1984: Characters (OCR A Level English Literature)

Characters

Orwell’s novel is written in the third person, but the story is told from the point of view of the main protagonist, Winston Smith. Other than Smith, the rest of the characters in 1984 are fairly two-dimensional. This could well have been a deliberate technique by Orwell, based on the fact that he was writing a piece of dystopian fiction in which individual identities and ideas are repressed and even erased in order to maintain the authoritarian regime. Orwell’s main intention was to dramatise ideas, rather than characters, but this does give the reader the decision of how to view the characters, based on what you gather from the information you are given. Characters can be also symbolic, representing certain ideas or ideals, so it is essential that you consider:

• how characters are established

• how characters are presented via:

  • actions and motives

  • what they say and think

  • how they interact with others

  • what others say and think about them

  • their physical appearance or description

• how far the characters conform to or subvert stereotypes

• the relationships between characters

• what they might represent

Below you will find detailed character profiles for the major characters in 1984, along with a summary of the significant other characters:

Major characters

• Winston Smith

• Julia

• O’Brien

Other characters

• Big Brother

• Mr and Mrs Parsons

• Syme

• Mr Charrington

• The Proles

Winston Smith

• Winston Smith is the protagonist of the novel, and the story is told from his perspective:

• The reader experiences the nightmarish world of Oceania through his eyes

• He is 39 years old, smallish, with fair hair, a red face and a varicose ulcer above his right ankle:

  • He tells Julia this, along with the fact that he has a wife and five false teeth, at their first secret meeting in the countryside

  • He cannot be exactly sure of his age, but he believes he was born in 1944 or 1945

• He is employed at the Ministry of Truth to rewrite the records of the past in order to fit the Party’s version of history:

  • He recognises that the Party’s intention is to control access to the past, and therefore control the minds of its citizens

• On the surface he is an Outer Party member who follows the rules:

  • However, inwardly he has a secret hatred of the Party

• His surname of “Smith” establishes him as an “everyman”:

  • His forename of “Winston” is commonly linked to Winston Churchill, representing resistance to evil

  • However, this could also be ironic, given Winston’s ultimate failure to resist being fully brainwashed into loving Big Brother

• He begins writing in a diary, which he purchased from a junk shop:

  • He is fully aware that, if caught, it would mean likely death, as the act of writing in the diary makes him guilty of thoughtcrime

• Winston has the intellectual ability to reason about his resistance and adopts the fatalistic attitude from the outset that, essentially, he is already dead:

  • He knows that he will be eventually caught by the Thought Police and punished

  • However, he still pursues his curiosity to understand how and why the Party exists and operates as it does

• He takes considerable risks in order to do this:

  • This begins with the diary, but progresses to secret relationships and the seeking out of others whom he believes share his scepticism and desire to rebel against the Party and the regime

  • He also begins to admire the Proles, believing that they represent the only real source of hope for the future

  • This can be explained by the idea that Winston already believes himself to be doomed, and therefore taking extra risks cannot do further damage

• Via Winston’s long reflections and self-analysis, Orwell explores the themes of control, manipulation, and the oppositions between external and internal realities and individualism and collective identity

• Meeting and engaging in a relationship with Julia give justification to Winston’s feelings:

  • His physical and mental health improve as his relationship progresses and nourishes him

• On the surface, Winston seems to be an admirable character, who strives to behave with decency and a sense of moral duty:

  • However, we also learn that he considers murdering his estranged wife, and he eventually betrays Julia

  • He could therefore be viewed as a selfish character, acting purely out of self-interest and without any real consideration of how his actions may affect others

  • He has quite a stereotypical view of the opposite sex, and the only real love he has ever experienced is the love his mother gave to him in childhood

  • Orwell reveals that Winston “dislikes” all women, but especially the “young and pretty ones”

  • Winston’s initial inner reaction, when Julia has to call off their pre-arranged meeting because she started her period early, was anger

  • He then acknowledges that this form of male “disappointment” must be a normal, recurring event when living with a woman

• He is also arguably quite naive, as he fails to notice any clues that O’Brien or Mr Charrington may not be who they seem

• Orwell further explores the relationship between illusion and reality via Winston’s dreams which, on several occasions, manifest his inner feelings:

  • He meets Julia in the actual Golden Country of his dream, and he foresees his exposure to rats in Room 101 and his eventual fatal outcome

• When Winston is captured, he is tortured extensively until he fully succumbs to the Party’s doctrines and betrays Julia:

  • He loses his humanity and becomes a devoted Party member

  • Despite knowing that he would be executed at some point in the near future, he declares his love for Big Brother

Julia

• Although we do not learn of her actual first name until Part II of the book, Julia is a 26-year-old Outer Party member who works in the Fiction department of the Ministry of Truth:

• We never learn her surname, but we are introduced to her in the first chapter as a dark-haired girl

• The reader learns of her appearance via Winston’s descriptions of her:

  • Even though Winston professes to dislike her initially, he has noticed her enough to be able to describe her physical appearance in some detail

  • He describes her as having a “freckled face and swift, athletic movements”

• Winston also recognises her as a member of the Junior Anti-Sex League via the scarlet sash tied around her waist, “just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips”:

  • She actually wears her sash like this, ironically, to make herself more sexually attractive

• Winston is suspicious of her, thinking she might be a member of the Thought Police:

  • The possibility of her being a spy remains throughout the novel

• She is outwardly a fully-committed and zealous member of the Party:

  • But she engages in her own form of small-scale rebellion by taking multiple lovers, living in the moment and taking steps to avoid being caught

• She is a practical person:

