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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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