain against the Party’s political foes. A considerable lot of these adversaries have been created by the Party explicitly for this reason.

Resistance and Revolution

In 1984, Winston investigated unsafe and critical demonstrations of obstruction against the Party. In Book One: Chapter VII, Winston sees that rebellion implies a look at without flinching, an articulation of the voice; and no more, an infrequent murmured word. Winston develops these minor uprisings by submitting individual demonstrations of rebellion, for example, keeping a diary and purchasing a paperweight. In the long run, he heightens his defiance through his sexual affair with Julia.

The relationship is a twofold resistance, as it incorporates the thoughtcrime of want. Winston doesn’t accept his activities or the activities of others  because this will prompt the obliteration of the Party inside his lifetime. However, before he is arrested by the Thought Police he holds out the expectation that later on somebody will have the option to glance back at Winston’s time from a world that is free.

Winston’s trust in real unrest against the Party lies with the socially marginalized of the city- proles. He sees that the proles have a prominent population than the Party and that the proles have the solidarity to complete an upheaval if they would ever arrange themselves. The issue is that the proles have been dependent on poverty for such a long time that they can’t see beyond the objective of endurance.

The very idea of attempting to construct a superior world is a lot for them to think about. These perceptions are set against the setting of the Party’s own way of life as the result of transformation. As indicated by Winston, the Party is made during the mid-1960s in a revolution that toppled the social order of Britain. The Party guarantees that the Revolution has not yet finished and that it will be satisfied once they have unlimited authority.

Independence and Identity

Controlling history is one of the essential devices for controlling the masses by the Party. The Party controls autonomy and personality. For instance, the essential qualities of setting up one’s character are inaccessible to Winston and different residents of Oceania. Winston doesn’t have a clue about his age. He is not aware about his marital bond. He has no information about the life of his mother. None of his memories of childhood are dependable, in light of the fact that he has no photographs or reports to assist him with arranging genuine recollections from envisioned ones.

Rather than being interesting people with explicit, distinguishing subtleties, each individual from the Outer Party is indistinguishable. All the members of the Party wear a similar dress, smoke similar cigarettes, drink similar gin, etc. In that capacity, shaping a feeling of individual character isn’t just mentally testing, yet strategically troublesome.

Wealth vs. Poverty

The culture of Oceania presents a reasonable division in everyday environments. The little Inner Party lives richly, with hirelings and comfort and furnished apartments. The Party individuals live in apartments with a single room without any comforts and low-quality food. The proles live in outright destitution. The gorge distance between poor people and rich people in the novel is striking and is generally recognizable during Winston’s entering into prole society. The living buildings of the proles are rotting, and the city of London is full of ruins. While the Inner Party solaces itself with extravagance, the residents of Oceania are made to suffer.

Orwell presents this division to show how authoritarian social orders advance the wealth of the ruling party while diminishing the personal satisfaction for every single citizen. These governments frequently express their desires for building up an equivalent society when as a general rule the division between their day to day environments and those of the residents is huge. Winston watches out toward the city and sees  London dying. O’Brien watches out on the city of London and sees a general public caught in a solitary minute in time, characterized and constrained by the Party.

  Technology

Technology and innovation is a critical apparatus that the Party uses to keep up command over its residents. Without telescreens, the Thought Police might not have been so powerful, there would have not been beneficial aspects of Propaganda. The consistent supervision of the telescreen viably detains residents of Oceania in their day to day lives which implies that they are constantly under perception.

  Different territories of technological advancement are strikingly stale. For instance, the printing machines in the Ministry of Truth are still very essential, and each state keeps on building similar bombs that were utilized a long time ago. Logical advancement has ended, aside from where it serves the Party’s objectives, for example, in new strategies for mental control. In the realm of Oceania, there is nothing as progress for progress; there is just force for power. At the point when mechanical improvements serve this force, they are energized. At the point when they don’t, they are halted.

The Party is energized by loyalty, and in this manner requests that its residents bolster all moves it makes in seeking to make Oceania great. For the Party, steadfastness implies tolerating beyond a shadow of a doubt or faltering. Incidentally, when Winston vows his devotion to the Brotherhood, he consents to acknowledge the objectives and prerequisites of the Brotherhood beyond a shadow of a doubt or delay.

Winston consents to do anything the Brotherhood demands, regardless of whether that implies killing honest people. Nonetheless, Winston is faithful to Julia, and won’t be isolated from her till eternity. This unwaveringly split of loyalty is the thing that isolates Winston from the other Party individuals. Party individuals are faithful to the Big Brother, The Party and Oceania. Individual connections are of no significance.

While in the Ministry of Love, O’Brien notices this shortcoming in Winston’s psyche and adequately expels it. Through excruciating physical torment, O’Brien first instructs Winston that the Party’s point of view is the exact viewpoint. Next, by undermining him with meat-eating rodents, O’Brien breaks Winston’s dependability to Julia. In the last scene of the novel, Winston at long last comes to cherish Big Brother, and his change from split loyalties to a more noteworthy single dependability to the Party is finished.

1984 Characters Analysis

Winston smith.

Winston lives in London and he serves the Party. He is an intellectual with a thin and fragile personality.  He is thirty-nine years old. He does not like the system of totalitarianism imposed by the Party. He dreams of gathering a rebellion against the Party to achieve freedom but he fails in the end.

Orwell’s main objective in 1984 is to exhibit the unnerving prospects of tyranny. The reader encounters the dark world that Orwell imagines through the eyes of Winston. His own inclination to oppose the smothering of his distinction, and his scholarly capacity to reason about his obstruction, empowers the peruser to watch and comprehend the brutal mistreatment that Big Brother, the Party and the Thought Police establish. Winston is incredibly meditative and inquisitive, to see how and why the Party imposes its force in Oceania. Winston’s reflections allow Orwell to investigate the novel’s significant subjects, including language as brain control, mental and physical terrorizing and control, and the significance of information on the past.

Apart from his thoughtful nature, Winston’s main attributes are his rebelliousness and his fatalism. Winston hates the Party and wants to test the limits of its power. He commits innumerable crimes throughout the novel. He develops an illicit relationship with Julia. He goes against the Big Brother. The effort Winston puts into his attempt to achieve freedom and independence ultimately underscores the Party’s devastating power. By the end of the novel, Winston’s rebellion is revealed as playing into O’Brien’s campaign of physical and psychological torture, transforming Winston into a loyal subject of Big Brother.

One purpose behind Winston’s disobedience, and inevitable destruction, is his feeling of submission to the inevitable by believing the Party will get and rebuff him. When he states “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” in his personal diary, Winston is certain that the Thought Police will rapidly catch him for carrying out a ThoughtCrime. Feeling that he is vulnerable to his fate, Winston permits himself to face pointless challenges, for example, confiding in O’Brien and leasing the room over Mr. Charrington’s shop. He realizes that these dangers will expand his odds of being arrested by the Party. He even confesses this to O’Brien while in jail. But since he accepts that he will be arrested regardless of his actions, he persuades himself that he should keep on rebelling. Winston lives in a world in which real confidence is difficult, he gives himself false expectations, completely mindful that he is doing as such.

Julia is the lover of Winston in this novel. She is a dark-haired girl. She works in the Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth. Julia likes intimate relations. She has many affairs with the Party members. She is an optimistic lady. She does not like the authority of the party. Her rebellion against the Party is not ideological but personal.

Julia is a person whom Winston believes that she loathes the Party and wishes to oppose it as like Winston. Though Winston is eager, fatalistic, and worried about social issues, Julia is logical, sensual, and by and large lives in moments to enjoy life. Winston aches to join the Brotherhood and read Emmanuel Goldstein’s dynamic statement while Julia is increasingly worried about sensual relationships and making pragmatic arrangements to abstain from getting captured by the Party. Winston considers his relation with Julia to be a transitory, and due to his fatalistic disposition he is unable to envision his relationship with Julia as long-lasting. Julia adjusts herself to pick types of little scope resistance against the Party. She confesses  having illicit relationships with different members of the Party. She has no expectation of ending her pleasure chasing, or of being arrested. Julia is a striking complexity to Winston: aside from their common sexual wants and contempt for the Party, a large portion of their qualities are unique, if not conflicting.

O`Brien is a mysterious character in this novel. He works for the Party and is a member of the Inner Party. He traps Winston and then tortures him so that he can become loyal to the party.

One of the most intriguing parts of 1984 is the way wherein Orwell covers the depiction of a totalitarian world in a cryptic atmosphere. While Orwell provides the reader a chance to investigate the individual existence of Winston Smith, the readers look at Party life from the perspective of Winston. Therefore, a significant number of the Party’s internal activities stay unexplained, as do its birthplaces, and the characters and inspirations of its pioneers. 

