1984 Characters, Terms, Summary – Flashcards

It is the official language of Oceania that aims to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc (English Socialism). Through the cutting down of the choice of words the range of thought is diminished.

The anti-Fascist writing of the 1930s and 1940s as well as events in Communist Russia had a profound influence on Orwell, and is reflected in his writing.

The mysterious all-seeing, all-knowing leader of the totalitarian society is seen as a god-like icon to the citizens he rules. He demands obedience and devotion of Oceania's citizens; in fact, he insists that they love him more than they love anyone else, even their own families. At the same time, he inspires fear and paranoia. His loyal followers are quick to betray anyone who seems to be disloyal to him. Through technology, he is even able to monitor the activities of people who are alone in their homes or offices. Of course, he doesn't really exist, as is clear from the way O'Brien dodges Winston's questions about him. His image is just used by the people in power to intimidate the citizens of Oceania. *His image is everywhere, watching over everybody, simultaneously inspiring the love and fear that assure the perpetuation of the totalitarian state.*

He is an acquaintance of Winston's who runs a small antique shop and rents Winston a small room above it. Winston and Julia do not realize he is actually a cold, devious man and a member of the Thought Police. He is responsible for Winston and Julia's eventual arrest. *He represents the impossibility of finding safety or privacy in a totalitarian society.*

He is the great enemy of Big Brother, and former Party leader, now the head of an underground conspiracy to overthrow the Party. Winston fears him yet is fascinated by him as well. *This "Enemy of the People" is not only a convenient scapegoat but occasionally becomes the focus of hero worship for someone rebellious like Winston. However, his actual existence is dubious, making rebellion in Oceania a mere fantasy.*

A pretty woman with dark hair and freckles, she is basically a simple woman who doesn't worry about the revolutionary implications of her actions; she does what she does because it feels good and right. When they are caught, it is Julia who insists that her love for Winston cannot be destroyed, but she betrays Winston more quickly than he betrays her (at least, according to O'Brien), and when they finally meet again she is indifferent to him. *This dark-haired 26-year-old woman projects the image of a Party zealot, but secretly revels in her sexual escapades. Leading a double life comes naturally to Julia, an employee of the Ministry of Truth's fiction department. She sees the Party as an impediment to her unbridled sensual enjoyment of life, rather than as a malignant destroyer of humanity. She has never known any other system of government and therefore simply seeks to break the rules when she can. She is attracted to Winston because she can sense the rebelliousness in him as well. But it is Julia's lack of deeper convictions that makes her so easy for the Party to break when she and Winston are captured and tortured. Unlike Winston, she does not harbor abstract moral or intellectual principles. She lives strictly for the moment. When Julia surrenders in the face of persecution, she can never regain her rebellious instinct.

Winston's wife. She was a tall, fair-haired girl, and, according to Winston, remarkably vulgar and stupid. Technically, he is still married to her, though they've lost track of each other. They parted ways about ten or eleven years before, after only fifteen months of marriage, when they realized that she could not get pregnant by him. The Party has declared that the only reason for marriage is procreation, and in fact it is illegal to have sex simply for pleasure. Therefore, there was no reason for Winston and Katharine to stay together. The Party does not believe in divorce, just separation, so Winston and Katharine just sort of drifted apart. Readers only see Katharine through Winston's memory of her, and her main purpose in the novel is to show how the Party destroys love, sex, and loyalty between husband and wife.

O'Brien is a member of the Inner Party. He is a large, burly, and brutal-looking man, and yet Winston thinks he has a certain charm and civility. Winston suspects he is very intelligent and may share his subversive views of society. When O'Brien reveals that he does have revolutionary thoughts, Winston is excited to go with him to a secret underground meeting led by Emmanuel Goldstein. The group aims to overthrow the Party. Winston does not realize that O'Brien is secretly loyal to the Inner Party and that the secret underground group is simply a set-up by the Party to detect potential subversives. O'Brien betrays Winston and becomes his interrogator and torturer. It is he who reveals to Winston that the true, ugly purpose of the Party is to stay in power for power's sake. Like the Party, O'Brien cares for one thing only: power. He has no personal ambition, however. He only needs and wants to be a part of the Party's power structure. As a torturer, O'Brien reveals himself to be extremely intelligent and sophisticated. His relationship with Winston is complicated and twisted. O'Brien seems to respect Winston, and he enjoys their conversations because Winston is a challenge. O'Brien and Winston ought to hate each other; after all, it's O'Brien's job to brainwash Winston and thereby destroy him. Still, they are drawn to each other out of respect and mutual understanding. O'Brien's surname has overtones of an Irish Catholic priest, and the comparison to a Jesuit father confessor is particularly apt. Throughout the novel, Winston finds himself somehow drawn to this large-bodied Inner Party official who seems to know something everyone else does not. But Winston is fooled by O'Brien's pretence of being involved in a plot with Goldstein. O'Brien has placed his powerful intellect completely in the service of the Party, and he uses a mixture of pain and paternal reproofs to reshape Winston's mind away from a tendency toward "thoughtcrime." O'Brien is the personal embodiment of the Party's implacable, permanent rule.

