Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four

File:1984first.jpg British first edition cover
Author	George Orwell
Language	English
Genre	Dystopian, Political Novel
Publisher	Secker and Warburg (London)
Publication date	8 June, 1949
Publication place	England
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback) & e-book, audio-CD
Pages	326 pp (Paperback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-452-28423-6 (Paperback edition)

Nineteen Eighty-Four (commonly written as 1984) is a dystopian novel by the English writer George Orwell, published in 1949. The book tells the story of Winston Smith and his degradation by the totalitarian state in which he lives.

Along with Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, it is among the most famous and cited dystopias in literature.

It has been translated into 62 languages and has left a profound impression upon the English language itself. Nineteen Eighty-Four, its terminology and its author have become bywords when discussing privacy and state-security issues. The term "Orwellian" has come to describe actions or organizations reminiscent of the totalitarian society depicted in the novel, and the phrase "Big Brother is watching" has come to mean any act of surveillance that is perceived as invasive.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has, at times, been seen as revolutionary and politically dangerous and therefore was banned by many libraries in various countries, not mentioning totalitarian regimes.[1] [2] [3]

Background

Orwell displays his perception of a dystopia in 1984. Surmised technological advances, such as telescreens, are used to the benefit of the system and to exploit greater control over party members and the masses ("proles") alike, not to improve quality of life. Elaborate strategies, such as perpetual warfare, are used to deny the proles the education needed to understand the potential for a better life. The reason for this is to keep the ruling faction in total power for eternity.

Novel history

Published on June 8, 1949 by Secker and Warburg, the bulk of the novel was written by Orwell on the island of Jura, Scotland in 1948, although he had been writing it since 1945. It begins on April 4, 1984 at 13:00 [1:00 P.M.] ("It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen…").

The novel had at least two direct literary predecessors. Orwell was familiar with Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1921 novel We, having read it in French and reviewed it in 1946; it became a significant influence on Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell also obsessively re-read Katharine Burdekin's 1937 dystopia, Swastika Night, borrowing from it the theme of a future totalitarian (not to be confused with fascist) State where all "true" past history has been erased except for isolated fragments kept in secret, forbidden books.

Title

Originally Orwell titled the book The Last Man in Europe, but his publisher, Frederic Warburg, suggested a change to assist in the book's marketing. Orwell did not object to this suggestion. The reasons for selection of this particular year are not known. Orwell may have only switched the last two digits of the year in which he wrote the book. Alternatively, he may have been alluding to the centenary of the Fabian Society, a socialist organization founded in 1884. The allusion may have also been to Jack London's novel The Iron Heel (in which the power of a political movement reaches its height in 1984), to G. K. Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill (also set in that year), or to a poem by his wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, called "End of the Century, 1984". A final supposed explanation is that his original re-titling was to be 1980; however, with his illness the book was taking a long time to write, so he felt obliged to push the story further and further into the future.

Orwell's inspiration

In his essay Why I Write, Orwell clearly explains that all the "serious work" he had written since the Spanish Civil War in 1936 was "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism". [4] Therefore, one can look at Nineteen Eighty-Four as a cautionary tale against totalitarianism and in particular the betrayal of a revolution by those claiming to defend or support it.

Orwell had already set forth his distrust of totalitarianism and the betrayal of revolutions in Homage to Catalonia and Animal Farm. Coming Up For Air, at points, celebrates the individual freedom that is lost in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

File:Stalincult.jpg

The Soviet Union under Stalin provided much of Orwell's inspiration for his description of Oceanian society.

Orwell based many aspects of Oceanian society on the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The "Two Minutes' Hate", for instance was based on Stalinism's habitual demonisation of its enemies and rivals, and the description of Big Brother himself bears a physical resemblance to Stalin. The Party's proclaimed great enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein, resembles Leon Trotsky, in part because both are Jewish, had the same physical description and Trotsky's real last name was Bronstein. ("Emmanuel Goldstein" could also be an allusion to anarchist Emma Goldman.) A particular doctored photograph that is of importance in the novel can also be traced to a similar practice of doctoring photographs under Stalin's regime in the USSR, where revolutionaries and political figures who had fallen out of favor were often erased from photographic records. In addition, the treatment of several characters in the novel resembles the famous Moscow Trials during the Great Purge in the Soviet Union.

Orwell's biographer Michael Shelden recognizes, as influences on the work: the Edwardian world of his childhood in Henley for the "golden country"; his being bullied at St. Cyprian's for the feelings that victims hold towards their tormentors; his life in the Indian Burma Police and his experiences with censorship in the BBC for models of authoritarian power. Specific literary influences Shelden mentions include Arthur Koestler's books Darkness at Noon and The Yogi and the Commissar; Jack London's The Iron Heel (1908); Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932); Yevgeny Zamyatin's Russian novel We (1923), which Orwell first read in the 1940s; James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution (1940). Orwell personally told Jacintha Buddicom that at some point he might write a book in a style similar to that of H. G. Wells' A Modern Utopia.

His work for the overseas service of the BBC, which at the time was under the control of the Ministry of Information, also played a significant role as the basis for his Ministry of Truth (as he later admitted to Malcolm Muggeridge). The Ministry of Information building, Senate House (University of London), was the Ministry of Truth's architectural inspiration.

The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four also reflects various aspects of the social and political life of both the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Orwell is reported to have said that the book described what he viewed as the situation in the United Kingdom in 1948, when the British economy was poor, the British Empire was dissolving at the same time as newspapers were reporting its triumphs, and wartime allies such as the USSR were rapidly becoming peacetime foes ('Eurasia is the enemy. Eurasia has always been the enemy').

