1984 Chapter Summaries

1984 Chapter Summaries

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

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.

Summary: Chapter II

Winston opens the door fearfully, assuming that the Thought Police have arrived to arrest him for writing in the diary. However, it is only Mrs. Parsons, a neighbor in his apartment building, needing help with the plumbing while her husband is away. In Mrs. Parsons's apartment, Winston is tormented by the fervent Parsons children, who, being Junior Spies, accuse him of thoughtcrime. The Junior Spies is an organization of children who monitor adults for disloyalty to the Party, and frequently succeed in catching them--Mrs. Parsons herself seems afraid of her zealous children. The children are very agitated because their mother won't let them go to a public hanging of some of the Party's political enemies in the park that evening. Back in his apartment, Winston remembers a dream in which a man's voice--O'Brien's, he thinks--said to him, "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness." Winston writes in his diary that his thoughtcrime makes him a dead man, then he hides the book.

Summary: Chapter III

Winston dreams of being with his mother on a sinking ship. He feels strangely responsible for his mother's disappearance in a political purge almost twenty years ago. He then dreams of a place called The Golden Country, where the dark-haired girl takes off her clothes and runs toward him in an act of freedom that annihilates the whole Party. He wakes with the word "Shakespeare" on his lips, not knowing where it came from. A high-pitched whistle sounds from the telescreen, a signal that office workers must wake up. It is time for the Physical Jerks, a round of grotesque exercise. As he exercises, Winston thinks about his childhood, which he barely remembers. Having no physical records such as photographs and documents, he thinks, makes one's life lose its outline in one's memory. Winston considers Oceania's relationship to the other countries in the world, Eurasia and Eastasia. According to official history, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia, but Winston knows that the records have been changed. Winston remembers that no one had heard of Big Brother, the leader of the Party, before 1960, but stories about him now appear in histories going back to the 1930s. As Winston has these thoughts, a voice from the telescreen suddenly calls out his name, reprimanding him for not working hard enough at the Physical Jerks. Winston breaks out into a hot sweat and tries harder to touch his toes.

Summary: Chapter IV

Winston goes to his job in the Records section of the Ministry of Truth, where he works with a "speakwrite" (a machine that types as he dictates into it) and destroys obsolete documents. He updates Big Brother's orders and Party records so that they match new developments--Big Brother can never be wrong. Even when the citizens of Airstrip One are forced to live with less food, they are told that they are being given more than ever and, by and large, they believe it. This day, Winston must alter the record of a speech made in December 1983, which referred to Comrade Withers, one of Big Brother's former officials who has since been vaporized. Since Comrade Withers was executed as an enemy of the Party, it is unacceptable to have a document on file praising him as a loyal Party member. Winston invents a person named Comrade Ogilvy and substitutes him for Comrade Withers in the records. Comrade Ogilvy, though a product of Winston's imagination, is an