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Personification
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Before the reader has even opened the book, one element of the novel's setting is made obvious right away: the year in which it takes place. However, Orwell promptly casts doubt on the reliability of the year 1984, when Winston reflects that it is "never possible nowadays to pin down any date." In another instance, he revises a thought about the year with a parenthetical: "(if it was 1984)." As applies to all facts in Orwell's dystopian world, "everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain."
Nevertheless, the totalitarian regime does not control the seasons or passage of time. The novel opens just after winter has ended; as Winston notes on the first page of his diary, it is early April. This detail situates the reader in the year, and moreover offers a temporal overview as the novel progresses. Although it is impossible to know, either for Winston or the reader, how much time he spends in the Ministry of Love, it seems that the novel roughly spans a full year. When Winston and Julia are reunited at the end of the third book, the narrator mentions that it is a "vile, biting day in March."
Beyond the temporal setting, the novel takes place in London. However, neither London nor the world beyond it are structured in quite the same way as Orwell's mid-20th century world or our 21st-century world. London is located in a place called Airstrip One, which is the "third most populous of the provinces of Oceania." Other details give an impression of the altered geography of the world Winston lives in, such as Oceania's constant wars with the two other super-states, Eurasia and Eastasia.
Related Themes:
