Images of Life in 1984

Images of Life in 1984

Pictures and posters on every corner, reminding citizens of Oceania that Big Brother is always watching them. (p4)

- A cold, dark world. I.e.) "Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sun a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere." (p4)

- Helicopters skimming down between the roofs, a sign of the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. (p4)

- Rocket bombs exploding in London with dull, reverberating roars. (p28)

- Horrible living conditions. I.e.) "Never quite enough to eat, one never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes, furniture had always been bad and rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured nothing cheap and plentiful." (p63)

- "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." (p77)

- Most people lived in slums.

- Bombs dropped on playgrounds with "several dozen children blown to pieces." (p156)

- Amid the decaying buildings in London, during Hate Week, there is singing, banners, dancing, speeches, drums, trumpets, marching, posters, and films.

- "The world today is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place" (p196)

- Outer Party Members

- Each Party member has a telescreen within their home that monitors and scrutinizes each and every move they make. It cannot be turned off.

- Forced to wear an expression of quiet optimism when facing the telescreen.

- Had to wear blue overalls, the uniform of the Party.

- Given a small amount of coupons to tr...

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...t (p67).

- Winston described his daily life as slogging through dreary jobs, fighting for a place on the Tube, darning a worn-out sock, cadging a saccharine tablet, [and] saving a cigarette end (p77).

- Day and night the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics that people today [were better off] than the filthy people of fifty years ago (p77).

- The Party told its members to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears (p84).

- Party members could not do anything that suggested a liking for solitude (p85). They were expected to be at the Community Center or participating in some kind of communal recreation (p85) in their spare time. It was dangerous to have an ownlife which, in Newspeak, referred to individualism and eccentricity.

- Winston constantly escaped the horrible world he was living in through his Victory Cigarettes and his Victory Gin (p107).