In George Orwell's 1984 (1949), the society of the year 1984 which Orwell projects for us is based on the assumption that a "limited" nuclear war of the 1950s had left civilization severely crippled and that government controls were seized by well-organized opportunists employing the familiar methods of a police state to maintain power. London, the scene of the novel's action, is the capital of Oceania, one of three superpowers. The other superpowers are called Eastasia and Eurasia. The city of London contains a few enormous government buildings and a small number of fine apartment buildings, but the vast majority of the buildings are eighteenth- or nineteenth-century houses in dilapidated condition which provide shelter for the common people. There are also a good many neglected bombed-out areas. Certainly this is not a picture of somebody's dream city.
Oceania is completely dominated by the members of "the Party," a handpicked group of loyal supporters of the government. The mass of the population, the proletariat or "proles," are purposely kept poor and ignorant and are without any voice in public affairs. Actually, the real power is held by the "Inner Party," the elite of the Party membership.
The methods employed by the Party to maintain control and to manipulate the population are copied directly from the records of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Any opposition to the system in deed, word or thought is summarily stamped out. Naturally freedom of speech and of the press are suppressed. Spies are everywhere. There are hundreds of posters throughout the city showing the enormous head of a man with steely eyes and heavy black mustache. The caption of the posters reads: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. Monitoring screens for official spying are in public places, in hallways, and even in apartments. One's every action or word may be under surveillance. It represents something of a refinement over wiretapping. People live in constant fear of being detected in some fault or of being suspected of some fault, and there is always present the dread of a banging on the door in the middle of the night. Confessions are wrested even from innocent persons by refined methods of torture.
