Well, finally finished Nineteen Eighty-Four. Actually it didn't take long once I got into it - it just took a while to get into it. The first half took me about a week, the second half about four or five days then I whizzed through the last part in a couple of days.
So the story is set in a future dystopia. The world is divided into three super powers fighting with each other - Oceana, Eurasia, and Eastasia. It is written from the pespective of Winston, living in London, which is part of Oceana. Oceana is under the control of a totalitarian political party, i.e., nearly all public and private behaviour is regulated. In fact the party controls society to such a degree that they monitor citizens' thoughts, watch them 24/7 via telescreens - monitors installed everywhere out of which the party broadcast various things. Big Brother is head of the party, whether he is a real person or just a representation of the party is not clear. His image appears on posters showing his watchful eyes everywhere informing people that they are under his constant gaze - 'Big Brother is watching you.'
The book begins by introducing us to Winston's oppressive world. He is a party member, a member of the outer party, and he works in the truth department, whose job it is to rewrite history. The party is organised into inner party, which forms the core, the outer party, whose members perform smaller jobs, and then there are the proles, the proletariat, the great unwashed, workers and so on who live in relative squallor.
Winston feels alone in his world, he questions the party, but dares not voice his dissent because to question the party, even in thought - Thoughtcrime - means death. Even such things as a flicker of the eyes can be picked up by the party. However, for his sanity, he keeps a diary of his thoughts, this provides us with insights into his thinking.
He falls in love with a young lady he suspected of being a member of the Thought Police. She followed him around and appears by all externals to be ultra loyal to the party. He believes she is onto him and contemplates killing her. However, it turns out this exterior is cunning cover for her dissidence. They begin an affair meeting in out of town places away from the cameras and hidden microphones. Or so they think. This goes on for some time until they discover an old room rented out above an old antique shop in the prole's part of town - a squalid area not subject to the same scrutiny as Party-members' accommodation.
They keep the affair up for a while, they talk of finding the Brotherhood, a supposed secret alliance set against Big Brother. Winston works with a member of the inner party, O'Brien, whom he suspects is a member of this brotherhood. They meet one day in a corridor at work and O'Brien gives him a signal to come to his apartment for "work" - a most unusual offer. Winston takes this to be O'Brien's way of reaching out to him as a member of the Brotherhood. He heads over to his place and reveals all. O'Brien informs him that he is indeed a member of the brotherhood and gets him to pledge to being a member - this pledge includes lots of strange things like throwing sulphoric acid in a child's face if the brotherhood command it. He agrees without reluctance such is his hatred for the Party.
The affair continues and Winston is slipped a copy of the Brotherhood's handbook exposing the party. At their rented room in the city Winston reads from the book and finds all that it contains concurring with everything that he has thought about the party until this time. Suddenly the windows smash, big brother's voice emerges from behind the wall, and the Thought Police enter the room. It turns out he has been under surveillance all this time and O'Brien as well as the shop owner, are members of the Thought Police. They have been watching his every move for the past year and his every move in the secret room through the wall.
The third part of the book begins. Here Winston is subjected to torture or the worst kind for weeks and months on end. In fact he is not even sure for how long as he is in such a state. Slowly he is purged of his rational suspicions about the party. 2+2 no longer equals four, but can equal 5 if the party says it does. There is no objective history, only a history created by the party. The party is the only thing that speaks the truth, and he must submit. There is no objective reality. Eventually he does submit. But he still retains one shred of humanity - his love for her. This proves to be his final purging. He is taken to room 101, a room in which one's worst nightmare is realised. Here he is threatened with having his face torn to pieces by the overgrown rats of prole town. He snaps under the pressure and bleats out the one thing that will save him - give the torture to her, his girlfriend, let the rats tear her apart – and he means every word of it.
The book draws to a close. Winston is released a changed man. He awaits his death which may come at any moment - always a bullet in the back of the head. He meets with her in a park, they no longer feel the same. Evidently she was also tortured and cracked under pressure in room 101. Their hearts grown cold now. As he sits sipping gin in a bar, his new hobby, the telescreen announces Big brother's success over Eurasia in a battle, and it is at this moment his conversion is complete – his heart wells with love for big brother. His will has been bent. The book ends.
