1984 by George Orwell - summary

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984 (1949)

By George Orwell

Entry 1

The story starts with a man by the name of Winston Smith who is aged 39 and is a member of the Outer Party. The society of Oceania is described, it seems like a contry under martial law. Everywhere there are large posters of Big Brother, who is the ruler of Oceania the posters have propergandial messages and I think that they are being used so that the repetition of seeing these things will brain wash the people, and make them think kindly towards Big Brother.

Winston lives in a very old flat on the 7th floor of Victory Mansions. He works at the Ministry of Truth or Minitrue as it is called in Newspeak a language made by Big Brother, it is in an enormous pyramid shaped structure which towers above the other buildings in London. There are three other Ministries housed in similar buildings, they are the Ministry of Peace, Ministry of Plenty and the Ministry of Love.

Everyone in the Outer Party has a telescreen in their home, which has propaganda on it all day, and the Thought Police can also watch its Party members through these devices. The Thought Police make sure that everyone follows the rules and never thinks anything bad about Big Brother.

There life seems to be very dull and doesn't have much excitement in it, it says that luxury is having a drink of Victory gin and the main challenge is trying to smoke a Victory cigarette without the tobacco falling out. This book was written in 1953 but it seems slightly similar to a communist Russia, were the people do not have a real say in anything at all and products are second rate, but this book has taken that idea a step further by not letting the people have any say at all and they even take away the one thing that people can claim as their own and that is their thoughts.

Winston gets a book so that he can keep a diary, and his first entry is "April 4th 1984". He has a place in his flat where he can write without being watched by the telescreen. He had the book for quite a while before he started writing in it, the first thing he writes about is his visit to the cinema, where he watched the usual war film.

It seems a little pathetic that the highlight of his day is to keep a diary documenting his mundane life and the reason he is doing this is to rebel against society, but it does not seem very rebelious at all. But he probably knows that he will eventually be caught, but that shows courage that he is willing to take the risk.

During the two minutes in which everyone chanted "B-B!" signifying Big Brother. Winston chanted with the them,but he did not like it, and a man called O'Brien saw his facial expression, Winston knew that O'Brien thought the same as him. this shows that there are others with his views against Big Brother but they have to stay in the dark so they don't get in trouble.

At the end of the day Winston was writing in his book, and then when he looked down at it he found that he had written "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" five times in large capital letters.He did this because his subniminal thoughts had surfaced through the book. He had just commited a Thought Crime, so that ment that the Thought Police would come and arrest him in the night. He gets a knock on the Door, it seems to be the thought police, but when he opens it he finds that it is only a neighbor needing help with her plumbing.

At Minitrue Winston's job was to change history, he changed the predictions that Big Brother had made so that it seemed like the predictions correspond with the present. I think that the this changing of newspaper article so that it seems that Big Brother are always right, this demonstrates a sort of communist society were the media is sencored, I think that Orwell was basing this book on the drepression and the Communist Russia. There was a public hanging once a month, which was a source of entertainment for some and Most goods were also rationed and coupons were required for clothes and other important things.

The children are shown to be strange and they showed no respect for their parents Winston's neighbor, Mrs. Parsons, was in afraid of her children. They also went to see public hangings. There are 2 other nations in the world Eurasian which Oceania was at war with and Eastasia with whom Oceania has an alliance.

When ever he put away his diary in the drawer, he would place a small grain of dust on the book, so that if it were moved he would know.

The only way to escape the world is to sleep, and when Winston is sleeping, he dreams of when he was little and he is with his mother and his sister. But how can Winston be sure that his childhood memories are accurate? Because Big Brother change the past to suit them how are you supose to know if the memories are accurate. He had another dream about a girl which he works with. She is coming towards him across a field and she tears off her clothes and flings them aside, Winston is not that intreasted in the naked woman, but more the fact that she threw of her clothes, which was an act of freedom. It was as if she was putting Big Brother, the Party and the Thought Police all aside and just living how humans wee ment to live.

He is woken up by the telescreen to do his exercise before work. It was time to get up and do his physical exercises before going to work. While doing the exercises, Winston, was trying to think back to his early childhood. This is when he thinks that if Big Brother control the past who can he know if his memories are true.

The telescreen tells Winston to exercise harder and the voice was saying that he shoul do it for the men in the war.

Entry 2

We meet one of Winstons friends Syme who works in the Research Department. He is one of the people trying to make the Newspeak Dictionary. The Dictionary will take years to complete, but they are trying to get rid of Oldspeak and replace it eith Newspeak by 2050. By that time, not a single human being will be alive who could understand Oldspeak, except perhaps the proletariat. Syme says that proles are not human beings. They have an existence outside the Party, but are still controlled, to a lesser extent, by it. Winston is depressed by this idea that the great literary works, Shakespeare, Milton etc. will be destroyed, and will exist only in Newspeak versions. They are introducing Newspeak so that people can not think bad things towards Big Brother and a though crime will not be able to happen because negative words will be out of their vocabulary.

When Winston looks around the canteen he notices how ugly everyone looked, all dressed in their blue overalls. This makes you think because the posters feature people that are young, beautiful and desirable, but when Winston looks around he sees a massive contradiction in what he sees in the posters and what he sees around him.
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There is always background noise in which a mixture of propaganda and music are played. This sort of system is still occouring today in North Korea were there are speaker on every street were people all stop and face the flag and then listen to properganda. You can hardly say that Orwell could see into the future but you can say that he was a visionary and he must have got a lot of his ideas from the second world war

This is when his paranoya starts, when he sees the brown haired girl who was featured ...

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