Winston Smith

Protagonist Winston Smith, aged 39, is a conflicted and frail Outer Party member who works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth rewriting news articles so that they conform with the Party’s worldview. Privately, Winston rebels against the Party’s goals to rewrite history and control the minds of Oceania’s citizens. He records his personal thoughts and observations in a diary, his insightful self-analysis allowing an exploration of the tense relationship between objective and subjective reality. Conscious that he will eventually be arrested for thought crime, Winston takes great risks to experience an intimate relationship with colleague Julia and to seek out Inner Party member O’Brien, whom he believes to be a member of the Brotherhood, the secret organisation aiming to bring down the Party. By the end of the novel, having been arrested and tortured as expected, Winston relinquishes the one thing that makes him human, his loyalty to Julia, demonstrating that the Party had taken control of his thoughts, and with his indoctrination complete, his individual identity had been merged with that of the Party’s collective.

Winston Smith Quotes

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. Part 1 Chapter 5

‘We are the dead.’ (Winston) Part 2 Chapter 3

I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind …’ (Winston) Part 2 Chapter 5

To die hating them, that was freedom. Part 3 Chapter 4

He pushed the picture out of his mind. It was a false memory. He was troubled by false memories occasionally. They did not matter so long as one knew them for what they were. (Winston) Part 3 Chapter 6

…the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. Part 3 Chapter 6

Julia/the dark-haired girl

Winston’s love interest, Julia, aged 26, works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Outwardly, Julia personifies the model Party member, being appropriately zealous at the Two Minute Hate sessions of Emmanuel Goldstein and an active member of the Junior Anti-Sex League. Secretly, Julia delights in breaking the Party’s rules such as having multiple sexual affairs and obtaining luxury black market items reserved only for the Inner Party. Julia does not share Winston’s mourning over the loss of history, but is instead present-focused on living in covert rebellion right under the Party’s noses.

Like Winston, Julia is arrested, tortured until she betrays Winston’s loyalty, and indoctrinated, before emerging with the true Party loyalty she had previously only feigned.

Julia/the dark-haired girl Quotes

Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act. Part 2 Chapter 2

‘Always in the stink of women! How I hate women!’ she said parenthetically. (Julia) Part 2 Chapter 3

She could describe the whole process of composing a novel… But she was not interested in the finished product. She ‘didn’t much care for reading,’ she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces. (Julia) Part 2 Chapter 3

‘When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour…’ (Julia) Part 2 Chapter 3

One knew that it was all rubbish, so why let oneself be worried by it? She knew when to cheer and when to boo, and that was all one needed. (Julia) Part 2 Chapter 5

You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.’
‘All you care about is yourself,’ he echoed.
‘And after that, you don’t feel the same towards the other person any longer.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘you don’t feel the same.’ (Winston and Julia) Part 3 Chapter 6

O’Brien

Winston is intrigued by Inner Party member O’Brien, whose intelligence and charisma lead Winston to assume that like him, O’Brien secretly opposes the Party. On the contrary, O’Brien serves as the antagonist and is the personification of the Party, the instrument through which Winston will be indoctrinated to the Party. The duplicity of O’Brien’s character, as both ally and enemy to Winston, holds true to the end of the novel when despite being the director of Winston’s torture, Winston develops a positive attachment to O’Brien as the only person who can relieve his pain.

O’Brien Quotes

He felt deeply drawn to him, … because of a secretly held belief – or perhaps not even a belief, merely a hope – that O’Brien’s political orthodoxy was not perfect. Part 1 Chapter 1

… he had nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic. (Winston, on O’Brien) Part 2 Chapter 8

‘We shall meet again… In the place where there is no darkness…’ (O’Brien) Part 2 Chapter 8

‘…Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the hum an mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.’ (O’Brien) Part 3 Chapter 2

‘When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will.’ (O’Brien) Part 3 Chapter 2

‘We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. …There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation–anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. …We make the laws of Nature.’ (O’Brien) Part 3 Chapter 3

Mr Charrington

Mr Charrington is the mild-mannered owner of the second-hand store where Winston buys a diary and paperweight, and from whom he rents an upstairs private room for his meetings with Julia. His fondness for the past, half-remembered rhymes and discretion around Winston and Julia’s affair lead Winston to mistakenly place his trust in Mr Charrington. A member of the Thought Police, it is Mr Charrington who is responsible for Winston and Julia’s arrest.

Mr Charrington Quotes

His spectacles, his gentle, fussy movements, and the fact that he was wearing an aged jacket of black velvet, gave him a vague air of intellectuality, as though he had been some kind of literary man, or perhaps a musician. (Winston, on Mr Charrington) Part 1 Chapter 8

Nor did he seem shocked or become offensive knowing … that Winston wanted the room for the purpose of a love-affair… Privacy, he said, was a very valuable thing. (Winston, on Mr Charrington) Part 2 Chapter 4

‘We are the dead,’ he said.
‘We are the dead,’ echoed Julia dutifully.
‘You are the dead,’ said an iron voice behind them. (Winston, Julia & Mr Charrington) Part 2 Chapter 10

It occurred to Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police. (Winston, on Mr Charrington) Part 2 Chapter 10

Big Brother

The Party leader, by invention, Big Brother is omniscient and omnipresent. His face appears on posters, coins, book covers and cigarette packets and his propagandic messaging is streamed through telescreens, symbolic of his constant surveillance of Oceania’s citizens.

Big Brother Quotes

The black-moustachio’d face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston’s own. Part 1 Chapter 1

Big Brother’s familiar style: a style at once military and pedantic, and, because of a trick of asking questions and then promptly answering them … [was] easy to imitate. Part 1 Chapter 4

Emmanuel Goldstein

The leader of the Brotherhood, the secret organisation planning to overthrow the Party and which may or may not exist. Goldstein is positioned as someone who was once equal to Big Brother but who had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities and disappeared. He is the personification of the Party’s hate propaganda.

Emmanuel Goldstein Quote

Goldstein was the renegade and backslider …one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. Part 1 Chapter 1

Syme

A loyal Party member who is working on the definitive eleventh edition of the Newspeak dictionary. Syme is intelligent and over-zealous in his work on Newspeak, individual characteristics which appear contrary to the collective Party line, and which eventually see him vaporised.

Syme Quotes

‘You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words – scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone.’ (Syme) Part 1 Chapter 5

‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. (Syme) Part 1 Chapter 5

It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word?’ (Syme) Part 1 Chapter 5

Tom Parsons

Winston’s neighbour and colleague is an enthusiastic devotee of the Party. When he accidentally criticizes the Party in his sleep, Parson is reported on by his daughter, who is zealous member of the Spies.

Tom Parsons Quote

‘It was my little daughter,’ said Parsons with a sort of doleful pride. ‘She listened at the keyhole. … I don’t bear her any grudge for it. In fact I’m proud of her. It shows I brought her up in the right spirit, anyway.’ Part 3 Chapter 1

Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford

Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford are former prominent Party leaders who were accused of treason and subsequently tortured but whom Winston later observes drinking at the Chestnut Tree Café. Proof of the men’s innocence, which Winston discovers through a photo that he comes across at work, confirms external reality for Winston and is the catalyst that compels his rebellion towards the Party’s falsification of history.