A great classic.

1. 1984
George Orwell
Book Summary by
© Akhtar Hussain
In case of any concern please write at akhtar.iitd20@gmail.com

2. “Great in terms of fiction and political philosophy. A great story, though provoking real and
fictive political philosophy & futuristic scenario all elements in a beautiful sync and that too
with much simplicity. One speciality of writing is that concepts, thoughts or open questions
are being put at various points in novel and then picked again and referenced at another points
(Just like how a thriller novel put hints) which gives and sense of interconnectedness and
completeness. They are like beads arranged beautifully in single thread.
The last parts starts giving you Goosebumps as you proceed. It seems you are seeing
everything with your eyes. It’s like watching a TV series. The torture part a bit resembles to
‘Arrow’ plot (season 5 I think). O’Brien seems to be a very strong character. His cynical though
deep conversation (or say monologue) to Winston makes you wonder or at times admire him.
Nothing but appreciation. A good and must read for every, every type of reader.”
---
Society in the novel is completely different, being continuously manipulated by party, which
has even started to shape Human instincts, mould human consciousness & control thoughts
to meet its objectives. Privacy, love, friendship, family are becoming things of past. Everyone
is comrade for one another. Emotions are futile. Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but
no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows. Subjects are being cut off from outer
world. Though criminals were even being vaporized from existence without trial, nothing.
Much of the affairs are controlled by 4 ministries. Continuous hate is being induced in subject
for enemy through every possible means of communication. Members of party are
encouraged to live a defined life. There is fixed ration for them for every activity. Physical
exercise was forced upon them like school children.
History is being manipulated continuously. Every record, literature everything was revised
according to need continuously. Statues, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of streets
anything that might throw light upon the past had been systematically altered. It was not even
forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Statistics were
just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version.
And when people were told white lies, they just accepted it. Why should one feel it to be
intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been
different? Also, history was altered so much that the original facts and dates no longer had
the smallest significance. The past not only changed but changed continuously. To make
people believe not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality,
was tacitly denied by their philosophy. If both the past and the external world exist only in the
mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?
Newspeak: Language to reduce vocabulary very small to constrict act of thinking. No words
to think thoughtcrime. Doublethink (Reality control): Consciously to induce unconsciousness,
& then, once again, to become unconscious of act of hypnosis you had just performed.
Parsons: One of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom stability of Party
depended. Syme: there was something that he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving
stupidity and that’s why still being loyal to party he could be considered a danger for party.

3. Sexual Act: The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming
loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all
pleasure from the sexual act. Only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for
the service of the Party. There was a direct intimate connection between chastity and political
orthodoxy, by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force for all hate
& sanity? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.
They had played a similar trick with the instinct of parenthood. The family could not actually
be abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their children, in almost the
old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their
parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations.
If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles. The proles were not loyal to a party or a
country or an idea, they were loyal to one another. Though Why was it that they could never
shout like that about anything that mattered? Until they become conscious they will never
rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
The Party claimed to have liberated the proles from bondage of capitalists. Though There did
not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested. A few
thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and
eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no
attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable
that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a
primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them
accept longer working-hours or shorter rations.
There was a vast amount of criminality in London, but since it all happened among the proles
themselves, it was of no importance. As per party “Proles and Animals are free”. They could
be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped
the enormity of what was demanded of them & were not sufficiently interested in public
events to notice what was happening.
The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere
feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the
material world. Proles on other hand hadn’t hardened, they had held on to the primitive
emotions which he himself had to re-learn by conscious effort.
Frustration in party: It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was
not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. The ideal
set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering and revolt might become
inevitable though that revolt raised with a guilt not a frustration like religion.
Jus primae noctis: The law by which every capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman
working in one of his factories.
“Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses!”
Reminds me of Modi Ji during demonetization :p

4. Goldstein’s Book of Socialism
“The book of Goldstein said what Winston himself would have said, if it had been possible for
him to set his scattered thoughts in order. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you
what you know already. Just they put your scattered thoughts in order.”
War is Peace
The war being fought in indecisive. Secondly, there is no longer, in a material sense, anything
to fight about. All had stablished economies. War can be said to be for labour power.
Moreover, the labour of the exploited peoples round the Equator is not really necessary to
the world’s economy. They add nothing to the wealth of the world used in war itself.
The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising
the general standard of living. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a
basis of poverty and ignorance. To return to the agricultural past wasn’t possible to
industrialization. Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting
the output of goods. It could make revolt inevitable. In principle the war effort is always so
planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the
population. War accomplishes necessary destruction it in a psychologically acceptable way.
The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is
not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. by
becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. A peace that was truly permanent would be
the same as a permanent war. War is peace.
Oceania: Ingsoc (English Socialism), Eurasia: Neo-Bolshevism, Eastasia: Death-Worship
Ignorance is strength
Concept of 3 categories of people: High, Medium, Low. Continuously high are overthrown by
Middle, who enlist Low on their side by pretending that they are fighting for liberty & justice.
But middle is new high & new order establishes in same way. Some scholars interpreted
history as a cyclical process and claimed to that inequality was unalterable law of human life.
In each variant of Socialism (1900 onwards) the conscious aim was to perpetuate UNfreedom
and INequality. This time, by conscious strategy, the High would be able to maintain their
position permanently. Through scientific revolution earthly paradise of equality could be seen
to achievable but the earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it
became realizable. Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to
hierarchy and regimentation. First came totalitarians. New aristocrats were less tempted by
luxury, hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more conscious of what they were doing and
more intent on crushing opposition. With ability of manipulated public opinion through digital
media and invention of television private life came to an end.
English Socialism: Abolition of private property. But It had long been realized that the only
secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when
they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property”. new owners were a
group instead of a mass of individuals.

