Quotes

• The text follows a linear, three-part plot structure. This is composed of parts one, two, and three. This breaks down the novel into varying staging allowing for better structure, reducing confusion for the audience, and making the plot easier to follow along. This three-part structure also allows the audience to experience Winston's dehumanisation along with him, creating tension and sympathy for the main characters. His attitudes and humanity experience a great deal of shift throughout the three parts, before, during and after his relationship with Julia.
• George Orwell employs a third-person limited point of view centred on Winston Smith to delve into the internal and external realities of life under a totalitarian regime. This narrative choice allows readers access to Winston's thoughts, memories, and emotions while also enabling Orwell to provide commentary on them. Through this perspective, readers witness Winston's gradual realisation of the Party's oppressive control, his struggles with memory and identity, and the erosion of his humanity. Orwell occasionally shifts to a third-person omniscient perspective to provide broader context and political critique, enhancing the reader's understanding of the dystopian world and inviting them to question the nature of power, truth, and individual freedom.
• The form of "1984" is characterised by a bleak and functional style, reflecting the oppressive and controlled world of the Party. Orwell's language is straightforward and unadorned, mirroring his belief in clear communication as a precursor to clear thinking. The narrative style is often oppressive and dull, echoing the life under Party rule where individuality is discouraged. Orwell occasionally modifies his style to match Winston's thoughts or emotional state, using uncapitalized, unpunctuated sentences to convey intense emotion. Additionally, Orwell shifts the register of dialogue to differentiate characters and highlight class differences, and he uses Newspeak, an invented language, to illustrate the Party's efforts to control thought and language.
• Universal themes are timeless and transcend context. They are found within texts that have textual integrity.

  
• Universal Themes within the Text


  • Independence and Identity
  • Loyalty
  • Dangers of Totalitarianism
  • Revolution
  • Surveillance
  • Propaganda
• Independence and Identity


  • He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. (metaphor)
  • But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. (irony)
  • Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. (paradox)
• Loyalty


  • Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me (symbolism)
  • What he valued was individual thought and a sense of personal loyalty: the ideal of a society where the individual counts for more than the collective mass. (direct characterisation)
  • We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. (loyalty to a future that may never arrive, loyalty to a cause) (symbolism and imagery)
• Dangers of Totalitarianism

  • He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. (parallelism)
  • The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. (repetition of "interested")
  • Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you. (foreshadowing)
• Revolution


  • Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. (paradox)
  • If there is hope, it lies in the proles. (irony)
  • Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. (juxtaposition)
• Surveillance


  • It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime... (hyperbole)
  • You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. (hyperbole and imagery)
  • The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. (imagery)
• Propaganda


  • 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. (personification)
  • BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU (symbolism)
  • Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. (parallelism)
• The text follows a linear, three-part plot structure. This is composed of parts one, two, and three. This breaks down the novel into varying staging allowing for better structure, reducing confusion for the audience, and making the plot easier to follow along. This three-part structure also allows the audience to experience Winston's dehumanisation along with him, creating tension and sympathy for the main characters. His attitudes and humanity experience a great deal of shift throughout the three parts, before, during and after his relationship with Julia.
• George Orwell employs a third-person limited point of view centred on Winston Smith to delve into the internal and external realities of life under a totalitarian regime. This narrative choice allows readers access to Winston's thoughts, memories, and emotions while also enabling Orwell to provide commentary on them. Through this perspective, readers witness Winston's gradual realisation of the Party's oppressive control, his struggles with memory and identity, and the erosion of his humanity. Orwell occasionally shifts to a third-person omniscient perspective to provide broader context and political critique, enhancing the reader's understanding of the dystopian world and inviting them to question the nature of power, truth, and individual freedom.
• The form of "1984" is characterised by a bleak and functional style, reflecting the oppressive and controlled world of the Party. Orwell's language is straightforward and unadorned, mirroring his belief in clear communication as a precursor to clear thinking. The narrative style is often oppressive and dull, echoing the life under Party rule where individuality is discouraged. Orwell occasionally modifies his style to match Winston's thoughts or emotional state, using uncapitalized, unpunctuated sentences to convey intense emotion. Additionally, Orwell shifts the register of dialogue to differentiate characters and highlight class differences, and he uses Newspeak, an invented language, to illustrate the Party's efforts to control thought and language.
• Universal themes are timeless and transcend context. They are found within texts that have textual integrity.
• Universal Themes within the Text


  • Independence and Identity
  • Loyalty
  • Dangers of Totalitarianism
  • Revolution
  • Surveillance
  • Propaganda
• Independence and Identity


  • He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. (metaphor)
  • But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. (irony)
  • Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. (paradox)
• Loyalty


  • Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me (symbolism)
  • What he valued was individual thought and a sense of personal loyalty: the ideal of a society where the individual counts for more than the collective mass. (direct characterisation)
  • We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. (loyalty to a future that may never arrive, loyalty to a cause) (symbolism and imagery)
• Dangers of Totalitarianism


  • He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. (parallelism)
  • The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. (repetition of "interested")
  • Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you. (foreshadowing)
• Revolution


  • Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. (paradox)
  • If there is hope, it lies in the proles. (irony)
  • Any kind of organized revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same. (juxtaposition)
• Surveillance


  • It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime... (hyperbole)
  • You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. (hyperbole and imagery)
  • The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. (imagery)
• Propaganda


  • 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. (personification)
  • BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU (symbolism)
  • Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. (parallelism)