1984

George Orwell

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1949

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-8

Part 2, Chapters 1-4

Part 2, Chapters 5-9

Part 3, Chapters 1-Appendix

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Big Brother

Big Brother’s image watches over everything, but he never makes an appearance, and his existence is ambiguous. He is depicted as “about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features” (3). This description could be interpreted as Big Brother resembling Joseph Stalin. His symbolic presence contributes to the theme of constant surveillance. He exists at the apex of the Party’s structure, is credited for every success and achievement of society, and it’s generally assumed that he will never die (262), elevating him to a status above mortal Party members. In a society constantly and intentionally stirred by hatred, Big Brother is a contrasting focal point for love, an emotion that’s easier to feel towards an individual rather than an organization (262). O’Brien insists that Big Brother does exist when he tells Winston, “Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party” (327). If Winston believes that Big Brother exists, then in his mind Big Brother does exist, and that belief is enough to perpetuate Big Brother’s power.

The Paperweight

Winston purchases the paperweight from Charrington’s prole shop and cherishes it as an unchanged connection to the past. The paperweight is essentially a pointless object in Winston’s world, something Winston is drawn to for no practical reason, and he loves it all the more for this. Owning something simply because he likes it is a forbidden luxury, and in owning the paperweight Winston is overstepping his Party boundaries. Symbolically, the paperweight weighs Winston down as he incriminates himself further and further through his purchases and actions at Charrington’s shop.

Winston admires the paperweight’s simple beauty and imagines its glass “enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete” (184). He fantasizes about living inside the safety of the paperweight’s glass bubble with Julia, safe from constant surveillance and Party oppression. The paperweight represents the fragility of Winston’s brief existence, but also the fragility of his love affair with Julia. Winston only realizes and appreciates how small the piece of coral is after the paperweight has been smashed, signifying his recognition that he is also merely a small piece in the Party’s larger political game.

2+2=5

This elementary math equation is symbolic of the completeness of the Party’s mind control: “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it” (102). Winston knows that two and two make four, but a true Party loyalist—one who really loves Big Brother—will unquestionably agree that two and two make any number the Party demands. This goes beyond simple math and extends to revising history, highlighting the prevalence of Propaganda, Emotional Manipulation, and Conformity as well as The Psychological Toll of Constant Surveillance. There are traces of evidence of pre-Party history, such as the paperweight and rare photographs, but any significant evidence of anything contradicting Party doctrine is altered. Challenging those alterations is an affront to the Party: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command” (103).

The Party demands compliance even in thought, and what’s most terrifying is “not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works?” (102). By controlling even the answers to math equations, something that would otherwise be proven through a proof or experiment, the Party succeeds in bringing into question anything it doesn’t promote itself. To obtain and maintain complete control, the Party must have total, unquestioning compliance from its members. The future belongs to the Party, but Winston spends much of the novel convinced that “you could share in that future if you kept alive the mind as they kept alive the body, and passed on the secret doctrine that two plus two make four” (278). This secret doctrine proves difficult to pass along, and Winston and Julia are arrested the next moment.