INDEXGENERAL............................................................3AUTHOR..............................................................4TITLE EXPLANATION.........................................4PERSPECTIVE....................................................5PROTAGONIST...................................................5OTHER CHARACTERS.......................................5PLACE & TIME....................................................6SUMMARY...........................................................6OPINION..............................................................7

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GENERALTitle: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Author: George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)

Genre: Dystopian Fiction, Political Science Fiction

Publisher: Wolters-Noordhoff bv (Original publisher: Secker &

Warburg)

Date of first publication: 8 June 1949

Theme(s):

- Power , because the Party controls everything (through controlling

the human mind, the eye of reality) and wants power for its own

sake. Freedom and privacy are gone. Through constant

surveillance there is nothing you could hide from the Party.

Orwell warns through 1984 how dangerous totalitarianism is. He

goes to great lengths to demonstrate the terrifying degree of

power and control a totalitarian regime can acquire and maintain.

- Loyalty , because a successful totalitarian state cannot make room

for private loyalties, since private loyalties will often trump loyalty

to the Party. Therefore, the Party in 1984 seeks to ensure that the

only and ultimate loyalty its members have will be loyalty for the

Party. They eliminate all potential private loyalties, such as the

familial or the sexual.

- Language , because the party uses it language Newspeak as a

tool for mind control, the goal is to limit the range of thought by

reducing the amount of words in the English language. This will

make it virtually impossible for citizens to think anti-Party

thoughts, because there would be no words left to express them

(except the word ‘crimethink’).

Story Structure: Ab ovo

Page amount: 303 total (story: 7-281)

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AUTHORGeorge Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) was born in India, in 1903. His father worked for

the Civil Service. They moved to England In 1907. Orwell went to the famous

school of Eton in 1917. His first novel appeared in 1934 after serving in the Indian

Imperial Police Force in Burma.

Orwell wrote Homage to Catalonia after he fought in the Spanish Civil War in 1936

(which left him injured). After this point, Orwell said that all his writings were

directed against totalitarianism in all forms. He wrote his two most famous novels at

the end of his life, Animal farm (published 1945) and 1984 (published 1949). He

died in 1950 from tuberculosis.

TITLE EXPLANATIONIt is the 1984 at the beginning of the story. At the time of writing this was 36 years

in the future. Orwell originally titles his novel ‘the last man of Europe’, but changed

it later to 1984. A reason for why he chose the title could be that 1984 is 1948 (the

time of writing) with the last digits switched. Orwell could also have chosen for this

title to honour his deceased wife who wrote a poem titled ‘End of the Century,

1984’ (which interestingly has similarities with George’s 1984).

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- Characters -

PERSPECTIVE1984 uses a third-person limited point of view to show the reader both the internal

and external experience of living under a totalitarian government. In the novel, we

have access to Winston Smith’s thoughts and memories, but no other character’s.

Because Orwell uses third-person, the narrative simultaneously describes

Winston’s thoughts and feelings while commenting on them.

Thanks to this third person limited omniscient point of view, the reader doesn’t just

know how horrible totalitarianism is, you get to experience it, through Winston.

PROTAGONISTWinston Smith - A minor member of the ruling Party in near-future London,

Winston Smith is a thin, frail, intellectual, and fatalistic thirty-nine-year-old. Winston

hates the totalitarian control and enforced repression that are characteristic of his

government. He harbours revolutionary dreams.

OTHER CHARACTERSJulia - Winston’s lover, a beautiful dark-haired girl working in the Fiction

Department at the Ministry of Truth. Julia enjoys sex, and claims to have had affairs

with many Party members. Julia is pragmatic and optimistic. Her rebellion against

the Party is small and personal, for her own enjoyment, in contrast to Winston’s

ideological motivation.

O’Brien - A mysterious, powerful, and sophisticated member of the Inner Party

whom Winston believes is also a member of the Brotherhood, the legendary group

of anti-Party rebels.

Big Brother - The symbol of Oceania and the Party, Big Brother is Oceania's

supreme leader, and is omnipresent through telescreen projections, coins, and

even large posters warning, "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU." Big Brother is

theoretically one of the original founders of the Party and the Revolution, but

Winston doesn’t know if he really exist. He is the face of the Party, and the symbol

all Party members worship (because that is easier than worshipping a faceless

organisation.)

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Mr. Charrington - An old man who runs a second hand store in the prole district.

