Previous Next

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes. Read more: What Is a Motif in Literature?

Doublethink

Simply put, doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s mind at the same time. The idea of emerges as an important consequence of the Party’s massive campaign of large-scale psychological manipulation. As the Party’s mind-control techniques break down an individual’s capacity for independent thought, it becomes possible for that individual to believe anything that the Party tells them, even while possessing information that runs counter to what they are being told.

At the Hate Week rally, for instance, the Party shifts its diplomatic allegiance, so the nation it has been at war with suddenly becomes its ally, and its former ally becomes its new enemy. When the Party speaker suddenly changes the nation, he refers to as an enemy in the middle of his speech, the crowd accepts his words immediately and is even ashamed to find that it has made the wrong signs for the event. In the same way, people can accept the Party ministries’ names, though they contradict their functions: the Ministry of Plenty oversees economic shortages, the Ministry of Peace wages war, the Ministry of Truth conducts propaganda and historical revisionism, and the Ministry of Love is the center of the Party’s operations of torture and punishment.

Urban Decay

Urban decay proves a pervasive motif in 1984. The London that Winston Smith calls home in the novel is a dilapidated, rundown city in which buildings are crumbling, conveniences such as elevators never work, and necessities such as electricity and plumbing are extremely unreliable. Though Orwell never discusses it openly, it seems clear that the disintegration of London, just like the widespread hunger and poverty of its inhabitants, is due to the Party’s mismanagement and incompetence. A key theme of 1984, inspired by examples from 20th-century communism, is that totalitarian regimes are viciously effective at enhancing their own power but miserably incompetent at providing for their citizens. The grim decay in London is an important visual reminder of this idea, and it offers insight into the Party’s priorities through its contrast to the immense technology the Party develops to spy on its citizens.

Technology

By means of telescreens and ubiquitous hidden microphones, the Party can monitor its citizens at almost any time. The Party also employs complicated mechanisms (1984 was written before computers were in widespread use) to exert large-scale control over sources of information and economic production. Additionally, it has developed fearsome machinery to inflict torture upon those it deems enemies. But nowhere in the novel are we told about any technological advances being used to improve the quality of life of the masses of citizens. 1984 warns that technology, which is generally perceived as working toward the betterment of humanity, can have the opposite effect when the intentions of those who control it are self-serving or evil.

Loyalty

Throughout 1984, the Party works to ensure that the only kind of loyalty possible is loyalty to the Party. Every example of loyalty depicted, from the most fundamental to the most trivial, is destroyed by the Party. Neighbors and coworkers inform on one another, and even Parson’s own child reports him to the Thought Police. Winston’s marriage to his wife Katherine fell apart when he realized that all her loyalty was to the Party, leaving none for him. Even the relationship between customer and merchant is perverted as Winston learns that Mr. Charrington, the man who has sold him the very tools of his resistance and independence and rented him the room in which to carry out his forbidden tryst with Julia, is a member of the Thought Police.

It is Winston’s relationship with Julia that represents the novel’s most promising possibility for sustained loyalty other than to the Party. In Book Two: Chapter 7, Winston tells Julia, “if they could make me stop loving you—that would be the real betrayal.” But by the end of the novel, the Party has made Winston stop loving Julia—and love Big Brother instead, which is the only form of loyalty sanctioned by the Party.

Previous section Themes Next section Symbols
Test your knowledge

Take the Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Quick Quiz
Take a study break

18 of the Most Brilliant Lines of Foreshadowing in Literature
Take a study break

The 7 Most Messed-Up Short Stories We All Had to Read in School

Popular pages: 1984

Take a Study Break