Chapter 1

George Orwell's 1984 starts off in April, 1984. The story itself takes place in Airstrip 1 - which used to be called England; Airstrip 1 is part of a larger state called Oceania that is constantly at war. Winston Smith is the protagonist of the story and he is an official in the party - a ruling class that has created a totalitarian government. Although he is an official, Winston lives in horrible housing conditions. His flat is about 30 years old, its held up by wooden supports on the outside, the roof is covered by corrugated metal, and the windows have cardboard covering the gaps. These types of houses are called victory mansions. Above all this in every house is a massive telescreen - a monitor that projects propaganda whenever the government wants to and is used by the thoughtpolice to watch everyone.
Winston is part of the ministry of truth and his job is to alter historic events to match what the party says. The government is made up of multiple ministries that give massive amounts of power to the government. All of these ministries were built as massive concrete pyramids that can be seen at any point in England - and they all have the slogans of the party on them: War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.
The government was divided up into the Ministry of Truth which handled all forms of media, education, and expression so it could be modified in favor of the government. The ministry of Peace which handled war. The ministry of Love which contained the thoughtpolice and other forms of force to handle law and order. The ministry of Plenty which handled economic shortages. In Oceania, the government created a new language called Newspeak - the ministries were called Minitrue, MiniPax, MiniLuv, and MiniPlenty in Newspeak.     
The Ministry of Love was the frightening one, it was protected by barbed wire, steel doors, machine guns, and armed guards; no one could get 1/2 a kilometer near it.
Winston's Flat was unique, the Telescreen was mounted on a different wall than the rest and included an alcove for bookshelf. Here he was able to escape the vision of the telescreen. He also kept an empty book here - which had been banned for 40 years as they were a form of self expression. In this book he writes about a film he had seen, a girl from the fiction department who he hates, and about O'Brien who also works for the Party but Winston thinks that O'Brien secretly hates it too. After all this Winston writes "down with Big Brother" multiple times. At this point Winston accepts he has done multiple thoughtcrimes and will most definitely be killed during the night. Even though he did a doublethink about his actions Winston believes that writing or not writing in the book is pointless and that he will eventually die  either way.