George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

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 two of the powers, which remain at war with the third, with alliances changing depending on who is at war with whom). The war is a stalemate (or, rather, an ideological 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 supreme head of Oceania, Big…

2118 words

Citation: Hopkins, Chris. "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 November 2002; last revised 03 November 2005. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3313, accessed 19 March 2024.]

3313 Nineteen Eighty-Four 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.