1984 Summary Essay, Research Paper
Summary: The Story starts, as the title tells us, in the year of 1984, and it deals in England or how it is called at that time, Airstrip One. Airstrip One itself is a the mainland of a huge country, called Oceania, which contains North America, South Africa, and Australia. The country is ruled by the Party, which is led by a figure called Big Brother. The population itself is divided in three parts:
1.The Inner Party (app. 1% of the population)
2.The Outer Party (app. 18% of the population)
3.The Proles
The narrator of the book is all-knowing and he is not participating in the action of the book himself. The main figure is Winston Smith, a member of the Party.Winston works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, rewriting records of the past. The action of the book starts when Winston develops critic thoughts against the ruling dictatorship of the party, for the first time. Doing so he buys himself a book, which were very rare these days, to use it as a diary. Because individual expression was forbidden by the Party, having a diary was a crime, which could be punished even with death. There were so-called telescreens in each room, which were showing propaganda and political pamphlets, and had a build in camera and microphone, in order to spy on the people. Therefore keeping a secret book was not only very dangerous, but also very difficult. When he makes the first entry in the diary ,Winston thinks about an experience he has made during the Two Minutes Hate, a propaganda film, that was repeated each day. During this Film he caught the eye of O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party, of whom he taught that he might stand also critic to the regime, or that at least there is a bond of some kind between them. After the reflection, he finds that he has written the sentence :”Down with Big Brother” all over the page. In the same night Winston dreams about, his mother and sister, who starved to death in the war, because he was so greedy. Then he dreams of having sex with a girl that he has seen in the Records Department, during the Two Minute Hate. Early in the morning Winston is waken up by the harsh voice from the telescreen. During the performance of the exercises, Winston’s thoughts move back to his childhood. The last thing he remembers clearly, is the World War. After the WW the party has taken control of the country, and from then on it was difficult to remember anything, because the party changed the history permanently to their own benefit (see Doublethink – Political System).After the exercises Winston goes to work, to the Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), where his job is to alter records, and once altered, to throw them into the Memory Hole where they are burnt. For example B.B. (Big Brother) has said that there will be no reduction of the chocolate ration, but there has been one, so Winston has to rewrite an old article, where the speech of B.B. is written down. At dinner Winston Smith meets Syme, a philologist, who is working on the 11 the edition of The Newspeak Dictionary (see Newspeak – Political System), and Syme explains the main character of their work on this dictionary. During their conversation the telescreen announces that the chocolate ration has been risen to 20 g a week, whereas yesterday it was cut down to 20 g a week.Winston wonders if he’s the only person with memory, that isn’t inflicted by Doublethink. As he looks around in the dining room , and he catches the eye of the dark-haired girl, he had dreamed the same night. Home again he makes an entry into his diary, of his meeting with a prostitute three years ago. He remembered her ugliness, but nevertheless he had sex with her. Winston had a wife, but she was very stupid and just following the orders of the Party, and this orders said that there may only be Sex to produce “new material” for the Party, and that sex for the personal pleasure is a crime. Then Winston thinks about the Party, and that the only hope lies in the Proles who pose over 80% of Oceanias population. Later he remembered another fact of his past, Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford the last three survivors of the original leaders of the Revolution. They were arrested in 1965, and on trial they confessed all kind of sabotage, they were pardoned, reinstated but not long after were arrested again, and executed. During the brief period Winston has seen them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. In the same year a half page torn out of the times came to Winston trough the transport tube in the Minitrue. This page of The Times showed the three men in Eastasia on a certain day. But Winston remembered clearly that they have confessed being in Eurasia on that day (At this time Eurasia was at war with Oceania, and Eastasia was an allied). So Winston could proof that the confessions were lies. But Winston had sent this paper down to the Memory Hole ( a kind of paper basket ) The last entry that Winston writes in his diary is that freedom is to say that two and two makes four. If that is granted all else follows. The next day Winston decides not to participate in the community actions, and so he decides to take a walk in the quarters of the Proles, around St Pancras station. During the walk a Rocket-Bomb explodes nearby. After a while Winston finds himself in front of the junk-shop, where he has bought the diary. There he sees an old man just entering a pub. He decides to follow the man, and to ask him about the time before the revolution, but the old man has already forgotten nearly everything about this time, except for some useless personal things. Winston leaves the pub and goes to the