Line #2 YMMV/NineteenEightyFour


1	* AdaptationDisplacement: Despite being credited as the TropeCodifier for dystopian fiction, Creator/GeorgeOrwell was inspired to write this novel after reading the [[UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} Russian]] novel ''Literature/{{We}}''. He also cited Arthur Koestler's ''Literature/DarknessAtNoon'' and Creator/JackLondon's ''Literature/TheIronHeel'', among others, as major inspirations. None of these other stories are nearly as well known.
2	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
3	** Given that the Party's doctrine is that of Alternate Reality Interpretation, and that the viewpoint character is repeatedly {{mind rape}}d in the end, it can be argued that we don't know what really happens post-Room 101. All that can be trusted is what Winston sees with his own eyes up until the cage snaps shut.
4	** Also, since he doesn't leave Airstrip One, we have no clue as to the state of the world -- is Oceania real? Is it the entire world? Is there a Brotherhood after all? Nothing can be taken for granted, even the InfoDump book that pops up halfway through (''especially'' the book, given that one of the Inner Party members claims credit for its authorship, and hands out copies). In fact, it's a little bit of a stretch but we can't be exactly sure if the Party even controls all of the British Isle. Could be half of it, just UsefulNotes/{{England}}, or hell, maybe only London and its imminent surroundings. Which might explain the whole "running out of resources" thing.
5	** A common suggestion is that the 'scholarly' appendix on Newspeak is written in a manner that deliberately subverts this DownerEnding, given that it ''is'' written in the past tense... When ''1984'' was to first be published in [[UsefulNotes/TheUnitedStates America]], the publisher wished to remove the appendix, but Orwell refused to have it published without, saying that the book would have to be reworked if such a large chunk was to be cut out. This incident, along with a few hand-picked statements of Orwell around the time the book was written, form the basis for including the appendix into the work.
6	** We explicitly never do learn if there's a Brotherhood or not. An alternate, admittedly optimistic interpretation would be that the Brotherhood did exist and that O'Brien was part of it, and that Winston and Julia's capture and death were in fact due to the latter's refusal to give up everything for the Brotherhood (though, granted, that'd just make the Brotherhood no better than the Party). Or, alternatively, they just messed up somehow and got caught, and O'Brien couldn't say anything, because ''[[ArcWords Big Brother is watching]]''. Yet another possibility is that their affirmative responses to questions about whether they'd do things like deliberately infect people with [=STDs=] or throw acid at children marked them as the kind of recruits the Brotherhood didn't want. Or perhaps the Brotherhood is real and O'Brien is simply not a member, but elsewhere there are real Brotherhood recruiters setting up a real plot to overthrow the Party.
7	** Is O'Brien Big Brother, living as a Higher Party member ''and'' a Brotherhood leader, giving him the perfect alibi? Or is there no Big Brother at all, no single leader, with a group of mutually-controlled Higher Party members who doublethink the existence of a higher tyrant being the only tangible government?
8	** O'Brien lied about having written The Book. He wants Winston to feel completely defeated, that there is no organization out there that opposed the party. And having lied about it, he doublethinked himself into believing that he wrote it. In reality, the Book's denunciation of the Party's workings is too clear to have been written by somebody whose brain is addled by Newspeak. The real writers are still out there.
9	** The Ministries may actually be true to their names [[MetaphoricallyTrue from a certain point of view]], and using The Party's way of thinking. The Ministry of Truth can be justified with doublethink, you may be able to consider the rations you are given by the Ministry of Plenty to be "plenty" from Big Brother's logic, the Ministry of Peace is justified through "WAR IS PEACE" and the Ministry of Love is where you learn to love Big Brother. Alternately, the Ministry of Truth ''manufactures'' truth as defined by the party, and the Ministry of Peace makes a state of internal peace in Oceania by depleting resources.
10	** O'Brien is a cynical mid-level bureaucrat who doesn't actually know what The Party truly wants in spite of his villainous monologue that the Party is operating on DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans- perhaps he is just a broken pessimist who sees the world through JadeColouredGlasses and thinks that the only way for Big Brother to make any sense at all is if they are as pure evil as he claims, but in truth he is as much in the dark as everyone else; alternatively, perhaps O'Brien is just a {{sadist}} who either doesn't know or doesn't care what the Party truly wants, he just wants to break Winston by painting the bleakest picture imaginable for him about Big Brother and its supposed intentions. Either way, by the end of the book, we still cannot say that we truly know what Big Brother wants, even if O'Brien seemingly spelt it out for us.
