II. Contents

I. About the author

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a novel-antiutopia written by George Orwell in 1949. It was published half a century ago, but it is appreciated nowadays in several ratings like The Times or Newsweek like one of the best antiutopias written about the threat of totalitarianism. The name of the novel has become a common noun describing a way of life of the socialistic society if the USSR and its ideology would have conquered the world.

George Orwell was born in 1903 in Motihari, a place of British India, in a family of a British trade agent. His real name was Eric Arthur Blair. He studied in the school of St. Ciprian and attended Eton College from 1917 to 1921. In the period of 1922-1927 he served as a colonial policeman in Birma, and then he lived in London for a long time on casual earnings. Also in that period he set out writing prose and political essays. His pen name was inspired in 1935 by the river called Orwell.

He participated in the civil war of 1936 in Spain. That event he described in the documental narrative “Homage to Catalonia” and in a feature story “Remembering war at Spain” published in 1953.

In 1946 he wrote a novel “Animal Farm” where he showed the reborn of revolutionary principles and programs. It is considered to be an allegory to the Revolution of 1917 in Russia.

The novel-antiutopia “Nineteen Eighty-Four” has become an ideological continuation of “Animal Farm”. That is where a lot of worldwide known phrases as “Big Brother is watching you”, “doublethink”, “thought crime”, “newspeak” and others came from.

George Orwell died from tubercle in London in January 1950. A few days before, Desmond MacCarthy had sent him a message of greeting on his last book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which he wrote: "You have made an indelible mark on English literature... you are among the few memorable writers of your generation."

II. Contents

This novel arouses interest as a product of deep analysis of political socialistic system. As for me, this book shows an example of what the government is capable for the purpose of profit and concealed despotism. The phenomena described by Orwell take place in the modern society: biased information disseminated by mass media, exceeding one’s authority and acquiring success by deception of people.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the world is divided into four huge territories: Oceania, Eurasia, Eastasia and the disputed area lying between the frontiers of the super-states. The World has overcome the consequences of the global nuclear war in 50s, and after that on the territory of disputed area, it means in South Africa and on the territory of past India the permanent battles between super-states are conducted. None of the countries isn’t able to conquer each other because of the military power of each.

One of the super-states, Oceania, is a country with a severe totalitarian regime. Its inhabitants are deprived of the civil rights and individuality. There is a strict hierarchy in the society, headed by the Big Brother – a common name that is considered to rule all over the country. He carries out the supervision of all the dwellers with the help of television screens that are equipped with the dual image communication – the audience can also be seen at the other side of the cable. Big Brother demand the implicit obedience from the citizens, and they shake from the fear to be punished by their God, Father and Protector at the same time.

The social class system of Oceania is threefold:

· The Inner Party, the upper-class, the elite ruling minority

· The Outer Party, the middle-class, numerous minor workers

· The Proles (from proletariat), the lower-class, who make up 85% of the population and represent the uneducated working class

As the government, the Party controls the population with four ministries:

· the Ministry of Peace, which deals with war actions

· the Ministry of Plenty, which deals with food, goods, and domestic production

· the Ministry of Love, which deals with identification, monitoring, arrest, and conversion of dissidents

· the Ministry of Truth, which deals with propaganda

The main slogan of the party called INGSOC (means “English Socialism”) is:

“WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

Any thought that is hostile to The Party must be eradicated. The organization called Thought Police suspects the thought criminals and delivers them in the Ministry of Love (the love of the Big Brother) first for punishing and making him confess, and then for the torture. For the purpose of making people think less, the language becomes primitive, mentioned in the novel as Newspeak; books and newspapers are rewritten to hide the real truth; betrayal and snitching are respected, even on the members of the family. This atmosphere of never-ending persecution drives people to despair and insensitivity.

III. Main characters of the plot:

Winston. The principle character of the novel – Winston Smith – is a man of 39 years old. He was born in London in 1944 or 1945 – he doesn’t know it clearly. He is a member of the middle-class, the Outer Party. At some point his parents and sister disappeared, and he was left alone face to face with the changing world. He lives an existence in a one-room flat on a weekly ration of black bread and synthetic meals. From the very young age he has been working in the Ministry of Truth, in the documentary section. Making changes in the documents with the facts contradictory to the Party propaganda is a part of his responsibility. He is very good at doing his job and also at imagining the slogans and ideas that the Party would propagate.

Secretly Winston hates the Party and its ideology, daily overcoming the daily desire to show his protest against the system. To pacify his anger, he keeps a journal where all his negative thoughts about the Party are put together, which, if uncovered by the Thought Police, would warrant death. On public he stays a respectable member of the Outer Party, but he suspects his collaborator in the Ministry Of Truth, the girl with the dark hair, of spying on him. He also supposes that another Inner Party member O’Brien is engaged in the Brotherhood – the organization founded to realize the protest against the Party and to pull it down.

One day Winston approached the proles city district to find out what the world was like before the Party had started its existence. It was dangerous, because if the Thought Police saw him, it would suspicious to see a blue-collar worker in this area. Winston failed in collecting the data about the gone world before the revolution, but he didn’t go away without any surprises. The girl with the black hair appeared to have been pursuing him.

Over a week Winston was planning how to get rid of the girl that had caught him in the thought crime. But one day, walking face to face with the girl down the corridor of the Ministry of Love, she falls down with the bandage over her hand. As a honest member of the Party, Winston helps her to stand up, feeling a tiny paper note in his hand, secretly given by the girl. It was written in it: “I LOVE YOU”, and this inscription shocked Winston. From that moment, he wasn’t thinking about killing her, but wanted to have a contact with her.

