London

London is the capital of a future (from the perspective of 1949, when George Orwell wrote the book) political unit called Airstrip One in the superstate Oceania that is the setting for the novel. London’s skyline is dominated by four government ministries, whose enormous bulk and tasteless architecture distinguish them from the surviving historical structures surrounding them. Residential sectors of the city segregate members of the unnamed Party from proles (“proletarians”), but both Proles and Outer Party members live in crumbling tenement buildings that are unsanitary, crowded, and poorly maintained. Police patrols are highly visible; posters of Big Brother—the ever-present, seemingly loving personification of the state—are ubiquitous.

The city’s squalor is symptomatic of the Ingsoc government’s disdain for the welfare of its own citizens. This is the result of a change in the fundamental principles and core values of the society; human rights are nonexistent, and all available resources support building and maintaining government structures that administer and preserve the collective. The life of the individual is barren; this barrenness is suggested by lack of luxury, beauty, and privacy.

Inner Party member Winston Smith has a fascination with the past that he acts out by paying clandestine visits to the oldest and meanest areas of the city, where the proles live and work. Because the proles are considered by Inner Party leaders to be beneath concern, their sectors are largely ignored by the government and have become de facto museums of prerevolutionary culture, customs, and mores. Only within the prole neighborhoods can Winston enjoy the smell of real coffee, the sounds of unconstrained conversation and songs, and the sights of uninhibited children playing and adults gathering to talk—all of which reminds Winston of his own childhood and suggest the complexity and fullness of prerevolutionary life.

Victory Mansions

Victory Mansions. Run-down London building in which Winston has a flat on the seventh floor. The building has bad plumbing, no heat, a broken elevator, and the inescapable stench of rancid cabbage. The one thing in the building that works flawlessly is its network of telescreens, which broadcast ceaseless propaganda and, in turn, watch residents through television cameras.

Charrington’s shop

Charrington’s shop. Cramped, dilapidated antique store in a prole sector of London that Winston frequents. He sees the shop as a microcosmic remnant of the past, but it is, in fact, a carefully maintained surveillance tool. Its upstairs apartment, which Winston rents for trysts with Julia, becomes the place of their downfall. Though infested by biting bedbugs and large, aggressive rats, the room also has a private entrance to facilitate Winston and Julia’s secret meetings. There they abandon themselves to sensuality only because they think the room has no telescreen. However, it does have a telescreen, which, ironically, is obscured by something that would never be found in the home of a Party member—an engraving of a medieval church. The illusion of privacy leads Winston and Julia to incriminate themselves, and furthermore leads Winston inadvertently to betray his abject horror of rats to the Thought Police watching him and Julia through the telescreen.

Ministry of Truth

Ministry of Truth. Government ministry building in which Winston is one of many writers who revise historical records to match the government’s constantly changing definitions of reality. Each time Oceania’s military alliances shift, history must be rewritten to show that Oceania has always had the same allies and same enemies. Winston often rewrites the same news stories many times, making something different happen each time, and he comes to appreciate the power of the government precept that whoever controls the past controls the future.

Ministry of Love

Ministry of Love. Site of Winston and Julia’s detention, torture, and reintegration into the Party. One of four enormous pyramidal steel and concrete structures that dominate the London skyline, “Miniluv” has no windows. Standing behind heavily guarded barricades, it is protected by barbed wire and automatic gun pods. Inside, brilliant lights gleam on sparkling clean white walls, which Winston comes to think of as “the place where there is no darkness,” a phrase he remembers either from a prescient dream or from his confused memory. The absence of clocks and windows creates a sense that time is suspended or has no influence, an impression rendered more powerful by the contrast with life outside, where all activities are maintained on a rigorous schedule. Thus Miniluv becomes a mockery of heaven, and by extension, Winston’s indoctrination and reintegration into the Party by O’Brien become a mockery of the loving inclusion into Paradise and communion with God promised by the saints.