This feeling of riddle is brought together in the character of O’Brien, an amazing individual from the Inner Party who stunts Winston into accepting that he is an individual from the progressive gathering called the Brotherhood. O’Brien accepts Winston into the Brotherhood. Afterward, however, he shows up at Winston’s prison cell to manhandle and indoctrinate him for the sake of the Party. During the procedure of this discipline, O’Brien concedes that he presented himself to be associated with the Brotherhood only to trap Winston in a demonstration of open unfaithfulness to the Party.

This disclosure brings up a bigger number of issues about O’Brien rather than giving answers. Instead of creating as a character all through the novel, O’Brien really appears to be an undeveloped character of the novel. When Winston inquires as to whether he has also been caught by the Party, he replies that they caught him a long time ago. This answer implies that he might have remained a rebel. One can likewise contend that O’Brien claims to identify with Winston just to pick up his trust. Likewise, one can’t be certain whether the Brotherhood really exists, or it is basically a Party creation used to trap the unfaithful and give the remainder of the masses a shared adversary. The book doesn’t address these inquiries, yet rather leaves O’Brien as a shadowy, emblematic riddle on the edges of the much progressively darker Inner Party.

Big Brother

Big Brother is the leader of Oceania, the pioneer of the Party, a cultivated war legend, an ace innovator and scholar. He is the first instigator of the insurgency that brings the Party to control Oceania. The Party utilizes the picture of Big Brother to ingrain a feeling of devotion and dread in the people. The picture shows up on currency, on telescreens, and on the banners which are spread all around the city with the trademark that Big Brother is watching you. The novel shows that a great part of Big Brother’s temperament is unclear and liable to change. Indeed, an aspect of Winston’s responsibilities is to take out old articles and alter the statements of Big Brother that are stated to coordinate what he states in the on-going present.

 Although he controls the whole of Oceania yet he never appears in the novel. Winston never gets an opportunity to communicate with Big Brother in any capacity. The concern of Big Brother is to keep the individuals living in a condition of dread, and the way that nobody appears to have ever observed him makes him considerably successful as a pioneer. The text of the book recommends that Big Brother either doesn’t exist or has never existed as a real individual. When Winston is arrested and put in the Ministry of Love, he has a discussion with O’Brien about Big Brother. Winston inquires whether Big Brother exists; he is given an answer that he does exist. When Winston inquires whether Big Brother will see death, O’Brien says that Big Brother cannot die.

 Mr. Charrington

Mr. Charrington owns a second-hand shop. His shop is located in the prole area. He is 60 years old. He has dark white hair. Winston believes that he might have been a musician or writer in his youth. He provides a number of crimes that can lead to rebellion against the party because the Party has not been good. He sells a notebook to Winston that becomes his personal diary. He also rents his room above his shop to Winston where Winston and Julia secretly meet. He is sympathetic towards Winston in the start and indirectly encourages him for rebellion but in the end, he becomes the source through which Winston gets arrested because Mr. Charrington is a member of Thought Police.

1984 Literary Analysis

Does the novel end on a note of pessimism or optimism?

Winston is broken down badly by the rats in room 101.  In order to get released from the torture he offers Julia for torture. Winston gets released in the last part of the novel.  Readers are informed that Winston lives a life of simplicity.  One day, he encounters Julia and they both confess that both of them offered to be released from the torture and the lover could be replaced.   This means that now they do not feel any sort of love for each other. In the actions of the novel, Winston experiences a picture of Big Brother and encounters a feeling of triumph since he presently cherishes Big Brother. Winston’s acknowledgment of Party rule denotes the end is in the direction he has been on since the opening of the novel. Regardless of Winston’s different types of dismissal and obstruction toward the Party, he had consistently been sensible about how his decisions would unavoidably prompt his capture, torment, and possible death.

Despite the fact that Winston’s destiny is troubled and the closure of the book may appear to be skeptical, the end of the novel can be pursued as hope for trust. The Party needed to go to extraordinary measures to break Winston, utilizing a whole cast of characters and deploying incalculable hours following Winston and later investigating him. 

The measure of exertion the Party places into separating only one individual would not be conceivable for a huge scope: there are lesser numbers of Party individuals and an excessive number of individuals for them to screen. In the event that the Party needs to consume an indistinguishable measure of assets on each dissident from it spent on Winston, it will always be unable to totally get rid of dispute among the individuals. 

For each nonconformist like Winston who gets captured and broken by the Party, another might not be detected. Were the Party ready to create a proficient method to extract the conflict, instead of taking out protesters individually, at that point the end of the book would be really sad. However, the way that Winston has the option to oppose as long as he does, and that it takes the Party such unprecedented endeavors to cut him down, shields the novel from being totally miserable.

What do Big Brother and Goldstein depict?

Emmanuel Goldstein and Big Brother are the pioneers of the restricting powers in Oceania. Big Brother rules Oceania while Goldstein leads the adversaries of Big Brother and has formed the Brotherhood. Orwell doesn’t clarify whether they really exist or not and this makes them quite similar.

O’Brien discloses to Winston Smith that Big Brother may or may not exist. Big Brother exists as the exemplification of the Party. However, he might not die forever. O’Brien won’t reveal to Winston whether Big Brother and Goldstein exist, yet all things considered, both are just the propaganda of the Party. For example the way that O’Brien confesses  having composed Goldstein’s book is a sign of this.

Big Brother is another name for control in Oceania because it is a name of trust, security, and fondness. The Party, or, Big Brother, is not like Stalin or Hitler. Orwell gives Emmanuel Goldstein a Jewish name that is reminiscent of the force structure in World War II. Important is that Emmanuel actually signifies God.

It has no effect in Winston’s life whether these two powers exist. Winston’s destiny is fixed, similar to the destiny of the general public in which he lives, paying little heed to their reality. Goldstein and Big Brother exist in the minds of the people, and that is the main thing that is an issue for Winston. Orwell proposes for these portray Totalitarian force structures because they are both the equivalent. O’Brien, in his manifestation as a Brotherhood chief, inquires as to whether they are happy to carry out outrage against the Party, huge numbers of which are the same that the Party submits against its subjects. Orwell portrays that Political radicalism isn’t certain under any name.

Interpreting the language: Newspeak:

Orwell was certain that the language`s decline is because of economic and political factors. Despite the fact that he had no strong evidence, he assumed that the dialects of nations under autocracies. For  example, the Soviet Union or Germany had decayed under their individual systems. Orwell writes in one of his articles that when the general environment is awful, language must endure. He adds whenever thought taints language, language can likewise degenerate ideas. Here is the very idea of driving the development of Newspeak.

To show this thought that language can degenerate ideas and that authoritarian framework use language to confine thoughts. Orwell made Newspeak that served as the official language for Oceania. In that language, a word like freedom did not exist.

In his Appendix, Orwell clarifies the grammatical game plan and the historical background of the Newspeak. A language that is alive like English has the capacity of different articulation tends to pick up words and in this manner widen the mindfulness and information of its speakers. Newspeak loses words, by evacuating words that can be used for rebellion and can give a thought to resistance. Thus, for instance, on the grounds that great presumes something contrary to awful, so awful is pointless. 

Correspondingly, all degrees of goodness can be communicated basically by adding standard prefixes and postfixes to this one root word: ungood (awful) and plusgood (generally excellent) and doubleplusgood (magnificent). In this manner, Newspeak takes out unnecessary words, yet it encourages a narrowing of thought and being aware. The thought behind Newspeak is that, as language must turn out to be less expressive, the brain is all the more handily controlled. Through making Newspeak, Orwell cautions the reader that a legislature that makes the language and commands how it is utilized can control the brains of its residents.

  History can be re-written:

In 1984, the possibility that history is variable or alterable is highlighted.  The fact is that whatever the Party considers it to be right, is made the basis of the standards of things to come in the future. Some German Fascist leaders flaunted that when people lie frequently enough, others will acknowledge it as truth. The Stalinists consummated this business as usual by re-composing individuals and occasions all through history or misshaping verifiable realities to suit the Party’s motivations. The party slogan in 1984 is that whoever has control over the past has control over the future and whoever has control of the present has control of the past.

Winston Smith’s situation in the Ministry of Truth is that of making the past events unrecognizable to any individual with an exact memory so every fraud becomes a notable reality. In a moment, Oceania is and consistently has been engaged in war with one adversary, the following moment it is and has consistently been engaged in war with another, and the individuals of Oceania acknowledge the data as obvious. It is an embellishment of wonder that Orwell saw it while writing the novel way before 1984 and detailed with genuine lucidity in 1984: People promptly accept what they can accept easily.

This book differentiated between truth and Facts and afterward investigates the social-political-moral good subtleties of the underhanded control of realities so as to control people and social orders for political benefits. Orwell was worried that the idea of truth was becoming dim in the world. In the field of human intercourse of which governmental issues is a section, what is accepted is significantly more impressive than what is real. In the event that the pioneers of countries are the individuals directing the what, when, where, how and who of history, there can be little inquiry that lies discover their way into the books of history, that those falsehoods are instructed to students, and that they in the end become authentic actuality.

