Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English novelist George Orwell. It was published on June 8, 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell’s ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Here is a psychoanalytic review of a passage in the beginning of the book.

The constant battle of trying to figure out if information is true or if it is false information to cover up something. This hangs over Winston’s head throughout the beginning of 1984. The narrator shows the audience a note that Winston wrote to the future in his diary. Part of it read “To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone–to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone” (27). This correlates to the theme of totalitarianism throughout the book because he only struggles with the truth due to the fact that Big Brother is always watching them. No one in this society can ever show what they are truly thinking and they are taught to be mindless robots. The kids have no chance because they do not know any better and are driven by fear, but Winston knows that they are rewriting history. He knows that life was better before Big Brother, but he is not allowed to show it because people ‘vaporize’ when they go up against the people with power.