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NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
1984 is possibly the definitive dystopian novel, set in a world beyond our imagining. A world where totalitarianism
really is total, all power split into three roughly equal groups - Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania. 1984 is set in
Oceania, which includes the United Kingdon, where the story is set, known as Airstrip One in 1984.
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Winston Smith is a middle-aged, unhealthy character, based loosely on Orwell's own frail body, an underling of the
ruling oligarchy, The Party. The Party has taken early 20th century totalitarianism to new depths, with each person
subjected to 24 hour surveillance and where people's very thoughts are controlled to ensure purity of the oligarchial
system in place. Figurehead of the system is the omnipresent and omnipotent Big Brother.
But Winston believes there is another way.
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1984 joins Winston as he sets about another day, where his job is to change history by changing old newspaper
records to match with the new truth as decided by the Party. "He who controls the past, controls the future" is a
Party slogan to live by and it gives Winston his job, but Winston cannot see it like that. Barely old enough to recall
a time when things were different, Winston sets out to expose the Party for the cynically fraudulent organisation it
is. He is joined by Julia, a beautiful young woman, much in contrast with Winston physically, but equally sickened
by the excesses of her rulers.
You will meet many recognisable characters, themes and words which have become part of our everyday life as you
read 1984. Where did Big Brother first appear? Certainly not on Australian TV! Written in Orwell's inimitable
journalistic style, 1984 is a tribute to a man who saw the true dangers of Lord Acton's statement: "Power corrupts;
absolute power corrupts absolutely."
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Characters
Winston Smith – The main protagonist of Orwell‟s 1984. He resents the authoritarian regime of the Party and tries
to rebel, but is finally crushed in body and soul.
Julia – Winston‟s girlfriend. She also starts out with a strident anti-party stand and is suppressed in the same way as
Winston is.
O‟Brien – a prominent member of the Inner Circle of the Party. He traps Winstoninto betraying his unorthodox
views and presides over his torture and degradation.
Mr. Charrington – a member of the powerful thought police, who disguises himself as a “prole” and entraps
Winston.
Ampleforth – One of Winston‟s colleagues at the Ministry of Truth, whose job is to “rewrite” old poems in keeping
with Party ideology. He is arrested for thoughtcrimes.
Parsons – Another colleague of Winston‟s who despite stupid and unquestioning adherence to the Party line is still
arrested.
Symes – Colleague of Winston‟s who is executed.
Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford – three original leaders of the Party who were later denouncedas traitors and
executed. Emmanuel Goldstein – The number One Enemy of the People according to the Party. He is believed to
have written a subversive book and to head a mysterious anti-party organization called The Brotherhood.
Big Brother – the symbol of Party dominance. Big Brother‟s precence is everywhere on posters, on cigarette covers,
on coins and on telescreens.
Part I
Chapter 1
Orwell‟s 1984 opens in London, now a part of the country Oceania. The whole globe is divided into three countries,
Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia all perpetually at war with each other. The leading protagonist Winston Smith enters
his flat in the dingy building ironically named Victory Mansions and is immediately conscious of the poster of “Big
Brother” with the inscription “Big Brother is Watching You.” The “Party” has taken over all aspects of life and is
intent on eradicating individuality. Winston is painfully aware of the telescreen, which is both a receiver and
transmitter at the same time. It incessantly relays messages from the Party and simultaneously allows the dreaded
“thought police” to tune into the activities of any individual at any given time. The administration is divided among
four Ministries- the Ministry of Truth, which deals with news, entertainment, education and fine arts, the Ministry
of Love which maintains law and order, the Ministry of Peace which wages war and the Ministry of Plenty which
handles economic affairs. The very vocabulary of the people was under Party Control; a system called “newspeak”
was encouraged. One of the most dreaded words in the arsenal of Newspeak was the most heinous offence
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according to the Party – that of “thoughtcrime” which was sure to be punished by the Thought police. The slogans
of Newspeak are “War is Peace” Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength.”
Winston pretended to toe the official line so as to dodge the thought police but terrifyingly, the pretence often
spilled over into reality, so that he did not always know if he actually hated or adored Big Brother. On this particular
day, Winston was planning to indulge in a clandestine activity which would mean at least a concentration camp if
discovered- he was going to keep a diary. He enters the date – April 4, 1984 and then realizes that he was
completely stuck for words. He finally puts down a long monologue about the film he had watched the day before, a
war propaganda film positively encouraging the audience to delight in sights of macabre, mindless slaughter.
From his memories of the film, Winston‟s thoughts move on to a daily ritual, which was conducted in each office,
the “two minute Hate.” During this process, the telescreens broadcast pictures of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Number
One “Enemy of the People” according to the Party. Goldstein had originally been a founding member of the Party
and was supposed to have later betrayed the Party‟s ideals and joined up with Eurasia or Eastasia to overthrow
Oceania. He was rumored to have written an inflammatory work, usually referred to just as “the book” and to be the
Head of a dangerous subversive group called “The Brotherhood”. During the “Hate” people watched the speeches
of Goldstein and reacted in violent anger. Winston himself often started out by dissembling his emotions, but the
effect of the collective frenzy was such that after about thirty seconds, he found himself actually feeling the power
of Hate.
However, sometimes Winston felt that he sympathized with Goldstein and hated Big Brother. During that morning‟s
Hate, he had been especially attracted to two individuals, one, a girl who worked in the Fiction Department,
operating a “novel writing machine” about whom he had both sexual and violent fantasies. She was a member of the
Ant-Sex league, sex also being something not much encouraged by the Party. The other person was O‟Brien, a high
official in the Party, but with whom Winston felt a shared complicity of anti-party sentiment. He had the feeling that
he and O‟Brien had the same dislike towards the party, which neither of them dared to express openly. As he
recollected the ritual of Hate, Winston almost automatically writes “Down with Big Brother” repeatedly in his
diary. He does this with the fatalistic conviction that even if he did not write it down, he had already committed
thoughtcrime and the thought police would get him sooner or later. As if in confirmation of this, there is a knock at
the door, which Winston is convinced heralds the arrival of the thought police.
