Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or “Ingsoc” in the government’s invented language, Newspeak), under the control of a privileged elite of the Inner Party, persecuting individualism and independent thinking known as “thoughtcrimes.”

     The tyranny is epitomized by Big Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality but who may not even exist. The Party “seeks power entirely for its own sake. It is not interested in the good of others; it is interested solely in power.” The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue in Newspeak), responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so the historical record always supports the party line. The instructions the workers receive specify the corrections as fixing misquotations and never as what they really are: forgeries and falsifications. A large part of the ministry also actively destroys all edited documents not containing the revisions; in this way, proof does not exist how the government is lying. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker but secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother. 

     As literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot, and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory hole, have entered into common use since its publication in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularized the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state. In 2005 the novel was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923-2005. It was awarded a place on both lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching No. 13 on the editor’s list, and No. 6 on the readers’ list. In 2003 the novel was listed at No. 8 on the BBC’s survey The Big Read.