1984 (book)

''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also published as ''1984'') is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist and an anti-Stalinist, modelled Britain under authoritarian socialism in the novel on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism and the practices of censorship and propaganda in Nazi Germany. More broadly, the book examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.

The story takes place in an imagined future. The current year is uncertain, but believed to be 1984. Much of the world is in perpetual war. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate Oceania, which is led by Big Brother, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense cult of personality manufactured by the Party's Thought Police. The Party engages in omnipresent government surveillance and, through the Ministry of Truth, historical negationism and constant propaganda to persecute individuality and independent thinking.

The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent mid-level worker at the Ministry of Truth who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. Smith keeps a forbidden diary. He begins an illegal relationship with a colleague, Julia, and they learn about a shadowy resistance group called the Brotherhood. However, their contact within the Brotherhood turns out to be a Party agent, and Smith and Julia are arrested. He is subjected to months of psychological manipulation and torture by the Ministry of Love. He ultimately betrays Julia and is released; he finally realizes he loves Big Brother.

''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. It also popularized the term "Orwellian" as an adjective, with many terms used in the novel entering common usage, including "Big Brother", "doublethink", "Thought Police", "thoughtcrime", "Newspeak" and the expression that "2 + 2 = 5". Parallels have been drawn between the subject-matter and real-life instances of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expression, amongst other themes. Orwell described his book as a "satire", and a display of the "perversions to which a centralised economy is liable", while also stating he believed "that something resembling it could arrive". ''Time'' included it on its list of the 100 best English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005, and it was placed on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list, reaching number 13 on the editors' list and number 6 on the readers' list. In 2003, it was listed at number eight on The Big Read survey by the BBC. It has been adapted across media since its publication, most notably as a film, released in 1984, starring John Hurt, Suzanna Hamilton and Richard Burton.

Writing and publication

Idea

The Orwell Archive at University College London contains undated notes about ideas that evolved into ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. The notebooks have been deemed "unlikely to have been completed later than January 1944", and "there is a strong suspicion that some of the material in them dates back to the early part of the war".

In one 1948 letter, Orwell claims to have "first thought of he bookin 1943", while in another he says he thought of it in 1944 and cites 1943's Tehran Conference as inspiration: "What it is really meant to do is to discuss the implications of dividing the world up into 'Zones of Influence' (I thought of it in 1944 as a result of the Tehran Conference), and in addition to indicate by parodying them the intellectual implications of totalitarianism". Orwell had toured Austria in May 1945 and observed manoeuvring he thought would probably lead to separate Soviet and Allied Zones of Occupation.

In January 1944 the literature professor Gleb Struve introduced Orwell to Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1924 dystopian novel '' We''. In his response Orwell expressed an interest in the genre, and informed Struve that he had begun writing ideas for one of his own, "that may get written sooner or later". In 1946, Orwell wrote about the 1931 dystopian novel ''Brave New World'' by Aldous Huxley in his article "Freedom and Happiness" for the ''Tribune'', and noted similarities to ''We''. By this time Orwell had scored a critical and commercial hit with his 1945 political satire ''Animal Farm'', which raised his profile. For a follow-up he decided to produce a dystopian work of his own.

Writing process

In a June 1944 meeting with Fredric Warburg, co-founder of his British publisher Secker & Warburg, shortly before the release of ''Animal Farm'', Orwell announced that he had written the first 12 pages of his new novel. As he could then only earn a living from journalism, he predicted the book would not see a release before 1947. Progress was slow; by the end of September 1945 Orwell had written some 50 pages. Orwell became disenchanted with the restrictions and pressures involved with journalism and grew to detest city life in London. He suffered from bronchiectasis and a lesion in one lung; the harsh winter worsened his health.

In May 1946 Orwell arrived on the Scottish island of Jura. He had wanted to retreat to a Hebridean island for several years; David Astor recommended he should stay at Barnhill, a remote farmhouse on the island that his family owned, with no electricity or hot water. Here Orwell intermittently drafted and finished ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. His first stay lasted until October 1946, during which time he made little progress on the few already completed pages, and at one point did no work on it for three months. After spending the winter in London, Orwell returned to Jura; in May 1947 he reported to Warburg that despite progress being slow and difficult, he was roughly a third of the way through. He sent his "ghastly mess" of a first draft manuscript to London, where Miranda Christen volunteered to type a clean version. Orwell's health worsened further in September, however, and he was confined to bed with inflammation of the lungs. He lost almost two stone (28 pounds or 12.7 kg) in weight and had recurring night sweats, but he decided not to see a doctor and continued writing. On 7 November 1947, he completed the first draft in bed, and subsequently travelled to East Kilbride near Glasgow for medical treatment at Hairmyres Hospital, where a specialist confirmed a chronic and infectious case of tuberculosis.

Orwell was discharged in the summer of 1948, after which he returned to Jura and produced a full second draft of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', which he finished in November. He asked Warburg to have someone come to Barnhill and retype the manuscript, which was so untidy that the task was only considered possible if Orwell was present, as only he could understand it. The previous volunteer had left the country and no other could be found at short notice, so an impatient Orwell retyped it himself at a rate of roughly 4,000 words a day during bouts of fever and bloody coughing fits. On 4 December 1948 Orwell sent the finished manuscript to Secker & Warburg and left Barnhill for good in January 1949. He recovered at a sanitarium in the Cotswolds.

Title

Shortly before completion of the second draft, Orwell vacillated between two titles for it: ''The Last Man in Europe'', an early title, and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Warburg suggested the latter, which he took to be a more commercially viable choice. There has been a theory – doubted by Dorian Lynskey (author of a 2019 book about ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'') – that ''1984'' was chosen simply as an inversion of the year 1948, the year in which it was being completed. Lynskey says the idea was "first suggested by Orwell's US publisher", and it was also mentioned by Christopher Hitchens in his introduction to the 2003 edition of ''Animal Farm and 1984'', which also notes that the date was meant to give "an immediacy and urgency to the menace of totalitarian rule". However, Lynskey does not believe the inversion theory:

This idea ... seems far too cute for such a serious book. ... Scholars have raised other possibilities. is wifeEileen wrote a poem for her old school's centenary called 'End of the Century: 1984.' G. K. Chesterton's 1904 political satire '' The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', which mocks the art of prophecy, opens in 1984. The year is also a significant date in ''The Iron Heel''. But all of these connections are exposed as no more than coincidences by the early drafts of the novel ... First he wrote 1980, then 1982, and only later 1984. The most fateful date in literature was a late amendment.

Publication

In the run up to publication, Orwell called it "a beastly book" and expressed some disappointment towards it, thinking it would have been improved had he not been so ill. This was typical of Orwell, who had talked down his other books shortly before their release. Nevertheless, it was enthusiastically received by Secker & Warburg, who acted quickly; before Orwell had left Jura he rejected their proposed blurb that portrayed it as "a thriller mixed up with a love story". He also refused a proposal from the American Book of the Month Club to release an edition without the appendix and chapter on Goldstein's book, a decision which Warburg claimed cut off about £40,000 in sales.

