3. Airstrip One, a province of Oceania, acts as the primary setting. It is located in
what "had been called England or Britain", and is the home of the main
characters of the book, including its protagonist, Winston Smith.
Even the names of countries, and their shapes on the map, had been different.
Airstrip One, for instance, had not been so called in those days: it had been
called England, or Britain, though London, he felt, had always been called
London.
Big Brother
Speculation has also focused on Lord Kitchener,[1] who among other things was
prominently involved in British military recruitment in World War I. As a child Orwell
(under his real name Eric Blair) published poems praising Kitchener and war
recruitment in his local newspaper. Additional speculation from Douglas Kellner
of UCLA argued that Big Brother represents Joseph Stalin and that the novel portrayed
life undertotalitarianism.[2]
4. In the novel it is not clear whether Big Brother is (or was) a real person or a fiction invented
by the Party to personify it. In Party propaganda Big Brother is presented as a real person:
one of the founders of the Party, along with Goldstein
5. • Ingsoc (Newspeak for "English Socialism") is the political ideology of
the totalitarian government of Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian science
fiction novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. [WikiPedia]
• With doublethink, the people believe what they otherwise know is false; in believing
the revised (new) past, the new past is what was, hence "he who controls the past
controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past". The Ministry of
Love (MiniLuv), via brainwashing and torture, and the Ministry of Truth (MiniTrue), with
propaganda, ensure that perpetual infallibility of the Party is instilled in the mind of each
Oceanian. The person exists only as part of the collective, hence, for the
collective, nothing exists beyond the goodness of the Party and the evil of other nations
and the Party's power.
6. Wikipedia
In the year 1984, Ingsoc divides Oceanian society into three social classes, the Inner
Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles:
• The Inner Party make policy, affect decisions, and govern; they are known as “The
Party”. One of their upper-class privileges is (temporarily) shutting off their
telescreens, for time alone. They live in spacious, comfortable homes, have good
food and drink, personal servants, and speedy transportation. No Outer Party
member or Prole may enter an Inner party neighbourhood without a good
pretext.
7. • The Outer Party work the state’s administrative jobs; they are the middle class, whose
“members are allowed no vices other than cigarettes and Victory Gin”, and who are
the citizens most spied upon, via telescreens and surveillance. This is
because, according to history, the middle class is the most dangerous; they are the
ones to incite revolution, the one thing The Party does not want. They live in
rundown neighbourhoods, use crowded subways as transportation, have poorer food
and drink, and are denied sex for any other purpose than having children within
marriage, and are expected to look at it as a duty, rather than pleasure.
• The Proles are the lower class of workers. They live in the poorest conditions, but
they can be considered as more fortunate than the Outer Party members since they
are not constantly watched by Big Brother, and the Party keeps them happy and
sedates them with alcohol, gambling, sport, sexual
promiscuity, and prolefeed (Fabricated books, pornography). A few agents of the
Thought Police do mark down and eliminate any individuals deemed capable of
becoming dangerous and spread false rumours. Proletariat are 85 percent
of Oceania’s populace. Wikipedia
8. Double Think
The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and
accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to
forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence
of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all
this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with
reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on
indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.
In the case of workers at the Records Department in the Ministry of Truth, doublethink
means being able to falsify public records, and then believe in the new history that they
themselves have just rewritten. As revealed in Goldstein's Book, the Ministry's name is
itself an example of doublethink: the Ministry of Truth is really concerned with lies. The
other ministries of Airstrip One are similarly named: the Ministry of Peace is concerned
with war, the Ministry of Love is concerned with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty is
concerned with starvation. The three slogans of the Party - War is Peace, Freedom is
Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength - are also examples. Wikipedia
9. • Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In
the novel, it refers to the deliberately impoverished language promoted by the state.
Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix[1] in which the basic
principles of the language are explained. Newspeak is closely based on English but
has a greatly reduced and simplifiedvocabulary and grammar. This suits
the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking—
"thoughtcrime", or "crimethink" in the newest edition of Newspeak—impossible by
removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of
freedom, rebellion and so on. One character, Syme, says admiringly of the shrinking
volume of the new dictionary: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.“
• The basic idea behind Newspeak is to remove all shades of meaning from
language, leaving simple dichotomies (pleasure and pain, happiness and
sadness, goodthink and crimethink) which reinforce the total dominance of the
State. Similarly, Newspeak root words served as both nouns and verbs, which
allowed further reduction in the total number of words; for example, "think" served
as both noun and verb, so the word thought was not required and could be
abolished. A staccato rhythm of short syllables was also a goal, further reducing the
need for deep thinking about language. (See duckspeak.) Successful Newspeak
meant that there would be fewer and fewer words – dictionaries would get thinner
and thinner.
10. The Thought Police (thinkpol in Newspeak) are the secret police of the novel Nineteen
Eighty-Four whose job it is to uncover and punish thoughtcrime. The Thought Police
use psychology surveillance to find and eliminate members of society who are capable
of the mere thought of challenging ruling authority.[2]
The Thought Police of Orwell and their pursuit of thoughtcrime were based on the
methods used by the totalitarian states and competing ideologies of the 20th century.
It also had much to do with, as Orwell called it, the "power of facing unpleasant
facts", and his willingness to criticize prevailing ideas which brought him into conflict
with others and their "smelly little orthodoxies".
The term "Thought Police", by extension, has come to refer to real or perceived
enforcement of ideological correctness.
Technology played a significant part in the detection of thoughtcrime in Nineteen
Eighty-Four—with the ubiquitous telescreens which could inform the
government, misinform and monitor the population. The citizens of Oceania are
watched by the Thought Police through the telescreens. Every movement, reflex, facial
expression, and reaction is measured by this system, monitored by the Ministry of
Love.
11. Senate
House, London, where
Orwell worked at the
Ministry of
Information, was his model
for the Ministry of Truth
The Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue, in Newspeak) is one of the four ministries that
govern Oceania in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. As with the other
Ministries in the novel, the Ministry of Truth is a misnomer and in reality serves an
opposing purpose to that which its name would imply, being responsible for the
falsification of historical events; and yet is aptly named in a deeper sense, in that it
creates/manufactures "truth" in the newspeak sense of the word.
12. • The Ministry of Love, like the other ministries, is ironically named, since it is
largely responsible for the practice and infliction of misery, fear, suffering, and
torture. In a sense, however, the term is accurate, since its ultimate purpose is to
instill love of Big Brother in the minds of thoughtcriminals. This is typical of the
language of Newspeak, in which words and names frequently contain both an
idea and its opposite; the orthodox party member is nonetheless able to resolve
these contradictions through the disciplined use of Doublethink.
13. O'Brien
The protagonist, Winston Smith, secretly hates the Party and Big Brother; in the event, he
approaches O’Brien, a high-level member of the Inner Party, believing him part of the
Brotherhood, Goldstein's conspiracy against Oceania, Big Brother, and the Party. Initially, he
appears as such, especially in giving Winston a copy of Goldstein’s illegal book, which
O’Brien says reveals the true, totalitarian nature of the society the Party established in
Oceania; full membership to the Brotherhood requires reading and knowing The Theory and
Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, the true title of "the book". When alone in the room
above Mr. Charrington's shop, Winston examines the book, before reading it, noting that it
was:
A heavy black volume, amateurishly bound, with no name or title on the cover. The
print also looked slightly irregular. The pages were worn at the edges, and fell apart
easily, as though the book had passed through many hands. The inscription on the
title-page ran:[1]THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM
by Emmanuel Goldstein