Chapter 2
When Winston opens the door, he is relieved to see that it is not the thought police, but Mrs. Parsons, the wife of a
neighbor who had come to ask for help in unblocking the kitchen sink. Mr. Parsons, Winston reflects was the kind
of dull unquestioning adherent who ensured the survival of the Party even more than the thought police. Whatever
the Party said was accepted with dog like obedience by Mr. Parsons and his kind.
Winston follows the woman into her flat and tries to unblock the sink. This flat, like Winston‟s own is dingy and
miserable, clearly indicating the appalling living conditions under the Party‟s regime. While in the Parson‟s flat,
Winston is horrified by the behavior of their two children. Both the boy and the girl have been indoctrinated by
Party organizations like The Spies and the Youth League. They play with toy weapons of war and dance around
Winston calling him “Eurasian”, traitor, “thoughtcriminal” etc. Winston reflects that within a few years they would
not be playing, they would be holding real weapons instead of toys and would turn in their own parents to the
thought police if they displayed any signs of unorthodoxy or nonconformity. These children who turned in their
own parents as traitors were regularly lauded in the newspapers, the term used to refer to them was “child-hero”.
The children are furious because their father has not been able to take them to see the “hanging”. Occurring about
once a month, it was a ritual in which war prisoners were hung as a public spectacle and was a popular
entertainment among schoolchildren.
Winston manages to fix the sink and while leaving is hit on the neck with a catapult fired by the boy. He ponders on
the fact that the Party training, on the one hand makes children into ungovernable savages while on the other hand it
also makes them devoted, fanatical and disciplined adherents of the Party.
On the way back to his own flat, Winston sees the inscriptions announcing INGSOC or English Socialism of which
Newspeak was the vocabulary. He remembers an event, which happened nearly seven years ago – an unknown
voice had told him “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness”. He had later become convinced that it
was O‟Brien who had spoken to him, though he had no way of confirming this.
From the telescreen in his flat there comes an announcement about a great victory in the battle with Eurasia, which
as Winston correctly anticipates, is the prelude to an announcement of further food rationing. This is followed by
the National Song “Oceania, „tis of thee” during which one was supposed to stand at attention, but which Winston
does not do.
He looks at his diary, in which he has repeatedly written “Down with Big Brother” and thinks that he is already a
dead man. Once he has committed thoughtcrime, the only question is how long it would take the thought police to
catch up with him. But once he has resigned himself to being practically already dead, staying alive as long as
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possible and rebelling in however small a way become matters of immensely significant proportions.
He wanted to communicate with a different age, whether of the past or the future where men were individual or
free. He wanted to carry on in some small measure, the human heritage. As a beginning of this communication, he
writes in his diary addressing that unknown age “from the age of doublethink, from the age of solitude, of Big
brother, of uniformity – Greetings.”
Chapter3
Winston dreamt of his mother that night. He dreamt of his mother and sister who along with his father whom he
remembered more vaguely had been exterminated in one of the famous Party “purges”. He realized that in some
unfathomable way, his mother and sister had died for him; they had died so that he could go on living. Always in
his dreams, he saw them in a deep grave or well and he felt that they were there so that he could be up on the
surface.
He also felt that his mother‟s love for him and his awareness of her death as a tragedy belonged to a bygone age
when words like love and tragedy had some real meaning just as human individuals possessed some real dignity.
Then it was natural for members of a family to stand together and love one another, now there was only fear,
selfishness and suspicion.
Another landscape entered Winston‟s dream, a sunny pastoral land with a brook which he always felt he had seen
somewhere in childhood but could ever place accurately. The girl he had noticed at work during yesterdays‟ Hate
came into the landscape and flung off her clothes in a grand gesture. Her body was beautiful, but it was not her body
that Winston looked at in his dream, it was the symbolism of the gesture that attracted him. He felt that in flinging
away her clothes like that, she was also throwing away all the shackles imposed by the Party and by Big Brother. He
woke up from his dream with the word “Shakespeare” on his lips, symbolizing human potential.
But the reality to which he woke up was a very grim one. He had to join in compulsory exercises following the
instructions given by a woman from the telescreen. As he mechanically went through the routine, his mind went
back to the past; trying to remember something of the childhood he had dreamt about.
He vaguely remembered that the Area where he lived which was now called Airstrip One was once called England
though London had always been called London. And there were memories of a time when there was no war, when
the first bomb had fallen and his family had taken shelter in a cellar.
Oceania was at war with Eurasia now, but just four years ago, these two had formed an alliance against Eastasia.
Winston remembered this clearly, but it made no difference what he or any other individual remembered, for the
Party said that Eurasia had always been the Enemy and what the Party said was the Truth. This, thought Winston,
was the most frightening aspect of the party regime-that it could obliterate memory, turn lies into Truth and alter the
Past. The Party slogan was “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”
This was where “doublethink” came into play, minds were trained to hold contradictory positions simultaneously
and unquestioningly- for example you had to believe at one and the same time that Democracy was impossible and
that the Party was the guardian of democracy. Winston could remember a time when the Party did not rule, when
Big Brother had not become all-powerful; but according to the Party they had always existed and this lie was
repeated ad infinitum until it “became” the truth. This, Winston thought was a far more terrible weapon in the hands
of the Party than torture or execution.
While he was lost in his thoughts, Winston‟s body had been performing the exercises routinely. Now he is suddenly
startled out of his reverie by the instructress from the telescreen addressing him directly. Shouting at him as “6079
Smith W” the woman tells him to pay more attention and recalls him to the regimented present where each man is a
coded number and the telescreens spy on every activity.
