Background

Nineteen Eighty-Four occurs in Oceania, one of three intercontinental super-states who divided the world among themselves after a global war, in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One", the Oceanian province that "had once been called England or Britain". Posters of the Party leader, Big Brother, bearing the caption BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU dominate the London landscape, while the telescreen (transceiving television) dominates the private and public lives of the populace. The social class system is three-fold: (I) the upper-class Inner Party, (II) the middle-class Outer Party, and (III) the lower-class Proles, the governors, administrators, and workers. As the government, the Party controls the population via four government ministries: the Ministry of Peace, Ministry of Plenty, Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Truth, where protagonist Winston Smith (a member of the Outer Party), works as an editor revising historical records to concord the past to the contemporary party line orthodoxy — that changes daily — and deletes the official existence of politically incorrect people identified as unpersons.

Winston Smith's story begins on 4 April 1984: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen";yet the date is dubitable, because it is what he perceives, given the continual historical revisionism; he later concludes it is irrelevant. Winston'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 fell to civil war and then was integrated to Oceania. Simultaneously, the USSR's annexation of continental Europe established the second superstate of Eurasia. The third superstate, Eastasia, comprises Chinese-dominated east Asia. The three superstates fight a perpetual war for the remaining unconquered lands of the world; they form and break alliances as convenient.

From his childhood (1949–53), Winston remembers the Atomic Wars fought in Europe, western Russia, and North America. It is unclear to him what occurred first — either the Party's civil war ascendance, or the US's British Empire annexation, or the war wherein Colchester was bombed — however, the increasing clarity of his memory and the story of his family's dissolution suggest that the atomic bombings occurred first (the Smiths took refuge in a tube station) followed by civil war featuring "confused street fighting in London itself", and the societal postwar reorganisation, which the Party retrospectively call "the Revolution".

Plot

The story of Winston Smith presents the world in the year 1984, after a global atomic war, via his perception of life in Airstrip One (England or Britain), a province of Oceania, one of the world's three superstates; his intellectual rebellion against the Party and illicit romance with Julia; and his consequent imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and re-education by the Thinkpol in the Miniluv.

Protagonist

Winston Smith is an intellectual, a member of the Outer Party, who lives in the ruins of London, and who grew up in the post–Second World War UK, during the revolution and the civil war with which the Party assumed power. During the civil war, the Ingsoc movement placed him in an orphanage for training and subsequent employment as a civil servant. Yet, his squalid existence is living in a one-room apartment, a subsistence diet of black bread and synthetic meals washed down with Victory-brand gin. His intellectual discontent leads to keeping a journal of negative thoughts and opinions about the Party and Big Brother, which, if discovered by the Thought Police, would warrant death. Moreover, he is fortunate, because the apartment has an alcove, beside the telescreen, where it cannot see him, where he believes his thoughts remain private, whilst writing in his journal: "Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death". The telescreens (in every public area, and the quarters of the Party's members), hidden microphones, and informers permit the Thought Police to spy upon everyone and so identify anyone who might endanger the Party's régime; children most of all, are indoctrinated to spy and inform on suspected thought-criminals — especially their parents.

At the Minitrue, Winston is an editor responsible for the historical revisionism concording the past to the Party's contemporary official version of the past; thus is the Oceania government omniscient. As such, he perpetually rewrites records and alters photographs, rendering the deleted people as unpersons; the original document is incinerated in a memory hole. Despite enjoying the intellectual challenge of historical revisionism, he is fascinated by the true past, and eagerly tries to learn more about it.

Julia

One day, at the Minitrue, whilst Winston is assisting a woman who had fallen, she surreptitiously hands him a note reading "I LOVE YOU"; she is "Julia", a dark-haired mechanic who repairs the ministry's novel-writing machines. Before then, he had loathed her, presuming she was a fanatical member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, given she wears the league's red sash, symbolising puritanical renouncement of sexual intercourse, yet his hostility vanishes upon reading her note. Afterwards, they begin a love affair, meeting first in the country, then in a rented room atop an antiques shop in a proletarian London neighbourhood, where they think themselves safe and alone; unbeknownst to Winston, the Thought Police have discovered their rebellion and had been spying on them for some time.

Later, when Inner Party member O'Brien approaches him, he believes the Brotherhood have communicated with him. Under the pretext of giving him a copy of the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary, O'Brien gives him "the book", The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, said to have been written by Emmanuel Goldstein, leader of the Brotherhood, which explains the perpetual war and the slogans, WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Capture

The Thought Police capture Winston and Julia in their bedroom, to be delivered to the Ministry of Love for interrogation, and Charrington, the shop keeper who rented the room to them, reveals himself an officer in the Thought Police. After a prolonged regimen of systematic beatings and psychologically draining interrogation by Party ideologues, O'Brien tortures Winston with electroshock, telling him it will cure him of his insanity — his manifest hatred for the Party. In long, complex conversation, he explains that the Inner Party's motivation: power as an end unto itself, achieved by abolishing the family, the orgasm, and the libido — thus eliminating every obstacle to loving Big Brother and Ingsoc in a ruthless, anti-intellectual society without art, literature, and science to distract from devotion to the Party.

Asked if the Brotherhood exists, O'Brien replies that Winston will never know whilst alive; it will remain an insoluble riddle in his mind. During a torture session, his imprisonment in the Miniluv is explained: "There are three stages in your reintegration," said O'Brien. "There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance" of the Party's reality; afterwards, Winston will eventually be killed.

Confession and betrayal

During political re-education, Winston admits to and confesses his crimes and to crimes he did not commit, implicating others and his beloved Julia. In the second stage of re-education for reintegration, O'Brien makes Winston understand he is "rotting away". Countering that the Party cannot win, Winston admits: "I have not betrayed Julia". O'Brien understands that despite his criminal confession and implication of Julia, Winston has not betrayed her that he "had not stopped loving her; his feeling toward her had remained the same".

One night in his cell Winston suddenly awakens, screaming: "Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!", whereupon O'Brien rushes in, not to interrogate but to send him to Room 101, the Miniluv's most feared room where resides the worst thing in the world. There, the prisoner's greatest fear is forced on them; the final step in political re-education: acceptance. Winston's primal fear of rats is imposed upon him as a wire cage holding hungry rats that will be fitted to his face. When the rats are about to devour his face, he frantically shouts: "Do it to Julia!" - in his moment of fear, ultimately relinquishing his love for Julia. The torture ends and Winston is reintegrated to society, brainwashed to accept the Party's doctrine and to love Big Brother.

During Winston's re-education, O'Brien always understands Winston's thoughts, it seems that he always speaks what Winston is thinking at the time.

Re-encountering Julia

After reintegration to Oceanian society, Winston encounters Julia in a park where each admits having betrayed the other and that betrayal changes a person:

"I betrayed you," she said baldly.
"I betrayed you," he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
"Sometimes," she said, "they threaten you with something — something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself."
"All you care about is yourself," he echoed.
"And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer."
"No," he said, "you don't feel the same."

Throughout, a score recurs in Winston's mind:

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me—

The lyric is an ambiguous bastardization of a Glen Miller lyric, which in form has many sinister

Capitulation and conversion

Winston Smith, now an alcoholic reconciled to his impending execution, has accepted the Party's depiction of life, and sincerely celebrates a news bulletin reporting Oceania's decisive victory over Eurasia. The metaphoric bullet had entered his brain, at that moment ". . . he had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother".

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