1984

when is the outer party first mentionned? (page) Also, what is the outer party? whats the inner party?

chapter 1 inner part member O'brien first mentioned

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I don't have page numbers next to me, but if you go to the date April 4th, 1984, and move to the 4th paragraph after the entry. This is where he's first mentioned.

The other person was a man named O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party and holder of some post so important and remote that Winston had only a dim idea of its nature. A momentary hush passed over the group of people round the chairs as they saw the black overalls of an Inner Party member approaching. O’Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse, humorous, brutal face. In spite of his formidable appearance he had a certain charm of manner. He had a trick of resettling his spectacles on his nose which was curiously disarming — in some indefinable way, curiously civilized. It was a gesture which, if anyone had still thought in such terms, might have recalled an eighteenth-century nobleman offering his snuffbox. Winston had seen O’Brien perhaps a dozen times in almost as many years. He felt deeply drawn to him, and not solely because he was intrigued by the contrast between O’Brien’s urbane manner and his prize-fighter’s physique. Much more it was because of a secretly held belief — or perhaps not even a belief, merely a hope — that O’Brien’s political orthodoxy was not perfect. Something in his face suggested it irresistibly. And again, perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written in his face, but simply intelligence. But at any rate he had the appearance of being a person that you could talk to if somehow you could cheat the telescreen and get him alone. Winston had never made the smallest effort to verify this guess: indeed, there was no way of doing so. At this moment O’Brien glanced at his wrist-watch, saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and evidently decided to stay in the Records Department until the Two Minutes Hate was over. He took a chair in the same row as Winston, a couple of places away. A small, sandy-haired woman who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was between them. The girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind."

Source(s)

1894

The Outer Party is a fictional social stratum from the George Orwell novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Party which controls Oceania is split into two parts: the Inner Party and the Outer Party. The Outer Party makes up approximately 13% of the population of Oceania.

The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, as are most of the other characters, though he does interact with a few proles (generally objects of contempt or disgust for Party members). The Outer Party represents the middle class in Oceanic society, bureaucrats who do most of the actual work in the Party government and its four ministries. Its members can be identified by their blue jumpsuits.

From a certain viewpoint, the members of the Outer Party, and not the "proles", are seen as the worst off of the three classes. They lack the relative personal freedom and simple pleasures of the proles, as they are under constant supervision by the Inner Party, and do not have the comforts of the Inner Party such as pleasant food, wine, cigarettes, coffee, tea, personal servants, convenient transportation, and more comfortable and spacious homes, as well as the right to turn their telescreens off. Outer Party members drink Victory Gin, as very little wine reaches them, and they have saccharine tablets instead of sugar (though it is possible for Outer Party members to obtain these in small quantities via a black market that works by stealing from the Inner Party).

Source(s)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Party

In the world of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Oceania is split into three "classes": the Inner Party, the Outer Party and the Proles. The Inner Party regulates Ingsoc and the Thought Police, and keeps all Outer Party members under close supervision, while the proles live in relatively benign conditions.

The Inner Party represents the oligarchical political class in Oceania, and has its membership restricted to 6 million individuals (about 2% of the population). Inner Party members enjoy a quality of life that is much better than that of the Outer Party members and the proles. For example, the telescreens (two-way televisions used for propaganda and surveillance purposes) in their homes can be turned off. This revelation may have been a method of deception utilised against Winston and Julia. It is unusual that a member of the inner party turn their telescreen off for more than 30 minutes anyway. Inner Party members also have access to spacious living quarters, personal servants (who could be prisoners of war, as O'Brien has a servant who appears to Winston when he visits O'Briens apartment, of Eurasian features), convenient transportation, and relatively pleasant food and drink (in contrast to the poor-quality and improperly manufactured Victory Gin, Victory Coffee and Victory Cigarettes of the Outer Party). Inner party members also have access to wine, as well as real coffee, tea and cigarettes with good tobacco. Inner party neighbourhoods are kept clean and fancy, compared to the Outer Party neighbourhoods.

Inner Party members are always identified by their black jumpsuits. Members are selected at a young age according to a battery of tests, not family heritage; any loyalty to anything other than Ingsoc and Big Brother, including the family, is strongly discouraged. Race is also of no importance in selecting members (Goldstein's book states that the likes of "...jews, negroes and pure-blooded Indians..." are all represented in the Inner Party).

It is extremely important for the rest of the population to think that they live in good conditions compared to their relatives, and that everyone is equal. As a result, no Outer Party member or Prole may venture into the Inner Party neighbourhoods without a good pretext.

In the novel, O'Brien is the only character met who is a member of the Inner Party.

Goldstein's book explains the rationale behind the class divisions in Oceania.

Source(s)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Party