5. There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power: Being conquered from
without, governing so inefficiently to make masses revolt, allowing a strong and discontented
Middle group to come into being, losing its own self-confidence and willingness to govern.
For party only genuine dangers are splitting-off of new group of able, underemployed, power-
hungry people, & growth of liberalism & scepticism in their own ranks. So, it’s necessary to
continuously mould consciousness both of directing group and of the larger executive group.
In principle, membership of these three groups is not hereditary. Admission to either branch
of the Party is by examination, taken at age of sixteen. No discrimination. Between two
branches of party interchange is only to ensure that weaklings are excluded from Inner Party
& ambitious members of Outer Party are made harmless by allowing them to rise. Proletarians
are not allowed to graduate into party. The most gifted among them are simply marked down
by Thought Police & eliminated. A Party member is required to have right opinions & instincts.
In the crucial years, the fact that the Party was not a hereditary body did a great deal to
neutralize opposition. But continuity of an oligarchy need not be physical. Hereditary
aristocracies have always been short-lived, whereas adoptive organizations such as the
Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years.
The alteration of the past is necessary to devoid one of a standard of comparison and to
safeguard infallibility of the Party. The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc.
Doublethink means power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously
and accepting both of them. For party intellectuals, greater understanding, greater delusion;
the more intelligent, the less sane. This peculiar linking-together of opposites knowledge with
ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism is one of the chief distinguishing marks of Oceanic society.
Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally
stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism.
---
Reality is not external. Reality exists in human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual
mind, which can make mistakes but only in party’s collective mind which is immortal.
We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them to make them love us. In case of
earlier punishments naturally all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the
Inquisitor who burned him. Russians communists persecuted heresy more cruelly but learning
from past they exposed their victims to public trial, they deliberately set themselves to
destroy their dignity. But that was of no use again because the confessions “martyrs” had
made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists
us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. we bring him over to our side, not in
appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him.
O’Brien had tortured him to the edge of lunacy, and in a little while, it was certain, he would
send him to his death. It made no difference. In some sense that went deeper than
friendship, they were intimates: somewhere or other, although the actual words might
never be spoken, there was a place where they could meet and talk.

6. There are three stages in your reintegration,” said O’Brien. “There is learning, there is
understanding, and there is acceptance.
But why ministry of love will spend so much on an individual? why we cling to power. What
is our motive? Power. We are different from all the oligarchies because we know what we
are doing. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their
methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. We know that no
one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing. Power is not a means; it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution. The object of torture
is torture. The object of power is power. individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is
the vigour of the organism. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. Slavery
is freedom. The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings.
Over the body but, above all, over the mind. We control matter because we control the mind.
O’Brien argues that nothing exists except through human consciousness. Earth is as old as
party. The bones, Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was
nothing. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in
fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression.
Solipsism: The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind. The key to understand
everything is to understand yourself.
How does one man assert his power over another? By making him suffer. Obedience is not
enough. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations
claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred.
In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. in the
future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at
birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an
annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. No loyalty or
love except for party and big brother. There will be no art, no literature, no science.
We can’t be defeated. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which
will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men
are infinitely malleable.
Acceptance: Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened
in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. What knowledge have we of anything,
save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds,
truly happens. To grasp the trust told by party stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and
as difficult to attain.
“I have not betrayed Julia,” he said.
How intelligent, he thought, how intelligent! Never did O’Brien fail to understand what was
said to him. In the sense in which he intended the word, he had not betrayed her. He had
not stopped loving her; his feelings towards her had remained the same. O’Brien had seen
what he meant without the need for explanation.

7. In the old days he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of conformity. Now he
had retreated a step further: in the mind he had surrendered, but he had hoped to keep the
inner heart inviolate. He knew that he was in the wrong, but he preferred to be in the wrong.
“Sometimes they threaten you with something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about.
And then you say, ‘Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So and-so. And perhaps
you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them
stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it.
You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself. And after that, you
don’t feel the same towards the other person any longer.”
-Julia
Notes (Quotes)
1. Why to write a diary? Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it
would not listen to one; or it would be different from it, and the predicament would
be meaningless.
2. At times, the rage that one feel is an abstract, undirected emotion which could be
switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
3. Who controls past, controls future and Who controls the present, controls the past.
4. Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
5. Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled
they cannot become conscious.
6. Biological uselessness of pain & fear, Treachery of human body which always freezes
into inertia at exactly moment when a special effort is needed. In moments of crisis
one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body.
7. In this game that we’re playing, we can’t win. Some kinds of failure are better than
other kinds, that’s all.
8. You will have to get used to living without results and without hope.
9. We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future.
10. The best books are those that tell you what you know already. Just they put your
scattered thoughts in order.
11. If you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.
12. What can you do, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives
your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
13. For everyone there is something unendurable something that cannot be
contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. And at time what you say,
you mean it.
And he was shouting frantically, over and over. “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia!
I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not
me!