Old man is a prole who lives near Winston. He remembers a lot about the past, but only insignificant snippets of his own life, so he can't answer Winston's pressing questions, such as, "Was life better then than it is now?" Winston describes him as an ant who can't see the bigger picture.

Winston's neighbor, Tom Parson, is a representative of the proletariat, or working class. His children, like children in Nazi Germany belong to scout-like organizations sponsored by the government. They wear uniforms and are encouraged to betray their parents to the authorities should they see any signs of disloyalty. His wife, Mrs. Parsons, is about thirty but looks much older because she lives in constant fear of her own children. Tom Parsons, age 35, is sweaty, fat, pink-faced and fair-haired. He is also not very bright, a zealous man who worships the Party. Eventually, his daughter turns him in for Thought crime because he says "Down with the Party" in his sleep. He tells Winston he is grateful he was turned in before his terrible thoughts became conscious.

A heavyset neighbor of Winston's, he watches her singing to herself as she hangs out the laundry. She is a symbol of the future, representing the spirit of the proletariat that cannot be crushed.

Orwell named his central character Winston Smith after Winston Churchill the Prime Minister of England during World War II; he also gave him the most common British last name, Smith. A thirty-nine-year-old man who works in the Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith is fairly ordinary. His heroism is heartfelt, not out of false notions of rebellion for the sake of power and glory. Because of the visceral nature of his actions, he acts in a foolhardy manner. For example, he keeps a diary in order to record events as he experiences them, even though he is very likely to get caught by the Thought Police. Similarly, he rents the room above a junk shop to use as a love nest with Julia despite the obvious risks. Finally, Winston trusts O'Brien, not suspecting that he is a loyal member of the Inner Party who is trying to entrap him. When he is captured and tortured, Winston continues his defiance as long as possible. He has a strange respect for his torturer, O'Brien, and seems to enjoy their battle of intellect, ideas, and wills. Indeed, he has been thinking about and fascinated by O'Brien for years, even dreaming about him. In a way, he seems happy to be confronting him at last. It is difficult to justify calling the protagonist of George Orwell's 1984 a "hero" in the larger sense of that term. In this classic vision of a totalitarian future, Winston Smith's acts of defiance are intellectual, sexual and highly personal. From the start, doom hangs over this malcontent 39-year-old employee of the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth. There is no real way for him to translate his rebellion into a broader political context in the dismal London, capital of Oceania, where he lives. Winston's awareness that he cannot hide from the ruling Party comes through in the opening passages of the novel. He sees posters of Big Brother in the hallway of his apartment building and then enters his flat to adjust his telescreen, which delivers constant propaganda, monitors his activities, and cannot be turned off. Winston trudges through his daily activities, editing documents to make them conform to the Party's current version of "reality," while trying to summon up clear memories of his past. In his dreams, he visualizes a "Golden Country" of peace and serenity. Acutely aware of his physical ugliness, he fantasizes about the possibility of an uprising led by the traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. He is alienated from colleagues like Syme and Parsons, whose differing commitments to orthodoxy nauseate him. It is Winston's daring to reach out to two other people, Julia and O'Brien, which proves his undoing. His initial distaste for Julia's apparent sexlessness is swept away when he enters into a passionate love affair with the rebellious young girl. But the pair are no match for the sinister power behind O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, who turns out not to be the secret reformer Winston had hoped for. Winston is reduced to a shell of a human being through massive brainwashing and torture, finally conceding his love for Big Brother. The essence of Winston's character is his secret, treasured individuality. Once he loses his desire to defy the Party, he has lost everything. Rather than growing as a character, he is forced to regress. With Communism on the rise in the post-World War II era, Winston's degradation represented a stark warning to Orwell's readers when this novel was published in 1949.

