Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often referred to as 1984, is a dystopian social science fiction novel by the English novelist George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair). It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviours within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated.
The story takes place in an imagined future, the year 1984, when much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power.
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. It also popularised the term "Orwellian" as an adjective, with many terms used in the novel entering common usage, including "Big Brother", "doublethink", "Thought Police", "thoughtcrime", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "2 + 2 = 5", "proles", "Two Minutes Hate", "telescreen", and "Room 101". "Time" included it on its 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. It was placed on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels, reaching No. 13 on the editors' list and No. 6 on the readers' list. In 2003, the novel was listed at No. 8 on The Big Read survey by the BBC. Parallels have been drawn between the novel's subject matter and real life instances of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression among other themes.
Background and title.
In 1944, Orwell began work which "encapsulate[d] the thesis at the heart of his... novel", which explored the consequences of dividing the world up into zones of influence, as conjured by the recent Tehran Conference. Three years later, he wrote most of the actual book on the Scottish island of Jura from 1947 to 1948 despite being seriously ill with tuberculosis. On 4 December 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the publisher Secker and Warburg, and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was published on 8 June 1949.
"The Last Man in Europe" was an early title for the novel, but in a letter dated 22 October 1948 to his publisher Fredric Warburg, eight months before publication, Orwell wrote about hesitating between that title and "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Warburg suggested choosing the latter, which he took to be a more commercially viable choice for the main title.
The introduction to the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt edition of "Animal Farm and 1984" (2003) claims that the title "1984" was chosen simply as an inversion of the year 1948, the year in which it was being completed, and that the date was meant to give an immediacy and urgency to the menace of totalitarian rule. This is disputed:
Throughout its publication history, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" has been either banned or legally challenged as subversive or ideologically corrupting, like the dystopian novels "We" (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, "Brave New World" (1932) by Aldous Huxley, "Darkness at Noon" (1940) by Arthur Koestler, "Kallocain" (1940) by Karin Boye, and "Fahrenheit 451" (1953) by Ray Bradbury.
Some writers consider Zamyatin's "We" to have influenced "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The novel also bears significant similarities in plot and characters to Koestler's "Darkness at Noon", which Orwell had reviewed and highly praised.
The original manuscript for "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is Orwell's only surviving literary manuscript. It is presently held at the John Hay Library at Brown University.
Plot.
In the year 1984, civilization has been damaged by world war, civil conflict, and revolution. Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain) is a province of Oceania, one of the three totalitarian super-states that rule the world. It is ruled by the "Party" under the ideology of "Ingsoc" (a Newspeak shortening of "English Socialism") and the mysterious leader Big Brother, who has an intense cult of personality. The Party brutally purges out anyone who does not fully conform to their regime using the Thought Police and constant surveillance through Telescreens (two-way televisions), cameras, and hidden microphones. Those who fall out of favour with the Party become "unpersons", disappearing with all evidence of their existence destroyed.
In London, Winston Smith is a member of the Outer Party, working at the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites historical records to conform to the state's ever-changing version of history. Winston revises past editions of "The Times", while the original documents are destroyed after being dropped into ducts leading to the memory hole. He secretly opposes the Party's rule and dreams of rebellion, despite knowing that he is already a "thoughtcriminal" and likely to be caught one day.
While in a proletariat (prole) neighbourhood, he meets Mr. Charrington, the owner of an antiques shop, and buys a diary where he writes thoughts criticising the Party and Big Brother, and also writes that "if there is hope, it lies in the proles". To his dismay, when he visits a prole quarter he discovers they have no political consciousness. An old man he talks to there has no significant memory of life before the Revolution. As he works in the Ministry of Truth, he observes Julia, a young woman maintaining the novel-writing machines at the ministry, whom Winston suspects of being a spy against him, and develops an intense hatred of her. He vaguely suspects that his superior, an Inner Party official O'Brien, is part of an enigmatic underground resistance movement known as the Brotherhood, formed by Big Brother's reviled political rival Emmanuel Goldstein (the name is an homage to anarchist political activist and writer Emma Goldman). In a lunch conversation with his co-worker Syme, who is assisting in developing a revised version of Newspeak (a controlled language of limited vocabulary), Syme bluntly reveals the true purpose of Newspeak: to reduce the capacity of human thought. Winston reflects that Syme will disappear as he is "too intelligent" and therefore dangerous to the Party. Winston also discusses preparations for Hate Week with his neighbour and colleague Parsons.
One day, Julia secretly hands Winston a note saying she loves him, and the two begin a torrid affair; an act of rebellion as the Party insists that sex is only for reproduction. Julia shares Winston's loathing of the Party, but he realizes that she is politically apathetic and uninterested in overthrowing the regime, thinking it impossible. Initially meeting in the country, they later meet in a rented room above Mr. Charrington's shop. During his affair with Julia, Winston remembers the disappearance of his family during the civil war of the 1950s and his tense relationship with his wife Katharine, from whom he is separated (divorce is not permitted by the Party). He also notices the disappearance of Syme during one of his working days. Weeks later, Winston is approached by O'Brien, who invites Winston over to his flat, which is noted as being of far higher quality than Winston's. O'Brien introduces himself as a member of the Brotherhood and sends Winston a copy of "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" by Goldstein. Meanwhile, during the nation's Hate Week, Oceania's enemy suddenly changes from Eurasia to Eastasia, with no-one seemingly noticing the shift. Winston is recalled to the Ministry to help make the major necessary revisions of the records. Afterwards Winston and Julia read parts of the book, which explains more about how the Party maintains power, the true meanings of its slogans, and the concept of perpetual war. It argues that the Party can be overthrown if proles rise up against it. However, to Winston, it does not answer 'why' the Party is motivated to maintain power.
Winston and Julia are captured and imprisoned when Mr. Charrington is revealed to be a Thought Police agent. At the Ministry of Love, Winston briefly interacts with colleagues who have been arrested for other offences. O'Brien arrives, revealing himself as a Thought Police agent, who tells Winston that the Brotherhood does not exist and Emmanuel Goldstein's book was written collaboratively by O'Brien and the Party themselves as part of a special sting operation to catch thought-criminals. Over several months, Winston is starved and tortured to "cure" himself of his "insanity" by changing his own perception to fit in line with the Party. O'Brien reveals to Winston that the Party "seeks power for its own sake." When he taunts Winston by asking him if there is any humiliation which he has not yet been made to suffer, Winston points out that the Party has not managed to make him betray Julia, even after he accepted the party's invincibility and its principles. Winston accepts internally that he really means he has not rescinded his feelings toward Julia; he betrays her by revealing her crimes many times. He fantasizes that moments before his execution his heretic side will emerge, which, as long as he is killed while unrepentant, will be his great victory over the Party.
O'Brien takes Winston to Room 101 for the final stage of re-education, which contains each prisoner's worst fear, indicating that the level of surveillance on the public is far more thorough than initially believed by Winston. Confronted with a wire cage holding frenzied rats, his biggest fear, in his face, Winston willingly betrays Julia by wishing the suffering upon her instead. Winston is released back into public life and continues to frequent the Chestnut Tree Café. One day, Winston encounters Julia, who was also tortured. Both reveal that they have betrayed the other and no longer possess feelings for one other. Back in the café, a news alert sounds and celebrates Oceania's supposed massive victory over Eurasian armies in Africa. Winston finally accepts that he loves Big Brother.
Characters.
Unseen characters.
Whether these characters are real or fabrications of Party propaganda is something that neither Winston nor the reader is permitted to know:
World in novel.
Ingsoc.
Ingsoc (English Socialism) is the predominant ideology and philosophy of Oceania, and Newspeak is the official language of official documents. Orwell depicts the Party's ideology as an oligarchical worldview that "rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism."
Ministries of Oceania.
In London, the capital city of Airstrip One, Oceania's four government ministries are in pyramids (300 m high), the façades of which display the Party's three slogans - "WAR IS PEACE", "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY", "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH". As mentioned, the ministries are deliberately named after the opposite (doublethink) of their true functions: "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation." (Part II, Chapter IX – "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism").
While a ministry is supposedly headed by a minister, the ministers heading these four ministries are never mentioned. They seem to be completely out of the public view, Big Brother being the only, ever-present public face of the government.
Ministry of Peace.
The Ministry of Peace supports Oceania's perpetual war against either of the two other superstates:
The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognised and not recognised by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work.
Ministry of Plenty.
The Ministry of Plenty rations and controls food, goods, and domestic production; every fiscal quarter, it claims to have raised the standard of living, even during times when it has, in fact, reduced rations, availability, and production. The Ministry of Truth substantiates the Ministry of Plenty's claims by manipulating historical records to report numbers supporting the claims of "increased rations". The Ministry of Plenty also runs the national lottery as a distraction for the proles; Party members understand it to be a sham process in which winnings are never paid out.
Ministry of Truth.
The Ministry of Truth controls information: news, entertainment, education, and the arts. Winston Smith works in the Records Department, "rectifying" historical records to accord with Big Brother's current pronouncements so that everything the Party says appears to be true.
Ministry of Love.
The Ministry of Love identifies, monitors, arrests and converts real and imagined dissidents. This is also the place where the Thought Police beat and torture dissidents, after which they are sent to Room 101 to face "the worst thing in the world"—until love for Big Brother and the Party replaces dissension.
Political geography.
Three perpetually warring totalitarian superstates control the world in the novel:
The perpetual war is fought for control of the "disputed area" lying between the frontiers of the superstates, which forms "a rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin and Hong Kong", which includes Equatorial Africa, the Middle East, India and Indonesia. The disputed area is where the superstates capture slave labour. Fighting also takes place between Eurasia and Eastasia in Manchuria, Mongolia and Central Asia, and between Eurasia and Oceania over various islands in the Indian and Pacific Ocean.
The Revolution.
Many of Orwell's earlier writings clearly indicate that he originally welcomed the prospect of a Socialist revolution in Britain, and indeed hoped to himself take part in such a revolution. The concept of "English Socialism" first appeared in Orwell's 1941 "", where Orwell outlined a relatively humane revolution - establishing a revolutionary regime which "will shoot traitors, but give them a solemn trial beforehand, and occasionally acquit them" and which "will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but will interfere very little with the spoken and written word"; the "English Socialism" which Orwell foresaw in 1941 would even "abolish the House of Lords, but retain the Monarchy". However, at some time between 1941 and 1948 Orwell evidently became disillusioned and came to the conclusion that also his cherished English Socialism would be perverted into an oppressive totalitarian dictatorship, as bad as Stalin's Soviet Union. Such is the revolution described in "Nineteen Eighty-Four". 
Winston Smith's memories and his reading of the proscribed book, "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" by Emmanuel Goldstein, reveal that after the Second World War, the United Kingdom became involved in a war during the early 1950s in which nuclear weapons destroyed hundreds of cities in Europe, western Russia and North America. Colchester was destroyed, and London also suffered widespread aerial raids, leading Winston's family to take refuge in a London Underground station. The United States absorbed the British Commonwealth and Latin America, resulting in the superstate of Oceania. The new nation fell into civil war, but who fought whom is left unclear (there is a reference to the child Winston having seen rival militias in the streets, each one having a shirt of a distinct color for its members). It is also unclear what The Party's name was while there were more than one, and whether it was a radical faction of the British Labour Party or a new formation arising during the turbulent 1950s. Eventually, Ingsoc won and gradually formed a totalitarian government across Oceania. Another point left completely unexplained is how Americans came to regard "English Socialism" as their ruling ideology; while a Socialist revolution in Britain was a concrete possibility, taken seriously for much of the Twentieth Century, in the United States Socialism of any kind had always been a marginal phenomenon. 
Meanwhile, Eurasia was formed when the Soviet Union conquered Continental Europe, creating a single state stretching from Portugal to the Bering Strait, under a Neo-Stalinist regime. In effect, the situation of 1940-1944 - Britain facing an enemy-held Europe across the Channel - was recreated, and this time permanently - neither side contemplating an invasion, their wars held in other parts of the world. Eastasia, the last superstate established, emerged only after "a decade of confused fighting". It includes the Asian lands conquered by China and Japan. (The book was written before the 1949 victory of Mao Tse-tung's Chinese Communist Party). Although Eastasia is prevented from matching Eurasia's size, its larger populace compensates for that handicap.
While citizens in each state are trained to despise the ideologies of the other two as uncivilised and barbarous, Goldstein's book explains that in fact the superstates' ideologies are practically identical and that the public's ignorance of this fact is imperative so that they might continue believing otherwise. The only references to the exterior world for the Oceanian citizenry are propaganda and (probably fake) maps fabricated by the Ministry of Truth to ensure people's belief in "the war".
However, due to the fact that Winston only barely remembers these events as well as the Party's constant manipulation of historical records, the continuity and accuracy of these events are unknown, and exactly how the superstates' ruling parties managed to gain their power is also left unclear. Winston notes that the Party has claimed credit for inventing helicopters and aeroplanes, while Julia theorises that the perpetual bombing of London is merely a false-flag operation designed to convince the populace that a war is occurring. If the official account was accurate, Smith's strengthening memories and the story of his family's dissolution suggest that the atomic bombings occurred first, followed by civil war featuring "confused street fighting in London itself" and the societal postwar reorganisation, which the Party retrospectively calls "the Revolution".
It is very difficult to trace the exact chronology, but most of the global societal reorganisation occurred between 1945 and the early 1960s. Winston and Julia meet in the ruins of a church that was destroyed in a nuclear attack "thirty years" earlier, which suggests 1954 as the year of the atomic war that destabilised society and allowed the Party to seize power. It is stated in the novel that the "fourth quarter of 1983" was "also the sixth quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan", which implies that the first three-year plan began in 1958. By that same year, the Party had apparently gained control of Oceania.
The War.