Kindly and encouraging, Mr. Charrington seems to share Winston’s interest in the

past. He also seems to support Winston’s rebellion against the Party and his

relationship with Julia, since he rents Winston a room without a telescreen in which

to carry out his affair. But Mr. Charrington eventually turns out to be a member of

the Thought Police.

Syme - An intelligent, outgoing man who works with Winston at the Ministry of

Truth. Syme specializes in language. As the novel opens, he is working on a new

edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Winston believes Syme is too intelligent to stay

in the Party’s favour (that turned out to be true).

Parsons - A fat, obnoxious, and dull Party member who lives near Winston and

works at the Ministry of Truth. He has a dull wife and a group of suspicious, ill-

mannered children who are members of the Junior Spies.

Emmanuel Goldstein - Another figure who exerts an influence on the novel

without ever appearing in it. According to the Party, Goldstein is the legendary

leader of the Brotherhood. He seems to have been a Party leader who fell out of

favour with the regime. In any case, the Party describes him as the most

dangerous and treacherous man in Oceania.

- Story -

PLACE & TIME1984 is set in near-future Oceania. (future at the time the book was written.) The city is still named London, though the country is now called Airstrip One. The super-country of Oceania is in a constant state of war.Overall the story goes chronological, but there are a few flashbacks, for example when Winston tries to remember his childhood.

SUMMARYThe story unfolds on a cold April day in 1984 in Oceania. Winston Smith, employed

as a records editor at the Ministry of Truth, drags himself home to Victory Mansions

for lunch. Depressed and oppressed, he starts a journal of his rebellious thoughts

against the Party. If discovered, this journal will result in his execution. For the sake

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of added precautions, Winston only writes when safe from the view of the surveying

telescreens.

At work, Winston notices a coworker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him,

and worries that she is an informant who will turn him in for his thoughtcrime, that is

until one day she slips him a note reading "I love you" in the corridor one day. The

two begin a secret love affair, first meeting up in the countryside, and then in a

rented room atop Mr. Charrington’s shop in the prole district. All of these places are

away from surveillance – or so they think.

As Winston’s affair with Julia progresses, his hatred for the Party grows more and

more intense. At last, he receives the message that he has been waiting for:

O’Brien wants to see him. They meet and O’Brien tells them that he is a member of

the brotherhood and arranges for Winston to receive a copy of Emmanuel

Goldstein’s book.

Winston reads the book to Julia in the room above the store. Suddenly, soldiers

barge in and seize them. Mr. Charrington turns out to be a member of the Thought

Police. Winston is then brought to the Ministry of Love, where criminals and

opponents of the Party are tortured, interrogated, and "reintegrated" before their

release and ultimate execution. O’Brien runs Winston’s torture sessions.

Months later, Winston is sent to Room 101, where a person is faced with his

greatest fear. In Winston’s case it’s rats. Just before the carnivorous rats would be

released into the cage strapped to his face Winston calls out, "Do it to Julia!" That

was what O’Brien was looking for. Winston is released to the outside world. He

meets Julia again but no longer feels anything for her. He has accepted the Party

entirely and has learned to love Big Brother.

- Subjective -

OPINIONDespite it being written in 1948, 1984 has stayed surprisingly relevant. I know it’s a

scary thought, but I would even say it eerily rises in relevance, because a scenario

like is described in 1984 is already visible in North Korea, rising China (surveillance

camera for 1 in 7 citizens and the social credit system next year) and even within

the sphere of conceivability here in Europe (socialist politicians denouncing the

working class and the increase of control from the EU). And of course the means

by which a dystopian state could exercise control over its citizens were still science

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fiction at the time of writing in 1948, but not anymore!

The only difference is that people these days are willingly letting go of their privacy

(think off what smart devices people bring into their homes and carry with them and

what they share online about their personal life with the world). and freedom. Huxley, another famous dystopian author, actually envisioned that willing

surrenderness in his novels.

Interestingly, he sent a letter to Orwell in October 1949 after reading Nineteen

Eighty-Four and wrote that it would be more efficient for rulers to stay in power by

the softer touch by allowing citizens to self-seek pleasure to control them rather

than brute force and to allow a false sense of freedom:

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that

infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of

government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just

as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by

flogging and kicking them into obedience.

You could see Huxley’s vision as the Western version of dystopia and Orwell’s as

the Eastern.

To my opinion the idea of designing a language, like Newspeak, to control

vocabulary with the idea to control communication and eventually thoughts would

be effective to a certain extent, but I think people eventually will still find a way to

communicate and think there thoughts. Where the few meaningless words become

a new sort of letters, similar to for example Chinese symbols, but then with words.

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