This worry is very clear in 1984. During Orwell’s time as an opposition warrior in Spain, he encountered this revamping of history directly. He saw that news stories were frequently erroneous. There were regular reports of fights where no battling had happened or no report at all of the fights where many men had faced deaths. Orwell yielded that quite a bit of history was falsehoods, and he was baffled by the way that he accepted that history could be precisely composed.

This re-writing of occasions isn’t saved for the governments of totalitarianism. Indeed, candidates for governments like the President, recollect things in an unexpected way. It seems as though an occasion can be removed from history as if people do not recall it. At all levels, vague or uncertain language is utilized to shade or change genuine occasions to support candidates or belief systems. With each period, our sages are disavowed, and history books revamped. As the way of life and the philosophy change, it changes history. Here and there these mutilations are honest and harmless contrasts of point of view; different occasions, they are fatal perilous.

Propaganda and Fear are used to Control the Subjects:

In “1984”, untruths, fantasies and wrong data control the thinking and perceptions of the residents. The Party deploys Propaganda as a weapon to control its subjects. Propaganda increases the confidence of residents in the party and makes them feel that whatever the party advises them to do is in every case right. There are for the most part two sorts of propaganda, one changes truth, known as doublethink, and another makes dread. 

“Doublespeak” can be seen much of the time in the realm of 1984. The slogan of the Party “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” is a genuine example. The possibility of the slogan is to persuade the residents that what they need is the thing that they already have. No one but war can make harmony and agreement, so harmony is no longer harmony, it turns into war. Any individual who is slaved and needs freedom, he already possesses Freedom.  One can reinforce himself by not knowing about things and being oblivious.

The motto changes truth and causes the residents to accept that anything they need other than what their administration needs can just make them despondent, along these lines, nobody will consider insubordination since they accept the Party’s method for overseeing is the best and just way. “Big Brother IS WATCHING YOU” is another center motto. It is almost everywhere in the state and for the most part, introduced underneath the image of Big Brother on a banner. It makes dread of wrecked protection among residents by alarming them that they are observed constantly. 

Simultaneously, the trademark focuses on Big Brother’s capacity to tell the residents that they are to be sure sheltered and protected. 

The Party utilizes this to cause them to accept that inside the Party nothing can turn out badly, and without Big Brother, they won’t have such lives. Everybody thinks he is protected in Oceania due to Big Brother.

Law for Control:

The law is another integral asset for administrators in the novel to curtail the freedom of the citizens. No gatherings, no dates, no adoration, no residents stroll on road after check-in time, laws are all around in Oceania. In spite of the fact that these are carefully executed, they can’t be called laws hypothetically on the grounds that they are not written in a framework. 

There is no composed law in the novel, there is nothing of the sort as constitution or court, and however, that is actually how dread is made, as residents are continually living in vulnerability. There is no law that characterizes Thoughtcrime. However, Winston could be captured whenever for perpetrating Thoughtcrime by even a little action proposing rebellion and his sensory system truly turns into his greatest adversary. Since there is no composed law, the Party can alter and adjust the laws unreservedly as it needs, residents can’t be sure whether they have carried out any wrongdoing, in this way nobody is sufficiently courageous to oppose the Party by any level, so dread is made. Likewise, “Newspeak” is another law that is upheld to set the control of the Party. 

People use language to communicate their thoughts, by reducing words and words for feelings, for example, “incredible”, “awesome” and “phenomenal” by a solitary word “good” and its relative degrees “plusgood” and “plusplusgood”. Bunches of contemplations are really constrained on the grounds that they can’t be shaped semantically in individuals’ brains. Residents at that point can’t have their own basic reasoning, and just do what they are advised to do; they work similarly as computers, which shockingly are operated on two words.

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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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Ben Pimlott: Introduction to Nineteen Eighty-Four

It is easy to see why George Orwell’s last novel, published in June 1949 seven months before the author’s death, was such an instant success. First, it is a wickedly disreputable yarn that takes adolescent fantasy – of lonely defiance, furtive sex and deadly terror – to a shockingly unacceptable extreme. Second, and more important, this singular tale was widely read as social comment, and even prophecy.

That it should have been so regarded is not, perhaps, surprising. Drabness, shortages, government red tape were a way of life not just in the novel but in the Britain where it was written. At the same time, totalitarianism was a stalking fear. Nazi Germany in the recent past, Russia and China in the present, framed the Western political consciousness. There was a sense of grimly staring into a crystal ball at a just-imaginable near-distance.

Today it is impossible to think of the novel in quite the same way. It is a mark of the author’s astonishing influence that, as the historical 1984 approached, the date on the calendar was discussed throughout the world almost with trepidation, as though it were a kind of millennium. But that is now over, and some may wonder whether the novel has exceeded its shelf life. For how can a story about a future that is past continue to alarm its readers?

There are certainly aspects of the novel which tempt the modern critic to be condescending. Not only has the supposed warning been largely wrong within its time-span (there has, so far, been no third world war or Western revolution, and totalitarian systems are not more but less common than forty years ago). The novel’s literary weaknesses can now be seen in clearer focus. If Nineteen Eighty-Four is an accessible novel, that is partly because of the lucidity of Orwell’s writing. But it is also because of a lack of subtlety in his characterisation, and a crude plot.

The latter may be briefly summarised. The novel is set in the year 1984 in London (‘Airstrip One’) in Oceania, a superpower controlled by the restrictive ‘Party’ and led by its symbolic head, Big Brother. Within this state there is no law and only one rule: absolute obedience in deed and thought. Oceanian society is divided hierarchically between a privileged Inner Party, a subservient Outer Party, and a sunken mass of ‘proles’. The hero, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party and is employed at the Ministry of Truth (that is, of Lies) as a routine falsifier of records. Despite overwhelming pressure to conform to the system, Winston secretly reacts against it. He is approached by another minor official, Julia, who recognises a kindred spirit. Emboldened by love, they ask a high-ranking Inner Party bureaucrat, O’Brien, to put them in touch with an opposition force called the Brotherhood, supposedly led by Big Brother’s arch-enemy, the Trotsky-like Emmanuel Goldstein. The encouragement they receive from O’Brien, however, turns out to be a ploy. They are arrested and separated. Both are broken under interrogation and betray each other. Released before his final liquidation, Winston discovers that he has learnt to love Big Brother.

This works well, at one level, as entertainment. But it has limitations as art. The narrative lacks development, the dialogue is sometimes weak, and most of the people are two-dimensional, existing only to explain a political point or permit a side-swipe at a species in the real world. Among the novel’s minor figures, a woman singing as she hangs out washing cheers us, and we are haunted by the mournful image of Winston’s long-disappeared mother.

But the hero’s Outer Party acquaintances – the fatuously eager Parsons, for instance, or the zealot Syme – are merely caricature political activists; while most of the proles, with their dropped aitches and jumbled cockney clichés, seem to come from a pre-war copy of Punch . Mr Charrington, the junk-shop dealer who rents Winston a room as a love-nest and turns out to be a Thought Policeman wearing make-up, is plucked from a hundred cheap thrillers.

Of the three main characters, the sinister O’Brien is an intellectual construct: not a flesh-and-blood human being at all, but the ultimate, black image of totalitarianism. Winston and Julia are more substantial. Aspects of Winston have been encountered in Orwell’s earlier novels. He is a loner and a loser, a prospectless member of the lower upper-middle class, filled with impotent rage at those who control his life. We are depressed by Winston’s plight, and when he is elevated by love and political commitment we wish him well. Yet he never rises much above his own self-pity, and it is hard to feel the downfall of this unprepossessing fellow as a tragedy.

Julia is altogether a more sympathetic and pleasing creation. Perhaps she contains something of Orwell’s first wife, Eileen, who died in 1945. Certainly Julia has a solidity and a touch of humour that are lacking elsewhere. The biggest relief is to discover, just as we are about to be suffocated in Oceania’s slough of despond, that politics bores Julia stiff:

‘I’m not interested in the next generation… I’m interested in us.’ ‘You’re only a rebel from the waist downwards,’ he told her. She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms round him in delight.

Yet Julia contains a contradiction. As well as the most engaging character in the book, she is also the least appropriate. Unlike the morose Winston, she is a free spirit. ‘Life as she saw it was quite simple,’ the author recounts. ‘You wanted a good time; “they”, meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you could.’

We are grateful for Julia. But we are left wondering how this public-schoolboy’s fantasy ideal of uncomplicated, healthy, outdoors femininity could possibly have survived the mind-rotting propaganda of the Party. Or, if she could survive, why not others? Winston (‘the last man in Europe’) just about makes sense as an unreformed relic of the old era, but Julia looks like proof that the methods of the new age do not work. Yet a theme of the book is that they are inescapably ineffective. In the novel’s own terms, Julia seems an anachronism: her clandestine affair belongs to a country under occupation, the land of Odette, rather than to one totally controlled.

