Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is, with the same author’s Animal Farm, one of the most widely read pieces of political writing of the twentieth century. Its vision is of a world in which three rival superpowers – Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia – are locked in an endless but in fact symbiotic war (there are alternating periods of peace between one or other power). The war is a stalemate (or perhaps a fiction in which all three sides collaborate) whose continuance ensures that the citizens of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia remain in a constant state of submission to the forces of hatred, artificial collective feeling, and propaganda. The leader of Oceania, Big Brother, is leader of the Party, which

This article in full comprises 2055 words but only the first 150 or so words are available to non-members.

All our articles have been written recently by experts in their field, more than 95% of them university professors. To read about membership, please click here.

Published 08 November 2002 ; revised 03 November 2005

Citation: Hopkins, Chris. "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 November 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3313, accessed 9 February 2010.]