George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Literary Analysis

George Orwell’s classic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, follows the life of 39-year-old Winston Smith in Airstrip One, a city in Oceania, a super-state controlled by a totalitarian government called the Party. Wherever he goes, Winston is haunted by massive posters of the Big Brother, the supposed leader of the government. When Winston starts keeping a journal, which warrants torture and execution, he begins to question everything that has been taught to him since the Party took over. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel because of the Party’s perpetual lying to all of its subjects, conscious effort to reduce the quality of everyday life, and cruel treatment to people deemed heretics.

At the beginning of the book, Winston

On part two, the woman goes through an elaborate ploy in order to pass Winston a single note: I LOVE YOU. They decide to meet in secret, doing illegal deeds and falling deeper in love, while discussing the Party and the possibility that an opposing movement, the Brotherhood, exists. When O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party and a person of note to Winston invites them over to his house, he initiates them into the Brotherhood and informs them of the Book, a famous piece of writing by the instigator of the Brotherhood, Emmanuel Goldstein. While reading through the Book, Winston comes across information he seems to already know, but it is a relief to him that his thoughts are not limited to himself anymore. In Chapter 3, Goldstein outlines how the Party remains in power by staying in perpetual war, “The war, therefore, if we judge by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture...It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs” (Orwell 155). This shows that the suffering the people of Oceania and almost the whole of Earth are going through is merely so their will is bent towards their own government instead of having a life quality and education level that are high enough to rebel. The Party is imposing itself as the savior of the people, protecting them from foreign

When Winston discovers that both Mr. Charrington and O’Brien are loyal members of the Party, he is arrested and taken to the Ministry of Love. There, his mental stability is slowly and meticulously shattered by various forms of torture. First, he is beaten within an inch of his life and forced to confess to a myriad of crimes he didn’t commit, then he is mercilessly bullied by Party members questioning him from every angle until he is reduced to tears form shame and fatigue. However, the most powerful form of torture is delivered by O’Brien himself using a dial set to deliver changing degrees of pain. The point of this, according to him, is to convert Winston to the Party fully, stating that, “Never again will you be capable of human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living… You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves” (Orwell 201). While being tortured and destroyed both mentally and physically, Winston discusses the fundamental ideals of the Party and how they remain in power for so long. O’Brien then points out the flaws with other government systems, including communism, stating that they fail because they deny their claim for power. The Party does not attempt to explain itself it its people or present itself as a utopia. The Party demands