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Summary
Summary
Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster and the Thought Police uncover each act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party.
Yet Big Brother will not tolerate dissent even in the mind. For those with original thoughts, they invented Room 101.
The world-changing novel "1984" is George Orwell s terrifying vision of a totalitarian future in which everything and everyone is slave to a tyrannical regime. Christopher Eccleston, Tim Pigott-Smith, and Pippa Nixon star in this drama, adapted by Jonathan Holloway, part of BBC Radio 4 s Real George Orwell season."
Author Notes
George Orwell was born Eric Arthur Blair on June 25, 1903 in Motihari in Bengal, India and later studied at Eton College for four years. He was an assistant superintendent with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He left that position after five years and moved to Paris, where he wrote his first two books: Burmese Days and Down and Out in Paris and London. He then moved to Spain to write but decided to join the United Workers Marxist Party Militia. After being decidedly opposed to communism, he served in the British Home Guard and with the Indian Service of the BBC during World War II. After the war, he wrote for the Observer and was literary editor for the Tribune.
His best known works are Animal Farm and 1984. His other works include A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, and Coming Up for Air. He died on January 21, 1950 at the age of 46.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Guardian Review
The clocks were striking 13 as Winston Smith entered his seventh-floor flat in Victory Mansions. The voice on the telescreen babbled away about the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan as he gazed out of the window at the bleak landscape dominated by posters of a black-moustached face, with the caption "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU". This was London, chief city of Airstrip One, itself a province of Oceania. He sat down in the alcove, hidden from the Thought Police. He picked up the book he had bought from a slummy shop that Party members were not supposed to frequent and felt a tremor pass through his bowels. The thing that he was about to start was a diary, an offence punishable by death or at least by 25 years of forced labour. I am a real 39-year-old man with real feelings. I am not just a cog in a heavy-handed political satire on Soviet totalitarianism. Winston stopped writing. What's the point? he thought. I am just a cipher. He drank a tumbler of Victory Gin and headed back to work at the Ministry of Truth. The face of Emmanuel Goldstein, Enemy of the People, flashed on to the telescreen during the Two Minutes Hate followed by the familiar declaration "WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH." As the telescreen went blank, Winston looked up and spotted O'Brien, an Inner Party member whom he had seen perhaps a dozen times in as many years. Something about the man's face suggested that, like himself, his political orthodoxy was not perfect. A feeling of imminence overwhelmed him. Not much may have happened up till now, as his every action had so far served only to illustrate a not altogether convincing dystopian world divided into three superpowers - Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia - that were perpetually at war with one another. But as he took a ruminative stroll among the coarse, yet heavily sentimentalised, Proles, he realised a young woman from the Ministry of Truth had placed a note in his pocket. Winston unwrapped the slip of paper. "I LOVE YOU". Why would an attractive young woman risk everything in a world where love and sex were forbidden to Party members for a nondescript middle-aged man with varicose ulcers to whom she had never spoken before? Such inconsistencies did not detain him long. Or at all. His heart raced. At last the action had really started. "I've done this hundreds of times before with lots of different men, you know," said Julia affectionately, as they lay together in an Oxfordshire meadow enjoying the secret thrill of a post-coital Victory Cigarette. "You do know that we are bound to get caught eventually," Winston replied, anxious that no one should forget the determinist realities of a repressive regime. "And that when we are, we shall both be vaporised." "I do and I don't care," she murmured defiantly, apparently unaware that she had just said she'd got away with it loads of times before. Their meetings were infrequent over the following weeks, furtively arranged half-hours between work and Party commitments. Yet even the terrifying scuttering of a rat in the church belfry could not unsettle Winston for long. His heart and mind were now free. "We must go to O'Brien," he announced one day. "I am sure he's a powerful figure in the Brotherhood and we can enlist in the resistance movement." "That sounds like an extremely rash assumption," Julia didn't reply. "I'm very glad you both could come," O'Brien said, sipping a glass of wine. "I'm going to give you a copy of Goldstein's forbidden book to read." The war with Eurasia was over and Winston found himself working long into the night rewriting the Party history to portray Eastasia as the enemy. Julia and I need a bolthole among the Proles, he later thought. Somewhere we can make love to the sound of Cockneys saying "Gor bless yer, guv'nor". Winston found a room above the slummy shop where he had bought the diary. "It's perfect, darling," Julia sighed, untidily applying some contraband make-up. "You look so much more attractive when you are defying the conventions of Stalinist brutalism," he cooed romantically. "Now let me read you page after page of extremely dull extracts from Goldstein's book that repeats everything about the regime you already know." "Put your hands in the air and come slowly," said a voice from behind the telescreen. "You have been caught just as you always knew you would be." "You are going to have to learn DoubleThink," O'Brien observed kindly, as electrodes were fitted to Winston's body. "The art of holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time." "OK, OK. I believe this is both a ponderous and didactic political allegory and the most brilliant critique of Soviet Russia. But I still love Julia." "Then it's Room 101 and the rats for you." Winston sat out in the square enjoying Big Brother's latest magnificent victory. Why had he struggled so hard against the Party? How great it was to be a cog in the wheels of satire! John Crace's Digested Read appears in G2 on Tuesdays. Caption: article-DigClass14.1 "I'm very glad you both could come," O'Brien said, sipping a glass of wine. "I'm going to give you a copy of [Emmanuel Goldstein]'s forbidden book to read." [Winston Smith] found a room above the slummy shop where he had bought the diary. "It's perfect, darling," [Julia] sighed, untidily applying some contraband make-up. "You look so much more attractive when you are defying the conventions of Stalinist brutalism," he cooed romantically. "Now let me read you page after page of extremely dull extracts from Goldstein's book that repeats everything about the regime you already know." "You are going to have to learn DoubleThink," O'Brien observed kindly, as electrodes were fitted to Winston's body. "The art of holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time." - John Crace.
Excerpts
Excerpts
It was a bright cold day in April, And The clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked To The wall. it depicted imply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: The face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made For The stairs. it was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. it was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, The poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. it was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, The caption beneath it ran. Excerpted from 1984 by George Orwell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
