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Nineteen Eighty-Four

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Novels

   CAPTION: Title Nineteen Eighty-Four

   Plume (Centennial Edition)
   Plume (Centennial Edition)
      Author    George Orwell
   Cover artist C. R. W. Nevinson
     Country    United Kingdom
     Language   English
     Genre(s)   Dystopian, Political Novel
    Publisher   Secker and Warburg (London)
     Released   8 June 1949
    Media type  Print ( Hardback & Paperback) & e-book, audio-CD
      Pages     368 pp (Paperback edition)
       ISBN     ISBN 0-452-28423-6 (Paperback edition)

   Nineteen Eighty-Four (commonly abbreviated to 1984) is a dystopian
   novel by the English writer George Orwell, first published by Secker
   and Warburg 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, Nineteen Eighty-Four is
   among the most famous and cited works of dystopian fiction in
   literature. However, it was a novel We (1921) by a Russian author
   Yevgeny Zamyatin which influenced Orwell most. Orwell's book 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.

   Nineteen Eighty-Four has, at times, been seen as revolutionary and
   politically dangerous and therefore was banned by many libraries in
   various countries. Some people believe that Orwell was a man who saw
   the future and prophesied the loss of personal freedom and the increase
   in control that would be brought about.

Novel history

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
   the current title of the novel are not absolutely known. In fact,
   Orwell may have only switched the last two digits of the year in which
   he wrote the book (1948). Alternatively, he may have been making an
   allusion to the centenary of the Fabian Society, a socialist
   organization founded in 1884. The allusion may have also been directed
   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 that his
   wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, had written, 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.

The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four

   Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

   The novel focuses on Winston Smith, who stands, seemingly alone,
   against the corrupted reality of his world: hence the work's original
   working name of The Last Man in Europe. Although the storyline is
   unified, it could be described as having three parts (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 Hitler's Nazi Germany. There are thematic
   similarities: the betrayed revolution, with which Orwell famously dealt
   in Animal Farm; the subordination of individuals to "the Party"; and
   the rigorous distinction between 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 Stalin and 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. Orwell
   may have drawn inspiration from the Nazi Party; compare the following
   quotes to how propaganda is used in Nineteen Eighty-Four:

   Nazi Party

     * “The broad mass of the nation … will more easily fall victim to a
       big lie than to a small one.” — Adolf Hitler, in his 1925 book Mein
       Kampf.
     * “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
       eventually come to believe it.” — Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph
       Goebbels.
     * “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding
       of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they
       are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of
       patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in
       any country.” — Nazi Reich Marshal Hermann Göring during the
       Nuremberg Trials.

   Nineteen Eighty-Four

     * “Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the
       Floating Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with.”
       (Page 39)
     * “The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by
       the government of Oceania itself, 'just to keep the people
       frightened'.” (Page 160)
     * “The key-word 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.” (Page 221)
     * “To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to
       forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it
       becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so
       long as it is needed…” (Page 223)
     * "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became
       truth." (Page 78)
     * "And if all others accepted the lie which the party imposed-if all
       records told the same tale-then the lie passed into history and
       became the truth." (Page 37)

Summary of plot

   Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
   A social pyramid of the classes listed in the Book, with Big Brother on
   top, and the proles at the bottom
   A social pyramid of the classes listed in the Book, with Big Brother on
   top, and the proles at the bottom

   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- Second World War
   Britain, 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 lifestyle, and keeps an ill-advised 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 entrance: " Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS
   death"). The Thought Police have telescreens in every household and
   public area, as well as hidden microphones and spies in order to catch
   potential thought criminals who could endanger the sanctity of the
   Party. Children are carefully brainwashed from birth to report any
   suspected thought criminal, even their parents.

   The Ministry of Truth, which exercises complete control over all media
   in Oceania, employs Winston at the Ministry's Records Department, where
   he doctors historical records in order to comply with the Party's
   version of the past. Since the events of the present constantly shape
   the perception of the past, 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 by Smith to
   have been written by the dissident Emmanuel Goldstein, leader of the
   Brotherhood.

   Winston and Julia are eventually, and unavoidably 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 executed.
   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 the nature of the endless world war, and that the purpose of
   the torture is not to extract a fake confession, but to alter the way
   that Winston thinks.

   The party intends to achieve this with a combination of torture and
   electroshock therapy, 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!", breaking his vow to never betray her, in order to
   stop the torture.

   Near the end, Winston and Julia again meet, but their feelings for each
   other have been destroyed. Winston has become an alcoholic and he knows
   that eventually he will be killed. The one thing Winston had held on to
   was his hatred of Big Brother, which he felt would be his victory over
   the party's otherwise absolute power. However, by the end of the novel,
   we see that the torture and 'reprogramming' have been successful,
   because Winston realizes that "He loved Big Brother."

   At the end of the novel there is an appendix on Newspeak (the
   artificial language invented and, by degrees, imposed by the Party to
   limit the capacity to express or even think "unorthodox" thoughts), in
   the style of an academic essay.

Backstory to novel

   The War of Nineteen Eighty-Four
   Part of World War II and the Cold War
   From top clockwise: The Russian invasion of Finland, the Soviet-Japan
   War, Clement Attlee's socialist victory, the signing of the North
   Atlantic Treaty.
   Several historical forerunners of Orwell's world.

      Date    late 1940s–early 1960s
    Location  North America, Western Europe, Soviet Union, East Asia
     Result   Inconclusive
      Casus
   belli      Soviet mass takeover
              British revolution
   Territorial
   changes    East Asian unification
              European-North African unification
              American- Oceanian-British unification
              South Africa, West/ South Asia disputed zones
   Combatants
   Americas
   British Isles
   Oceania Soviet Union
   Europe
   East Asia

   The novel does not give a full history of how the world of 1984 came
   into being. Winston's recollections, and what he reads from 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; and the third world
   power, Eastasia — an amalgamation of east Asian countries including
   Korea, China and Japan — emerged some time later.