11	** Based on O'Brien's line "they caught me a long time ago", is he lying or was he a rebel until being caught and brainwashed? Is that why he's so good in catching rebels? Is he also a dead man waiting?
12	** The look on Winston's face when the film ends after a flashback of Julia mouthing "I love you"... is he regaining his humanity after his time in Room101?
13	** Well, not so much a specific character but more the setting as a whole. As one comment on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQxOKXEff4I this]] video put it, "One interesting thing about ''1984'' is that it's not entirely clear that Ingsoc actually exists outside of the British Isles. All the claims made about territory, about the endless wars, are the product of Minitruth propaganda. One character even hypothesizes that the bombs being dropped on London during the book are simply part of the effort to keep the Proles scared. For all we know, Airstrip One is just one giant North Korea, cut off and isolated from the rest of the world, the party projecting its illusions of grandeur and power onto a populace too broken and controlled to even know any better." Also, the beam coming from the eye in the picture up top could either be a spotlight to represent Big Brother watching you or a Doom Ray to represent their annihilation of society and those who oppose them.
14	** Is Julia in love with Winston and a fellow rebel or is she actually an agent of the Party (perhaps even the Thought Police)? After all, the Party needs enemies to justify its existence and using her as a HoneyPot to root out dissidents is a perfectly likely act from them and not even unlike the RL Soviet Union.
15	** [[spoiler: Parsons]] in the Ministry of Love. Was he thrown in the same cell as Winston by coincidence? We don't know if he actually spoke out against the Party in his sleep. Was he then arrested purely to demoralize Winston? And seeing how people tend to not be who they look like at first, was he secretly working with the Thought Police?
16	** We see all the other characters from Winston's perspective. He frequently informs us that various characters are stupid, but it's not hard to imagine that many of them are just better than him at keeping their heads down. His view of the proles as "distracted" by trivial matters falls somewhat flat when you remember that (by the standards of his society) Winston is a single, childless, middle-class man looking down on people who are struggling to feed their families.
17	** The old man whom Winston talks to in the prole pub about life before the Revolution: genuinely senile and drunk or ObfuscatingInsanity because he fears what Winston, a Party member, may do to him for telling him the truth?
18	*** Alternatively, he might not have been afraid of Winston, but of who else might have been listening. While this may seem like a slight variation, his actions could be taken as a hint that Winston should REALLY learn when to keep his mouth shut. If he'd truly believed Winston was simply Thought Police he most likely would have simply recited some Party talking points and insisted they were all true.
19	** Was Syme really purged, as Winston believes? Or was he just moved elsewhere and given a new identity for some other purpose?
20	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: [[https://youtu.be/F43DqnMoWi0 Totalitarian, yes, but stirring]].
21	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcTP7YWPayU Sexcrime!]] ([[Music/{{Eurythmics}} doo, doo doo]], boo boo~)
22	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buGo4dm5xGI Julia]]'s theme.
23	* CommonKnowledge:
24	** While often claimed to be a warning about fascism, communism, and/or socialism, the story is intended to speak out against totalitarianism in general rather than any particular political ideology. Orwell was personally a socialist, but detested authoritarian regimes that had been put in place in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The original political leaning of the Party is deliberately vague, and their sole concern is retaining power — no more, no less, as stated In-Universe by O'Brien near the end.
25	** The book does actually not have the ultimate DownerEnding as most people would think. There's an often overlooked appendix talking about the history of Newspeak referring to it in the past tense written in Standard English, implying that the Party ''did'', in fact, eventually fall. While the final message is left open to interpretation, many people are completely unaware of the appendix's existence, which can be considered relevant to the story. There's at least ''somewhat'' of a RayOfHopeEnding.
26	** The word "wrongthink" is never used in the book. It was likely inspired by "doublethink" or "crimethink" which it does use. In fact, "wrong" is probably among the extraneous extra words "Newspeak" is intended to remove.
27	** Lots of people think this book depicts a society where you're under surveillance all the time. You aren't, not ''all'' of the time. You just don't know when you're being watched and when you aren't. However, one could argue this creates the illusion that you are being watched all the time out of paranoia. Effectively, it is all in your head.
28	** There's also the misconception that ''everyone'' is watched and under the government's heel. Only government officials are watched; the 80% of the population that is the Proles are essentially "free" (hence the slogan "Proles and animals are free.") Though the misconception about Proles being spied on is not completely unfounded as it is stated that the Party finds the brightest and most troublesome Proles and eliminates them.
