Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four (often 1984) is a political novel written by George Orwell. The story takes place in a nightmarish dystopia where the omnipresent State enforces perfect conformity among members of a totalitarian Party through indoctrination, propaganda, fear, and ruthless punishment. The novel introduced the concepts of the ever-present, all-seeing Big Brother, the notorious Room 101, the ubiquitous thought police, and the bureaucrats' and politicians' language Newspeak. Many commentators draw parallels between today's society and the world of 1984, suggesting that we are starting to live in what has become known as Orwellian society. The novel was successful in terms of sales, and has remained one of the most influential books of the 20th century.

Appendix on Newspeak

The novel includes an appendix, The Principles of Newspeakhttp://www.eng.buffalo.edu/~smf7/175/chapp.html, written in the style of an academic essay describing the development of the thought-suppressing language. If we do not have a word for something, it is argued, we have difficulty thinking about the concept.

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The fact that the essay is written in the past tense has led some to speculate that it must therefore be describing Newspeak, and by extension Ingsoc, as a thing of the past, possibly implying a "happy ending" for the novel. Note, however, that there is no claim that the 'essay' exists or was written in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, or that the use of the past tense is significant (as almost all novels are written in the past tense) ? it could simply be a part of Orwell's third person narrative. It would be uncharacteristic of Orwell, an advocate of plain English, to give so subtle a clue for so significant a plot detail. Nonetheless, if "the hope lay in the proles," following a revolution the English language as we know it would in the end supplant Newspeak, although the implication is that prole language, being the result of deliberately low-quality education, would not contain advanced political concepts. It would also be worthy asking how such a revolution could occur, considering Ingsoc's total control of history, media and swift extermination of dissidents.

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It should also be pointed out that the broad thrust of the third-person narrative is that Ingsoc's totalitarianism will last forever, and it would be unusual for Orwell, who greatly stressed the importance of being vigilant against totalitarianism, to erode the horrifying impression of a terrible world. Furthermore, such an essay could indeed exist in Oceania, being written by an inner party member, it might be claimed: the principle of doublethink for example allows O'Brien to make explicit comments on the methods Ingsoc uses whilst holding contradictory views regarding the 'benevolence' of Big Brother.

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