Julia (for all this inconsistency) breathes life into the novel; but her presence alone would barely sustain a short story. If there were nothing to the novel apart from the characters and the narrative, it would scarcely be read today except as a curiosity. In fact, there is a great deal more. What makes it a masterpiece of political writing – the modern equivalent, as Bernard Crick has rightly claimed, of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan – is the extraordinary texture of the backcloth. Disguised as horror-comic fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is really a non-fiction essay about the demon power. It works for us in the same way that Emmanuel Goldstein’s heretical book, analysing and attacking the political system, works for Winston:

In a sense it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction. It said what he would have said, if it had been possible to set his scattered thoughts in order… The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.

As elsewhere in Orwell’s writings, the deceptive, collusive amateurism of the author’s style lulls us into the realisation not only that he is right, but also that he is saying what we always thought but never managed to formulate into words.

As satire Nineteen Eighty-Four has been hard to place. Some have seen it as an attack on Stalinism, or on totalitarianism in general, or on the directive tendencies (at a time of Labour government) of British state socialism. Others have read it as an assault on the pretensions and illiberalism of Western left-wing intellectuals. Others, again, have explained it as a feverish tubercular hallucination, as a lampoon of prep-school life or (what might be the same thing) as a sado-masochistic reverie. Probably it contains elements of all these. Yet it is more than just a satirical attack, and much more than the product of febrile imagination. Though it contains a kind of warning, it is not prophecy (which Orwell knew, as well as anybody, to be impossible and meaningless). Neither is it much concerned with contemporary events. It is a book about the continuing present: an update on the human condition. What matters most is that it reminds us of so many things we usually avoid.

The book shocks where it is most accurate. We are unmoved by embarrassing descriptions of Winston’s encounters with the proles – which seem to say more about the author’s own class difficulties than about social apartheid in a real or threatened world. But the account of a system based on ideological cant and psychological manipulation immediately affects us. The dream-like misappropriation of reason touches our rawest nerve. It is no accident, indeed, that many word and concepts from Nineteen Eighty-Four that are now in common use by people who have never read the book – for example, Newspeak, thoughtcrime, Big Brother, unperson, doublethink – most relate to the power of the state to bend reality. At the core of the novelist’s perception is doublethink, defined as ‘the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them’. Like many of Orwell’s aphorisms, this seems at first absurd and then an aspect of everyday political life.

In Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon , an earlier novel which also explored the theoretical limits of totalitarianism, the author showed the moral annihilation produced by an ideology in which the end is allowed to justify any means. Orwell’s innovation is to abolish the end. Where other ideologies have justified themselves in terms of a future goal, Ingsoc, the doctrine of the Party in Oceania, is aimless. As O’Brien explains to Winston, ‘we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.’ But power for what? O’Brien’s answer tells us what we already know about oppression everywhere: ‘The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.’ Oceania is a static society running on an equilibrium of suffering. ‘If you want a picture the future,’ says O’Brien, ‘imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.’

Nineteen Eighty-Four draws heavily on James Burnham’s Managerial Revolution , whose image of a world divided into three large units, each ruled by a self-elected elite, is reflected in Goldstein’s Theory of Oligarchical Collectivism and in the division of the world into the three superpowers of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, continually at war with one another. But there is also much, indirectly, of Sigmund Freud. The furnace of Orwellian society, in which everything is done collectively yet everyone remains alone, is the denial of the erotic. It is this that fires the prevailing moods of ‘fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph’. Sexual hysteria is used deliberately to ferment a sadistic loathing of imagined enemies and to stimulate a masochistic, depersonalised love of Big Brother.

Nobody, not even the sceptical Winston, is immune. Mass emotion, the author repeatedly reminds us, is almost irresistible. The ‘Two Minutes Hate’ is one of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s most notorious inventions. The author shows his hero, in the midst of this organised mania, unable to stop himself joining in. Winston manages to turn the ‘hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness’ that ‘seemed to flow through the whole group like an electric current’ into hatred for the girl sitting behind him (who later turns out to be Julia). ‘Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. Her would flog her to death and cut her throat at the moment of climax.’ Why? Because ‘she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so…’. Such private hatred, Orwell makes clear, is the purpose of Oceania’s Puritanism. Sexual happiness is the biggest threat to the system and Julia’s code (‘What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter’) is much more dangerous than Winston’s intellectual doubts. ‘We shall abolish the orgasm,’ says O’Brien, with his usual knack of getting to the heart of things. ‘Our neurologists are at work on it now.’

The psychic balance between private misery and the acceptance of official cruelty in Nineteen Eighty-Four did not so much anticipate the future as help to shape the way others- including survivors – would describe totalitarianism. Works by Alexander Solzhenitsyn ( A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The First Circle , for example) show clearly the imprint of Orwell’s notion of a stable, purposeless evil, into which victims and persecutors are mutually locked. It is Nineteen Eighty-Four’s account of the plasticity of reason, however, that has had the sharpest impact. The full horror of the book begins when it becomes plain that everybody in Oceania, even among members of the cynical-yet-fanatical Inner Party, is in flight from logic. Doubtless Orwell was thinking of Stalin’s attempt to make the laws of genetics accord with Marxism-Leninism, when he presented Big Brother as master of the universe:

‘What are the stars?’ said O’Brien indifferently. ‘They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out… For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?’

This, of course, is madness. But who is to determine what is mad and what is sane in a society where all, including the thought controllers, learn to believe that two and two can equal five? Orwell reminds us how shaky is our hold on objective knowledge, and how uncertain our grip on the past.

Primo Levi – who lived through Auschwitz to become the finest writer on the Holocaust – has described in The Drowned and the Saved how Hitler contaminated the morality of his subjects by refusing them access to the truth. He concludes that ‘the entire history of the brief “millennial Reich” can be reread as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification of reality…’. Oceania’s unceasing war on memory, in which every shred of evidence that conflicts with the latest official line is systematically destroyed and a false trail is laid in its place, is one of the novel’s most ingenious and terrifying devices.

Another is the assassination of language. Accurate history is one essential vessel of liberty, perhaps the most essential, and Nineteen Eighty-Four can be seen as a charter for historical scholarship. A second is linguistic purity. Language is testimony: it contains geological strata of past events and out-of-fashion values. Orwell was making an observation that is as relevant to the behaviour of petty bureaucrats as of dictators, when he noted the eagerness with which truth-evaders shy away from well-known words and substitute their own. In Oceania the Party has created a sanitised language, Newspeak, to take the place of traditional English with its uncomfortable associations. This ideological Esperanto is composed of short, clipped words, ‘which aroused the minimum of echoes in the speaker’s mind’, and which will eventually render the faming of heretical thoughts impossible,. Orwell gives real-world examples of Newspeak: Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Agitprop. There are many others. Thus Levi notes how, in Hitler’s Germany, phrases like ‘final solution’, ‘special treatment’, ‘prompt employment unit’ disguised a frightful reality. We could make our own additions from the age of nuclear terror: overkill, the verb to nuke, the semi-jocular star wars.

Doublethink, Newspeak, crimestop (the faculty of ‘stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought… In short… protective stupidity’) are hardy perennials in any authoritarian or totalitarian state, which helps explain why the novel, secretly distributed, has been so keenly appreciated in Eastern Europe. At the same time, they also refer to aspects of any bureau, corporation or political party in a democracy, not to mention any jargon-ridden profession or orthodoxy-driven academic discipline. They are predictions only in the sense that any polemic predicts a dire consequence if its injunction is not heeded.

Nevertheless, Nineteen Eighty-Four , with its very specific date, does have an historical reference point. It is not by chance that Orwell calls the Party ideology Ingsoc, and presents it as a perversion of English socialism. Some have seen it as an indictment of the Labour government of Clement Attlee. In fact Orwell, who continued to think of himself both as a democratic socialist and as a Labour Party supporter, was not greatly interested by the fast-moving politics of the mid-1940s, and much of the time during the gestation and writing of the novel (interrupted by a long spell in hospital with tuberculosis) he spent far from London political gossip at his farmhouse on the island of Jura.

Yet the novel can certainly be seen – like its predecessor Animal Farm – as a contribution to the debate within socialism. Like Animal Farm it does not look forward to future controversies but harks back to pre-war ones. The most important political experience in Orwell’s life (described in Homage to Catalonia ) was the Spanish Civil War, in which the author was wounded fighting for the revolutionary POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) militia. Orwell came back from Spain bitterly hostile towards Moscow-led communism, whose influence on the progressive British intelligentsia continued to be pervasive. He was less surprised than many on the Left by the Nazi-Soviet pact in August 1939 (to be followed by the German invasion of Russia in 1941, which brought Stalin into the war on the side of the Allies, and then by the cooling of Allied-Soviet relations, which turned Russia back into a potential enemy of the West almost as soon as the war was over). The cynicism and impermanence of big power alliances is a feature of Nineteen Eighty-Four .

