1984: Symbolism and Irony Imagine a cold, dark world with horrible living conditions and never quite enough to eat. A world of “Decaying, dingy cities where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad lavatories.” Picture bombs dropping on playgrounds, blowing children to pieces. Imagine what it would be like if the government knew your every move, your every thought. This is the world of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-four.” “Nineteen Eighty-four” is a novel about a society completely different from present day. Because the government constantly monitors what one is thinking or doing, the peopl