Several literary techniques that make 1984 the novel it is include the following:
Point-of-view: We identify strongly with Winston Smith, an ordinary citizen of Oceania, as he rebels against the ugliness, surveillance, and mind control in his society. We see the world through Winston's eyes, memories and consciousness, and this influences us to reject the totalitarianism of Big Brother and to root for Winston to make a successful stand against repression.
Characterization: Characterization ties closely to point-of-view. Orwell develops Winston as a character. Winston moves from anger and hate to love and self-sacrifice as he falls in love with Julia. We sympathize with his growing humanity and his desire to share a simple, everyday life with the woman he loves. We also feel his fear of exposure, which is almost constant.
Backstory: Unusually for a novel, Orwell includes within 1984 long portions of THE THEORY...
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AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM by Emmanuel Goldstein. This provides both Winston and the reader with the goals and rationales of the government. Since this novel is a cautionary tale, warning readers that 1984 could happen to them, this explanation of Oceania's government's quest for power for power's sake makes sense of the grindingly bleak lives of most of Oceania's population.
Descriptive detail: The novel comes alive, and arguably has remained popular, because of Orwell's gift for the descriptive detail. For example, he describes an old-fashioned paperweight as follows:
It was a heavy lump of glass, curved on one side, flat on the other, making almost a hemisphere. There was a peculiar softness, as of rainwater, in both the colour and the texture of the glass. At the heart of it, magnified by the curved surface, there was a strange, pink, convoluted object that recalled a rose or a sea anemone
This Victorian object becomes a recurrent symbol of a world the government of Oceania is destroying.
This is a literary novel, and Orwell uses allusion through rhyme and song to make a larger point. One example is the nursery rhyme "oranges and lemons." Throughout the first part of the novel, Winston is both attracted by the rhyme and unable to remember how it ends. Its end, in fact, is a chilling reminder that Winston's desire for the world of the past, of poetry and of human feeling, is also what will destroy him:
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head
Suspense: From the beginning, Orwell builds suspense by making the audience aware of the deep risks that Winston is running. Winston has plunged into a life or death struggle the moment he buys the journal, and we turn the pages, in part, because we wonder what will happen to him.