Oceania is not, in any sense, a socialist society. On the contrary, A cardinal example of doublethink is that ‘the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement ever stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism’. Oceania cannot therefore be taken as an argument for socialism’s failure. The point is not the achievement of socialist promises, but their rejection and distortion. Some may hear an echo of Friedrich von Hayek’s Road to Serfdom in Goldstein’s account of how ‘in each variant of Socialism that appeared from about 1900 onwards the aim of establishing liberty and equality was more and more openly abandoned’. Yet Orwell is no less critical of anti-socialists. By the 1940s, says Goldstein, ‘all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian… Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation.’ If Airstrip One is a version of austerity London (as Michael Radford’s interesting film of the novel suggests), then Labour socialism is scarcely singled out for particular criticism. Indeed, Goldstein also makes clear that th systems on the other superpowers, Eurasia and Eastasia, are practically identical.

Orwell’s attack is not on socialism, but on credulous or self-serving people who call themselves socialists, and on some of their illusions. One illusion – still part of platform rhetoric – is that, whatever obstacles and setbacks may be encountered on the way, the working class will eventually and inevitably triumph. Orwell turns this on its head. In Oceania the relative freedom of working-class people is merely a symptom of the contempt in which they are held. ‘From the proletarians,’ declares Goldstein, ‘nothing is to be feared.’ They can be granted intellectual liberty, he adds (with a kick in the groin for the liberal, as well as socialist, assumptions), ‘because they have no intellect’.

Yet the proles have an important place in the novel If there is hope, Winston ruminate, it lies with them. Is there hope? The surface message of the novel seems to be that there is none. Oceania is a society beyond totalitarianism. Even in Auschwitz or the Gulag a community of sorts could continue to exist and heroism was possible. But in Oceania heroism is empty because there is nobody to save. Hope flickers briefly and then it is extinguished: Winston’s attempt to preserve his identity is a mere spitting in the wind. Physical resistance to the Party’s terrorism is self-defeating. Orwell underlines Koestler’s argument in Darkness at Noon that to fight oppression with the oppressor own methods is a moral capitulation. He uses O’Brien, while apparently testing Winston’s resolve as a fellow-conspirator, trap the hero into a monstrous pledge:

‘If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child’s face – are you prepared to do that?’ ‘Yes.’

Later, O’Brien the interrogator asks Winston:

‘And you consider yourself morally superior to us, with our lies and cruelty?’

He has only to turn on a tape of the earlier conversation to make his point.

For all this, however, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a far from despairing book. As an intellectual puzzle it is almost watertight: every facile answer or objection is cleverly anticipated and blocked off. But the grotesque world it portrays is imaginary. There is no reason to read into the blackness of Orwell’s literary vision the denial of any real-life alternative. The novel, indeed, can be seen as an account of the forces that endanger liberty and of the need to resist them. Most of these forces can be summed up in a single word: lies. The author offers a political choice – between the protection of truth, and a slide into the expedient falsehood for the benefit of rulers and the exploitation of the ruled, in whom genuine feeling and ultimate hope reside.

This the novel is above all subversive, a protest against the tricks played by governments. It is a volley against the authoritarian in every personality, a polemic against every orthodoxy, an anarchistic blast against every unquestioning conformist. ‘It is intolerable to us,’ says the evil O’Brien, ‘that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.’ Nineteen Eighty-Four is a great novel and a great tract because of the clarity of its call, and it will endure because its message is a permanent one: erroneous thought is the stuff of freedom.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Professor Ben Pimlott was a leading historian and political biographer of post-war Britain. His works include lives of Hugh Dalton (1985, winner of the Whitbread Prize for biography), Harold Wilson (1992), and a study of Queen Elizabeth II (1996). His other books include Labour And The Left In The 1930s (1977), The Trade Unions In British Politics (with Chris Cook, 1982), Fabian Essays In Socialist Thought (1984), The Alternative (with Tony Wright and Tony Flower, 1990), Frustrate Their Knavish Tricks (1994) and Governing London (with Nirmala Rao, 2002).

He wrote about Portugal’s ‘Carnation Revolution’ in the 1970s (work which drew comparisons with Orwell in Catalonia), and during the 1980s he was a prolific essayist and book reviewer for the New Statesman, The Guardian and The Independent. He was also a political commentator at times for The Sunday Times, The Times and the New Statesman, where he was political editor in 1987-88. Chairman of the Fabian Society in 1993, he joined the politics and sociology department at Birkbeck College in 1981, and was Warden of Goldsmiths College until shortly before his death in 2004.

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1. A text’s atmosphere is a feeling created through the details and language used to describe setting.

• How does Orwell establish a dystopian atmosphere early in the novel? ( topic sentence )
• Give at least 3 examples of details, images, or phrasing that support a dystopian atmosphere. Explain how they accomplish this task.
• In your concluding sentence or sentences, explain how the dystopian atmosphere supports the theme Constant Surveillance is Oppressive or Totalitarian Power Diminishes Individuality .

2. Winston believes that there is something essentially different about the impact the Party has on proles versus the impact it has on Party members.

• Why does Winston hope the proles will be able to contest the Party’s power? ( topic sentence )

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Exploring George Orwell’s “1984”: Themes, Reception, and Legacy

George Orwell’s “1984” is a dystopian novel that was published in 1949. The book is set in a future society where the government, controlled by the Party, has complete control over people’s lives. The story follows the life of Winston Smith, a man who works for the government as a propaganda writer and who begins to rebel against the Party. The book is considered a classic of modern literature and has had a significant impact on popular culture, politics, and social discourse. Its themes and ideas remain relevant today, and the book continues to be widely read and studied. In this article, we will provide a summary of “1984” and explore its themes, characters, symbolism, and legacy.

Plot Summary George Orwell’s “1984”

Themes of book “1984”, characters in 1984, symbolism in “1984” book, legacy and impact 1984, critical reception of george orwell’s book “1984”, ending of a book “1984”.

“1984” is set in a future society where the government, controlled by the Party, has complete control over people’s lives. The story follows the life of Winston Smith, a man who works for the government as a propaganda writer. Winston is disillusioned with the Party’s control over every aspect of life, including history and language. He begins to secretly rebel against the Party, starting by keeping a diary in which he expresses his thoughts and feelings. Winston meets a young woman named Julia and they begin a love affair, which is forbidden by the Party. Together, they become involved in a group that seeks to overthrow the Party. However, their rebellion is discovered and they are brutally punished. Winston is subjected to torture and brainwashing until he fully submits to the Party’s control. The book ends with Winston’s complete surrender to the Party, and the reader is left with the sense that individual freedom and rebellion are impossible in this society.

Another theme in the book is the power of language and propaganda. The Party uses language as a tool to control people’s thoughts and emotions, demonstrating the danger of the manipulation of language for political purposes.

The book also examines the importance of history and memory. In the world of “1984,” the Party controls all historical records and manipulates them to suit its own agenda. This theme raises questions about the importance of preserving history and the dangers of manipulating historical records for political gain.

The dangers of technology is another important theme in the book. The Party uses technology to monitor and control people’s thoughts and actions, raising questions about the role of technology in society and the need for ethical guidelines.

Finally, “1984” explores the tension between the individual and the collective. The Party values the collective over the individual, leading to a society in which individuality is suppressed. This theme raises important questions about the role of the individual in society and the balance between individual freedom and the needs of the collective.

“1984” features a number of memorable characters who play important roles in the story. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a complex character who begins the book as a disillusioned Party member and becomes a rebel against the Party. Winston’s love interest, Julia, is a young woman who also rebels against the Party and joins forces with Winston.

O’Brien, a high-ranking Party member who Winston believes is a fellow rebel, becomes a central figure in Winston’s rebellion. However, it is later revealed that O’Brien is, in fact, a loyal Party member and is responsible for Winston’s capture and torture.

The character of Big Brother is also significant in the book. Although he is never actually seen, Big Brother is a symbol of the Party’s complete control over people’s lives. He is used as a tool of propaganda and is used to instill fear in the population.

The book also features a number of minor characters, including Party members and the proles, who are members of the working class. These characters help to flesh out the world of “1984” and provide insight into the workings of the Party and the society in which the characters live.

• Big Brother – a symbol of the Party’s complete control over people’s lives
• The telescreen – a symbol of the Party’s use of technology to monitor and control people
• Room 101 – a symbol of the Party’s ultimate weapon of control, used to break the will of rebels and dissidents
• Newspeak – a symbol of the Party’s manipulation of language for political purposes
• The paperweight – a symbol of Winston’s desire for the past and his rebellion against the Party’s control over history
• The red-armed prole woman – a symbol of hope and rebellion, who Winston sees as a potential ally in his struggle against the Party
• The rats – a symbol of Winston’s deepest fears and his ultimate submission to the Party’s control

These symbols help to create a rich and complex world in “1984” and add to the book’s lasting impact and significance.