In many ways, Oceania is indeed a future metamorphosis of the British Empire (although Orwell is careful to state that, geographically, it also includes the United States, and that the currency is the dollar). It is, as its name suggests, an essentially naval power. Much of its militarism is focused on veneration for sailors and seafarers, serving on board "floating fortresses" which Orwell evidently conceived of as the next stage in the growth of ever-bigger warships, after the Dreadnoughts of WWI and the aircraft carriers of WWII; and much of the fighting conducted by Oceania's troops takes place in defence of India (the "Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire).

The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four

File:Bbc1984.jpg

Peter Cushing (left) as Winston Smith with Donald Pleasence as Syme in the 1954 BBC television adaptation of the novel.

The novel focuses on Winston Smith, who stands, seemingly alone. Orwell's original title for the novel was The Last Man in Europe,which was dropped both because it did not sound ominous enough and because it implied a level of heroism in the main character. Although the storyline is unified, it could be described as having three parts and in fact it has been published in three parts by some publishers. The first part deals with the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four as seen through the eyes of Winston; the second part deals with Winston's forbidden sexual relationship with Julia and his eagerness to rebel against the Party; and the third part deals with Winston's capture by the Party and his imprisonment in the Ministry of Love.

The world described in Nineteen Eighty-Four parallels the Stalinist Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. There are thematic similarities: the betrayed revolution, with which Orwell had famously dealt in Animal Farm; the subordination of individuals to "the Party"; and the rigorous distinction between the Inner Party, Outer Party, and everyone else. There are also direct parallels of the activities within the society: leader worship, such as that towards Big Brother, who can be compared to dictators like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler; Joycamps, which are a reference to concentration camps or gulags; Thought Police, a reference to the Gestapo or NKVD; daily exercise reminiscent of Nazi propaganda movies; and the Youth League, reminiscent of Hitler Youth or Little Octobrists/Young Pioneers.

There is also an extensive and institutional use of propaganda; again, this was found in the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Stalin.

Plot summary

A social pyramid of the classes listed in the Book, with Big Brother on top, and the proles at the bottom

max likes to suck on cock

Winston Smith, a member of the Outer Party, lives in the ruins of London, the chief city of Airstrip One — a front-line province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania. He grew up in post-World War II United Kingdom, during the revolution and civil war. When his parents disappeared during the civil war, he was picked up by the growing Ingsoc (Newspeak for "English Socialism") movement, placed into an orphanage and eventually given a job in the Outer Party.

Winston lives a squalid existence in a one-room apartment in "Victory Mansions", and eats black bread, synthetic meals served at his workplace, and drinks industrial-grade "Victory Gin." He is discontented with his life, and keeps a journal of his negative thoughts and opinions about the Party. This journal, along with any other eccentric behaviour, if found, would result in his torture and death through the dealings of the Thought Police (he starkly explains the very definite result of his "thoughtcrime" in a journal entry: "Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death"). The Thought Police have telescreens in every Party household and public area, as well as hidden microphones and informers in order to catch potential thoughtcriminals who could endanger the security of the Party. Children are carefully indoctrinated from birth to report any suspected thought criminal, even − especially − their parents.

The Ministry of Truth, which exercises complete control over all mass media in Oceania, employs Winston at the Records Department, where he doctors historical records in order to comply with the Party's version of the past. Since the present needs of the Party require constant revision of past events in order to reflect the shifting nature of the party's orthodox view of history, the task is a never-ending one.

While Winston likes his work, especially the intellectual challenge involved in fabricating a complete historical anecdote from scratch, he is also fascinated by the real past, and eagerly tries to find out more about the forbidden truth. At the Ministry of Truth, he encounters Julia, a mechanic on the novel-writing machines, and the two begin a necessarily clandestine relationship, regularly meeting up in the countryside (away from surveillance) or in a room above an antique shop in the Proles' area of the city. The owner of the shop exchanges various facts on the mysterious pre-revolutionary past with Winston and sells him artifacts from this period, as well as renting the room to them. Julia and Winston find their new hiding place a paradise, as they believe that there is no telescreen and so they believe themselves completely alone and safe.

As their relationship progresses, Winston's views begin to change, and he finds himself relentlessly questioning Ingsoc. Unknown to the two (or to the reader), he and Julia are under surveillance by the Thought Police. When he is approached by Inner Party member O'Brien, Winston believes that he has made contact with the Resistance or Brotherhood which is opposed to the ideals of the Party. O'Brien gives Winston a copy of "the book", a searing criticism of Ingsoc believed to have been written by the dissident Emmanuel Goldstein, leader of the Brotherhood. This book explains the nature of the perpetual war, and exposes the truth behind the Party's slogan, "War Is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

Winston and Julia are eventually apprehended by the Thought Police in their supposed sanctuary, which actually contains a hidden telescreen, and are then interrogated separately in the Ministry of Love, where opponents of the regime are tortured and usually executed but sometimes released (only to be executed at a later time). O'Brien appears at the Ministry of Love, and reveals that he will help Winston "be cured" of his hatred for the Party, by subjecting Winston to numerous torture sessions. During one of these sessions, he explains to Winston that the purpose of the torture is not to extract a fake confession, but to alter the way Winston thinks. O'Brien also assures Winston that once he is cured, meaning that he accepts reality as described by the Party, he will be executed.

The party intends to achieve this with a combination of torture and electroshocks, continuing until O'Brien decides that Winston is "cured". Eventually, Winston is sent into Room 101, the most feared room in the Ministry of Love, where a person's greatest fear is forced upon them as the final step in their "re-education." Since Winston is morbidly afraid of rats, a cage of the hungry vermin is placed over his eyes, so that when the door is opened, they will eat their way through his skull. In terror, as the cage is placed onto his head, he screams, "Do it to Julia!". So ends the torture and Winston returns to society, apparently filled with party doctrine.