In 1984, there is a perpetual war between Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, the superstates that emerged from the global atomic war. "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", by Emmanuel Goldstein, explains that each state is so strong it cannot be defeated, even with the combined forces of two superstates, despite changing alliances. To hide such contradictions, the superstates' governments rewrite history to explain that the (new) alliance always was so; the populaces are already accustomed to doublethink and accept it. The war is not fought in Oceanian, Eurasian or Eastasian territory but in the Arctic wastes and a disputed zone comprising the sea and land from Tangiers (Northern Africa) to Darwin (Australia). At the start, Oceania and Eastasia are allies fighting Eurasia in northern Africa and the Malabar Coast.
That alliance ends, and Oceania, allied with Eurasia, fights Eastasia, a change occurring on Hate Week, dedicated to creating patriotic fervour for the Party's perpetual war. The public are blind to the change; in mid-sentence, an orator changes the name of the enemy from "Eurasia" to "Eastasia" without pause. When the public are enraged at noticing that the wrong flags and posters are displayed, they tear them down; the Party later claims to have captured the whole of Africa.
Goldstein's book explains that the purpose of the unwinnable, perpetual war is to consume human labour and commodities so that the economy of a superstate cannot support economic equality, with a high standard of life for every citizen. By using up most of the produced goods, the proles are kept poor and uneducated, and the Party hopes that they will neither realise what the government is doing nor rebel. Goldstein also details an Oceanian strategy of attacking enemy cities with atomic rockets before invasion but dismisses it as unfeasible and contrary to the war's purpose; despite the atomic bombing of cities in the 1950s, the superstates stopped it for fear that would imbalance the powers. The military technology in the novel differs little from that of World War II, but strategic bomber aeroplanes are replaced with rocket bombs, helicopters were heavily used as weapons of war (they did not figure in World War II in any form but prototypes) and surface combat units have been all but replaced by immense and unsinkable Floating Fortresses (island-like contraptions concentrating the firepower of a whole naval task force in a single, semi-mobile platform; in the novel, one is said to have been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, suggesting a preference for sea lane interdiction and denial).
Claude Rozenhof notes that:
Living standards.
According to Goldstein's book, almost the entire world lives in poverty; hunger, thirst, disease, and filth are the norms. Ruined cities and towns are common: the consequence of wars and false flag operations. Social decay and wrecked buildings surround Winston; aside from the ministries' pyramids, little of London was rebuilt. Middle class citizens and Proles consume synthetic foodstuffs and poor-quality "luxuries" such as oily gin and loosely-packed cigarettes, distributed under the "Victory" brand. (That is a parody of the low-quality Indian-made "Victory" cigarettes, widely smoked in Britain and by British soldiers during World War II. They were smoked because it was easier to import them from India than it was to import American cigarettes from across the Atlantic because of the Battle of the Atlantic.)
Winston describes something as simple as the repair of a broken window as requiring committee approval that can take several years and so most of those living in one of the blocks usually do the repairs themselves (Winston himself is called in by Mrs. Parsons to repair her blocked sink). All upper-class and middle-class residences include telescreens that serve both as outlets for propaganda and surveillance devices that allow the Thought Police to monitor them; they can be turned down, but the ones in middle-class residences cannot be turned off.
In contrast to their subordinates, the upper class of Oceanian society reside in clean and comfortable flats in their own quarters, with pantries well-stocked with foodstuffs such as wine, real coffee, real tea, real milk, and real sugar, all denied to the general populace. Winston is astonished that the lifts in O'Brien's building work, the telescreens can be completely turned off, and O'Brien has an Asian manservant, Martin. All upper class citizens are attended to by slaves captured in the "disputed zone", and "The Book" suggests that many have their own cars or even helicopters. Nonetheless, "The Book" makes clear that even the conditions enjoyed by the Inner Party are only "relatively" comfortable, and standards would be regarded as austere by those of the pre-revolutionary élite.
The proles live in poverty and are kept sedated with alcohol, pornography, and a national lottery whose winnings are rarely paid out; that is obscured by propaganda and the lack of communication within Oceania. At the same time, the proles are freer and less intimidated than the upper classes: they are not expected to be particularly patriotic and the levels of surveillance they are subjected to are very low. They lack telescreens in their own homes and often jeer at the telescreens that they see. "The Book" indicates that because the middle class, not the lower class, traditionally starts revolutions, the model demands tight control of the middle class, with ambitious Outer-Party members neutralised via promotion to the Inner Party or "reintegration" by the Ministry of Love, and proles can be allowed intellectual freedom because they are deemed to lack intellect. Winston nonetheless believes that "the future belonged to the proles".
The standard of living of the populace is extremely low overall. Consumer goods are scarce, and those available through official channels are of low quality; for instance, despite the Party regularly reporting increased boot production, more than half of the Oceanian populace goes barefoot. The Party claims that poverty is a necessary sacrifice for the war effort, and "The Book" confirms that to be partially correct since the purpose of perpetual war consumes surplus industrial production.