29	** The "We've always been at war with Eastasia" scene during hate week is often held up as a major WhamLine. However, the concept of the alliances shifting suddenly and being instantly Retconned is brought up early in the book and intermittently until that point. The Hate Week scene is just when the reader can see so for themselves. In fact, the real wham line involving this phrase is when Winston begins to think it himself, and again in the final chapter when the narration casually remarks that Oceania has always been at war with ''Eurasia,'' signalling his complete transformation.
30	%%Do not add any entries under Complete Monster without coming to the cleanup thread.
31	* DiscreditedMeme: Comparisons of real world current events to this book in general, especially without referring to a specific concept. "Literally 1984" is more often used ironically than not, and captioning a gif of Big Brother from the Apple commercial with common sense advice has itself become a meme.
32	* FairForItsDay: The book is one of the most referenced pieces of literature in the world, and one of the [[TropeCodifier Trope Codifiers]] of the dystopia genre. So perhaps it's not surprising that compared to a lot of its more modern contemporaries, ''1984'' not only doesn't do a lot that's different, but arguably has less to say about society beyond the concept of Newspeak and a basic, milquetoast "authoritarianism bad" message.
33	* FandomEnragingMisconception:
34	** Mistaking the book as a TakeThat to either ThoseWackyNazis or DirtyCommunists will attract criticism. One of the villains of the story even [[EvilerThanThou specifically demeans those two ideologies]], claiming that the fact that they cared about things other than remaining in power is the very reason both fascist and communist regimes eventually fell.
35	** Making poor real life comparisons to the setting or themes in the book is also a good way to annoy the book's readers, especially if there's no elaboration on why nor evidence of any exploration of ''1984'' beyond knowing that there's a {{Dystopia}} in it. Oceania is a dystopia written with nuance, built on surveillance, psychological manipulation, and an iron grip from the government, so citing it as just a generic "bad place" to inappropriately use as a comparison for any single possible bad thing is a disservice to the book's themes.
36	* FanWank: Much has been made of the Newspeak appendix being written in the past tense. Many think it points to the eventual fall of The Party (Creator/ThomasPynchon even supports this interpretation in an introduction included with some editions), but Orwell never confirmed nor denied it.
37	* FriendlyFandoms:
38	** There's a lot of overlap between readers of this and readers of ''Literature/{{Fahrenheit 451}}'', due to both books being about [[{{Zeerust}} then-future]] {{dystopia}}s and elimination of free thought. Not to mention with both books often being required reading in schools, many are likely to read both.
39	** There's also strong favourable comparisons to SpiritualAntithesis ''Literature/BraveNewWorld'', for depicting a [[CrapsaccharineWorld vastly different type]] of {{dystopia}} that nonetheless [[http://ritholtz.com/2011/11/orwell-vs-huxley-1984-vs-brave-new-world/ holds the same degree of real-world applicability as this book]]. Interestingly enough, Aldous Huxley, one of Orwell's former teachers [[https://www.openculture.com/2022/06/aldous-huxley-george-orwell-my-hellish-vision-of-the-future-is-better-than-yours-1949.html actually liked the book while also thinking Orwell's dystopia of cruelty was less plausible than his dystopia of comfort]].
40	* GeniusBonus:
41	** In the final scene when Winston is playing chess in the Chestnut Tree Café, he picks up a White knight from the board and contemplates a move. The arrangement of the pieces on the chess board suggests that he is considering the tactic of going around and hitting the opposing Black army from behind. Only minutes later, the telescreen announcer reports that the Oceanian forces had just defeated the Eurasian enemy in Africa by using the same tactic.
42	** Winston's ulcerated ankle is a metaphor for repressed sexual energy.
43	* HarsherInHindsight:
44	** [[http://tinyurl.com/apydbda By 2007, Britain was home to more than 4.2 million CCTV cameras]] monitored by government or civil authorities. 32 of them are within 200 yards of Orwell's London flat, and at least four have a direct line-of-sight to his property, including direct views through the house's rear windows. These numbers have certainly increased since then.
45	** China has created an even more thorough system of government surveillance, the Social Credit System, that allows the government to spy on its citizens and manipulate them by punishing and rewarding unfavorable behavior.
46	** The totalitarian society the book describes has been more or less realized by UsefulNotes/NorthKorea, which managed to create a state similar to the condition of Oceania a few ''years'' after the book was published[[note]] Strict punishments for minor crimes, with importing a film from another country is a ''death penalty'' crime according to defectors; teaching the people that the enemies are even more totalitarian states; and with the founder, Kim Il-Sung, being worshiped as the messiah, with statues being set up all over the country.[[/note]] Creator/ChristopherHitchens used to joke that Kim Il-Sung got a hold of a Korean translation of the novel and said to himself "Well, I don't know if we can make it work, but we can always give it the old college try!"
