1984 by George Orwell | Book Summary

This longform episode walks patiently through Nineteen Eighty-Four, the novel George Orwell wrote from a farmhouse on a remote Scottish island in the last years of his life. We begin with the book's origins and the conditions under which it was made. We then enter the world of Oceania through the eyes of Winston Smith, the small functionary whose diary opens the book, and follow the three-part arc of the novel through his work, his private rebellion, his turn toward what he believes to be a resistance, and his passage through the building that gives its name to the longest section. A closing chapter considers the quiet reframing Orwell places at the very end and what the book still has to say about a life lived under watchful power.