Nineteen Eighty-Four - Wikipedia

1949 dystopian novel by George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(also published as
1984
) is a
dystopian speculative fiction novel
by the English writer
George Orwell
. It was published on 8 June 1949 by
Secker & Warburg
as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centres on
totalitarianism
mass surveillance
and
repressive regimentation
of people and behaviours.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
has been often regarded as a
classic
and has been acknowledged for its impact on twentieth-century literature.
The story takes place in a fictional future. The year is believed to be 1984, but this is uncertain. Much of the world is in
perpetual war
. Great Britain, now known as Airstrip One, has become a province of the totalitarian superstate
Oceania
, which is led by
Big Brother
, a dictatorial leader supported by an intense
cult of personality
manufactured by the Party's
Thought Police
. The Party engages in
omnipresent government surveillance
and, through the
Ministry of Truth
historical negationism
and constant
propaganda
to persecute individuality and independent thinking.
Orwell described his book as a "
satire
",
and a display of the "perversions to which a
centralised economy
is liable", while also stating he believed "that something resembling it could arrive".
The novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated. Parallels have been drawn between the novel and real-world totalitarianism, mass surveillance and violations of
freedom of expression
, among other themes.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
has become a classic literary example of dystopian and
political fiction
. It popularised "
Orwellian
" as an adjective, and many terms used in it have entered common usage, including "
Big Brother
", "
doublethink
", "
Thought Police
", "
thoughtcrime
", and "
Newspeak
", as well as the expression "
2 + 2 = 5
".
Time
magazine included it on its list of the 100 best English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005,
10
and it was placed on the
Modern Library
's
100 Best Novels
list, reaching number 13 on the editors' list and number 6 on the readers' list.
11
In 2003 it was listed at number 8 on
The Big Read
survey by the
BBC
12
It has been
adapted across media
, most famously
as a film in 1984
starring
John Hurt
Suzanna Hamilton
and
Richard Burton
As the narrative opens on "April 4th, 1984", a date whose validity is questioned by the protagonist,
Winston Smith
, the world has been ravaged for decades by global war, civil conflict and revolution. What was formerly known as the island of
Great Britain
is "Airstrip One", a province of
Oceania
, one of the three
totalitarian
super-states
that rule the world. It is ruled by "The Party" under the ideology of "
Ingsoc
": a
Newspeak
shortening of "English Socialism". Also present is the mysterious leader
Big Brother
, who has an intense
cult of personality
. The Party brutally purges anyone who does not fully conform to their regime, using the
Thought Police
and constant surveillance through
telescreens
(two-way televisions),
cameras
and
hidden microphones
. Those who fall out of favour with the Party become "unpersons", disappearing per
damnatio memoriae
with all evidence of their existence destroyed.
In London, the protagonist is a member of the Outer Party, working at the
Ministry of Truth
, where he
rewrites historical records
to conform to the state's ever-changing version of history. Winston revises past editions of
The Times
, while the original documents are destroyed after being dropped into ducts known as
memory holes
, which lead to an immense furnace. He secretly opposes the Party's rule and dreams of rebellion, despite knowing that he is already a "
thought-criminal
" and is likely to be caught one day.
While in a
prole
neighbourhood, he meets Mr. Charrington, the owner of an
antiques shop
, and buys a diary where he writes criticisms of the Party and Big Brother. To his dismay, when he visits a prole quarter, he discovers they have no political consciousness. As he works in the Ministry of Truth, he observes
Julia
, a young woman maintaining the novel-writing machines at the ministry, whom Winston suspects of being a spy, and develops an intense hatred of her. He vaguely suspects that
O'Brien
, a member of the Inner Party and a superior of his, is part of an enigmatic underground
resistance movement
known as the Brotherhood, formed by Big Brother's reviled political rival,
Emmanuel Goldstein
One day, Julia discreetly hands Winston a love note, and the two begin a secret affair. Julia explains that she also loathes the Party, but Winston observes that she is politically apathetic and uninterested in overthrowing the regime. Initially meeting in the country, they later meet in a rented room above Mr. Charrington's shop. During the affair, Winston remembers the disappearance of his family during the civil war of the 1950s and his tense relationship with his estranged wife Katharine. Weeks later, O'Brien invites Winston to his flat, where he introduces himself as a member of the Brotherhood and sends Winston a copy of
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
by Goldstein.
Meanwhile, during the nation's Hate Week, Oceania's enemy suddenly changes from
Eurasia
to
Eastasia
, which goes mostly unnoticed. Winston is recalled to the Ministry to assist in making the necessary revisions to the records. Winston and Julia read parts of Goldstein's book, which explains how the Party maintains power, the true meanings of its slogans, and the concept of
perpetual war
. It argues that the Party can be overthrown if the proles rise against it. However, Winston never gets the opportunity to read the chapter that explains why the Party took power and is motivated to maintain it.
Winston and Julia are captured when Mr. Charrington is revealed to be an undercover
Thought Police
agent, and they are separated and imprisoned at the
Ministry of Love
. O'Brien also shows himself to be a member of the Thought Police and a participant in a
false flag
operation that targets political dissidents within the Party. Over several months, Winston is starved and relentlessly tortured to bring his beliefs in line with the Party. O'Brien tells Winston that he will never know whether the Brotherhood actually exists and that Goldstein's book was written collaboratively by him and other Party members; furthermore, O'Brien reveals to Winston that the Party sees power not as a means but as an end, and the ultimate purpose of the Party is to seek power entirely for its own sake. For the final stage of re-education, O'Brien takes Winston to
Room 101
, which contains each prisoner's worst fear. When confronted with
rat torture
, Winston begs for the method to be used on Julia instead of him.
Winston is released into public life and continues to frequent the Chestnut Tree café. He encounters Julia, and both reveal that they have betrayed each other and are no longer in love. Back in the café, a news alert celebrates Oceania's supposed massive victory over Eurasian armies in Africa. Winston finally accepts that he loves Big Brother.
The novel includes an epilogue, an appendix of around 1,000 words, titled
Principles of Newspeak
, and written in the voice of the (or possibly a second) narrator,
13
14
using
counterfactual past-subjunctive
tense.
14
It is referred to in a footnote to the book's seventh paragraph.
13
14
Some critics read it as implying the failure of Newspeak to become dominant and the collapse of The Party some years after the events of the novel, describing it as a "happy ending".
13
Orwell wrote to his literary agent in 1949, urging that the appendix be retained for the American edition.
14
Winston Smith
: the 39-year-old protagonist who is a phlegmatic
everyman
harbouring thoughts of rebellion and is curious about the Party's power and the past before the Revolution.
Julia
: Winston's lover, who publicly espouses Party doctrine as a member of the fanatical Junior Anti-Sex League. Julia enjoys her small acts of rebellion and has no interest in giving up her lifestyle.
O'Brien
: an Inner Party official who is secretly a member of the Thought Police. He poses as a member of the Brotherhood, the counter-revolutionary resistance, to catch Winston.
Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein never physically appear, but are important to the plot and have a significant role in the
worldbuilding
Secondary characters
edit
Aaronson, Jones, and Rutherford: former members of the Inner Party whom Winston vaguely remembers as among the original leaders of the Revolution, long before he had heard of Big Brother. They confessed to treasonable conspiracies with foreign powers and were then executed in the political purges of the 1960s. In between their confessions and executions, Winston saw them drinking in the Chestnut Tree Café—with broken noses, suggesting that their confessions had been obtained by torture. Later, in the course of his editorial work, Winston sees newspaper evidence contradicting their confessions, but drops it into a
memory hole
. Eleven years later, he is confronted with the same photograph during his interrogation.
Ampleforth: Winston's one-time Records Department colleague who was imprisoned for leaving the word "God" in a poem by
Rudyard Kipling
as he could not find another rhyme for "rod";
16
Winston encounters him at the
Ministry of Love
. Ampleforth is a dreamer and intellectual who takes pleasure in his work, and respects poetry and language, traits which cause him disfavour with the Party.
Mr Charrington: an undercover officer of the
Thought Police
masquerading as a kind and sympathetic antiques dealer among the proles.
Katharine Smith: the emotionally indifferent wife whom Winston "can't get rid of". Despite disliking sexual intercourse, Katharine married Winston because it was their "duty to the Party". Although she was a "goodthinkful" ideologue, they separated because the couple could not conceive children. Divorce is not permitted, but couples who cannot have children may live separately. For much of the story Winston lives in vague hope that Katharine may die or could be "got rid of" so that he may marry Julia. He regrets not having killed her by pushing her over the edge of a quarry when he had the chance many years previously.
