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Full Title
Author George Orwell
Type of work Novel
Genre Dystopian Fiction, Science Fiction
Language English
Time and place written England, 1949
Date of first publication 1949
Publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
Narrator Third-person, limited
Climax Winston’s torture with the cage of rats in Room 101
Protagonist Winston Smith
Antagonist The Party; Big Brother
Setting (time) 1984
Setting (place) London, England (known as “Airstrip One” in the novel’s alternate reality)
Point of View Winston Smith’s
Falling action Winston’s time in the café following his release from prison, including the memory of his meeting with Julia at the end of Book Three
Tense Past
Foreshadowing Winston’s betrayal of Julia is ironically foreshadowed by his insistence the Party can’t make him stop loving her; Winston’s betrayal of the Party is foreshadowed by the anti-Party comments he writes in his diary; Winston’s misreading of Julia as a spy foreshadows that he will misread O’Brien as a friend instead of antagonist; the rat in Winston and Julia’s rented room foreshadows that they are being watched.
Tone Dark, frustrated, pessimistic
Themes The psychological, technological, physical, and social dangers of totalitarianism and political authority; the importance of language in shaping human thought
Motifs Urban decay (London is falling apart under the Party’s leadership); the idea of doublethink (the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s mind at the same time and believe them both to be true)
Symbols The glass paperweight (Winston’s desire to connect with the past); the red-armed prole woman (the hope that the proles will ultimately rise up against the Party); the picture of St. Clement’s Church (the past); the telescreens and the posters of Big Brother (the Party’s constant surveillance of its subjects); the phrase “the place where there is no darkness” (Winston’s tendency to mask his fatalism with false hope, as the place where there is no darkness turns out to be not a paradise but a prison cell)
