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Summary 1984 (George Orwell)
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comprehensive summary of the book including information on themes, motifs, characters and general information about the book.
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1984George Orwell
Type Of Work: Novel
Genre: dystopian fiction, science fiction, utopian literature; social criticism
Setting: London in the year 1984 as part of the nation of Oceania
Point of View: Third-person omniscient
Point Of View: 1984 uses a third-person limited, or close third-person, point of view to show the
reader both the internal and external experience of living under a totalitarian government.
Tone: dark, pessimistic, and gloomy
Tense: past tense
Setting (Time): 1984
Setting (Place): London as part of the nation of Oceania
Major Conflict: Winston and Julia struggle against the dehumanizing policies of the Party, and
must choose between individuality and conformity.
Rising Action: Winston and Julia begin their affair. O’Brien falsely claims he’s a member of the
rebellious Brotherhood. Winston and Julia are arrested by the party.
Climax: O’Brien tortures Winston in Room 101 with the cage of rats and Winston chooses Big
Brother over Julia.
Falling Action: Winston reintegrates back into society as a loyal Party member, and he and
Julie realize they betrayed each other under torture.
Foreshadowing:
Orwell uses foreshadowing to create a claustrophobic environment and a sense of foreboding.
- Winston’s betrayal of Julia
- Winston’s betrayal of the Party
- Winston’s misreading of Julia and O’Brien
- Winston’s beating and torture
Summary 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 thoughtcrime 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
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, 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 thoughtcrime. 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 neighbourhoods 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.
Summary 2
In the future world of 1984, the world is divided up into three superstates—Oceania, Eurasia,
and Eastasia—that are deadlocked in a permanent war. The superpowers are so evenly
matched that a decisive victory is impossible, but the real reason for the war is to keep their
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