1984 - George Orwell - Indicative Summary Notes

1984 is an English novel written in 1949 - envisaging life in 1984 under a totalitarian regime. It tells the story of Winston Smith, a middle-aged, unhealthy person who is a protagonist, working at the Ministry of Truth. His job is to edit historical accounts to tailor to the policies laid out by the government.

Power is split into three major groups of stake-holders: namely, Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania. 1984 is written from the angle of base in Oceania, which includes the United Kingdom. Oceania's people are of three political classes: the Inner Party, the Outer Party and the Proles. The Party (Government) controls the people through Ministry of Truth, where Winston Smith works.

The main characters in the novel are Winston Smith, Julia (his flawed lover), Big Brother (the director of Oceania - popularly believed to be Orwell's portrayal of Stalin), his opposing member Emmanuel Goldstein (a former top member - popularly believed to be Orwell's portrayal of Trotsky), and O'Brien (a government agent who deceives Winston Smith and Julia posing as a member of resistance). There are also other side characters such as Aaronson, Parsons, Katharine and a few others.

The novel has three main phases. In the first phase comes a description of the world in Winston Smith's (Orwell's) vision in 1984. The the second phase he and Julia get involved in an illicit romantic relationship, and Smith is caught by the Thought Police (who had been spying on him and Julia). He is tortured, and re-educated. He is scared of rats, so he is exposed to a cage-full of starving rats, and he shouts in fear, "do it to Julia". His re-education gets over. In the third phase, Smith is released, and he and Julia meet in a park and acknowledge that they had betrayed each other. Smith accepts the Party and accepts his own love for the omnipotent Big Brother.

1984 is a political satire and many similarities can be observed here with George Orwell's other famous novel Animal Farm. In both the novels, one can see a betrayed revolution, and in both case the leaders are involved in betrayal. Orwell, in his essay Why I Write, explains that everything serious he had written post-1936 (Spanish Civil War) was against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism - directly or indirectly. And while reading 1984, one can clearly see he meant that.

Some of the famous quotes are:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH


He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, 'just to keep people frightened.'
The birds sang, the proles sang. The Party did not sing.
We are the Dead.

There are some more, and the reader might want to find his/her own quotes from the book. 1984 is a book where one can claim to find literally more than a hundred quotes worth mentioning for all practical purposes.

One can read the book 1984 in the George Orwell section of the library hosted at WebLiterature.