Summary: Chapter I
On a cold day in April of 1984, a
man named Winston Smith returns to his home, a dilapidated apartment
building called Victory Mansions. Thin, frail, and thirty-nine years
old, it is painful for him to trudge up the stairs because he has
a varicose ulcer above his right ankle. The elevator is always out
of service so he does not try to use it. As he climbs the staircase,
he is greeted on each landing by a poster depicting an enormous
face, underscored by the words “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
YOU.”
Winston is an insignificant official in the Party, the
totalitarian political regime that rules all of Airstrip One—the
land that used to be called England—as part of the larger state
of Oceania. Though Winston is technically a member of the ruling
class, his life is still under the Party’s oppressive political
control. In his apartment, an instrument called a telescreen—which
is always on, spouting propaganda, and through which the Thought
Police are known to monitor the actions of citizens—shows a dreary
report about pig iron. Winston keeps his back to the screen. From
his window he sees the Ministry of Truth, where he works as a propaganda
officer altering historical records to match the Party’s official
version of past events. Winston thinks about the other Ministries
that exist as part of the Party’s governmental apparatus: the Ministry
of Peace, which wages war; the Ministry of Plenty, which plans economic
shortages; and the dreaded Ministry of Love, the center of the Inner
Party’s loathsome activities.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
(See Important Quotations Explained)
From a drawer in a little alcove hidden from the telescreen,
Winston pulls out a small diary he recently purchased. He found
the diary in a secondhand store in the proletarian district, where
the very poor live relatively unimpeded by Party monitoring. The proles, as
they are called, are so impoverished and insignificant that the
Party does not consider them a threat to its power. Winston begins
to write in his diary, although he realizes that this constitutes
an act of rebellion against the Party. He describes the films he
watched the night before. He thinks about his lust and hatred for
a dark-haired girl who works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry
of Truth, and about an important Inner Party member named O’Brien—a
man he is sure is an enemy of the Party. Winston remembers the moment
before that day’s Two Minutes Hate, an assembly during which Party
orators whip the populace into a frenzy of hatred against the enemies
of Oceania. Just before the Hate began, Winston knew he hated Big Brother,
and saw the same loathing in O’Brien’s eyes.
Winston looks down and realizes that he has written “DOWN WITH
BIG BROTHER” over and over again in his diary. He has committed
thoughtcrime—the most unpardonable crime—and he knows that the Thought
Police will seize him sooner or later. Just then, there is a knock
at the door.
Analysis: Chapter I
The first few chapters of 1984 are
devoted to introducing the major characters and themes of the novel.
These chapters also acquaint the reader with the harsh and oppressive
world in which the novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, lives. It
is from Winston’s perspective that the reader witnesses the brutal
physical and psychological cruelties wrought upon the people by
their government. Orwell’s main goals in 1984 are
to depict the frightening techniques a totalitarian government (in
which a single ruling class possesses absolute power) might use
to control its subjects, and to illustrate the extent of the control
that government is able to exert. To this end, Orwell offers a protagonist
who has been subject to Party control all of his life, but who has
arrived at a dim idea of rebellion and freedom.
Unlike virtually anyone else in Airstrip One, Winston
seems to understand that he might be happier if he were free. Orwell
emphasizes the fact that, in the world of Airstrip One, freedom
is a shocking and alien notion: simply writing in a diary—an act
of self-expression—is an unpardonable crime. He also highlights
the extent of government control by describing how the Party watches its
members through the giant telescreens in their homes. The panic that
grabs hold of Winston when he realizes that he has written “DOWN
WITH BIG BROTHER” evidences his certainty in the pervasive
omniscience of the Party and in the efficiency of its monitoring
techniques.
Winston’s diary entry, his first overt act of rebellion,
is the primary plot development in this chapter. It illustrates
Winston’s desire, however slight, to break free of the Party’s total
control. Winston’s hatred of Party oppression has been festering
for some time, possibly even for most of his life. It is important
to note that the novel, however, opens on the day that this hatred
finds an active expression—Winston’s instinct to rebel singles him
out of the sheeplike masses. Unlike the rest of the general public
who do not find the Party’s contradictions problematic, Winston
is aware of himself as an entity separate from the totalitarian
state. He realizes that writing in the diary has altered his life
irrevocably and that he is no longer simply another citizen of Oceania.
In writing in the diary he becomes a thought-criminal, and he considers
himself doomed from the very start: “Thoughtcrime was not a thing
that could be concealed forever . . . Sooner or later they were
bound to get you.”
One of the most important themes of 1984 is
governmental use of psychological manipulation and physical control
as a means of maintaining its power. This theme is present in Chapter
I, as Winston’s grasping at freedom illustrates the terrifying extent
to which citizens are not in control of their own minds. The telescreens
in their homes blare out a constant stream of propaganda, touting
the greatness of Oceania and the success of the Party in ruling
it. Each day citizens are required to attend the Two Minutes Hate,
an intense mass rally in which they are primed with fury and hatred
for Oceania’s rival nations, venting their own pent-up emotions
in the process. The government, meanwhile, expresses its role in an
outlandishly dishonest fashion, as seen in the stark contradiction
between the name and function of each of its ministries. The net
effect of this psychological manipulation is a complete breakdown
of the independence of an individual’s mind. Independence and will
are replaced by a fear of, and faith in, the Party; indeed, individual
thought has become so alien the population accepts that the Party
has made it a crime.