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1. Exposition/Beginning
2. Rising Action
3. Climax
4. Falling Action
5. Resolution

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Winston Smith is a low-ranking member of the Ministry of Truth and lives most of his days having his back faced towards the telescreen. London, everyone’s daily lives were watched and all their conversations were heard. Winston felt more safe being out of sight from the telescreen to feel some form of freedom.

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Winston, as well as everyone else, is being controlled through these telescreens. Their expressions, emotions, the food they eat, the way they dress, how they talk, etc.. Winston made the decision to leave the ministry in which he worked at early, leaving him with no lunch and having to chug down acidic-tasting gin and smoke crumbled cigarettes.

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As Winston stood in the living room he realized that the telescreen was placed in an unusual position which is uncommon. Due to the position it was in, Winston found its blind spot and opened his diary. This was big since both the purchase and use of the diary could warrant death. This is the point where Winston starts finding small ways to escape control of what they called “Big Brother”.

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Before he knew it, Winston started scribbling away in his diary and the date of the story is revealed to be the year of 1984. Winston writes about a film he saw, about people in the struggle to survive while being chased and taken out in the ocean by military helicopters. He went into a full description of the people’s expressions and actions in the film and found himself just writing word after word leaving him with a cramp.

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Winston had a new memory come into his mind thanks to his journal. It was the memory that led to the decision of buying the diary in the first place and started that same day.

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a. Characterization
b. Fictional Elements
i. Setting
ii. Irony
iii. Flashback
c. Symbolism
d. Realism
e. Moral issues
f. Depth

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- Winston Smith: a member of the party himself, who has a low-key rebellious personality that he isn’t aware of due to the oppression of the system. This personality makes him relatable to the reader and is juxtaposed by the harsh oppression of the citizens’ individuality by the Party. Winston’s struggle to reflect on life before the Party is telling in how the government essentially wiped the minds of the people, so that all they remember is the life that they currently live (so that they can’t idealize it and want to go back to it).
- Big Brother: this character is the “villain,” the leader of Oceania, and the leader of the Party. While Big Brother does actually exist, none of the other characters meet him. It is enough that the idea of Big Brother keeps the citizens in fear.

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- Setting: The story takes place in a fictionalized version of London, and it is the capitol of a province called Airstrip One, which is itself part of the nation of Oceania. Because of the way that the Party controls and rewrites history, Winston does not know what the year is, but only suspects that it is 1984. The city of London is divided into the Inner Party, who lives in relative comfort with servants and luxury goods, the Outer Party, which Winston is a part of, who lives in dreary, dilapidated conditions with little personal space or property, and the proles who live in slums where the Party does not control, but also does not provide support or opportunity. A few remains of the “old” London are mentioned, but only as reminders of a forgotten era.

- Irony: The names of the four Ministries are  intentionally misleading and the exact opposite of their function.The Ministry of Truth dealt with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. This Ministry is ripe for the use of government propaganda, since the government can control what news the people get, what they get to do for fun, what the children get to learn about their past and their government (revisionist history), and what the people get to venerate as art. This is ironic because there wouldn’t be any truth being printed, only lies of the government and Big Brother being spread.  The Ministry of Love maintained law and order, and their building was frightening, filled with barbed wire, steel doors, and men with truncheons. This is ironic, because “love” should not be associated with fear and pain.  The Ministry of Peace dealt with war; this is intentionally oxymoronic and therefore ironic.

- Flashback: There is a failed attempt of a flashback by Winston when he is trying to imagine a time before Big Brother and before the Party. The fact that the flashback fails is telling of the totalitarian nature of Winston’s government. “He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this… But it was no use, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible” (page 5-6).

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- Big Brother: Big Brother is the face of the Party and the face of the government. The face of Big Brother symbolizes the public face of the Party; he is a reassuring presence to most people (his name suggests protecting his people), but he is also an open threat (one cannot escape him). Big Brother represents the unknowability of the government to the everyday people, and the lack of transparency of the government to the people is abhorrent to readers.

- Telescreens: The omnipresence of the telescreens are the book’s obvious symbol of the Party’s constant monitoring. Their duality of streaming constant mind-numbing propaganda and observing citizens allows the telescreens to symbolize how authoritarian governments abuse technology for its purposes instead of using it to improve the lives of their people.

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- This issue is portrayed extremely realistically since the story of 1984 can be strongly paralleled to many Communist countries and, frighteningly enough, to our own future. The symbols in the novel and actions of individuals led many readers to easily parallel the story to Nazis and the Communist Party.
All three use euphemistic naming systems, harsh sentences, thought control, and propaganda to control their citizens.

- One specific link between the novel and Communism is the use of the word “prole” to describe someone. Prole is short for proletariat, and is a term used in Communism to identify someone of the working class. The use of the terms helps create further social divides between the citizens, making them mistrust each other and continuing the cycle of a controlling governmental system.

- The Thought Police are also similar to Stalin’s secret police force, called the NKVD. Both organizations watch their citizens’ every move and encourage distrust between the classes.

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The moral issue that is continually brought up whenever propaganda is involved is: is it ethical? When taken to the extreme of controlling every action of you people at all times, the answer is obviously no. It takes away personal autonomy, and constantly forces people to think of how badly they will be punished by the government if they are caught.
“How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

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This story, like all depictions and real-life scenarios involving propaganda, is full of depth and has many layers in order to express a full story. Specifically, 1984 portrayed the different methods that propaganda can be used by an authoritarian government to control every move of their citizens.

It used a specific language called Newspeak and had the four Ministries: Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Peace, Ministry of Love, and Ministry of Plenty. The Ministry of Truth dealt with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. This Ministry is ripe for the use of government propaganda, since the government can control what news the people get, what they get to do for fun, what the children get to learn about their past and their government (revisionist history), and what the people get to venerate as art. This is reminiscient of Nazi Germany: Hitler only allowed the printing of newspapers supporting the Nazis, only hired non-Jewish or Nazi-Affiliated teachers to teach the children to accept the new government, and attempted burned Jewish books and banned all Jewish musicians and artists as well as their art. Ministry Peace dealt with war (ironically enough). The Ministry of Love maintained law and order, and their building was frightening, filled with barbed wire, steel doors, and men with truncheons.

It also used words like “prole” and “jewess.” Prole means a member of the working class (short for proletariat), and jewess means a Jewish woman or girl. The constant reel of war films playing is a more obvious use of propaganda by the government for the citizens.