Outer Party

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.

Living conditions

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, and also lack the luxurious lifestyle and privileges maintained by the Inner Party in the form of food, sweets, servants or motor vehicles. in addition, they are under constant and uninterrupted surveillance, unlike the Proles (who are considered irrelevant by the Inner Party and kept in check by simple pleasures) or the Inner Party (whose rich lifestyle and luxury maintains their loyalty to the State).

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 supplies). They smoke Victory Cigarettes, which have a tendency to lose tobacco if not carefully held, and food is of low quality. Also, they have to purchase various basic necessities from the Prole market in order to sustain themselves (such as razors or shoelaces) or through the black market that steals from the Inner Party.