The Parsons family:
Tom Parsons: Winston's naïve neighbour, and an ideal member of the Outer Party: an uneducated, suggestible man who is utterly loyal to the Party, and fully believes in its perfect image. He is socially active and participates in the Party activities for his social class. He is friendly towards Smith, and despite his political conformity punishes his bullying son for firing a
catapult
at Winston. Later, as a prisoner, Winston sees Parsons imprisoned in the Ministry of Love, after his young daughter reported him to the Thought Police for speaking against Big Brother in his sleep. Even this does not dampen Parsons's belief in the Party—he says he could do "good work" in the hard labour camps.
Mrs Parsons: Parsons's wife is a wan and hapless woman who is intimidated by her own children.
The Parsons children: a nine-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter. Both are members of the Spies, a youth organisation that focuses on indoctrinating children with Party ideals and training them to report any suspected incidents of unorthodoxy. They represent the new generation of Oceanian citizens, the model society envisioned by the Inner Party without memory of life before Big Brother, and without family ties or emotional sentiment.
Syme: Winston's colleague at the Ministry of Truth, a
lexicographer
involved in compiling a new edition of the
Newspeak
dictionary. Although he is enthusiastic about his work and support for the Party, Winston notes, "He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly." Winston predicts, correctly, that Syme will become an unperson.
Writing and publication
edit
The Orwell Archive at
University College London
contains undated notes about ideas that evolved into
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. The notebooks have been deemed "unlikely to have been completed later than January 1944", and "there is a strong suspicion that some of the material in them dates back to the early part of the war".
17
In one letter from 1948 Orwell claims to have "first thought of [the book] in 1943", while in another he says he thought of it in 1944 and cites the
Tehran Conference
in 1943 as inspiration: "What it is really meant to do is to discuss the implications of dividing the world up into '
Zones of Influence
' (I thought of it in 1944 as a result of the Tehran Conference), and in addition to indicate by parodying them the intellectual implications of totalitarianism".
17
Orwell had toured Austria in May 1945 and observed manoeuvring he thought would probably lead to separate Soviet and Allied Zones of Occupation.
19
In January 1944 the Russian literary historian
Gleb Struve
introduced Orwell to
Yevgeny Zamyatin
's 1924 dystopian novel,
We
. In his response Orwell expressed an interest in the genre, and informed Struve that he had begun writing ideas for one of his own, "that may get written sooner or later".
20
In 1946 Orwell wrote about the 1931 dystopian novel
Brave New World
by
Aldous Huxley
in his article "Freedom and Happiness" for the
Tribune
, and noted similarities to
We
20
By this time Orwell had scored a critical and commercial hit with his 1945 political satire,
Animal Farm
, which raised his profile. For a follow-up he decided to produce a dystopian work of his own.
23
In a June 1944 meeting with
Fredric Warburg
, co-founder of his British publisher
Secker & Warburg
, shortly before the release of
Animal Farm
, Orwell announced that he had written the first 12 pages of his new novel. As he could then only earn a living from journalism, he predicted the book would not see a release before 1947. Progress was slow; by the end of September 1945 Orwell had written some 50 pages. Orwell became disenchanted with the restrictions and pressures involved with journalism and grew to detest city life in London. He suffered from
bronchiectasis
and a lesion in one lung; the harsh winter worsened his health.
The novel was completed at
Barnhill, Jura
In May 1946 Orwell arrived on the
Scottish island
of
Jura
23
He had wanted to retreat to a
Hebridean
island for several years;
David Astor
recommended he should stay at
Barnhill
, a remote farmhouse on the island that his family owned, with no electricity or hot water. Here Orwell intermittently drafted and finished
Nineteen Eighty-Four
23
His first stay lasted till October 1946, and during it he made little progress on the few already completed pages, and for a period of three months he did not work on it at all. After spending the winter in London, Orwell returned to Jura; in May 1947 he reported to Warburg that despite progress being slow and difficult, he was roughly a third of the way through. He sent his "ghastly mess" of a first-draft manuscript to London, where Miranda Christen volunteered to type a clean version.
30
Orwell's health worsened further in September, and he was confined to his bed with inflammation of the lungs. He lost almost two stone (28 pounds or 12.7 kg) in weight and had recurring night sweats, but he decided not to see a doctor and continued writing. On 7 November 1947 he completed the first draft in bed, and subsequently travelled to
East Kilbride
near
Glasgow
for medical treatment at
Hairmyres Hospital
, where a specialist confirmed a chronic and infectious case of
tuberculosis
30
Orwell was discharged in the summer of 1948, after which he returned to Jura and produced a full second draft of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, which he finished in November. He asked Warburg to have someone come to Barnhill and retype the manuscript, which was so untidy that the task was only considered possible if Orwell were present, as only he could understand it. The previous volunteer had left the country and no other could be found at short notice, so an impatient Orwell retyped it himself at a rate of roughly 4,000 words a day during bouts of fever and bloody coughing fits.
30
On 4 December 1948 Orwell sent the finished manuscript to Secker & Warburg and left Barnhill for good in January 1949. He recovered at a sanitarium in the
Cotswolds
30
Shortly before completion of the second draft, Orwell vacillated between two titles:
The Last Man in Europe
, an early title, and
Nineteen Eighty-Four
33
Warburg suggested the latter, which he took to be a more commercially viable choice.
34
There has been a theory – doubted by
Dorian Lynskey
(author of
a 2019 book about
Nineteen Eighty-Four
) – that
1984
was chosen simply as an inversion of the year 1948, the year in which it was being completed. Lynskey says the idea was "first suggested by Orwell's US publisher", and it was also mentioned by
Christopher Hitchens
in his introduction to the 2003 edition of
Animal Farm and 1984
, which also notes that the date was meant to give "an immediacy and urgency to the menace of totalitarian rule". However, Lynskey does not believe the inversion theory:
This idea ... seems far too cute for such a serious book. ... Scholars have raised other possibilities. [His wife] Eileen wrote a poem for her old school's centenary called 'End of the Century: 1984.'
G. K. Chesterton
's 1904 political satire
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
, which mocks the art of prophecy, opens in 1984. The year is also a significant date in
The Iron Heel
. But all of these connections are exposed as no more than coincidences by the early drafts of the novel ... First he wrote 1980, then 1982, and only later 1984. The most fateful date in literature was a late amendment.
36
A 1947 draft
manuscript
of the first page of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, showing the
editorial
development
In the run up to publication Orwell called the novel "a
beastly
book" and expressed some disappointment towards it, thinking it would have been improved had he not been so ill. This was typical of Orwell, who had talked down his other books shortly before their release.
36
Nevertheless, it was enthusiastically received by Secker & Warburg, who acted quickly; before Orwell had left Jura he rejected their proposed blurb that portrayed it as "a thriller mixed up with a love story".
36
He also refused a proposal from the American Book of the Month Club to release an edition without the appendix and chapter on Goldstein's book, a decision which Warburg claimed cut off about £40,000 in sales.
36
Nineteen Eighty-Four
was published on 8 June 1949 in Britain;
36
39
Orwell predicted earnings of around £500. A first print of 25,575 copies was followed by a further 5,000 copies in March and August 1950. It had the most immediate impact in the United States, following its release there on 13 June 1949 by
Harcourt Brace, & Co.
An initial print of 20,000 copies was quickly followed by another 10,000 on 1 July, and again on 7 September. By 1970, over 8 million copies had been sold in the US, and in 1984, it topped the country's all-time best seller list.
In June 1952 Orwell's widow, Sonia Brownell, sold the sole remaining manuscript at a charity auction for £50. The draft remains the only surviving literary manuscript from Orwell, and is held at the
John Hay Library
at
Brown University
in
Providence, Rhode Island
, US.
44
45
Variant English-language editions
edit
In the original published UK and US editions of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
numerous small variations in the text exist, the US edition altering Orwell's agreed edit of the text as was typical of publishing practices of the time in regard to spelling and punctuation, as well as some small edits and phrasings. While Orwell rejected a proposed book club edition which would see substantial sections of the book removed, these minor changes passed somewhat under the radar. Other more significant revisions and variant texts also exist, however.
In 1984, Peter Davison edited
Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile of the Extant Manuscript
, published by Secker and Warburg in Britain and Harcourt-Brace-Jovanovich in the United States. This reproduced, page-for-page, Brownell's copy of the original manuscript in
facsimiles
, as well as a complete typeset versions of that text, complete with Orwell's holograph and typewritten pages, and handwritten amendments and corrections. The book had a preface by Daniel Segal. It has been reprinted in various international editions with translated introductions and notes, and reprinted in English in limited edition formats.
In 1997, Davison produced a definitive text of
Nineteen Eighty Four
as part of Secker's 20-volume definitive edition of the
Complete Works of George Orwell
. This edition removed errors and reversed editorial changes in the original editions made without Orwell's oversight, all based on detailed reference to Orwell's original manuscript and notes. This text has gone on to be reprinted in various subsequent paperback editions, including one with an introduction by the novelist
Thomas Pynchon
, without obvious note that it is a revised text, and has been translated as an unexpurgated version of text.
