Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book
in which hidden messages and meanings reside in abundance, a book which
provokes the mind to its threshold, a book which is trying to reflect how
society really is, or was, and a book which makes you think again about life. Nineteen
Eighty-Four depicts how life in a free country, like England, would be under
totalitarian rule. George Orwell lived his life among socialists and democrats,
he received his ideas of totalitarianism from World War 2 parties such as the
German Nazi party, and the Russian Communists, communism is a form of
totalitarianism. He deemed that if either Russia or Germany won World War 2,
and took over the world, or parts of it, then this is what life would be like. We
can compare Oceania in the book to the communists of Russia. In the book, the
world has been divvied between three super-powers, the Eurasia, Eastasia, and
Oceania, all of which control one section of the world. Oceania controls Oceania,
the United Kingdom and other places all over the war, this is where the main
character, Winston Smith lives. The London portrayed in the book is a very
dreary place; there is never enough foodstuff, never enough necessary clothing,
life is boring. However, the worst part of living in Oceania is wherever you
go, whatever you do, the ‘Big Brother’ is watching you. The ‘Big Brother’ is
the prodigious leader of ‘the party’, which dominatingly rules over every
citizen living in Oceania. The ‘Big Brother’ controls everybody’s feelings,
actions, and even thoughts; anybody who acts, feels or even thinks against the
party ultimately disappears from all record, ceases to exist. Orwell based his
characters on the experiences of his life, and as Oceania can be compared to
the communists of the Soviet Union, the ‘Big Brother’ is no doubt Stalin’s
counterpart, and not only because of the moustache. Winston Smith works as an
outer member of the party, his job is to alter history, to change the
information in books, newspapers, and etcetera, to make it appear as if the
party is always correct. If the party had imparted that the amount of boots
produced would rise by 60,000, and the real amount of boots produced had been
10,000, it would be Winston’s job to change all written material to make the
party’s estimation sound correct. The novel starts when Winston buys a journal,
an illegal thing for a party member; the party reckoned that rebellious
thoughts could be written down on a journal, so they banned them. Winston buys
the journal as he despises the party and all its propaganda, and decides that
he needs to write down all his criminal thoughts. Winston is only able to do so
as the Telescreen, placed in his house, sits at an awkward angle. Telescreens
are televisions with cameras on them; the party has placed them in every room
in, every house, and in every street, everything you do is watched. That is why
it is very fortunate that his telescreen does not have a full view of his
house, allowing him to write. Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, among
many co-workers, many with the same job as him. One day, he notices a beautiful
girl looking at him, Winston fears that she is part of the notorious
thought-police, who constantly seek out and kill rebels in society. He fears
that she knows about his feelings and will turn him in. The same day, he
discerns a man named O’Brien, who he thinks may have the same feelings as him
about society. He determines to meet O’Brien, and in his head, he starts to
fantasise about joining the ‘brotherhood’, an underground society discretely
trying to overthrow the party. Winston continues to live his dreary existence
of writing in his journal, working, and hating the party, the ‘Big Brother’ and
Julia. This all changes one day when Julia slips him a note during work, the
note read,
‘I love you.’
This completely changes Winston’s opinion of her, and all
hatred towards her turns to liquid and sinks down the drain. He now discovers
the he too loves her, he realised that he hated her, as he knew he would never
be able to have sex with her. Julia too was against the party; however, she
participated in things such as the Anti-Sex league to make the thought-police
believe that she was an orthodox party member. Winston and Julia eventually
find a way to meet in secret, and a chapter of the book is dedicated just to
describe their lovemaking. After Julia and Winston return from their
expedition, O’Brien invites Winston to his house. An inner party member
inviting an outer party member to his house is an atypical thing, especially as
the party has banned close friends, all emotion is supposed to be saved for the
party. Winston sees his invitation as the perfect time to get involved with the
‘brotherhood’. He is correct, and O’Brien invites both Winston and Julia into
the mysterious ‘brotherhood’. Winston and Julia are now rebels in society, and
are constantly evading the iron fist of the party. Winston continues to work as
an alterer [new word] of history, and now has taken to walking home via the
slums of London, the proletarian areas. Proletarians or proles are the lowest
class in the society and live without the prying eyes of the party, and they
live in the dirtiest part of London. Proles have their own society, just
without any government, as the party still occasionally blasts them with
propaganda that would make you sick. Winston is attracted to particular shop,
which is located within the proletarian areas. This shop is an antiques shop,
owned by a friendly old man by the name of Mr. Charrington. The shop has a room
above it, which Winston and Julia rent to be able to live together, banned is
love, like all other relationships. If any telescreen were to see them, it
would be torture and them death for both of them. During this time, O’Brien supplies the couple
with
the book. The book is an equivalent to the bible for all ‘brotherhood’
members; it supplies readers with reasons why society is as it is today. The
infamous Goldstein has written the book. Goldstein is the centre of hatred for
all citizens of the party, he is the leader of the ‘brotherhood’ and the party
has turned everybody against him, however this is not plausible to Winston.