  • Winston notices her oily hands, which suggests that she is adept at fixing “novel-writing machines”

  • She is also the one to organise her and Winston’s meetings, and has a history of obtaining luxury goods from her lovers

• She is by no means openly rebellious, but appears to hate the Party as much as Winston:

  • However, unlike Winston, she has no desire to overthrow it, being generally content to make the best of her life, and is interested primarily in her own survival

  • She goes along with Winston to join the Brotherhood, but is not interested in reading Goldstein’s manifesto

  • She delights in breaking the rules, but does not believe that the Brotherhood or any other form of organised resistance will be successful

• Her more simplistic view of her life and situation is sometimes more insightful than all of Winston’s inner musings:

  • She is the one who suggests that the Party may be bombing its own people in order to keep its citizens in a constant state of fear and hatred towards the perceived enemy

• Julia is sometimes viewed as a stereotypical male fantasy figure:

  • In the apartment above Mr Charrington’s shop, Julia attempts to “please” Winston by painting her face with lips that were “deeply reddened”, making her seem more “feminine” in Winston’s eyes

  • She declares her desire to find a dress and silk stockings, so that she can be a “woman” with him in that room

• However, it is Julia who begins the affair with Winston, passing him a note that informs him that she loves him:

  • She also skillfully arranges their encounters, and takes charge of their sex life

• Ultimately, she has limited character development, as she is nameless in Part I, Winston’s lover in Part II and largely absent in Part III of the novel until the end:

  • She serves to shape Winston’s rebellion via his reactions to her

• She is captured along with Winston, but we do not know what happens to her:

  • We are only told of their final, bittersweet encounter in which Julia also seems to be a mere shell of her former self – spiritless and broken

  • She regards Winston with contempt and dislike, and admits that she betrayed him just like he betrayed her

O’Brien

• O’Brien is a prominent Inner Party member whom Winston has also taken note of in the Ministry of Truth:

  • He is introduced, along with Julia, in the first chapter

• He is described as a “large, burly” man with a “thick neck” and a “coarse, humorous, brutal face”:

  • He also appears charming and civilised

  • Winston harbours a hope that O’Brien’s inner political leanings secretly align more with his own

  • There was something in his face and intelligence that suggested this to Winston

• O’Brien manipulates Winston into believing that he is a member of the Brotherhood:

  • He invites Winston and Julia to his house, and “inducts” them into the Brotherhood

• However, in fact he betrays Winston, turning him in for thoughtcrime and overseeing his torture in the Ministry of Love:

  • Even though he is Winston’s torturer, Winston comes to paradoxically worship him as his saviour

• O’Brien symbolises brutal totalitarianism wrapped up in an enigmatic and charming persona:

  • His enigmatic existence raises questions about whether the Brotherhood actually exists, or if it is merely a Party invention designed to trap the disloyal and to concentrate collective hatred around a centralised enemy

Other characters

Big Brother

• Big Brother is theoretically one of the original founders of the Party, and is now the supreme ruler of Oceania

• He is omnipresent in the book via propaganda such as posters and the telescreens

• He is described as having the face of a man aged about 45, with a heavy black moustache and “ruggedly handsome features”

• He is a symbolic character, representing everything the Party worships:

  • He instils both fear and loyalty

• It is questionable whether he actually exists or ever existed as a real person:

  • When Winston asks O’Brien if Big Brother exists, his reply is that “Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party”

Mr and Mrs Parsons

• The Parsons are Winston’s neighbours:

  • Mr Parsons is also one of Winston’s co-workers in the Ministry of Truth

• Tom Parsons is a heavy, sweaty, simple man who unquestioningly accepts everything the Party tells him:

  • He appears to be fully indoctrinated into the Party’s beliefs and ideologies

• Winston meets him again while imprisoned in the Ministry of Love:

  • He learns that Parson’s daughter turned him in to the Thought Police, a fact that Parsons seems to be ironically proud of

• Mrs Parsons is a tired, aged woman and mother to two children who are members of the Spies and Youth League:

  • She is also betrayed by them, but we do not know of her fate

Syme

• Syme is a “friend” of Winston’s, working on the 11th edition of the Newspeak Dictionary

• Winston dislikes Syme, but tolerates having partially interesting conversations with him:

  • He notes that Syme is too intelligent and vocal for his own good

  • He predicts that Syme will be erased, and his prediction is proven correct when Syme disappears

Mr Charrington

• Mr Charrington is the owner of the antique/junk shop where Winston first buys his diary and returns to buy a coral paperweight

• He appears to be a kindly man with an interest in history and the past

• He is described as being about 60 years old, frail and bowed, with white hair and bushy black eyebrows:

  • He shows Winston the apartment above his shop, which Winston later rents in order to conduct his affair with Julia

  • The apartment is notable for the apparent lack of a telescreen

• However, Mr Charrington is actually a spy, and observes Winston and Julia from a secret telescreen hidden behind a painting:

  • He reports them to the Thought Police

  • When arrested, Winston notes that Mr Charrington looks entirely different, as though he has been operating under disguise for quite some time

The Proles

• Orwell presents us with limited impressions of the Proles:

  • They are represented as common, vulgar slum-dwellers and pub-goers

  • Even the Prole who sings beneath the room above Mr Charrington’s shop is a caricature of a washer woman constantly hanging out laundry

• The Party thinks of them as mentally inferior and therefore not capable of challenging anything:

  • Winston comes to respect their vitality and humanity, believing that hope lies with them

• One perspective of the Proles is that Orwell deliberately created them to be two-dimensional and stereotypical:

  • They can be viewed as a satirical exaggeration that symbolises the damage of class division