In 2021, Polygon published
Nineteen Eighty Four: The Jura Edition
, with an introduction by Alex Massie.
Sources for literary motifs
edit
Nineteen Eighty-Four
uses themes from life in the Soviet Union and wartime life in Great Britain as sources for many of its motifs. Some time at an unspecified date after the first American publication of the book, the producer
Sidney Sheldon
wrote to Orwell interested in adapting the novel to the Broadway stage. Orwell wrote in a letter to Sheldon (to whom he would sell the US stage rights) that his basic goal with
Nineteen Eighty-Four
was imagining the consequences of Stalinist government ruling British society:
Nineteen Eighty-Four
] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the
Russian Foreign Office
46
According to Orwell's biographer
D. J. Taylor
Orwell's
A Clergyman's Daughter
(1935) has "essentially the same plot of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
... It's about somebody who is spied upon, and eavesdropped upon, and oppressed by vast exterior forces they can do nothing about. It makes an attempt at rebellion and then has to compromise".
47
A 1931 poster for the
first five-year plan
of the
Soviet Union
by
Yakov Guminer
ru
reading "The arithmetic of an industrial-financial counter-plan: 2 + 2 plus the enthusiasm of the workers = 5"
The statement "
2 + 2 = 5
", used to torment Winston Smith during his interrogation, was a communist party slogan from the second
five-year plan
, which encouraged fulfilment of the five-year plan in four years. The slogan was seen in electric lights on Moscow house-fronts, billboards and elsewhere.
48
The switch of Oceania's allegiance from Eastasia to Eurasia and the subsequent rewriting of history ("Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete"; ch 9) is evocative of the Soviet Union's changing relations with Nazi Germany. The two nations were open and frequently vehement critics of each other until the signing of the 1939
Treaty of Non-Aggression
. Thereafter, and continuing until the
Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union
in 1941, no criticism of Germany was allowed in the Soviet press, and all references to prior party lines stopped—including in the majority of non-Russian communist parties who tended to follow the Russian line. Orwell had criticised the
Communist Party of Great Britain
for supporting the Treaty in his essays for
Betrayal of the Left
(1941). "The Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939 reversed the Soviet Union's stated foreign policy. It was too much for many of the
fellow-travellers
like
Gollancz
[Orwell's sometime publisher] who had put their faith in a strategy of construction
Popular Front
governments and the peace bloc between Russia, Britain and France."
49
Descriptions of Emmanuel Goldstein and Big Brother evoke Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin respectively.
The description of Emmanuel Goldstein, with a "small, goatee beard", evokes the image of
Leon Trotsky
. The film of Goldstein during the Two Minutes Hate is described as showing him being transformed into a bleating sheep. This image was used in a propaganda film during the
Kino-eye
period of Soviet film, which showed Trotsky transforming into a goat.
50
page needed
Like Goldstein, Trotsky was a formerly high-ranking party official who was ostracised and then wrote a book criticising party rule,
The Revolution Betrayed
, published in 1936.
The omnipresent images of Big Brother, a man described as having a moustache, bears resemblance to the cult of personality built up around
Joseph Stalin
51
The news in Oceania emphasised production figures, just as it did in the Soviet Union, where record-setting in factories (by "
Heroes of Socialist Labour
") was especially glorified. The best known of these was
Alexei Stakhanov
, who purportedly set a record for coal mining in 1935.
52
The tortures of the Ministry of Love evoke the procedures used by the
NKVD
in their interrogations,
53
page needed
including beatings, deprivation, and torture through the use of their greatest fear.
54
The random bombing of Airstrip One is based on the
area bombing
of London by
Buzz bombs
and the
V-2 rocket
in 1944–1945.
51
The
Thought Police
is based on the
NKVD
, which arrested people for "anti-Soviet" remarks.
55
page needed
The confessions of the "Thought Criminals" Rutherford, Aaronson and Jones are based on the
show trials
of the 1930s, which included fabricated confessions by the prominent Bolsheviks
Nikolai Bukharin
Grigory Zinoviev
and
Lev Kamenev
to the effect that they were being paid by the Nazi government to undermine the Soviet regime under
Leon Trotsky
's direction.
The song "
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, and you sold me") was based on an old English song called "Go no more a-rushing" ("Under the spreading chestnut tree, Where I knelt upon my knee, We were as happy as could be, 'Neath the spreading chestnut tree."). The song was published as early as 1891. The song was a popular camp song in the 1920s, sung with corresponding movements (like touching one's chest when singing "chest", and touching one's head when singing "nut").
Glenn Miller
recorded the song in 1939.
57
The "Hates" (Two Minutes Hate and Hate Week) were inspired by the constant rallies sponsored by party organs throughout the Stalinist period. These were often short pep-talks given to workers before their shifts began (Two Minutes Hate),
58
but could also last for days, as in the annual celebrations of the anniversary of the
October Revolution
(Hate Week).
Orwell fictionalised "newspeak", "doublethink" and "Ministry of Truth" based on both the Soviet press, and British wartime usage, such as "Miniform". In particular, he adapted Soviet ideological discourse constructed to ensure that public statements could not be questioned.
60
Winston Smith's job, "revising history" (and the "unperson" motif) are based on
censorship of images in the Soviet Union
, which airbrushed images of "fallen" people from group photographs and removed references to them in books and newspapers.
62
In one well-known example, the second edition of the
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
had an article about
Lavrentiy Beria
. After his fall from power and execution, subscribers received a letter from the editor
63
instructing them to cut out and destroy the three-page article on Beria and paste in its place enclosed replacement pages expanding the adjacent articles on
F. W. Bergholz
, the
Bering Sea
and
Bishop Berkeley
64
65
66
Big Brother's "Orders of the Day" were inspired by Stalin's regular wartime orders, called by the same name. A small collection of the more political of these have been published (together with his wartime speeches) in English as
On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union
by Joseph Stalin.
67
68
Like Big Brother's orders of the day, Stalin's frequently lauded heroic individuals,
67
like Comrade Ogilvy, the fictitious hero Winston Smith invented to "rectify" (fabricate) a Big Brother Order of the day.
The Ingsoc slogan "Our new, happy life", repeated from telescreens, evokes Stalin's 1935 statement, which became a
CPSU
slogan, "Life has become better, Comrades; life has become more cheerful."
55
In 1940 the Argentine writer
Jorge Luis Borges
published "
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
", which describes the invention by a "benevolent secret society" of a world that would seek to remake human language and reality along human-invented lines. The story concludes with an appendix describing the success of the project. Borges' story addresses similar themes of
epistemology
, language and history to 1984.
60
During the
Second World War
Orwell believed
British democracy
as it existed before 1939 would not survive; the question being, "Would it end via Fascist
coup d'état
from above or via Socialist revolution from below?"
60
Later he admitted that events proved him wrong: "What really matters is that I fell into the trap of assuming that 'the war and the revolution are inseparable'."
69
In his 1946 essay "
Why I Write
" Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the
Spanish Civil War
(1936–39) were "written, directly or indirectly, against
totalitarianism
and for
democratic socialism
".
70
Nineteen Eighty-Four
is a
cautionary tale
about revolution betrayed by totalitarian defenders previously proposed in
Homage to Catalonia
(1938) and
Animal Farm
(1945), while
Coming Up for Air
(1939) celebrates the personal and political freedoms lost in
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(1949). The biographer
Michael Shelden
notes Orwell's
Edwardian
childhood at
Henley-on-Thames
as the golden country; being bullied at
St Cyprian's School
as his empathy with victims; his life in the
Indian Imperial Police
in Burma and the techniques of violence, and wartime censorship in the
BBC
as capricious authority.
Other influences include
Darkness at Noon
(1940) and
The Yogi and the Commissar
(1945) by
Arthur Koestler
The Iron Heel
(1908) by
Jack London
1920: Dips into the Near Future
72
by
John A. Hobson
Brave New World
(1932) by
Aldous Huxley
We
(1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin which he reviewed in 1946;
73
and
The Managerial Revolution
(1940) by
James Burnham
predicting perpetual war among three totalitarian superstates. Orwell told the writer
Jacintha Buddicom
that he would write a novel stylistically like
A Modern Utopia
(1905) by
H. G. Wells
74
Extrapolating from the Second World War, the novel's
pastiche
parallels the politics and rhetoric at war's end—the changed alliances at the "
Cold War
's" (1945–91) beginning; the
Ministry of Truth
derives from the BBC's overseas service, controlled by the
Ministry of Information
during the two World Wars;
Room 101
derives from a conference room at BBC
Broadcasting House
75
the
Senate House
of the University of London, containing the Ministry of Information is the architectural inspiration for the Minitrue; the post-war decrepitude derives from the socio-political life of the UK and the US, i.e., the impoverished Britain of 1948 losing its Empire despite newspaper-reported imperial triumph; and war ally but peace-time foe, Soviet Russia became
Eurasia
76
The term "English Socialism" has precedents in Orwell's wartime writings; in the essay "
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
" (1941), he said that "the war and the revolution are inseparable... the fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realisable policy"—because Britain's superannuated social class system hindered the war effort and only a socialist economy would defeat
Adolf Hitler
. Given the middle class's grasping this, they too would abide socialist revolution and that only reactionary Britons would oppose it, thus limiting the force revolutionaries would need to take power. An English Socialism would come about which "will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word."
