1984Full Book Summary
Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party is forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes.
As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the party and has illegally purchased a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts. He has also become fixated on a powerful Party member named O’Brien, whom Winston believes is a secret member of the Brotherhood—the mysterious, legendary group that works to overthrow the Party.
Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to fit the needs of the Party. He notices a coworker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him, and worries that she is an informant who will turn him in for his thoughtcrime. He is troubled by the Party’s control of history: the Party claims that Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia, but Winston seems to recall a time when this was not true. The Party also claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged leader of the Brotherhood, is the most dangerous man alive, but this does not seem plausible to Winston. Winston spends his evenings wandering through the poorest neighborhoods in London, where the proletarians, or proles, live squalid lives, relatively free of Party monitoring.
One day, Winston receives a note from the dark-haired girl that reads “I love you.” She tells him her name, Julia, and they begin a covert affair, always on the lookout for signs of Party monitoring. Eventually they rent a room above the secondhand store in the prole district where Winston bought the diary. This relationship lasts for some time. Winston is sure that they will be caught and punished sooner or later (the fatalistic Winston knows that he has been doomed since he wrote his first diary entry), while Julia is more pragmatic and optimistic. As Winston’s affair with Julia progresses, his hatred for the Party grows more and more intense. At last, he receives the message that he has been waiting for: O’Brien wants to see him.
Winston and Julia travel to O’Brien’s luxurious apartment. As a member of the powerful Inner Party (Winston belongs to the Outer Party), O’Brien leads a life of luxury that Winston can only imagine. O’Brien confirms to Winston and Julia that, like them, he hates the Party, and says that he works against it as a member of the Brotherhood. He indoctrinates Winston and Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein’s book, the manifesto of the Brotherhood. Winston reads the book—an amalgam of several forms of class-based twentieth-century social theory—to Julia in the room above the store. Suddenly, soldiers barge in and seize them. Mr. Charrington, the proprietor of the store, is revealed as having been a member of the Thought Police all along.
Torn away from Julia and taken to a place called the Ministry of Love, Winston finds that O’Brien, too, is a Party spy who simply pretended to be a member of the Brotherhood in order to trap Winston into committing an open act of rebellion against the Party. O’Brien spends months torturing and brainwashing Winston, who struggles to resist. At last, O’Brien sends him to the dreaded Room 101, the final destination for anyone who opposes the Party. Here, O’Brien tells Winston that he will be forced to confront his worst fear. Throughout the novel, Winston has had recurring nightmares about rats; O’Brien now straps a cage full of rats onto Winston’s head and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face. Winston snaps, pleading with O’Brien to do it to Julia, not to him.
Giving up Julia is what O’Brien wanted from Winston all along. His spirit broken, Winston is released to the outside world. He meets Julia but no longer feels anything for her. He has accepted the Party entirely and has learned to love Big Brother.
Full Book Analysis
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1984 follows a three-part linear narrative structure that enables the reader to experience Winston’s dehumanization along with him, creating tension and sympathy for the main characters. Time in 1984 generally proceeds in a linear fashion, except for a few flashbacks to Winston’s career at the Ministry of Truth, his disastrous marriage, and his early life with his mother and sister, memories sparked by events taking place in his present.
In the novel’s early exposition, we immediately learn that we’re in a world where normal rules don’t apply: “It was a cold day in April, and clocks were striking thirteen.” We learn about the existence of Big Brother, meet the protagonist Winston Smith, and see glimpses of the society he lives in. Through details such as the smell of the building and the electricity that has been rationed in preparation for Hate Week, we learn that the book takes place in a repressive society with few creature comforts.
The initiating incident that sets the plot in motion occurs when Winston begins to write his subversive thoughts in his diary. He begins to think of himself as “already dead,” suggesting he has abandoned the impulse for self-preservation, and his life has little value to him, making him ready to sacrifice it to a cause.
The conflict between Winston’s essential humanity and the dehumanizing policies of the Party is developed when Winston’s coworker, Julia, hands Winston a slip of paper. Winston has suspected Julia is following him, and he views her with a mixture of desire and paranoia, so he expects the paper to reveal a warning or a coded threat from a Party spy. Instead, it says, “I love you,” and Winston and Julia begin their affair, setting Winston’s personal desires on a collision course with Party ideology and raising the stakes of how far Winston will go to maintain his autonomy.
Julia serves as a character foil to Winston, as Orwell compares and contrasts their political philosophies and their styles of resistance. For example, Winston believes that the Party must be resisted and overthrown, but Julia thinks it’s better to evade its authority while pretending to acquiesce to it. Winston, frustrated, tells her she’s “only a rebel from the waist down,” which she takes as a compliment.
At the end of Book Two, the police burst in on Winston and Julia and arrest them, reversing the reader’s understanding of many of the characters in the book and turning the tone from momentarily optimistic to despairing and dark. It is revealed that Mr. Charrington, who Winston believed to be a kindly old man and potential ally, was a member of the Thought Police, and that the Party had likely been tracking Winston since he first purchased the diary.
Winston and Julia are taken to the Ministry of Love, where prisoners are shown begging not to be sent to Room 101, creating suspense about what could possibly happen in it, before Winston is called up and discovers that O’Brien was a faithful member of the Party all along. Through psychological intimidation and physical torture, O’Brien breaks Winston’s will until he cannot answer for certain whether two plus two makes four or five. He concedes that two and two might sometimes make five in certain philosophical or theoretical concepts. Then finally he gives in to accept that the answer to two plus two is whatever the Party says it is.
The novel’s climax comes when Winston’s free will, represented by his love for Julia, is directly challenged by the Party, and he must choose between Julia and Big Brother, between individuality and conformity. In Room 101, O’Brien demonstrates a medieval torture device, a cage full of rats to be strapped to the prisoner’s face, playing on Winston’s fear of rats. In a panic, Winston gives up Julia, begging O’Brien to torture her instead of him, breaking the promise he swore never to break: “if they could make me stop loving you, that would be the real betrayal.” In Room 101, the Party succeeds in breaking Winston not just physically and mentally, but emotionally. In the battle between personal freedom and political repression, repression has won.
In the novel’s falling action, Winston is reintegrated back into society as a loyal and faithful Party member. He meets Julia again and realizes that they both betrayed one another under torture, and he can no longer stand to be near her. In the novel’s final chilling moments, Winston reflects on how foolish he had been. “He had won the battle over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party is forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes.
As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the party and has illegally purchased a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts. He has also become fixated on a powerful Party member named O’Brien, whom Winston believes is a secret member of the Brotherhood—the mysterious, legendary group that works to overthrow the Party.
Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to fit the needs of the Party. He notices a coworker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him, and worries that she is an informant who will turn him in for his thoughtcrime. He is troubled by the Party’s control of history: the Party claims that Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia, but Winston seems to recall a time when this was not true. The Party also claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged leader of the Brotherhood, is the most dangerous man alive, but this does not seem plausible to Winston. Winston spends his evenings wandering through the poorest neighborhoods in London, where the proletarians, or proles, live squalid lives, relatively free of Party monitoring.
One day, Winston receives a note from the dark-haired girl that reads “I love you.” She tells him her name, Julia, and they begin a covert affair, always on the lookout for signs of Party monitoring. Eventually they rent a room above the secondhand store in the prole district where Winston bought the diary. This relationship lasts for some time. Winston is sure that they will be caught and punished sooner or later (the fatalistic Winston knows that he has been doomed since he wrote his first diary entry), while Julia is more pragmatic and optimistic. As Winston’s affair with Julia progresses, his hatred for the Party grows more and more intense. At last, he receives the message that he has been waiting for: O’Brien wants to see him.
Winston and Julia travel to O’Brien’s luxurious apartment. As a member of the powerful Inner Party (Winston belongs to the Outer Party), O’Brien leads a life of luxury that Winston can only imagine. O’Brien confirms to Winston and Julia that, like them, he hates the Party, and says that he works against it as a member of the Brotherhood. He indoctrinates Winston and Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein’s book, the manifesto of the Brotherhood. Winston reads the book—an amalgam of several forms of class-based twentieth-century social theory—to Julia in the room above the store. Suddenly, soldiers barge in and seize them. Mr. Charrington, the proprietor of the store, is revealed as having been a member of the Thought Police all along.
Torn away from Julia and taken to a place called the Ministry of Love, Winston finds that O’Brien, too, is a Party spy who simply pretended to be a member of the Brotherhood in order to trap Winston into committing an open act of rebellion against the Party. O’Brien spends months torturing and brainwashing Winston, who struggles to resist. At last, O’Brien sends him to the dreaded Room 101, the final destination for anyone who opposes the Party. Here, O’Brien tells Winston that he will be forced to confront his worst fear. Throughout the novel, Winston has had recurring nightmares about rats; O’Brien now straps a cage full of rats onto Winston’s head and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face. Winston snaps, pleading with O’Brien to do it to Julia, not to him.
Giving up Julia is what O’Brien wanted from Winston all along. His spirit broken, Winston is released to the outside world. He meets Julia but no longer feels anything for her. He has accepted the Party entirely and has learned to love Big Brother.
Full Book Analysis
Previous
Next
1984 follows a three-part linear narrative structure that enables the reader to experience Winston’s dehumanization along with him, creating tension and sympathy for the main characters. Time in 1984 generally proceeds in a linear fashion, except for a few flashbacks to Winston’s career at the Ministry of Truth, his disastrous marriage, and his early life with his mother and sister, memories sparked by events taking place in his present.
In the novel’s early exposition, we immediately learn that we’re in a world where normal rules don’t apply: “It was a cold day in April, and clocks were striking thirteen.” We learn about the existence of Big Brother, meet the protagonist Winston Smith, and see glimpses of the society he lives in. Through details such as the smell of the building and the electricity that has been rationed in preparation for Hate Week, we learn that the book takes place in a repressive society with few creature comforts.
The initiating incident that sets the plot in motion occurs when Winston begins to write his subversive thoughts in his diary. He begins to think of himself as “already dead,” suggesting he has abandoned the impulse for self-preservation, and his life has little value to him, making him ready to sacrifice it to a cause.
The conflict between Winston’s essential humanity and the dehumanizing policies of the Party is developed when Winston’s coworker, Julia, hands Winston a slip of paper. Winston has suspected Julia is following him, and he views her with a mixture of desire and paranoia, so he expects the paper to reveal a warning or a coded threat from a Party spy. Instead, it says, “I love you,” and Winston and Julia begin their affair, setting Winston’s personal desires on a collision course with Party ideology and raising the stakes of how far Winston will go to maintain his autonomy.
Julia serves as a character foil to Winston, as Orwell compares and contrasts their political philosophies and their styles of resistance. For example, Winston believes that the Party must be resisted and overthrown, but Julia thinks it’s better to evade its authority while pretending to acquiesce to it. Winston, frustrated, tells her she’s “only a rebel from the waist down,” which she takes as a compliment.
At the end of Book Two, the police burst in on Winston and Julia and arrest them, reversing the reader’s understanding of many of the characters in the book and turning the tone from momentarily optimistic to despairing and dark. It is revealed that Mr. Charrington, who Winston believed to be a kindly old man and potential ally, was a member of the Thought Police, and that the Party had likely been tracking Winston since he first purchased the diary.
Winston and Julia are taken to the Ministry of Love, where prisoners are shown begging not to be sent to Room 101, creating suspense about what could possibly happen in it, before Winston is called up and discovers that O’Brien was a faithful member of the Party all along. Through psychological intimidation and physical torture, O’Brien breaks Winston’s will until he cannot answer for certain whether two plus two makes four or five. He concedes that two and two might sometimes make five in certain philosophical or theoretical concepts. Then finally he gives in to accept that the answer to two plus two is whatever the Party says it is.
The novel’s climax comes when Winston’s free will, represented by his love for Julia, is directly challenged by the Party, and he must choose between Julia and Big Brother, between individuality and conformity. In Room 101, O’Brien demonstrates a medieval torture device, a cage full of rats to be strapped to the prisoner’s face, playing on Winston’s fear of rats. In a panic, Winston gives up Julia, begging O’Brien to torture her instead of him, breaking the promise he swore never to break: “if they could make me stop loving you, that would be the real betrayal.” In Room 101, the Party succeeds in breaking Winston not just physically and mentally, but emotionally. In the battle between personal freedom and political repression, repression has won.
In the novel’s falling action, Winston is reintegrated back into society as a loyal and faithful Party member. He meets Julia again and realizes that they both betrayed one another under torture, and he can no longer stand to be near her. In the novel’s final chilling moments, Winston reflects on how foolish he had been. “He had won the battle over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