Shop, where he finds a pink piece of glass with apiece of coral inside which he buys. Mr Carrington, the owner of the shop leads him upstairs to show him an old fashioned room. W. Smith likes the room because of its warmth and of course because there are no telescreens. After Winston leaves the shop he suddenly meets the dark-haired girl in the street. He now believes that this girl is an amateur spy or even a member of the Thought Police, spying on him. The next morning he meets the girl in the Ministry of Truth, and in the moment when she passes, she fall down and cries out in pain. Winston helps her up, and finds that she has pressed a piece of paper into his hand. Later, at the first opportunity he opens it and finds that on it is written the startling message: “I love you”. For a week he waits for an opportunity to speak with her. Finally he is successful, and he meets her in the canteen where they fix a meeting. Again some time later they meet on the fixed place, there the girl gives Winston precise instructions how to get to a secret place on Sunday. It is Sunday and Winston is following the girl’s direction. On the way he picks some bluebells for her. And then finally she comes up behind him, telling him to be quiet because there might be some microphones hidden somewhere. They kiss and he learns her name: Julia. She leads him to another place where they cannot be observed. Before she takes off her blue party-overall, Julia tells Winston that she is attracted to him by something in his face which showed that he was against the party. Winston is surprised and asks Julia if she has done such thing already before. To his delight she tells him that she has done it scores of times, which fills him with a great hope. Evidence of corruption and abandon always fills him with hope. Perhaps the whole system is rotten, and that it simply will crumb to pieces one day. The more men she had, the more he loves her, and later as he looks at her sleeping body, he thinks that now even sex is a political act, a blow against the falseness of the Party. Winston and Julia arrange to meet again. Winston has rented a room above Mr Carringtons junk shop ,a place where they can meet and talk without the fear of being observed. It is summer, and the preparation for “Hate Week” ,a enormous propaganda event, are well forthcoming, and in this time Winston meets Julia more often than ever before. Julia makes him feel more alive, she makes him feel healthier, and he even puts on weight. One day O’Brien speaks to Winston in the Ministry of Truth. He refers, obliquely to Syme, the philologist, who has vanished a couple of days before, an is now, as it is called in Newspeak an unperson. In doing so O’Brien is committing a little act of thoughtcrime. O’Brien invites Winston to his flat, to see the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Winston now feels sure that the conspiracy against the Party he had longed to know about – the Brotherhood, as it is called – does exist, and that in the encounter with O’Brien he has come into contact with its outer edge. He knows he has embarked on a course of action which will lead , in one way or another, to the cells of the Ministry of Love. Some days later Winston and Julia meet each other to go to the flat of O’Brien, which lies in the district of the Inner Party. They are admitted to a richly furnitured room by a servant. To their astonishment O’Brien switches off the Telescreen in the room.(Normally it is impossible to turn it off) Winston blurts out why they have come: they want to work against the Party, they believe in the existence of the Brotherhood, and that O’Brien is involved with it. Martin, O’Brien servant brings real red vine, and they drink a toast to Emanuel Goldstein, leader of the Brotherhood. O’Brien asks them a series of questions about their willingness to commit various atrocities on behalf of the Brotherhood and gets their assent. They leave, and again some days later Winston gets a copy of “The Book”, a book written by Emanuel Goldstein, about his political ideas. Now it was Hate Week, and suddenly the war with Eurasia has stopped, and a war with Eastasia has started. This of course meant a lot of work for Winston. He had to change dozens of articles which were about the war with Eurasia. But nevertheless Winston has found time to read the book. The book has three chapters titled, “War is Peace”, “Ignorance is Strength” and “Freedom is Slavery”, which were also the main phrases of the party. The main ideas of the book are:
1: War is important for consuming the products of human labour, if this work would be used to increase the standard of living, the control of the party over the people would decrease. War is the economy basis for a hierarchical society.
2: There is an emotional need to believe in the ultimate victory of Big Brother.
3: In becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The continuity of the war guarantees the permanence of the current order. In other words “War is Peace”
4: There have always been three main grades of society; the High, the Middle and the Low, and no change has brought human equality a millimetre nearer.
5: Collectivism doesn’t lead to socialism. In the event the wealth now belongs to the new “high-class”, the bureaucrats and administrators. Collectivism has ensured the permanence of economic inequality.
6: Wealth is not inherited from person to person, but it is kept within the ruling group.
7: The masses (proles) are given freedom of thought, because they don’t think! A Party member is not allowed the slightest deviation of thought, and there is an elaborate mental training to ensure this, a training that can be summarised in the concept of doublethink.