By common efforts, he has made her acquaintance, her name was Julia. They have started to date several times a month, hiding from the gaze of the telescreens. Their romance has begun unnoticeable for the Thought Police, but he couldn’t escape from the feeling that they are already dead.

Inspired by the success of hiding the relation between Julia, Winston made an effort to contact O’Brien, the potential member of the Brotherhood. Doing that was surprisingly real, and soon he got from O’Brien a book that was considered to be the property of the leader of the Brotherhood, Emmanuel Goldstein. Winston discovered the truth about the present condition of the world super-states, which aim is to wage a war against two other super-states to reduce the level of goods consumption. In that way, all the warfare turns out to be a conspiracy of country Parties, including Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.

While reading the book in their shelter, Winston and Julia are caught and separated by the Thought Police and delivered in the Ministry of Love. Winston thought he would be tortured after his confession, but the things could get worse: he realizes that the Ministry of Love was found to “cure” the mind of a patient from the thought disease in purpose to send the individual back in the society. O’Brien turns out to be the member of the Thought Police and Winston’s executioner.

Winston wanted to save his tender feelings to Julia from O’Brien, but finally the last has made Winston confess to his love with the girl with the black hair. He has been “cured” from the feeling of love, so has been Julia. After they were set free, their meeting didn’t arouse in them any feelings. Henceforth, the society adores all-seeing and powerful Big Brother, and so does Winston.

Julia. The girl that is in love with Winston – Julia – is 26 years old, she has brown hair and brown eyes, a thin waist, with a red sash of Junior Anti-sex union. She works in a Ministry of Truth, in the section of literature. She is very skillful at pretending to be a fierce supporter of the Party, but in fact she continuously violates the laws. She also teaches Winston how to cheat on the methods of Party surveillance.

She doesn’t believe that the Brotherhood exists. She takes the Party existence for granted as she is young and is capable to adjust to the living conditions of the present society.

As it turns out, Julia is a thought criminal as Winston, and hates the Party as much as he does. Winston and Julia begin a love affair, at first meeting in the country, at a clearing in the woods, then in a ruined church, and afterwards in a rented room at the antiques shop in a proletarian district of London. There, they think themselves safe and unobserved, because the rented bedroom has no apparent telescreen. Unknown to Winston and Julia, the Thought Police were already aware of their love affair.

After the confession in the Ministry of Love, Julia says to Winston she has betrayed him and this doesn’t arouse any feelings in her. They both have realized that betraying each other in words to stop the torture means also to betray by heart too.

O’Brien. He is a member of the Inner Party of approximately 45 years old with tall and burly body, a thick neck but with a coarse mocking face. However, he has enough charm to win anyone over: he has a smart appearance in combination with good manners and a body of a heavyweight boxer.

O’Brien poses himself as a member of The Brotherhood, the counter-revolutionary resistance, in order to deceive, trap, and capture Winston and Julia. In his turn, Winston keeps the journal to write In the novel he represents the antagonist to Winston: though he had given Winston the book of the Party’s enemy Emmanuel Goldstein, he turned out to be the Thought Police serviceman.

It is mentioned in the novel that O’Brien sympathizes Winston because of his way to comprehend the rules of the Party and its drawbacks. So does Winston because of O’Brien’s greatness of Party spirit and his ability to read Winston’s mind. He acts as a father to Winston, instead of one who he lacked in the childhood, and re-educates him in the manner that the Party demands.

O’Brien’s destiny in the end of the novel is not cleared up. He may continue the service at the Thought Police chasing the thought criminals.

Big Brother. Big Brother is a dark-eyed man with mustaches; his appearance resembles to the one of Stalin. He is the head of The Party who rule Oceania (territory of North and South America, Australia, the Oceanic Isles and the British Isles). He must have been an abstract person who was created by The Party as a symbol of power and a chief of the people. Maybe he existed, but had died long time ago. Nobody has seen him alive making a speech.

From the very young age people bring their children to love Big Brother and to be engaged in the work of the Party in his honor. They are signed up in the Junior Antisex Union, taught to spy on their relatives and neighbors with the elementary methods of espionage to reveal the strange behavior of thought criminals.

All the characters not from the Inner-Party are afraid of the image of Big Brother that is placed all over the city in any street. Even when Winston and Julia had been caught, they couldn’t move a muscle to run away from the Thought Police – that was a result of daily psychological influence through the mass media.

Emmanuel Goldstein. Goldstein is considered to be the number one Oceania’s enemy. Once he was one of the leaders of the Revolution, even fought shoulder to shoulder with Big Brother, but later, according to the Party propaganda, he betrayed it and escaped from the state. He is a national symbolic enemy who ideologically unites the people of Oceania with the Party, especially during the Two Minutes Hate when people are obliged to shout at the image of Goldstein wishing him torture and death.

He is reputed a founder of the Brotherhood which purpose was to fight against the Party system. He is the author of The Book, the one and only code of rules of the organization, but according to the words of O’Brien, it was a fabrication of the Party itself for the purpose of snaring a trap for criminals.

Winston thinks Goldstein is his secret thoughts rescuer, and hopes that he really exists. He dreams of finding him and telling all the things that have been in his mind for a long time. But the ideology of the Party forces him to hate him, and sometimes he goes mad from contradictory feelings of hatred and hope at the same time.

In the end of the novel Goldstein doesn’t appear, and it seems that we’ll never know whether his identity was real or not.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-16