Syme, who works in the Research Department of the Ministry of Truth, is a small man with dark hair and large eyes. He is helping prepare a new dictionary of Newspeak which will eliminate even more words from the language. He is so smart and straightforward that Winston knows Syme is destined to be purged. Syme's lack of savvy and self-protectiveness irritates Winston because he knows he is loyal to Big Brother. Superficially, Syme appears to be the sort of character the Party would approve. A researcher for the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary, he takes pleasure in destroying language and watching hangings. But his orthodoxy is undercut by an intellect which is too active for the Party's liking. He thinks ahead too much and reads too widely. Early in the book, Winston already recognizes that Syme will be vaporized, and that is what happens to him.

Dead for thirty years, Winston's mother appears only in his dreams of the past. He recalls her as a fair-haired and self-possessed woman. He's not certain what happened to her, but he thinks she was probably murdered in the purges of the 1950s (reminiscent of Joseph Stalin's infamous purges in Russia, in which large numbers of people simply disappeared overnight and were murdered). Winston misses his mother greatly and feels guilty that he survived and she did not. In fact, he has the feeling that somehow she gave her life for his.

A neighbor of Winston Smith, this 35-year-old Party drone participates eagerly and unquestioningly in all the government's programs. But his own beloved daughter ultimately denounces him after hearing him say "Down with Big Brother" in his sleep. Parsons' demise makes a clear point: no one, not even the most faithful slave, can be completely safe in this society.

The sinister, mustachioed face symbolizing the Party's power is completely inescapable in George Orwell's parable of the future. When Winston Smith comes home to Victory Mansions, he feels the eyes of Big Brother on him thanks to posters on every landing in the stairwell. It is the same when he looks at a coin or cigarette packet. Each day, at the end of the Two Minutes Hate session directed at Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, all Party workers return to a state of calm when Big Brother appears on the giant telescreen, illustrating the near-hypnotic hold he exercises over the masses. It is just as Winston reads in Goldstein's The Theory of Oligarchic Collectivism: "[Big Brother's]function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than towards an organization." When Winston is arrested and separated from the corrupting influence of Julia, O'Brien strives to make the rebellious civil servant an empty vessel that will once again surrender to Big Brother's all-consuming love. And in the end, Winston gives in: "He loved Big Brother." Orwell uses this figurehead for tyranny to powerfully illustrate the effect totalitarian government can have on the human spirit.

Orwell's 1984 is set in Oceania, a totalitarian state ruled by a god-like leader named Big Brother who completely controls the citizens down to their very thoughts. Anyone who thinks subversive thoughts can be turned in by spies or by Big Brother, who monitors them through highly sensitive telescreens. If someone does not have the proper facial expression, they are considered guilty of Facecrime, so all emotions must be extremely carefully guarded. It is even possible to commit Thoughtcrime by being overheard talking in one's sleep, which Winston Smith fears will happen to him; it actually happens to his neighbor Tom Parson. Freedom exists only in the proletarian ghetto, where crime and hunger are commonplace. Winston feels he could not live in this ghetto, even though his life is almost as grim as that of the ghetto dwellers. The punishment for even minor crimes is severe, yet people occasionally choose to break the law. The Party knows that people instinctively want to have sex, form loving bonds, and think for themselves instead of accepting unquestioningly whatever the totalitarian government tells them. As long as people choose to exercise free will, the Party must be ever-vigilant against crime and make their punishments severe in order to remain in control.

In totalitarian Oceania, it seems as if everyone is slavishly devoted to Big Brother and believes everything the government tells them. However, as we can understand from Winston's thoughts, all is not as it seems. Some people secretly feel and believe differently from how they behave; of course, they are extremely careful not to betray themselves. Moreover, the Party is in control of all information and revises history, even yesterday's history, to reflect their current version of events. Winston is very much aware of this, because it is his job in the inaccurately named Ministry of Truth to change the records of history. He cannot ignore what he remembers: Oceania was at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia yesterday, and not vice versa. If anyone else remembers differently, they certainly won't say so. Only the old man, a powerless prole who lives on the street, speaks about what really happened in the past, but in short and irrelevant snippets about his personal experiences. It is Winston's need to reconcile what he knows with the Party's version of reality that leads to his downfall. The Party cannot allow people to have a perception of reality that is different from theirs. As Winston writes in his diary, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