During the two minutes hate, which is performed every day, Goldstein’s face
always takes centre-stage, making him the most hated person in Oceania. This
proves how people can be manipulated by simple propaganda. Goldstein also
represents somebody in the real world, this time it is Leon
Trotsky. Trotsky was
the founder and leader of the Red Army until Stalin came to power, when Stalin
came to power, Trotsky was forced into exile. However, he continued to write
against Stalin, and subsequently turned many people against him.
The book
represents Trotsky’s work against Stalin, Goldstein writing against the ‘Big
Brother’. However, Goldstein’s fate may be different to the one of Trotsky; an
assassin working on the orders of Stalin assassinated Trotsky, the assassin
killed him with an ice pick. Nobody knows what has happened to Goldstein. Winston
reads the first three chapters of the book, but as he continues, the
thought-police break through the walls of the small room and capture Winston
and Julia. Mr. Charrington stands in the doorway and Winston realises that for
the first time he is actually looking at a real member of the thought-police.
Winston is riven from Julia, and is taken to a cell in the Ministry of Love.
This is where the book takes a dark turn, exploring how manipulative one can be
to both the mind and the body. In the Ministry of Love, he discovers that
O’Brien too is a member of the thought-police; O’Brien tortures Winston repeatedly.
After a period of months, Winston is send to the final leg of his torture, room
101. Room 101 is a place in which your worst fear is placed in front of you,
throughout the book Winston has recurring nightmares about rats. O’Brien knows
this and Winston’s nightmare might be coming true. What did Julia see in room
101? What would you see? What happens to them both, nobody but the reader of
Nineteen Eighty-Four would know…
Nineteen
Eighty-Four is a book which can be called science fiction, and realistic
fiction at the same time. This is for multiple reasons, some obvious, some not.
Firstly, this novel is science fiction as the technology used throughout the
novel, such as the telescreen. The telescreen is a big television placed at the
centre of everybody’s home; Winston describes the telescreen on page three of
the book, “The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror
which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall.” The telescreen
constantly watches all of your movements and if it feels that, you are not
doing a sufficient job, it will shout at you, “6079 Smith W! Uncover your face.
No faces covered in the cells.” This happened of page two hundred and
forty-six. I do not see this happening in the close future; therefore, the book
contains science fiction. The book is also realistic fiction for the same
reasons it is science fiction. Although I do not feel that we live in a
dystopian world, as Winston does, I could compare some aspects of life now to
his life. This makes it realistic fiction, a specific example of Winston having
a life comparable to ours comes on page three, “Winston, who was thirty-nine
and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several
times on the way.” This proves that Winston Smith has an ordinary life as he
has a varicose ulcer. If this book were very far in the future, I think that
cures for ulcers like that would have been long found. Winston smith also lives
in a small flat, living in a flat is something that the majority of people in
the world do today, and that fact that Winston has to take the stairs, as the
lift doesn’t work also proves that Winston lives a life similar the life of a
typical thirty-nine year old. Having a life similar to people today makes the
book a realistic fiction one.
Winston
Smith is the main character in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and he not only develops
in the book, but he completely changes.
At the beginning of the book, Winston has nobody in his life; he has
nothing except for memories of the long-gone past. Winston has no friends who
he really can connect to; he is all by himself. He once had an affair with a
woman, but she felt no love for him, she had no connection with him. Winston
just used her as a sex object, all beauty no brain nor emotion, she was the
typical, orthodox party member. This all changes by the end of the book,
Winston finds the perfect woman he has always been dreaming about, wanting. He
finds this woman in Julia; they share numerous things, including their hatred
of the ‘Big Brother’, hatred for the party, and love for each other. Julia can
feel real compassion, like Winston. However, this only lasts until they both
enter room 101, when they are both faced with their worst fears. In room 101
Winton’s head is place in a mask connected to a cage filled with hungry rats,
O’Brien threatens to release the rats and allow them to eat his face, however
on page three hundred he breaks, “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me!