''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was published on 8 June 1949 in Britain; Orwell predicted earnings of around £500. A first print of 25,575 copies was followed by a further 5,000 copies in March and August 1950. It had the most immediate impact in the US, following its release there on 13 June 1949 by Harcourt Brace, & Co. An initial print of 20,000 copies was quickly followed by another 10,000 on 1 July, and again on 7 September. By 1970, over 8 million copies had been sold in the US, and in 1984 it topped the country's all-time best seller list.

In June 1952 Orwell's widow, Sonia Brownell, sold the sole remaining manuscript at a charity auction for £50. The draft remains the only surviving literary manuscript from Orwell, and is held at the John Hay Library at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, US.

Variant English-language editions

In the original published UK and US editions of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' numerous small variations in the text exist, the US edition altering Orwell's agreed edit of the text as was typical of publishing practices of the time in regard to spelling and punctuation, as well as some small edits and phrasings. While Orwell rejected a proposed book club edition which would see substantial sections of the book removed, these minor changes passed somewhat under the radar. Other more significant revisions and variant texts also exist, however.

In 1984 Peter Davison edited ''Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile of the Extant Manuscript'', published by Secker and Warburg in the UK and Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich in the US. This book reproduced, page for page, Brownell's copy of the original manuscript in facsimile, along with a complete typeset version of the text—including Orwell's holograph and typewritten pages, as well as his handwritten amendments and corrections. It featured a preface by Daniel Segal and has been reprinted in various international editions with translated introductions and notes, as well as in limited-edition English formats.

In 1997 Davison produced a definitive text of ''Nineteen Eighty Four'' as part of Secker's 20-volume definitive edition of the ''Complete Works of George Orwell''. This edition removed errors and reversed editorial changes in the original editions made without Orwell's oversight, all based on detailed reference to Orwell's original manuscript and notes. This text has gone on to be reprinted in various subsequent paperback editions, including one with an introduction by Thomas Pynchon, without obvious note that it is a revised text, and has been translated as an unexpurgated version of text.

In 2021 Polygon published ''Nineteen Eighty Four: The Jura Edition'', with an introduction by Alex Massie.

Plot

The protagonist, Winston Smith, is introduced as a frail man in his 40s, entering Victory Mansions, the building where Party workers live. A telescreen in the room both transmits Party propaganda and monitors the citizens’ every move. The story begins on 'April 4th, 1984'—a date that Winston calls into doubt, knowing that the Party constantly alters historical records and even he cannot be certain it truly is 1984. The world has been devastated by decades of global war, civil unrest and revolution, setting the stage for a totalitarian regime that manipulates reality itself. Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain) is a province of Oceania, one of the three totalitarian super-states (the others being Eurasia and Eastasia) that rule the world. It is ruled by "The Party" under the ideology of "Ingsoc" (a Newspeak shortening of "English Socialism") and the mysterious leader Big Brother. The Party brutally purges anyone who does not fully conform to their regime, using the Thought Police and constant surveillance through telescreens (two-way televisions), cameras and hidden microphones. Those who fall out of favour with the Party become " unpersons", disappearing with all evidence of their existence destroyed.

The Party’s slogans—''War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength''—are drilled into the minds of citizens. While alone in his apartment, Winston is visited by his neighbour, Mrs. Parsons. Her children, who are members of the Junior Spies, exhibit aggressive behavior and chant slogans. Winston is deeply unsettled by how thoroughly even children are indoctrinated, trained to betray their own families in service to the Party.

In London, Winston is a member of the Outer Party, working at the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites historical records to conform to the state's ever-changing version of history. Winston revises past editions of ''The Times'', while the original documents are destroyed after being dropped into ducts known as memory holes, which lead to an immense furnace. However, Winston secretly opposes the Party's rule and dreams of rebellion, despite knowing that he is already a " thought-criminal" and is likely to be caught one day. Winston reflects on how the Party not only rewrites history but controls memory itself. By changing past records and suppressing documents, the Party makes its lies become truth. Winston is both repelled and fascinated by this total control.

He becomes preoccupied with a man named O'Brien, a high-ranking member of the Inner Party, who Winston assumes might secretly share his disillusionment. Winston frequently notices a young, dark-haired woman who operates the novel-writing machines and grows intensely suspicious of her, partly due to her constant presence near him. Believing she may be a spy, he develops a deep hatred for her, fuelled also by her attractiveness, which stirs forbidden desires he has been conditioned to repress.

Winston wanders into a prole neighborhood, an area inhabited by the working class. He enters a secondhand shop and buys a glass paperweight containing a piece of coral. The object is useless, but it represents a connection to the past and a world that existed before the Party. The shopkeeper, Mr. Charrington, shows him an upstairs room with no telescreen. For a moment, Winston imagines it as a possible safe haven. To his dismay, when Winston visits another prole neighbourhood, he finds that the proles lack political awareness, largely because the Party deliberately keeps them distracted with trivial entertainment, cheap goods and constant labour.

One day, Winston receives a secret note from the dark-haired girl, Julia; it says, “I love you”. They begin a covert relationship, meeting in hidden places like the countryside and the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop. She hates the Party but focuses on enjoying life despite it. They grow close, sharing personal stories and memories. Julia brings real food from the black market—coffee, sugar and chocolate—symbols of a lost world. Eventually O'Brien approaches Winston, giving the impression that he, too, is against the Party. He invites Winston to his home, where they speak openly. O'Brien claims to be part of the Brotherhood, a secret resistance group led by Emmanuel Goldstein. Winston and Julia swear loyalty and agree to do anything for the cause, though O'Brien warns them of betrayal and pain. Winston and Julia are captured when Mr. Charrington is revealed to be an undercover Thought Police agent, and they are separated and imprisoned at the Ministry of Love.

Winston is taken to a windowless, heavily guarded prison. He is kept in a bright white cell, alone or sometimes with other prisoners. He sees familiar faces—people arrested for minor thoughtcrimes or accidentally spoken words. Eventually, it is revealed that O'Brien is also loyal to the Party.

Winston is tortured in phases. He is strapped into a machine that delivers pain when he answers wrongly. O'Brien explains the Party’s goal: complete power, not justice or truth. Winston must accept that reality is whatever the Party says it is. If they say 2 + 2 = 5, he must believe it—not pretend, but truly believe. Over time, Winston is broken. He starts to doubt his own memory and logic. He even confesses to fake crimes, meaningless under real law but necessary under the Party’s system. He loses grip on his independent thought but still harbours love for Julia and clings to some inner resistance. Finally, O'Brien takes him to Room 101, the most feared place in the Ministry of Love. There, the torture is customized to the prisoner’s worst fear. For Winston it is rats. In desperation, Winston betrays Julia, screaming that the torture should be done to her instead. After Room 101, Winston is released. He has lost everything—his will, his love, his rebellion. He spends his days at the Chestnut Tree Café, drinking and staring blankly. He now loves Big Brother.

