In keeping with the grim, dystopian mood of 1984, George Orwell's 1949 novel of a man living in a future totalitarian state, descriptions of urban decay are peppered throughout the story.
On page six, Winston gazes out at the landscape surrounding the Ministry of Truth, observing "the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble."
On page twenty-six, Winston follows Mrs. Parsons. Together, they advance to Victory Mansions. These aging houses are described with cold, dilapidated imagery.
Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces.
Later, on page 105, Winston is approaching what was once Saint Pancras Station, and he offers the following description:
a cobbled street of little two-storey houses with battered doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were somehow curiously suggestive of ratholes.
In Airstrip One, even the interiors seem to decay, as exemplified on page seventy-five, where Winston is in the Canteen. Orwell describes the canteen as follows:
its walls grimey from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack . . .
There are several specific scenes that depict urban decay in the novel. At the beginning of the story, Winston reflects on his society and vaguely remembers when Airstrip One was named London. However, Winston has a difficult time remembering a time when there was not extensive decay and rotting buildings throughout the city. Orwell writes,
He [Winston] tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? (6).
Orwell proceeds to depict the unwelcoming society and urban decay by portraying Winston's dilapidated apartment. Winston Smith proceeds to walk through the Victory Mansions apartment complex, which is a decaying building that resembles the other living quarters throughout Airstrip One. Orwell depicts urban decay by writing,
Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces. The plaster flaked constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in every hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was snow, the heating system was usually running at half steam when it was not closed down altogether from motives of economy (27).
In part 1, chapter 8, Winston decides to take a stroll through the prole section of town. As Winston walks the streets, he witnesses urban decay and even sees a bomb strike a section of town. Orwell writes,
He [Winston] was walking up a cobbled street of little two-story houses with battered doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were somehow curiously suggestive of ratholes. There were puddles of filthy water here and there among the cobbles . . . Perhaps a quarter of the windows in the street were broken and boarded up (105).
Overall, Airstrip One represents the economically depressed society of Oceania and illustrates the extensive urban decay under Big Brother's leadership.
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