Oceania's government is divided into four ministries: the Ministry of Truth, which concerns itself with news, entertainment, education and the fine arts; the Ministry of Peace, which deals with war; the Ministry of Love, which maintains law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty, which is responsible for economic affairs. (Orwell, p. 6) Winston is an Outer Party member who works in the Records Department in the Ministry of Truth. It was his job to destroy and rewrite the archives of the London Times so that they were consistent with Ingsoc policy. When someone is vaporized, or when Ingsoc changes it's political alliance with either Eastasia or Eurasia, it is Winston's job to change the records; to change the past.

The political party of Oceania is INGSOC, which is otherwise known as English Socialism. The go

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London, England: Penguin Books, 1949. (326 pages)

vernment monitors the lives of the citizens through technological means to insure loyalty through surveillance, propaganda and brainwashing. The Party, as the government is known, goes so far as to control the people's thoughts and ideas. They have even replaced English with Newspeak, the language of the party. By removing meaning and suggestion from the vocabulary, they hoped to obliterate anti-social thinking before it even had a chance to enter a person's mind. The act of individual thought is called Thought Crime. No one could be trusted in fear that they might report you to the Thought Police. This held true for families as well. You had to watch your facial expressions at all times, because "the smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself - anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide." (Orwell, p.65) Those who think for themselves are arrested by the Thought Police and sent to the Ministry of Love, where they are re-educated or killed. And sometimes both.

This novel serves as a warning against the dangers of a technologically advanced totalitarian government. It is set in London, the chief city of Airstrip One, a province of Oceania. It is possibly 1984, although, with the party's control of all facts, one could never be sure. (Orwell)

Paxman, Jeremy. Chronical of the 20th Century: the Ultimate Record of our Time. London, England: Dorling Kindersley, 1995.

New Understanding of the People and Society During the Historical Period

As this novel was written in 1949 about the year 1984, it is not an accurate portrayal of the period. George Orwell wrote about Oceania, which, as previously mentioned, consisted of the Americas, Australia, and the Atlantic Islands (including the British Isles.) (Orwell) These countries were, and still are, democratic nations, and not, as Orwell had predicted, socialist totalitarian states. Although the U.S.S.R. and China were similar to Oceania politically in the 1980's, they form part of Neo-Bolshevist Eurasia and Death-Worship Eastasia, respectively, not totalitarian Oceania. Orwell's

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Approximate Word count = 1531
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)