Characters

Main characters

* Winston Smith: the protagonist of story, a 39-year-old Outer Party member who works at the Ministry of Truth in London, rewriting historical records to align with the Party’s current narrative. He is thin, frail, and introspective, burdened by a deep sense of disillusionment with the totalitarian regime of Big Brother. Despite living under constant surveillance, Winston secretly despises the Party and yearns for truth, freedom, and genuine human connection. He begins a forbidden love affair with Julia, which becomes his first major act of rebellion. Together, they believe they are joining a resistance movement against the Party, but their efforts ultimately fail. Winston is arrested by the Thought Police, tortured and brainwashed in the Ministry of Love—primarily by O'Brien—and eventually betrays Julia under extreme psychological pressure. By the end of the novel, Winston is broken in mind and spirit. His individuality and rebellious thoughts are extinguished, and he accepts the Party’s control completely. In the final scene, he sits at a café, emotionally dead, having learned to ''love Big Brother''. Winston represents the tragic fate of the individual under absolute tyranny: resistance is possible, but victory is impossible.

*Julia: a young woman in her mid-20s who works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Outwardly, she appears to be a devoted Party member, wearing the red sash of the Junior Anti-Sex League and participating actively in Party activities like the Two Minutes Hate and community programs. However, she secretly loathes the Party and engages in rebellious behavior, primarily through covert sexual relationships, which she views as personal acts of defiance. Julia becomes Winston Smith’s lover and partner in rebellion. Unlike Winston, her rebellion is pragmatic and personal rather than ideological; she is not interested in abstract political theory or revolution but in carving out private pleasures within the oppressive system. She is cunning, bold, and practical, using her conformity as a cover to avoid suspicion. Their relationship is ultimately discovered by the Thought Police. Julia is arrested alongside Winston, tortured, and reconditioned. Like Winston, she eventually betrays him under pressure, and after their release, their emotional bond is destroyed. They meet once more, dispassionately, both emptied of love and resistance. Julia represents a more instinctual, bodily form of rebellion, one that is just as doomed under totalitarian control.

* O'Brien: O'Brien is a high-ranking Inner Party member. He is intelligent, authoritative, and enigmatic, initially presenting himself as a secret dissenter of the Party who recruits Winston and Julia into what he claims is the underground resistance group called the Brotherhood. O'Brien is middle-aged, heavily built, and possesses a sense of calm control. He plays a pivotal role in Winston's psychological journey, ultimately revealing himself as a loyal agent of the Party. He orchestrates Winston's arrest and conducts his prolonged torture and reeducation in the Ministry of Love. O'Brien is both Winston’s tormentor and intellectual equal, often engaging in complex philosophical discussions about reality, power, and truth. He believes in the total and eternal dominance of the Party and views rebellion as a mental illness to be cured through pain and submission. His ultimate purpose is to demonstrate the Party’s ability to crush all individual thought. He embodies the terrifying fusion of intelligence, cruelty, and ideological commitment that defines the Inner Party’s power.

* Big Brother: he is the symbolic and possibly fictional leader of the Party. He is depicted as an all-seeing, all-knowing, authoritarian figure whose image is constantly present throughout Oceania—on telescreens, posters, and coins—accompanied by the slogan “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” He represents the embodiment of the Party’s control, surveillance, and psychological domination over the population. Despite his omnipresence, it is unclear whether Big Brother is a real person or a constructed icon meant to inspire loyalty and fear. He is never seen in person, never speaks directly, and functions more as a godlike figurehead or a personification of the Party’s absolute authority. Big Brother’s purpose is to unify the state under a single focus of devotion, to eliminate individual identity, and to serve as a perpetual reminder of the Party’s power and the futility of resistance.

*Emmanuel Goldstein: he is the principal enemy of the state, portrayed as the leader of a counter-revolutionary movement against the Party called ''The Brotherhood''. Once a high-ranking Party member (possibly close to Big Brother), he is now depicted as a traitor and the ideological opposite of the Party. Goldstein’s face appears in the daily ''Two Minutes Hate'', where citizens release their rage toward him in a ritualistic display of loyalty to Big Brother. He is also the alleged author of ''The Book''—formally titled ''The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism''—which explains the true nature of the Party’s control, perpetual war, and social manipulation. The Party uses Goldstein as a scapegoat and a focus for hate, but it is never confirmed whether he, the Brotherhood, or the book are real or fabricated tools of Party propaganda. His role is to serve as a manufactured opposition, allowing the regime to justify repression and maintain fear, obedience, and unity through a common enemy.

Secondary characters

*Aaronson, Jones, and Rutherford: former members of the Inner Party whom Winston vaguely remembers as among the original leaders of the Revolution, long before he had heard of Big Brother. They confessed to treasonable conspiracies with foreign powers and were then executed in the political purges of the 1960s. In between their confessions and executions, Winston saw them drinking in the Chestnut Tree Café—with broken noses, suggesting that their confessions had been obtained by torture. Later, in the course of his editorial work, Winston sees newspaper evidence contradicting their confessions, but drops it into a memory hole. Eleven years later, he is confronted with the same photograph during his interrogation.
* Ampleforth: Winston's one-time Records Department colleague who was imprisoned for leaving the word "God" in a Kipling poem as he could not find another rhyme for "rod"; Winston encounters him at the Ministry of Love. Ampleforth is a dreamer and intellectual who takes pleasure in his work, and respects poetry and language, traits which cause him disfavour with the Party.
* Mr. Charrington: a seemingly kind, old prole shopkeeper who owns the secondhand shop where Winston buys the diary and rents the upstairs room for his meetings with Julia. He initially appears sympathetic to Winston’s interest in the past and even recites old rhymes. However, he is later revealed to be a Thought Police agent in disguise, and the shop was a trap all along.
* Katharine Smith: the emotionally indifferent wife whom Winston "can't get rid of". Despite disliking sexual intercourse, Katharine married Winston because it was their "duty to the Party". Although she was a "goodthinkful" ideologue, they separated because the couple could not conceive children. Divorce is not permitted, but couples who cannot have children may live separately. For much of the story Winston lives in vague hope that Katharine may die or could be "got rid of" so that he may marry Julia. He regrets not having killed her by pushing her over the edge of a quarry when he had the chance many years previously.
* The Parsons family:
**Tom Parsons: Winston's naïve neighbour, and an ideal member of the Outer Party: an uneducated, suggestible man who is in mid-thirties and a utterly loyal person to the Party, and fully believes in its perfect image. He is socially active and participates in the Party activities for his social class. He is friendly towards Smith, and despite his political conformity punishes his bullying son for firing a catapult at Winston. Later, as a prisoner, Winston sees Parsons imprisoned in the Ministry of Love, after his young daughter reported him to the Thought Police for speaking against Big Brother in his sleep. Even this does not dampen Parsons's belief in the Party—he says he could do "good work" in the hard labour camps.
** Mrs Parsons: Parsons's wife is a wan and hapless woman who is often nervous and intimidated by her own children. She is believed to be in early thirties. She only physically appears in the novel once, but is mentioned twice when Mr. Parsons is prisoned.
** The Parsons children: a nine-year-old son who is heavily manipulated by Party ideology and a seven-year-old daughter who likes to imitate her brother. Both are members of the Spies, a youth organisation that focuses on indoctrinating children with Party ideals and training them to report any suspected incidents of unorthodoxy. They represent the new generation of Oceanian citizens, the model society envisioned by the Inner Party without memory of life before Big Brother, and without family ties or emotional sentiment.
* Syme: a colleague of Winston’s at the Ministry of Truth. He is a linguist working on the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak dictionary, aiming to reduce the English language to a minimal, rigid system that eliminates any possibility of rebellious thought. Syme is highly intelligent and enthusiastic about Newspeak. He openly explains how destroying words will eventually make thoughtcrime impossible because people will literally lack the language to think rebellious or complex thoughts. He sees this as a great intellectual challenge. Winston recognizes that Syme is too intelligent and too outspoken—dangerous traits in a regime that demands blind conformity. Winston predicts that Syme will be vaporized (erased from existence by the Party). Not long after, Syme disappears without explanation, and his name is erased from all records, as if he had never existed. No one mentions him again.

Sources for literary motifs

''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' uses themes (mostly) from life in the Soviet Union and wartime life in Great Britain as sources for many of its motifs. Some time at an unspecified date after the first American publication of the book, the producer Sidney Sheldon wrote to Orwell interested in adapting the novel to the Broadway stage. Orwell wrote in a letter to Sheldon (to whom he would sell the US stage rights) that his basic goal with ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was imagining the consequences of Stalinist government ruling British society:

'Nineteen Eighty-Four''was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office.

Comparisons

According to the biographer D. J. Taylor, Orwell's ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' (1935) has "essentially the same plot of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' ... It's about somebody who is spied upon, and eavesdropped upon, and oppressed by vast exterior forces they can do nothing about. It makes an attempt at rebellion and then has to compromise".

The statement "2 + 2 = 5", used to torment Winston Smith during his interrogation, was a communist party slogan from the second five-year plan, which encouraged fulfilment of the five-year plan in four years. The slogan was seen in electric lights on Moscow house-fronts, billboards and elsewhere.

The switch of Oceania's allegiance from Eastasia to Eurasia and the subsequent rewriting of history ("Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete"; ch 9) is evocative of the Soviet Union's changing relations with Nazi Germany. The two nations were open and frequently vehement critics of each other until the signing of the 1939 Treaty of Non-Aggression. Thereafter, and continuing until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, no criticism of Germany was allowed in the Soviet press, and all references to prior party lines stopped—including in the majority of non-Russian communist parties who tended to follow the Russian line. Orwell had criticized the Communist Party of Great Britain for supporting the Treaty in his essays for ''Betrayal of the Left'' (1941). "The Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939 reversed the Soviet Union's stated foreign policy. It was too much for many of the fellow-travellers like Gollancz rwell's sometime publisherwho had put their faith in a strategy of construction Popular Front governments and the peace bloc between Russia, Britain and France."

The description of Emmanuel Goldstein, with a "small, goatee beard", evokes the image of Leon Trotsky, similar to how Trotsky was portrayed by Stalin and his party in the Soviet era. The film of Goldstein during the Two Minutes Hate is described as showing him being transformed into a bleating sheep. This image was used in a propaganda film during the Kino-eye period of Soviet film, which showed Trotsky transforming into a goat. Like Goldstein, Trotsky was a formerly high-ranking party official who was ostracized and then wrote a book criticizing party rule, ''The Revolution Betrayed'', published in 1936.

The omnipresent images of Big Brother, a man described as having a moustache, bears resemblance to the cult of personality built up around Joseph Stalin. The news in Oceania emphasized production figures, just as it did in the Soviet Union, where record-setting in factories (by "Heroes of Socialist Labour") was especially glorified. The best known of these was Alexei Stakhanov, who purportedly set a record for coal mining in 1935.

The tortures of the Ministry of Love evoke the procedures used by the NKVD in their interrogations, including beatings, deprivation, and torture through the use of their greatest fear. The random bombing of Airstrip One is based on the area bombing of London by Buzz bombs and the V-2 rocket in 1944–1945. The Thought Police is based on the NKVD, which arrested people for "anti-Soviet" remarks.The confessions of the "Thought Criminals" Rutherford, Aaronson and Jones are based on the show trials of the 1930s, which included fabricated confessions by the prominent Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev to the effect that they were being paid by the Nazi government to undermine the Soviet regime under Leon Trotsky's direction.

The song " Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, and you sold me") was based on an old English song called "Go no more a-rushing" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, Where I knelt upon my knee, We were as happy as could be, 'Neath the spreading chestnut tree."). The song was published as early as 1891. The song was a popular camp song in the 1920s, sung with corresponding movements (like touching one's chest when singing "chest", and touching one's head when singing "nut"). Glenn Miller recorded the song in 1939.

The "Hates" (Two Minutes Hate and Hate Week) were inspired by the constant rallies sponsored by party organs throughout the Stalinist period. These were often short pep-talks given to workers before their shifts began (Two Minutes Hate), but could also last for days, as in the annual celebrations of the anniversary of the October Revolution (Hate Week).Orwell fictionalized "newspeak", "doublethink" and "Ministry of Truth" based on both the Soviet press, and British wartime usage, such as "Miniform". In particular, he adapted Soviet ideological discourse constructed to ensure that public statements could not be questioned.

Winston Smith's job, "revising history" (and the "unperson" motif) are based on censorship of images in the Soviet Union, which airbrushed images of "fallen" people from group photographs and removed references to them in books and newspapers. In one well-known example, the second edition of the ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' had an article about Lavrentiy Beria. After his fall from power and execution, subscribers received a letter from the editor instructing them to cut out and destroy the three-page article on Beria and paste in its place enclosed replacement pages expanding the adjacent articles on F. W. Bergholz (an 18th-century courtier), the Bering Sea and Bishop Berkeley.Big Brother's "Orders of the Day" were inspired by Stalin's regular wartime orders, referred to similar name. A small collection of the more political of these have been published (together with his wartime speeches) in English as ''On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union'' by Joseph Stalin. Like Big Brother's Orders of the day, Stalin's frequently lauded heroic individuals, like Comrade Ogilvy, the fictitious hero Winston Smith, himself, invented to "rectify" (fabricate) a Big Brother Order of the day. The Ingsoc slogan "Our new, happy life", repeated from telescreens, evokes Stalin's 1935 statement, which became a slogan of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: "Life has become better, Comrades; life has become more cheerful."