Near the end, Winston and Julia again meet in a park, by chance. They remember, with distaste, the "bad" feelings they once shared. Both acknowledge having betrayed the other, and find themselves apathetic. We finally see that the torture and "reprogramming" have been successful; happily reconciled to his own impending execution, and accepting of the Party's versions of the past and present (Winston shortly celebrates a possible fabricated, though accepted as fact, bulletin describing Oceania's recent decisive victory over Eurasia), he finally accepts love towards Big Brother.

The novel is followed by an Appendix on Newspeak (see below). Template:Endspoiler

Backstory to novel

The novel does not give a full history of the world up to 1984. Winston's recollections, and what he reads from Emmanuel Goldstein's book, reveal that at some point after the Second World War, the United Kingdom descended into civil war, eventually becoming part of the new world power of Oceania. At roughly the same time, the Soviet Union expanded into mainland Europe to form Eurasia; the third world power, Eastasia — an amalgamation of east Asian countries around China, Japan and Korea — emerged some time later.

There was a period of nuclear warfare during which hundreds of atomic bombs were dropped, mainly on Europe, western Russia, and North America. (The only city that is explicitly stated to have suffered a nuclear attack is Colchester.) It is not clear what came first — the civil war which ended with the Party taking over, the merging of the British Empire and the United States, or the external war in which Colchester was bombed.

During the Second World War, Orwell repeatedly expressed the idea that British democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war, the only question being whether its end would come through a Fascist coup d'état from above or by a Socialist revolution from below. (Orwell greatly supported and hoped for the latter, to the extent that he joined and loyally participated in the British Home Guard throughout the war, in the expectation that it would become the nucleus of a revolutionary militia). Later during the war Orwell admitted that events had proven him wrong: "What really matters is that I fell into the trap of assuming that 'the war and the revolution are inseparable'" (London Letter to Partisan Review, December 1944, quoted from vol. 3 of the Penguin edition of the Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters).

English Socialism

The most complete expression of Orwell's predictions in that direction is contained in "The Lion and the Unicorn" which he wrote in 1940. There, he stated that "the war and the revolution are inseparable (...) the fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realizable policy". The reason for that, according to Orwell, was that the outmoded British class system constituted a major hindrance to the war effort, and only a Socialist society would be able to defeat Hitler. Since the middle classes were in process of realizing this, too, they would support the revolution, and only the most outright Reactionary elements in British society would oppose it — which would limit the amount of force the revolutionaries would need in order to gain power and keep it.

Thus, an "English Socialism" would come about which "...will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word".

Such a revolutionary regime, which Orwell found highly desirable and was actively trying to bring about in 1940, is of course a far cry from the monstrous edifice presided over by Big Brother, which was his nightmare a few years later. Still, one can see how the one may degenerate into the other (and The Party does provide "traitors" with "a solemn trial" before shooting them...)

The term "English Socialism", repeated numerous times in "The Lion and the Unicorn", is rather parochial — had events developed as Orwell predicted, the Scots and Welsh would have undoubtedly had a major share in such a revolution. Its importance for understanding "1984" is that the official Party ideology is "Ingsoc", an abbreviation of "English Socialism". This shows that Orwell perceived of the monstrous regime that he described in “1984”, as not only a betrayal and perversion of Socialist ideals in general, but also as a perversion of Orwell’s own specifically and dearly cherished vision and hope of Socialism.

In 1940 Orwell was quite optimistic about the chances of Socialism — his brand of Socialism. In 1947, when he wrote "Toward European Unity" he was far more pessimistic (which may have had to do, not only with objective conditions in the world, but also with his fast deteriorating health). He no longer had hopes in the possibility of a Socialist revolution in Britain alone. The only real chance (and he considered it a slim chance) was through a Socialist Federation of Western Europe, "The only region where for a large number of people the word Socialism is bound up with liberty, equality and internationalism". Such a federation, embracing some 250 million people, would provide a large-scale working model of "a community where people are relatively free and happy and where the main motive in life is not the pursuit of money or power".

Many preconditions had to be fulfilled for that vision to materialise. The Western European countries had to remain independent both of the Soviet military might and of looking to the Soviet Union for their model of Socialism. Britain had to divest itself of its empire, since exploiting the labour of colonial masses was incompatible with building a true Socialist society. It also had to cut itself completely out of the American orbit, and ally with the West European countries in a common revolution. Orwell was not sanguine about the chances of all these conditions materialising, but stated in conclusion, "One thing in our favour is that a major war is not likely to happen immediately" — which would at least give some breathing space to the forces seeking Democratic Socialism.[9]

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" was written at almost precisely the same time as "Toward European Unity", and the fictional history unfolding in the past of the novel could be considered as the exact mirror image of that article. A major war does break out almost "immediately" from the time of writing in 1948, the opposite happens of all the indispensable conditions for Democratic Socialism, and things deteriorate.

From the memories of Winston, scattered through the book, one can try to piece out the following: At the outbreak of war, when Colchester was A-bombed, the child Winston experienced an air-raid alarm and his parents took him to a tube station, where he heard an old man saying, "We didn't ought to 'ave trusted them". This implies a sense of betrayal, felt in the British public in the aftermath of a surprise attack. The context would suggest a Soviet attack, possibly after a period of relative rapprochement or a failed peace effort. The outbreak of war might have followed the withdrawal of US forces from Europe — a quite plausible future development when the book was written, before the creation of NATO and when the main available precedent was the American withdrawal from Europe in the aftermath of WWI. That would account both for the feeling of betrayal and for the Soviet success in sweeping, while Britain was heavily bombed but protected by the Channel from a ground invasion, westwards to the Atlantic and southwards into the Middle East. (A newsreel from the Middle East which Smith watches shows a boat full of Jewish refugees being sunk by an Oceanian helicopter; evidently, in this history the state of Israel, founded in 1948, had had only an ephemeral existence.) The major invasion was followed by the Soviet Union being transformed into "Eurasia" and adopting the ideology of "Neo-Bolshevism" (possibly under the impact of absorbing the Communists of France, Italy etc. into its ruling party). The isolated Britain kept its empire and was perforce drawn into a closer alliance and eventual political amalgamation with the United States — that might have been the time when the dollar became the common currency. At that time, Winston's father was still around and his sister was not yet born. The time must be the early 1950s, since he was born in 1944 or 1945 and these are for him dim childhood memories; in other words, for Orwell writing in 1948 this was in the very near future. Winston is about the same age as Richard Horatio Blair, Orwell's adopted son, who was born in May 1944. After that, the war in Europe seems to have stabilized into exchanges of aerial bombardments (by tacit agreement avoiding the use of nuclear arms) and to naval blockades and submarine warfare, with ground battles confined to extra-European theatres. In effect, Orwell conceived the future war as taking virtually the same course that WWII took in 1940 after the Fall of France. This is the period from which come Winston's later childhood memories, a time when the father was gone and the mother was left alone with Winston and the baby sister. That was a time of very great economic privations — much worse even than the systematised and controlled privations which daily life in 1984 Oceania entails. There was presumably the destruction left by nuclear bombardment, which destroyed a part of Britain's industrial capacity, and also left agricultural areas contaminated ("1984" mentions Winston and Julia meeting in countryside areas still devastated and deserted after 30 years), the need to fight a full-scale war again without being fully recovered from the effects of WWII (in our history Britain only fully recovered in the late 1950s, and in 1948 when Orwell wrote, there were predictions of a much longer time needed for recovery).

To these would be added Soviet/Eurasian attacks on the supply lines, for which (unlike with Nazi Germany in WWII) the coasts of Spain, Portugal and North Africa, as well as those of France, would be fully available for Soviet/Eurasian submarine bases and airfields. (The development of the "virtually unsinkable" Floating Fortresses might have come later, as a means of securing the Atlantic sea-lanes and ensuring at least a trickle of vital supplies to Britain/Airstrip One — which would explain the popularity of the sailors serving in these fortresses, used in the Party's propaganda. The Floating Fortresses might have been inspired by WWII Project Habakkuk's virtually unsinkable reinforced ice aircraft carriers, if Orwell had heard of them.)

Winston's memories of this time are full of political chaos and violence, as seen through an uncomprehending child's eyes. There is a specific mention of rival militias roaming the streets, each one composed of boys all wearing shirts of the same colour (a vision which Orwell might have taken from the last years of Weimar Germany, where Nazi, Communist and other militias constantly fought in the streets).

That corresponds, presumably, to the time when The Party (which at the time must still have had a name, being only one of several contending parties) was led by Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford, and Big Brother had not yet risen to prominence. (The three are clearly modelled on Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev, the prominent Bolshevik leaders whom Stalin supplanted and executed).

Apparently, Orwell conceives of the three as sincere revolutionaries moved by outrage at the injustice of capitalism. There is the specific mention of Rutherford's "brutal cartoons", depicting slum tenements, starving children, street battles and capitalists in top hats, which "helped inflame popular opinion before and during the Revolution". The revolutionaries eventually win — or so it seems. What Orwell hoped for in vain during WWII does take place during the WWIII of the 1950s, Orwell's immediate future — a revolution in Britain. But now he sees it as the beginning of a nightmare, not of hope.

The difference can be partly explained by the fact that the revolution takes place in far more brutal conditions than those of WWII Britain where Orwell hoped for a relatively mild revolution — and more similar to the conditions of 1917 in Russia from which the incipient Soviet regime had its introduction to brutality. While Rutherford's cartoons were obviously exaggerated, in order to be so effective in rousing public fury they must have reflected, to some degree, the reality of deep privations and social polarization in the immediate pre-revolutionary time.

Under such conditions, the revolutionaries' victory could have easily been accompanied by widespread retaliations against "war profiteers" and "fat cats" (there was widespread resentment against such people in WWII Britain). Such retaliations, condoned as "unavoidable excesses", would have set the new regime on a road of arbitrary brutality from its very inception.

Also, Orwell's essential conditions for the revolution to develop towards Democratic Socialism, set out in "Toward European Unity", were all not fulfilled — Western Europe is occupied and in no condition to join in the revolution, and Britain is inextricably tied to both the U.S. and to its oppressive overseas empire. Indeed, the brutal all-out exploitation of colonial peoples as semi-slave labour could have been started by the old regime in the immediate aftermath of the occupation of Europe, as a desperate measure of survival, and deepened rather than abolished by the newly arrived revolutionaries. Altogether, the revolutionary regime was inexorably perverted into the merciless tyranny of Big Brother.

At some time soon after, the revolution, which started in Britain, spread to the United States and won there as well. This is simply mentioned, with no detail and no information of the situation in the American part of Oceania beyond a passing mention of a Party congress in New York and a reference in "The Book" to "Jews, Negroes and South Americans of pure Indian blood" being "found in the highest ranks of the Party". The Americas are not part of this story any more than the detailed history of China; it is just a faraway place of which almost no information is given.

The later history of Oceania seems modelled, in a rather one-to-one basis, on Soviet history. Oceania's 1950s are based on the Soviet 1920s, a time of civil war and revolutionary turmoil. Similarly, the 1960s are the 1930s, the time when Stalin/Big Brother, consolidated his power and smothered all opposition. (Stalin's Moscow Show Trials took place in 1936, Big Brother's equivalent in 1965). By the end of the 1960s, Big Brother has completed the process of turning the revolution into a pretext for creating a terror state.

By the year 1984, the citizens of Oceania had been separated into three distinct, isolated classes — the Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the proles. However, in the view of Emmanuel Goldstein (which seems to be Orwell's) these are but new names for classes which have essentially existed throughout human history — though under the new dispensation they are more rigid and unchangeable than ever before. It has also been speculated that Orwell based his class structure upon those formulated by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, in the "Republic". The Platonic society is separated into three classes. The "Guardians", are small in number but rule unaccountably over the masses (Orwell's Inner Party); the "auxiliaries", who exist to extend their unquestioning support to the Guardians, and aid them in implementing their decisions(the Outer Party); and the "producers", who represent the populous base of society, and who partake in essential economic activity such as farming or building (the proles).

On the global level, as "The Book" (supposedly written by Emmanuel Goldstein though in fact its descriptive part turns out to be endorsed by the Party) explains, the three powers eventually realized that continuous stalemate war was preferable to conquest, as war allowed them to spend their surplus labour manufacturing products that would be wasted during fighting, rather than improving people's standards of living (an impoverished population being easier to control than a rich one).

By 1984, the three powers have taken over most of the world, but they still fight over a large area containing the northern half of Africa, the Middle East, southern India, Indonesia, and northern Australia, providing an endless stream of low-paid workers - who are effectively slaves - for all three powers.

The powers rarely if ever fight on their own territory — Airstrip One (the official name of Great Britain) has become the target of Eurasian rocket bombs. But, as Julia says, the Oceanian government itself may launch the bombs to convince the population that it is under constant attack.

Ingsoc (English Socialism)

Main article: Ingsoc

Ingsoc (Newspeak for "English Socialism".) is the ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania.

English Socialism apparently came to dominance during a communist or socialist revolution, but as The Party is constantly rewriting history it is difficult to tell precisely how it came about. In addition to rewriting history, The Party is also constantly rewriting the language, so as to make the true meanings of words, and the ideas behind them, ambiguous. Hence, The Party changed the term "English Socialism" to the shorter and more esoteric "Ingsoc."

Under Ingsoc, society is composed of three levels:

1. The Inner Party, which makes policy decisions and runs the government, which is referred to as simply The Party.
2. The Outer Party, which works in the state jobs and is the middle class of the society. "Members are allowed no vices other than cigarettes and Victory Gin." The Outer Party is also under the most scrutiny, being constantly monitored by two-way telescreens and other implements of surveillance.
3. The Proles, which form the vast lower class, the rabble that is kept happy and sedate with beer, gambling, sports, casual sex and prolefeed ("rubbishy texts"). The proles are named for the proletariat, the Marxist term for the working class. The Proles make up 85% of the population of Oceania.

The classes do not mix much, although the narrator describes an evening at a movie theater where proles and Party members are both in attendance. The main character is also able to patronise a prole pub without attracting much attention -- or so he thinks -- and to visit the flat of O'Brien, an Inner Party member, on a pretext of borrowing a special edition of a Newspeak dictionary.

Ministries of Oceania

Oceania's four ministries are housed in huge pyramidal structures, each roughly 300 metres high and visible throughout London, displaying the three slogans of the party (see below) on their facades.

Ministry of Peace

Newspeak: Minipax.
Conducts Oceania's perpetual war.

Ministry of Plenty

Newspeak: Miniplenty.
Responsible for rationing and controlling food and goods.

Ministry of Truth

Newspeak: Minitrue.
The propaganda arm of Oceania's regime, controlling information: literature, propaganda, the Party organization, and the telescreen programs. Winston Smith works for the Records Department (RecDep) of Minitrue, "rectifying" historical records and newspaper articles to make them conform to Big Brother's most recent pronouncements, thus making everything that the Party says true.

Ministry of Love

Newspeak: Miniluv.
The agency responsible for the identification, monitoring, arrest, and torture of dissidents, real or imagined. Based on Winston's experience there at the hands of O'Brien, the basic procedure is to pair the subject with his or her worst fear for an extended period, eventually breaking down the person's mental faculties and ending with a sincere embrace of the Party by the brainwashed subject. The Ministry of Love differs from the other ministry buildings in that it has no windows in it at all.

The ministries' names are an example of doublethink — “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation.” (Part II, Chapter IX - chapter I of Goldstein's book)

The Party

The ideal set up by the Party was something very huge, terrible and glittering — a world of steel and concrete of monstrous marching and terrifying weapons — a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts, wearing the same clothes and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—three hundred million people all with the same face. The reality was decaying, dingy cities where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad lavatories. He seemed to see a vision of London, vast and ruinous, city of a million dustbins, and mixed up with it was a picture of Mrs Parsons, a woman with a lined face and wispy hair, fiddling helplessly with a blocked wastepipe.

— (Page 77, chapter VII)

The citizens have no right to a personal life or to personal thought. Leisure and other activities are controlled through a system of strict mores. Sexual pleasure is discouraged; sex is retained only for the purpose of procreation, although artificial insemination (ARTSEM) is more encouraged.

File:Bbc19842.jpg

Big Brother poster in the BBC television adaptation. The description in the book does not exactly match the image; in the novel, the caption is beneath the picture and Big Brother is smiling under his moustache.

The mysterious head of government is the omniscient, omnipotent, beloved Big Brother, or "B.B.", usually displayed on posters with the slogan "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU". It is never made clear whether Big Brother is an actual person or whether he is a fictitious leader created as a focus for the love of the Party. It is possible that the conflict between Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein is in fact a conflict either between two leaders who are either fictitious or dead, and whose true purpose is to personify both the Party and its opponents -- or, perhaps, even to personify "doublethink" by presenting a fictitious person to love and one to hate.

Big Brother's political opponent (therefore a criminal) is the hated Goldstein, a Party member who had been in league with Big Brother and the Party during the revolution. Goldstein is said to be the leader of the Brotherhood, a vast underground anti-Party fellowship. It is never truly explained whether the Brotherhood exists or not, but the implication is that Goldstein is either entirely fictitious or was eliminated long ago. Party members are expected to vilify Goldstein, the Brotherhood, and whichever superstate Oceania is currently warring via the daily "Two Minutes Hate."

A typical Two Minutes Hate is depicted in the novel, during which citizens ridicule and shout at a video of the hated "bleating" Goldstein as he releases a litany of attacks upon Oceanic governance (indeed, the image ultimately morphs into a bleating sheep) on a background of enemy soldiers (in the book's portrayal of the Two Minutes they are Eurasian, but after the switch to the war with Eastasia, it is expected that the background changes to Eastasian soldiers).

The three slogans of the Party, on display everywhere, are:

• WAR IS PEACE
• FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
• IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Each of these is of course either contradictory or the opposite of what is normally believed, and in 1984, the world is in a state of constant war, no one is free, and everyone is ignorant. The slogans are analysed in Goldstein's book. Though logically insensible, the slogans do embody the Party. For instance, through constant "war", the Party can keep domestic peace; when freedom is brought about, the people are enslaved to it, and the ignorance of the people is the strength of the Party. If anybody (like Winston) becomes too smart, they are whisked away for fear of rebellion. Through their constant repetition, the terms become meaningless, and the slogans become axiomatic. This type of misuse of language, and the deliberate self-deception with which the citizens are encouraged to accept it, is called doublethink.

One essential consequence of doublethink is that the Party can rewrite history with impunity, for "The Party is never wrong." The ultimate aim of the Party is, according to O'Brien, to gain and retain full power over all the people of Oceania; he sums this up with perhaps the most distressing prophecy of the entire novel: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

— Part III, chapter III

Doublethink

Main article: Doublethink

The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

— Part II, chapter IX - chapter I of Goldstein's book

Political geography

Not all boundaries are given in detail in the book, so some are speculation. Note: At the end of the novel, there are news reports that Oceania has captured the whole of Africa, though their credibility is uncertain.

The world is controlled by three functionally similar totalitarian superstates engaged in perpetual war with each other:

• Oceania (ideology: Ingsoc or English Socialism)
• Eurasia (ideology: Neo-Bolshevism)
• Eastasia (ideology: Obliteration of the Self, usually rendered as "Death worship").

Oceania covers the British Isles, Australia, Polynesia, and the Americas, Eastasia corresponds to China, Japan, Korea and Northern India. Eurasia corresponds to the Soviet Union and Continental Europe.

That the British Isles are in Oceania rather than in Eurasia is commented upon in the book as a historical anomaly. North Africa, the Middle East, South India, and Southeast Asia form a disputed zone which is used as a battlefield and source of slaves by the three powers. Goldstein's book explains that the ideologies of the three states are the same, but it is imperative to keep the public ignorant of that. The population is led to believe that the other two ideologies are detestable. London, the novel's setting, is the capital of the Oceanian province of Airstrip One, the former United Kingdom.

The war

Further information: Perpetual war

Eternal War
The attacks described as black (Eurasian) and white (Oceanian) arrows in the last chapter of the novel.
Date early 1970s–present Location North Africa Southwest Asia Southeast Asia Central Asia Result eternal stalemate Territorial changes East Asian unification European-North African unification American-Oceanian-British unification Southern Africa, West/South Asia disputed zones
Belligerents
Oceania	Eurasia	Eastasia
Commanders and leaders
Big Brother

The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is built around a never-ending war involving the book's three superstates, with two allied powers fighting against the third. But as Goldstein's book explains, each superstate is so strong it cannot be defeated even when faced with the combined forces of the other two powers. The allied states occasionally split with each other and new alliances are formed. Each time this happens, history is rewritten to convince the people that the new alliances were always there, using the principles of doublethink. The war itself never takes place in the territories of the three powers; the actual fighting is conducted in the disputed zone stretching from Morocco to Australia, and in the unpopulated Arctic wastes. Throughout the first half of the novel, Oceania is allied with Eastasia, and Oceania's forces are combating Eurasia's troops in northern Africa.

Midway through the book, the alliance breaks apart and Oceania, newly allied with Eurasia, begins a campaign against Eastasian forces. This happens during "Hate Week" (a week of extreme focus on the evilness of Oceania's enemies, the purpose of which is to stir up patriotic fervor in support of the Party), Oceania and Eastasia are enemies once again. The public is quite abnormally blind to the change, and when a public orator, mid-sentence, changes the name of the enemy from Eurasia to Eastasia (still speaking as if nothing had changed), the people are shocked as they notice all the flags and banners are wrong (they blame Goldstein and the Brotherhood) and tear them down. This is the origin of the idiom, "we've always been at war with Eastasia." Later on, the Party claims to have captured India. As with all other news, its authenticity is questionable.

Goldstein's book explains that the war is unwinnable, and that its only purpose is to use up human labor and the fruits of human labor so that each superstate's economy cannot support an equal (and high) standard of living for every citizen. The book also details an Oceanian strategy to attack enemy cities with atomic-tipped rocket bombs prior to a full-scale invasion, but quickly dismisses this plan as both infeasible and contrary to the purpose of the war.

Although, according to Goldstein's book, hundreds of atomic bombs were dropped on cities during the 1950s, the three powers no longer use them, as they would upset the balance of power. Conventional military technology is little different from that used in the Second World War. Some advances have been made, such as replacing bomber aircraft with "rocket bombs", and using immense "floating fortresses" instead of battleships, but they appear to be rare. As the purpose of the war is to destroy manufactured products and thus keep the workers busy, obsolete and wasteful technology is deliberately used in order to perpetuate useless fighting.

