With George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 jumping to the top of the bestseller list after President Donald Trump’s election that there will be a lot of first time readers and returning readers alike dissecting the novel for glimpses into the bleak and dreary world of Telescreens and Newspeak that is 1984.

As a new reader you may feel overwhelmed and confused by Orwell’s writing style or 1984’s plot developments, but there is nothing to worry about because hopefully these tips will help you to digest all the information the novel throws your way.

If you find Newspeak to be confusing:

Read the appendix at the back of the novel, this will really help you to improve your understanding of the fictional language of Oceania. Occasionally the main protagonist, Winston, and several other characters will throw in words from Newspeak into their dialogue in the novel, this could be quite confusing if you don’t have a full grasp of the words they are using. Hopefully the appendix will provide you with the proper insight into the twisted nature of Newspeak.

If you didn’t quite understand a chapter:

Reread through any chapters you recently read through. There’s a lot of subtle details in this book that you may not be able to catch on to during you first read through a chapter. There’s a lot of information thrown your way while reading the novel and it’ll help if you have every piece of the puzzle when you try to figure out what’s going on.

While it may be tempting to “reread” the chapters through Sparknotes or other summarization websites it won’t do you any good if that is all that you read the book with. Sparknotes is good if you need a quick reminder of the events of a chapter and you are short on time.

If you struggle with getting through a chapter:

Some people may have problems sitting down and reading a chapter of the book because of other things that they need to do. It may be for the best then if you listen to an audiobook of the novel to supplement your reading. You have to keep in mind though that the audiobook is not a replacement for actually reading the book, find a time to sit down and take a peek at the page’s contents, it will stay stuck in your brain for longer that way.
Hopefully this helped any first time readers or any returning readers get into the wonderfully dark and depressing world of 1984.