Golden Country

Golden Country. Place about which Winston dreams frequently. It is an abandoned pasture that, although once hedged, is being reclaimed by nature. Winston associates it at first with the distant past, and early in the novel, dreams of having a sexual encounter with Julia here; after this dream, he awakens speaking the word “Shakespeare.” Less than a month later, Winston and Julia have their first sexual experience in a rural spot outside London that Winston realizes is almost identical to the place of his dreams. In the midst of his first encounter with Julia, the Golden Country comes to represent for him an animal sensuality unburdened by reason, the antithesis of calculation and cold restraint. Such freedom, for Winston, is possible only in a place largely untainted not just by Ingsoc, but also by the political and philosophical milieu from which it has arisen. The disappearing traces of human domination and the return of the pasture to an idyllic state suggest perhaps not just a yearning for the past, but also a hope for the future. Nevertheless, it is a hope so wild that Winston can hardly allow himself to indulge it except in dream.

Chestnut Tree Café

Chestnut Tree Café. Sidewalk coffeehouse associated with Party members who have been reintegrated and subsequently targeted for vaporization. Early in the novel, Winston destroys an exculpatory newspaper photograph of three enemies of Big Brother whom he later sees at the café, before their disappearances but after their much-publicized but false confessions. A year later, in the novel’s final episode, Winston himself, now a doomed outcast, again sits at the café, drinking sweetened clove-flavored gin, the café specialty, and solving newspaper chess problems. As the telescreen announces a military victory for Oceania’s armies, Winston, who throughout the novel has reacted to such questionable government claims with cynical skepticism, can no longer resist proclaiming his joy and his love for Big Brother.

Oceania

Oceania. One of three superstates that cover most of the globe. The superstates are conglomerates of nations and regions that first formed alliances then annealed into new entities under the pressures of revolution. The three states are engaged in a constant state of war and shifting alliances, on which Ingsoc broadcasts interminable news bulletins through the telescreens. Oceania itself comprises the lands of the Western Hemisphere, Australia and its surrounding islands, the British Islands, and part of Southern Africa. The easternmost province of Oceania is Airstrip One, which corresponds to what had once been the United Kingdom.

Eastasia

Eastasia. Superstate that comprises China, Southeast Asia, Japan and its surrounding islands, and varying portions of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet.

Eurasia

Eurasia. Superstate that comprises most of Europe and northern Asia, from Portugal to eastern Siberia. When the novel opens, Oceania is at war with Eurasia; when it ends, Eurasia is Oceania’s ally.

Winston Smith begins a diary, an act tantamount to signing his own death sentence in a ruthlessly totalitarian state bent on eradicating individuality. He is determined to stay alive—and “human”—as long as he can. To do so, he must escape the all-seeing eye and all-hearing ear of the Thought Police behind the omnipresent telescreen.

Winston and Julia, who work in the Ministry of Truth, become lovers and find an illusory haven above Charrington’s shop in the district of the “proles,” or masses outside the Party. Earlier, the lovers revealed themselves to O’Brien, allegedly a member of the “Brotherhood” intent on toppling Big Brother. O’Brien sends them “the book,” supposedly written by Goldstein, Big Brother’s enemy. The Thought Police smash into the lovers’ refuge and drag them away to the Ministry of Love.

As he expected, Winston is maniacally tortured, but to his surprise his torturer is O’Brien, a self-styled therapist, determined to return Winston to “sanity.” Winston masters “doublethink,” or the capacity to believe that two plus two equals five, or any other number suggested. Confident that he has satisfied O’Brien’s insane demands without betraying the self that loves Julia, Winston is totally unprepared for the horror of what awaits him in Room 101. Knowing that Winston has a phobia of rats, O’Brien has devised a wire mask to fit over his head with a door his tormentors can open into a cage of starving rats. Winston in mindless terror screams, “Do it to Julia! Not me!” Internally devastated by the horrible recognition of his betrayal, Winston accepts self-annihilation as a “victory over himself.” The last sentence confirms his conversion: “He loved Big Brother.”

Point of View

Orwell’s 1984 is narrated in the third person, but the perspective is distinctly Winston Smith’s. Through Winston's eyes, readers gain insight into the workings of the totalitarian regime, particularly how an individual copes with harboring illegal thoughts that are easily detected by spies and telescreens monitoring every move. Since readers experience the story from Winston’s viewpoint, they share in his errors when assessing people. At one point, he surveys a room at work and convinces himself he knows who will be vaporized within a few years and who will survive. However, his judgments about who is a loyal party member and who is not prove to be incorrect. Orwell illustrates that in a paranoid society where personal relationships are at best tolerated and at worst forbidden, truly knowing another person is impossible.