Themes.
Nationalism.
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" expands upon the subjects summarised in Orwell's essay "Notes on Nationalism" about the lack of vocabulary needed to explain the unrecognised phenomena behind certain political forces. In "Nineteen Eighty-Four", the Party's artificial, minimalist language 'Newspeak' addresses the matter.
O'Brien concludes: "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
Futurology.
In the book, Inner Party member O'Brien describes the Party's vision of the future: 
Censorship.
One of the most notable themes in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is censorship, especially in the Ministry of Truth, where photographs and public archives are manipulated to rid them of "unpersons" (people who have been erased from history by the Party). On the telescreens, almost all figures of production are grossly exaggerated or simply fabricated to indicate an ever-growing economy, even during times when the reality is the opposite. One small example of the endless censorship is Winston being charged with the task of eliminating a reference to an unperson in a newspaper article. He also proceeds to write an article about Comrade Ogilvy, a made-up party member who allegedly "displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands."
Surveillance.
In Oceania, the upper and middle classes have very little true privacy. All of their houses and apartments are equipped with telescreens so that they may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones. Written correspondence is routinely opened and read by the government before it is delivered. The Thought Police employ undercover agents, who pose as normal citizens and report any person with subversive tendencies. Children are encouraged to report suspicious persons to the government, and some denounce their parents. Citizens are controlled, and the smallest sign of rebellion, even something as small as a suspicious facial expression, can result in immediate arrest and imprisonment. Thus, citizens are compelled to obedience.
Newspeak appendix.
"The Principles of Newspeak" is an academic essay appended to the novel. It describes the development of Newspeak, an artificial, minimalistic language designed to ideologically align thought with the principles of Ingsoc by stripping down the English language in order to make the expression of "heretical" thoughts (i.e. thoughts going against Ingsoc's principles) impossible. The idea that a language's structure can be used to influence thought is known as linguistic relativity.
Whether or not the Newspeak appendix implies a hopeful end to "Nineteen Eighty-Four" remains a critical debate. Many claim that it does, citing the fact that it is in standard English and is written in the past tense: "Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised" (p. 422). Some critics (Atwood, Benstead, Milner, Pynchon) claim that for Orwell, Newspeak and the totalitarian governments are all in the past.
Sources for literary motifs.
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" uses themes from life in the Soviet Union and wartime life in Great Britain as sources for many of its motifs. Some time at an unspecified date after the first American publication of the book, producer Sidney Sheldon wrote to Orwell interested in adapting the novel to the Broadway stage. Orwell sold the American stage rights to Sheldon, explaining that his basic goal with "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was imagining the consequences of Stalinist government ruling British society:
["Nineteen Eighty-Four"] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office. According to Orwell biographer D. J. Taylor, the author's "A Clergyman's Daughter" (1935) has "essentially the same plot of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" ... It's about somebody who is spied upon, and eavesdropped upon, and oppressed by vast exterior forces they can do nothing about. It makes an attempt at rebellion and then has to compromise".
The statement "2 + 2 = 5", used to torment Winston Smith during his interrogation, was a communist party slogan from the second five-year plan, which encouraged fulfilment of the five-year plan in four years. The slogan was seen in electric lights on Moscow house-fronts, billboards and elsewhere.
The switch of Oceania's allegiance from Eastasia to Eurasia and the subsequent rewriting of history ("Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete"; ch 9) is evocative of the Soviet Union's changing relations with Nazi Germany. The two nations were open and frequently vehement critics of each other until the signing of the 1939 Treaty of Non-Aggression. Thereafter, and continuing until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, no criticism of Germany was allowed in the Soviet press, and all references to prior party lines stopped—including in the majority of non-Russian communist parties who tended to follow the Russian line. Orwell had criticised the Communist Party of Great Britain for supporting the Treaty in his essays for "Betrayal of the Left" (1941). "The Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939 reversed the Soviet Union's stated foreign policy. It was too much for many of the fellow-travellers like Gollancz [Orwell's sometime publisher] who had put their faith in a strategy of construction Popular Front governments and the peace bloc between Russia, Britain and France."
The description of Emmanuel Goldstein, with a "small, goatee beard", evokes the image of Leon Trotsky. The film of Goldstein during the Two Minutes Hate is described as showing him being transformed into a bleating sheep. This image was used in a propaganda film during the Kino-eye period of Soviet film, which showed Trotsky transforming into a goat. Goldstein's book is similar to Trotsky's highly critical analysis of the USSR, "The Revolution Betrayed", published in 1936.
The omnipresent images of Big Brother, a man described as having a moustache, bears resemblance to the cult of personality built up around Joseph Stalin.