Chapter 4
In this chapter we meet Winston engaged in his routine job at the Ministry of Truth. The instructions he receives for
the day‟s business are in newspeak, which appear to be senseless gibberish, but are soon revealed to carry very
sinister meanings indeed. What Winston and his colleagues in the Records office, a section of the Ministry of Truth
are involved in is no less than a stupendous, perpetual project of recreating the past. For example, an earlier edition
of The Times Newspaper had reported that the army would be active on the Indian front while there would be peace
on the African border. What had actually happened was the reverse. Now, Winston had to create a fresh copy of the
Times, bearing the earlier date, but with the facts “updated”. All copies of the earlier edition would be destroyed
and anyone who went looking for records would find the Party‟s claims fully substantiated by the documents. This
process applied to all written documents, there was an employee named Ampleforth whose sole occupation was to
produce ideologically correct, “updated” versions of earlier poems. Another colleague dealt with erasing all records
of persons who had been “vaporized” (that is, executed) by the Party, so that according to records, they had never
existed at all, so of course they could not have been killed. All branches of writing, from poetry to biography, from
alphabet books to dictionaries were constantly remade in this manner. There was even a special section dealing with
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the production of updated pornography, to which only the producers and the members of the Party‟s inner circle had
access.
One of Winston‟s jobs for this particular day was of extra significance as it dealt directly with one of Big Brother‟s
speeches. In newspeak, the instructions said that Big Brother‟s speech had been misreported and referred to
“unpersons” and had to be rewritten and submitted to higher authorities for editing. The job was so delicate that
Winston knew he would not be the only one working on it. He thought that Tillotson, a man who sat next to him as
well as a few others would all be producing different versions, which would finally be edited, and the best piece
selected. In the speech under review, Big Brother had referred to an organization called the FFCC, praised it and
singled out an official, Withers, for special commendation. Now the organization no longer existed and Withers was
an “unperson.” No one usually knew what happened to those declared as “unpersons,” public executions or trials of
political offenders were spectacles which happened only once every two years or so. Usually such people just
disappeared.
Now Winston had to rewrite Big Brother‟s speech without any reference to FFCC or Withers. He decides to invent
a totally new person as the subject of the speech and names this imaginary character Comrade Oglivy. Of course,
Comrade Oglivy did not exist, but once Big Brother‟s speech about him was placed in the newspapers with a couple
of faked photographs his existence would become indisputable fact. Winston writes the speech in which Big Brother
pays glowing tribute to the heroic life and glorious death of Comrade Oglivy who is held up as an example for all
citizens to follow. He is presented as a devoted Party adherent, with no vices, a brave soldier and a noble martyr.
Winston regards his draft of the speech with an artist‟s satisfaction. Though he is almost sure that Tillotson was
working on the same piece he feels sure his idea would be the acceptable one. He reflects on the ease with which
real people can be made “unpersons” and non-existent ones be made real. Comrade Oglivy was a figment of
Winston‟s imagination, but once the speech was placed on the records he would be as solid a historical figure “as
Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.”
Chapter 5
During the lunch break, Winston meets up with a colleague, Syme who is a specialist in newspeak and is involved
in compiling the Eleventh Dictionary of Newspeak, which will be the definitive edition. Syme is zealously attached
to the party, enjoys the hangings as a spectacle is devoted to Big Brother and Winston knows he would denounce
anyone to the thought police if he suspected them of unorthodoxy. Yet he feels that Syme himself is the sort of
person who is in danger of becoming an “unperson”, of being vaporized as he knows too much, has read too many
books and is too intelligent. The Party doesn‟t really like that sort of person and they are in constant danger.
Over lunch, Syme discusses Newspeak with the fervor of a fanatic. He tells Winston that it is a misconception to
think that Newspeak consists mainly in inventing new words. An equally if not more important process is the
destruction of many existing words. The fundamental idea is to cut language down to the bone and Syme describes
this butchering of words with a savage relish. For example, if you have the word “good” then you do not need
another word “bad” to express its opposite- “ungood” will do the job. And you don‟t need words like Excellent or
Splendid; instead you can say “plusgood” or “doubleplusgood”. By the time the Eleventh Dictionary is completed,
Syme claims, Old Speak will be totally eradicated. All the old authors, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton etc will exist
only in their newspeak versions.
Slowly the whole sinister significance of the project begins to sink in – it is not just language that is being
destroyed, the attempt is to annihilate consciousness and thought itself. Once newspeak has taken over completely,
thoughtcrimes will be impossible, because there will be no language to express rebellious thoughts in. Even
doublethink slogans like “freedom is slavery” will be unnecessary, as the concept of freedom will be forgotten.
Syme tells Winston that he is guilty of actually thinking in Oldspeak and then translating it into the new idiom, what
is ideally required is that the thought process itself take place in Newspeak. Winston has a hard time trying to avoid
exhibiting his distaste of the destructive process this implies and is saved by the arrival of Parsons.
Parsons unlike Syms does not display the slightest gleam of intelligence, his line is stolid obedience and Winston
marks him out as one of the survivors. He collects some money from Winston as a subscription to conducting Hate
Week in their building and proceeds to boast about the “achievements” of his horrible children. They had tracked a
man down and handed him over to the thought police as a traitor on the sole ground that he was wearing strange
looking shoes and had set fire to a woman‟s clothes because she wrapped a parcel in a poster of big Brother. Finally,
they had been eavesdropping at their parent‟s bedroom door with a listening device to see if any thoughtcrime
remarks were made. All of these are presented by Parsons as exploits of which he is very proud!
At this point he sees the girl he had dreamt about observing him from a nearby table. He is uncomfortably aware
that she has been looking at him keenly for a couple of days and momentarily wonders if she was a member of the
though police. Even if that was not the case, she could still be an amateur spy, which was dangerous enough. He
leaves the lunchroom in a rather disturbed state of mind.
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Chapter 6
Winston makes his next entry in his diary. He writes about a horrible encounter he had three years ago with a
prostitute. Remembering the incident leads him to reflect that the sex instinct was another area of human life, which
the Party sought to kill or at least distort. Only the “proles” the so-called lower class people who did not actually
qualify to belong to the Party were acknowledged to have sexual instincts. Among Party members all love and
eroticism was removed from the sex act. Marriages were permitted, but they had to be officially approved and were
to be undertaken for the sole purpose of begetting children who would grow up to be responsible Party members.