47	** One of the 3 super states in the book is the superstate of Eurasia, which practices the ideology of "Neo-Bolshevism" which, as per the themes of the book, is a totalitarian ideology disguising itself as a populist one. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bolshevism As of now, there is an ACTUAL movement in Russia called National Bolshevism]] which not only sounds similar, but seeks to create a Eurasian super state led by Russia while maintaining a pseudo-communist government. They've been disowned by [[EveryoneHasStandards Marxists and ultranationalists]] alike.
48	** Plenty of people have commented on how the constant monitoring and citizens spying on each other makes Oceania look a lot like North Korea, but Winston's backstory also bears some disturbing similarities to the story of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Dong-hyuk Shin Dong-hyuk]], the only known person to ever escape from a North Korean labour camp (having been born there because of the crimes of his parents or grandparents, he isn't sure which) and escape. Shin claims to have turned in his mother and brother for execution when they tried to escape. He did this because he saw them as competitors for food, and was hoping the guards would let him eat a full meal for the first time in his life (to this day he says he doesn't know what "love" means, and his entire concept of "freedom" is based around being able to eat as much as he wants.)
49	** With a dose of RealitySubtext thrown in, Richard Burton was dying as the film was being made and his health was so bad that he had to wear support braces during rehearsals. It makes O'Brien's speech to Winston about the frailty of the flesh and the strength of the Party much sadder in the case of Burton and more terrifying in the case of O'Brien.
50	** The revelations in the 21st Century that Orwell himself [[http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/george-orwell-communist-list.html composed a list of suspected subversives]] for an anti-communist organization around the same time he finished ''1984'' has left many people noting that Orwell himself came to love Big Brother and approved some measure of surveillance on targeted citizens, [[PoliticallyIncorrectHero such as "anti-white" Paul Robeson]], Creator/CharlieChaplin and others who are potentially "Jewish". Later revelations have likewise exposed that for all of Orwell's criticism of language creating propaganda and hiding the truth in ''1984'', he himself has a huge history of [[http://web.archive.org/web/20120819092954/http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/19/orwell-s-big-fat-lies-his-diaries-reveal-problems-with-the-truth.html exaggerating and outright lying]] about some of the events he covered. As they say, WriteWhatYouKnow......
51	** Amazon once slipped some users' Kindle copies of the novel down the memory hole (they deleted them and refunded the customers the money) after a copyright dispute. This similarity to the events in the novel was not lost on a lot of commentators.
52	%%zce; explain how this trope applies ** Also, O'Brien's speech to Winston and Julia in his apartment.
53	** On a corporate level, [[https://www.businessinsider.com/jpmorgan-chase-employees-describe-fear-mass-workplace-data-surveillance-wadu-2022-5 certain companies have adopted AI-powered apps]] to monitor their employees even in the privacy of their own homes.
54	* HeartwarmingInHindsight: When Orwell published the book, half of Europe was under the heel of a totalitarian empire and he feared the rest of the world would become totalitarian by the end of the 20th century. By the 1990s, this empire crumbled relatively peacefully, and much of Europe became democratic. Granted, post-communist Europe [[WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell hasn't lived up to all of its promises]], and places like Belarus and Russia have become authoritarian, but even Putin's Russia hasn't reached the level of totalitarianism Soviet Russia did.
55	* HilariousInHindsight:
56	** It's briefly discussed that the Minitrue has a section dedicated to producing pornography, which Julia works for. The porn is [[IKEAErotica barely considered sexual or erotic]], and is more SoBadItsGood than anything else. [[RuleThirtyFour Then the]] [[TheInternetIsForPorn internet happened]], giving people access to more bad porn than they could shake a stick at.
57	** So what does the future feel like, according to O'Brien? [[Radio/TheFrantics A boot to the head]].
58	** In the 1984 film adaptation, Creator/JohnHurt plays Winston, a man oppressed by a totalitarian government. 22 years later he plays Adam Sutler, the head of a totalitarian government in the film adaptation of ''Film/VForVendetta''.
59	*** And then, he played the role of '''''Big Brother''''' ''himself'' in a 2009 stage adaptation of this novel.
60	*** Come 2013 in ''Series/DoctorWho'', he regenerates into Creator/ChristopherEccleston. In the ''same year'', Eccleston provided the voice of Winston Smith in a BBC radio adaptation of the book.
61	*** Later in ''Film/{{Snowpiercer}}'', Hurt plays an elderly man in the lowest social class who later incites a revolution. Then, his character was revealed to be [[spoiler:[[TheMole cooperating with the antagonist]] the whole time, to ensure the planned StagedPopulistUprising among the lowest social class.]]
62	** The rat torture in the climax is reminiscent of a noticeably less scary scene from the extended cut of ''Film/TheWickerMan2006'', involving poorly CGI'd bees and Creator/NicolasCage {{ham\|AndCheese}}ming it up.
63	** Someone thought "Series/BigBrother" would be a good concept for a RealityTV show, and considering it's a LongRunner, millions of people agree.
64	** In the 1984 film, Parsons marvels at the fake meat in the stew. Modern products like Beyond Meat that mimic the taste of actual meat have become popular, and some people (such as vegetarians) would very much prefer it over actual meat.
65	** At one point it's mentioned that The Party has computers that automatically write novels for the Proles to read. Now we today have deep learning algorithms that can do exactly that if fed a sufficient quantity of reference material, but let's just say that it would [[MoodWhiplash completely ruin the tone of the book]] if Winston were to actually [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-3Y0CdvwEw read us one]].
66	** When O'Brien has Winston and Julia busted for thoughtcrime, he declares [[PreMortemOneLiner "You are the dead!"]] Which sounds a lot like [[Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar a later memetic character]]'s [[YouAreAlreadyDead catchphrase]].
67	* HoYay:
68	** Winston is ''pretty'' obsessed with O'Brien.
69	*** To be fair, Winston was fairly certain O'Brien could get him out of HellOnEarth.
70	** The feeling can be seen as mutual, particularly after it's implied that O'Brien has been working on Smith as his "pet project" for seven years.
71	*** In the 1984 adaptation, Winston looked genuinely ''heartbroken'' after the reveal of O'Brien's role as TheMole. He later hallucinates about O'Brien, saying ''I love you'' to O'Brien, before he turns into Julia.
72	* ItWasHisSled: O'Brien is a government agent who tricks Winston and Julia into trusting him. Since he's the one who delivers the Party's messages to the readers, his betrayal is freely discussed as part of the greater debate on the themes of the story. Many modern introductions that display the characters freely spoil that he's the BigBad.
73	* MemeticMutation:
74	** This is the work that informs modern life, with "Big Brother" and "BigBrotherIsWatching You," "DoubleThink," "{{Unperson}}," "ThoughtCrime," "thought police," "2+2=5," and "Room101". While we're at it, there's the [[strike:the war with Eastasia]] Eastasia is our ally. We were always at war with Eurasia. Really, the government in the novel communicates to the public almost entirely through memes.
75	** Artifacts of the pre-Party times survive as memes too: "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's..."
76	** "''1984'' was not an instruction manual!"[[labelnote:Explanation]]A common reaction to whenever a group is acting overly censoring.[[/labelnote]]
77	** [=GroupThink=][[labelnote:Explanation]]The Newspeak vocabulary gave rise to the term [=GroupThink=] to denote the process whereby a group of people will settle into a course of action that some or even most of them wouldn't have considered wise individually due to peer pressure. Whilst the word itself never appeared in the book or the Newspeak appendix its inspiration is clear.[[/labelnote]]
78	** "Wow, this is just like 1984!"/"Literally 1984"[[labelnote:Explanation]]Mockery of MisaimedFandom comparing the novel to ''any attempt at censorship'' or calling out political incorrectness, regardless of context, reached new heights when Donald Trump Jr. referenced the novel in the context of his father's Twitter suspension. This led to a surge of ironic memes comparing any mild inconvenience to the book's dystopian setting.[[/labelnote]]
79	** "This is just like ''Animal Crossing'' by George Orwell!"[[labelnote:Explanation]]A further corruption of the "Literally 1984" meme, where the person making the comparison is so ignorant that they not only mix up ''1984'' with George Orwell's other famous book, ''Literature/AnimalFarm'', but then proceed to mix THAT up with Nintendo's ''VideoGame/AnimalCrossing'' games.[[/labelnote]]
80	** "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a(n) [insert something here] - forever"
81	** [[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/big-brother-orders This scene]] featuring a crowd of people while juxtaposed to a large static image of Big Brother have been used as an exploitable ImageMacro in which the context will involve orders forbidding acts that are considered stupid, pointless and/or downright dangerous.
82	** A comedic version: Creator/MargaretAtwood, creator of another [[Literature/TheHandmaidsTale famous dystopian fiction]], is of course familiar with ''1984'' and said in an article about Orwell that, in her family, ''Do it to Julia!'' had become the standard phrase people used whenever they were told it was their turn to do the dishes, take out the trash, etc.
