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Nineteen Eighty-Four: Difference between revisions
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<!-- %%Mirror from Brave New World page. If you want to change, do so on the BNW page also. -->
Also, this book is frequently compared to ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'' as a way of showing the perspectives of the dystopia-esque society. Note that ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' shows that [[Nightmare Fuel|what we fear]] [[Big Brother Is Watching|controls us]], while ''[[Brave New World (novel)|Brave New World]]'' shows that [[Freud Was Right|what we love]] [[Memetic Mutation|controls us.]]
Compare also with ''[[Jennifer Government]]'', another [[Dystopia|Dystopian]] novel in which it's not the state or a single party, but [[Privately-Owned Society|corporations who control everything]].
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{{quote|He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.}}
* [[Airstrip One]]: [[Trope Namer]].
* [[And I Must Scream]]/[[Fate Worse Than Death]]: The entire world. History and progress has been paralyzed, and the inhabitants are dehumanized into mindless drones while being constantly tortured by the warmongering regime and being watched by Big Brother, having no private life whatsoever, spending every day as a form of [[Mind Rape]]. And ''you are fully aware of all of it''.
** It's worth noting that Doublethink is in itself a mental version of [[And I Must Scream]], with Doublethink being essentially self-hypocrisy and the Doublethink practitioners being unconscious drones who sublimate themselves and do whatever Big Brother says as truth, while being fully conscious of the entire process and all the heresies and lies the Party imposes on the citizens. Even more chilling is that some people enjoy it.
* [[Apathetic Citizens]]: The Proles.
* [[Arc Words]]: "Big Brother is watching you", and on a different level:
{{quote|''WAR IS PEACE''
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* [[Big Brother Is Watching]]: [[Trope Namer]].
* [[Bigger Bad]]: {{spoiler|Big Brother is never seen in the plot, and it's ambiguous whether he even exists, or is just an icon of the Party}}.
* [[Blatant Lies]]: The whole purpose of the Ministry of Truth and the scary thing is no one questions them.
* [[Blind Idiot Translation]]: The original Finnish translation, but it was later remedied by a much better and accurate one.
* [[Bread and Circuses]]: The Proles. The Ministry of Truth has a section that produces crappy entertainment for them: newspapers that only contain crime, sports and horoscopes, sensationalistic novels, films "oozing with sex", sentimental songs made by machines and porn.
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*** An even more terrifying possibility: Winston's rebellion started when he saw a picture that directly contradicted established party dogma (even more so than what he usually saw), that appeared to have been passed to him by accident. It's strongly implied that the party intentionally arranged for him to get this. One interpretation is that the Party felt that its existence required opposition to exist, so they intentionally conditioned some people to rebel, JUST SO THEY COULD CRUSH THEM!
* [[Doomed Moral Victor]]: Cruelly, relentlessly, absolutely subverted. The Ministry of Love's methodology is specifically crafted to prevent it.
* [[Downer Ending]]:
** For the protagonists, at least; besides the aforementioned appendix, there just ''may'' be a single spot of hope left for the world as indicated subtly by the fact that the proletarian woman's symbolic [[Leitmotif|recurring love song outlasts the popularity of the Hate Song. The Party might fall after all, eventually.]]
*** And also within the 'Oranges and Lemons' motif. When O'Brien continues Winston's recitation of the rhyme a couple of lines beyond Winston's recollection of it, he exclaims 'You knew the last line!', and O'Brien agrees. But the rhyme as normally told continues a little more ("I'm sure I don't know, said the great bell of Bow", -- that is, interestingly, Bow Bells, the Cockney Londoner's central point.) suggesting that the Inner Party is not as omniscient as it believes.
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**** Actually, the book ends as the movie ends; the {{spoiler|trial, walk down the hallway, and bullet to the brain}} only occur in Winston's imagination, and represent his complete demolition. The events of the book (and 1984 movie version) end with him in the Chestnut Tree Cafe, realizing he 'loves' Big Brother.
**** The Brotherhood is this. Although O'Brien implies that it's a myth, it must be borne in mind that O'Brien is lying - the party is not known for its truthfulness. Also possible is a resistance movement that the party does not control (although O'Brien rejects this notion as impractical).
**** The following passage (which, incidentally, comes from the narration): "It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world."
* [[Dystopia]]: [[Trope Codifier]].
* [[Dystopia Is Hard]]: Interestingly, though, there are shades of this in the book as well (which makes the book an example of using an [[Unbuilt Trope]], since that didn't become popular until ''1984'' had affected the zeitgeist). ''Nothing'' is efficient in Oceania except for the Thought Police, and the few [[Hope Spot|Hope Spots]] in the book come from the Proles, whom the Party can't ''really'' control (or even understand, for that matter). And during Winston's interrogation, O'Brien does - briefly - voice an opinion that the endless war with the other superpowers can't be maintained in perpetuity, and when the breaking point comes, it'll be bad news for the Party.
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* [[The Evils of Free Will]]: This seems to be one of the few things that O'Brien and the Party actually believe in, besides their utterly cynical [[For the Evulz]] motivation.
* [[False Friend]]: O'Brien.
* [[Fan Service]]: In the film. Julia is quite clearly naked in some scenes.
* [[Fat Bastard]]: Subverted with Parsons, who seems to be pretty affable.
* [[Faux Affably Evil]]: {{spoiler|O'Brien talks to Winston in a calm, sometimes cordial tone throughout his torture in the Ministry of Love.}}
* [[Female Misogynist]]: Julia says that she hates women.
* [[Fictional Political Party]]: 'The Party'. Simply 'The Party' since they've long since gotten rid of the competition, forming a totalitarian regime. Judging from what little history we can discern, they were originally a far left/communist party which formed in Britain or Europe, eventually succeeding in revolution. Of course, their communist beliefs about social equality were all just a sham, or have long since become one - the only thing The Party wants is power.
** Bear in mind that even this little snippet comes from a document that is very probably a fabrication by the party themselves. It is heavily implied that the original "Party" was simply a clique of amoral intellectuals who took power via a coup d'etat.
* [[Fictionary]]: The Newspeak dictionary.
* [[Foe Yay]]: Invoked. The purpose of the Two Minutes' Hate is to channel the citizens' sexual impulses into their hatred for the state's enemies.
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** {{spoiler|O'Brien telling Winston and Julia about how they will be captured, tortured, etc. after joining The Brotherhood.}}
* [[Forever War]]: [[War Is Hell|causes a totalitarian Hell.]]
* [[Four Eyes, Zero Soul]]: O'Brien.
* [[Freud Was Right]]: Invoked. Julia theorizes that the Party keeps people in a state of warlike hysteria and power hunger though subjecting them to sexual deprivation. She even calls it "sex gone sour."
* [[Genius Bruiser]]: O'Brien.
* [[Genre Blind]]: Winston.
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* [[Ironic Nursery Tune]]: "Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head!"
** Similarly "Under the spreading chestnut tree/I sold you and you sold me."
* [[Jail Bake]]: Winston, after being imprisoned, thinks that the Brotherhood might send him a razor blade hidden in his food, not to escape but to kill himself with. It doesn't happen.
* [[Just the First Citizen]]: Big Brother, according to the Party's faux-egalitarian ideology. It's unclear whether he exists at all, but if he did, he would be near-omnipotent.
* [[Karma Houdini]]: See [[The Bad Guy Wins]]. The Party, O'Brien, and Big Brother all go off scot-free due to the way the system is set up. {{spoiler|At least, until the Newspeak Appendix implied the Party's fall...}}
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* [[Light Is Not Good]]: "The place where there is no darkness" is not a place you ever want to end up. ''Ever''.
* [[Malevolent Mugshot]]
* [[Manipulative Bastard]]: O'Brien, and by extensive the entire Party.
* [[Meaningful Name]]: Winston Smith, from "[[Winston Churchill]]" and "Smith", [[The Everyman]]. Julia from ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]''. Emmanuel Goldstein from "Bronstein" (Trotsky's given surname) and anarchist Emma Goldman, who was prominent in Orwell's time.
* [[The Metric System Is Here to Stay]]: Some focus is given to everybody having to use the metric system. [http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/asiplease1947-03.htm Orwell was against the complete scrapping of Imperial units], though he supported the use of the metric system in scientific work.
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* [[Scary Shiny Glasses]]: Winston's duckspeaking colleague.
* [[Schizo-Tech]]: The Party has a machine that writes trashy novels (to keep the proles happy) but farms are still worked by using horse plows.
** Justified in that working the farms keeps the proles busy and poor and writing trashy novels the old fashioned way would potentially lead to dangerous thoughts in the writers.
* [[Screens Are Cameras]]: The telescreens.
* [[Secret Police]]: The Thought Police.
* [[Sex Is Evil]]: The Party wants to suppress the sex drive. O'Brien states that their neurologists are working on the abolition of the orgasm. One of The Party's prominent youth movements is the Junior Anti-Sex League, who want all reproduction done by artificial insemination.
* [[Shadow Dictator]]: Big Brother.
* [[Sinister Surveillance]]: Surveillance cameras, hidden microphones and two-way "telescreens" exist in every home and in every street, spying on citizens, monitoring their every move and showering them with propaganda slogans. The Proles are lucky in that they have no telescreens, and only members of the Inner Party are able to (temporarily) turn their telescreens off.
* [[Space
* [[Staged Populist Uprising]]: The "resistance's" book claims that all revolutions are just the middle class using the lower class as a tool to supplant the upper class. IngSoc is designed to prevent this with the meritocratic Inner Party selection process and intense surveillance of the Outer and Inner Parties.
* [[Stockholm Syndrome]]: The Party imposes this on its members, including {{spoiler|Winston, in the end.}}
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** Even going so far as to build a giant [[wikipedia:Ryugyong Hotel|pyramid building]]. And by law, North Korean libraries may not stock books older than fifteen years - the books must be re-edited and reprinted. Wonder where they got that idea...
** During the Stalinist era in the USSR, children had to paste new pages into their history books as the official view changed. If any classmates were taken away and "vaporized", the kids had to '''scratch out their faces in all the yearbooks'''.
*** Big Brother ''is'' [[Josef Stalin|Stalin]]. Never say to a survivor of Stalin's regime, or even someone who had lived in the USSR when it was still Communist, that ''1984'' is an exaggeration of those times; children much like Winston's next door neighbors existed in droves, enjoyable sex was discouraged, and most importantly, thoughtcrime in its purest form existed -- it just wasn't ''called'' thoughtcrime.
** The most terrifying part of all of this is that it is all plausible. There are no far-fetched sci-fi elements in it, and they had 30ish years in the book-- long enough to raise a generation who've never known anything else. Orwell lifted most of Big Brother's tactics from Stalin and Hitler and provided a reason (war) for otherwise rational men and women to accept the same tactics from their own government. Though this also provides some hope, as North Koreans flee to China all the time, and when the Soviet Union collapsed people lined up to leave, and they were a generation that knew nothing else.
* [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]: Although apparently this was a case of [[Executive Meddling]], Supposedly Orwell wanted to set the book in 1948, but was told he couldn't, so he just switched the last two digits around to arrive at the new date/title. The fact that Winston himself isn't sure what year it is is remarked on several times.
* [[Two Plus Torture Makes Five]]: Though George Orwell used it before in essays, this is the book it's most remembered from.
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