Assignment paper no.107: "Character Dynamics and Symbolism in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four"

Personal Information

Name:- Unnati Baroliya 

Batch:- M.A. Sem 2 (2023-2025)

Enrollment Number:- 5108230002

E-mail Address:- unnatibaroliya@gmail.com 

Roll Number:- 26


Assignment Details

Topic:-"Character Dynamics and Symbolism in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four"

Paper & subject code:- 107: The Twentieth Century Literature: From World War II to the End of the Century 

Submitted to:- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar

Date of Submission:- April 26, 2024

Keywords

Character Analysis, The Glass Paperweight and St. Clement’s Church, Big Brother, The place where there is no darkness, The Telescreens, The Red Armed Prole Woman.

Abstract

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, was a renowned English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic whose works under the pen name George Orwell are characterized by lucid prose, social criticism, and opposition to totalitarianism. His masterpiece, "Nineteen Eighty-Four," published in 1949, serves as a warning against totalitarianism and has left a lasting impact on literature and popular culture. The novel depicts a dystopian world where the Party governs with absolute control, manipulating language, history, and individuals' thoughts. Through the protagonist Winston Smith, Orwell explores themes of rebellion, oppression, and the power of truth. Other key characters, such as Julia, O'Brien, Big Brother, and Mr. Charrington, contribute to the complex portrayal of a society dominated by fear and surveillance. Symbolism, including Big Brother, the glass paperweight, and the telescreens, enriches the narrative, highlighting the Party's manipulation of reality and the struggle for individual freedom.

Eric Arthur Blair

His time span was from 25 June 1903 to 21 January 1950, was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.

Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.

Nineteen Eighty-four

Novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949 as a warning against totalitarianism. The chilling dystopia made a deep impression on readers, and his ideas entered mainstream culture in a way achieved by very few books. The book’s title and many of its concepts, such as Big Brother and the Thought Police, are instantly recognized and understood, often as bywords for modern social and political abuses.

Summary

The book is set in 1984 in Oceania, one of three perpetually warring totalitarian states (the other two are Eurasia and Eastasia). Oceania is governed by the all-controlling Party, which has brainwashed the population into unthinking obedience to its leader, Big Brother. The Party has created a propagandistic language known as Newspeak, which is designed to limit free thought and promote the Party’s doctrines. Its words include doublethink (belief in contradictory ideas simultaneously), which is reflected in the Party’s slogans: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “Ignorance is strength.” The Party maintains control through the Thought Police and continual surveillance.

The book’s hero, Winston Smith, is a minor party functionary living in a London that is still shattered by a nuclear war that took place not long after World War II. He belongs to the Outer Party, and his job is to rewrite history in the Ministry of Truth, bringing it in line with current political thinking. However, Winston’s longing for truth and decency leads him to secretly rebel against the government. He embarks on a forbidden affair with Julia, a like-minded woman, and they rent a room in a neighbourhood populated by Proles (short for proletariats). Winston also becomes increasingly interested in the Brotherhood, a group of dissenters. Unbeknownst to Winston and Julia, however, they are being watched closely.

When Winston is approached by O’Brien—an official of the Inner Party who appears to be a secret member of the Brotherhood—the trap is set. O’Brien is actually a spy for the Party, on the lookout for “thought-criminals,” and Winston and Julia are eventually caught and sent to the Ministry of Love for a violent reeducation. The ensuing imprisonment, torture, and reeducation of Winston are intended not merely to break him physically or make him submit but to root out his independence and destroy his dignity and humanity. In Room 101, where prisoners are forced into submission by exposure to their worst nightmares, Winston panics as a cage of rats is attached to his head. He yells out for his tormentors to “Do it to Julia!” and states that he does not care what happens to her. With this betrayal, Winston is released. He later encounters Julia, and neither is interested in the other. Instead Winston loves Big Brother.

Analysis

Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-four as a warning after years of brooding on the twin menaces of Nazism and Stalinism. Its depiction of a state where daring to think differently is rewarded with torture, where people are monitored every second of the day, and where party propaganda trumps free speech and thought is a sobering reminder of the evils of unaccountable governments. Winston is the symbol of the values of civilized life, and his defeat is a poignant reminder of the vulnerability of such values in the midst of all-powerful states.

