Key Facts
full title · 1984
author · George Orwell
type of work · Novel
genre · Negative utopian, or dystopian, 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 dreams (making love to Julia in the forest,
meeting O'Brien in the “place where there is no darkness”); the
St. Clement's Church song (“Here comes a chopper to chop off your head!”)
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)