In order to remain all-powerful, the Party destroys loyalty between people: co-workers, friends, even family members. Children are encouraged to betray their parents to the state if they suspect them of Thoughtcrimes (thinking something that goes against the Party line). The Party has outlawed sex for pleasure and reduced marriage to an arrangement between a man and woman that exists only for procreation. Sexual urges must be repressed for fear they will lead to love, human connection, and personal loyalty, all of which threaten the Party. Winston believes that love like the love he and Julia share will eventually destroy the Party, but he underestimates the Party's ability to destroy that love and loyalty. Winston and Julia both give in to torture and betray each other. When they are released, their love and loyalty to each other has been destroyed. Because the Party can easily detect Thoughtcrimes, people always act as if they are completely loyal to the Party. No one trusts anyone else completely. Winston makes fatal mistakes when he trusts O'Brien and Charrington, both of whom betray him. His misjudgment is almost understandable, given the subtle cues both give him to indicate that they are fellow subversives. But as it turns out, they are deliberately setting a trap for him and Julia. In the end, no one can be trusted.

1984 is clearly an anti-utopian book. As O'Brien tells Winston, the world he and his comrades have created is "the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined." Instead of being a society that is a triumph of human spirit and creativity, the society the Party has created is full of fear, torment, and treachery that will worsen over time. O'Brien gives Winston an image of the future: a boot stomping on a human face, forever and ever. Such a pessimistic vision of the future serves a purpose, as Orwell knew. He wrote 1984 as a warning in order to make people aware that this type of society could exist if trends such as jingoism, oppression of the working class, and the erosion of language that expresses the vastness of human experience continued. Readers are supposed to see that this is only one possible future, one they must work to avoid. Orwell's anti-utopian vision captured the horrors of World War II and the fears of the cold war in the same way that earlier utopian novels, from British author Thomas More's Utopia to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, captured the hope and self-confidence after the end of the medieval era.

The blind patriotism that fueled the dictatorships of German leader Adolf Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s inspired Orwell to write of Oceania and its leader, Big Brother. Just as the Germans fanatically cheered and revered Hitler, treating him as a beloved father, the citizens of Oceania look up to Big Brother as their protector, who will watch over them just as a real brother would. The huge pictures of Big Brother that can be found everywhere in Oceania are reminiscent of those of Communist leader Mao Tse-tung displayed by the Chinese. As in real totalitarian regimes, the children of Oceania play a large part in maintaining the loyalty and patriotism of the citizens. Just as German children joined the scout-like and militaristic Hitler Youth organization, the children of Oceania enjoy wearing their Junior Spies costumes, marching around, and singing patriotic songs. Orwell depicts how sinister it is for a government to use children to promote their policies when he portrays the Parsons' children as holy terrors, threatening to denounce their parents to the authorities if they don't give in to their childish demands. In the 1960s, the Chinese under Mao would indoctrinate an entire generation of children to be loyal to the state by taking them away from their parents for long periods in order to insure that the government's message could not be contradicted by the children's parents.

There is no better proof of the Party's quest to dominate the mind as well as the body than the existence of the Ministry of Truth, where Winston works. By creating a sort of collective amnesia, wiping out the memory of unpleasant truths and always casting the Party's actions in the best light, the totalitarian government of Oceania can survive the present and ensure its future. The Records Department of the Ministry plays a significant role in this process, destroying or editing books, magazines, films and photographs that contradict the current orthodox Party view of the world. Winston, adept at this work himself, can step back and see how the masses are being manipulated. In fact, he is horrified by it, and his rebellion against the Party is motivated in part by a hunger for objective truth. But the futility of resisting the Party's information control is illustrated by Julia, younger and more politically naïve despite her cynicism. She cannot even remember the fact that four years earlier Oceania had been at war with Eastasia rather than with Eurasia, because the Party has propagandized her into believing that Eastasia was always the enemy. As an observer and chronicler of early 20th-century socialism, Orwell was well aware of the power of propaganda driving the movement, both positively and negatively. In 1984, he shows his disgust with the revisionism and overriding orthodoxy that consumed the Soviet Union under Stalin.

When the state exercises total control over the military, the economy, the press, and the very lives of its citizens, it is no longer possible for the individual to spark a large-scale political rebellion. When Winston and Julia meet with O'Brien, who tempts them with tales of a Brotherhood resisting the Party's hegemony, Winston is eager to believe that such a mass uprising might come someday. But of course, that hope is dashed. So any acts of defiance that he can muster against the state are limited to the personal sphere. These are simple things that someone not living under totalitarianism would take for granted: keeping a diary, renting a room, making love with a girl. But they are cardinal sins for a Party member and ultimately attract the deadly attention of the Thought Police. Orwell shows why in his description of the aftermath of Winston and Julia's lovemaking: "Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act." When personal rebellion is crushed in this world, hope for a grand liberation likewise perishes.