Characters Study

1) Winston Smith

Orwell’s primary goal in 1984 is to demonstrate the terrifying possibilities of totalitarianism. The reader experiences the nightmarish world that Orwell envisions through the eyes of the protagonist, Winston. His personal tendency to resist the stifling of his individuality, and his intellectual ability to reason about his resistance, enables the reader to observe and understand the harsh oppression that the Party, Big Brother, and the Thought Police institute. Whereas Julia is untroubled and somewhat selfish, interested in rebelling only for the pleasures to be gained, Winston is extremely pensive and curious, desperate to understand how and why the Party exercises such absolute power in Oceania. Winston’s long reflections give Orwell a chance to explore the novel’s important themes, including language as mind control, psychological and physical intimidation and manipulation, and the importance of knowledge of the past.

Apart from his thoughtful nature, Winston’s main attributes are his rebelliousness and his fatalism. Winston hates the Party passionately and wants to test the limits of its power; he commits innumerable crimes throughout the novel, ranging from writing “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” in his diary, to having an illegal love affair with Julia, to getting himself secretly indoctrinated into the anti-Party Brotherhood. The effort Winston puts into his attempt to achieve freedom and independence ultimately underscores the Party’s devastating power. By the end of the novel, Winston’s rebellion is revealed as playing into O’Brien’s campaign of physical and psychological torture, transforming Winston into a loyal subject of Big Brother.

One reason for Winston’s rebellion, and eventual downfall, is his sense of fatalism—his intense (though entirely justified) paranoia about the Party and his overriding belief that the Party will eventually catch and punish him. As soon as he writes “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” in his diary, Winston is positive that the Thought Police will quickly capture him for committing thoughtcrime. Thinking that he is helpless to evade his doom, Winston allows himself to take unnecessary risks, such as trusting O’Brien and renting the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop. Deep down, he knows that these risks will increase his chances of being caught by the Party; he even admits this to O’Brien while in prison. But because he believes that he will be caught no matter what he does, he convinces himself that he must continue to rebel. Winston lives in a world in which legitimate optimism is an impossibility; lacking any real hope, he gives himself false hope, fully aware that he is doing so.

2) Julia

Julia is Winston’s lover and the only other person who Winston can be sure hates the Party and wishes to rebel against it as he does. Whereas Winston is restless, fatalistic, and concerned about large-scale social issues, Julia is sensual, pragmatic, and generally content to live in the moment and make the best of her life. Winston longs to join the Brotherhood and read Emmanuel Goldstein’s abstract manifesto; is more concerned with enjoying sex and making practical plans to avoid getting caught by the Party. Winston essentially sees their affair as temporary; his fatalistic attitude makes him unable to imagine his relationship with Julia lasting very long. Julia, on the other hand, is well adapted to her chosen forms of small-scale rebellion. She claims to have had affairs with various Party members, and has no intention of terminating her pleasure-seeking, or of being caught (her involvement with Winston is what leads to her capture). is a striking contrast to Winston: apart from their mutual sexual desire and hatred of the Party, most of their traits are dissimilar, if not contradictory

3) O'Brien

One of the most fascinating aspects of 1984 is the manner in which Orwell shrouds an explicit portrayal of a totalitarian world in an enigmatic aura. While Orwell gives the reader a close look into the personal life of Winston Smith, the reader’s only glimpses of Party life are those that Winston himself catches. As a result, many of the Party’s inner workings remain unexplained, as do its origins, and the identities and motivations of its leaders. This sense of mystery is centralized in the character of O’Brien, a powerful member of the Inner Party who tricks Winston into believing that he is a member of the revolutionary group called the Brotherhood. O’Brien inducts Winston into the Brotherhood. Later, though, he appears at Winston’s jail cell to abuse and brainwash him in the name of the Party. During the process of this punishment, and perhaps as an act of psychological torture, O’Brien admits that he pretended to be connected to the Brotherhood merely to trap Winston in an act of open disloyalty to the Party.

This revelation raises more questions about O’Brien than it answers. Rather than developing as a character throughout the novel, O’Brien actually seems to un-develop: by the end of the book, the reader knows far less about him than they previously had thought. When Winston asks O’Brien if he too has been captured by the Party, O’Brien replies, “They got me long ago.” This reply could signify that O’Brien himself was once rebellious, only to be tortured into passive acceptance of the Party. One can also argue that O’Brien pretends to sympathize with Winston merely to gain his trust. Similarly, one cannot be sure whether the Brotherhood actually exists, or if it is simply a Party invention used to trap the disloyal and give the rest of the populace a common enemy. The novel does not answer these questions, but rather leaves O’Brien as a shadowy, symbolic enigma on the fringes of the even more obscure Inner Party.

4) Big Brother

Big Brother is the supreme ruler of Oceania, the leader of the Party, an accomplished war hero, a master inventor and philosopher, and the original instigator of the revolution that brought the Party to power. The Party uses the image of Big Brother to instill a sense of loyalty and fear in the populace. The image appears on coins, on telescreens, and on the large posters which are plastered all over the city with the slogan “Big Brother is watching you.” While these facts are undisputed, much of the rest of Big Brother’s nature is undefined and subject to change, even within the reality of the novel. In fact, part of Winston’s job is to go into old articles and change what Big Brother said in the past to match what he says in the present. Big Brother is merely a convenience that suits the current goals of the Party.

Despite his hugely powerful role in society, Big Brother makes no actual appearance in the novel. Winston never interacts with Big Brother in any way, and in the one scene where Big Brother speaks during the Two Minutes Hate, not only is the reader not told what he says, but Winston observes that nobody present listens to what he says either. The idea of Big Brother is sufficient to keep the people living in a state of fear, and the fact that no one seems to have ever seen him may make him even more effective as a leader. In fact, several passages throughout the book suggest that Big Brother either doesn’t exist, or perhaps never existed, as an actual person. When Winston is held in the Ministry of Love, he has a conversation with O’Brien about the nature of Big Brother. Winston asks O’Brien if Big Brother exists, to which O’Brien replies, “‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.” When Winston asks if Big Brother will ever die, O’Brien simply says, “Of course not. How could he die?”

5) Mr. Charrington

Mr. Charrington can tell Winston about London’s history and share in Winston’s interest in the past. He provides several key resources that facilitate Winston’s various crimes against the Party. Mr. Charrington sells Winston both the blank book which Winston uses to record a diary and the glass paperweight that becomes a symbol of Winston’s connection to a concrete past unaltered by the Party’s propaganda. Mr. Charrington also rents Winston the room where Winston and Julia carry out the bulk of their sexual relationship.

Like O’Brien, Mr. Charrington must be re-assessed two-thirds of the way through the novel, when Winston and the reader learn that Mr. Charrington is a member of the Thought Police. In light of this revelation, all of Mr. Charrington’s interactions with Winston take on a different meaning. Contrary to what we’ve believed so far, Mr. Charrington was never a sympathetic appreciator of the past who identified with Winston’s rebellious spirit. Instead, he was acting as a manipulative agent of the Party laying traps to test how far Winston would go.

When Winston first realizes that Mr. Charrington is a member of the Thought Police, Mr. Charrington’s physical appearance has dramatically transformed. He now appears to be only 35, with black hair and no wrinkles. He strikes Winston as straighter, larger, more alert, and even his accent has disappeared. More than any other character, Mr. Charrington seems to physically represent the unsettling ability of the Thought Police to hide in plain sight and infiltrate the lives of Party members. The moment of Mr. Charrington’s revelation occurs in the transition from Book Two, where Winston leads the best part of his life, to Book Three, where his life becomes a nightmare of torture and horror.

6) Emmanuel Goldstein

Emmanuel Goldstein is introduced as the Enemy of the People during the Two Minutes Hate at the beginning of the novel. He was once an important member of the Party but became a traitor. Although he was sentenced to death, he escaped and formed the Brotherhood, an organized body of rebels committed to the destruction of the Party and the party’s way of life.

Like Big Brother, Goldstein very likely does not exist as an actual person, but rather, is a propaganda tool used by the Party to stir up emotion in the citizens. Goldstein functions as a threatening but ill-defined monster that the Party uses to keep citizens in line and prevent rebellion. Like Eastasia and Eurasia, Goldstein provides the Party with an enemy to act against. When the Party does things that hurt the populace, their actions can be blamed either on terrorist attacks by Goldstein’s followers or on necessary precautions to prevent further attacks.

Goldstein’s most significant contribution to the plot of the novel is as alleged author of the book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. The book contains the truth of the Party as well as a model for how to overthrow them, as is quoted at length in Book Two: Chapter IX of 1984. These sections go into detail about how the Party uses endless war, the manipulation of history, and the threat of the Thought Police to control the population. The book also lays out a hopeful plan of rebellion whereby the tiny resistances made by disobedient Party members eventually accumulate to become powerful enough to tear down the Party.