• The popularization of the term “Orwellian,” which is used to describe any situation or society that is oppressive and totalitarian in nature.
• The introduction of the concept of “Big Brother” into popular culture, which has become a ubiquitous term for any form of surveillance or control.
• The book’s exploration of themes such as government control, the manipulation of language, and the dangers of technology, which continue to be relevant today.
• The book’s influence on other dystopian novels, such as “Brave New World” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
• The book’s lasting impact on political discourse and activism, particularly in the context of civil liberties and human rights.

Overall, “1984” remains a powerful and thought-provoking work that continues to resonate with readers around the world. Its impact on literature and popular culture cannot be overstated, and its message about the importance of individual freedom and the dangers of government control remains as relevant today as it was when the book was first published.

“1984” has received critical acclaim since its publication, with many critics praising the book’s themes, writing style, and relevance. Some of the notable critical responses to the book include:

• The New York Times called the book a “profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book” in its original review.
• The Guardian included “1984” in its list of the 100 best novels of all time, calling it “a masterpiece that everyone should read.”
• The book has been praised for its powerful and thought-provoking exploration of themes such as government control, individual freedom, and the manipulation of language.
• Some critics have criticized the book for its bleak and pessimistic view of the future, arguing that it offers little hope for the possibility of positive change.
• Some critics have also criticized the book for its portrayal of women, which they argue is stereotypical and lacking in depth.

Overall, the critical reception of “1984” has been overwhelmingly positive, with the book widely regarded as a masterpiece of dystopian literature. Its impact on popular culture and political discourse, as well as its enduring relevance, are a testament to its lasting significance as a work of literature.

The final scene of the book takes place in a café, where Winston sees the image of Big Brother on a telescreen and feels a sense of love and loyalty towards him. The book ends with the famous line: “He loved Big Brother.”

The ending of the book is a stark reminder of the power of totalitarian regimes to control and manipulate people’s thoughts and emotions. It is also a powerful commentary on the human spirit and the ability of individuals to resist or succumb to oppression.

Many readers find the ending of the book deeply disturbing and depressing, as it seems to suggest that there is no hope for meaningful change or rebellion in the face of such overwhelming power. However, others argue that the book offers a powerful warning about the dangers of government control and the importance of fighting for individual freedom and autonomy.

In conclusion, George Orwell’s “1984” is a seminal work of dystopian literature that has had a profound impact on literature and popular culture since its publication in 1949. The book’s exploration of themes such as government control, the manipulation of language, and the dangers of technology remain as relevant today as they were when the book was first written.

The book’s legacy and impact are evident in the lasting contributions it has made to popular culture, such as the popularization of the term “Orwellian” and the introduction of the concept of “Big Brother.” It has also had a significant influence on other dystopian novels and continues to inspire political discourse and activism.

The critical reception of “1984” has been overwhelmingly positive, with the book widely regarded as a masterpiece of dystopian literature. However, some critics have criticized the book for its bleak and pessimistic view of the future and its portrayal of women.

Despite its controversial ending, which some readers find deeply disturbing, the book offers a powerful warning about the dangers of government control and the importance of individual freedom and autonomy. In this way, “1984” remains a timeless and thought-provoking work that continues to resonate with readers around the world.

What is the main theme of "1984"?

The main theme of "1984" is government control and the dangers of totalitarianism.

How does "1984" reflect the political climate of George Orwell's time?

"1984" reflects the political climate of George Orwell's time by criticizing the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, as well as warning about the potential for similar regimes to arise in the future.

How did "1984" impact popular culture?

"1984" has had a significant impact on popular culture, introducing concepts such as "Big Brother" and the term "Orwellian" into the lexicon and inspiring numerous other works of dystopian literature.

Was "1984" well-received by critics upon its publication?

"1984" was well-received by critics upon its publication, with many praising its political commentary and its relevance to contemporary political issues.

Why is the ending of "1984" so controversial and disturbing?

The ending of "1984" is controversial and disturbing because it suggests that individuals may be unable to resist the power of a totalitarian regime, and that rebellion may ultimately be futile.

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Fewer Pesky Words, More Movie Stars Steer a New ‘1984’

A hectic high-profile adaptation for Audible plays fast and loose with George Orwell’s original text.

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By Shreya Chattopadhyay

Shreya Chattopadhyay is on the editorial staff of the Book Review.

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1984, by George Orwell, read by Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, Tom Hardy, Chukwudi Iwuji and others.

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood,” Winston Smith, the pain-addled protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopian 1949 classic “1984,” ponders while learning to love Big Brother at the end of a needle — his rogue thought offering a kernel of humanity amid the novel’s grim landscape.

You won’t find that line in “George Orwell’s 1984,” Audible’s star-studded “original adaptation” helmed by playwright Joe White, though this new version’s approach to Orwell attests to the endurance of people’s desire for connection and communion, even in the worst circumstances.

At nearly three and a half hours, it also runs about a third of the length of other “1984” audiobook versions. This is because, save some key passages, it radically alters the text. Gone are Orwell’s sardonic third-person descriptions. Here instead is Andrew Garfield’s breathy Winston, muttering to himself and “you” (us, the listeners of “the future”) with all the trappings of 21st-century speech and sensibility. What is happening in Oceania is “surveillance,” he explains redundantly. If his thoughtcrimes are discovered, he’ll be consigned to a “terrible job in the suburbs” — or worse, in which case he’s not sure what to do. “I’m a coward,” he remarks, with palpable self-loathing.

Instead of Orwell’s words, this version relies heavily on audio effects, from gadgety voices of telescreens whirring “Microphones enhance” to a cinematic score performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra (featuring pop disco and video game synths galore) to the extravagant heavy breathing of Winston and Julia (Cynthia Erivo) as they declare the liberatory power of their love. The resulting experience feels less like a book than a high-budget play behind a curtain, or a movie watched with your eyes closed. (Tom Hardy also appears briefly as a steely but avuncular Big Brother, and Andrew Scott is harrowing as Winston’s torturer and foil O’Brien.)

In one sense, this approach emphasizes the paranoid qualities of the story, engulfing the listener and closing in. But stripping “1984” of so much of its language mostly serves to undermine the novel’s central themes about language — its role as a tool of state repression, its ability to structure not only communication but thought.

When Winston and Julia betrayed each other, I didn’t quite believe them; for psychologically tortured dissidents turned foot soldiers, they sounded just a little too relatable. Maybe Audible has made 2024 America’s “1984,” with our freshly reconsidered antiheroes and love amid climate collapse . But not George Orwell’s.

1984 | By George Orwell | Read by Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, Tom Hardy, Chukwudi Iwuji and others | Audible Originals | 3 hours, 27 minutes

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What Orwell Really Feared

The Isle of Jura is a patchwork of bogs and moorland laid across a quartzite slab in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides. Nearly 400 miles from London, rain-lashed, more deer than people: All the reasons not to move there were the reasons George Orwell moved there. Directions to houseguests ran several paragraphs and could include a plane, trains, taxis, a ferry, another ferry, then miles and miles on foot down a decrepit, often impassable rural lane. It’s safe to say the man wanted to get away. From what?

Orwell himself could be sentimental about his longing to escape (“Thinking always of my island in the Hebrides,” he’d once written in his wartime diary) or wonderfully blunt. In the aftermath of Hiroshima, he wrote to a friend:

This stupid war is coming off in abt 10–20 years, & this country will be blown off the map whatever else happens. The only hope is to have a home with a few animals in some place not worth a bomb.

It helps also to remember Orwell’s immediate state of mind when he finally fully moved to Jura, in May 1946. Four months before Hiroshima, his wife, Eileen, had died; shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped, Animal Farm was published.

[ From the March 1947 issue: George Orwell’s ‘The Prevention of Literature’ ]

Almost at once, in other words, Orwell became a widower, terrified by the coming postwar reality, and famous—the latter a condition he seems to have regarded as nothing but a bother. His newfound sense of dread was only adding to one he’d felt since 1943, when news of the Tehran Conference broke. The meeting had been ominous to Orwell: It placed in his head the idea of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin divvying up the postwar world, leading to a global triopoly of super-states. The man can be forgiven for pouring every ounce of his grief, self-pity, paranoia (literary lore had it that he thought Stalin might have an ice pick with his name on it), and embittered egoism into the predicament of his latest protagonist, Winston Smith.

Unsurprisingly, given that it culminated in both his masterpiece and his death, Orwell’s time on the island has been picked over by biographers, but Orwell’s Island: George, Jura and 1984 , by Les Wilson, treats it as a subject worthy of stand-alone attention. The book is at odds with our sense of Orwell as an intrepid journalist. It is a portrait of a man jealously guarding his sense of himself as a creature elementally apart, even as he depicts the horrors of a world in which the human capacity for apartness is being hunted down and destroyed.

