A book about theoretical autocracies rising from the ruins of the world after the world was devastated by a post-WWII nuclear war. One of them, named Oceania, has a fellow named Winston Smith working within its department of Truth, which, Ironically, works only to spread lies and propaganda to make sure the Party (the government) is seen as absolute truth and always adhering to moral codes. Winston staunchly hates the party, ever wishing for its downfall, and the downfall of its icon - Big Brother. Big Brother represents the party to all of the people of the world, and represents power and hope for the people - while reinforcing the 'law', the law being thoughtcrime. He is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and certainly acts as a deterrent to 'dangerous' thoughts, aka thoughtcrime. Thoughtcrime is the act of rebelling against the party, in any way, shape or form; any sign of discontent is thoughtcrime, any sign of love towards anyone other than the glorified Big Brother is thoughtcrime, and virtually anything which could in the vaguest form be taken as displeasing for the party - is thoughtcrime, including coming to logical conclusions on the party's clearly illogical acts is seen as thoughtcrime as well, so one would be disposed of by the thoughtpolice, which is a secret government organization which removes 'dangerous' individuals.
The way the party monitors people for thoughtcrime is by their implementations of 'Telescreens' in the household of every person, other than the proletarians (the working class) for they are seen as sub-human. The telescreens have a microphone and a camera and are virtually everywhere so any actions against the party can always be monitored and privacy cannot take form. On top of this there are members of the thoughtpolice scattered throughout the country (the story happens to take place in England, and Winston is in London), and alongside that there are microphones and camera's everywhere.
And, as I mentioned, Winston hates the part, so he tries to have a secret intimate relationship with one of his co-workers (Julia), an act punishable by death, by exchanging whispers and notes, and eventually meeting in the middle of nowhere where they are supposedly not being watched to have intercourse. They do this on a number of occasions and Winston even rents a small room, secretly, within the proletariat areas, and he's even met with a higher-up (O'Brien) who conforms with his ideals of taking down the autocracy called the Party, so allows him to join a secret organization called the Brotherhood, which wants to take down the Party, and all is going well for Winston - until he realises that the room he rented and made love with Julia in actually had a telescreen behind a picture (they could hear everything), and the landlord was a member of the thoughtpolice, and O'Brien was actually tricking them - he just wanted to give hope and then dash it from the two of them.
So now Winston and Julia get taken to the Ministry of Love, which, going by the previous irony, deals with torture and war. Here, Winston is tortured for 7 years, and is broken down, but O'Brein promises to help him throughout the ordeal, but it turns out that O'Brein just wants Winston to use the technique named doublethink without asking questions, and forces him to believe that there is no real world, its all inside the minds of humans.
Doublethink is a key concept by the party, and is key in its reality control. The party constantly rewrites all record so they are up to date with what the party says now, and so they have managed to wipe out all of History, they even claim to have invented most of modern technology. Of course, this would lead to people's thoughts contradicting with the party's wishes, so the ones who remember the past, are killed, and those who do not, are taught doublethink. It involves in accepting a fact mindlessly, while being fully aware of its stupidity, and then forgetting that they accepted it, in fact, the fact was always true, and then they forget the entire process all the time. For example, Oceania was at war with Eastasia before the story, and then halfway through a hating upon a Eastasia, they suddenly change the victim of their hate to Eurasia, and nobody even speaks of ever being at war with Eastasia. This allows the Party to have absolute control over the lives of their people.
Now Winston is forced to believe that, after extensive torture and starvation, doublethink is the only way to think. And after all that he is left to live, just because the party wants to kill him while he is loving Big Bother. However, he still hates Big Brother, which gives us hope that Winston still has resistance, but towards the final few pages of the book, Winston hears of an Oceanic victory against Eurasia, and in a way that he thought up of - and he fell in love with Big Brother.
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The point of this book was to show what society could become, through manipulation of facts and the minds of people from a young age, and through brutal manipulation of their lives as well. It showed that in a society like this, facts were irrelevant, for one was not allowed to act upon them, in fact, one was not allowed to think about them, it was useless.
The Party stayed in power by enforcing its rules upon the people and solely because these people wanted power. For all we know, Eurasia and Eastasia had never existed, maybe Big Brother didn't exist either, it could all have been a ploy to waste resources on war and keep people in desperate conditions so they would be easily manipulable, and it might not have been - in fact, according to doublethink, it could have just as easily been both.