Permission would be denied if the couple showed any signs of being physically attracted to each other. Ideally the
Party would prefer complete celibacy, which would mean that men and women would forge fewer bonds of
individual loyalties and children could be produced artificially. Failing this, it tried to present the sex act as a rather
disgusting preliminary necessity.
Winston had been married once, to a woman named Katherine. It had been a party approved marriage but he had
soon found life with her impossible. The fact that she did not have a single original thought and simply functioned
as a party mouthpiece was bad enough. But what had been truly unbearable was the sex. Winston would not have
minded remaining celibate, but Katherine insisted they go through the process at fixed intervals to “fulfill their duty
to the Party” by producing a child. And each time, it was clear to Winston that she hated the act and was merely
submitting passively. When no children appeared they parted with Party approval and mutual relief.
His encounter with the prostitute also had been a farce as he realized when he saw the woman in the light she was
aged and wrinkled and he did not feel the slightest attraction for her. But he had sex with her anyway as if it was the
inevitable thing to do. In fact all his relationships had left him revolted and disgusted and he longed for one proper
relation with some personal warmth of feeling involved. But that seemed an impossible dream in the circumstances.
Writing about his experience with the prostitute and with his wife had been extremely difficult, but he had
undertaken it hoping that it would serve a therapeutic purpose. But when he had finished entering it in his diary, he
found that the therapy had not worked, he felt as sick and full of self-loathing as before.
He realized that the sexual act in a fulfilling sense would be an act of rebellion. The Party tried to make its women
asexual and desire was ranked high among the list of thoughtcrimes. If he could break that barrier of indoctrination
in at least one relationship, he felt he would be seriously challenging the Party. But he had no hope that such a
relationship was possible.
Chapter 7
Winston carries on writing in his diary with dedicated if apprehensive zeal. He knows that if once the “proles” rose
up in rebellion, the Party could not survive. But the “proles” seemed incapable of organizing themselves into any
concrete entity. All their immense energy was dissipated in trivial grievances; they had no concern to expend on
larger issues. The Party itself did not interfere too much with the “proles”; they were “below suspicion.” So long as
they were willing to breed and labor they were left largely to their own devices. According to the Party “Proles and
animals are free.”
The Party claimed that it had liberated the “proles” who before the Party‟s regime had been hideously oppressed by
capitalists. Winston recollected pictures and statistics of these monstrous capitalists in the history textbooks issued
by the Party. According to those books, everything had changed since those days and had changed for the better.
But when even Party members like himself found life a drudgery, it was hard to believe that things had improved
for the “proles.”
Winston himself was engaged in altering the past at the Ministry of Truth and he knew very well how the process
worked. But there had been one incident which stood out in his memory, convincing him that lies could not become
truth. This incident had happened around 1965. Most of the original leaders of the Party Revolution except Big
Brother himself had been purged and vaporized on the charge of being counter revolutionaries and traitors.
Prominent among these were three leaders Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford. They had all been arrested and charged
of treason to the Party and after public confessions had been temporarily reinstated. But everyone knew this was
only a stopgap arrangement, once you fell into the hands of the thought police there was no escape. Winston had
seen the three men at a café where they were carefully avoided by most people as being dangerous to associate with.
He had noticed the signs of torture on their faces.
Soon afterwards, the three were rearrested and after further confessions of conspiracies with Eurasia were executed.
Years later a scrap of newspaper which somehow had escaped destruction had found it‟s way to Winston‟s desk.
There was a photograph of the three men attending a prominent Party function on the same date they were said to
have been launching conspiracies on Eurasian soil. Winston had destroyed the paper immediately, but it stayed at
the back of his mind, as evidence confirming what he already knew, that what the Party presented as Truth was a
complete tissue of lies.
Winston wondered how far this falsification would go. Given the inexorable nature of the Party‟s project, sooner or
later, they would declare that two and two are five and if he, Winston questioned it he would probably be a lunatic
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and “in a minority of one.” At this point however, Winston thinks of O‟Brien and the thought is strangely
reassuring. He feels that he would have a sympathetic listener in O‟Brien and that O‟Brien actually is the audience
for whom he is keeping his diary. With new confidence he sets out his definition of freedom in the diary –
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
Chapter 8
Winston continues to indulge in what the Party would regard as suspicious behavior, returning home from work one
day through an unusual way which led through the Prole quarters. The Newspeak term for such eccentric activities
was “ownlife” something that was definitely frowned upon. But Winston experienced a kind of precarious pleasure
in flirting with danger. He observes the activities of the proles who regard him initially with a wariness and then
ignore him. At that point, a rocket bomber lands in the street strewing destruction around, but the Proles, to
Winston‟s astonishment go on discussing mundane issues quite calmly. They seem to be most interested in the
lottery which they talk about like a life and death event.
Passing by a bar, Winston‟s eye is caught by an old man who he thinks must surely remember life as it was before
the Party took over. Winston offers to buy the old man a drink and tries to question him about his youth. What he
basically wants to know is whether there is any truth in the History books‟ claim that the proles were much worse
off under the capitalists than they are now. But he finds it impossible to get any coherent information out of the old
man. He remembers the old days well enough and talks of them without any resentment, indeed even with gusto,
but he is quite unable to draw the parallel between the past and the present that Winston wants.
Wandering around later, Winston finds himself outside the little old shop where he had bought his diary. He goes in
to browse and is attracted by the remnants of beauty that still cling to some small antiques scattered around. He buys
a piece of coral for four dollars and hides it in his pocket so that he could smuggle it home without being seen by
the thought police. He starts a conversation with the old man who owns the shop and unearths a lot of fascinating
reminiscences. The man talks about old churches in London which are now either destroyed or turned into
museums, about old games and nursery rhymes and shows Winston dusty old paintings he is very tempted to buy.
