Literary Analysis #1

1984 by George Orwell

1.      Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party is forcing the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such thought crime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes. As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the party and has illegally purchased a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts. He has also become fixated on a powerful Party member named O’Brien, whom Winston believes is a secret member of the Brotherhood—the mysterious, legendary group that works to overthrow the Party. Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he alters historical records to fit the needs of the Party. He notices a coworker, a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him, and worries that she is an informant who will turn him in for his thought crime. He is troubled by the Party’s control of history: the Party claims that Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia, but Winston seems to recall a time when this was not true. The Party also claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged leader of the Brotherhood, is the most dangerous man alive, but this does not seem plausible to Winston. Winston spends his evenings wandering through the poorest neighborhoods in London, where the proletarians, or proles, live squalid lives, relatively free of Party monitoring. One day, Winston receives a note from the dark-haired girl that reads “I love you.” She tells him her name, Julia, and they begin a covert affair, always on the lookout for signs of Party monitoring. Eventually they rent a room above the secondhand store in the prole district where Winston bought the diary. This relationship lasts for some time. Winston is sure that they will be caught and punished sooner or later (the fatalistic Winston knows that he has been doomed since he wrote his first diary entry), while Julia is more pragmatic and optimistic. As Winston’s affair with Julia progresses, his hatred for the Party grows more and more intense. At last, he receives the message that he has been waiting for: O’Brien wants to see him. Winston and Julia travel to O’Brien’s luxurious apartment. As a member of the powerful Inner Party (Winston belongs to the Outer Party), O’Brien leads a life of luxury that Winston can only imagine. O’Brien confirms to Winston and Julia that, like them, he hates the Party, and says that he works against it as a member of the Brotherhood. He indoctrinates Winston and Julia into the Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein’s book, the manifesto of the Brotherhood. Winston reads the book—an amalgam of several forms of class-based twentieth-century social theory—to Julia in the room above the store. Suddenly, soldiers barge in and seize them. Mr. Charrington, the proprietor of the store, is revealed as having been a member of the Thought Police all along. Torn away from Julia and taken to a place called the Ministry of Love, Winston finds that O’Brien, too, is a Party spy who simply pretended to be a member of the Brotherhood in order to trap Winston into committing an open act of rebellion against the Party. O’Brien spends months torturing and brainwashing Winston, who struggles to resist. At last, O’Brien sends him to the dreaded Room 101, the final destination for anyone who opposes the Party. Here, O’Brien tells Winston that he will be forced to confront his worst fear. Throughout the novel, Winston has had recurring nightmares about rats; O’Brien now straps a cage full of rats onto Winston’s head and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face. Winston snaps, pleading with O’Brien to do it to Julia, not to him. Giving up Julia is what O’Brien wanted from Winston all along. His spirit broken, Winston is released to the outside world. He meets Julia but no longer feels anything for her. He has accepted the Party entirely and has learned to love Big Brother.

2.      Nineteen Eighty-Four covers the themes of the hazards of totalitarianism and the control and manipulation of history and information. Orwell warns society of what would happen if government becomes too big and this is obvious in the book. Oceania is ruled by a totalitarian government which controls every facet of life. They are constantly watching over their citizens and even rebellion through thought is punishable by death. The citizens have lost their humanity. They are nothing but shells of humans that do not think for themselves or form relationships with others unless when mandated. There is no love, no freedom, no conscious. Only conformity. All because the government controls EVERYTHING. This ties in with Orwell's other theme in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is the control and manipulation of history and information. Through the Ministry of Truth, the government manipulates the past. For example, if production reports read that 20,000 boots were produced the previous year while the quota was for 30,000 boots, the Ministry of Truth would go back and change the quota to 15,000 boots to make it seem that they produced more boots that they predicted. Oceania is also at constant war with either Eastasia or Eurasia. When it is at war with Eastasia, it is in alliance with Eurasia and visa versa. If Oceania turned from being in an alliance with Eastasia to war, it was always at war with Eastasia. Since the beginning of time it has been at war with Eastasia. Same is true if that happened with Eurasia. The Ministry of Truth reconstructs the past to fit the needs of the party. In a conversation with Winston, O'Brien asks him where does the past exist, to which Winston replies that the past only exists in memory and through documentation, which is easily destroyed or altered. The party controls both the minds and memories of the citizens as well as all documentation. Since individuals do not have the ability or desire to document the past, they believe anything the party tells them as their own memory is fuzzy and improvable. By altering the past, the individual believes he is better off than his ancestors when he, in fact, might not be. The past is what the Party wants it to be. The motto they use is "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past". This statement is essentially the overarching motif and theme throughout the book.