77
In the world of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
"English Socialism" (or "
Ingsoc
" in
Newspeak
) is a
totalitarian
ideology unlike the English revolution he foresaw. Comparison of the wartime essay "The Lion and the Unicorn" with
Nineteen Eighty-Four
shows that he perceived a Big Brother regime as a perversion of his cherished socialist ideals and English Socialism. Thus Oceania is a corruption of the British Empire he believed would evolve "into a federation of Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of the Union of Soviet Republics".
60
verification needed
Nineteen Eighty-Four
expands upon the subjects summarised in Orwell's essay "
Notes on Nationalism
78
about the lack of vocabulary needed to explain the unrecognised phenomena behind certain political forces. In
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, the Party's artificial, minimalist language 'Newspeak' addresses the matter.
Positive nationalism: For instance, Oceanians' perpetual love for Big Brother. Orwell argues in the essay that ideologies such as
Neo-Toryism
and
Celtic nationalism
are defined by their obsessive sense of loyalty to some entity.
Negative nationalism: For instance, Oceanians' perpetual hatred for Emmanuel Goldstein. Orwell argues in the essay that ideologies such as
Trotskyism
and
antisemitism
are defined by their obsessive hatred of some entity.
Transferred nationalism: For instance, when Oceania's enemy changes, an orator makes a change mid-sentence, and the crowd instantly transfers its hatred to the new enemy. Orwell argues that ideologies such as
Stalinism
79
and redirected feelings of racial animus and class superiority among wealthy intellectuals exemplify this. Transferred nationalism swiftly redirects emotions from one power unit to another. In the novel, it happens during Hate Week, a Party rally against the original enemy. The crowd goes wild and destroys the posters that are now against their new friend, and many say that they must be the act of an agent of their new enemy and former friend. Many of the crowd must have put up the posters before the rally but think that the state of affairs had always been the case.
O'Brien concludes: "The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
80
In the novel O'Brien describes the Party's vision of the future:
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
— Part III, chapter III,
Nineteen Eighty-Four
One of the most notable themes in
Nineteen Eighty-Four
is
censorship
, especially in the Ministry of Truth, where photographs and public archives are manipulated to rid them of "unpersons" (people who have been erased from history by the Party).
81
On the telescreens, almost all figures of production are grossly exaggerated or simply fabricated to indicate an ever-growing economy, even during times when the reality is the opposite. One small example of the endless censorship is Winston being charged with the task of eliminating a reference to an unperson in a newspaper article. He also proceeds to write an article about Comrade Ogilvy, a made-up party member who allegedly "displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands."
82
In Oceania the upper and middle classes have very little true privacy.
83
All of their houses and flats are equipped with two-way telescreens so that they may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones.
83
Written correspondence is routinely opened and read by the government before it is delivered. The Thought Police employ undercover agents, who pose as normal citizens and report any person with subversive tendencies. Children are encouraged to report suspicious persons to the government, and some denounce their parents.
83
Citizens are controlled, and the smallest sign of rebellion, even something as small as a suspicious facial expression, can result in immediate arrest and imprisonment. Thus, citizens are compelled to obedience.
Poverty and inequality
edit
Almost the entire world lives in poverty; hunger, thirst, disease and filth are the norms. Ruined cities and towns are common: the consequence of perpetual wars and extreme economic inefficiency. Social decay and wrecked buildings surround Winston; aside from the ministries' headquarters, little of London was rebuilt. Middle-class citizens and proles consume synthetic foodstuffs and poor-quality "luxuries" such as oily
gin
and loosely-packed cigarettes, distributed under the "Victory" brand, a parody of the low-quality Indian-made "Victory" cigarettes, which British soldiers commonly smoked during the Second World War.
Winston describes something as simple as the repair of a broken window as requiring committee approval that can take several years and so most of those living in one of the blocks usually do the repairs themselves (Winston himself is called in by Mrs. Parsons to repair her blocked sink). All upper-class and middle-class residences include telescreens that serve both as outlets for propaganda and surveillance devices that allow the Thought Police to monitor them; they can be turned down, but the ones in middle-class residences cannot be turned off.
In contrast to their subordinates, the upper class of Oceanian society reside in clean and comfortable flats in their own quarters, with pantries well-stocked with foodstuffs such as wine, real coffee, real tea, real milk and real sugar, all denied to the general populace.
84
Winston is astonished that the lifts in O'Brien's building work, the telescreens can be completely turned off, and O'Brien has an Asian manservant, Martin. All upper-class citizens are attended to by slaves captured in the "disputed zone", and "The Book" suggests that many have their own cars or even helicopters.
However, despite their insulation and overt privileges, the upper class are still not exempt from the government's brutal restriction of thought and behaviour, even while lies and propaganda apparently originate from their own ranks. Instead, the Oceanian government offers the upper class their "luxuries" in exchange for maintaining their loyalty to the state; non-conformant upper-class citizens can still be condemned, tortured, and executed just like any other individual. "The Book" makes clear that the upper class' living conditions are only "relatively" comfortable, and would be regarded as "austere" by those of the pre-revolutionary élite.
85
The proles live in poverty and are kept sedated with synthetic entertainment such as pornography, a national lottery whose "big prizes" are always won by non-existent people, and gin, "which the proles were not supposed to drink". At the same time, the proles are freer and less intimidated than the upper classes: they are not expected to be particularly patriotic and the levels of surveillance that they are subjected to are very low; they lack telescreens in their own homes. "The Book" indicates that because the middle class, not the lower class, traditionally starts revolutions, the model demands tight control of the middle class, with ambitious Outer-Party members neutralised via promotion to the Inner Party or "reintegration" (
brainwashing
via psychological and physical torture) by the Ministry of Love, and proles can be allowed intellectual freedom because they are deemed to lack intellect. Winston nonetheless believes that "the future belonged to the proles".
86
The standard of living of the populace is extremely low overall.
87
Consumer goods are scarce, and those available through official channels are of low quality; for instance, despite the Party regularly reporting increased boot production, more than half of the Oceanian populace goes barefoot.
88
The Party claims that poverty is a necessary sacrifice for the war effort, and "The Book" confirms that to be partially correct since the purpose of perpetual war is to consume surplus industrial production.
89
As "The Book" explains, society is in fact designed to remain on the brink of starvation, as "In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."
The Party monitors
facial expressions
and aims to find out and control the
thoughts
of citizens through the "
Thought Police
" and the detection and elimination of "
thoughtcrime
". The Party rejects the
legal principle
Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur
("Thought does not commit a crime").
It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in
Newspeak
: FACECRIME, it was called.
One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, (...) The scientist of today is either a mixture of psychologist and inquisitor, studying with real ordinary minuteness the meaning of facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice, and testing the truth-producing effects of drugs, shock therapy, hypnosis, and physical torture; (...)
We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about.
When it was first published,
Nineteen Eighty-Four
received critical acclaim.
V. S. Pritchett
, reviewing it for the
New Statesman
, wrote: "I do not think I have ever read a novel more frightening and depressing; and yet, such are the originality, the suspense, the speed of writing and withering indignation that it is impossible to put the book down."
93
P. H. Newby
, reviewing
Nineteen Eighty-Four
for
The Listener
magazine, described it as "the most arresting political novel written by an Englishman since
Rex Warner
's
The Aerodrome
."
94
Nineteen Eighty-Four
was also praised by
Bertrand Russell
E. M. Forster
and
Harold Nicolson
94
Conversely,
Edward Shanks
was dismissive of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. Reviewing the book for
The Sunday Times
, Shanks wrote that
Nineteen Eighty-Four
"breaks all records for gloomy vaticination".
94
C. S. Lewis
was also critical of the novel, contending that the relationship of Julia and Winston, and especially the Party's view on sex, lacked credibility, and that the setting was "odious rather than tragic".
95
The historian
Isaac Deutscher
was far more critical of Orwell from a
Marxist
perspective, and characterised him as a "simple minded
anarchist
". Deutscher argued that Orwell had failed to grasp Marxist dialectics and that
Nineteen Eighty-Four
had been appropriated for anti-communist
Cold War propaganda
. Despite this, Deutscher still acknowledged that few novels in history have achieved such massive popularity or made a comparable impact on politics.
