First of all, the message that 1984 conveys is 

extremely important. It digs deep into the

methodological workings of politics and how humans can be kept in the grasp of a
government. I’m not fighting the message in any way.
Nor am I fighting any of the millions of people who loved this book. What’s amazing
about books is that we all experience them differently but we also differ greatly in
how we judge them. I try to judge books based on both my enjoyment of the material
and the quality of the book.

This excruciating paper collection is often denoted as one of the best books of our
time. It is a classic, a dystopian horror tale of a world towards which we are already
sailing. Everyone seems to love this book, in fact, never in my life would I have
pushed through reading it if it wasn’t a very important book for my friend. I
desperately wanted to see why 1984 has been put to its pedestal. And now I only
faintly understand.

In 1984, George Orwell’s characters seek freedom within a strictly controlled

government system. While outwardly complying with the Party's rules and
conventions, they dream of a rebellion they are too afraid and restricted to
pursue. In the end, they are pieces on a board played by the government.
Explore these characters with discussion questions.

Winston Smith 
Winston is a 39-year old man who works at the Ministry of Truth, where his
job is to alter the historical record to match the government's official
propaganda. Outwardly, Winston Smith is a meek and obedient member of
The Party. He carefully practices his facial expressions and is always conscious
of being watched, even in his apartment. However, his internal monologue is
seditious and revolutionary.

Winston is just old enough to remember a time before the current regime. He
idolizes the past and revels in the few details he can still remember. Whereas
younger people have no memory of any other society and thus function as
ideal cogs in The Party's machine, Winston remembers the past and supports
The Party only out of fear and necessity. Physically, Winston looks older than
he is. He moves stiffly and with a bent back. He is in poor health overall,
though without any specific disease.`

Winston is often arrogant. He imagines that the proles are the key to
overthrowing the government and he romanticizes their lives without knowing
much about their reality. He is also eager to believe that he has been recruited
by the Brotherhood, despite his relative lack of importance. Orwell uses
Winston to demonstrate that passive rebellion merely makes the rebel part of
the system he wants to subvert, thus dooming him to serve it in one way or
another. Rebellion and oppression are just two sides of the same dynamic.
Winston is thus doomed to betray the Party and to be exposed, arrested,
tortured, and broken. His fate is inescapable because he relies on the
mechanisms provided to him instead of forging his own path

Julia 
Julia is a young woman who works at the Ministry of Truth. Like Winston, she
secretly despises the Party and the world it has shaped around her, but
outwardly behaves as a dutiful and content member of the Party. Unlike
Winston, Julia’s rebellion is centered not on revolution or changing the world,
but on personal desires. She wishes for the freedom to enjoy her sexuality and
her existence as she pleases, and sees her private resistance as a path towards
those goals.

Just as she pretends to be a loyal citizen, Julia is also pretending to be a

fervent revolutionary when she and Winston are contacted by the
Brotherhood. She has little sincere interest in these goals, but goes along
because it is the only avenue of freedom open to her. It is telling that at the
end, after her own torture and breaking, she is an empty vessel devoid of
emotion and yet harbors a strong dislike for Winston, who she once professed
to love and saw as a path to her own liberation.

Julia is actually very unsuitable to Winston in terms of romance or sexuality.

Like Winston, she is not nearly as free as she believes herself to be, and is
constrained completely by the choices society puts in front of her. Julia invents
her love for Winston as a way of convincing herself that her relationship with
him is genuine and the result of her own choices.

O’Brien 
O’Brien is initially introduced as Winston’s superior at the Ministry and a
high-ranking member of the Party. Winston suspects that O’Brien sympathizes
with the resistance, and is thrilled when he discovers (or believes he discovers)
that O’Brien is a member of the Brotherhood. O’Brien later appears at
Winston’s jail cell and participates in Winston’s torture, and tells Winston that
he purposely lured Winston into betrayal.