In 1940 the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges published "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", which describes the invention by a "benevolent secret society" of a world that would seek to remake human language and reality along human-invented lines. The story concludes with an appendix describing the success of the project. Borges' story addresses similar themes of epistemology, language and history to 1984. During the Second World War Orwell believed that British democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war. The question being "Would it end via Fascist ''coup d'état'' from above or via Socialist revolution from below?" Later, he admitted that events proved him wrong: "What really matters is that I fell into the trap of assuming that 'the war and the revolution are inseparable'."

In his 1946 essay "Why I Write", Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) were "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism". ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' is a cautionary tale about revolution betrayed by totalitarian defenders previously proposed in ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938) and ''Animal Farm'' (1945), while ''Coming Up for Air'' (1939) celebrates the personal and political freedoms lost in ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). The biographer Michael Shelden notes Orwell's Edwardian childhood at Henley-on-Thames as the golden country; being bullied at St Cyprian's School as his empathy with victims; his life in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma and the techniques of violence and censorship in the BBC as capricious authority.

Other influences include ''Darkness at Noon'' (1940) and '' The Yogi and the Commissar'' (1945) by Arthur Koestler; ''The Iron Heel ''(1908) by Jack London; ''1920: Dips into the Near Future'' by John A. Hobson; ''Brave New World'' (1932) by Aldous Huxley; '' We'' (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which Orwell reviewed in 1946; and ''The Managerial Revolution'' (1940) by James Burnham predicting perpetual war among three totalitarian superstates. Orwell told Jacintha Buddicom that he would write a novel stylistically like ''A Modern Utopia'' (1905) by H. G. Wells.

Extrapolating from the Second World War, the novel's pastiche parallels the politics and rhetoric at war's end—the changed alliances at the "Cold War's" (1945–91) beginning; the Ministry of Truth derives from the BBC's overseas service, controlled by the Ministry of Information; Room 101 derives from a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House; the Senate House of the University of London, containing the Ministry of Information is the architectural inspiration for the Minitrue; the post-war decrepitude derives from the socio-political life of the UK and the US, i.e., the impoverished Britain of 1948 losing its Empire despite newspaper-reported imperial triumph; and war ally but peace-time foe, Soviet Russia became Eurasia.

The term "English Socialism" has precedents in Orwell's wartime writings; in the essay " The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius" (1941), he said that "the war and the revolution are inseparable... the fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realisable policy"—because Britain's superannuated social class system hindered the war effort and only a socialist economy would defeat Adolf Hitler. Given the middle class's grasping this, they too would abide socialist revolution and that only reactionary Britons would oppose it, thus limiting the force revolutionaries would need to take power. An English Socialism would come about which "will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word."

In the world of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', "English Socialism" (or "Ingsoc" in Newspeak) is a totalitarian ideology unlike the English revolution he foresaw. Comparison of the wartime essay "The Lion and the Unicorn" with ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' shows that he perceived a Big Brother regime as a perversion of his cherished socialist ideals and English Socialism. Thus Oceania is a corruption of the British Empire he believed would evolve "into a federation of Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of the Union of Soviet Republics".

Themes

Nationalism

''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' expands upon the subjects summarized in Orwell's essay "Notes on Nationalism" about the lack of vocabulary needed to explain the unrecognized phenomena behind certain political forces. In ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' the Party's artificial, minimalist language, "Newspeak", addresses the matter.
* Positive nationalism: For instance, Oceanians' perpetual love for Big Brother. Orwell argues in the essay that ideologies such as Neo-Toryism and Celtic nationalism are defined by their obsessive sense of loyalty to some entity.
* Negative nationalism: For instance, Oceanians' perpetual hatred for Emmanuel Goldstein. Orwell argues in the essay that ideologies such as Trotskyism and antisemitism are defined by their obsessive hatred of some entity.
* Transferred nationalism: For instance, when Oceania's enemy changes, an orator makes a change mid-sentence, and the crowd instantly transfers its hatred to the new enemy. Orwell argues that ideologies such as Stalinism and redirected feelings of racial animus and class superiority among wealthy intellectuals exemplify this. Transferred nationalism swiftly redirects emotions from one power unit to another. In the novel, it happens during Hate Week, a Party rally against the original enemy. The crowd goes wild and destroys the posters that are now against their new friend, and many say that they must be the act of an agent of their new enemy and former friend. Many of the crowd must have put up the posters before the rally but think that the state of affairs had always been the case.

O'Brien concludes: "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

Futurology

In the book, Inner Party member O'Brien describes the Party's vision of the future:

Censorship

One of the most notable themes in ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' is censorship, especially in the Ministry of Truth, where photographs and public archives are manipulated to rid them of "unpersons" (people who have been erased from history by the Party). On the telescreens, almost all figures of production are grossly exaggerated or simply fabricated to indicate an ever-growing economy, even during times when the reality is the opposite. One small example of the endless censorship is Winston being charged with the task of eliminating a reference to an unperson in a newspaper article. He also proceeds to write an article about Comrade Ogilvy, a made-up Party member who allegedly "displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands."

Surveillance

In Oceania, the upper and middle classes have very little true privacy. All of their houses and apartments are equipped with two-way telescreens so that they may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones. Written correspondence is routinely opened and read by the government before it is delivered. The Thought Police employ undercover agents (such as Mr. Charrignton), who pose as normal citizens and report any person with subversive tendencies. Children are encouraged to report suspicious persons to the government, and some denounce their parents as demonstrated when Mr. Parson is convicted by his childrens. Citizens are controlled, and the smallest sign of rebellion, even something as small as a suspicious facial expression, can result in immediate arrest and imprisonment. Thus, citizens are compelled to obedience. The omnipresent surveillance in ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', symbolized by Big Brother and the telescreens, has been a focal point for analyses drawing on Michel Foucault’s theories of disciplinary power. Foucault’s concept of the panopticon—a prison design where inmates self-regulate under the assumption of constant observation—parallels the Party’s use of technology to enforce compliance. The telescreens, which monitor citizens in both public and private spaces, create a culture of perpetual vigilance where individuals internalize surveillance, becoming their own jailers. Academic comparisons to Foucault’s panopticism emphasize how power in ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' operates not through brute force alone but through the internalization of control.

Newspeak and Doublethink

Orwell’s invention of Newspeak and the concept of doublethink has been central to discussions about linguistic manipulation as a tool of authoritarianism. Newspeak, the Party’s engineered language, aims to eradicate rebellious thought by stripping vocabulary to its bare essentials. As analyzed in critical studies, this linguistic reductionism limits citizens’ ability to conceptualize dissent, effectively narrowing the scope of human cognition. The deliberate destruction of words like “freedom” and “justice” illustrates how language shapes reality, a theme that resonates with modern debates about propaganda and misinformation.

Doublethink—the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously—further entrenches the Party’s control by normalizing cognitive dissonance. Winston’s job at the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to align with Party narratives, exemplifies how truth becomes malleable in service to power. Critics have drawn parallels to 20th-century totalitarian regimes that rewrote history to legitimize their authority, underscoring Orwell’s insight into the relationship between language and thought control. The novel’s warning about the erosion of critical thinking remains disturbingly relevant in an era of “fake news” and algorithmic echo chambers.

