The novel 1984 by George Orwell is perpetually set in the year 1984, a period when the majority of the world’s population had fallen victims of war, government oppression, and constant propaganda. In the novel, there are distinct classes of people categorized according to the elements of the power they contain. For instance, Airstrip One (Great Britain), a province in the Oceania super state is predominantly ruled by the “Party,” who execute their duties through the “Thought Police.” The police force works to persecute selfless individualism and free thinkers. The main characters in the novel are Winston Smith, Julia, and O’Brien. Winston, the protagonist, is a middle-class member who works as a filing officer in the Party. Despite Smith’s skill and diligence, he secretly hates the Party with passion and dreams of executing revolt against Big Brother. Smith finally rebels by entering a forbidden love affair with Julia, a fellow employee.
Smith is a junior member in the ruling Party in the Oceania nation. At the onset of the novel, Smith exhibits frustration resulting from the oppression and the uncouth regulations of the Party. Typically, the Party prohibits any essence of personal freedom including free thought, free spirit individuality, and even sex. The Party entirely controls the Oceania nation and everything in it. According to the Party, political rebellion encompassing even anything about it is rated the worst crime an individual can ever commit within its territory. Smith on the contrary, illegally purchases a diary to record his criminal thought, since his dislike for the party was escalating. Smith is also disillusioned and becomes fixated on O’Brien, an influential member of the Party. He naively believes that O’Brien is an undercover member of the mysterious legendary group working to overthrow the Party, Brotherhood.
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Smith, an officer in the Ministry of Truth, altering historical records to fit the needs of the Party, notices a cute dark-haired girl staring at him for quite a while. He is gripped by worry to think that the lady is an informant sent to unfold his thought crime. Notably, Smith feels perturbed by the Party’s control of history. Mr. Smith recalls a time when the information that Oceania was allied with Eastasia in the war against Eurasia, which is not true, but the current records require him to dispute the truth. Moreover, the Party also claims that the alleged Brotherhood’s leader, Emmanuel Goldstein, is the most ferocious living man. When he leaves office, Smith spends his time trolling through the poor neighborhoods in London. The places are dominated by the proles, leading squalid lives, with minimum monitoring from the Party.
On a particular day of Smith’s routine office job, he encountered a note from the dark-haired girl, Julia. The note read, “I love you.” The two begin an affair but keen enough not to be found by the Party monitoring. Progressively, Smith and Julia went to live together for sometime in a room in the prole district. Despite indulging into a romantic relationship, Smith is sure of the fact that fate will beget them and that they will be punished. Conversely, Julia continued to develop more optimism as their affair was lasting. Nonetheless, Smith’s hatred for the Party continued to grow more intensely with the progress of their love. At last, a message reaches Smith’s desk that he was being waited by O’Brien.
Without fear of contradiction and convening the law, Smith, and Julia pay O’Brien a visit in his luxurious apartment. O’Brien’s comfy life sends Smith into the fantasy world, but the reality is that there was no way O’Brien could live a simple life, for he was a member of the Inner Party. O’Brien blindfolds the couple’s imagination and tells them that he hates the Party and that he belongs to the Brotherhood who tirelessly work for its downfall. O’Brien offers the couple a copy of the purported Brotherhood’s leader book, the manifesto of Brotherhood. As the two get home, Smith reads the contents of the book to Julia, and suddenly, the police conduct an impromptu arrival. The soldiers seize the two, and Mr. Charrington, the store proprietor, is also revealed as an all-time member of the Thought Police.
Further, Smith is roughed up and torn away from Julia and headed to a specific place referred to as the Ministry of Love. In this place, Smith finds out that O’Brien is the Party’s watchdog spying on lawbreakers on the pretense of being members of the Brotherhood. In so doing, he tricks Smith into committing an open revolt against the ruling Party. For several months, O’Brien tortured Smith, who struggles to a stage resistance. The worst begets Smith when O’Brien finally sends him to the dreaded Room 101. The room served as the final destination of all the rebellious individuals against the Party. In this room, Smith meets a cage of rats, a revelation of the nightmares that kept on recurring in the inmate’s brain throughout the novel. Smith is overridden by torture and pleads to O’Brien to reconsider the punishment, and subject it to Julia.
Finally, Smith is released to the outside world. However, his spirit is entirely broken and distorted. On the other hand, O’Brien’s ultimate aim for all the torture and brainwash was Smith to give up on Julia. Incidentally, Smith meets Julia but reflects the ordeal and no longer feels anything for her. Smith retracts to accepting the Party, learning to love its leader, the Big Brother. Devastatingly, the ruling Party is a typical example of how the current governments bulldoze and incriminate some intelligent minds. However, the trend is fading out in upright civil countries, but still rampant in the third-world nations.
