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Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed

Nineteen Eighty-Four

by George Orwell

1949

Novel

Dystopian

Written in 1949, this story tells of a society in which men and women live in bondage to Big Brother, who regulates their every thought and emotion.

Instead of a glorious future of freedom and dignity, George Orwell imagines that despair, slavery, and numbing hopelessness will be mankind's fate. The slogans of the new order—War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength—adequately convey the bleakness of the world that Orwell envisioned. The inhabitants of this future society live under the watchful eye of Big Brother, leader of a government whose power is enforced by Thought Police and diabolical informants.

The novel's protagonist, Winston Smith, a member of the outer ring of the Party, finds himself slowly evolving into an independent thinker who writes anti-Big Brother slogans in his diary. He eventually encounters individuals who appear to share his disdain for the Party. First, Julia comes into his life, a winsome woman who anachronistically speaks of love and with whom Winston shares many encounters in a rented room above Mr. Charrington's antique shop. Winston also encounters O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, but one who, Winston deduces, is not in sympathy with Party aims.

Winston subsequently discovers, however, that except for Julia all those whom he had trusted as confidants and fellow dissidents were in fact Party operatives, seeking to entrap Winston and Julia in their “conspiracy” against Big Brother. The disturbing climax of the novel exemplifies the dehumanizing effects of totalitarian control on the individual person.

A key ingredient in this chilling documentation of eroding human freedom is its depiction of a corrupted language, “Newspeak,” Orwell's brilliant rendering of that degraded language of politicians and sophists which hides rather then reveals truth.

As a true anti-utopian novel, one in which the horrors of totalitarianism are amply illustrated, Nineteen Eighty-Four serves as a poignant reminder of the preciousness of free thought and an open society.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Orwell, George. "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed, edited by Editors of Salem Press, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=6CR_0366.
APA 7th
Orwell, G. (2015). Nineteen Eighty-Four. In E. Salem Press (Ed.), Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Orwell, George. "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Edited by Editors of Salem Press. Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.