Nineteen Eighty-Four

‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘they threaten you with something – something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, “Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so.” And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself, and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.’

• Read the first chapter of Nineteen Eighty-Four (courtesy of Penguin Books)
• Buy Nineteen Eighty-Four (Penguin Books)

Published in 1949, and written while Orwell was seriously ill with tuberculosis, 1984 is perhaps Orwell’s most famous work. The story of Winston Smith, who rewrites Times editorials at the Ministry of Truth to suit the Party’s version of events, 1984 introduced ‘Big Brother’, ‘thought police’, ‘Room 101′, ‘doublethink’ and ‘newspeak’ to the English language. A satire on totalitarianism, 1984 is a testament to the potential power of modern political systems, and the dark side of human nature: as O’Brien tells Winston, ‘the object of power is power’.

More by Orwell related to Nineteen Eighty-Four

• Arthur Koestler (written 1944)
• Freedom and Happiness – Review of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Tribune, 1946)
• In Front of Your Nose (Tribune, 1946)
• Just Junk – But Who Could Resist It? (Evening Standard, 1946)
• Pleasure Spots (Tribune, 1946)
• Politics and the English Language (Horizon, 1946)
• Second Thoughts on James Burnham (Polemic, 1946)
• The Prevention of Literature (Polemic, 1946)
• You and the Atom Bomb (Tribune, 1945)

More about Nineteen Eighty-Four

• BBC: 1984 (1954 TV version on YouTube) – more about the adaptation on Wikipedia
• Colin Brush: ‘It was a bright cold day in April…’
• Richard Cavendish: Publication of 1984 (History Today)
• Bernard Crick: Orwell as a comic writer
• Robert Harris: Interview with Sebastian Faulks on Winston Smith (BBC on YouTube)
• Robert Harris: Introduction to 1984 – Frail, cowardly Winston saved us (The Times)
• John Hurt: On 1984 (National Media Museum)
• Steve King: Orwell’s warning (Barnes and Noble Review)
• Aleks Krotoski: 1984 in pictures, one word at a time (Flickr)
• Sébastian Lefait: « The Big Screen is watching you » (video) (French)
• Scott Lucas: Nineteen Eighty-Four - timeline (eNotes)
• Robert McCrum: 1984 – The masterpiece that killed George Orwell (The Observer)
• Paul Owen: 1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot? (The Guardian)
• Ben Pimlott: Introduction to 1984
• V. S Pritchett: The most honest writer alive – review of 1984 (New Statesman)
• Mike Radford: 1984 (1984 film) Q&A
• D. J. Taylor: Orwell and the rats
• D. J. Taylor: The Road to 1984 (video)

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