Goldstein's book hints that, in fact, there may not actually be a war. The only view of the outside world presented in the novel is through Oceania's media, which has an obvious tendency to exaggerate and even fabricate "facts", and the rocket bombs ostensibly fired by the enemy. Goldstein's book suggests that the three superpowers may not actually be warring, and as Oceania's media provide completely unbelievable news reports on impossibly long military campaigns and victories (including a ridiculously large campaign in the Sahara desert), it can be suggested that the war is a lie.

Even Eurasia and Eastasia themselves may only be a fabrication by the government of Oceania, with Oceania the sole undisputed dominator of the world. On the other hand, Oceania might as well actually control only a rather small part of the world and still brainwash its citizens into believing that Oceania dominates the whole Earth or - as in the novel - that they are battling/allying with Eurasia/Eastasia.

It is noted in the novel that there are no longer massive battles, but rather expert fighters occasionally appearing in small skirmishes; this is relatively paradoxical considering the massive amounts of resources wasted to keep the war effort running.

Living standards

By the year 1984, the society of Airstrip One lives in abject squalor and poverty. Hunger, disease, and filth have become the norm. As a result of the civil war, atomic wars, and enemy (or possibly even Oceanian) rocket bombs, the urban areas of Airstrip One lie in ruins. When travelling around London, Winston is surrounded by rubble, decay, and the crumbling shells of wrecked buildings.

Apart from the gargantuan bombproof Ministries, very little seems to have been done to rebuild London, and it is assumed that all towns and cities across Airstrip One are in the same desperate condition. Living standards for the population are generally very low — everything is in short supply and those goods available are of very poor quality. The Party claims that this is due to the immense sacrifices that must be made for the war effort. They are partially correct, since the point of continuous warfare is to be rid of the surplus of industrial production to prevent the rise of the standard of living and make possible the economic repression of people.

The Inner Party, at the top level of Oceanian society, enjoys the highest standard of living. O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, lives in a clean and comfortable apartment, and has variety of quality foodstuffs such as wine, coffee, and sugar, none of which is available to the rest of the population. Winston, for example, is astonished simply that the lifts in O'Brien's building actually work, and that the telescreens can be turned off. Members of the Inner Party also seem to be waited on by slaves captured from the disputed zone.

Although the Inner Party enjoys the highest standard of living, Goldstein's book points out that, despite being at the top of society, their living standards (apart from the slaves) are significantly lower than pre-Revolution standards. O'Brien says the social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. The proles, treated by the Party as animals, live in squalor and poverty. They are kept sedate with vast quantities of cheap beer, widespread pornography, and a national lottery, but these do not mask the fact that their lives are dangerous and deprived — proletarian areas of the cities, for example, are ridden with disease and vermin.

However, the proles are subject to much less close control of their daily lives than Party members. The proles, which Winston Smith meets in the streets and in the pubs, seem to speak and behave much like working-class Englishmen of Orwell's time. In addition, the prole criminals whom he meets in the first phase of his imprisonment are far less subdued and intimidated than the intellectual "politicals", some of them rudely jeering at the telescreens with apparent impunity.

As explained in Goldstein's book, this derives from the social theory which the regime believes in — and which seems to work — that revolutions are always started by the middle class and that the lower classes would never start an effective rebellion on their own. Therefore, if the middle classes are so tightly controlled that the regime can penetrate their very thoughts and their most minute daily life, the lower classes can be left to their own devices and pose no threat.

As Winston is a member of the Outer Party, more is shown from its living standards than any other group. Despite being the middle class of Oceanian society, the Outer Party's standard of living is very poor. Foodstuffs are low quality or synthetic; the main alcoholic beverage — Victory Gin — is industrial-grade; Outer Party cigarettes are shoddy.

Subjects of Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nationalism

Template:Spoilers Nineteen Eighty-Four expands upon the subjects summarised in Orwell’s preparatory essay, Notes on Nationalism (1945): [5]. In it, Orwell expresses frustration at the lack of vocabulary needed to explain an unrecognised phenomenon that he felt was behind certain forces. He addresses this problem in Nineteen Eighty-Four by inventing the jargon of Newspeak.

File:Book cover 1984.jpg

Plume (Centennial Edition)

A fictional society, to which the readers have no preconceived bias, was a tool in illustrating why Orwell thought examples shown below were different manifestations of the same forces at work, despite their being ideologically incompatible.

Positive nationalism is apparent in the novel, in the Oceanians’ undying love for Big Brother, whose physical existence is doubtful. Orwell lists Celtic Nationalism, Neo-Toryism and Zionism as examples of positive nationalism.

Negative nationalism is apparent in the novel, in the Oceanians’ undying hatred for Goldstein, whose continued existence is doubtful. Orwell lists Stalinism, Anti-Semitism and Anglophobia as examples of negative nationalism.

Transferred nationalism: In the novel, an orator, mid-sentence, alters the alleged enemy of Oceania, and the crowd instantly transfer their same feelings of hatred toward the new alleged enemy. In Notes on Nationalism, Orwell describes transferred nationalism as swiftly redirecting emotions from one power unit to another, as if not by reasoned change in opinion, but as if one’s beliefs are serving one’s loyalties, which can be altered, but with the original fanaticism intact. Orwell lists Communism, Political Catholicism, Pacifism, Colour Feeling, and Class Feeling as examples of transferred nationalism.

O'Brien, in one of his most conclusive statements, describes nationalism for its own sake: “The object of power is power; The object of torture is torture.”