96
60
Upon its publication many American reviewers interpreted it as a statement on the socialist policies of the
British prime minister
Clement Attlee
, or the policies of Joseph Stalin.
Serving as prime minister
from 1945 to 1951
, Attlee implemented wide-ranging social reforms and changes in the British economy following the Second World War. The American trade union leader Francis A. Hanson wanted to recommend the book to his members, but was concerned with some of the reviews it had received, so Orwell wrote a letter to him.
60
In it he described his novel as a satire, and said:
I do not believe that the kind of society I describe will necessarily arrive, but I believe (allowing, of course, for the fact that the book is a satire) that something resembling it could arrive...[it is] a show...[of the] perversions to which a centralised economy is liable and which have already been partly realisable in communism and fascism.
— George Orwell, Letter to Francis A. Hanson
Throughout its publication history
Nineteen Eighty-Four
has been
banned
and legally challenged as subversive or ideologically corrupting, like the dystopian novels
We
(1924) by
Yevgeny Zamyatin
Brave New World
(1932) by
Aldous Huxley
Darkness at Noon
(1940) by
Arthur Koestler
Kallocain
(1940) by
Karin Boye
and
Fahrenheit 451
(1953) by
Ray Bradbury
97
According to
Czesław Miłosz
, a
defector
from
Stalinist Poland
, the book also made an impression behind the
Iron Curtain
. Writing in
The Captive Mind
, he stated "[a] few have become acquainted with Orwell's
1984
; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well ... Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life."
98
60
The writer
Christopher Hitchens
has called this "one of the greatest compliments that one writer has ever bestowed upon another ... Only one or two years after Orwell's death, in other words, his book about a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party was itself a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party."
98
: 54–55
Stage play
1984
at the
Playhouse Theatre
in the
West End
in 2016
In the same year as the novel's publishing, a one-hour radio adaptation featuring
David Niven
was aired on the
NBC
radio network as part of the
NBC University Theatre
series.
99
The
first television adaptation
appeared as part of
CBS
's
Studio One
series in September 1953.
100
BBC Television
broadcast
an adaptation
by
Nigel Kneale
in December 1954 that was watched by seven million viewers in the UK.
101
Described as British television's first "watercooler moment" by
The Telegraph
, the BBC adaptation made a dramatic impact on a fledgling television audience who were horrified by the graphic depiction of a totalitarian regime controlling the population, including scenes of Winston Smith (
Peter Cushing
) being tormented in Room 101 by rats as punishment for daring to rebel against totalitarian rule.
102
101
The first feature film adaptation,
1984
, was released in 1956.
99
A second feature-length adaptation,
Nineteen Eighty-Four
followed in 1984, a reasonably faithful adaptation, which starred
John Hurt
as Winston Smith and also featured
Richard Burton
in his final role.
103
The story has been adapted several other times to radio, television and film; other media adaptations include theatre (a musical
104
and
a play
),
an opera
and ballet.
105
The BBC's 2013 Orwell season saw
Christopher Eccleston
star as Winston in a
BBC Radio 4
adaptation.
99
An audio dramatisation was released in 2024 to critical acclaim, starring
Andrew Garfield
as Winston,
Tom Hardy
as Big Brother,
Cynthia Erivo
as Julia, and
Andrew Scott
as O'Brien, featuring a score by
Matt Bellamy
and
Ilan Eshkeri
performed by a 60-piece orchestra at
Abbey Road Studios
106
The 1983 novel
1985
is an unofficial sequel. The 2023 novel
Julia
, written by
Sandra Newman
, retold the novel from Julia's perspective. It was published with the permission of the Orwell estate.
107
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Russian version published in the
Soviet Union
in 1984. A limited edition, only for members of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The novel was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, when the first publicly available Russian version in the country, translated by Vyacheslav Nedoshivin, was published in
Kodry
, a literary journal of Soviet Moldavia.
108
In 1989 another Russian version, translated by
Viktor Golyshev
, was also published. Outside the Soviet Union, the first Russian version was serialised in the emigre magazine
Grani
in the mid-1950s, then published as a book in 1957 in Frankfurt. Another Russian version, translated by Sergei Tolstoy from a French version, was published in Rome in 1966. These translations were smuggled into the Soviet Union and became quite popular among dissidents.
108
Some underground published translations also appeared in the Soviet Union. The Soviet philosopher
Evald Ilyenkov
translated it from German into Russian.
109
For the Soviet elite, as early as 1959, according to the order of the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, the Foreign Literature Publishers secretly issued a Russian version of the novel, for the senior officers of the Communist Party.
110
In the
People's Republic of China
the first
Simplified Chinese
version, translated by
Dong Leshan
, was serialised in the periodical
Selected Translations from Foreign Literature
in 1979, for senior officials and intellectuals deemed politically reliable enough. In 1985, the Chinese version was published by Huacheng Publishing House, as a restricted publication. It was first available to the general public in 1988, by the same publisher.
111
Amy Hawkins and Jeffrey Wasserstrom of
The Atlantic
stated in 2019 that the book is widely available in mainland China for several reasons: the general public largely no longer read books; because the elites who do read books feel connected to the ruling party anyway; and because the Communist Party sees being too aggressive in blocking cultural products as a liability. The authors stated, "It was—and remains—as easy to buy
1984
and
Animal Farm
in
Shenzhen
or Shanghai as it is in London or Los Angeles."
112
They also stated that "The assumption is not that Chinese people can't figure out the meaning of
1984
, but that the small number of people who will bother to read it won't pose much of a threat."
112
The journalist
Michael Rank
argued that it is only because the novel is set in London and written by a foreigner that the Chinese authorities believe it has nothing to do with China.
111
By 1989,
Nineteen Eighty-Four
had been translated into 65 languages, more than any other novel in English at that time.
113
The amateur translator Tsiu Ing-sing's
Taiwanese Hokkien
translation, which uses
romanisation
alongside Chinese characters, was published in 2025.
114
"Happy 1984" (in Spanish or Portuguese) stencil
graffiti
on a standing piece of the
Berlin Wall
, 2005
The effect of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
on the English language is extensive; the concepts of
Big Brother
Room 101
, the
Thought Police
thoughtcrime
unperson
memory hole
(oblivion),
doublethink
(simultaneously holding and believing contradictory beliefs) and
Newspeak
(ideological language) have become common phrases for denoting totalitarian authority.
Doublespeak
and
groupthink
are both deliberate elaborations of
doublethink
, and the adjective "
Orwellian
" means similar to Orwell's writings, especially
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. The practice of ending words with
"-speak"
(such as
mediaspeak
) is drawn from the novel.
115
Orwell is perpetually associated with 1984; in July 1984
an asteroid
was discovered by
Antonín Mrkos
and named after Orwell.
References to the themes, concepts and plot of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
have appeared frequently in other works, especially in popular music and video entertainment. An example is the worldwide hit reality television show
Big Brother
, in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras.
Noam Chomsky
adapted Orwell's
neologism
"unpeople" to describe those whom the state deems "unfit to enter history" and whom the state strips of the right to live in order to advance the state's sovereignty.
116
: 313
In November 2011, the
United States federal government
argued before the
US Supreme Court
that it could continue to
use GPS tracking of individuals
without first seeking a warrant.
117
In response, Justice
Stephen Breyer
questioned what that means for a democratic society by referencing
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, stating "If you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States. So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like
1984
..."
118
The book touches on the invasion of privacy and ubiquitous surveillance. From mid-2013 it was publicised that the American
National Security Agency
has been secretly monitoring and storing global internet traffic, including the bulk data collection of email and phone call data. Sales of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
increased by up to seven times within the first week of the
2013 mass surveillance leaks
119
120
121
The book again topped the
Amazon.com
sales charts in 2017 after a controversy involving
Kellyanne Conway
using the phrase "
alternative facts
" to explain discrepancies with the media.
122
123
124
125
On 5 November 2019, the BBC named
Nineteen Eighty-Four
on its list of the
100 most influential novels
126
In 2020, it was number three on the list of "Top Check Outs of All Time" by the
New York Public Library
127
Nineteen Eighty-Four
entered
the public domain on 1 January 2021
, 70 years after Orwell's death, in most of the world. It is still under copyright in the US until 95 years after publication, or 2044.
128
129
Brave New World
comparisons
edit
In October 1949, after reading
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, Huxley sent a letter to Orwell in which he argued that it would be more efficient for rulers to stay in power by the softer touch by allowing citizens to seek pleasure in order to control them rather than by use of brute force. He wrote:
Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.
...
Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.
130
In the decades since the publication of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, there have been numerous comparisons to Huxley's
Brave New World
, which had been published 17 years earlier, in 1932.
