The Literature Book

254

population: these are run by the

Thought Police, who supervise

the protection of the ruling Party.

Everyman’s rebellion

Orwell immerses his readers in this

hideous totalitarian world before

revealing that Winston Smith is

engaged in a vital act of rebellion.

In his tiny apartment, dominated

by the instrument of Party control

(the telescreen), Smith is starting to

write his own history in a diary

he has acquired secondhand—a

crime of self expression. He knows

it will be an act that he cannot ever

step back from and, moreover, that

“he was a lonely ghost uttering a

truth that nobody would ever hear.”

And yet he continues to write.

Winston Smith is the everyman

hero of the novel—his surname’s

commonality suggesting that there

is nothing special or unusual about

him. That quality makes his act of

subversion so incendiary: if every

Smith or Jones were to rise up

against society, then revolution

would follow. The use of a name

that feels ordinarily English echoes

Eric Blair’s own adoption of the

pseudonym “George Orwell,” which

he did shortly before publication of

his first book, Down and Out in

Paris and London (1933), to avoid

any embarrassment to his family.

Orwell’s characterization of the

ordinary Smith as a rebel, one who

makes his own stand for genuine

truth against the machinery of the

Party, creates an unlikely champion.

In Julia, he finds a fellow dissenter

and a lover. Younger than Smith,

Julia is an apparent firebrand for

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

the Junior Anti-Sex League, but

passes Smith a note with the

simple message “I love you.” Their

affair is an act of rebellion itself,

a sex crime. Yet their covert love

cannot last for long, hidden beneath

the facade of their obedience to Big

Brother and the rules of Oceania.

Enemies of the state

The state’s acknowledged enemy

is Emmanuel Goldstein, the Party’s

former leader who now heads

a resistance movement called

In the end the Party would

announce that two and two

made five, and you would

have to believe it.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

If you want a picture

of the future, imagine

a boot stamping on

a human face—forever.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Duckspeak:

a form of brainless speaking that enables

garbage to be uttered convincingly.

Bellyfeel:

gut instinct acceptance

of Party ideas.

Thoughtcrime:

the criminal act of a belief that

questions the ruling Party.

Doubleplusgood:

something that is

simply the best.

Unperson:

someone erased by the state

from the historical records.

Blackwhite:

blind, uncritical belief

in spite of the facts.

Goodthink:

approved views that give ideological

conformity to the Party.

Doublethink:

a system of thought in which control in

the present means amending the past.

“Newspeak” is a sinister, curtailed

form of everyday English (“Oldspeak”)

devised by the all-powerful state. In

time, “Oldspeak” will be replaced by

Newspeak, a stark, simple language,

purified to express meanings and to

meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc,

or English Socialism. Because thought

requires words, the state has inhibited

“thoughtcrimes,” and personal ideas

and feelings of dissent will have

become unthinkable.

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