: A totalitarian state. A member of the party is trying to resist power, retaining his consciousness from manipulation. But mental crime is impossible to hide, and the party subordinates a person to the system.

First part

1984 London, capital of Runway I, Oceania Province. The 39-year-old short puny Winston Smith, an employee of the Ministry of Truth with experience, rises to his apartment. In the lobby there is a poster with a huge, rude face with thick black eyebrows. “Big Brother is looking at you,” reads the signature. In Winston’s room, like in any other room, an apparatus (TV screen) is mounted on the wall, working around the clock for both reception and transmission. The thought police eavesdrops on every word and watches every movement. From the window you can see the facade of his ministry with party slogans: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is power. ”

Winston decides to keep a diary. This crime is punishable by death or hard labor camps, but he needs to throw out his thoughts. It is unlikely that they will achieve the future: the police of thought will get to it anyway, thought crime cannot be hidden forever. Winston doesn't know where to start. He recalls the morning two-minute hate in the ministry.

The main object of the two-minute hate has always been Goldstein - a traitor, the main defiler of party purity, an enemy of the people, a counterrevolutionary: he appeared on television. In the hall, Winston met a freckled girl with thick dark hair. At first glance, he disliked her: so young and pretty were "the most fanatical partisans, swallowers of slogans, voluntary spies and sniffers of heresy." O’Brien, a senior member of the party, also entered the room. Perplexed by the contrast of his good manners and physique of a heavyweight boxer. At heart, Winston suspected that O’Brien was “politically not entirely right.”

He recalls his old dream: someone told him: "We will meet where there is no darkness." It was the voice of O’Brien.

“Winston could not clearly recall a time when the country would not fight ... Officially, the ally and enemy never changed ... The party says that Oceania has never entered into an alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knows that Oceania was in alliance with Eurasia only four years ago. But where is this knowledge stored? Only in his mind, and he, one way or another, will soon be destroyed. And if everyone accepts the lies imposed by the party ... then this lie settles in history and becomes true. ”

Now even children are informing their parents: the offspring of Winston Parsons neighbors will definitely try to catch their mother and father in ideological incontinence.

In his office, Winston gets to work. He is modifying the data in the newspapers previously published in accordance with today's assignment. Wrong forecasts, political mistakes of Big Brother were destroyed. The names of unwanted persons were deleted from history.

In the dining room at lunch, Winston meets philologist Syme, a specialist in newspeak. He speaks of his work: "It is wonderful to destroy words ... In the end, we will make mental crime simply impossible - there will be no words left for him." Saimaa is undoubtedly being sprayed, Winston thinks. "You can’t say that it’s not true ... But there always came from him a little respectable darling."

Suddenly he notices that the girl with dark hair, whom he met yesterday at the two-minute hate, is watching him intently.

Winston recalls his wife Katherine. They broke up 11 years ago. At the very beginning of his life together, he realized that “he had never met a more stupid, vulgar, empty creature. Every thought in her head consisted of slogans. "

Smith believes that only proles - the lowest caste of Oceania, accounting for 85% of the population - can destroy the party. Prologs do not even have television screens in their apartments. "In all moral matters they are allowed to follow the customs of their ancestors."

“With the feeling that he is saying this to O’Brien,” Winston writes in his diary: “Freedom is an opportunity to say that two is two is four.”

Second part

At work, Winston meets this freckled girl again. She stumbles and falls. He helps her up, and the girl shoves a note in his hand containing the words: "I love you." In the dining room, they make an appointment.

They meet outside the city, among the trees, where they can not be eavesdropped. Julia - that is the name of the girl - admits that she had dozens of connections with party members. Winston is delighted: it is such corruption, animal instinct that can tear the party to shreds! Their love embrace becomes a battle, a political act.

Julia is 26 years old, she works in the department of literature on a machine for writing novels. Julia understood the meaning of party puritanism: “When you sleep with a person, you spend energy; and then you don’t give a damn about everything. For them it’s across the throat. ” They want energy to be used only for party work.

Winston hires a room above Mr. Jarrington's junk shop for meetings with Julia - there is no television screen. Once a rat appears from a hole. Julia is indifferent to her, Winston's rat is disgusted: "There is nothing worse in the world."

Sime disappears. “Syme has ceased to exist; he never existed. "

When Winston once mentioned a war with Eurasia, “Julia stunned him, casually saying that, in her opinion, there is no war. The missiles falling on London may be launched by the government itself, “in order to keep people in fear.”