131
132
133
134
They are both predictions of societies dominated by a central government and are both based on extensions of the trends of their times. However, members of the ruling class of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
use brutal force, torture and harsh
mind control
to keep individuals submissive to authority, while rulers in
Brave New World
keep the citizens subservient via drugs, hypnosis, genetic conditioning and pleasurable distractions. Regarding censorship, in
Nineteen Eighty-Four
the government tightly controls information to keep the population in line, but in Huxley's world, so much information is published that readers are easily distracted and overlook the information that is relevant.
135
Elements of both novels can be seen in modern-day societies, with Huxley's vision being more dominant in the West and Orwell's vision more prevalent with dictatorships, as is pointed out in essays that compare the two novels, including Huxley's own
Brave New World Revisited
136
137
138
125
Comparisons with later dystopian novels like
The Handmaid's Tale
Virtual Light
The Private Eye
and
The Children of Men
have also been drawn.
139
140
In 1955, an episode of BBC's
The Goon Show
1985
, was broadcast, written by
Spike Milligan
and
Eric Sykes
and based on
Nigel Kneale
's
television adaptation
. It was re-recorded about a month later with the same script but a slightly different cast.
141
1985
parodies many of the main scenes in Orwell's novel.
In 1970, the American rock group
Spirit
released the song "1984" based on Orwell's novel.
In 1973, the ex–
Soft Machine
bassist
Hugh Hopper
released an album called
1984
on the Columbia label (UK), consisting of instrumentals with Orwellian titles such as "Miniluv", "Minipax", "Minitrue" and so forth.
In 1974,
David Bowie
released the album
Diamond Dogs
, which is thought to be loosely based on
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. It includes the tracks "
We Are the Dead
", "1984" and "Big Brother". Before the album was made, Bowie's management (MainMan) had planned for Bowie and
Anthony Ingrassia
(MainMan's creative consultant) to co-write and direct a musical production of Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, but Orwell's widow refused to give MainMan the rights.
142
143
In 1977, the British rock band
the Jam
released the album
This Is the Modern World
, which includes the track "Standards" by
Paul Weller
. This track concludes with the lyrics "...and ignorance is strength, we have God on our side, look, you know what happened to Winston."
144
In 1984,
Ridley Scott
directed a television commercial, "
1984
", to launch
Apple
's
Macintosh
computer.
145
The advertisement stated, "1984 won't be like
1984
", suggesting that the Apple Mac would be freedom from Big Brother, i.e., the IBM PC.
146
Rage Against the Machine
's 2000 single, "
Testify
", from their album
The Battle of Los Angeles
, features the use of "The Party" slogan, "Who controls the past(now), controls the future. Who controls the present(now), controls the past."
144
An episode of
Doctor Who
, "
The God Complex
", depicts an alien ship disguised as a hotel containing Room 101-like spaces, and also, like the novel, quotes the nursery rhyme "
Oranges and Lemons
".
147
Radiohead
's 2003 single "
2 + 2 = 5
", from their album
Hail to the Thief
, is Orwellian by title and content.
Thom Yorke
states, "I was listening to a lot of political programs on
BBC Radio 4
. I found myself writing down little nonsense phrases, those Orwellian euphemisms that [the British and American governments] are so fond of. They became the background of the record."
144
In September 2009, the English rock band
Muse
released
The Resistance
, which included songs influenced by
Nineteen Eighty-Four
148
In
Marilyn Manson
's autobiography
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
, he states: "I was thoroughly terrified by the idea of the end of the world and the Antichrist. So I became obsessed with it... reading prophetic books like... 1984 by George Orwell..."
149
The English band
Bastille
reference the novel in their song "Back to the Future", the fifth track on their 2022 album
Give Me the Future
, in the opening lyrics: "Feels like we danced into a nightmare/We're living 1984/If doublethink's no longer fiction/We'll dream of Huxley's Island shores."
150
Released in 2004, KAKU P-Model/
Susumu Hirasawa
's song "Big Brother" directly references
1984
, and the album itself is about a fictional dystopia in a distant future.
The Used
released a song by the same name, "1984", on their 2020 album
Heartwork
102
"Nineteen Eighty-Four"
knowthyshelf.com
. 13 August 2015
. Retrieved
11 February
2024
"Classify"
. OCLC. Archived from
the original
on 2 February 2019
. Retrieved
22 May
2017
Murphy, Bruce (1996).
Benét's reader's encyclopedia
. New York: Harper Collins. p.
734
ISBN
978-0-06-181088-6
OCLC
35572906
Aaronovitch, David (8 February 2013).
"1984: George Orwell's road to dystopia"
BBC News
Archived
from the original on 24 January 2018
. Retrieved
8 February
2013
Chernow, Barbara; Vallasi, George (1993).
The Columbia Encyclopedia
(5th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 2030.
OCLC
334011745
"The savage satire of '1984' still speaks to us today"
The Independent
. 7 June 1999. Archived from
the original
on 7 January 2023
. Retrieved
7 January
2023
Orwell said that his book was a satire – a warning certainly, but in the form of satire.
Crouch, Ian (11 June 2013).
"So Are We Living in 1984?"
The New Yorker
Archived
from the original on 10 September 2023
. Retrieved
3 December
2019
Seaton, Jean (7 May 2018).
"Why Orwell's 1984 could be about now"
. BBC.
Archived
from the original on 10 May 2020
. Retrieved
3 December
2019
Leetaru, Kalev.
"As Orwell's 1984 Turns 70 It Predicted Much of Today's Surveillance Society"
Forbes
Archived
from the original on 27 March 2023
. Retrieved
3 December
2019
Grossman, Lev
(8 January 2010).
"Is
1984
one of the All-TIME 100 Best Novels?"
Time
Archived
from the original on 20 August 2017
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
"100 Best Novels"
Modern Library
Archived
from the original on 2 October 2010
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
"The Big Read – Top 100 Books"
BBC
Archived
from the original on 31 October 2012
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
Sanderson, Richard K. (1988).
"The Two Narrators and Happy Ending of "Nineteen Eighty-Four"
Modern Fiction Studies
34
(4):
587–
595.
ISSN
0026-7724
JSTOR
26283509
. Retrieved
28 June
2025
Sanchez, Julian (27 June 2025).
"Orwell's Happy Ending"
Non-Content
. Retrieved
28 June
2025
Martyris, Nina (18 September 2014).
"George Orwell Weighs in on Scottish Independence"
LA Review of Books
Archived
from the original on 28 October 2017
. Retrieved
20 October
2017
This may be a reference to "
McAndrew's Hymn
", which includes the lines "From coupler-flange to spindle-guide I see Thy Hand, O God— / Predestination in the stride o' yon connectin'-rod".
15
"Orwell's Notes on 1984: Mapping the Inspiration of a Modern Classic"
Literary Hub
. 18 October 2019.
Archived
from the original on 1 January 2023
. Retrieved
1 January
2023
"Reporting from the Ruins"
The Orwell Society
. 3 October 2021.
Archived
from the original on 26 March 2023
. Retrieved
3 April
2023
Lynskey 2019
, ch. 6: "The Heretic"
Lynskey 2019
, ch. 7: "Inconvenient Facts"
Lynskey 2019
, ch. 8: "Every Book Is a Failure"
Orwell, George
(1968).
Orwell, Sonia
Angus, Ian
(eds.).
The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell Vol. IV: In Front Of Your Nose 1945-1950
. New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
. p. 448
. Retrieved
19 May
2024
– via
Internet Archive
Crick, Bernard. Introduction to
Nineteen Eighty-Four
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).
Lynskey 2019
, ch. 9: "The Clocks Strike Thirteen"
"Charles' George Orwell Links"
. Netcharles.com. Archived from
the original
on 18 July 2011
. Retrieved
4 July
2011
"Brown library buys singer Janis Ian's collection of fantasy, science fiction"
Providence Journal
. 17 September 2019.
Archived
from the original on 24 September 2019
. Retrieved
24 September
2019
Braga, Jennifer (10 June 2019).
"Announcement | 70th Anniversary of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four"
Brown University Library News
Archived
from the original on 24 September 2019
. Retrieved
24 September
2019
Sheldon, Sidney (2006)
The Other Side of Me
, Grand Central Publishing, p. 213
ISBN
978-0-75956-732-0
Taylor, D. J.
"The Best George Orwell Books"
Five Books
(Interview). Interviewed by Stephanie Kelley.
Archived
from the original on 30 October 2019
. Retrieved
30 October
2019
Tzouliadis, Tim (2008).
The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia
. New York: Penguin Press. pp.
48–49
ISBN
978-1-59420-168-4
Perry, Matthew.
"Left Book Club Anthology"
Reviews in History
Institute of Historical Research
Archived
from the original on 29 December 2022
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
Vertov, Dziga (1985).
Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov
. University of California Press.