Winston is a well-developed character with distinct opinions (apparent to the reader, as he cannot express them in his society). Critics often argue that Winston’s views mirror George Orwell’s own. For instance, Winston admires the spirit of the proletariat but dismisses them as lacking the means or intelligence to change their lives and government. Conversely, he respects the sophistication of the wealthy, cultured O’Brien, despite him being a malevolent figure. This could reflect Orwell’s own class biases, as someone who was more educated and worldly than most individuals from his economic background in England (the lower middle class).

Setting

Written between 1947 and 1948, 1984 was initially titled 1948, but Orwell changed it to set the story in the future, yet close enough to the present to be unsettling. The narrative unfolds in London, now part of a nation called Oceania. Oceania is one of three global superpowers, perpetually at war with Eastasia or Eurasia. Alliances can shift overnight, and when they do, the Party rewrites history so no one remembers the previous state of affairs. This continuous war consumes most of the state's resources, leaving city buildings in constant disrepair. All consumer goods, from food to clothing, are rationed, similar to England during World War II. Winston resides in what was once London, now a bleak, gray, and deteriorating urban landscape.

Language and Meaning

Orwell was acutely aware of the influence of language, so he envisions a future totalitarian regime that creates a new language called Newspeak. Citizens of Oceania use Newspeak throughout the book, and it is detailed in an appendix. This language is derived from Standard English and is intended to evolve through multiple versions until it reaches its final form in 2050. However, the 1984 version still closely resembles English.

The core concept of Newspeak is to eliminate or alter words that represent ideas opposed by the Party. The goal is to limit the range of thoughts that can be expressed, leading to a language with progressively fewer words. Simplification extends to word forms, grammar, and pronunciation, ultimately minimizing the number of literate individuals. Newspeak also introduces terms for new concepts, such as oldthink, which refers to pre-revolutionary thinking and carries a negative connotation.

With the advent of Newspeak, citizens are unable to read about old ideas or articulate new ones that contradict the Party's ideology. For example, a passage from the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . ,” is reduced to a single word: crimethink. Complex ideas are replaced with simplistic slogans. The Party’s most notorious slogans are “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” and “Ignorance Is Strength.”

By creating a fictional language, Orwell illustrates how language can be manipulated to deceive people. Newspeak is influenced by both political rhetoric, which often replaces meaningful communication, and advertising jargon, which makes absurd and vague promises.

Structure

1984 is structured into three parts, plus an appendix. The first part introduces Winston’s world, which is seen through his perspective and thoughts. Readers understand his isolation and the reasons behind his risky actions that ultimately lead to his downfall.

The second part, the longest section of the book, depicts Winston’s involvement with individuals he believes are fellow rebels. He engages in an affair with Julia and follows O’Brien to a clandestine meeting of dissidents. This part also includes extensive excerpts from the fictional political treatise by Emmanuel Goldstein. Interestingly, Orwell’s publishers initially wanted him to remove this material, as it interrupts the narrative’s flow.

In the third part, Winston and Julia are captured by the Inner Party and separated. Winston endures intense torture and brainwashing at the hands of O’Brien. Their interactions are filled with dramatic tension, underpinned by a mutual respect. Sadly for Winston, this respect does not lead to his liberation. O’Brien successfully reprograms Winston to love Big Brother.

The book concludes with an appendix that delves into the creation and framework of the language known as “Newspeak.” This appendix is crafted in the style of an academic article. Although it helps elucidate the application of Newspeak within the novel, it is noteworthy that the publisher initially considered removing it, deeming it superfluous.

Orwell structured Nineteen Eighty-Four into three sections, dedicating the first two-thirds to developing the twisted reality of Oceania and detailing the relationship between Winston and Julia. The final third primarily focuses on Winston's "re-education," interwoven with instructive polemics. Blending realism with fantasy, Orwell offers a striking depiction of potential future life while making a compelling case for prevention. Additionally, by employing religious metaphors to highlight the shift of loyalty to Big Brother, Orwell adds an ironic layer to the novel's events. Written in clear, straightforward prose, Nineteen Eighty-Four stands out as a technical masterpiece and justifies its acclaim as a contemporary classic.