Ministries of Oceania
Oceania's four ministries are housed in huge pyramidal structures, each roughly 300 meters high and visible throughout London, displaying the three slogans of the party (see below) on their facades.
- The Ministry of Peace
- Newspeak: Minipax.
Concerns itself with conducting Oceania's perpetual wars. - The Ministry of Plenty
- Newspeak: Miniplenty.
Responsible for rationing and controlling food and goods. - The Ministry of Truth
- Newspeak: Minitrue.
The propaganda arm of Oceania's regime. Minitrue controls information: political literature, the Party organization, and the telescreens. Winston Smith works for Minitrue, "rectifying" historical records and newspaper articles to make them conform to Big Brother's most recent pronouncements, thus making everything that the Party says true. - The Ministry of Love
- Newspeak: Miniluv.
The agency responsible for the identification, monitoring, arrest, and torture of dissidents, real or imagined. Based on Winston's experience there at the hands of O'Brien, the basic procedure is to pair the subject with his or her worst fear for an extended period of time, eventually breaking down the person's mental faculties and ending with a sincere embrace of the Party by the brainwashed subject. The Ministry of Love differs from the other ministry buildings in that it has no windows in it at all.
The ministries' names are ironic — the Ministry of Peace makes war, the Ministry of Plenty administers over shortages, the Ministry of Truth spreads propaganda and lies, and the Ministry of Love inflicts misery. However, from the perspectives of the Oceanians who accept the propaganda, these names are accurate.
The Party
In his novel Orwell created a world in which citizens have no right to a personal life or to personal thought. Leisure and other activities are controlled through a system of strict mores. Sexual pleasure is discouraged; sex is retained only for the purpose of procreation , although artificial insemination (ARTSEM) is more encouraged.
The mysterious head of government is the omniscient, omnipotent, beloved Big Brother, or "B.B.", usually displayed on posters with the slogan "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU". However, it is never quite clear whether Big Brother truly exists or not, or whether he is a fictitious leader created as a focus for the love of the Party which the Thought Police and others are there to engender (it is possible that he is real, but we -- and the book's characters -- never know for certain). It is perfectly possible that the conflict between Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein is in fact a conflict either between two fictitious or dead leaders, whose true purpose is to personify both the Party and its opponents.
His political opponent (who is therefore a criminal) is the hated Goldstein, a Party member who the reader is told had been in league with Big Brother and the Party during the revolution. Goldstein is said to be the leader of the Brotherhood, a vast underground anti-Party fellowship. The reader never truly finds out whether the Brotherhood exists or not, but the implication is that Goldstein is either entirely fictitious or was eliminated long ago. Party members are expected to vilify Goldstein, the Brotherhood and whichever supernation Oceania is currently warring via the daily "two minutes hate ." A typical two-minutes hate is depicted in the novel, during which citizens ridicule and shout at a video of the hated "bleating" Goldstein as he releases a litany of attacks upon Oceanic governance (indeed, the image ultimately morphs into a bleating sheep).
The three slogans of the Party, on display everywhere, are:
- WAR IS PEACE
- FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
- IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Each of these is of course either contradictory or the opposite of what we normally believe, and in 1984 the world is in a state of constant war, no one is free, and everyone is ignorant. The slogans are analysed in Goldstein's book . Though logically insensible, the slogans do embody the Party. For instance, through constant "war", the Party can keep domestic peace; when freedom is brought about, the people are enslaved to it, and the ignorance of the people is the strength of the Party. If (like Winston) anybody becomes too smart, they are whisked away for fear of rebellion. Through their constant repetition, the terms become meaningless, and the slogans become axiomatic . This type of misuse of language, and the deliberate self-deception with which the citizens are encouraged to accept it, is called doublethink .
One essential consequence of doublethink is that the Party can rewrite history with impunity, for "The Party is never wrong." The ultimate aim of the Party is, according to O'Brien, to gain and retain full power over all the people of Oceania; he sums this up with perhaps the most distressing prophecy of the entire novel: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.
Political geography
The world is controlled by three functionally similar totalitarian superstates engaged in perpetual war with each other:
- Oceania (ideology: Ingsoc or English Socialism),
- Eurasia (ideology: Neo-Bolshevism ), and
- Eastasia (ideology: Death Worship or Obliteration of the Self ).