ISBN
978-0-520-05630-5
page needed
Lynskey 2019
, p.
page needed
Siegelbaum, Lewis (2000).
Stalinism as a Way of Life
. Yale University Press. p. 100.
ISBN
0-300-08480-3
Senyonovna, Eugenia (1967).
Journey into the Whirlwind
. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
page needed
Tymkiv, Vasyl (23 February 2024).
"Terror in NKVD Prisons in Stanislav Region during 1939-1941"
Law & Society
210–
218.
ISSN
2719-552X
Fitzpatrick, Sheila (1999).
Everyday Stalinism
. New York: Oxford University Press.
ISBN
978-0-19-505001-1
page needed
"Go No More a-Rushing (Riddle Song)"
. Sniff.numachi.com.
Archived
from the original on 18 May 2021
. Retrieved
2 January
2012
Werth, Alexander (2017).
Russia at War, 1941–1945: A History
. Skyhorse Publishers.
ISBN
978-1510716254
McCauley, Martin (2014).
The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union
. Taylor and Francis. p. 298.
ISBN
978-1-317-86783-8
OCLC
869093605
"Newseum: The Commissar Vanishes"
. Archived from
the original
on 11 June 2008
. Retrieved
19 July
2008
King, David (1997).
The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia
. Metropolitan / Holt.
ISBN
978-0-8050-5294-7
Lambroschini, Sophie.
"Russia: Putin-Decreed 'Great Russian' Encyclopedia Debuts At Moscow Book Fair".
Archived
5 December 2007 at the
Wayback Machine
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Burnette Jr., O. Lawrence and William Converse Haygood (eds.).
A Soviet View of the American past: An Annotated Translation of the Section on American History in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1964, p. 7.
Archived
4 June 2011 at the
Wayback Machine
"Soviet Encyclopedia Omits Beria's Name"
The Times-News
. 2 December 1953. p. 8.
Archived
from the original on 24 August 2022
. Retrieved
23 April
2017
– via Google News Archive.
Schacter, Daniel L.; Scarry, Elaine, eds. (2001).
Memory, brain, and belief
. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
ISBN
978-0-674-00719-2
OCLC
803952174
Stalin, Joseph
(1944).
On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union
. Moscow: Foreign Languages Press.
"Order of the Day, No. 130, May 1st, 1942"
Archived
from the original on 13 August 2021
. Retrieved
14 December
2011
"London Letter to Partisan Review, December 1944, quoted from vol. 3 of the Penguin edition of the
Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters
"George Orwell: Why I Write"
. Resort.com.
Archived
from the original on 9 July 2011
. Retrieved
4 July
2011
Hobson, John A.
"1920: Dips into the Near Future"
ariwatch.com
Archived
from the original on 21 February 2016
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
Orwell, George (4 January 1946).
"Review: We, by E. I. Zamyatin"
Tribune
Archived
from the original on 23 March 2023
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
Paraphrasing
Rayner Heppenstall
, he reportedly said "that he was taking it as the model for his next novel" (Bowker 2003, p. 340).
"Bloomsbury Collections – George Orwell and Religion"
www.bloomsburycollections.com
Archived
from the original on 14 April 2021
. Retrieved
29 October
2020
"The real room 101"
. BBC. Archived from
the original
on 5 January 2007
. Retrieved
9 December
2006
Meyers 2000
, p. 214
Snyder, Timothy (3 September 2014).
"To Understand Putin, Read Orwell"
POLITICO Magazine
. Retrieved
30 April
2025
Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds).
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell
, Volume 2: "My Country Right or Left" (1940–43; Penguin)
ISBN missing
"George Orwell: "Notes on Nationalism"
. Resort.com. May 1945.
Archived
from the original on 27 April 2019
. Retrieved
25 March
2010
Decker, James (2004).
"George Orwell's 1984 and Political Ideology"
Ideology
. p.
146
doi
10.1007/978-0-230-62914-1_7
ISBN
978-0-333-77538-7
"George Orwell,
1984
, part 3, chapter 3"
www.george-orwell.org
Archived
from the original on 1 November 2020
. Retrieved
29 October
2020
Martin, Mike W.; Department of Philosophy, Florida State University (1984). "Demystifying Doublethink: Self-Deception, Truth, and Freedom in 1984".
Social Theory and Practice
10
(3):
319–
331.
doi
10.5840/soctheorpract198410314
ISSN
0037-802X
Orwell.
1984
. pp. part 1, chapter 4.
"Surveillance In 1984 By George Orwell"
www.bartleby.com
. Retrieved
12 August
2025
Reed, Kit (1985).
"Barron's Booknotes – 1984 by George Orwell"
Barron's Educational Series
. Retrieved
2 July
2009
{{
cite web
}}
: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (
link
1984
, part 2, chapter 9"
Archived
from the original on 13 December 2021
. Retrieved
17 October
2013
Lines 29–35, p. 229, part II, chapter X, of the Penguin paperback edition of
1984
: "The proles were immortal, you could not doubt it when you looked at that valiant figure in the yard. In the end their awakening would come. And until that happened, though it might be a thousand years, they would stay alive against all the odds, like birds, passing on from body to body the vitality which the Party did not share and could not kill".
Bossche, Edmond van Den (1 January 1984).
"The Message for Today in Orwell's
1984
The New York Times
Archived
from the original on 1 November 2020
. Retrieved
29 October
2020
"George Orwell,
1984
, part 1, chapter 4"
www.george-orwell.org
Archived
from the original on 1 November 2020
. Retrieved
29 October
2020
"Talking People: Your Stuff! – G. Orwell"
www.talkingpeople.net
Archived
from the original on 20 September 2020
. Retrieved
29 October
2020
Howe, Irving
(1982).
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism
. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
ISBN
978-0-15-565811-0
pp. 290–293.
Fountain, Nigel
(14 June 1994). "First Bites:
Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Guardian
Lewis, C. S.
(1966). "George Orwell".
On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature
. Harcourt. p. 101.
"1984 - The Mysticism of Cruelty, by Isaac Deutscher 1955"
www.marxists.org
Marcus, Laura;
Nicholls, Peter
(2005).
The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature
Cambridge University Press
. p. 226.
ISBN
978-0-521-82077-6
Brave New World [is] traditionally bracketed with Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four
as a dystopia ...
Hitchens, Christopher
(2002).
Why Orwell Matters
. New York: Basic Books. p. 54.
ISBN
978-0-465-03050-7
"Other Oceanias: a short history of Nineteen Eighty-Four adaptations"
BFI
. Retrieved
11 August
2025
1984
(TV episode 1953)
at
IMDb
"How the 'unadulterated horror' of Peter Cushing's Nineteen Eighty-Four broke the BBC"
The Telegraph
. Retrieved
12 August
2025
Lynskey, Dorian (10 June 2019).
"George Orwell's 1984: Why it still matters"
BBC News
Archived
from the original on 12 October 2023
. Retrieved
7 October
2023
– via YouTube.
"John Hurt-Richard Burton Movie '1984' to Screen in Theaters on April 4"
Variety
. Retrieved
12 August
2025
"1984! The Musical! | New Theatre"
. 6 November 2019.
Archived
from the original on 10 September 2021
. Retrieved
10 September
2021
"1984 | Northern Ballet"
northernballet.com
Archived
from the original on 10 September 2021
. Retrieved
10 September
2021
"Andrew Garfield & Tom Hardy to Star in 1984 Adaptation for Audible"
MovieWeb
. 10 August 2025.
Walter, Natasha (18 October 2023).
"Julia by Sandra Newman a review, a new Nineteen Eighty-Four"
The Guardian
. Retrieved
21 August
2025
Bershidsky, Leonid.
"I Just Translated '1984' Into Russian. I'm Gasping for Air"
The Moscow Times
Archived
from the original on 29 June 2023
. Retrieved
1 January
2026
"Evald Ilyenkov and Soviet Philosophy"
Monthly Review
. 1 January 2020.
Archived
from the original on 1 July 2023
. Retrieved
1 July
2023
Blum Arlen Viktorovich.
"Orwell's Travels to the country of bolsheviks"
Orwell.ru
Archived
from the original on 29 June 2023
. Retrieved
29 June
2023
Rank, Michael (9 June 2013).
"Orwell in China: Big Brother in every bookshop"
The Asian Pacific Journal
Archived
from the original on 1 July 2023
. Retrieved
1 July
2023
Hawkins, Amy; Wasserstrom, Jeffrey (13 January 2019).
"Why
1984
Isn't Banned in China"
The Atlantic
Archived
from the original on 10 May 2020
. Retrieved
15 August
2020
Rodden, John.
The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of "St. George" Orwell
Chao, Yen-hsiang (18 April 2025).