3.      The overall tone is dark, depressing, and pessimistic. In the start of the book, Winston goes and watches a movie where "Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away from a helicopter after him...he was full of holes and the sea around him turned pink ...audience shouting with laughter when he sank." This is an example of depressing and dark tone because the audience are being entertained and laughing at the brutal death of a man. This hints to the lack of humanity in the citizens in this novel. Another thing that points to the lack of humanity and contributes to the overall dark and depressing tone is when a bomb hit the city (pg. 107). "When he got to it he saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist." When he approached it, "he kicked the thing into the gutter...". He does this in such a apathetic, non-caring way that it is a bit disturbing. Winston  has very little hope for most of the book. He acknowledges that it does not matter what he does, he feels like he is going to get caught eventually and is only slightly prolonging his pathetic life. His pessimism is shown in chapter one when it says that "...at any rate, they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live- did live, from the habitat that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and... every movement scrutinized."

4.      Ten literary elements

l  Symbolism: The glass paperweight that Winston buys is highly symbolic of the past. It is one of the few things from the past that still exists. It serves as a connection that Winston is trying to establish with the past. When Winston and Julia get arrested, the paperweight shatters. Symbolically, this means that the past has been destroyed by the party into unrecognizable pieces.The paperweight ties in to the fact that the party controls the past and alters it at will.

l  Analogy:

l  Juxtaposition: When Julia and Winston have their first sexual encounter, it is out in the countryside. Here, they are away from any government intrusion. There is no telescreens or microphones or any forms of spying on them. Here, they can love each other and experience emotions and actions that were forbidden by the party. Orwell juxtaposed the freedom and liberty of the countryside to the oppression of the city.

l  Repetition: The posters of Big Brother are plastered throughout the novel's world and is often mentioned by Orwell. This is to remind the readers and the citizens of Oceania that no matter where they are, all their actions will always be seen by the unblinking eyes of Big Brother and the party. The party's slogan WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH is also repeated throughout the novel to remember the reader of the world that Nineteen Eighty-Four takes place in.

l  Allusions: Nineteen Eighty-Four is obviously alluding to Soviet Russia and Joseph Stalin. In the book, three men (Rutherford, Aaronson and Jones) who were leaders of the revolution were convicted of thought crimes they did not commit and promptly executed. This was much like the purges and show trials of early Soviet Russia under Stalin. This allusion is proof that the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is extremely possible and must be avoided.

l  Irony: There is irony in the fact that the few people that Winston trusted turned on him. He believed that the owner of the antique store could be trusted but it turned out he was a member of the thought police. He also believed that O'Brien was part of the Brotherhood and inspired hope in Winston. Instead, O'Brien essentially destroyed the humanity that was left in Winston. The irony conveys the complexity of the novel.

l  Imagery: Orwell is very descriptive in the novel. The Ministry of Truth is described as "...an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up... 300 meters into the air." When O'Brien is torturing Winston, O'Brien goes on and tells him "Look at this filthy grime all over your body...Do you know you stink like a goat?... Look at your emaciation. Do you see? I can make my thumb and forefinger meet around your bicep. I could snap your neck like a carrot...." Orwell does this to convey to the reader that O'Brien broke Winston physically and made him a shell of his former self.

l  Selection of Detail: By staying away from the details of who Emmanuel Goldstein and Big Brother, it adds to their mystique and perhaps even the fact that they may not exist. Goldstein was created so that the citizens would live in perpetual fear of a "boogeyman" and stay loyal to the party. Big Brother was created by the party to represent a bigger-than-life idol that the citizens of Oceania worship and fear and obey without question. The selection of details add to the slogan that "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH ; it is, but only for the party.

l  Anecdote: In the beginning of the novel, Winston goes and watches a movie. The movie is of a sinking enemy ship and a chopper gunning down those trying to escape, including a woman and her child. The movie serves as an example of how dehumanized the enemy becomes through the eyes of the Oceania citizens. They laugh and cheer at the death of those trying to escape. They don't see them as humans. They absolutely hate them simply because of the lies the party has been feeding them for their entire lies. It exemplifies the control of emotions and information that is ever-present in the novel. 

l  Personification: Orwell personifies the party such as on page 43, where he says "If the party could  thrust its hands into the past and say this or that event, IT NEVER HAPPENED- that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?" By personifying the Party, it makes it seem as BIGGER than any character in the story. The inner party is the brain while the other party and proles are the body, with the inner party making all the decisions the outer party must follow.