Eric Blair, better known by his pen-name George Orwell, published his ninth and last book in June of 1949. The dystopian novel depicts a totalitarian society characterized by mass surveillance of its citizens, the censorship of information coupled with widespread government propaganda, and the severe punishment of dissidence or nonconformity. It is especially noteworthy for its depiction of how language might be manipulated to control thought rather than to examine truth. The fact that he named the novel 1984—a mere 35 years after its publication—suggested the sobering possibility that the society portrayed in the book is already poised to come into existence.
Orwell’s magnum opus is a no-brainer for my list. It is the only novel on my list that was named on all seven of the lists I consulted when I began my project: It came in as number 13 on the famous 1998 Modern Library list of the 100 greatest English language novels of the twentieth century. It was number 23 on the Penguin Classics’ list of 100 “must read” novels as selected by their readers, and number 12 on the BBC list of the 100 Greatest British Novels. It’s also on the unranked Time magazine list of the 100 greatest English language novels since 1923, the Guardian list of the 100 greatest English language novels, the Observer list of the 100 greatest world novels, and the Norwegian Book Clubs’ list of the great world novels. In addition to all that, just to mention a few other more recent lists I’ve talked about in past reviews, 1984 was number 30 on the “Twentieth Century’s Greatest Hits” list, number 18 on the PBS conducted “Great American Read” list of 2018, and number 8 on the BBC’s 2003 “Big Read” list. On the “Greatest Books of All Time” website, a mathematically computed compilation of 343 “best books” lists, 1984 is the fifth highest ranked novel in the English language. Having been translated into at least 65 languages, 1984 is among the 25 most often translated books in the history of the world. And it’s ranked number 67 (alphabetically) on my own list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.”
Of course, the novel most often compared to 1984 is Huxley’s Brave New World, published in Britain seventeen years earlier that Orwell’s book. Huxley’s totalitarian state relied on genetic engineering and on brainwashing, augmented by drug-induced serenity, the censorship of any materials that might prove disturbing to citizens, and rampant consumerism. The goal of this society seems to be to make people happy by eliminating the difficult and the challenging. Orwell’s totalitarian leaders are interested not in the happiness of their citizens but solely in their own power. Orwell was writing in the aftermath of the Second World War: the world was much better acquainted with totalitarianism at its most lethal, and some of the tactics of the 1984 government—the skillful use of propaganda and particularly the “two-minute hate”—are quite reminiscent of the Nazi demonization of the Jews. But the depiction of the mustachioed Big Brother, the surveillance techniques, and the treatment of dissenters in the novel would be recognized immediately by Cold War readers in 1949 as a kind of parody of Soviet Russia under the despotic rule of Joseph Stalin.
The story focuses on the protagonist, Winston Smith, a government employee in the ironically named Ministry of Truth. His job is to change and rewrite all past news stories to match what the government currently has decided the “truth” actually is. For instance the superstate of Oceania, which included Great Britain (as well as the entire Western Hemisphere and Australia), is perpetually at war—a war conducted by the equally ironically named Ministry of Peace, but which country they are actually at war with changes with the wind, so that one day the Ministry of Truth releases news stories about Oceania’s war against Eurasia (another totalitarian superstate that includes all of Russia as well as mainland Europe), but the next day they are at war with Eastasia (which includes, China, Korea, Japan Southeast Asia, etc.), and have always been at war with Eastasia. Eurasia is their faithful ally. And Winston must make all necessary changes to all public records as well as news stories posted in the past, so there is never any documentary evidence that the current lie is not the truth. Books, of course, must be destroyed if they do not reflect the current Party line. As the Party slogan insists: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
The official language of Oceania is Newspeak, the chief goal of which is to eliminate words from the official vocabulary. Since all official documents and news stories must be written in Newspeak, eventually all children will learn Newspeak in school, ultimately limiting everyone’s vocabulary. All human beings think and reflect on their emotions using language, and since a large vocabulary allows for a variety of nuanced thought, it is in the interest of the totalitarian state to limit the kinds of things their citizens can speak about, because it limits the things they can think about. If there are no words for revolution, liberty, or democracy, then there is no specific coherent way to think about them. Why do we need a word like bad when we can simply say ungood? Why do we need worse when we can say plusungood? Why say worst when you can say doubleplusungood? Orwell’s appendix on the principles of Newspeak is a brilliant essay on its own concerning the significant role of language in political discourse.
Winston secretly hates what he does, hates the Party, which controls all things, and hates Big Brother, who is the public face of the Party. Big Brother is apparently a dictatorial demagogue who maintains power by what is essentially a cult of personality (the “carrot” in this scenario) joined with the “Thought Police” (the “stick”)—those who keep the citizens under surveillance (through such devices as hidden cameras and microphones, as well as two-way television screens) and discipline those who show any trace of non-conformity. Winston keeps his own subversive thoughts in a private diary.
Winston begins a secret affair with a like-minded co-worker named Julia. The two meet regularly in a secluded room above an out-of-the way antiques shop run by a certain Mr. Charrington. Winston does suspect that his supervisor at the Ministry of Truth, the Party insider O’Brien, is a member of a secret underground society known as the Brotherhood, which was formed by Big Brother’s great rival Emmanuel Goldstein—a former revolutionary who fled from Oceania and is now known to be helping the nation’s enemies—either Eurasia or East Asia, depending on which way the wind is blowing. Goldstein was regularly reviled, along with the enemy country, during the daily “Two-Minute Hates” that everyone in the Ministry must engage in. Goldstein—the Trotsky to Big Brother’s Stalin in this parable—is purported to be hiding out in some secret foreign location.
Some time after the affair with Julia begins, O’Brien invites Winston to his flat, reveals that he is in fact a member of the Brotherhood, and afterward secretly sends Winston a copy of Goldstein’s subversive book, the Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Winston and Julia read one of the chapters from Goldstein’s book (included in full in Orwell’s text) discussing the Party’s strategies for holding on to power through their propaganda and the idea of perpetual war, and expresses the belief that the only hope is for the working classes, the proletariat, to rise up and overthrow their masters. Winston, however, finds that the “proles” are completely apolitical.
In a dismaying reversal, both O’Brien and Charrington turn out to be agents of the Thought Police who have had Winston and Julia under surveillance throughout their affair. The two lovers are put into prison, where Winston shares a cell with a co-worker named Tom Parsons. This is a huge surprise to Winston, since Parsons had always been an unthinking cheerleader for the Party. But apparently Parsons’ seven year old daughter had heard him mutter “down with Big Brother” in his sleep, and had turned him in to the Thought Police—an act which makes Parsons very proud of is patriotic daughter.
If I told you what happens to Winston and Julia in prison, and the outcome of their months of incarceration, that would count as a “spoiler,” so I won’t say anything, other than, as I’m sure you can imagine, it involves some cringeworthy interrogation techniques.
The themes of 1984—the dangers of authoritarian governments, the importance of freedom of thought and expression, the necessity to know what the truth is and to construct our world according to it—are still as important today as they were in Orwell’s time, if not more so. In a world where the trend in recent years, even among western democracies, has been toward more authoritarian governments, Orwell’s cautionary tale should arouse our senses. When social media and the plethora of often contradictory news sources make truth more and more difficult to pinpoint, and where the term “alternative facts” could be used seriously by a former president’s Senior Counselor as if it were an actual thing—as if truth were in fact a matter of choice—then the dangers of the popular political lies in 1984 are painfully relevant. Strangely enough, the novel is one of the most often challenged or banned books in American schools. It’s often been called “pro-communist”—a charge that boggles the mind, as does the irony of banning a book that talks about banning books. This is a book everyone should read.