Finally, a fateful conversation with O’Brien. He walks up to Smith in the hallway and gives his address.

Winston is dreaming of a mother. He recalls his hungry childhood. Winston does not remember how his father disappeared. Despite the fact that the food had to be divided between the mother, his painful little sister of two or three years, and Winston himself, he demanded more and more food and received it from his mother. One day he took her sister's chocolate bar from her sister and ran away. When he returned, neither mother nor sister was gone. After that, Winston was sent to a colony for the homeless - “educational center”.

Julia decides to meet Winston to the very end. Winston talks about torture if they reveal it: “Confession is not a betrayal. What you said or did not say is not important, only feeling is important. If they make me stop loving you, there will be real betrayal. ”

Winston and Julia come to O’Brien and admit that they are enemies of the party and thought criminals. O’Brien confirms that a conspiracy against the party, called the Brotherhood, exists. He promises that Winston will be given the Goldstein book.

On the sixth day of the Hate Week, they announce that Oceania is not at war with Eurasia. The war is on with Ostasia. Eurasia is an ally. "Oceania is at war with Ostasia: Oceania has always been at war with Ostasia." For five days, Winston has been working on erasing past data.

Winston begins to read the book by Emanuel Goldstein, “Theory and Practice of Oligarchic Collectivism,” in a room in Mr. Charrington's shop. Later, Julia and Winston listen by the window as a woman prol. “We are dead,” they say in turn. “You are dead” - an iron voice is heard behind them. Julia is hit and taken away. A television screen was hidden in the room. Mr. Charrington enters. “He looked like himself the same, but it was a different person ... It was the face of a wary, cold-blooded man of about thirty-five. Winston thought that for the first time in his life, he saw with complete certainty the thoughts of a police officer. ”

The third part

“Winston did not know where he was. He was probably brought to the Ministry of Love, but there was no way to verify this. ”In his cell, where the light is constantly on, Parsons appears. In a dream, he shouted: “Down with Big Brother!”, And the daughter informed him. Winston is left alone in the cell, O’Brien enters. “And you have them!” Winston shouts. O’Brien replies: “I’ve been with them for a long time ... Don't be fooled. You knew that ... you always knew. ”

The nightmare begins. Winston is beaten and tortured. He learns that he was watched for seven years. Finally, O’Brien appears. Winston is confined to some instrument of torture. O’Brien recalls the phrase Smith wrote in his diary: “Freedom is an opportunity to say that two is two is four”? He shows four fingers and asks Winston to show how many of them. Winston stubbornly repeats that there are four of them, although O’Brien intensifies the pain of the arrested person with the help of a lever. Finally, unable to bear the pain, Winston shouts “Five!” But O’Brien says, “You are lying. You still think that there are four of them ... Do you understand, Winston, that the one who has been here does not leave our hands uncured? ”

O’Brien says the party seeks power only for its own sake. He is one of those who wrote the book of the Brotherhood. The party will always be, it cannot be overthrown. “Winston, you are the last person. Your species has died out ... You are beyond history, you do not exist. ” O’Brien notes how Winston sank, but he objects: "I did not betray Julia." “That's right. You didn't betray Julia, ”agrees O’Brien.

Winston continues to be locked up. Winston shouts in half-forgottenness: "Julia, my beloved!" Waking up, he realizes his mistake: O’Brien doesn’t ask him that. Winston hates Big Brother. "To die by hating them is freedom." Winston is sent to the room one hundred and one. They bring a cage with disgusting rats to his face - he cannot stand this: “Give them to Julia! .. Not me! Julia! ” He shouts.

Winston sits in a cafe under the chestnut. He ponders what happened to him: “They can't get into you,” Julia said. But they were able to fit. O’Brien correctly said: “What is being done to you here is done forever.”

Winston met Julia after torture at the Ministry of Love. She changed: "The face acquired an earthy tint, a scar stretched across the forehead to the temple ... But that was not the point." Her waist, when Winston hugged Julia, seemed stone: like the corpse that Winston had to pull out from under the rubble. Both confessed to each other in betrayal. Julia noted the most important thing: when a person screams to give another one instead, he doesn’t just say that, he wants it. Yes, Winston wanted her, not him, given away.

Winning fanfares are heard in the cafe: Oceania defeated Eurasia. Winston also triumphs - over himself. He loves Big Brother.