In terms of the political map of the late 1940s when the book was written, Oceania covers the greater part of the British Empire (or the Commonwealth ), and the Americas , Eastasia corresponds to China , Japan , Korea , and northern India . Eurasia corresponds to the Soviet Union and Continental Europe . That Great Britain is in Oceania rather than in Eurasia is commented upon in the book as a historical anomaly. North Africa , the Middle East , southern India , and South East Asia form a disputed zone which is used as a battlefield and source of slaves by the three powers. Goldstein's book explains that the ideologies of the three states are basically the same, but it is imperative to keep the public ignorant of that. The population is led to believe that the other two ideologies are detestable. London , the novel's setting, is the capital of the Oceanian province of Airstrip One , the former Great Britain.
The war
- Main article: Perpetual war
| Eternal War | |||||||||
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| Part of World War II and the Cold War | |||||||||
The attacks described as black (Eurasian) and white (Oceanian) arrows in the last chapter of the novel. |
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| Combatants | |||||||||
| Oceania | Eurasia
East Asia |
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The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is built around an endless war involving the three global superstates, with two allied powers fighting against the third. The allied states occasionally split with each other and new alliances are formed, but as Goldstein's book explains, this does not matter, as each superstate is so strong it cannot be defeated even when faced with the combined forces of the other two powers. The war rarely takes place on the territory of the three powers, and actual fighting is conducted in the disputed zone stretching from Morocco to Australia, and in the unpopulated Arctic wastes. Throughout the first half of the novel, Oceania is allied with Eastasia , and Oceania's forces are engaged with fighting Eurasian troops in northern Africa. Mid-way through the novel, the alliance breaks apart and Oceania, newly allied with Eurasia, begins a campaign against Eastasian forces in India . During "Hate Week" (a week of extreme focus on the evilness of Oceania's enemies), Oceania and Eurasia are enemies once again. The public is quite blind to the change, and when a speaker, mid-sentence, changes the enemy from Eurasia to Eastasia (speaking as if nothing had changed) the people are shocked as they notice all the flags and banners are wrong (they blame Goldstein and the Brotherhood) and quite effectively tear them down.
The book that Winston receives explains that the war cannot be won, and that its only purpose is to use up human labor and the fruits of human labor so that each superstate's economy cannot support an equal (and high) standard of living for every citizen. The book also details an Oceanian strategy to attack enemy cities with atomic-tipped rocket bombs prior to a full-scale invasion, but quickly dismisses this plan as both infeasible and contrary to the purpose of the war. Although, according to Goldstein's book, hundreds of atomic bombs were dropped on cities during the 1950s, they are no longer used by the three powers as they would upset the balance of power. Conventional military technology is little different from that used in the Second World War. Some advances have been made, such as replacing bomber aircraft with "rocket bombs", and using immense "floating fortresses" instead of battleships, but such advances appear to be few and far between. As the purpose of the war is to destroy manufactured products and thus keep the workers busy, obsolete and wasteful technology is deliberately used in order to perpetuate useless fighting.
Goldstein's book hints that in fact, there may not actually be a war. The only view of the outside world presented in the novel is through Oceania 's media, which has an obvious tendency to exaggerate and even fabricate "facts". Goldstein's book suggests that the three superpowers may not actually be at war, and as Oceania's media provides scarcely believable news reports on impossibly huge military campaigns and victories (including an impossibly large campaign in the Sahara desert ), it can be suggested that the war, in fact, is a lie. However, as with many facets of the novel, the disputed existence of a war is neither confirmed nor denied, and the reader cannot be sure whether or not a war actually is in progress. In fact, it is entirely possible that the other two powers themselves are fabrications, and the entire world is controlled by a single entity.
It is noted in the novel that there are no longer massive battles, but rather, highly expert fighters occasionally appearing in skirmishes. This may be relatively paradoxical considering the massive amounts of resources wasted to keep the war effort running, given that so few soldiers are actually fighting.
Living standards
By the year 1984, the society of Airstrip One lives in abject squalor and poverty. Hunger, disease, and filth have become the social norm. As a result of the civil war, atomic wars, and Eurasian rocket bombs, the urban areas of Airstrip One lie in ruins. When travelling around London , Winston is surrounded by rubble, decay, and the crumbling shells of wrecked buildings. Apart from the gargantuan bombproof Ministries, very little seems to have been done to rebuild London, and it is assumed that all towns and cities across Airstrip One are in the same desperate condition. Living standards for the population are generally very low — everything is in short supply and those goods that are available are of very poor quality. The Party claims that this is due to the immense sacrifices that must be made for the war effort. They are partially correct, since the point of continuous warfare is to be rid of the surplus of industrial production so as to prevent the rise of the standard of living and make possible the economic repression of people.