He leaves the shop determined to come back some time and buy more things and also to listen to more scraps of
chat about a mysterious past.
Winston‟s feeling of elation however is damped suddenly when he sees the girl from the office watching him from
across the street. He is now convinced that she is a spy who would turn him in. Panic stricken, he even thinks of
assaulting and silencing her, but is forced to recognize he does not have the guts to do that. He goes home in a state
of extreme terror, not so much of death but of the inevitable torture which he knew would precede execution.
Despairingly he realizes that when confronted by the brute reality of physical pain, all noble and heroic causes
diminish in significance, the body alone swells to immense proportions. He tries to reassure himself by thinking of
O‟Brien, but this time that does not work and his consciousness is completely taken over by the terrifying aspect of
Big Brother.
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Part II
Chapter1
Four days after this encounter in the prole quarters, Winston ran into the girl in the corridors of the Ministry of
Truth while on his way to the toilet. She had hurt her arm in some accident and while he was trying to pass without
looking at her, tripped and fell, hitting the injured arm. It was evident that she was in pain and even though he
believed her to be his enemy, he felt an instinctive human sympathy. He helped her up and she disappeared after
thanking him briefly, but in that brief minute she had pressed a small piece of paper into his hand.
Winston was deeply agitated by this event; obviously the paper contained some sort of message, but it was almost
impossible to open and read it without being observed from the telescreens. He was also not sure if she was an agent
provocateur delivering a message for the thought police or someone who could be trusted. When he finally managed
to get the paper opened in what he hoped was an unobserved fashion, he saw written on it the message “I Love
You.”
This was momentous for Winston, who saw his chance for the kind of relationship he had only dreamt about, warm
and loving. But the path was full of difficulties; even to try and speak to her in private would invite suspicion. It was
after four days that he was finally able to sit at the same table as her for lunch and manage to arrange a meeting.
They meet publicly in a crowd where there is less danger of being noticed than in a more secluded atmosphere and
under cover of a procession of prisoners of war she manages to give Winston directions to a rendezvous. Ironically
the venue they have to choose for their first meeting is a procession of war criminals on a crowded square and their
first exchanges of love are made in at atmosphere pervaded by hate.
They have to exercise such extreme caution that they cannot even look directly at each other and though they are
able to briefly touch each other‟s hands in the crowd Winston realizes that he still does not even know the color of
her eyes! Instead of looking into her eyes, Winston has to stare straight ahead and finds himself gazing directly into
the miserable eyes of an aged Eurasian prisoner of war.
Chapter 2
On the arranged day Winston arrives at the meeting place in the country. He has been doubtful about whether she
would show up and it was a great relief when she did. But even then they had to be cautious. She walked ahead and
obviously knew the way. As he followed, Winston suddenly felt inadequate, she was beautiful and much younger
than he was, surely she could not really care for him.
However he felt his insecurities slowly slipping away as he saw the place she had selected which was almost
identical to the golden landscape of his dreams. They luxuriate in the beauty of the surroundings for a while and he
learns that her name is Julia. She already knows his name and tells him that she chose him because she could always
tell those who didn‟t belong.
The physical union when it happens was everything Winston had hoped for. And it was made all the more exciting
when she told him that she was experienced, that it was not just that she loved him personally, but that she enjoyed
the act of sex itself. This together with the jeering way in which she spoke of the Party invested the whole activity
with an aura of defiance which fascinated Winston. Her very confessions of licentiousness are exhilarating to
Winston, he hates the “purity‟ which the Party hypocritically tries to enforce and he wants to corrupt it, to infect it
with some cancerous blight.
After they had sex, Julia lay sleeping while Winston observed her and he thinks that pure desire or pure love was no
longer possible. Their action had been a challenge to the Party; their union had been a declaration of rebellion. Sex
itself was now a political act, indeed there was no sphere of human activity laft which did not carry its individually
coded political significance.
Chapter 3
After their first meeting, Winston and Julia develop an intense relationship. He left the details of planning to her, as
she was remarkably good at thinking up cunning devices for contriving meetings. On the surface they both continue
to function as zealous Party members, in fact Julia even encourages Winston to take up voluntary Party work so as
to further deflect any possible suspicion. She herself had an impeccable Party record, being regarded as trustworthy
enough to have been even employed in the pornography department which called for the strictest confidentiality.
But she had been living dangerously for a long time, having had an affair with a Party leader when she was sixteen.
He had later committed suicide; luckily for her as otherwise he would certainly have revealed her name under
torture.
Winston finds that Julia has a defiant attitude to the Party. With her, the whole thing came down to a battle of wits,
the Party wanted to stop you from having a good time, if you were smart enough, you outwitted them and had a
good time anyway. She did not indulge in the kind of romantic visions about organized rebellion against the Party
like Winston did. She did not believe the Brotherhood existed, or if it did, she did not care. The Party mattered to
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her only as it impinged on her personal life.
Winston recalls his relationship with his wife Katherine and Julia tells him that she should not be blamed
personally, the Party tries its level best to make all women like that. Only a few like Julia avoid ending up as frigid
carbon copies of each other. Like Winston, Julia also realizes that sooner or later the thought police will catch up
with them. The difference between their attitudes is that he is fatalistic about death while she is determined to cheat
the Party by getting the most out of life.
Chapter 4
Slowly as their relationship progresses Winston and Julia grow more reckless. Winston goes so far as to approach
Mr. Charrington, the shopkeeper in the prole quarter and hire a small room above his shop as a hideout. They both
recognize that this is almost an open invitation to the thought police, it is like taking a further step towards the grave
but they are carried on by an irresistible momentum. The landlord seems to welcome both the rent and the company
and asks no prying questions about how they plan to use the flat. He becomes a regular visitor, often displaying
some old treasure asking merely that Winston should admire it, with no pressure to buy something.