83	* MisaimedFandom:
84	** If you think Orwell was solely attacking communism, socialism, liberalism, or almost any other political ideology, you've missed the point. The Party's only motivation is staying in power, and everything they do is in service to that; even if Ingsoc is Newspeak for "English Socialism", that's just part of the Party's effort to control people through language, for Orwell himself considered Ingsoc to be everything that socialism wasn't.
85	** Relatedly, if you compared the setting or characters of this book to your own least favorite place or political figure, chances are that you've went exactly opposite to the book's message. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' is about a totalitarian government holding control by warping the English language to their own ends and writing propaganda loaded full of lies, relying on reduced intellectualism in the population to go unchallenged in their rule. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe64p-QzhNE As TED-Ed points out,]] trying to spin this book to represent something it doesn't, or repeating what someone else says about it without critically thinking about if it's true, is falling to the exact thing that ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' warns against.
86	** Some people consider the character of Emmanuel Goldstein to be a symbol of rebellion against tyranny because of his status in the book as a boogeyman for the Party. However, it's likely Goldstein was based on UsefulNotes/LeonTrotsky, whom Orwell considered not much better than the Stalinist regime, whose ideology he famously advocated against.
87	** The book is unfortunately popular among some real life totalitarians, with Stasi chief Erich Mielke even naming his office Room 101. TheBadGuyWins, after all.
88	%%* Please add an in-work example before adding meta moments. SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome: A meta example: This book's very existence is a Moment of Awesome for George Orwell, who wrote what many consider to be the most meaningful dystopian work in the history of English literature; exposing the truths about authoritarian regimes; forever changing the way many think about politics, society, and language; and coining dozens of terms used by academics today... all while he was dying from tuberculosis.
89	* MusicToInvadePolandTo: ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F43DqnMoWi0 Oceania, 'Tis of Thee]]'' from the 1984 film.
90	* NightmareFuel: Being one of the [[TropeCodifier codifiers]] of the Totalitarian {{Dystopia}}, it should be no surprise that it [[NightmareFuel/NineteenEightyFour has its own page]].
91	* OlderThanTheyThink: Many of the themes from ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' appear earlier in Orwell's work. The idea of "the truth" being whatever the ruling elite says (including the specific example of '2+2 = 5')? Chapter Four of ''[[http://www.george-orwell.org/Looking_Back_On_The_Spanish_War/0.html Looking Back on the Spanish War]]''. [[LanguageEqualsThought Political jargon constricting thought?]] ''[[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm Politics and the English Language]]'', and before that, his ''As I Please'' [[http://wintermute10.tripod.com/AIP-14.htm column]] for March 17, 1944. [[SpaceFillingEmpire The world being divided between a small number of super-states?]] He [[http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/burnham.html cribbed it]] from James Burnham. History being an endless cycle of the "Middle" deceiving the "Low" in order to depose the "High?" Ditto. Doublethink, 'the power of holding simultaneously two beliefs which cancel out'? ''[[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/nose/english/e_nose In Front of Your Nose]]''. The aversion of EvilWillFail? Chapter Four of ''Looking Back on the Spanish War'', again. The working class (Proles) as the only hope against a totalitarian government, but also [[WorkingClassPeopleAreMorons very stupid and shallow]]? Chapter ''Five'' of ''Looking Back on the Spanish War''. The metaphor of a totalitarian government as a boot stamping on the face of humanity? From Creator/JackLondon's ''Literature/TheIronHeel''.
92	** Believe it or not ''1984'' was not the first Dystopian novel of its kind. That honour goes to the book Literature/ParisInTheTwentiethCentury by none other than Creator/JulesVerne. He had written it towards the middle of his life, but the book was shelved until TheNineties, when it was rediscovered and published.
93	** The year 1984 itself was allegedly taken from [[http://arlindo-correia.com/101103.html a poem about a bad future written by Orwell's first wife]]. Before that, ''Literature/TheIronHeel'' had used 1984 as an important year in its setting, and Creator/GKChesterton's dystopian novel ''Literature/TheNapoleonOfNottingHill'' was set in the year 1984.
94	** The nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons" has existed since the 18th century, but given its ArcWords prominence some think that it originated from this novel.
95	* OneSceneWonder: Syme is a fascinating character who while clearly intelligent is devoted to Big Brother due to the interest he has in his job. The one chapter he appeared in, he brought up many interesting ideas that english classes love to analyze.
96	* ParanoiaFuel: Almost certainly, the worst part of ''1984'' is that it's plausible.
97	* PraisingShowsYouDontWatch: Ironically, especially given how often just about ''any'' development in how the government works will be met with comparisons to ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', according to a British survey it's also [[http://tinyurl.com/aon99n the book most people lie about having read]].
98	* RealismInducedHorror: The scary thing about the Oceanian Superstate is that its evil isn't anything out of the ordinary: regimes that censor language, torture dissidents, and spy on citizens have existed throughout history.
99	* SciFiGhetto:
100	** Many literature professors and some science-fiction writers as Creator/IsaacAsimov will get ''very angry'' if you call this "ScienceFiction", even though it's set in the future, with a level of surveillance impossible at the book's writing central to the plot and tone and the climax clearly relying on some sort of ultra-sophisticated psychological profiling.
101	** The otherworldly pyramid architecture of the Ministry buildings. While not necessarily containing an outright sci-fi element, their description evokes a futuristic, sci-fi feel.
102	* SlidingScaleOfSocialSatisfaction: Solidly placed in the "Controlled But Well-Fed" category. The average person will not starve but has no commodities and must toe the line, else nasty punishments await. All in all, there's no freedom or safety.
103	* TooBleakStoppedCaring: A lot of people report struggling to finish the book or abandoning it altogether due to how pessimistic the story is.
104	* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: While the book's overall message of things like mass surveillance, the manipulation of language, and torture were (uncomfortably) prescient, some of the other messages haven't aged well.
105	** The book is set in a late 20th-century world that is entirely under the rule of totalitarianism. While this fear was plausible in 1949 when much of the world's population was under the thumb of the totalitarian Soviet Union, it became less so since the 1990s when the Soviet Union and its bloc collapsed, and the number of democratic nations grew, [[WhyWereBummedCommunismFell albeit not everywhere]].
106	** Although Orwell couldn't have predicted them, his futuristic world of total surveillance lacks computers or cell phones.
107	** The geopolitical state of the world also counts, given that the book was written in post-war 1948 and was based on the dominant world powers at the time; Oceania is meant to represent a merger of the British Empire and the United States; Eurasia used to be the USSR after they annexed most of Europe and west Asia; Eastasia is Japan, China, the Koreas, and southeast Asia. However, this preceded the absolutely monumental changes in the world order that would come as a result of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar:
108	*** Most of Europe would end up aligning with the USA due to the encroaching influence of the USSR, namely France, Spain, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands and the Nordic states (Finland, Sweden, and Norway), while Germany was split into West and East Germany, aligned with the USA and the USSR respectively. Additionally, the dissolution of the USSR and the Balkanization of Yugoslavia also led to states that were part of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, such as the Baltics (Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia), the Czech Republic, Albania, and Bosnia-Herzegovina firmly aligning themselves with the USA. And on top of it all, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the subsequent war in 2022 caused Ukraine to align itself with the USA and the west after decades of being under the USSR/Russia's sphere of influence.
109	*** The Levant as a whole is part of Eurasia; the Indian subcontinent has India as a "disputed territory", modern-day Pakistan as part of Oceania, and Kashmir as part of Eastasia; and the Koreas are still united. These would become outdated by the formation of Israel and the outbreak of the Israeli-Arab conflict; the rise of India as a geopolitical great power, Pakistan as its historic rival, and the Kashmir conflict between them and China; and the division of Korea into North and South Korea. Suffice to say, it's hard to imagine the territorial conflicts encompassed by all as having absolutely no affect on the geopolitical arena of the world at large.
110	*** Japan and China both being part of Eastasia makes no sense when Japan would end up aligning itself with the USA and NATO, while China would end up being forever changed by the reign of Mao Zedong and its eventual growth into a global superpower, which itself would lead to neighboring countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines aligning themselves with the west.
111	*** The end of Apartheid in South Africa, as well as the dissolution of Rhodesia and the independence of Zimbabwe has led to both South Africa and Zimbabwe becoming more aligned with Russia and China than they were with the west, mainly due to the west's support of Apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia.
112	*** Northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula being part of the "disputed territories" now seems incredibly quaint and outdated after the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser turned Egypt into a regional power and led to the rise of Pan-Arabism across Northern Africa and the Middle East, as well as the Gulf states becoming major economic powers in their own right; namely Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
113	*** New Guinea as a whole being part of Oceania, when the New York Agreement in 1962 resulted in the handover of Western New Guinea from the Netherlands to Indonesia, while Papua and New Guinea merged into one administrative territory in 1949 and eventually gained independence in 1975.
114	*** Cuba being a part of Oceania, which failed to account for the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 that resulted in Cuba becoming aligned with the USSR and was preceded by the severing of ties between the USA and Cuba for over fifty years, as well as the onset of both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.