One of Oceania's most distinctive features is its official language, Newspeak. Though only projected to supersede Oldspeak (standard English) by the year 2050, Newspeak reflects the state's desire to reduce the critical thinking abilities of its subjects. Using words like "thoughtcrime" and "doubleplusgood," Newspeak eliminates shades of meaning with the intention of "narrowing the range of thought," as Winston's acquaintance Syme explains. A smaller vocabulary offers less opportunity for political or moral deviation. Also, it enables the Party to cover up horrific crimes or radical shifts in policy by the use of well-known catchphrases. In many respects, Newspeak reflects the concerns Orwell expressed in his famous 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language." There, he gives numerous examples of how jargon can leave people with a distorted sense of reality. Certainly, a society in which leaders babble phrases like "complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism" has come to that sorry state.

The overall atmosphere of 1984 is dreary, depressing and murky. The moments of color and power occur during Party rallies and martial celebrations. Otherwise, life consists of "boiled cabbage," "old flats," and "the sordid swarming life of the streets." The proletarians are obsessed with playing the Lottery and getting drunk. Lacking intellectual stimulation and culture, they are in no position to rebel against the Party. They are led to believe that things have never been any better than at present. Most, except the very oldest, simply swallow the notion that capitalism did nothing but oppress the lower classes. Women and men alike go through life as tiny cogs in a great machine, replaced easily when they die. This inertia is another powerful means of maintaining state control. Orwell's picture of drudgery and inertia was largely adapted from the conditions he saw around him in post-World War II London. It was his fear that a state of perpetual war, such as depicted in 1984, would lead to this becoming a reality throughout Europe and perhaps the world. Soviet Communism promised the liberation of the masses, but its actions more often mirrored the philosophy of Oceania's Party: "WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

The concepts of free enterprise and individual freedom no longer exist in 1984. Only three superpowers remain to dominate a world of hatred, isolation, and fear. Eurasia and Eastasia are two of these superpowers. Oceania, the other, is always at war with one of them. Winston Smith is a 39-year-old employee at the Ministry of Truth, London, located in Oceania. His world is shaped by the Party and its dictator/leader Big Brother, whose face is everywhere on posters captioned "Big Brother Is Watching You." Big Brother controls life in Oceania through the four ministries of Peace, Love, Plenty, and Truth. Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth involves revisions of historical documents and rewrites of news stories to reflect the Party's infallibility. The Party, which carries out government policies in Oceania, rations food, issues clothing, and selects social activities. Both chocolate and tobacco are in short supply during this latest war. Winston's clothing, including his tattered pajamas, is government issued, and his evenings are spent in government-sponsored meetings. War and hatred dominate Oceania, where the Party monitors every move and expression with telescreens, hidden microphones, and spies. The Thought Police, Big Brother's secret militia, help the Party quell any sign of revolt by eliminating all who think or behave in a disloyal fashion. Hate Week intensifies feeling against Emmanuel Goldstein, Enemy of the People, while increasing devotion to Big Brother. The Party also preaches that the proles, the majority, are natural inferiors to be kept in check. The Party, however, does not completely control Winston. He secretly buys an illegal diary in which he writes the heresy "Down With Big Brother." In doing so, he commits the worst offense, "thoughtcrime," a Newspeak term for the "essential crime that contained all others in itself." Many of Winston's thoughts revolve around his attempts to remember various events and people from his childhood, especially his mother who had disappeared years before. Winston tries to investigate the specifics of life in London before the Revolution, but it seems the Party has been successful in eradicating all remnants of daily life in the past. Winston enters into an affair with the free-spirited Julia, a fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth. At the beginning they view their desire for one another as a political act against the Party dominated by hate and suspicion. Since promiscuity among Party members has been forbidden, they view their affair as an act of rebellion. As the affair continues, Winston's feelings for Julia change. Although the couple knows the affair is doomed, they continue to meet secretly in an attic room above a junk shop owned by Mr. Charrington, the man who sold the diary, and later, a coral paperweight, to Winston. The lovers discuss the repressiveness of their lives and the possibility of joining the Brotherhood, the secret underground of Emmanuel Goldstein whose express purpose is to overthrow Big Brother. At work at the Ministry of Truth, Winston is approached by O'Brien, an acquaintance who seems to share his views. After Winston and Julia visit O'Brien at his apartment, he recruits them as members of the Brotherhood and promises to send them a copy of Goldstein's book, which details strategies to destroy Big Brother. Winston pledges to do whatever it takes, including murder and suicide, to erode the power of the Party. The inevitable occurs when Julia and Winston are arrested in their secret room, betrayed by Mr. Charrington, a member of the Thought Police. Winston is taken to the Ministry of Love where he is starved, beaten, and tortured during the next months in an effort to "cure" him. Ironically, his torturer is O'Brien, who confirms his identity as a dedicated Inner Party member. Winston submits after a long struggle when he is taken to the mysterious room 101 and threatened with a cage of hungry rats prepared to devour him. At this point he finally betrays Julia. Soon Winston is released, but he awaits the bullet he knows will extinguish him. He unexpectedly runs into Julia, who admits that she too had betrayed their love. Surprisingly, Winston feels no desire for her, preferring instead to take his usual seat at the Chestnut Street Cafe where he spends another night in his habitual alcoholic stupor. Winston knows that it is only a matter of time before the Party executes him; nevertheless, when the telescreen barks the news of the army's latest victory, he weeps with joy. The Party finally controls Winston, whose defeat is summed up in the final sentence, "He loved Big Brother."