"INTERVIEW/'Nineteen Eighty-Four' receives timely 1st Taiwanese translation"
. Central News Agency
. Retrieved
21 April
2025
Republished as:
'Nineteen Eighty-Four' receives timely first Taiwanese translation"
Taipei Times
. 19 April 2025
. Retrieved
21 April
2025
Keyes, Ralph
(2009).
I Love It When You Talk Retro
. St Martins. p.
222
ISBN
978-0-312-34005-6
Rojas, Carlos (2016). "Time Out of Joint: Commemoration and Commodification of Socialism in Yan Lianke's Lenin's Kisses". In Li, Jie; Zhang, Enhua (eds.).
Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution
. Harvard Contemporary China Series. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Asia Center
ISBN
978-0-674-73718-1
"United States v. Jones"
Oyez
. Retrieved
17 November
2025
"Justice Breyer warns of Orwellian government"
The Hill
. 8 November 2011.
Archived
from the original on 10 November 2011
. Retrieved
9 November
2011
'1984' sales skyrocket in wake of US spy scandal
Archived
28 March 2014 at the
Wayback Machine
Agence France-Presse
, 11 June 2013. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
"Sales of Orwell's '1984' Increase as Details of NSA Scandal Emerge"
ABC News
Archived
from the original on 23 June 2013
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
"Sales Of '1984' Skyrocket In Wake Of NSA Scandal"
HuffPost
. 11 June 2013.
Archived
from the original on 29 December 2022
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
Kakutani, Michiko (26 January 2017).
"Why '1984' Is a 2017 Must-Read"
The New York Times
Archived
from the original on 14 March 2021
. Retrieved
26 January
2017
Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko de (25 January 2017).
"George Orwell's '1984' Is Suddenly a Best-Seller"
The New York Times
Archived
from the original on 17 February 2021
. Retrieved
25 January
2017
Rossman, Sean (25 January 2017).
"George Orwell's '1984' leaps to top of Amazon bestseller list"
USA Today
Archived
from the original on 25 January 2017
. Retrieved
25 January
2017
"Kellyanne Conway's "Alternative Facts" Claim Sends '1984' Book Sales Soaring"
The Hollywood Reporter
Associated Press
. 24 January 2017.
Archived
from the original on 26 January 2017
. Retrieved
25 January
2017
"100 'most inspiring' novels revealed by BBC Arts"
BBC News
. 5 November 2019.
Archived
from the original on 3 November 2020
. Retrieved
10 November
2019
The reveal kickstarts the BBC's year-long celebration of literature.
"These Are The NYPL's Top Check Outs OF ALL TIME"
Gothamist
. 13 January 2020.
Archived
from the original on 13 January 2020
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
"Publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four | History Today"
www.historytoday.com
. Archived from
the original
on 4 April 2023
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
"George Orwell is out of copyright. What happens now?"
The Guardian
. 1 January 2021.
Archived
from the original on 29 December 2022
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
"1984 v. Brave New World"
Letters of Note
. 8 February 2020. Archived from
the original
on 8 February 2020
. Retrieved
8 February
2020
Purves, Libby (12 September 2015).
"1984? Brave New World? Why I love a little dystopia"
The Daily Telegraph
. London.
Archived
from the original on 10 January 2022.
"January 2011"
Juxtapoz
. Archived from
the original
on 23 November 2015
. Retrieved
28 February
2018
"2011: A Brave New Dystopia: Chris Hedges"
Truthdig
. 27 December 2010.
Archived
from the original on 21 July 2017
. Retrieved
6 December
2015
"1984 vs. Brave New World: Comparison"
Study.com
Archived
from the original on 10 August 2017
. Retrieved
6 December
2015
"Brave New World Revisited (1958) by Aldous Huxley, pg. 36"
. Retrieved
27 March
2024
"Brave New World Revisited (1958) by Aldous Huxley"
www.huxley.net
Archived
from the original on 30 January 2018
. Retrieved
29 December
2022
"Which Dystopian Novel Got It Right: Orwell's
1984
or Huxley's
Brave New World
?"
The New York Times
. 13 February 2017.
Archived
from the original on 15 June 2017
. Retrieved
17 June
2017
Gopnik, Adam (27 January 2017).
"Orwell's
1984
and Trump's America"
The New Yorker
Archived
from the original on 14 June 2017
. Retrieved
17 June
2017
Alex Hern (26 January 2017).
"Forget
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. These five dystopias better reflect Trump's US"
The Guardian
Archived
from the original on 1 July 2017
. Retrieved
17 June
2017
"Dystopian Novels for Modern Times"
Rebel Princess Reader
. 3 February 2017
. Retrieved
17 June
2017
permanent dead link
Wilmut, Roger; Grafton, Jimmy (1976).
The Goon Show Companion: A History and Goonography
. Robson Books. p. 56.
Stardust: The David Bowie Story
, Henry Edwards and Tony Zanetta, 1986, McGraw-Hill Book Company, p. 220
Grimm, Beca (23 June 2017).
"Flashback: David Bowie's Failed Attempt to Adapt George Orwell's '1984'
Rolling Stone
Archived
from the original on 7 April 2018
. Retrieved
6 April
2018
"10 Songs Inspired by George Orwell's 1984"
Paste magazine
Archived
from the original on 6 June 2020
. Retrieved
6 June
2020
Friedman, Ted (2005).
"Chapter 5: 1984"
Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture
New York University Press
ISBN
978-0-8147-2740-9
Archived
from the original on 9 January 2019
. Retrieved
6 October
2011
"Apple's Macintosh, 25 years on"
The Guardian
Archived
from the original on 6 June 2020
. Retrieved
6 June
2020
Mulkern, Patrick (18 September 2011).
"Doctor Who: The God Complex"
Radio Times
Archived
from the original on 15 September 2023
. Retrieved
9 September
2023
"Muse Discuss The Resistance, Their 'Very Personal' New Album"
Archived
5 July 2012 at the
Wayback Machine
. MTV. Retrieved 19 October 2012
Manson, Marilyn (2012).
The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
. Harper Collins. p. 19.
Bastille – Back to the Future
archived
from the original on 6 February 2022
, retrieved
6 February
2022
Aubrey, Crispin; Chilton, Paul, eds. (1983).
Nineteen Eighty-four in 1984: Autonomy, Control, and Communication
(repr. ed.). London: Comedia Publishing Group.
ISBN
978-0-906890-42-4
Bloom, Harold
George Orwell's
1984 (2009), Facts on File, Inc.
ISBN
978-1-4381-1468-2
Ezio Di Nucci
and Stefan Storrie (editors), 1984
and Philosophy: Is Resistance Futile?
(2018),
Open Court Publishing Company
ISBN
978-0-8126-9985-2
Goldsmith, Jack and
Nussbaum, Martha
On
Nineteen Eighty-Four
: Orwell and Our Future
(2010),
Princeton University Press
ISBN
978-1-4008-2664-3
Hillegas, Mark R. (1967).
The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians
. Southern Illinois University Press.
ISBN
978-0-8093-0676-3
Howe, Irving
, ed. (1983).
1984 Revisited: Totalitarianism in Our Century
. New York: Harper Row.
ISBN
978-0-06-080660-6
Orwell, George
(1949).
Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel
. London: Secker & Warburg.
Orwell, George
(1984).
Davison, Peter
(ed.).
Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile Manuscript
. London, United Kingdom: Secker & Warburg.
ISBN
978-0-436-35022-1
– via
Internet Archive
Orwell, George
(1977).
1984
Erich Fromm
(foreword) (reissue ed.). Signet Classics.
ISBN
978-0-451-52493-5
Orwell, George. 1984 (Vietnamese edition), translation by Đặng Phương-Nghi, French preface by Bertrand Latour
ISBN
978-0-9774224-5-6
Plank, Robert,
George Orwell's Guide Through Hell: A Psychological Study of
1984 (1994), Borgo Pres.
ISBN
978-0-89370-413-1
Smith, David; Mosher, Michael (1984).
Orwell for Beginners
(1st ed.). [London], England: Writers and Readers Pub. Cooperative.
ISBN
978-0-86316-066-0
Steinhoff, William R. (1975).
George Orwell and the Origins of 1984
. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press
ISBN
978-0-472-87400-2
Taylor, D. J.
On
Nineteen Eighty-Four
: A Biography
(2019), Abrams.
ISBN
978-1-68335-684-4
Tuccille, Jerome
(1975).
Who's Afraid of 1984? The case for optimism in looking ahead to the 1980s
. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House Publishers.
ISBN
978-0-87000-308-0
– via
Internet Archive
Waddell, Nathan (editor),
The Cambridge Companion to
Nineteen Eighty-Four (2020),
Cambridge University Press
ISBN
978-1-108-84109-2
West, W. J. (1992).
The Larger Evils—Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Truth Behind the Satire
. Edinburgh: Canongate Press.
ISBN
978-0-86241-382-8
Electronic editions
edit