Slowly, Winston also realizes that love has taken over sensuality in their relationship, they want more from each
other than just sex. Other little indulgences also creep in, Julia uses her standing with the Inner Party Circle to
obtain food, drink and clothes which normally would be far beyond their reach. In a way they are playing at keeping
house and being a married couple in that room in the prole quarters. Julia uses make up and frocks instead of the
severe uniforms which the Party issued, saying that within this room at least she meant to be a woman and not a
Party comrade.
One night unexpectedly, Julia gets a glimpse into one of Winston‟s secret fears. She spots a rat running across the
room and when she mentions this she is astonished to see that Winston has gone pale and looks terrified. Though he
soon recovers and tries to brush it off by saying in a half ashamed way that he just did not like rats, she notices that
he has the appearance of one who has been a terrible nightmare.
They enjoy browsing through the bits and pieces in the little shop and a glass paperweight especially seems to
Winston in its beauty and fragility to symbolize his and Julia‟s lives forever within itself.
Chapter 5
As Winston had predicted earlier, one day his colleague Syme disappeared. He vanished and ceased to have existed.
This brought the precariousness of their own position closer to Winston and Julia, but they persisted in living for the
moment. Even if they could not actually be together a lot, the very fact that the room above the shop existed was
consoling in itself.
Meanwhile, the preparations for Hate Week were going ahead at full steam. A special Hate song had been
composed and was played through the telescreens continuously. Parsons was going all out to ensure a magnificent
participation by his building in Hate Week.
Julia and Winston tried to insulate themselves in their room, they talked to the shop owner and treasured the
memories of the past he dredged up. But while this went on, they both knew that it could not last. Sometimes they
had fantasies of escape where they would cheat the Party and get married or run away and live disguised as proles.
They even considered suicide at times. But none of these options were real, only the moment, despite its inexorable
movement towards doom seemed to have any solidity.
Winston found that the one area of his interest in which Julia could not share was the idea of organized rebellion
against the Party. She was not affected by the story of Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford. She did not mind as he did
about the fact that history was being falsified daily. As for Goldstein and the Brotherhood, she went to sleep when
Winston tried to discuss them. It did not matter to her whether they were fighting Eurasia or Eastasia, in fact she
doubted whether there was a war at all, the Party probably dropped the bombs itself to control the people.
The only thing Julia was willing to accept was Winston‟s intuitive feeling that O‟Brien was an Anti-Party person as
an individual. But she refused to believe that he could head any organized activity against the Party and frankly told
Winston that she was concerned about themselves rather than about future generations.
Chapter 6
Even though he had been half expecting it, the message from O‟Brien when it finally came was a shock to Winston.
O‟Brien stopped him quite openly in the corridor and started a conversation about Newspeak. He introduced what
Winston recognized as a coded reference to Syme in the talk and by this open flaunting of the thoughtcrime of
referring to an “unperson” Winston felt that he and O‟Brien had somehow become accomplices in a plot.
In full view of a telescreen, O‟Brien wrote down his address and gave it to Winston with an invitation to come over
and look at the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary. The very daring of the act convinces Winston that there
must be something behind the invitation- that perhaps the fabled brotherhood did exist and he was finally being
invited to join.
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Winston was thrilled and terrified at the same time. He knew that sooner or later he would follow up on O‟Brien‟s
invitation. But at the same time he felt certain that he was embarking on something which would have its ending
behind the dread walls of the Ministry of Love. And yet, he could in no way desist from responding. Winston
routinely destroys the piece of paper on which O‟Brien had written the address, but he memorizes it beforehand and
the invitation haunts him constantly with an equal measure of terror and fascination.
Chapter 7
The next night, in the room with Julia, Winston tells her about his mother and sister. He confesses that sometimes
he feels that he had symbolically if not physically murdered his mother. After his father had been vaporized, his
mother had struggled to feed Winston and his sister on her meager earnings. With the selfishness of childhood,
Winston had tried to grab whatever was available, often refusing to listen to his mother when she told him to share
with his sister. He had justified this by telling himself that he was hungry and that gave him a right to be selfish.
One evening when they got a small piece of chocolate, he snatched the whole thing and ran away. He remembered
seeing his mother hug his sister to her as he ran. He had never seen either of them again, when he came back they
were gone. He did not know if they had gone away or were taken away and vaporized. And he had lived with that
guilt for years.
But as Winston tells Julia, what really stayed with him was his other‟s instinctive gesture of clasping the child to
her. A refugee woman in the war propaganda film had done the same with her son when their boat was bombed. It
would not save the children, but it was a gesture which asserted maternal love.
Winston tells Julia that he does not want to be responsible for her death as well. She had a good reputation, she
could probably survive if she stayed away from him. She refuses, saying that she wanted to be with him. And then
she makes the crucial statement that while the thought police could make them confess by torturing them, they
could not make them betray each other. One could be tortured into SAYING anything, but one could not be made to
BELIEVE it. In other words, the thought police could not get inside you. Winston grabs on to this idea as a ray of
hope.
Chapter 8
Finally in an act of almost reckless daring, Winston and Julia decide to go to O‟Brien‟s house together. They are
astounded by the sheer luxury of the place. But the greatest surprise comes when O‟Brien turns off the telescreen in
his room, explaining that members of the Inner Party had the privilege to do this. He invites Winston to state their
purpose and inspired by sudden confidence Winston is impelled to say that they are there because they believe the
brotherhood exists and that O‟Brien can gain them entry into it. O‟Brien invites his Valet Martin, to sit down with
them, saying that Martin is also a member of the Brotherhood.
He then proceeds to confirm that the Brotherhood does exist under the leadership of Goldstein and that Goldstein‟s
book was its manifesto. He then asks Winston and Julia what they are prepared to do in order to damage the Party
and support the Brotherhood. They both say that they are willing to do anything from murder or suicide except to
part with each other. O‟Brien invites them to drink a toast as newly recruited members of the Brotherhood. He then
tells them that the group‟s activities are carried out in the utmost secrecy, so that if one member were to be caught,
he could not betray much about the others. Even Goldstein, he says would not know the name of all the members.
