Orwell, George - 1984, summary (2)

Nineteen eighty-four

The novel describes a future word divided into 3 blocks:

1. Oceania
2. Eurasia
3. Eastasia

The novel takes place in Oceania country which extends from America to England in the year 1984. Oceania is ruled by the Party which has all the power of the country and its aim is to spy all over the population, by putting cameras everywhere, in order to maintain the population under his control. The party is a dictatorship in fact they used propaganda to enter into people's life, and create the idea that the Party is always present. For this reason there are posters with Big Brother’s face all over the city with the caption “Big Brother is watching you”. To control the population also in their mind they create a language called “Newspeak” which is without any word against the Party, so people can’t express what they really think about the Party because there aren’t words to describe it. In fact the novel starts with the main character, Winston Smith, who buys a diary in which he tries to express his feelings but he can’t do it so he uses basic words and grammatically incorrect sentences. Free thought and any expression of individuality are forbidden. He works at the ministry of Truth where he has the role to rewrite history by the order of the party. At his ministry he notices a blackhaired girl who feels something, but he is afraid that she might be a spy of the Party who can denounce him for “thoughtcrime”. Her name is Julia and they start to have an affair. O’Brian, who is a member of the “Inner Party'', is suspicious because Winston thinks that he might be a member of the secret movement “brotherhood”. He invites Winston and Julia to his luxury flat in which he confirms the suspect of Winston, and gives to them a copy of the Brotherhood’s Manifesto. While Winston is reading it with Julia in their flat the Thought Police break into their apartment and they are sent to the Ministry of Love, whose purpose is to create the propaganda for the Party in order to make people love it, where he finds O’Brian who is a spy for the Party. O’Brian tortures Winston but he resists and is sent to the Room 101 which is the room of fear. In this room Winston is forced to confront himself with his biggest fear, rats. This is manifested in Room 101 by confronting Smith with a wire cage that contains two large rats. The front of the cage is shaped so that it can fit over a person's face. A trap-door is then opened, allowing the rats to devour the victim's face. This cage is fitted over Smith's face, but he saves himself by begging the authorities to let his lover, Julia, suffer this torture instead of him. The threatened torture, and what Winston does to escape it, breaks his last promise to himself and to Julia: never to betray her. At the end of the novel Wiston is released and meets Julia but he understands that he doesn’t love her anymore because the aim of O’Brian was to erase every feeling and the identity of the two lovers.