Wilson is a former political journalist, not a critic, who lives on neighboring Islay, famous for its whiskeys. He is at pains to show how Orwell, on Jura, overcame one of his laziest prejudices: The author went from taking every opportunity to laugh at the Scots for their “burns, braes, kilts, sporrans, claymores, bagpipes” (who is better at the derisive list than Orwell?) to complaining about the relative lack of Gaelic-language radio programming.

Scottish had come to mean something more to him than kailyard kitsch. These were a people holding out against a fully amalgamated identity, beginning with the Kingdom of Great Britain and extending to modernity itself. On Jura at least, crofters and fishermen still lived at a village scale. As to whether Jura represented, as has been suggested, suicide by other means—Orwell was chronically ill, and Barnhill, his cottage, was 25 miles from the island’s one doctor—Wilson brushes this aside. In fact, he argues that Jura was “kinder to Orwell’s ravaged lungs than smog-smothered London,” where inhabitants were burning scavenged wood to stay warm.

At Barnhill, Orwell set up almost a society in miniature, devoting his 16-acre homestead to his ideal of self-sufficiency. Soon after moving there, he was joined by his sister, his 2-year-old adopted son, and a nanny. Amid the general, often biting, austerity of postwar Europe, they enjoyed a private cornucopia, subsisting on, as Wilson says, a diet of “fish, lobster, rabbit, venison and fresh milk and eggs,” and were often warmed by peat that Orwell himself had cut. He intended to live there for the rest of his life, raising his son and relishing an existence as a non-cog in a noncapitalist machine.

[ From the July 2019 issue: Doublethink is stronger than Orwell imagined ]

He lived without electricity or phone; shot rabbits “for the pot,” as Wilson says; raised geese to be slaughtered and plucked; and fished the surrounding waters in a dinghy. He fashioned a tobacco pouch from animal skin and a mustard spoon out of deer bone, and served his aghast guests a seaweed blancmange. Over time, absconding to Jura and writing 1984 became aspects of a single premonition: a coming world of perpetual engulfment by the forces of bigness. As Orwell’s latest biographer, D. J. Taylor, has pointed out in Orwell: The New Life , Orwell’s novels before Animal Farm followed a common template of a sensitive young person going up against a heartless society, destined to lose. Eileen is the one who helped him—either by suggesting that Animal Farm be told as a fable or by lightening his touch, depending on whom you talk to—find a newly engaging, even playful (in its way), register.

The loss of Eileen and return of the self-pitying Orwell alter ego are certainly linked. And indeed, in 1984 he produces his most Orwellian novel, in both senses—only now both protagonist and situation are presented in the absolute extreme : The young man is the bearer (if we believe his tormentor, O’Brien) of the last shred of human autonomy, in a society both totally corrupt and laying total claim to his being.

What this absolutism produced, of course, was not another fusty neo-Edwardian novel à la Orwell’s earlier Keep the Aspidistra Flying , but a wild, aggrieved tour de force of dystopian erotica. Odd though it may sound, given the novel’s unremitting torments, 1984 quickly became a best seller, in no small part because its first readers, especially in America, found it comforting—a source of the release you might feel, in a darkened theater, when you remember that you yourself are not being chased by a man with a chain saw. The reader could glance up, notice no limitless police powers or kangaroo inquisitions, and say: We are not them .

Such complacency is hard to come by in 2024. Thinking of Orwell, famous though he is for his windowpane prose and the prescience of his essays, as the ultimate sane human being is not so easy either. Rereading 1984 in light of the Jura episode suggests that Orwell was an altogether weirder person, and his last novel an altogether weirder book, than we’ve appreciated.

Conventionally speaking, 1984 is not a good novel; it couldn’t be. Novels are about the conflict between an individual’s inner-generated aims and a prevailing social reality that denies or thwarts them. 1984 is the depiction of the collapse of this paradigm—the collapse of inner and outer in all possible iterations. Of course its protagonist is thinly drawn: Winston’s self lacks a social landscape to give it dimensionality.

In place of anything like a novel proper, we get a would-be bildungsroman breaking through to the surface in disparate fragments. These scraps are Winston’s yearnings, memories, sensual instincts, which have, as yet, somehow gone unmurdered by the regime. The entire state-sponsored enterprise of Pavlovian sadism in Oceania is devoted to snuffing out this remnant interiority.

The facsimile of a life that Winston does enact comes courtesy of a series of private spaces—a derelict church, a clearing in the woods, a room above a junk shop—the last of which is revealed to have been a regime-staged contrivance. The inexorable momentum of the novel is toward the final such private space, Winston’s last line of defense, and the last line of defense in any totalitarian society: the hidden compartment of his mind.

When all else fails, there is the inaccessibility of human mentality to others, a black box in every respect. Uncoincidentally, Winston’s final defense—hiding out in his head—had been Orwell’s first. While he struggled on Jura to finish 1984 , Orwell apparently returned to “Such, Such Were the Joys,” his long and excoriating essay about his miserable years at St. Cyprian’s boarding school. He’d been sent there at the age of 8, one of the shabby-genteel boys with brains in what was otherwise a class snob’s paradise. He was a bed wetter to boot, for which, Orwell writes, he was brutally punished. No wonder he found dignity in apartness. Taylor’s biography is brilliant about the connection between Orwell’s childhood reminiscence and 1984 .

In the essay, Orwell portrays his alma mater as an environment that invaded every cranny of its pupils’ lives. Against this, he formed his sense of bearing “at the middle of one’s heart,” as he writes, “an incorruptible inner self” holding out against an autocratic headmistress. As a cop in Burma, a scullion in Paris, an amateur ethnographer in northern England, he was a man who kept his own company, even when in company, and whom others, as a consequence, found by and large inscrutable.

What was this man’s genius, if not taking the petty anxieties of Eric Blair, his given name, and converting them into the moral clarity of George Orwell? Fearful that his own cherished apartness was being co-opted into nonexistence, he projected his fear for himself onto something he called the “autonomous individual,” who, as he said in his 1940 essay “Inside the Whale,” “is going to be stamped out of existence.” To this he added:

The literature of liberalism is coming to an end and the literature of totalitarianism has not yet appeared and is barely imaginable. As for the writer, he is sitting on a melting iceberg; he is merely an anachronism, a hangover from the bourgeois age, as surely doomed as the hippopotamus.

The fate of the autonomous individual, “the writer,” the literature of liberalism—he carried all of it to Jura, where he dumped it onto the head of poor Winston Smith.

Orwell typed for hours upstairs, sitting on his iron bedstead in a tatty dressing gown, chain-smoking shag tobacco. In May 1947, he felt he had a third of a draft, and in November, a completed one. In December, he was in a hospital outside Glasgow, diagnosed with “chronic” tuberculosis—not a death sentence, maybe, but his landlord on Jura suspected that Orwell now knew he was dying.

The following July, after grueling treatments and a stint in a sanatorium, he returned to Jura fitter but by no means cured, and under strict orders to take it easy. His rough draft, however, was a riot of scrawled-over pages. To produce a clean manuscript for the publisher, he would need to hire and closely supervise a typist, but no candidate was willing to trek to Jura, and Orwell was unwilling to leave it. He typed 1984 on his own, having all but spent himself writing it.

“He should have been in bed,” Wilson says, and instead sat “propped up on a sofa” banging out 5,000 words a day. Among all of its gruesome set pieces, culminating in Room 101 in the Ministry of Love, the novel’s most decisive act of torment is a simple glance in the mirror. Winston is sure—it is one of his last consolations, before breaking completely—that some inherent principle exists in the universe to prevent a system based on nothing but cruelty and self-perpetuation from triumphing forever. O’Brien calmly assures Winston that he’s wrong, that he is “the last man,” and to prove it, and the obvious nonexistence of “the human spirit,” he forces Winston to look at himself:

A bowed, greycoloured, skeleton-like thing was coming towards him. Its actual appearance was frightening, and not merely the fact that he knew it to be himself. He moved closer to the glass. The creature’s face seemed to be protruded, because of its bent carriage. A forlorn, jailbird’s face with a nobby forehead running back into a bald scalp, a crooked nose, and battered-looking cheekbones above which his eyes were fierce and watchful. The cheeks were seamed, the mouth had a drawn-in look. Certainly it was his own face, but it seemed to him that it had changed more than he had changed inside. The emotions it registered would be different from the ones he felt.

The final membrane between inner and outer is dissolving. 1984 can read like Orwell’s reverse autobiography, in which, rather than a life being built up, it gets disassembled down to its foundational unit. The body is now wasting; the voice is losing expressive competence. Worse, the face will soon enough have nothing left to express, as the last of his adaptive neurocircuitry becomes property of Oceania.

1984 is Orwell saying goodbye to himself, and an improbably convincing portrait of the erasure of the autonomous individual. He finished typing the novel by early December 1948. His final diary entry on Jura—dated that Christmas Eve—gave the weight of the Christmas goose “before drawing & plucking,” then concluded: “Snowdrops up all over the place. A few tulips showing. Some wall-flowers still trying to flower.” The next month, he was back in a sanatorium; the next year, he was dead. He was 46 years old.

1 984 was published 75 years ago. Surprisingly, it immediately surpassed Animal Farm as a critical and commercial success. One by one, Orwell’s contemporaries—V. S. Pritchett, Rebecca West, Bertrand Russell—acknowledged its triumph. A rare dissenter was Evelyn Waugh, who wrote to Orwell to say that he’d found the book morally inert. “You deny the soul’s existence (at least Winston does) and can only contrast matter with reason & will.” The trials of its protagonist consequently failed to make Waugh’s “flesh creep.” What, he implied, was at stake here?

Talk about missing the point. Nowhere in Orwell’s work can one find evidence of anything essential, much less eternal, that makes us human. That’s why Winston, our meager proxy, is available for a thoroughgoing reboot. As the book implies, we’re creatures of contingency all the way down. Even a memory of a memory of freedom, autonomy, self-making, consciousness, and agency—in a word, of ourselves—can disappear, until no loss is felt whatsoever. Hence the terror of being “the last man”: You’re the living terminus, the lone bearer of what will be, soon enough, a dead language.

A precious language, indicating a way of being in the world worth keeping—if you’re George Orwell. From the evidence of Jura and 1984 , persisting as his own catawampus self—askew to the world—was a habit he needed to prove he couldn’t possibly kick. He could be the far-off yet rooted man who loved being a father; performing what he deemed “sane” tasks, such as building a henhouse; indulging his grim compulsions (smoking tobacco and writing books). The soul, eternal fabric of God, had no place in that equation.

Waugh wasn’t the only muddled reader of the book. In the aftermath of the Berlin blockade and the creation of NATO , followed by the Soviets’ detonation of their first atomic weapon , readers—Americans, especially—might have been eager for an anti-Stalinist bedtime story. But Orwell had already written an anti-Stalinist bedtime story. If his time on Jura tells us anything, it’s that in 1984 , he was exhorting us to beware of concentrated power and pay attention to public language, yes, but above all, guard your solitude against interlopers, Stalinist or otherwise.

In addition to the book’s top-down anxieties about the coming managerial overclass, a bottom-up anxiety about how fragile solitude is—irreducible to an abstract right or a material good—permeates 1984 . Paradoxically, Winston’s efforts to hold fast to the bliss of separateness are what give the book its unexpected turns of beauty and humanity. (“The sweet summer air played against his cheek. From somewhere far away there floated the faint shouts of children: in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice of the clock.”) For all of Orwell’s intrepidness, his physical courage, his clarity of expression, his most resolutely anti-fascist instinct lay here: in his terror at the thought of never being alone.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “Orwell’s Escape.”

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Listen to audio teasers from George Orwell’s 1984

Audible’s adaptation of Orwell’s classic captures all of the intensity and human drama of the novel in an immersive new format. Hear clips from the A-list cast below, and explore our series of articles about 1984’s insights for life in 2024

Listen to them being listened to. The hushed tones and the panic in their voices. The horror and forced joyfulness. The performative devotion to Big Brother. Audible’s all-star dramatisation of George Orwell’s 1984 takes one of the most vivid fictional nightmares of our age and turns it into something uniquely evocative.

Here are some clips from the new audio production, featuring a star-studded ensemble cast that includes Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy. As you listen to them, you’ll likely be struck by the similarities between the world that Orwell imagined and the world we live in today. So beneath the audio clips, we introduce a special series of articles exploring the insights that 1984 holds for life in 2024.

“You might rectify history in the Records Department”

The ministry of truth – a clip from audible's new dramatisation.

Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen $https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2024/03/12/audible_4.mp3

Take a tour of the Ministry of Truth, 1984’s vast disinformation factory that evokes today’s fake news operations – complete with content-generating machines that foreshadow AI content.

Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston Smith), Ensemble (Various)

“I’ve been hoping for an opportunity to talk to you”

Meeting o'brien – a clip from audible's new dramatisation.

Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen $https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2024/03/12/audible_5.mp3

This introduction to Party official O’Brien, played by Andrew Scott, is so bone-chillingly ominous it’s like listening to a serpent. Is it a friendly overture or a trap?

Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston ), Andrew Scott (O’Brien)

“A deliberate drowning of consciousness”

War is peace – a clip from audible's new dramatisation.

Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen $https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2024/03/12/audible_3.mp3

During the Two Minutes Hate – 1984’s ritualised outpouring of rage – Winston shows us just how captivating hatred can be. Likewise, it’s hard not to be captivated by the soothing voices of Big Brother, played by Tom Hardy, and O’Brien, played by Andrew Scott.

Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston ), Tom Hardy (Big Brother), Andrew Scott (O’Brien), Francesca Mills (Syme), Romesh Ranganathan (Parsons), Cynthia Erivo (Julia )

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words”

Newspeak dictionary – a clip from audible's new dramatisation.

Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen $https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2024/03/12/audible_2.mp3

In the canteen at the Ministry of Truth, Winston listens to an overzealous colleague explain how Newspeak, the Party’s officially condensed vocabulary, is designed to limit people’s capacity for thinking.

Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston ), Francesca Mills (Syme), Romesh Ranganathan (Parsons)

“Comrades, raise your victory gins. A toast to Big Brother”

Hidden danger – a clip from audible's new dramatisation.

Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen $https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2024/03/12/audible_6.mp3

The ensemble cast duly performs enforced joyfulness after hearing that rations will be raised. Andrew Garfield captures how Winston just can’t pull off the pretence – and all the danger that that entails.

Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston ), Francesca Mills (Syme), Romesh Ranganathan (Parsons), Cynthia Erivo (Julia ), Yasmin Mwanza (Party Announcer)

“Everyone changes during the hate”

The dark haired girl – a clip from audible's new dramatisation.

Sorry your browser does not support audio - but you can download here and listen $https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2024/03/12/audible_1.mp3

The Party members psych themselves up for the Two Minutes Hate. By stoking hatred of enemies and traitors, the Party pacifies and controls people.

Voices: Andrew Garfield (Winston ), Cynthia Erivo (Julia ), Katie Leung (Ling), Alex Lawther (Ampleforth)

How the hellscape fits together

Introducing a series of articles about why we need Orwell’s classic more than ever

1984 as you have never experienced it before. If only that sentence was just a slogan. Or a sales pitch. Just a tagline for a haunting new dramatisation of our era’s defining work of fiction.

And if only 1984 was merely that – just a work of fiction and not some mystical post-truth prophecy. If only each generation didn’t have to experience a whole new aspect of the hellscape George Orwell foresaw.

Today, it’s the turn of the content-generating machines housed inside 1984’s Ministry of Truth. Their output of automatically-generated songs, novels and pornography is a logical extension of the Ministry’s vast apparatus for churning out fake news.

But whether it’s machine-generated content or the two-way telescreens that snoop on their audience, the prescience of 1984 is only part of the story. As well as being a crystal ball, 1984 is also a map. And not some surveillance-era satnav or geolocation tracker app, but the kind of map that shows you how the whole hellscape fits together.

The content-generating machines in the Ministry of Truth might seem spot-on in today’s world of deepfakes and generative AI, but their role in the bigger scheme of things is even more revealing. When the Party needs a fresh public frenzy of “fear, hatred and lunatic credulity”, the machines generate new baddies in old stories at pace and scale.

They are hate-generating machines, and they work in unison with other elements and concepts in 1984, such as the Thought Police, the censorship and mass surveillance, the unpersoning, the shrinking of language, the stirring up of nationalism as a means of control, and the “doublethink” that destabilises the whole notion of truth.

1984 gives us a more intuitive feel for how all these different elements are interdependent, as if designed to operate in service of each other. It can thereby give us a better feel for how the different parts of our own dystopia might interrelate – how to better navigate the fake news and disinformation, the jargon, the hate-stoking, and our own cognitive biases.

In the following articles, we look at how 1984 can give us a more instinctive grasp of the wider mechanics and post-truth machinations at play today:

Ignorance ain’t strength: what 1984 tells us about fake news – and how to resist it

Surveillance states: has living under watch changed the way we act, speak and think?

At war with ourselves: 1984 and the struggle against our digital demons

Trolling and digital pile-ons: have we created our own version of 1984’s Two Minutes Hate?

Disruptive thought leadership: how to decode Orwellian newspeak in 2024

Sonic immersion: rock star Matthew Bellamy and composer Ilan Eshkeri on their score and soundscape for the new dramatisation

‘Love is dangerous’: what 1984 can teach us about sex, pain and fear

Are you a blagger or in the Brotherhood? Take our quiz to test your knowledge of Orwell’s dystopian classic

From Hollywood to your headphones: meet the star-studded cast of Audible’s new dramatisation

Audible’s new dramatisation of George Orwell’s classic tale stars Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy, with an original score by Matthew Bellamy and Ilan Eshkeri. Listen now . Subscription required. See audible.co.uk for terms.

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