115	*** Venezuela would shift in its alignment from 1999 onwards as a result of a Bolivarian Revolution and the election of the socialist Hugo Chavez, leading to a deterioration of relations between it and the USA and Venezuela gradually realigning itself with Russia and China after the UsefulNotes/TurnOfTheMillennium. In addition, the reign of Nicolas Maduro and the flare-up of the Guyana Esequiba crisis in 2023 has further isolated Venezuela from the USA and its sphere of influence, while worsening relations with its neighbor Guyana.
116	*** Probably most relevant to ''1984'' itself is the decline of the British Empire; while the UK was weakened in stature after World War II, ''1984'' was still written with the idea that Oceania was made as a result a merger between the British Empire and the United States, to the point where the dominant ideology, Ingsoc, is an abbreviation of "English Socialism". However, the independence of India, Pakistan, Israel, and Malaysia; the Suez Crisis in 1956; the decolonization of Africa; the Troubles in Northern Ireland; and the handover of Hong Kong all contributed to the end of the British Empire and of the United Kingdom as a world superpower, with the Brexit referendum in 2016 further weakening the UK's international standing as a power player in geopolitics. All of these events make it incredibly unlikely that the United Kingdom would ever return to being a dominant enough power to turn a third of the world into a one-party totalitarian state under its rule.
117	* ValuesDissonance:
118	** The Party's arbitrary changing of their enemies and allies in the possibly-fictional war makes sense both in-universe and out, as a display of their power, and refers to how the USSR went from being stridently anti-Nazi to neutral with friendly leanings during the M-R Pact to being fiercely anti-Nazi again (which to be really fair, is something they only did once, briefly, and that after many years of anti-Nazi coalitions formed with the West fell on deaf ears). However, even vaguely insinuating that in a wartime context based off of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, that all sides are the same and the war crimes of one state are merely propaganda would probably, and ironically, get Orwell compared to Nazi apologists and possibly even Holocaust deniers today.
119	** Indeed, Orwell in one of his letters, believed that Britain after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII would either end in fascist or socialist dictatorship, which considering how British resolve during the war where they defied Nazism before the USSR and USA got involved, is rightly seen as its GloryDays, is [[WorstNewsJudgmentEver a rather weird judgment]] on the events and needless to say.
120	** Despite its strong female lead, the novel has been accused of misogyny in how Winston notes that the Party's most fanatical followers are women, and how even Julia's appearance is so often emphasized as very important, the "a-political" cog in the wheel of the system does reflect some of Orwell's gender biases. In one particularly disturbing moment before Winston and Julia start hooking up, Winston worries that she'll never fall for him, and his bitterness over that curdles into fantasies about torturing, raping, and killing her! However, some have defended this as being an examination of how some people's attitudes towards relationships and the opposite sex have been warped by the [=IngSoc=] regime.
121	** The idea of NewSpeak, and how some languages or dialects are inherently superior to others, is ScienceMarchesOn at ''best'', and elitist/imperialistic at worst. Much of which was inspired by Orwell propagandizing BeigeProse in his essays and this attitude would be criticized, then and later, by writers like Julian Barnes, Will Self, Creator/SalmanRushdie among others, for its {{schoolmarm}}-like recommendation of linguistic purity and discipline, [[BecameTheirOwnAntithesis of the kind that Orwell]] was supposedly railing against.
122	* ValuesResonance: The rise and spread of mass media politics, consumerist advertising, PR-Based politics that emphasize image over content, and the new technologies that rose during UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror such as government-enforced surveillance makes Orwell's overly paranoid satire relevant and applicable even decades after the USSR and fascist states that Orwell was targeting had fallen. The fact that the novel is a best-seller in TheNewTens vindicates its strength.
123	* SugarWiki/VisualEffectsOfAwesome: The [[https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6507-how-roger-deakins-conjured-the-dystopian-darkness-of-1984 bleach-bypassed cinematography]] of the 1984 movie adaptation that gives it a dark and desaturated coluors close to black-and-white elevates ''both'' the SceneryGorn and SceneryPorn of the movie and truly brought Oceania to life. It was one of Roger Deakins' early work, and it showed how much grit he already has in the field. The strength of the cinematography can be especially seen in Creator/TheCriterionCollection restoration of the movie.
124	** This extends to the actual visual effects of the movie itself, as all of them were practical effects. This includes the explosion, which was an ''actual'' explosion, and scenes of Winston and O'Brien walking in the corridor where the door leads to the Golden Country, that was actually shot on location as well, with the corridor actually being built on location.
125	* TheWoobie: Winston and Julia, ''especially'' in the movie.

Context YMMV / NineteenEightyFour