"to mark the paper was a decisive act" (p. 7)

We view this world through the mind of Winston Smith and almost immediately we're presented with a depressive outlook where “there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere” (p. 2). He lives in present-day London, capitol of Airstrip One, which is described as the “third most populous of the provinces of Oceania” (p. 3).

So Mr. Smith lives in the same world we do, except England became Airstrip One and Oceania sounds like a super-continent. With a map from Wikipedia, Oceania is made up of the Americas, South Africa, Australia, and the British Isles. Oceania's competitors around the world are Eurasia (Europe and Russia) and Eastasia (China, Japan, Korea, and North India).

Side note: England's militaristic renaming to Airstrip One reminds me of the state-controlled liquor stores of Utah, where they're literally called, “DABC Utah State Liquor Store #__).

Sometime before we are launched into the events of 1984, Winston had acquired a journal where it'll be shown in italics. One of the first entries he compulsively writes about is a scene at the theater where he was watching a violent war movie that was met with applause. War has consumed their world and as Winston is writing he mentions how “somewhere far away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating roar” (p. 26) and follows up that twenty or thirty more of these rockets were dropped.

Oceania was always at war with someone, “though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war” (p. 33).

For anyone born in the 21st century, this could not be more true. How long have we been overseas and increased our military budget? Even when we're not engaged in conflict with another country, we've had a war on drugs and a war on poverty, just to name a few examples. What's the next war about? These generations are growing up with an already installed mindset of always being at war.

The thing that makes these wars Orwellian, is the population doesn't know “who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one” (p. 34).

If we take a look at the Gulf of Tonkin and the WMD incident with Iraq, we're not so far off from this. These are well-known events for the fabrication of war and they likely will not be the last. The accurate reporting of historical events and its preservation to factual events is utterly critical and cannot be controlled. Otherwise, Oceania could just pretend to be at war for as long as they want.

The victors of war are the ones who get to write their history and that's exactly what happened here, but to the benefit of the state.

Winston knows the only place he could actually trust with history is in his own memory but, just like we do, he knows how foggy memory can be stored. He remembers that “beyond the late Fifties everything faded” (p. 32) such as countries and their appearance on the map. Its implied that a war had broke out during this time “because one of his early memories was of an air raid which appeared to take everyone by surprise” (p. 32). He tells a story from his childhood when he took shelter inside of a subway and mentions Colchester getting nuked. This could give us the impression of World War II having a much different turn of events.

Sometime after, there was another conflict where Big Brother and The Party had emerged victorious, this is known in Oceania as the Revolution. The Revolution was fought against rich and powerful capitalists who were said to own everything with everyone as their slaves and believing “[e]verything existed for their benefit” (p. 90).

I find it interesting that we're also in a similar situation today, minus the all-out revolution. There has been an undeniable growth of distaste in capitalism in recent years as well as an alarming rate of media manipulation.

Here's another interesting little line of capitalism: “The centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of any value.” (p. 98)

Now how many times have you said or heard how people centuries ago built these awe-inspiring structures, while we haven't built anything as nearly impressive. You could look at this line a bunch of other ways too, like the materialistic waste that capitalism may produce or toxicity and so on, just ask someone who opposes capitalism.

Speaking of building, Winston goes on to warn, “one could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Statues, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of streets – anything that might throw light upon the past had been systematically altered.” (p. 98)

Statues, inscriptions and memorial stones...ever heard of those being scrubbed?

Anyways, The Party won the revolution against capitalists and now projected itself as huge powerful military nation but “the reality was decaying, dingy cities, where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad lavatories” (p. 74). The Party was also known to ration or was completely unable to supply basic items like buttons and razors. Winston mentioned that he was only allowed 3,000 clothing coupons every year to spend on his wardrobe which he complains is not enough. On top of the rationing and short budget, “about a quarter of one's salary had to be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions”. (p. 56) Except those aren't actually voluntary and goes towards community morale. For example, Winston pays his neighbor $2 because his neighbor is the treasure of their block and is in charge of the house-to-house fund for Hate Week.

So how has society evolved during the rise of Big Brother? Orwell puts it nicely here: “Tragedy belonged to the ancient time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.” (p. 30)

Tragedies occur on a daily basis across the world and we are made aware of them almost instantaneously. The problem that comes with this around-the-clock reporting is we eventually become desensitized from repeated tragedies and viewing them as just another day.

The state's surveillance methods are growing every year with further invading the privacy of its citizens. The irony of the security surveillance is that we have all these ways to track and record individuals yet it seems that no one is there to monitor the state. Whenever a new idea is presented to enhance or maintain privacy, there is always a shadow trying to regulate how much privacy can be allowed. This is the basis of the cryptocurrency dilemma, how far should an individual's finances be monitored and kept private to the individual?

Love and friendships are too much of a complex topic to try to generalize but I'll say this: divorce rates are at all time highs and there are many children with separate parents. The strongest expressions on love are within a family. Unfortunately, the traditional family units accompanied with marriage are becoming less and less normal for our society. As for friendships, we see that people are less likely to be friends with someone if either of them hold opposing views.

That last line really stings for Americans. I am grateful that my family has been resilient to being divided, but I know others who are not so fortunate. I'm not talking about those with abusive families where its in the best interest to separate for mental health. I'm talking about families who constantly bicker and drive wedges between each other for things that don't matter in the end. They forget at the end of the day, family is something that anyone has really had all their life.

With the loss of those values, they have been replaced by “fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, or deep or complex sorrows.” (p. 30)

Fear leads to pain and hatred. These elements can be found circulating daily in a media takes delight in antagonizing these emotions to sell more clicks, subscriptions, articles, and streams. When consuming media, become aware of who is being targeted and how or why your supposed to feel a certain way, see if you can find the fear, pain and hate they're providing.

Orwell gets a little deep at the end of line with the dignity of emotion and complex sorrows. I feel as if there is more to this than at face value so I had to look it up.

Dignity is the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically. Dignity is of significance in morality, ethics, law and politics as an extension of the Enlightenment-era concepts of inherent, inalienable rights.

In other words, if there is no dignity of emotion, citizens have lost the right to express emotion.

Today, we bite our tongues for fear of how others will respond and potentially attack our expressions. The primate desire to “fit-in” and conform to society comes at the cost of not saying what you feel. What happens when its the state that dictates the societal emotions towards something?

Sorrow is a mental suffering caused by loss, disappointment, or misfortune. In the Orwellian world of Oceania, they have experienced so much generational trauma that they become numb and are past sorrow. I don't think we are anywhere near this point, but what a depressing image it creates.

Moving on, there are party members and Proles that live in Airstrip One. Winston is considered to be an outer party member, somewhat of a average working class citizen. We'll go more in depth for both The Party itself and the Prole class later on. For now, I just want to briefly mention the Proles to add onto the war theme.

Winston reveals that it is not illegal for outer party to visit the Prole neighborhood but it is unwise since members will surely be questioned if they are spotted in the area. Winston frequently visits the neighborhood where he initially bought the journal that he writes in. On one of his strolls he observes that Proles “possess some kind of instinct which told them several seconds in advance when a rocket was coming, although rockets supposedly traveled faster than sound.” (p. 84) and a few minutes afterwards “the sordid swarming life of the streets was going on as thought nothing had happened.” (p. 84)

Quick recap, Winston recalls that his country is always at war, he's able to hear and probably feel explosions from his apartment, and the Proles just go back to their daily lives after their streets have been bombed. By the way those rockets are said to fly faster than the speed of sound, according to Big Brother.

War is a day-to-day occurrence to the citizens of Oceania and who knows how long its been going on or who's responsible for the attacks.

Don't know about Winston, but it doesn't really seem like a good place to live. So why doesn't anyone leave? Well, it seems doubtful that that's even an option. I guess if a Oceania citizen couldn't handle another day in country, they're reduced to one escape and that's in taking their own life.

Big Brother saw that one coming too and took steps for the safety of party members.

Winston lives “in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain poison, were completely unprocurable.” (p. 102) Regardless of your political affiliations, this makes you want to revisit and give the American second amendment another minute of thought; because for our poor character Winston, he has virtually no escape and is doomed to live under tyranny.

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