The book starts out by describing Oceania under a dictator. Winston Smith is the main character in the novel and he lives in Oceania formerly London. It becomes clear that he against the government. He tries to write in his journal about an event that had happened earlier in the day, but it is hard because there is a camera in his room watching him. Earlier that day he looked into the eyes of a top ranked official and saw that he too was against the government.
Winston is interrupted by his neighbor that wants him to fix something in her apartment, he does so and feels very relieved that it was not the police, who were at his door. When Winston goes to sleep he has a dream of his mother. He has not seen his mother since he was 10 years old, but he often dreams of her. Then he dreams of a beautiful girl in the countryside. In the dream she gets naked and starts to walk toward him. When he wakes up he interprets the dream as a sign that he has to overthrow the government.
He is awoken at 7:15 to go to work. He is in bad shape suffering from a disease and he wakes up every morning coughing, and this morning was no different. The telescreen( which is a monitor that everyone has in their homes) makes everyone work out and

The news of the country’s victory over their enemy comes over the Telescreen and everyone cheers and celebrates. Winston is shot by the thought police while looking at a picture of Big Brother, who he know feels deep love for.

After being fully beaten and brainwashed, Winston agrees to accept the Party and it’s reign. In turn he is moved to a better cell, cleaned, given more clothes and better food. One night he wakes up screaming Julia, and he starts to think what has happened to her. He accepts everything that the party tells him, for example that 2+2=5, and that Freedom is Slavery.

He is release from his cell, because now according to the Party his is completely rid of his insanity and his crazy thoughts of overtaking the government. After he is freed he knows that he will be killed soon because he was told so. They told him this so that he would be scared for his life and always looking over his shoulder. He spends a lot of his time now in a Café. He happens to see Julia there one day. She is now completely different, not beautiful and she has a long scar on her face that she tries to hide with her hair. They take briefly and then they go their own separate ways. He realizes that he is still deeply in love with her.

He is till tortured regulary in his cell. For Winston the worst thing that he had to go through is rats because he is deathly afraid of them. They strap him to a chair and put rats in a cage a couple of feet in front of him. They are meat eating rats and by the drop of a lever they would be released and put all over him. Just the thought of this and the closeness to the rats makes him pass out.

Winston goes to a prostitute, which is important because then sex was not looked upon greatly and usually women did not enjoy it. He then meets with Syme, who work for the Dictionary company and he talks about the new language with her, and how there will be less words since the government has taken out words they did not want. The party looks down upon sex because they think it is barbaric and dirty. All of reproduction is done artificially. Married people are allowed to have sex, but his wife never wanted to because since she was a child she was taught it was dirty and was always afraid some one was wat