Orwell's 1984 is told in the third person, but the point of view is clearly Winston Smith's. Through his eyes, readers are able to see how the totalitarian society functions, in particular how an individual deals with having illegal thoughts that can be detected easily by spies and telescreens that monitor one's every movement. Because readers are in Winston's head, they make the mistakes he makes in judging people. At one point he looks around a room at work and tells himself he knows just who will be vaporized within the next few years and who will be allowed to live. His perceptions of who is a loyal party member and who is not turn out to be inaccurate, however. In this way, Orwell shows that in a paranoid society, where personal relationships with others are at best only tolerated and at worst illegal, no one can really know his fellow man. Winston is a well-drawn character with clear opinions (clear to the reader, that is; he cannot reveal his opinions to anyone in his society). Often, critics have claimed that these opinions echo George Orwell's. For example, Winston admires the spirit of the proletariat, but looks down on them because they will never have the means or intelligence to change their lives and their government. On the other hand, he admires the sophistication of the wealthy, cultured O'Brien, even though he is an evil character. This may reflect Orwell's own class prejudices, as someone who was far more educated and worldly than most of the people from the economic class in England (the lower middle class).

Written between 1947 and 1948, 1984's original title was 1948, but Orwell changed it so that it would be set in the future, but still be close enough to the present to be frightening. The action takes place in London, which is now part of a country called Oceania. Oceania is one of three world superpowers, and it is continually at war with one of the other two superpowers, Eastasia and Eurasia. Enemies can change overnight and become an ally, although the Party automatically rewrites history when this happens so that no one will remember that circumstances were ever any different. This perpetual state of war consumes most of the state's resources, so city buildings are in a constant state of disrepair. All consumer goods, from food to clothing, are rationed, just as they were in England during World War II. Winston lives in what was once London, now a drab, gray, and decaying urban area.

Orwell was very aware of the power of language, so he has the totalitarian government of the future create a new language called Newspeak. Newspeak is used throughout the book by the citizens of Oceania and explained in detail in an appendix. The language is derived from Standard English and will go through many versions over the years until it reaches its final version in the year 2050. The 1984 version, however, still bears a strong resemblance to English. The basic idea behind Newspeak is to take all words that refer to ideas the Party disagrees with and strip them of their original meaning or eliminate them entirely. The purpose of Newspeak is to narrow the range of ideas that can be expressed, so as the language develops it contains fewer and fewer words. Word forms and grammar are simplified, as is pronunciation, so that eventually the number of readers can be kept to a minimum. Newspeak also contains words to express new ideas, such as oldthink, which means the way people thought before the revolution. Naturally, it has a wicked and decadent connotation. When Newspeak appeared citizens were unable to read about old ideas and express new ones that were counter to what the Party wanted them to think. An entire passage from the Declaration of Independence "We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . ," can be reduced to one word: crimethink. Simplistic slogans replace more complicated ideas. The Party's most famous slogans are "War Is Peace," "Freedom Is Slavery," and "Ignorance Is Strength." Through the device of a fictional language, Orwell is able to point out that language can be misused to mislead people. In creating Newspeak, Orwell was influenced both by political rhetoric that takes the place of substantive communication and advertising lingo that makes ridiculous and vague promises.

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