So far the book has analysed how the Party works. It has not yet attempted to deal with why the Party has arisen. Before continuing with the next chapter Winston turns to Julia, and finds her asleep. He too falls asleep. The next morning when he awakes the sun is shining, and down in the yard a prole women is singing and working. Winston again is filled with the conviction that the future lies with the proles, that they will overthrow the greyness of the Party. But suddenly reality crashes in. “We are the death”, he says to Julia. An iron voice behind them repeats the phrase, the picture on the wall falls to bits to reveal a telescreen behind it. Uniformed man thunder into the room and they carry Winston and Julia out.Winston is in a cell in what he presumes is the Ministry of Love. He is sick with hunger and fear, and if he makes a movement or a sound, a harsh voice will bawl at him from the four telescreens. A prisoner is brought in that is dying of starvation, his face is skull-like. Later the man is brought to “Room 101″ after screaming and struggling, and even offering his children’s sacrifices in his stead. O’Brien comes in. Winston thinks that they must have got him too, but O’Brien says that they got him long time ago. A guard his Winston, and he becomes unconscious. As he wakes up he is tied down to a kind of bed. O’Brien stands beside the bed, and Winston feels that O’Brien, who is the torturer, is also somehow a friend. The aim of O’Brien is to teach Winston the technique of Doublethink, and he does it by inflicting pain in ever-increasing intensity. He reminds Winston that he wrote the sentence:” Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four”. O’Brien holds up four fingers of his left hand, and he asks Winston how many there are. Winston answers four a couple of times, and each time the pain increases (this is not done to make Winston lie, but to make him really see five fingers instead of four). At the end of the session, under heavy influence of drugs and agony, Winston really seas five fingers. Now Winston is ready to enter the second stage of his integration (1. Learning, 2. Understanding, 3. Acceptance). O’Brien now explains why the Party works. The image he gives of the future is that of a boot stamping on a human face – for ever. Winston protest, because he thinks that there is something in the human nature that will not allow this to be so, what he can call “The Spirit of Man”. O’Brien points out that Winston is the last humanist, he is the last guardian of the human spirit. Then O’Brien gets Winston to look at himself in the mirror, and Winston is horrified what he sees. The unknown time of torture has changed him into a shapeless and battered wreck. This is what the last humanist looks like. The only degradation that Winston has not been trough, is that he has not betrayed Julia. He will have said anything under torture, but inside he has remained true to her. Winston is much better now. For some time he has not been beaten and torture, he has been fed quite well and allowed to wash. Winston realises that he now accepts all the lies of the Party, that for example Oceania was always at war with Eastasia, and that he never had the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford that disproved their guilty. Even gravity could be nonsense. But nevertheless Winston has some unorthodox thoughts that he cannot suppress. But now it is time for the last of the three steps, reintegration. Winston is taken to Room 101. O’Brien says that the room 101 is the worst thing in the world. For each person it is his own personal hell. For some it is death by fire or burial alive. For Winston it is a cage containing two rats, with a fixture like a fencing mask attached, into which the face of the victim is strapped. Then there is a lever, that opens the cage ,so that the rats can get to the face. O’Brien is coming nearer with the cage ,and Winston gets the bad smell of the rats. He screams. The only way to get out of this is to put someone else between him and the horror.”Do it to Julia”, he screams in a final betrayal of himself. Winston is released, and he is often sitting in the Chestnut Tree Caf , drinking Victory Gin and playing chess. He now has a job in a sub-committee , that is made up for others like himself. On a cold winter day he meets Julia, the spoke briefly, and had little to say to each other, except that they have betrayed each other. A memory comes to his mind, of a day in his childhood, It is false, he is often troubled by false memories. He looks forward to the bullet they will kill him some day, and now he realises how pointless it was to resist. He loves Big Brother!
Characters Winston Smith: Orwell named his hero after Winston Churchill, England’s great leader during World War II. He added a common last name: Smith. The action of this novel is build around the main person, Winston Smith, and therefore the understanding of his personality, and his character is important for the understanding of the whole book. Winston was born before the Second World War. In the War, there was a lack of food, and Winston has taken nearly all of the food that was allocated to the family, although his younger sister was starving to death. In 1984 Winston often dreams of this time, and he often remembers how he has stolen the whole chocolate, that was one day given to the family. I think that Winston now (1984) somehow regrets his egoistic behaviour. He also sees a kind of link between his behaviour, and the behaviour of the children that are educated by the Party. These children prosecute their own family (Pars
Plot: The plot has three main movements, corresponding with the division of the book in three parts. The first part, the first eight chapters, creates the world of 1984, a totalitarian world where the Party tries to control everything, even thought and emotion. In this part Winston develops his first unorthodox thoughts. The second part of the novel deals with the development of his love to Julia, someone with whom he can share his private emotions. For a short time they create a small world of feeling for themselves. They are betrayed however. O’Brien, whom Winston thought was a rebel like himself, is really a chief inquisitor of the Inner Party. The third part of the novel deals with Winstons punishment. Finally he comes to love Big Brother. Generally the plot is very simple: a rebel, a love affair with a like-minded, capture, torture, and finally the capitulation. Apart from Julia and O’Brien, and of course Winston, there are no important characters; there is no attempt to crate a range of social behaviour, and the complex personal interactions therein, all traditional concerns of the novel. Indeed one of Orwell’s points is that life in 1984 has become totally uniform. So the traditional novel would be unthinkable. In fact Winston is the only character worth writing about; all the other characters are half-robots already. So one could say that the plot was build around Winstons mind and life. This gave Orwell the opportunity to focus on the reaction of the individual to totalitarianism, love, and cruelty.
