The world presented in the book is almost a “mirror reflection” of a life in wartime Europe. “Two years after the war in Europe has ended the not always obtainable meat rations was the equivalent of two small chops a week, the grey bread was rationed, and so where the argus – eyed potatoes. The only one wine obtainable was a red Algerian that (…) tested a little as if it had been drained off a corpse.”
Some other aspects of illustrated Oceanian society were based on the Stalin-era and Soviet Union. The portrayals of Big Brother – the omnipotent person who control ones life bring appearance of Stalin to anyone minds and the “Two Minutes Hate” was based on Stalin habitual demonstration of its enemies and proclaimed great enemy Emanuel Goldstein resembles Leon Trotsky.
Leaving in a country necessarily allied with Soviet Union Orwell point out the vicious nature of the socialist state. At the time he could not have the knowledge of the real situation where “millions had been executed or died in labour camps” or of the police network that planted spies everywhere” so one could be an informer and report on anyone.
The world of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” consists of Proles, representing the majority of the population, the Outer Party and the elite Inner Party.
The action of the book is built around the main personality Winston Smith. George Orwell named his protagonist after Winston Churchill, England greater leader during the World War II. It is a necessary to understand main character personality due to course to understand the book. As we find out at the beginning of the book Winston “was thirty – nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle”.
One of the first things we know about Winston is that he has “smallish, frail figure” with “neagrene body and naturally sanguine face” and skin “roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter”.
In this way narrator create in readers’ imagination picture of tired of life man in not best health condition. Straight away readers got a feeling that something is terrible wrong. It is not a picture of average 40 years old man living in normal country.
To portray Winston Orwell allows us to read the diary main character was writing. This is how we found out that main character does not belong to the described by author world. He lives in the world of dreams and memories’ only setting “his features into the impression of quiet optimism” what was rather recommended when opposite the screen.
Facing every day alternation of the documents he straggle”to think his way backward into the dim period of his early childhood”. But Winston does not have memories like we do. He is truing to build the past from haunting him in his dreams scratches.
Leaving in the world where every move is controlled and monitored Winston found his “greatest pleasure in life” at his work. Despite the fact that even there he was constantly watched by the BB he felt as there is nothing else to guide him except of the rule “what the Party wanted him to say”. Rewriting history was giving him sense of control. It was the only control in his life, even his thoughts weren’t free. Beside, he did understand the importance of knowing the past and his job allowed him sometimes to discover the true.
Winston was placed in the world he was never going to accept. During the “Two Minutes Hate” where he “was shouting with the others” his hatred was not turned against Goldstein”, as it suppose to be and what was the aim of this demonstration, “but against Big Brother, the Party and the Thought Police”. Winston hates the Party passionately and tests the limits of its power by committing innumerable crimes throughout the novel, ranging from writing “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” in his diary, to having an illegal love affair with Julia. Since he wrote above phrase in his diary he was confident that he will be soon catch. This sense of fatalism was also one of the reasons for his rebellion. He felt helpless to evade his doom “in this game that we’re playing, we can’t win … We are the dead”. Because he convinced him self that he will be caught no matter what he took unnecessary risk such us trusting O’Brien and renting the room from Mr. Charrington.
Winston is not the only one who hates the Party and the system. One of other citizens who secrete their true filings is Julia.
As we know from the narrator, she is a woman around 25 years old “with tick dark hair” and “athletic movements”. Her job is producing cheap pornography for the Proles in the special department of the Minitrue. She covers her real thoughts so mysterious that for Winston she appears devoted about the Party. Main Protagonist suspects her of spying him for the Thought Police and for a moment he even considers killing her.
But inside Julia hates the Party not less than Winston. The time she spent attending demonstration, distributing Junior Anti-Sex Leagues books and doing other things for the sake of Party was just a camouflage.
However unlike the main character, Julia’s life was much less complicated. She was rather a simple woman and her emotion towards the Party has strictly different character. She does not trouble herself about any changes in Oceania’s history. She falls asleep over Winston reading of the treasured book by Goldstein. Her idea of live is how to break the rules ”and stay alive at the same time”. Her rebellion against the Party is primarily physical and mainly for the pleasures to be gained, to make the best of her life. This same rebellion is for Winston mostly emotional and intellectual, by no means it is about him, but about the feature and large scale social issue and to understand how and why the Party exercises such absolute power.