Contemporary reassessments and philosophical frameworks

Modern critiques have revisited ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' through the lens of postmodern philosophy, particularly Foucault’s analysis of power dynamics. The novel’s depiction of surveillance as a tool for social control aligns with Foucault’s assertion that power operates through visibility and normalization. Winston’s eventual capitulation to the Party—symbolized by his love for Big Brother—illustrates the ultimate triumph of disciplinary mechanisms over individual resistance.

Scholars have also examined the novel’s treatment of technology, noting how Orwell anticipated the role of media in shaping public perception. The telescreens’ dual function as propaganda tools and surveillance devices foreshadows contemporary concerns about social media’s capacity to manipulate and monitor. The Party’s manipulation of historical records, akin to modern “deepfakes,” exploring how truth can be "manufactured" in today's world of advance technologies.

Poverty and inequality

According to Orwell's book, almost the entire world lives in poverty; hunger, thirst, disease and filth are the norms. Ruined cities and towns are common: the consequence of perpetual wars and extreme economic inefficiency. Social decay and wrecked buildings surround Winston; aside from the ministries' headquarters, little of London was rebuilt. Middle-class citizens and proles consume synthetic foodstuffs and poor-quality "luxuries" such as oily gin and loosely-packed cigarettes, distributed under the "Victory" brand, a parody of the low-quality Indian-made "Victory" cigarettes, which British soldiers commonly smoked during the Second World War.

Winston describes something as simple as the repair of a broken window as requiring committee approval that can take several years and so most of those living in one of the blocks usually do the repairs themselves (in book, Winston himself is called in by Mrs. Parsons to repair her blocked sink). All upper-class and middle-class residences include telescreens that serve both as outlets for propaganda and surveillance devices that allow the Thought Police to monitor them; they can be turned down, but the ones in middle-class residences cannot be turned off.

In contrast to their subordinates, the upper class of Oceanian society reside in clean and comfortable flats in their own quarters, with pantries well-stocked with foodstuffs such as wine, real coffee, real tea, real milk, and real sugar, all denied to the general populace. Winston is astonished that the lifts in O'Brien's building work, the telescreens can be completely turned off, and O'Brien has an Asian manservant, Martin. All upper-class citizens are attended to by slaves captured in the "disputed zone", and "The Book" suggests that many have their own cars or even helicopters.

However, despite their insulation and overt privileges, the upper class are still not exempt from the government's brutal restriction of thought and behaviour, even while lies and propaganda apparently originate from their own ranks. Instead, the Oceanian government offers the upper class their "luxuries" in exchange for maintaining their loyalty to the state; non-conformant upper-class citizens can still be condemned, tortured, and executed just like any other individual. "The Book" makes clear that the upper class' living conditions are only "relatively" comfortable, and would be regarded as "austere" by those of the pre-revolutionary élite.

The proles live in poverty and are kept sedated with pornography, a national lottery whose big prizes are reported won by non-existent people, and gin, "which the proles were not supposed to drink". At the same time, the proles are freer and less intimidated than the upper classes: they are not expected to be particularly patriotic and the levels of surveillance that they are subjected to are very low; they lack telescreens in their own homes. "The Book" indicates that because the middle class, not the lower class, traditionally starts revolutions, the model demands tight control of the middle class, with ambitious Outer Party members neutralized via promotion to the Inner Party or "reintegration" (brainwashing via psychological and physical torture) by the Ministry of Love, and proles can be allowed intellectual freedom because they are deemed to lack intellect. Winston nonetheless believes that "the future belonged to the proles".

The standard of living of the populace is extremely low overall. Consumer goods are scarce, and those available through official channels are of low quality; for instance, despite the Party regularly reporting increased boot production, more than half the Oceanian populace goes barefoot. The Party claims that poverty is a necessary sacrifice for the war effort, and "The Book" confirms that to be partially correct since the purpose of perpetual war is to consume surplus industrial production. As "The Book" explains, society is in fact designed to remain on the brink of starvation, as "In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."

Thought monitoring

The Party monitors facial expressions and aims to find out and control the thoughts of citizens through the "Thought Police" and the detection and elimination of "thoughtcrime". The Party rejects the legal principle "Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur" ("Thought does not commit a crime").

Critical reception

''Nineteen Eighty Four'' received a complex and multifaceted critical reception that ranged from enthusiastic praise to sharp criticism, establishing patterns of interpretation that continue to influence literary discourse today. The novel's initial reception was marked by critical acclaim from prominent literary figures who recognized its artistic merit and political significance, though it also faced dismissive reviews from critics who found its vision excessively pessimistic or ideologically problematic. American reviewers frequently interpreted the work through the lens of contemporary Cold War politics, viewing it alternately as a critique of British socialism or Soviet communism, while later critical perspectives have grappled with questions of literary adaptation, character development, and the novel's enduring relevance in an era of technological surveillance and political authoritarianism.

Literary recognition

When it was first published, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' received critical acclaim.The American reception proved particularly enthusiastic, with ''TIME'' magazine's reviewer expressing pleasant surprise at the novel's quality, describing it as "absolutely super". The ''TIME'' review noted that Orwell's fictional dystopia would not seem foreign to contemporary readers, suggesting that the novel's power lay partly in its ability to make totalitarian scenarios feel uncomfortably plausible. This recognition of the novel's prophetic qualities became a recurring theme in early critical responses, as reviewers grappled with the uncomfortable parallels between Orwell's fictional world and emerging Cold War realities.

The novel's political significance extended beyond immediate Cold War concerns to encompass broader questions about truth, propaganda, and social control that resonated with critics across the political spectrum. Later critical perspectives, as reflected in ''TIME'''s retrospective coverage, emphasized Orwell's literary legacy over his political predictions, with Paul Gray arguing that "the proper way to remember George Orwell, finally, is not as a man of numbers—1984 will pass, not Nineteen Eighty–Four—but as a man of letters, who wanted to change the world by changing the word". This perspective highlighted the enduring artistic value of Orwell's work while acknowledging its continued relevance to political discourse.

V. S. Pritchett, reviewing the novel for the ''New Statesman'', stated: "I do not think I have ever read a novel more frightening and depressing; and yet, such are the originality, the suspense, the speed of writing and withering indignation that it is impossible to put the book down." P. H. Newby, reviewing ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' for '' The Listener'' magazine, described it as "the most arresting political novel written by an Englishman since Rex Warner's ''The Aerodrome.''" Fountain, Nigel (14 June 1994). "First Bites: ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. ''The Guardian''. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was also praised by Bertrand Russell, E. M. Forster and Harold Nicolson. On the other hand, Edward Shanks, reviewing ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' for ''The Sunday Times'', was dismissive; Shanks claimed ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' "breaks all records for gloomy vaticination". C. S. Lewis was also critical of the novel, claiming that the relationship of Julia and Winston, and especially the Party's view on sex, lacked credibility, and that the setting was "odious rather than tragic". The historian Isaac Deutscher was far more critical of Orwell from a Marxist perspective and characterized him as a “simple minded anarchist”. Deutscher argued that Orwell had struggled to comprehend the dialectical philosophy of Marxism, demonstrated personal ambivalence towards other strands of socialism and his work, ''1984'', had been appropriated for the purpose of anti-communist Cold War propaganda.