He then asks Julia to leave and questions Winston about their hideout in the prole quarters. Next he tells Winston
that as a preliminary initiation he would receive a coded message after which he would be given a copy of
Goldstein‟s book which he was to read and return in two weeks. His assignments would be given to him later. When
O‟Brien asks him if he has any questions, Winston can think of nothing to say except repeat the remark he had
heard seven years ago “we shall meet where there is no darkness.” O‟Brien apparently understands the allusion and
when Winston irrelevantly quotes a fragment of an old nursery rhyme he had heard from Mr. Charrington
astonishes him by completing the quotation. Winston leaves, inspired with full confidence in O‟Brien.
Chapter 9
Next week, after he had finally completed the enormous load of work entailed by Hate Week, Winston gets his
hands on Goldstein‟s book and a chance to read it. Hate week had meant such immense work because half way
through the enemy was switched from Eurasia to Eastasia. Banners and posters had to be rewritten immediately and
the newspapers of the past five years had to be remade in a week. But at last it was over and Winston was alone in
his room above the shop, reading Goldstein‟s book.
The book was called The Theory and Practice of Collectival Oligarchism. The very fact of reading it in a room
without a telescreen seemed to Winston to empower him considerably. In the first Chapter, Goldstein discussed the
existence of the three classes of men – the High, the Middle and the Low in relation to the proposition “Ignorance is
strength. He pointed out that in all revolutions the High were overthrown by the Middle ho then became the new
High and for the Low all that revolutions usually meant was a change of masters. It was with the last revolution and
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the coming of INGSOC that the latest High learnt how to keep their position permanently – by cultivating ignorance
among the other classes and by constantly surveying them through the Thought police. Part of this strategy included
the maintenance of a state of continual warfare, which Goldstein discussed in the third chapter. The three major
powers were not fighting this perpetual war for victory, they were fighting to keep a state of emergency always
present as the surest guarantee of authoritarianism. INGSOC in Oceania, Neo-Bolshevism in Eurasia and DeathWorship in East Asia were the three Party philosophies which fundamentally shared the same tenets. The central
doctrine of all these was the “mutability of the past” - the concept that the past had no objective reality except in
records and so could be altered at will through doublethink.
While reading Winston had the strange feeling that he was hearing his own thoughts set out in an orderly manner.
He reads out portions to Julia who comes in later. However she falls asleep in the middle and he reads on by
himself. When she wakes up and they are standing at the window together the voice they had been expecting all
along finally sounds from within the room itself, barking out an instruction to stand still as they are cornered. As
they realize they are in the grip of the thought police, neither of them has any thought of escape; they clearly realize
that is impossible.
As uniformed men with truncheons swarm into the room Winston concentrates his entire being on standing still so
as to avoid being hit. From behind he hears Julia being savagely hit and sees her limp form being carried away. He
feels the pain in his own body but cannot move an inch. At this point, Mr. Charrington enters the room and Winston
notices a distinct change in his appearance and behavior. He realizes that Mr. Charrington had all along been a
member of the thought police.
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Part III
Chapter 1
Winston finds himself in the cells in the Ministry of Love awaiting his sentence and punishment. He has no idea as
to how long he has been there, he only knows he has not eaten for a very long time. There were two types of
prisoners in the temporary cells he had been put in earlier – ordinary criminals and political prisoners like himself.
The guards actually treated the ordinary criminals quite leniently, it was the party prisoners who were terrorized and
isolated. Occasionally there were references to Room 101 which seemed to terrify the victims. After being moved to
his present cell, Winston sees both Ampleforth and Parsons being brought in for thoughtcrimes. Ampleforth was
arrested because he had retained the forbidden word “God” in a Kipling poem he was rewriting, Parsons had been
denounced by his own daughter for shouting “Down with Big Brother” in his sleep. Winston thinks fleetingly of
Julia, wonders if she is suffering more than he is, but he can only really concentrate on his own predicament.
He sees other prisoners being beaten up in front of him, one man is especially severely struck for offering a piece of
bread to another prisoner, a thin man who was clearly dying of starvation. The guards come to take the thin man to
the dreaded Room101 and Winston witnesses a terrifying breakdown. The man begs to be killed, offers to sign and
confess to anything, to denounce his wife and children, screams that it is the other prisoner who tried to offer him
food who should be punished – anything to avoid being taken to Room 101. It is of no avail and he is dragged off.
Winston‟s one hope now is O‟Brien. He knows that the Brotherhood will not rescue him, but they might smuggle in
a razor blade and help him to commit suicide. Then he sees O‟Brien walk into the cell and for a moment thinks he
too has been arrested. Then as O‟Brien steps aside and motions to the guard to strike him, Winston realizes with
blinding clearness that he had been duped all along.
Chapter 2
Winston‟s torture starts in real earnest and is presided over by O‟Brien himself. At first it is sheer brutal physical
torture, incessant blows all over, reducing him to a cowering animal confessing to anything and everything,
implicating everybody if only the pain would stop. Then the guards are replaced by the intellectuals of the Party
who inflict subtler kinds of pain and reduce him to an abject cringing wreck crying from sheer humiliation and
exhaustion. In between, he is administered frequent drug injections which sometimes increase his pain and
sometimes knock him out completely. In the last stage, O‟Brien takes over personally, with Winston connected to
an electric dial by means of which O‟Brien can impose any degree of pain he wishes.
O‟Brien tells Winston that he is there to be cured of his mental fallacies. He combines the relentless logic of
doublethink and the administration of pain till Winston is reduced o saying that four fingers are actually five.
O‟Brien points out that unlike the persecutors of the old Regimes, Nazism or the inquisition, they did not stop with
extorting forced confessions, they break men till they actually become what they are tortured into being. Even the
three leaders Winston had once admired – Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford had been broken by the same method till
they had been completely broken. He tells Winston that there is no escape, even if they allow him to live, there
would be no capacity left in him to be a full human being again, and posterity will not vindicate him as posterity
will not even hear of him.