   There was a period of nuclear warfare during which some 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.

   In articles written 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 takeover from above or by a Socialist
   revolution from below. (The second possibility, it should be noted, was
   greatly supported and hoped for by Orwell, to the extent that he joined
   and loyally participated in "the Home Guard" throughout the war, in the
   expectation that that body would become the nucleus of a revolutionary
   militia). After the war ended Orwell openly expressed his surprise that
   events had proven him wrong.

Ingsoc (English Socialism)

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

Origins

   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."

Class structure under 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 term Marx used 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 theatre 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.

   The Ministry of Peace
          Newspeak: Minipax.
          Concerns itself with conducting Oceania's perpetual war.

   The Ministry of Plenty
          Newspeak: Miniplenty.
          Responsible for rationing and controlling food and goods.

   The Ministry of Truth
          Newspeak: Minitrue.
          The propaganda arm of Oceania's regime. Minitrue controls
          information: political literature, the Party organization, and
          the telescreens. 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.

   The 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 Plenty: starvation, the
   Ministry of Truth: lies, and the Ministry of Love: torture.

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)                                ”

   In his novel, Orwell created a world in which 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.

   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.

   Big Brother's political opponent (who is therefore a criminal) is the
   hated Goldstein, a Party member who the reader is told 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. The reader never truly finds out 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
   (like Winston) anybody 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.            ”

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.      ”

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
   left uncertain.
   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
   left uncertain.

   The world is controlled by three functionally similar totalitarian
   superstates engaged in perpetual war with each other:
     * Oceania (ideology: Ingsoc or English Socialism),
     * Europe (ideology: Neo-Bolshevism), and
     * Eastasia (ideology: Obliteration of the Self, usually rendered as "
       Death worship").

   In terms of the political map of the late 1940s when the book was
   written, Oceania covers Britain, Ireland, Australia, Polynesia, and the
   Americas, Eastasia corresponds to China, Japan, Korea, and northern
   India. Eurasia corresponds to the Soviet Union and Continental Europe.

   That Great Britain (and Ireland) is in Oceania rather than in Eurasia
   is commented upon in the book as a historical anomaly. North Africa,
   the Middle East, southern India, and South East 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 Great Britain.

The war

   Eternal War
   Part of World War II and the Cold 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
            West Asia
            South Asia
            Central Asia
    Result  Not applicable
    Casus
   belli    Economic and social stability
   Combatants
   Oceania Eurasia
   Eastasia
   Commanders
   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 rare colloquialism, "we've always been at war with Eurasia."
   Later on, the Party claims to have captured India. As with all other
   news, its authenticity is questionable.

   The book that Winston and Julia receive 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 such advances 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". 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.

   The other two super-states, Eurasia and Eastasia, may actually only be
   a fabrication by the government of Oceania. And Oceania may actually be
   the sole undisputed dominator of the world. On the other hand, Oceania
   may actually be controlling only a rather small part of the world and
   brainwashing its citizens into believing that Oceania dominates the
   whole planet Earth (eg. North Korea today) 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
   may be relatively paradoxical considering the massive amounts of
   resources wasted to keep the war effort running, given that so few
   soldiers are actually fighting.

Living standards

   By the year 1984, the society of Airstrip One lives in abject squalor
   and poverty. Hunger, disease, and filth have become the social norm. As
   a result of the civil war, atomic wars, and Eurasian 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 that are 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 relatively clean and comfortable apartment, and has access to a
   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 for the reason that the elevators in O'Brien's
   building actually work. 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 are (apart from the slaves) only
   upper-middle-class by pre-Revolution standards. 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 in the framework
   of the book — namely, 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. Hence Winston's comment that "If there is
   hope, it lies with the proles".

   As Winston is a member of the Outer Party, we discover more about the
   Outer Party's 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

   Nineteen Eighty-Four expands upon the subjects summarised in Orwell’s
   preparatory essay, on Nationalism ( 1945): . 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.

   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

   This 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

   This 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 anti-eroticism on its members (sponsoring the Junior
   Anti-Sex-League, etc.), since sexual attachments might diminish
   exclusive loyalty to the Party. In the novel, Julia describes party
   fanaticism as "sex gone sour;" Winston, aside from during his affair
   with Julia, suffers from an ankle inflammation, alluding to Oedipus Rex
   and symbolizing an unhealthy repression of the sex drive. 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-socialist regime), be it consciously or by selective
   pressures on doctrine.

Futurology

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

   He describes what he believed was the future of England in his essay
   England, Your England:

          "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."

   This is in stark contrast to O'Brien's forecast:

          "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."

Appendix on Newspeak

   The novel includes an appendix, The Principles of Newspeak , written in
   the style of an academic essay. The appendix describes the development
   of Newspeak, and explains how the language is designed to standardise
   thought to reflect the ideology of Ingsoc; that is, by making "all
   other modes of thought impossible".

   There still exists to this day a literary debate about whether the
   appendix should be read as part of the narrative. Because it is written
   in third person past tense these people argue that: for whoever wrote
   the appendix, Newspeak, and the totalitarian government, is a thing of
   the past.(Atwood , Benstead ).

Cultural impact

   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 that never actually appeared in the novel itself. 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) as well as the abbreviation of
   "luv" for love arguably originated with the novel.

Controversy

   In 1981, Jackson County in the U.S. state of Florida challenged the
   novel on the grounds that it contained pro-communist material and
   sexual references.
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