Chapter 1: Winston Smith, a thirty-nine-year-old male, is returning home to a raggedy apartment building called Victory’s Mansions. It is a cold day in April in the supposed year 1984. The elevator is never working, so Winston is forced to trudge up the stairs toward his apartment. He has to stop multiple times because he is thin, weak, and has a painful ulcer above his right ankle. On each landing between floors, he is greeted by a poster that portrays an enormous face gazing upon him with the caption, “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” 

Once Winston finally arrives at his loft he sheds his uniform of the Party, of which he is an official. He is located in what used to be London, but is now called Oceania and gazes out the window at a colorless world full of more BIG BROTHER posters and old piles of rubble which were once bombed. In the background, a telescreen prompter in Winston’s apartment was spouting off news and information, which Winston knew was tapped and could simultaneously record any sound he made while also transmitting propaganda. Winston liked to keep his back to the telescreen because it made him feel safer, especially from the Thought Police who spy on their citizens and are always on the lookout for treason. From his window he can also see where he works at the Ministry of Truth and its three slogans painted on the wall: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. He then begins to think about the different ministries and how they all work together to create Oceania’s government. There is the Ministry of Truth which pursues news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts, the Ministry of Peace which deals with war, the Ministry of Plenty which specializes in economic affairs, and the most terrifying of them all the Ministry of Love which maintains law and order.

Winston then finds a spot in his loft that is out of sight of the telescreen in which he pulls out a diary he had recently bought out of a drawer. He doesn’t know why he bought the diary, but he knows that writing in it could be seen as an act of treason. He begins to write in it starting with the date: April 4th, 1984, assuming that is the year. Then he starts describing the violent movies he watched previously. He realized that what had inspired him to write in this journal was an event that occurred during his work at the Ministry of Truth’s Records Department that day. He was preparing for the Two Minutes Hate when a member of the Inner Party named O’Brien came to watch as well. He also was curious about a dark-haired girl that worked in the Fictional Department and had been convinced that she was a secret Thought Police agent. As the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, appeared on the screen to rile uncontrollable outbursts of hate and anger, Winston found that even he could not resist shouting at the screen as well. During this riot, Winston had made eye contact with O’Brien and swore that in some way he knew what Winston was feeling and that he shared the same opinion. Winston realized he might have created the spectacle in his mind, but it didn’t stop him from becoming curious and more roused in his thoughts. He began to write DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER repeatedly in his journal. Winston was beginning to realize that it didn’t matter if he continued to write in the journal, he had already committed treason and the Thought Police would find him either way. He began to write in a hurried and frightened state about how he would be found and shot in the back of the neck, but he didn’t care he wanted BIG BROTHER taken down. As he sat back looking at what he had written, he heard a knock and feared the Thought Police had found him already.