Western media

On its publication, many American reviewers interpreted the book as a statement on the socialist policies of the British prime minister, Clement Attlee, or the policies of Joseph Stalin. Serving as prime minister from 1945 to 1951, Attlee implemented wide-ranging social reforms and changes in the British economy following the Second World War. Francis A. Hanson, an American trade union leader, wanted to recommend the book to his members but was concerned with some of the reviews it had received, so Orwell wrote a letter to him. In his letter Orwell described his book as a satire, and said:

Legal challenges

Throughout its publication history, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' has been either banned or legally challenged as subversive or ideologically corrupting, like the dystopian novels '' We'' (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, ''Brave New World'' (1932) by Aldous Huxley, ''Darkness at Noon'' (1940) by Arthur Koestler, '' Kallocain'' (1940) by Karin Boye and ''Fahrenheit 451'' (1953) by Ray Bradbury.

On 5 November 2019 the BBC named ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' on its list of the 100 most influential novels.

According to Czesław Miłosz, a defector from Stalinist Poland, the book also made an impression behind the Iron Curtain. Writing in ''The Captive Mind'', he stated " few have become acquainted with Orwell's ''1984''; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well ... Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life." The writer Christopher Hitchens has called this "one of the greatest compliments that one writer has ever bestowed upon another ... Only one or two years after Orwell's death, in other words, his book about a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party was itself a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party."

Adaptations in other media

In the same year as the novel's publishing, a one-hour radio adaptation was aired on the United States' NBC radio network as part of the ''NBC University Theatre'' series. The first television adaptation appeared as part of CBS's '' Studio One'' series in September 1953. BBC Television broadcast an adaptation by Nigel Kneale in December 1954. The first feature film adaptation, ''1984'', was released in 1956. A second feature-length adaptation, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' followed in 1984, a reasonably faithful adaptation. It has been adapted several other times to radio, television and film; other media adaptations include theatre (a musical and a play), opera and ballet. An audio dramatization was released in 2024 to critical acclaim, starring Andrew Garfield as Winston.

Translations

The novel was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, when the first publicly available Russian version in the country, translated by Vyacheslav Nedoshivin, was published in ''Kodry'', a literary journal in Soviet Moldavia. In 1989 another Russian version, translated by Viktor Golyshev, was also published. Outside the Soviet Union, the first Russian version was serialized in the emigre magazine ''Grani'' in the mid-1950s, then published as a book in 1957 in Frankfurt. Another Russian version, translated by Sergei Tolstoy from the French version, was published in Rome in 1966. These translations were smuggled into the Soviet Union, which became quite popular among dissidents. Some underground published translations also appeared in the Soviet Union; for example, the Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov translated the novel from German into Russian.

For Soviet elite, as early as 1959, according to the order of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, the Foreign Literature Publishers secretly issued a Russian version of the novel, for the senior officers of the Communist Party.

In the People's Republic of China the first Simplified Chinese version, translated by Dong Leshan, was serialized in the periodical ''Selected Translations from Foreign Literature'' in 1979, for senior officials and intellectuals deemed politically reliable enough. In 1985 the Chinese version was published by Huacheng Publishing House, as a restricted publication. It was first available to the general public in 1988, by the same publisher. Amy Hawkins and Jeffrey Wasserstrom of ''The Atlantic'' stated in 2019 that the book is widely available in mainland China for several reasons: the general public by and large no longer read books; because the elites who do read books feel connected to the ruling party anyway; and because the Chinese Communist Party sees being too aggressive in blocking cultural products as a liability. The authors stated, "It was—and remains—as easy to buy ''1984'' and ''Animal Farm'' in Shenzhen or Shanghai as it is in London or Los Angeles." They also stated that "The assumption is not that Chinese people can't figure out the meaning of ''1984'', but that the small number of people who will bother to read it won't pose much of a threat." British journalist Michael Rank argued that it is only because the novel is set in London and written by a foreigner that the Chinese authorities believe it has nothing to do with China.

By 1989 ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' had been translated into 65 languages, more than any other novel in English at that time.Rodden, John. ''The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of "St. George" Orwell''.

An amateur translator named Tsiu Ing-sing's Taiwanese Hokkien translation, which uses romanization alongside Chinese characters, was published in 2025.

Cultural impact

The effect of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' on the English language is extensive; the concepts of Big Brother, Room 101, the Thought Police, thoughtcrime, unperson, memory hole (oblivion), doublethink (simultaneously holding and believing contradictory beliefs) and Newspeak (ideological language) have become common phrases for denoting totalitarian authority. Doublespeak and groupthink are both deliberate elaborations of ''doublethink'', and the adjective "Orwellian" means similar to Orwell's writings, especially ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. The practice of ending words with (such as ''mediaspeak'') is drawn from the novel. Orwell is perpetually associated with 1984; in July 1984 an asteroid was discovered by Antonín Mrkos and named after Orwell.

References to the themes, concepts and plot of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' have appeared frequently in other works, especially in popular music and video entertainment. An example is the worldwide hit reality television show '' Big Brother'', in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras.

Noam Chomsky adapted Orwell's neologism "unpeople" to describe those whom the state deems "unfit to enter history" and whom the state strips of the right to live in order to advance the state's sovereignty.

In November 2012 the federal government of the United States argued before the US Supreme Court that it could continue to utilize GPS tracking of individuals without first seeking a warrant. In response, Justice Stephen Breyer questioned what that means for a democratic society by referencing ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', stating "If you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States. So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like ''1984'' ..."

The book touches on the invasion of privacy and ubiquitous surveillance. From mid-2013 it was publicized that the United States National Security Agency has been secretly monitoring and storing global internet traffic, including the bulk data collection of email and phone-call data. Sales of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' increased by up to seven times within the first week of the 2013 mass surveillance leaks. The book again topped the Amazon.com sales charts in 2017 after a controversy involving Kellyanne Conway using the phrase "alternative facts" to explain discrepancies with the media.

''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was number three on the list of "Top Check Outs of All Time" by the New York Public Library.

''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' entered the public domain on 1 January 2021, 70 years after Orwell's death, in most of the world. It is still under copyright in the US until 95 years after publication, or 2044.

''Brave New World'' comparisons

In October 1949, after reading ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', Huxley sent a letter to Orwell in which he argued that it would be more efficient for rulers to stay in power by the softer touch by allowing citizens to seek pleasure to control them rather than use brute force. He wrote:

Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.

...

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

In the decades since the publication of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', there have been numerous comparisons to Huxley's ''Brave New World'', which had been published 17 years earlier, in 1932. They are both predictions of societies dominated by a central government and are both based on extensions of the trends of their times. However, members of the ruling class of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' use brutal force, torture and harsh mind control to keep individuals in line, while rulers in ''Brave New World'' keep the citizens in line by drugs, hypnosis, genetic conditioning and pleasurable distractions. Regarding censorship, in ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' the government tightly controls information to keep the population in line, but in Huxley's world, so much information is published that readers are easily distracted and overlook the information that is relevant.

Elements of both novels can be seen in modern-day societies, with Huxley's vision being more dominant in the West and Orwell's vision more prevalent with dictatorships, including those in communist countries (such as in modern-day China and North Korea), as is pointed out in essays that compare the two novels, including Huxley's own ''Brave New World Revisited''.

Comparisons with later dystopian novels like ''The Handmaid's Tale'', ''Virtual Light'', ''The Private Eye'' and ''The Children of Men'' have also been drawn.

In popular culture

*In 1955 an episode of the BBC's ''The Goon Show'', "1985", was broadcast, written by Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes and based on Nigel Kneale's television adaptation. It was re-recorded about a month later with the same script but a slightly different cast. ''1985'' parodies many of the main scenes in Orwell's novel.
* In 1970 the American rock band Spirit released the song "1984" based on Orwell's novel.
* In 1973 the ex–Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper released an album called ''1984'' on the Columbia label (UK), consisting of instrumentals with Orwellian titles such as "Miniluv", "Minipax", "Minitrue" and so forth.
* In 1974 David Bowie released the album ''Diamond Dogs'', which is thought to be loosely based on the novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. It includes the tracks " We Are the Dead", "1984" and "Big Brother". Before the album was made, Bowie's management (MainMan) had planned for Bowie and Tony Ingrassia (MainMan's creative consultant) to co-write and direct a musical production of Orwell's ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', but Orwell's widow refused to give MainMan the rights.
* In 1977 the British rock band the Jam released the album '' This Is the Modern World'', which includes the track "Standards" by Paul Weller. This track concludes with the lyrics "...and ignorance is strength, we have God on our side, look, you know what happened to Winston."
* In 1984 Ridley Scott directed a television commercial, "1984", to launch Apple Inc's Macintosh computer. The advertisement stated, "1984 won't be like ''1984''", suggesting that the Apple Mac would be freedom from Big Brother, i.e., the IBM PC.
* Rage Against the Machine's 2000 single, "Testify", from their album ''The Battle of Los Angeles'', features the use of "The Party" slogan, "Who controls the past(now), controls the future. Who controls the present(now), controls the past."
* An episode of ''Doctor Who'', called "The God Complex", depicts an alien ship disguised as a hotel containing Room 101-like spaces, and also, like the novel, quotes the nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons".
* The two-part episode Chain of Command in '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'' bears some resemblances to the novel.
*Radiohead's 2003 single "2 + 2 = 5", from their album ''Hail to the Thief'', is Orwellian by title and content. Thom Yorke states, "I was listening to a lot of political programs on BBC Radio 4. I found myself writing down little nonsense phrases, those Orwellian euphemisms that he British and American governmentsare so fond of. They became the background of the record."
* In September 2009 the English progressive rock band Muse released '' The Resistance'', which included songs influenced by ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''.
*In Marilyn Manson's autobiography ''The Long Hard Road Out of Hell'', he states: "I was thoroughly terrified by the idea of the end of the world and the Antichrist. So I became obsessed with it... reading prophetic books like... 1984 by George Orwell..."
* The English band Bastille references the novel in their song "Back to the Future", the fifth track on their 2022 album ''Give Me the Future'', in the opening lyrics: "Feels like we danced into a nightmare/We're living 1984/If doublethink's no longer fiction/We'll dream of Huxley's Island shores."
* Released in 2004, KAKU P-Model/Susumu Hirasawa's song "Big Brother" directly references ''1984'', and the album itself is about a fictional dystopia in a distant future.
* The Used released a song by the same name, "1984", on their 2020 album ''Heartwork''.

See also

* Authoritarian personality
* Brainwashing
* Closed-circuit television (CCTV)
* Culture of fear
* ''Fahrenheit 451'', a similar novel revolving around censorship
* Ideocracy
* Language and thought
* List of stories set in a future now in the past
* Mass surveillance
* New World Order (conspiracy theory)
* Psychological projection
* Scapegoating
* Totalitarianism
* Utopian and dystopian fiction
* ''V for Vendetta'', a similar graphic novel and film
* '' We'', a similar novel

References

Citations

Cited references

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Further reading

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* Bloom, Harold, ''George Orwell's'' 1984 (2009), Facts on File, Inc.
* Di Nucci, Ezio and Storrie, Stefan (editors), 1984 ''and Philosophy: Is Resistance Futile?'' (2018), Open Court Publishing Company.
* Goldsmith, Jack and Nussbaum, Martha, ''On'' Nineteen Eighty-Four'': Orwell and Our Future'' (2010), Princeton University Press.
* Hillegas, Mark R. (1967). ''The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians''. Southern Illinois University Press.
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* Orwell, George. 1984 (Vietnamese edition), translation by Đặng Phương-Nghi, French preface by Bertrand Latour .
* Plank, Robert, ''George Orwell's Guide Through Hell: A Psychological Study of'' 1984 (1994), Borgo Pres.
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* Taylor, D. J. ''On'' Nineteen Eighty-Four'': A Biography'' (2019), Abrams.
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* Waddell, Nathan (editor), ''The Cambridge Companion to'' Nineteen Eighty-Four (2020), Cambridge University Press.
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External links

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''Nineteen Eighty-Four''
() at the British Library

''Nineteen Eighty-Four''
at the Open Library
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1953 ''Theatre Guild on the Air'' radio adaptation
at the Internet Archive

Historian Sarah Wise on the London of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' on the London Fictions website
* Underneath The Spreading Chestnut Tree
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Electronic editions

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George Orwell—Eric Arthur Blair

Project Gutenberg Australia (e-text)



* ttp://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/PDFs/1984_GO.pdf Nineteen Eighty-Four(Canadian public domain Ebook – PDF)

Film versions

* , adapted by William Templeton, directed by Paul Nickell, with Eddie Albert as Winston, Norma Crane as Julia, and Lorne Greene as O'Brien; ''Westinghouse Studio One'', CBS (1953)

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British science fiction novels
Censored books
Dystopian fiction
Dystopian novels
English novels
Fiction about mind control
Fiction set in 1984
Historical negationism
Historical revisionism in fiction
Mass surveillance
Novels about freedom of speech
Novels about mass surveillance
Novels about nuclear war and weapons
Novels about propaganda
Novels about revolutionaries
Novels about totalitarianism
Novels adapted into ballets
Novels by George Orwell
Novels set in the 1980s
Novels set in fictional countries
Novels set in London
Novels set in the future
Political satire novels
Propaganda in fiction
Science fiction novels adapted into films
Secker & Warburg books
Social science fiction
Totalitarianism in fiction