The Inner Party, at the top level of Oceanian society, enjoys the highest standard of living. O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, lives in a relatively clean and comfortable apartment, and has access to a variety of quality foodstuffs such as wine , coffee , and sugar , none of which is available to the rest of the population. Members of the Inner Party also seem to be waited on by slaves captured from the disputed zone. Although the Inner Party enjoys the highest standard of living, Goldstein's book points out that, despite being at the top of society, their living standards are far, far below those of society's elite before the revolution. The proletariat, treated by the Party as animals, live in squalor and poverty. They are kept sedate with vast quantities of cheap beer , widespread pornography , and a national lottery , but these do not mask the fact that their lives are dangerous and deprived—proletarian areas of the cities, for example, are ridden with disease and vermin.
However, the proles are subject to much less close control of their daily lives than Party members, and the proles which Winston Smith meets in the streets and in the pubs seem to speak and behave much like working-class Englishmen of Orwell's time. Also the prole criminals which he meets in the first phase of his imprisonment are far less subdued and intimidated than the intellectual "politicals", some of them rudely jeering at the telescreens with apprent impunity. As explained in Goldstein's book, this derives from the social theory which the regime believes in—and which seems to work in the framework of the book—namely, that revolutions are always started by the middle class and that the lower classes would never start an effective rebellion on their own. Therefore, if the middle classes are so tightly contolled that the regime can penetrate their very thoughts and their most minute daily life, the lower classes can be left to their own devices and pose no threat.
As Winston is a member of the Outer Party, we discover more about the Outer Party's living standards than any other group. Despite being the middle class of Oceanian society, the Outer Party's standard of living is very poor. Foodstuffs are low-quality or synthetic; the main alcoholic beverage—Victory Gin—is industrial-grade; Outer Party cigarettes are shoddy. Winston, like many other members of the Outer Party, lives in a filthy one-room apartment with no comforts. All members of the Outer Party are required to wear scruffy overalls, and clothes in general are of very low quality. Members of the Outer Party are subject to a rigid timetable, being awoken each morning by the telescreens, and are required to participate in group "leisure" activities. Apart from Victory Gin, everything from artificial foods to badly-made razor blades is in very short supply, and living standards as a whole appear to be declining further. The description is to a considerable degree based on actual conditions in Second World War Britain, which was not self-supporting and which needed—since all contact with the German-occupied European mainland was cut off—to import many neccesities across the ocean via U-boat -infested waters. Orwell assumes a Soviet occupation of Western Europe and its incorporation in the hostile Eurasia (quite hostile even when not in officially proclaimed war with Oceania) making this a permanent, decades-long situation.
The social stratification serves to make members of the Outer Party appreciative of what they have, however meager: this helps to keep them governable, for they are less likely to take their status for granted as would those who live in plenty. An Outer Party member can at least be grateful not to be a Prole, who will always be much worse off. An Outer Party member will be obedient for fear of being executed, and he will learn to love the Party for providing a higher standard than them. He may also aspire to the higher status and standard of living of the Inner Party, and apply extra effort and diligence.
But the ultimate goal of this impoverishment and stratification is the preservation of the hiearchical society, which Orwell states through "The Book" to be only maintainable via ignorance and poverty.
Newspeak
Newspeak , the "official language" of Oceania, is extraordinary in that its vocabulary decreases every year; the state of Oceania sees no purpose in maintaining a complex language, and so Newspeak is a language dedicated to the "destruction of words". As the character Syme puts it:
- Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well... If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well... Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good', what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still.... In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words; in reality, only one word. (Part One, Chapter Five)
The true goal of Newspeak is to take away the ability to think anything not desired by the state (thought-crime), let alone act against the state, by eliminating words to express the concepts. For example, though a person could say, "BB is ungood" (Big Brother is bad), this would be seen as totally meaningless to any member of the party, and he would have no words to support his claim. Syme openly discusses this aim, this indiscretion being the presumed reason for his disappearance later on. Since the thought police had yet to develop a method of reading people's minds to catch dissent, Newspeak was created. (This concept has been examined — and widely disputed — in linguistics : see the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis .)