Title: 
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Content: 8 on The Big Readsurvey by the BBC.[8] Parallels have been drawn between the novel's subject matter and real lifeinstances of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and violations of freedom of expressionamong other themes. [ 9][10][11]
Contents
1Background and title
2Plot
3Characters
3.1Main characters
3.2Secondary characters
3.3Unseen characters
4World in novel
4.1Ingsoc
4.2Ministries of Oceania
4.2.1Ministry of Peace
4.2.2Ministry of Plenty
4.2.3Ministry of Truth
4.2.4Ministry of Love
4.3Doublethink
4.4Political geography
4.5The Revolution
4.6The War
4.7Living standards
5Themes
5.1Nationalism
5.2Futurology
5.3Censorship
5.4Surveillance
6Newspeak appendix
7Sources for literary motifs
8Influences
9Critical reception
10Adaptations in other media
11Translations
12Cultural impact
13Brave New Worldcomparisons
14See also
15References
16External links
16.1Electronic editions
16.2Film versions
Background and title[edit]
A 1947 draft manuscript of the first page of Nineteen Eighty-Four, showing the editorial development
In 1944, Orwell began work which "encapsulate[d] the thesis at the heart of his... novel", which explored the consequences of dividing the world up into zones of influence, as conjured by the recent Tehran Conference. Three years later, he wrote most of the actual book on the Scottish island of Jurafrom 1947 to 1948 despite being seriously ill with tuberculosis. [ 12][13]On 4 December 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the publisher Secker and Warburg, and Nineteen Eighty-Fourwas published on 8 June 1949. [ 14][15]
The Last Man in Europewas an early title for the novel, but in a letter dated 22 October 1948 to his publisher Fredric Warburg, eight months before publication, Orwell wrote about hesitating between that title and Nineteen Eighty-Four.[16] Warburg suggested choosing the latter, which he took to be a more commercially viable choice for the main title. [ 17]
The introduction to the Houghton Mifflin Harcourtedition of Animal Farm and 1984(2003) claims that the title 1984was chosen simply as an inversion of the year 1948, the year in which it was being completed, and that the date was meant to give an immediacy and urgency to the menace of totalitarian rule.[18] This is disputed: There's a very popular theory—so popular that many people don't realize it is just a theory—that Orwell's title was simply a satirical inversion of 1948, but there is no evidence for this whatsoever. This idea, first suggested by Orwell's US publisher, seems far too cute for such a serious book. Scholars have raised other possibilities. [ His wife] Eileen wrote a poem for her old school's centenary called "End of the Century: