1984 by George Orwell, Essay Example

Analysis of Characters and their Role in 1984 by George Orwell

Winston Smith: Winston Smith is the protagonist and narrator in the novel. Besides acting as the storyteller, George Orwell uses the character of Winston to portray the theme of rebellion against an oppressive government. Although Winston is a member of the Outer Party and employee of the government, he leads a poor life similar to that of the working class, the Proletariats. In addition, he is employed at the Ministry of Truth, where he is in charge of revising historical facts to agree with the Party’s agenda. Thus, Winston represents the instruments that totalitarian regimes employs to suppress opposition, and, at another level, the subjects who works to support totalitarian regimes while living in poverty. However, Winston is vaguely aware that the party is distorting true facts and in their place, promoting falsehoods. An example is the party’s position that Big Brother, the mysterious head of the party and ruler of Oceania, has been around since the 1930s, while Winston remembers that Big Brother came into being in the 1960s, after the civil revolution. Similarly, the Ministry of Truth is constantly erasing information about the Party’s original founders, and classifying them as “unpsersons,” people who never existed.

Consequently, Winston is worried of these distortions of history, and starts to dislike the Party and Big Brother. He knows that it is a suppression of people’s freedom to express themselves, when he reflects that “Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two makes four” (Orwell 84). However, that party was determined to convince people that two plus two makes five. He starts to rebel by writing in his diary “Down With Big Brother,” a thought-crime that he understands will put him in danger. His secret love affair with Julia shows how the government’s intrusion into people’s private lives denies them the pleasure of marriage, such as sex, and how this intrusion may lead to social vice. For instance, Winston is forced to stay with his wife because the government demands it, so that they can create new members for the party. As such, sex is seen as a mere exercise of procreation and not pleasure. It is the reason Winston rebels against the government’s definition of sex in order to seek pleasure in an illicit love affair.

George Orwell uses Winston and his rebellious attitude to show that oppressive regimes often uses the instruments of power to shape public opinion, and that oppression of the people will always lead to rebellion from the people.  Through Winston, the reader is exposed to the kind of cruelty and oppression that totalitarianism can bring to bear upon its subjects. Throughout the novel, Winston lives in constant fear of the ruling Party of Oceania. The Party, through its Ministry of Love, carries out systematic torture and brainwashing aimed at conditioning the people into total abeyance of the party’s ideologies. Winston portrays this aspect of totalitarian rule when he is arrested and taken into the Ministry of Love to be tortured by O’Brien, a powerful member of the Inner Party, in the dreaded room 101.  Finally, he is forced to betray Julia and start loving Big Brother instead. Therefore, Winston shows that totalitarianism survives through coercion, torture and manipulation.

O’Brien: He is a member of the Inner Party, who pretends to belong in the Brotherhood so as to trap Winston into openly showing his disloyalty in the Party. The Brotherhood is a mysterious movement that is supposedly working to overthrow the Party.  O’Brien represents the ruling class who lives in luxury at the expense of the people. In the novel, Winston explains that O’Brien lived in the kind of luxury that he (Winston) can only imagine of. At the same time, O’Brien acts as a spy of the Party by exposing Winston’s rebellion. In this regard, O’Brien plays the role of portraying the machinations employed by totalitarian governments to control the public, such as physical and psychological torture of opponents. He says that “We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them” (Orwell 265). Accordingly, he torture and brainwashes Winston into total submission, which portrays how oppressive regimes relies on physical and psychological torture to defeat any opposition.

Orwell wrote 1984 at a time when communism was taking root in Russia, and O’Brien could represent the Red Army that was used to crush opponents. This idea seems plausible in consideration that it is O’Brien who interrogates and torture Winston in room 101. Therefore, by working to strengthen the rule of the Party, O’Brien can also be regarded as a weapon of the government, and Big Brother’s puppet for controlling the people. This is because Big Brother does not appear anywhere, but remains in the background while using loyal party members like O’Brien to rule. In fact, this is the tendency in totalitarian regimes, where dictators avoid public appearances while using their agents to rule. Such was the case in Russia, where Stalin remained unknown to the majority of the peasants while his Red Army terrorized them into complete acceptance of communism.

Big Brother: Big Brother is the faceless, mysterious head of the Party and ruler of Oceania. Although he does not appear in the novel, and even his existence is not certain, he seems to be omnipresent- everywhere. Winston explains that everywhere he turns, he sees posters of Big Brother with the warning that “Big Brother is Watching You.” He represents the face of the Party and, by extension, the face of totalitarianism. The omnipresent nature of Big Brother, and the fact that people never get to see him physically, portrays the mystery that surrounds dictators, whereby it is impossible to determine who actually is in charge. They become legends who people fear, and sometimes revere like gods. The purpose of this omnipresent presentation of Big Brother (and dictators in any society), is to intimidate the public and suppress any anti-government sentiments that questions the policies of such governments. In the case of Oceania, Winston could not openly oppose the Party, because Big Brother is always watching, or so the people are made to believe.

This belief is heightened by the existence of telescreens in public places, which monitors people’s actions so as to avoid rebellion. However, the name of Big Brother is also used as a symbol of guardianship or protection, so as to instill a sense of reassurance in the public. The Party’s agenda is to make Big Brother a popular icon of admiration in the public mind; hence he is represented as the figurehead of Oceania, the big brother protecting the people against their enemies.

All these characters, Winston, O’Brien and Big Brother are tied together by roles in promoting the Party’s totalitarian rule. While Winston is used as a mere instrument to promote the party’s agenda, O’Brien and Big Brother have a common objective, and one that is common to all totalitarian regimes; achieving absolute power. Thus, all the characters work towards this same goal, although in different capacities- Winston as a member of the Outer Party and Oceania’s working class, O’Brien and Big Brother as rulers and members of the Inner Party.

Family vs. Party in the Novel: The family is exploited to promote the Party’s agenda. In the novel, the family is regarded as an instrument of creating new members for the Party. This is because the Party controls sex, so that it is done only for procreation purposes. The author says that “real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act” (Orwell 68). The anti-sex movement, in which Julia is a member, is used to discourage people from enjoying sex. Therefore, the family is reduced to an institution that serves the interests of the party, at the expense of individual freedom. This is because people have no freedom to control their sex life, evidenced by Winston’s wife who has to perform sex with him although she does not enjoy it.

Works Cited

Orwell, George. 1984. London: 1st World Library, 2005. Print.