The news in Oceania emphasised production figures, just as it did in the Soviet Union, where record-setting in factories (by "Heroes of Socialist Labour") was especially glorified. The best known of these was Alexey Stakhanov, who purportedly set a record for coal mining in 1935.
The tortures of the Ministry of Love evoke the procedures used by the NKVD in their interrogations, including the use of rubber truncheons, being forbidden to put your hands in your pockets, remaining in brightly lit rooms for days, torture through the use of their greatest fear, and the victim being shown a mirror after their physical collapse.
The random bombing of Airstrip One is based on the Buzz bombs and the V-2 rocket, which struck England at random in 1944–1945.
The Thought Police is based on the NKVD, which arrested people for random "anti-soviet" remarks. The Thought Crime motif is drawn from Kempeitai, the Japanese wartime secret police, who arrested people for "unpatriotic" thoughts.
The confessions of the "Thought Criminals" Rutherford, Aaronson and Jones are based on the show trials of the 1930s, which included fabricated confessions by prominent Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev to the effect that they were being paid by the Nazi government to undermine the Soviet regime under Leon Trotsky's direction.
The song "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, and you sold me") was based on an old English song called "Go no more a-rushing" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, Where I knelt upon my knee, We were as happy as could be, 'Neath the spreading chestnut tree."). The song was published as early as 1891. The song was a popular camp song in the 1920s, sung with corresponding movements (like touching one's chest when singing "chest", and touching one's head when singing "nut"). Glenn Miller recorded the song in 1939.
The "Hates" (Two Minutes Hate and Hate Week) were inspired by the constant rallies sponsored by party organs throughout the Stalinist period. These were often short pep-talks given to workers before their shifts began (Two Minutes Hate), but could also last for days, as in the annual celebrations of the anniversary of the October revolution (Hate Week).
Orwell fictionalised "newspeak", "doublethink", and "Ministry of Truth" based on both the Soviet press and that of Nazi Germany. In particular, he adapted Soviet ideological discourse constructed to ensure that public statements could not be questioned.
Winston Smith's job, "revising history" (and the "unperson" motif) are based on censorship of images in the Soviet Union, which airbrushed images of "fallen" people from group photographs and removed references to them in books and newspapers. In one well-known example, the Soviet encyclopaedia had an article about Lavrentiy Beria. When he fell in 1953, and was subsequently executed, institutes that had the encyclopaedia were sent an article about the Bering Strait, with instructions to paste it over the article about Beria.
Big Brother's "Orders of the Day" were inspired by Stalin's regular wartime orders, called by the same name. A small collection of the more political of these have been published (together with his wartime speeches) in English as "On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union" By Joseph Stalin. Like Big Brother's Orders of the day, Stalin's frequently lauded heroic individuals, like Comrade Ogilvy, the fictitious hero Winston Smith invented to "rectify" (fabricate) a Big Brother Order of the day.
The Ingsoc slogan "Our new, happy life", repeated from telescreens, evokes Stalin's 1935 statement, which became a CPSU slogan, "Life has become better, Comrades; life has become more cheerful."
In 1940, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges published "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", which describes the invention by a "benevolent secret society" of a world that would seek to remake human language and reality along human-invented lines. The story concludes with an appendix describing the success of the project. Borges' story addresses similar themes of epistemology, language and history to 1984.
Influences.
During World War II, Orwell believed that British democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war. The question being "Would it end via Fascist "coup d'état" from above or via Socialist revolution from below?" Later, he admitted that events proved him wrong: "What really matters is that I fell into the trap of assuming that 'the war and the revolution are inseparable'."
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949) and "Animal Farm" (1945) share themes of the betrayed revolution, the individual's subordination to the collective, rigorously enforced class distinctions (Inner Party, Outer Party, Proles), the cult of personality, concentration camps, Thought Police, compulsory regimented daily exercise, and youth leagues. Oceania resulted from the US annexation of the British Empire to counter the Asian peril to Australia and New Zealand. It is a naval power whose militarism venerates the sailors of the floating fortresses, from which battle is given to recapturing India, the "Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire. Much of Oceanic society is based upon the USSR under Joseph Stalin—Big Brother. The televised Two Minutes Hate is ritual demonisation of the enemies of the State, especially Emmanuel Goldstein ("viz" Leon Trotsky). Altered photographs and newspaper articles create unpersons deleted from the national historical record, including even founding members of the regime (Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford) in the 1960s purges ("viz" the Soviet Purges of the 1930s, in which leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution were similarly treated). A similar thing also happened during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror in which many of the original leaders of the Revolution were later put to death, for example Danton who was put to death by Robespierre, and then later Robespierre himself met the same fate.