Julia! I do not care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the
bones. Not me! Julia!” By the end of the book Winston is a fragmented man, like
the others, he can only have love of the ‘Big Brother’. The last words of the
novel are, “He loved the Big Brother.” Therefore, Winston’s life was a hill, at
the beginning he had nobody, loved nobody, and lived an uneventful life. During
the middle of the book, Winston loved Julia, and his life was full of
adventure. By the end of the book, he has been tortured to the breaking point;
he loves nobody bar the ‘Big Brother’. Winston has gone from unorthodox, to
orthodox.
George
Orwell uses many characterisation techniques to make his characters relatable,
and real. Most authors use reflection as a characterisation technique, and
George Orwell is no exception, Orwell uses reflection to develop Winston Smith
in particular, and he uses it multiple times throughout the book. The first
example of reflection becomes apparent on page five, where Winston reveals his
thoughts about London, “This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste – this
was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces
of Oceania.” In this sentence, we can clearly see Winston’s thoughts about his
home, how he does not hate it, but he does not love it. Sentences like these
create a picture of Winston in my mind; in my opinion, George Orwell uses
characterisation techniques very effectively.
Nineteen
Eighty-Four takes place in a very dreary London, during the year 1984. England,
known as Airstrip One in the book, is part of the Oceania Empire, and as
Oceania is at war with either Eastasia or Eurasia, rockets constantly fly into
the city and blast people to pieces. London is dilapidated, there is a food
shortage, a lack of basic needs, and the city is run-down. Houses are falling apart, and barren streets
constantly reek of the stench of old food, and poo. On page five, Winston
describes London, and compares it to the London he knew as a child, “Were there
always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up
with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs
with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And
the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willowherb
straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared
a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid like colonies of wooden dwellings
like chicken-houses?” However, above all the rubble, there rise four pyramid
like government buildings, built out of concrete and glass; these buildings
house the four ministries, which control England. On page six of the book,
Winston describes the Ministry of Truth, “The Ministry of Truth – Minitrue, in
Newspeak – was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an
enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace
after terrace, three hundred metres into the air.” I cannot possible imagine
living in such a place! Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in 1984, during this time,
a great continuation of World War 2 is happening, killing thousands of people
per diem. The technology of the time was advanced to George Orwell, as the book
was published in 1949, so the book is considered set in the future, although
the year 1984 has long gone.
This
book is told via a narrator, through a third-person limited point-of-view. This
is palpable as only the thoughts and feelings of the main character, Winston Smith,
are visible to the reader; however, in this book nobody’s’ thoughts are
private… The point-of-view of the book becomes evident at the very beginning of
the book. Page 26 proves the point-of-view, “With those children, he thought,
that wretched woman must lead a life of terror.” This helps develop the main
character in various ways. Firstly, the point-of-view helps develop the
character of Winston Smith as we can read and share his thoughts; this helps us
know that he has rebellious thoughts, or that he has love for someone.
Secondly, the third-person limited helps excite the plot, by not revealing the
thoughts of others; this keeps the suspense in the book, and helps give the
ending a twist.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is filled to the brim
with themes. In my previous book reports, I have discovered a maximum of three
themes in the book; however, in this novel, there are many more. The first
theme of the book is capitalism. This theme is obvious, and shows in the
average citizen of Airstrip One, when the party brainwashes the minds of simple
people. For example, Goldstein is a man who rebels against the party, the party
brainwashes the entire population, and makes them hate Goldstein. This happens
during the party’s two minutes hate and such; it shows how capitalism can
affect the individual. The second theme of the book is convention and rebellion,
and is obvious as we can see Winston’s thoughts. Winston disagrees with all the
party says, and he and Julia decide to rebel in their own way. An example is
when Winston buys a diary, a very dangerous thing to do, “The thing he was
about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal,
since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain
that it would be punished by death, or at least twenty-five years in a
forced-labour camp.” Winston said this on page eight. Some other themes found
in the book are injustice, manipulation, war, and will to survive, but I will
not bore you with in depth explanations. Do you want to know more? Nineteen
Eighty-Four is available on Kindle for £5.91.
I
really enjoyed reading this book and it haunted me with its dark twists and
turns, this is an English classic, and I think that all teenagers should be
required to read this book. George Orwell wrote this book for a clear reason;
at the time it was published, the communists of Russia were expanding their
territories rapidly, and many people accepted communism, despite the looming
Cold War. He wrote this book to warn the west of the dangers of communism. I
thoroughly enjoyed this book, its plot keeps you on the edge, and the
characters are always developing, and you just never know what is round the
corner. I would definitely recommend this book to a friend, as it is one of the
world’s few must-read books; this book is just as fantastic as it is dark. If I
were to be a person in the book, I would probably be a citizen against the
party, but much too afraid to speak out. Out of ten, I would rate this book a
nine.
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