Sexual repression

The Party imposes antisexualism on its members (sponsoring the Junior Anti-Sex-League, etc.), since sexual attachments might diminish exclusive loyalty to the Party. Julia describes party fanaticism as "sex gone sour"; Winston, aside from during his affair with Julia, suffers from an ankle inflammation, alluding to Oedipus the King and symbolizing an unhealthy repression of the sex drive. In part III of the book, O'Brien tells Winston that their neurologists are working on removing the orgasm from humans - Orwell supposed that the sufficient mental energy for prolonged worship requires the repression of a vital instinct, such as the sex instinct. This possibly alludes to the restrictions on sexuality imposed by authorities (civil, political, religious or otherwise, such as in the German National Socialism), be it consciously or by selective pressures on doctrine.

Futurology

It is not clear to what extent Orwell believed his work was prophetic.

His character O'Brien described his view of the future of the world:

"There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face …for ever." (Part III, chapter III)

This is in stark contrast to Orwell's own forecast in the essay England Your England (1941):

"The intellectuals who hope to see it Russianised or Germanised will be disappointed. The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies. It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture. The Stock Exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be turned into children's holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same."

Appendix on Newspeak

Further information: Newspeak

The novel includes an appendix "The Principles of Newspeak", written in the style of an academic essay. It describes the development of Newspeak, the artificial language invented and, by degrees, imposed and by the Party to standardise thought to reflect the ideology of Ingsoc by making "all other modes of thought impossible" (see Sapir–Whorf hypothesis).

There is a literary debate about whether the appendix should be read as part of the narrative, in which case it offers a more hopeful ending. As it is written in Standard English and refers to Newspeak, Ingsoc, Party members etc. in the past tense (for instance, "Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were being constantly devised", p. 422), some critics (Atwood, Benstead, Pynchon) claim that for its writer Newspeak, and the totalitarian government, is a thing of the past. The opposite view is that as the novel has no hint of a frame story, Orwell wrote the appendix as an essay in the same past tense in which the novel is told, meaning "our" for his and the readers' common reality.

Cultural impact

File:1984 (Signet Classic).PNG

Signet Classics ("1984")

Nineteen Eighty-Four has had a significant impact on the English language. Many of its concepts, such as Big Brother, Room 101, thought police, doublethink and Newspeak, have entered common usage in describing totalitarian or overarching behaviour by authority. Doublespeak or doubletalk is a subsequent elaboration on the word doublethink. The adjective "Orwellian" is often used to describe any real world scenario reminiscent of the novel. The practice of suffixing words with "-speak" and "-think" (groupthink, mediaspeak) arguably originated with the novel.

Controversy

In 1981, Jackson County, Florida challenged the novel on the grounds that it contained pro-communist material and sexual references. [6], [7]

Other media

Main article: Nineteen Eighty-Four in popular media

Nineteen Eighty-Four has been adapted for the cinema twice, for the radio twice, for television thrice, has been made into a play, and has another film version on the way set for a due date as early as 2009 (see links in the table below). References to its themes, concepts and elements of its plot are also frequent in other works, particularly popular music and video entertainment; for an incomplete but extensive list of these adaptations and references, see the main article. Nineteen Eighty-Four was the inspiration for David Bowie's Diamond Dogs album. It was an acknowledged inspiration for the graphic novel, and later film, V for Vendetta.

See also

• 1984 (television commercial)
• 1985 (novel)
• Asch conformity experiments
• Censorship under fascist regimes
• Cult of personality
• Dystopia
• Fahrenheit 451
• Language and thought
• Mass surveillance
• Solipsism
• Stalinism
• State torture
• Totalitarianism
• Equilibrium (2002 film)
• V for Vendetta (film)

Bibliography

• Orwell, George. (1949). Nineteen-Eighty-Four. London: Secker & Warburg. (later edn. ISBN 0-451-52493-4)
• Aubrey, Crispin & Chilton, Paul (Eds). (1983). Nineteen-Eighty-Four in 1984: Autonomy, Control & Communication. London: Comedia. ISBN 0-906890-42-X.
• Hillegas, Mark R. (1967). The Future As Nightmare: H.G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-0676-X
• Howe, Irving (Ed.). (1983). 1984 Revisited: Totalitarianism In Our Century. New York: Harper Row. ISBN 0-06-080660-5.
• Shelden, Michael. (1991). Orwell — The Authorised Biography. London: Heinemann. ISBN 0-434-69517-3
• Smith, David & Mosher, Michael. (1984). Orwell for Beginners. London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative. ISBN 0-86316-066-2
• Tuccille, Jerome. (1975). Who's Afraid of 1984? The case for optimism in looking ahead to the 1980s. New York: Arlington House. ISBN 0-87000-308-9.
• West, W. J. The Larger Evils – Nineteen Eighty-Four, the truth behind the satire. Edinburgh: Canongate Press. 1992. ISBN 0-86241-382-6
• 1984 (Vietnamese edition), translation by Đặng Phương-Nghi, French preface by Bertrand Latour ISBN 0-9774224-5-3.

References

• Erich Fromm (1961). "Afterword" to Nineteen eighty-four, pp. 324–337. New York: Plume, 2003.
  Orwell's text has a "Selected Bibliography", pp. 338–9; the foreword and the afterword each contain further references.
  Copyright is explicitly extended to digital and any other means.
  Plume edition is a reprint of a hardcover by Harcourt. Plume edition is also in a Signet edition.

External links

Electronic Editions

WARNING: Nineteen Eighty-Four will NOT enter the public domain in the United States until 2044 and in the European Union until 2020, although it is public domain in countries such as Canada, Russia, and Australia.

The following free online or downloadable editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four are available:

• (English)
• (Searchable online edition)
• (With publication data)
• (Project Gutenberg Australia e-text)

Other

• On-line comic version of 1984
• MP3 of NBC University Theater radio dramatization (originally aired August 27, 1949)