In his 1946 essay "Why I Write", Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) were "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism". "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is a cautionary tale about revolution betrayed by totalitarian defenders previously proposed in "Homage to Catalonia" (1938) and "Animal Farm" (1945), while "Coming Up for Air" (1939) celebrates the personal and political freedoms lost in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949). Biographer Michael Shelden notes Orwell's Edwardian childhood at Henley-on-Thames as the golden country; being bullied at St Cyprian's School as his empathy with victims; his life in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma and the techniques of violence and censorship in the BBC as capricious authority.
Other influences include "Darkness at Noon" (1940) and "The Yogi and the Commissar" (1945) by Arthur Koestler; "The Iron Heel "(1908) by Jack London; "1920: Dips into the Near Future" by John A. Hobson; "Brave New World" (1932) by Aldous Huxley; "We" (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin which he reviewed in 1946; and "The Managerial Revolution" (1940) by James Burnham predicting perpetual war among three totalitarian superstates. Orwell told Jacintha Buddicom that he would write a novel stylistically like "A Modern Utopia" (1905) by H. G. Wells.
Extrapolating from World War II, the novel's pastiche parallels the politics and rhetoric at war's end—the changed alliances at the "Cold War's" (1945–91) beginning; the Ministry of Truth derives from the BBC's overseas service, controlled by the Ministry of Information; Room 101 derives from a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House; the Senate House of the University of London, containing the Ministry of Information is the architectural inspiration for the Minitrue; the post-war decrepitude derives from the socio-political life of the UK and the US, i.e., the impoverished Britain of 1948 losing its Empire despite newspaper-reported imperial triumph; and war ally but peace-time foe, Soviet Russia became Eurasia.
The term "English Socialism" has precedents in Orwell's wartime writings; in the essay "" (1941), he said that "the war and the revolution are inseparable... the fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realisable policy"—because Britain's superannuated social class system hindered the war effort and only a socialist economy would defeat Adolf Hitler. Given the middle class's grasping this, they too would abide socialist revolution and that only reactionary Britons would oppose it, thus limiting the force revolutionaries would need to take power. An English Socialism would come about which "will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word."
In the world of "Nineteen Eighty-Four", "English Socialism" (or "Ingsoc" in Newspeak) is a totalitarian ideology unlike the English revolution he foresaw. Comparison of the wartime essay "The Lion and the Unicorn" with "Nineteen Eighty-Four" shows that he perceived a Big Brother regime as a perversion of his cherished socialist ideals and English Socialism. Thus Oceania is a corruption of the British Empire he believed would evolve "into a federation of Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of the Union of Soviet Republics".
Critical reception.
When it was first published, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" received critical acclaim. V. S. Pritchett, reviewing the novel for the "New Statesman" stated: "I do not think I have ever read a novel more frightening and depressing; and yet, such are the originality, the suspense, the speed of writing and withering indignation that it is impossible to put the book down." P. H. Newby, reviewing "Nineteen Eighty-Four" for "The Listener" magazine, described it as "the most arresting political novel written by an Englishman since Rex Warner's "The Aerodrome."" "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was also praised by Bertrand Russell, E. M. Forster and Harold Nicolson. On the other hand, Edward Shanks, reviewing "Nineteen Eighty-Four" for "The Sunday Times", was dismissive; Shanks claimed "Nineteen Eighty-Four" "breaks all records for gloomy vaticination". C. S. Lewis was also critical of the novel, claiming that the relationship of Julia and Winston, and especially the Party's view on sex, lacked credibility, and that the setting was "odious rather than tragic". On 5 November 2019, the BBC named "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on its list of the 100 most influential novels.
Adaptations in other media.
In the same year as the novel's publishing, a one-hour radio adaptation was aired on the United States' NBC radio network as part of the "NBC University Theatre" series. The first television adaptation appeared as part of CBS's "Studio One" series in 1953. The first feature-length adaptation, "1984", was released in 1956. A second feature-length adaptation, "Nineteen Eighty-Four," followed in 1984; it received critical acclaim for its reasonably faithful adaptation of the novel. The story has been adapted several other times to radio, television, and film; other media adaptations include theater, opera, and ballet.
Translations.
The first Simplified Chinese version was published in 1979. It was first available to the general public in China in 1985, as previously it was only in portions of libraries and bookstores open to a limited number of people. Amy Hawkins and Jeffrey Wasserstrom of "The Atlantic" stated in 2019 that the book is widely available in Mainland China for several reasons: the general public by and large no longer reads books; because the elites who do read books feel connected to the ruling party anyway; and because the Communist Party sees being too aggressive in blocking cultural products as a liability. The authors stated "It was—and remains—as easy to buy "1984" and "Animal Farm" in Shenzhen or Shanghai as it is in London or Los Angeles." They also stated that "The assumption is not that Chinese people can’t figure out the meaning of 1984, but that the small number of people who will bother to read it won’t pose much of a threat."
By 1989, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" had been translated into 65 languages, more than any other novel in English at that time.
Cultural impact.
The effect of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on the English language is extensive; the concepts of Big Brother, Room 101, the Thought Police, thoughtcrime, unperson, memory hole (oblivion), doublethink (simultaneously holding and believing contradictory beliefs) and Newspeak (ideological language) have become common phrases for denoting totalitarian authority. Doublespeak and groupthink are both deliberate elaborations of "doublethink", and the adjective "Orwellian" means similar to Orwell's writings, especially "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The practice of ending words with (such as "mediaspeak") is drawn from the novel. Orwell is perpetually associated with 1984; in July 1984, an asteroid was discovered by Antonín Mrkos and named after Orwell.
References to the themes, concepts and plot of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" have appeared frequently in other works, especially in popular music and video entertainment. An example is the worldwide hit reality television show "Big Brother", in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras.
The book touches on the invasion of privacy and ubiquitous surveillance. From mid-2013 it was publicised that the NSA has been secretly monitoring and storing global internet traffic, including the bulk data collection of email and phone call data. Sales of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" increased by up to seven times within the first week of the 2013 mass surveillance leaks. The book again topped the Amazon.com sales charts in 2017 after a controversy involving Kellyanne Conway using the phrase "alternative facts" to explain discrepancies with the media.
The book also shows mass media as a catalyst for the intensification of destructive emotions and violence. Since the 20th century, news and other forms of media have been publicising violence more often. In 2013, Nottingham Playhouse, the Almeida Theatre and Headlong staged a successful new adaptation (by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan), which twice toured the UK and played an extended run in London's West End. The play opened on Broadway in New York in 2017. A version of the production played on an Australian tour in 2017.
"Nineteen Eighty-Four" was number three on the list of "Top Check Outs Of All Time" by the New York Public Library.
In accordance with copyright law, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Animal Farm" both entered the public domain on January 1, 2021 in most of the world, 70 calendar years after Orwell died. The US copyright expiration is different for both novels: 95 years after publication.
"Brave New World" comparisons.
In October 1949, after reading "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Huxley sent a letter to Orwell in which he argued that it would be more efficient for rulers to stay in power by the softer touch by allowing citizens to seek pleasure to control them rather than use brute force. He wrote,Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.
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.
In the decades since the publication of "Nineteen Eighty-Four", there have been numerous comparisons to Huxley's "Brave New World", which had been published 17 years earlier, in 1932. They are both predictions of societies dominated by a central government and are both based on extensions of the trends of their times. However, members of the ruling class of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" use brutal force, torture and mind control to keep individuals in line, while rulers in "Brave New World" keep the citizens in line by addictive drugs and pleasurable distractions. Regarding censorship, in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" the government tightly controls information to keep the population in line, but in Huxley's world, so much information is published that readers do not know which information is relevant, and what can be disregarded.
Elements of both novels can be seen in modern-day societies, with Huxley's vision being more dominant in the West and Orwell's vision more prevalent with dictators. including those in communist countries, as is pointed out in essays that compare the two novels, including Huxley's own "Brave New World Revisited".
Mary Wendworth noted that "In both "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Brave New World", dissidents get to have a long and intensive talk with a senior representative of the regime, who is completely frank and candid in explaining how the system came about and how and why it does what it does (by the way, dissidents in real-life tyrannical regimes rarely get to meet such a person). The comparison is very instructive. Orwell's Comrade O'Brien explains the workings of the regime in between subjecting Winston Smith to very thorough physical and mental torture, with the stated purpose of totally breaking him, driving all "criminal thoughts" out of his head - after which he would be summarily executed and "vaporized", all evidence that he ever existed completely destroyed. Conversely, Huxley's Mustafa Mond is a perfect host, urbane and genial to his dissident "guests", laughing indulgently at their futile antics and informing them that they are to be exiled to an island - which is in fact no punishment but a reward, as on an island they would be in the congenial company of fellow dissidents and creative thinkers. They would be free, to their heart's content, to compose subversive poetry (which people in the outside world would never read - and if they did, they would find it incomprehensible anyway). Plainly, the rulers of Orwell's Oceania feel threatened by dissent, and are constantly stomping on it. The rulers of Huxley's World State feel serenely secure. (...) O'Brien's subjects are terribly terrorized. If ever they overcame their fear and united, they might rebel. Mond's subjects are so thoroughly conditioned that they can comprehend no reason to rebel. (...) If I found O'Brien and Mond sitting side by side in a room and I had a gun with one bullet only, I would shoot Mond. He is, by far, the more dangerous of the two" 
Comparisons with other dystopian novels like "The Handmaid's Tale", "Virtual Light", "The Private Eye" and "The Children of Men" have also been drawn.
References.
Notes
Bibliography
Further reading