Finally, O‟Brien invites Winston to ask any questions he wants to. Winston asks about Julia and is told that she
betrayed him totally and completely. He asks if Big Brother exists and is told that as the party says Big Brother
exists then he exists. He asks about the Brotherhood and is told that that was something he would never know, even
if he lives to be ninety it would be an unsolved mystery for him. Then Winston nerves himself to ask the last
question “What is in Room 101?” O‟Brien‟s mocking answer is that everyone KNOWS what is in Room 101.
Chapter 3
In the next stage of his “education” Winston is told plainly by O‟Brien that the Party wants power for its own sake.
There are no lies now, the Party is not promising Utopia. The aim is to dehumanize the human race, to obliterate
every emotion and instinct except loyalty to the Party. And Winston, as much as anyone else would come to accept
this not just as inevitable, but desirable.
Winston puts up a feeble resistance even now. He says that finally, in the last instance the human spirit would
overthrow the regime O‟Brien was describing. O‟Brien mockingly asks him if he considers himself a man. When he
says that he does, he is told to look at himself in a mirror and he sees a rotting, emaciated stinking body. That,
O‟Brien tells him is the last remnant of humanity. It cannot survive. The symbol of the future, O‟Brien says is a
boot permanently stamping on the human face. He then tells Winston that they have broken his mind as badly as
they have shattered his body and asks him if there is any degradation or humiliation that he has not been reduced to.
As his last stand Winston claims that he has despite everything not betrayed Julia. O‟Brien immediately understands
what he means by this – he has revealed all of their secrets, but in the sense of not ceasing to love her, Winston had
not betrayed Julia. That, then was the final stage he had to be reduced to.
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Chapter 4
Winston was still in solitary confinement, but he was not tortured now. He was fed at regular intervals, he was even
given cigarettes. At first he was content to lie free from pain, that in itself was bliss. Slowly as his physical health
improved, he retreated into a dream world with the faces changing – his mother, O‟Brien, Julia, it was all the same
now. He was provided with a slate and pencil, slowly he set about educating himself in the way the Party wanted.
He wrote the Party slogans on the slate and made himself believe them. He convinced himself that two and two was
five, he acquired, laboriously the stupidity required to do that. Ha managed to convince himself that he had never
seen the photograph confirming the innocence of the three executed leaders. He remembered seeing it, but that was
an aberration.
On the whole, he was making excellent “progress” when one day he suddenly woke up from a dream crying out
“Julia, my love.” His feelings, he realized were unchanged. He had surrendered his mind, but he still hoped to retain
his heart. He clung to one last shred of hope, that in his heart he could continue to hate the Party, disguise that
hatred even from himself and release it into consciousness only at the moment of his execution. Thus the Party
would be unable to destroy his hatred and he would score a small victory by dying with his hatred inviolate.
However, O‟Brien anticipated this as he did ever other thought of Winston‟s. Entering the cell he tells Winston that
intellectually he has made good progress but emotionally the final step remained to be taken. He then asks Winston
about his true feelings towards Big Brother. Recognizing the futility of lying, Winston confesses “I hate him.”
O‟Brien now passes judgment, it is not enough to obey Big Brother, one must also love him. He then utters the
dreaded words “Room 101.”
Chapter 5
Winston is confined in Room101, strapped to a chair in a way which rendered him completely immobile. In front of
him were two tables on which stood two covered wire cages. O‟Brien was holding a lever which would operate the
cages. Impassively, O‟Brien explains that what Room 101 contains is quite simply, “the worst thing in the world.”
This varies from individual to individual. For some it may be torture, fire for some one else, drowning for yet
others. For each individual, Room 101 held his greatest fear. When confronted with that, courage and cowardice
lose their meaning, one will do whatever one has to do to avoid the horror in Room 101 as naturally and
automatically as one will grab at a rope to keep from falling.
In Winston‟s case, his greatest fear, his worst nightmare was rats and it was rats there were there in the cages in
front of him. O‟Brien informs him that he is going to open the cages and set the rats onto him. The rats are starving,
they will sense Winston‟s helplessness and devour him inch by inch. Winston cries out in terror asking O‟Brien to
only tell him what he has to do to avoid this. O‟Brien vouchsafes no answer and lays his hand on the lever which
would open the cages. In a total frenzy Winston sees the rats behind the bar and with a sudden flash of intuition
realizes what he has to do to save himself. He has to take the final step of degradation, he has to betray Julia. It is no
longer a matter of choice, before this threat, he is helpless. He cries out “Do it to Julia! Not me!” Repeating that cry
he is aware that the lever has clicked back into place, the cage is closed. His degradation is finally completed in
Room 101.
Chapter 6.
In the final chapter we meet Winston at The Chestnut Tree pub where he now spent most of his time. He had been
released, he even had a better-paid job - in fact nobody paid any attention to him any longer. He had accidentally
run into Julia one day and they had walked together for a while quite sure now that nobody would bother even if
they had sex right in public. But they had no such desire at all, in fact they were both revolted by the others
presence. Both admit frankly that they had each betrayed the other. Julia remarks that when the only way to save
yourself from something you simply cannot endure is to make another person suffer, then you agree to that suffering
and no matter how much you pretend afterwards that you only did it to escape you know that at the crucial moment
you had willed the other person to suffer so that you did not have to Winston knew from experience that this was
true. And after that, you could never feel the same way about the person you had betrayed. That was their last
meeting and they had no wish to meet again.
Winston spent his days drinking gin in the pub and listening eagerly to the announcements from the telescreens. Just
now he was very concerned over the war in which Eurasia was once again the enemy, Eurasia he reminded himself
had always been the enemy. Any contrary memories were merely mental aberrations.
Just then the announcement of a glorious victory on the African front came over the telescreen. Though Winston did
not rush out into the streets, mentally he was joining in with the cheering crowds. The face of Big Brother loomed
large over the announcement and Winston felt his eyes fill with tears of joy and reconciliation. The last lesson had
been learnt. “He loved Big Brother.”