Those two main characters could be seen as Orwell limited view of the opposite sex. Being so different and rive by so different motives they start love affair. When for Winston it is an act against the Party and the system, for Julia sex is not that much about rebel as about pleasure. She believes that when you make love you use up energy and then left feeling happy and care free. In her opinion Big Brother doesn’t want that’ “marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply wasted energy, sex gone soon”. Apart form their shared sexual desire and hatred of the Party, most of their traits are dissimilar. However, after few months of risking their own lives their relationship transform into unbreakable love.
One of the most interesting and fascinating aspects of the book is the way in which Orwell blanket an explicit portrayal of a totalitarian world in an mysterious aura. At the same time when readers can almost move into normal citizen of Oceania apartment and have a close look into their private life, author gives them only dim idea how members of Inner Party live. As a result we not only know their identities, but also motives of its leaders remain unknown.
This all centralised in one of the main character named O’Brien. Orwell reviles only little details about this person. Unlike Winston, O’Brien does not live in a “world of shortage”. He is “a large, burly man” with a “thick neck” and a “coarse, humorous, brutal face”. He is a member of the Inner Party and holds some very important host. Without any sensible explanation, Winston feel “deeply drawn to him”, believing that O’Brien was someone he could talk to about the secret Brotherhood. For some time Winston even believed that this prominent person was a head of the secret organisation. “There was a link of understanding between them, more important than affection or partisanship”. For Winston it wasn’t any longer matter if O’Brien is friend or an enemy. The most important thing for Winston was to find out the true, if there is any secret Brotherhood, if the resistance is real and instinctively he knew O’Brien can help him with this.
The relation between O’Brien and Winston has all attributes of a typical relation between a father and a child. Like a father O’Brien seems to all-knowing, he teaches, punishes and educates. Even during the brain washing O’Brien could be seen as a trying to protect Winston from something yet worse.
O’Brien character is full of contradictions. At some point he can be like a father, but with all a fanatic devotion to the Party he is the torturer. Somehow O’Brien has knowledge of Winston’s conscious and subconscious mind; he also knows about his dreams and nightmares.
O’Brien seems to un-develop through the novel. By the end of the book reader actually know far less about him then they thought they know. We don’t know if O’Brien was rebellious who caught was tortured into passive acceptance of the Party. The novel leaves O’Brien a shadowy, symbolic enigma of the obscure Party.
As the plot of the novel change, the mutual relations between characters change, especial between Winston and Julia.
At the beginning of the story Winston hates Julia. He disliked all women and thought that she is even “more dangerous than most”. In addition she was member of the Party and that seems to horrify him. Eating every day lunch in the same canteen Julia only watched him sometimes. He starts suspect her of spying him. “The sweat started out on Winston backbone. A horrible pang of terror went through him”.
His feelings towards this faceless person change when she suddenly felt down. Lying down in front of him she wasn’t dangerous anymore. Grimace of pain on her face change into a human kind, “in front of him was an enemy (…) a human creature, in pain…” Written on the little piece of paper message saying “I love you” change Winston completely. “He did not consider any longer the possibility that she may be laying some kind of trap for him”. Winston couldn’t stop thinking how to get in touch with Julia, afraid that if he will not do it on time, she will change her mind. But Julia already took on herself great risk handing him the note, she would wait.
Her real filings towards the Party make Winston even more interested about seeing her and their relationship turn into love affair at once. The fact that she has an affair before they have met only attracts him to her. For him it was act of protest against the system. Desire of another human being was for Winston like “animal instinct, (…) the force that would tear the party to pieces”. As Winston said “The more men you have got, the more I love you”. He hates the purity what for him means being for the Party and the BB. This sign of protest against the system attracted him and “filled with a wild hope”.
The first time when they made a love has for those two characters strictly political meaning. “Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a Victory. It was a blow struck against the Party”.
However after so many times risking their lives to meet their relationship becomes much more emotional than even they would expect. When they went to O’Brien to find out whether the resistance really exist and to join the secret organisation, they were prepared to do everything for the conspiracy. But asked if they would separate and never see one another again, they both answered “No”.
After they have been arrested and separately taken to the Ministry of Love their desire seems to be what the Thought Police want most. Their feelings are so strong that the tortures takes months before Winston betray Julia.
After their respective release they met again. But their relationship has been completely destroyed. They are not the same people any more; spiritless, physically broken. Winston notes that her waist is “no longer supple” and the body of a corpse suggest that Julia is dead, her personality has been beaten down as well as Winston, and they are just empty bodies now.
In this essay I discussed the main characters of the “Nineteen Eighty-Four” book and tried to illustrate how the relationship between the main characters changes.