Political System Party: The Party of Oceania poses about 19% of the whole population of Oceanias mainland. Generally one could divide the Party into the Inner Party, which is comparable to the communistic Nomenclature, and the Outer Party. Winston Smith himself was a member of the Outer Party. The members of the Inner Party held high posts in the administration of the country. They earned comparable much money, and there wasn’t a lack of anything in their homes, which looked like palaces. The people of the Outer Party lived in dull grey and old flats. Because of the war there was often a lack of the most essential things. The life of the Outer Party was dictated by the Party, even their spare time was used by the Party. There were so-called community hikes, community games and all sort of other activities. And refusing the participation at this activities was even dangerous. The life of a Party member is dictated from his birth to his death. The Party even takes children away from their parents to educate them in the sense of Ingsoc. (you can find this also in the Communist future plans)The children are taught in school, to report it to the police (Toughtpolice) when their parents have had unorthodox thoughts, so-called “Thoughtcrimes”. After the education the Party members start to work mainly for one of the four Ministries (Minipax, Minitrue, Miniluv, Miniplenty). The further live of the “comrades” continues under the watchful eyes of the Party. Each thing that the people do is targeted by the telescreens. Even in their homes the people have telescreens. Each unorthodox action is then punished by “joycomps” (Newspeak word for forced labour camps”). Proles: The proles make about 81% of the population of Oceania. The Party itself is only interested in their labour power, because the proles are mainly employed in the industry and in the farms. Without their Labour force Oceania would brake down. Despite this fact the Party completely ignores this social caste. The curious thing about this behaviour is, that the Party calls itself a Socialistic Party, and generally socialism (at least at the beginning and middle of this century) is a movement of the proletariat. So one could say that the Party abuses the word “Ingsoc”. Orwell again had pointed at an other regime, the Nazis, who had put “socialism” into their name. One of the main phrases of the Party is “Proles and animals are free”. In Oceania the proles live in very desolate and poor quarters. Compared to the districts where the members of the Party live, there are much fewer telescreens, and policemen. And as long as the proles don’t commit a crime (crime in our sense / not in the sense of the party – Toughtcrime) they don’t have any contact with the state. Therefore in the districts of the proletarians one could find things that where abolished and forbidden for the Party members. E.g. old books, old furniture, prostitution and alcohol (mainly beer) Except “Victory Gin” all of these things were not available for the Partymen. The proletarians didn’t participate in the technical development. They lived like they used to do many years ago. To my mind the Party ignores the Proles, because they pose no danger to their rule. The working class is to uneducated and to unorganised to pose a real threat. So there is not really a need to change the political attitudes of this class. Newspeak: Newspeak is the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984, there was nobody, who has really used Newspeak in speech nor in writing. Only the leading articles were written in this “language”. But it was generally assumed that in the year 2050 Newspeak would superset Oldspeak, or common English. The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other methods of thought impossible. Another reason for developing Newspeak was, to make old books, or books which were written before the era of the Party, unreadable. With Newspeak ,Doublethink would be even easier. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings whatever. Generally Newspeak words were divided into three groups: the A,B(also called compound words) and the C Vocabulary.
A-Vocabulary: The A-Vocabulary consisted of the words needed in business and everyday life, for such things as drinking, working, and the like. The words of this group were nearly entirely composed of Oldspeak words, but in comparison, their number was very small. Nevertheless the meaning of this words was much more defined, and it allowed no other interpretation.
B-Vocabulary: The B-Vocabulary consisted of words which had been deliberately constructed for political purpose. Without the full understanding of the principles of Ingsoc it was very difficult to use and understand this words correctly.The B-Vocabulary were in all cases compound words, and they consisted of two or more words, merged together in an easy pronounceable form. Example: goodthink – Goodthing means very roughly orthodoxy, or if it is regarded as a verb “to think in a good manner”. The infected as follows: noun-verb goodthink; past tense and past participle, goodthinked; present participle, goodthinking; adjective, goodthinkful; adverb, goodthinkwise; verbal noun, goodthinker. The B-Words were not constructed on any etymological plan. The words of which they were made up could be placed in any order mutilated in any way which made them easy to pronounce (e.g. toughtcrime, crimethink thinkpol, tought police). Many of the B-Words were euphemisms. Such words for instance as joycamp (forced labour camp) or Minipax (Ministry of Peace in charge of the army ), meant almost exact opposite of what they appeared to mean. Again some words were ambivalent, having the connotation good when applied the party, and bad when applied to its enemies. Generally the name of any organisation, building, and so on was cut down to a minimum number of syllables and to a minimum of length, in an easy pronounceable way. This isn’t only in Newspeak, already other, especially totalitarian systems, tended to used abbreviations for political purpose (Nazi, Comintern, Gestapo, ….). But the difference is that only in Newspeak this instrument was used with consciousness. The Party intended to cut down the possibility of associations with other words.
C-Vocabulary: The C-Words are consisting of technical and scientific terms.
From the foregoing account it is very easy to see that in Newspeak the expression of unorthodox opinions, above a very low level, was impossible. It would only have been possible to say “Big Brother is ungood”. But this statement could not have been sustained by reasoned arguments, because the necessary words were not available. Ideas inimical to Ingsoc could only be entertained in a very vague and wordless form, and could only be named in very broad terms. One could in fact use only Newspeak for political unorthodoxy, by illegitimately translating some of the words back into Oldspeak. For example “All mans are equal” was a possible Newspeak sentence, but only in the same sense in which “All man have the same weight” is a possible Oldspeak sentence. It did not contain a grammatical error, but it expressed a palpable untruth i.e. that all man have the same size, weight ….. The concept of political equality no longer existed. In 1984, when Oldspeak was still the normal means of communication, the danger theoretically existed that in using Newspeak words one might remember their original meanings. In practice it was not difficult for a person well grounded in Doublethink to avoid doing this, but within a couple of generation even the possibility of such a lapse would have vanished. A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of “politically equal” (also free,….). There would be many crimes and errors which would be beyond of the power to commit, simply because there were nameless and therefore unimaginable. It was to be foreseen that with the passage of time Newspeak words would become fewer and fewer, their meanings more and more and more rigid, and the chance to put them to improper uses always diminished. So when Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded the last link with the past would have been severed. Doublethink: Doublethink is a kind of manipulation of the mind. Generally one could say that Doublethink makes people accept contradictions, and it makes them also believe, that, the party is the only institution that distinguishes between right and wrong. This manipulation is mainly done by the Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), where also Winston Smith works. When a person that is well grounded in Doublethink recognises a contradiction or a lie of the Party, then the person thinks that he is remembering a false fact. The use of the word Doublethink involves doublethink. With the help of the Minitrue it is not only possible to change the written facts, but also the facts that are remembered by the people. So complete control of the country and it’s citizens is provided. The fact of faking the history had already been used by the Nazis, who told the people that already German Knights believed in the principles of National Socialism.
Symbolism: In “Nineteen Eighty-Four” Orwell draws a picture of a totalitarian future. Although the action deals in the future, there are a couple of elements and symbols, taken from the present and past. So for example Emanuel Goldstein, the main enemy of Oceania, is, as one can
see in the name, a Jew. Orwell draws a link to other totalitarian systems of our century, like the Nazis and the Communists, who had anti-Semitic ideas, and who used Jews as so-called scapegoats, who were responsible for all bad and evil things in the country. This fact also shows that totalitarian systems want to arbitrate their perfection. Emanuel Goldstein also somehow stands for Trotsky, a leader of the Revolution, that was later declared as an enemy. Another symbol that can be found in Nineteen Eighty-Four is the fact that Orwell divided the fictional superstates in the book according to the division that can be found in the Cold War. So Oceania stands for the United states of America , Eurasia for Russia and Eastasia for China. Also the fact that the two socialistic countries Eastasia and Eurasia ( in our case Russia and China ) are at war with each other, corresponds with our history (Usuri river). Also other, non-historical symbols can be found. One of these symbols is the paperweight that Winston buys in the old junk-shop. It stands for the fragile little world that Winston and Julia have made for each other. They are the coral inside it. As Orwell wrote: “It is a little chunk of history, that they have forgotten to alter”. The “Golden Country” is another symbol. It stands for the old European pastoral landscape. The place where Winston and Julia meet for the first time to make love to each other, is exactly like the “Golden Country” of Winstons dreams.