Nineteen Eighty Four

Nineteen Eighty Four written by George Orwell is a novel which portrays the life of people living under the tyranny of party in absolute power in a fictional state of Oceania. It revolves around the life of a common man, Winston Smith-the protagonist of the story.

Winston is a sincere, thoughtful and intellectual person working in the Ministry of Truth. His job was to re-write old news articles to exaggerate the Party’s glories. He represented a common man belonging to the Outer Party. The society in Oceania was divided into three classes-Inner Party, Outer Party and Proletarians. Inner Party members enjoyed the highest degree of freedom and were supplied with high quality authentic goods and food. On the other hand Outer Party members experienced a comparatively low standard of living and were forced upon with strict rules. Adding to their misery, they were given goods of substandard quality and were under continuous surveillance from the police patrols. The Proletarians constituted the major part of the society and were termed as unwanted.

Another character in the story, named Julia, was a young, attractive girl who worked for the Anti-Sex League. In spite of knowing that love was a crime according the Party rules, she fell for Winston. Moreover, from Orwell’s description of the character we infer that she was a defiant of the Party since a long time as she had physical relationship with many other men.

O’Brien a middle aged man belonged to Inner Party and worked in the Ministry of Love. Winston believed O’Brien was a follower of Brotherhood- an alliance headed by Goldstein that was believed to contain people who were against the Party and were involved in a conspiracy against the BIG BROTHER. However, this was a faint idea and no satisfying description is given to prove its existence. Proving his belief wrong, O’Brien turned out to be a leader of Thought Police who later on caught him with Julia. Both were processed and executed later.

The leader of the ruling Party, publicly known as BIG BROTHER, was portrayed everywhere on the buildings and other places by using big posters that were marked with the tagline BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU just to instigate a sense of terror among the people. No reference has been given in the novel to prove the existence of BIG BROTHER.

Orwell has very creatively named the objects in the novel.eg. The various ministries under the Party rule, named as Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Love, Ministry of Peace and Ministry of Plenty, function quite ironical to their names. Ministry of Love deals with torturing and executing people. Ministry of Truth manipulates the news articles to be used for the Party propaganda. Ministry of Peace deals with war and the Ministry of Plenty deals with ration and other resources provided to people.

The inhabitants had no privacy. Every house contained a big telescreen through which the police maintained surveillance over citizens. The police is named as THOUGHTPOLICE or THINKPOL which can even determine the crimes committed in thoughts and punished the thought criminals with execution or death. The people in Oceania didn’t have any right to exercise any kind of freedom or resistance against the party. Anyone found doing it was immediately executed.

 A newly introduced language, called Newspeak was used for party affairs.

Orwell has also inculcated various instances to depict the oppressive rule of the Party. A two-minute hate was done regularly in which Goldstein, the enemy of the Party was shown in a film to be abused by all the citizens and to maintain the spirit of loyalty towards the party.

Words such as DOUBLETHINK, MEMORY HOLE and THOUGHTCRIME depict the creative and imaginative side of the author.

All in all, every character and object used in the story is appropriately described which makes the story interesting for the reader. In modern age of liberalism and equality, this novel doesn’t holds much importance when seen from a political viewpoint but can be somewhat related to a communist one party rule in China.