O’Brien is an unreal character; virtually anything the reader believes they

learn about him is later revealed to be a lie. As a result, the reader actually
knows nothing about O’Brien at all. He is a completely unreliable character. In
this he is actually representative of the universe Orwell is imagining, a world
where nothing is true and everything is a lie. In the universe of 1984, it is
impossible to know if The Brotherhood and its leader Emmanuel Goldstein
actually exist or if they are simply pieces of propaganda used to control the
population. Similarly, we cannot know if there is an actual "Big Brother," an
individual or even an oligarchy that rules Oceania.

O’Brien’s emptiness as a character is thus purposeful: He is as unreal,

changeable, and ultimately mindlessly cruel as the world he represents.

Mr. Charrington 
Appearing initially as a kind old man who rents Winston a private room and
sells him some interesting antiques, Mr. Charrington is later revealed to be a
member of the Thought Police who has been setting Winston up for arrest
from the very beginning. Charrington thus contributes to the level of deception
that the Party engages in and to the fact that Winston and Julia’s fates are
completely controlled from the very beginning.

Big Brother 
The symbol of The Party, a middle-aged man depicted on posters and other
official materials, there is no certainty that Big Brother actually exists as a
person in Orwell's universe. It is very likely he is an invention and a
propaganda tool. His main presence in the novel is as a looming figure on
posters, and as part of the mythology of the Party, as "Big Brother is Watching
You." What is interesting is that these ubiquitous posters strike those who
support the Party as somewhat comforting, seeing Big Brother as a protective
uncle, while people like Winston see him as an ominous, threatening figure.

Emmanuel Goldstein 
The leader of The Brotherhood, the resistance organization working to foment
revolution against the Party. Like Big Brother, Emmanuel Goldstein seems to
be an invention used to trap resistors like Winston, although it is possible he
does exist, or did exist and has been co-opted by the Party. The lack of
certainty is emblematic of the way the Party has corrupted knowledge and
objective facts, and the same disorientation and confusion experienced by
Winston and Julia in regards to Goldstein's existence or nonexistence is felt by
the reader. This is a particularly effective technique that Orwell uses in the
novel.

George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is perhaps the

most pervasively influential book of the twentieth century, and here are a few
important themes of the book that we need to be mindful of.
Totalitarianism: Total Control, Pure Power
The Party – the controller of the superstate – “seeks power entirely for its own
sake.” As an official admits: “We are not interested in the good of others; we are
interested solely in power, pure power.”
Propaganda Machines
A well-organized and effective propaganda machine goes a long way in ensuring
total control of the Party over the superstate and its residents. The regulation and
dissemination of information involves “tearing human minds to pieces and putting
them together again in new shapes of your choosing.”

The Thing Called Love 

The totalitarian knows that to rule people he needs to quell all ways of achieving
happiness and fulfilment. Therefore, love and sex, two of the most enriching
human experiences, are killed and depersonalized.

Liberty and Censorship

The Ministry of Truth works tirelessly and meticulously to modify public archives
and rewrite history. As a result, “the past was erased, the erasure was forgotten,
the lie became the truth.”

Language: Doublethink and Newspeak

The residents of the superstate are forced to communicate in Newspeak – the
government’s invented language. It plays a pertinent role in the Party’s control
over the masses.

Technology: All-seeing Telescreens and a Watchful Eye

The Party needs and develops top-notch technology to exercise ruthless control
over the residents. Without telescreens, the Thought Police would fail in its
objective of surveillance. And, of course, overseeing all of this is Big Brother.

Gripped by the themes above? Are you going to read or reread Nineteen Eighty-
Four? Do tell us about other ominous 

What is Orwell’s purpose in 1984?

The Dangers of Totalitarianism 1984 is a political novel written with the purpose of
warning readers in the West of the dangers of totalitarian government.

How does Big Brother control the truth in 1984?

Its purpose is to rewrite history to change the facts to fit Party doctrine for
propaganda effect. For example, if Big Brother makes a prediction that turns out to
be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of Truth correct the record to make it
accurate.