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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 simply 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. . . . 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.

By informing the reader that the clocks in 1984 strike thirteen, Orwell immediately lets us know that they are entering a strangely different world than existed in 1949. As the opening passage sets the gloomy and pessimistic tone that will be relentlessly sustained through to the novel’s final words, Orwell quickly and efficiently conveys that his characters are bound to in a world of physical squalor and psychological oppression.

You can read more about how this passage conveys the bleak reality of the novel’s main setting in Quotes by Setting: London, Oceania (the first quote).

The specter of psychological domination of the citizens by the totalitarian government in 1984 is captured by what is probably the most famous line from the novel which comes at the end of this passage:

  BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

You can learn more about this important slogan in Quotes by Symbol: Big Brother (the first quote) as well as in Quotes by Character: Big Brother (the first quote) since Big Brother will function as both a character and a symbol in the novel.

The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. . . The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.

These lines from later in Book One, Chapter 1 describe telescreens, a key instrument of Big Brother’s psychological control of its citizens, to us. You can read more about this at Quotes by Symbol: The Telescreens (the first quote).

Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.

This quote from Book One, Chapter 1 and the one after it both delve into specific aspects of the setting that Orwell creates for 1984. The explanation of this quote in Quotes by Setting: London, Oceania (the second quote) focuses on how the decrepit state of the city triggers fuzzy memories in the main character, Winston.

The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue, in Newspeak—was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:

  WAR IS PEACE
  FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
  IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

This passage from Book One, Chapter 1 reveals that building housing the governmental agency The Ministry of Truth contrasts from most of the rest of London in that it is modern and magnificent. You can read more about this in Quotes by Setting: London, Oceania (the third quote). The significance of the three government slogans on the side of the building will be described in the next quote.

  WAR IS PEACE
  FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
  IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The complex meaning behind these three governmental slogans on the side of the massive, gleaming Ministry of Truth building in the squalid city of London has great significance in 1984. Read an explanation of how they introduce us to the idea of doublethink in Famous Quotes Explained (the second quote).

At those moments, his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness, and the doubt that hung about his very existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of civilization.

This quote from Book One, Chapter 1 gives us an early glimpse of the power of the Party and its figurehead, Big Brother, and describes Winston’s sometimes ambivalent reactions to the mind games the Party uses. You can read more about this quote in Quotes by Symbol: Big Brother (the second quote).

Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken.

This quote from near the end of Book One, Chapter 1 describes the citizens’ reactions as Big Brother speaks and how they are they have been conditioned to react to him in a particular way regardless of what he might be saying. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Symbol: Big Brother (the third quote).

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