Character Analysis

Winston Smith

Winston Smith is the protagonist of 1984. He is the character that the reader most identifies with, and the reader sees the world from his point of view. Winston is a kind of innocent in a world gone wrong, and it is through him that the reader is able to understand and feel the suffering that exists in the totalitarian society of Oceania.

Even Winston’s name is suggestive. Winston is taken from Winston Churchill, the exalted leader of wartime England, and Smith is the most common last name in the English language, thus allowing readers to see him as Orwell intended: an ordinary man who makes a valiant effort in extraordinary circumstances. A reader cannot resist identifying with Winston: He is ordinary, yet he finds the strength to try and make his circumstances better. He represents the feelings in every human being, and it is for this reason that a reader hopes that things will change. Orwell characterizes Winston as a complete, sympathetic human being, and in doing so gives the reader a stake in the outcome of the novel.

Because Winston is so real, so common, it is easy for readers to identify with him and to imagine themselves in his place. Perhaps Winston carries even more weight for today’s reader, who can imagine the possibility of a society like Winston’s, the value of technology over humanity.

Even though Winston’s life is replete with misery and pain, Orwell allows him a brief time of happiness and love. During this time, there is hope for Winston, and subsequently, hope for the future. But Orwell makes certain that there is no happy ending. Totalitarianism does not permit such an ending; Winston must be crushed. If Winston were to escape, Orwell’s agenda of showing the true nature of totalitarianism would have been lost.

Readers identify so closely with Winston because he has individuality and undying self-determination. Winston embodies the values of a civilized society: democracy, peace, freedom, love, and decency. When Winston is destroyed, these things are destroyed with him, and so goes the reader’s faith that these values are undying and a natural part of being human. Winston represents the struggle between good and bad forces, and there is no mistaking where the lines are drawn.

Ultimately, Winston loses his spirit and his humanity, the two characteristics that he fought so hard to keep. Orwell insists that Winston’s fate could happen to anyone, and it is for this reason that Orwell destroys Winston in the end, so that the reader may understand Orwell’s warning and see that the society of 1984 never come to pass.

Julia

Julia is Winston’s love-interest and his ally in the struggle against Big Brother. She represents the elements of humanity that Winston does not: pure sexuality, cunning, and survival. While Winston simply manages to survive, Julia is a true survivalist, using any means necessary to conduct her self-centered rebellion. Her demeanor is that of a zealous Party follower, but just under that thin surface is an individual with unchecked human desires and a willful spirit, which ultimately results in her capture.

While Winston enjoys sex and intimacy, Julia is an outwardly sexual being and sleeps with Party members regularly—at least before she meets Winston. She does not do this to destroy the Party but to quench her own desires, and that is the fundamental difference between Winston and Julia. His rebellion is as much for future generations as it is for himself; her rebellion is purely incidental to her own desires.

Julia is far more intuitive and realistic than Winston. She understands the Party better than he does and is more cunning in the ways that she defies Party doctrine. While Winston is emotional about the Party and its potential downfall, Julia feels his wishes are merely fantasy and is apathetic to the Party’s dogma. She busies herself with getting around the Party, unlike Winston, who wishes to attack the Party at its center.

Julia uses sex to attack the Party, but it is far less effective a weapon than love. When Julia and Winston fall in love, they commit the ultimate offense against the Party. Note that the couple was caught at their happiest moment, the moment where they let down their guard and felt like an ordinary couple. Both had been watched for years and could have been captured at any time. But not until their love was strong did the Party intervene. Separating the couple diminishes their effectiveness: As individuals they do not understand the party wholly, nor are they capable of resistance.

Superficially, Julia seems like an uncomplicated character. She functions as a sounding board for Winston, but she is far more complicated than that. Winston has real antipathy toward women resulting from the Party’s indoctrination and from its stringent sexual codes. Winston can remember a time when affection was shown for affection’s sake and is angry at women for what the Party has done to them. Julia does not follow these strict sexual codes and, in fact, breaks them at every opportunity. She shows Winston, who once imagined raping and killing her, that the Party cannot get to the most intimate places in a human being’s mind; she is his proof that the feelings that he has been having are valid. Julia gives Winston hope, and it is the continuation of this hope that gets them both destroyed.

O’Brien

O’Brien is a prominent leader in the Inner Party, although his official title is not clear. He seems to be close to Big Brother and may even be part of a collective that makes up Big Brother. O’Brien seems to be a co-conspirator and friend to Winston until the third part of the novel, when he is revealed as a zealous Party leader who had been closely watching Winston for years.

O’Brien represents the Party and all of its contradictions and cruelty. He functions largely to bring the reader into the inner chambers of the Party so that its mechanisms can be revealed. Without O’Brien, the Party would be as mysterious to the reader as it is to Winston and Julia.

While Winston is characterized as an individual, a small man in a large society, O’Brien is bigger than life and remains so throughout the novel. This effect is partly a result of his mysteriousness and partly because the novel hinges on O’Brien’s “turnabout” actions; if he were given more time on the page, his true nature would have been revealed too soon.

O’Brien is not only duplicitous in nature, but he also seems to be able to employ doublethink very well. Whether or not he truly believes contradictory notions simultaneously, he is determined to teach Winston to do so. There is no evidence to sustain the idea that O’Brien truly believes in the concepts that he forces upon Winston beyond his statement to Winston in the Ministry of Love that the Party had gotten him (O’Brien) long ago.

This statement illustrates a consciousness that would be dangerous for an Outer Party member to have, so it is possible that O’Brien shares the same consciousness as Winston, but because of his status in the Party, has no reason to want society to change. He is not the individual being tortured, though he would have Winston and the reader believe that the “rehabilitation” once happened to him as well.

O’Brien is often seen as a father figure and a friend to Winston. O’Brien is trying, through torture, to make Winston “perfect,” to “save” him. If Winston would simply embrace the Party’s doctrine, he would be “clean.” But it is not really Winston that O’Brien and the Party want to change; the Party wants to purify all thought, believing that one stray thought has the potential to corrupt the Party.

The character of O’Brien is not so different from many of the contemporary leaders of the 20th century. For example, Hitler and Stalin used this kind of torture to keep their power and did it in the name of “purity.” O’Brien represents these leaders and others, who use cruelty and torture as their primary method of control.

Big Brother/Emmanuel Goldstein

Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein are the conceptual leaders of the opposing forces in Oceania: Big Brother is the titular head of Oceania, and Goldstein is the leader of his opponents, the Brotherhood. They are similar in that Orwell does not make clear whether they actually exist.

Using doublethink, O’Brien tells Winston that Big Brother does and does not exist. Big Brother does exist as the embodiment of the Party, but he can never die. O’Brien will not tell Winston whether Goldstein and the Brotherhood exists, but it is likely that both are merely Party propaganda; the fact that O’Brien claims to have written Goldstein’s book is a good indication of this.

Big Brother is aptly named for his position in Oceania—a name of trust, protection, and affection—another example of doublethink. Big Brother, or, the Party, is as unlike a benevolent big brother as Hitler or Stalin. Orwell gave Emmanuel Goldstein a traditionally Jewish name that is suggestive of the power structure in World War II. Noteworthy is that Emmanuel literally means “God.”

It makes no difference in Winston’s life whether these two forces exist. Winston’s fate is sealed, as is the fate of the society in which he lives, regardless of their existence. Big Brother and Goldstein exist in effect, and that is the only thing that matters to Winston. Orwell intended for these figures to represent totalitarian power structures; in essence, they are both the same. O’Brien, in his incarnation as a Brotherhood leader, asks Winston and Julia if they are willing to commit atrocities against the Party, many of which are no better that the atrocities that the Party commits against its people. Political extremism, as Orwell shows, is not positive under any name.