Winston Smith is a low-ranking
member of the ruling Party in London, in the nation
of Oceania. Everywhere Winston goes, even his own home, the Party
watches him through telescreens; everywhere he looks he sees the
face of the Party’s seemingly omniscient leader, a figure known
only as Big Brother. The Party controls everything in Oceania, even
the people’s history and language. Currently, the Party is forcing
the implementation of an invented language called Newspeak, which
attempts to prevent political rebellion by eliminating all words
related to it. Even thinking rebellious thoughts is illegal. Such
thoughtcrime is, in fact, the worst of all crimes.
As the novel opens, Winston feels frustrated by the oppression and
rigid control of the Party, which prohibits free thought, sex, and any
expression of individuality. Winston dislikes the party and has illegally
purchased a diary in which to write his criminal thoughts. He has
also become fixated on a powerful Party member named O’Brien, whom
Winston believes is a secret member of the Brotherhood—the mysterious,
legendary group that works to overthrow the Party.
Winston works in the Ministry of Truth, where he alters
historical records to fit the needs of the Party. He notices a coworker,
a beautiful dark-haired girl, staring at him, and worries that she
is an informant who will turn him in for his thoughtcrime. He is
troubled by the Party’s control of history: the Party claims that
Oceania has always been allied with Eastasia in a war against Eurasia,
but Winston seems to recall a time when this was not true. The Party
also claims that Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged leader of the Brotherhood,
is the most dangerous man alive, but this does not seem plausible
to Winston. Winston spends his evenings wandering through the poorest
neighborhoods in London, where the proletarians, or proles, live
squalid lives, relatively free of Party monitoring.
One day, Winston receives a note from the dark-haired
girl that reads “I love you.” She tells him her name, Julia, and
they begin a covert affair, always on the lookout for signs of Party
monitoring. Eventually they rent a room above the secondhand store
in the prole district where Winston bought the diary. This relationship
lasts for some time. Winston is sure that they will be caught and
punished sooner or later (the fatalistic Winston knows that he has
been doomed since he wrote his first diary entry), while Julia is
more pragmatic and optimistic. As Winston’s affair with Julia progresses, his
hatred for the Party grows more and more intense. At last, he receives
the message that he has been waiting for: O’Brien wants to see him.
Winston and Julia travel to O’Brien’s luxurious apartment.
As a member of the powerful Inner Party (Winston belongs to the
Outer Party), O’Brien leads a life of luxury that Winston can only
imagine. O’Brien confirms to Winston and Julia that, like them,
he hates the Party, and says that he works against it as a member
of the Brotherhood. He indoctrinates Winston and Julia into the
Brotherhood, and gives Winston a copy of Emmanuel Goldstein’s book,
the manifesto of the Brotherhood. Winston reads the book—an amalgam
of several forms of class-based twentieth-century social theory—to Julia
in the room above the store. Suddenly, soldiers barge in and seize
them. Mr. Charrington, the proprietor of the store, is revealed as
having been a member of the Thought Police all along.
Torn away from Julia and taken to a place called the Ministry
of Love, Winston finds that O’Brien, too, is a Party spy who simply pretended
to be a member of the Brotherhood in order to trap Winston into
committing an open act of rebellion against the Party. O’Brien spends
months torturing and brainwashing Winston, who struggles to resist.
At last, O’Brien sends him to the dreaded Room 101,
the final destination for anyone who opposes the Party. Here, O’Brien
tells Winston that he will be forced to confront his worst fear.
Throughout the novel, Winston has had recurring nightmares about
rats; O’Brien now straps a cage full of rats onto Winston’s head
and prepares to allow the rats to eat his face. Winston snaps, pleading
with O’Brien to do it to Julia, not to him.
Giving up Julia is what O’Brien wanted from Winston all
along. His spirit broken, Winston is released to the outside world.
He meets Julia but no longer feels anything for her. He has accepted
the Party entirely and has learned to love Big Brother.