Winston gets a copy of Goldstein’s book from O’Brien and is hugely affected by what he reads in this book. Although the content of the book seems to be largely accurate to the way the Party really works, we later learn that the book was not written by Goldstein, but by O’Brien and a committee of Party loyalists as another prop and trap for drawing in thought-criminals.

Symbolism

1) Big Brother

Throughout London, Winston sees posters showing a man gazing down over the words “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” everywhere he goes. Big Brother is the face of the Party. The citizens are told that he is the leader of the nation and the head of the Party, but Winston can never determine whether or not he actually exists. In any case, the face of Big Brother symbolizes the Party in its public manifestation; he is a reassurance to most people (the warmth of his name suggests his ability to protect), but he is also an open threat (one cannot escape his gaze). Big Brother also symbolizes the vagueness with which the higher ranks of the Party present themselves—it is impossible to know who really rules Oceania, what life is like for the rulers, or why they act as they do. Winston thinks he remembers that Big Brother emerged around 1960, but the Party’s official records date Big Brother’s existence back to 1930, before Winston was even born.

2) The Glass Paperweight and St. Clement’s Church

By deliberately weakening people’s memories and flooding their minds with propaganda, the Party is able to replace individuals’ memories with its own version of the truth. It becomes nearly impossible for people to question the Party’s power in the present when they accept what the Party tells them about the past—that the Party arose to protect them from bloated, oppressive capitalists, and that the world was far uglier and harsher before the Party came to power. Winston vaguely understands this principle. He struggles to recover his own memories and formulate a larger picture of what has happened to the world. Winston buys a paperweight in an antique store in the prole district that comes to symbolize his attempt to reconnect with the past. Symbolically, when the Thought Police arrest Winston at last, the paperweight shatters on the floor. The old picture of St. Clement’s Church in the room that Winston rents above Mr. Charrington’s shop is another representation of the lost past. Winston associates a song with the picture that ends with the words “Here comes the chopper to chop off your head!” This is an important foreshadow, as it is the telescreen hidden behind the picture that ultimately leads the Thought Police to Winston, symbolizing the Party’s corrupt control of the past.

3) The Place Where There Is No Darkness

Throughout the novel, Winston imagines meeting O’Brien in “the place where there is no darkness.” The words first come to him in a dream, and he ponders them for the rest of the novel. Eventually, Winston does meet O’Brien in "the place where there is no darkness"; instead of being the paradise Winston imagined, it is merely a prison cell in which the light is never turned off. The idea of “the place where there is no darkness” symbolizes Winston’s approach to the future: possibly because of his intense fatalism (he believes that he is doomed no matter what he does), he unwisely allows himself to trust O’Brien, even though inwardly he senses that O’Brien might be a Party operative.

4) The Telescreens

The omnipresent telescreens are the book’s most visible symbol of the Party’s constant monitoring of its subjects. In their dual capability to blare constant propaganda and observe citizens, the telescreens also symbolize how totalitarian government abuses technology for its own ends instead of exploiting its knowledge to improve civilization.

5) The Red-Armed Prole Woman

The red-armed prole woman whom Winston hears singing through the window represents Winston’s one legitimate hope for the long-term future: the possibility that the proles will eventually come to recognize their plight and rebel against the Party. Winston sees the prole woman as a prime example of reproductive virility; he often imagines her giving birth to the future generations that will finally challenge the Party’s authority.

Conclusion

George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" remains a seminal work in literature, offering a stark portrayal of the dangers of totalitarianism and the erosion of individual liberty. Through vivid characters and powerful symbolism, Orwell crafts a chilling narrative that continues to resonate with readers, serving as a cautionary tale against the abuse of power and the suppression of truth. As society grapples with issues of surveillance, censorship, and political control, Orwell's themes of resistance and the pursuit of truth remain as relevant today as they were when the novel was first published. "Nineteen Eighty-Four" stands as a timeless reminder of the importance of vigilance in safeguarding democratic values and preserving the rights of the individual against oppressive regimes.

Reference

• Lowne, Cathy, and George Woodcock. “Nineteen Eighty-four | Summary, Characters, Analysis, & Facts.” Britannica, 29 March 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nineteen-Eighty-four. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• Orwell, George. “1984: Character List.” SparkNotes, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/characters/. Accessed 5 May 2024.

• Orwell, George. “1984: Symbols.” SparkNotes, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/symbols/. Accessed 5 May 2024.