The Revelation of Character
One can’t run, and one can’t hide from the Party. 1984 is George Orwell’s vision of a post-atomic dictatorship and it demonstrates how this could be possible if the government became corrupt as such as this one. The Party controls everything and anyone in 1984’s society. The Party’s leader, Big Brother watches and knows everything through telescreens, the thought police, and the many followers and believers; the party manipulates everything including the people’s history and language. In the novel, the characters Winston, Julia, and O’Brien develop and with their dialogue and language, their character is revealed.
Winston Smith, the main protagonist experiences the nightmarish world in London, Oceania. He is a very smart man, yet stifled in a world of the dominating and powerful Party. In a journal that he had found earlier, Winston tries to express his feelings about the society and Big Brother. He writes, “I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY” (68). Even from the beginning of the novel, Winston is very curious and desperate to understand how and why the Party exercises such absolute power in Oceania. By writing in his journal, Winston is being very daring and is extremely risky himself of being discovered of Thought crime. He relates how “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows” (69). With his earlier actions of partaking of the VICTORY GIN and VICTORY CIGARETTES, he is demonstrating his confused personality because he doesn’t know if the Party is right in their teachings. By expressing of one’s true feelings, he is acting against the law. The Party expects Winston and everyone else to be almost robotic in their ways of going throughout their lives. Later on, after Winston and Julia’s first encounter alone in the open clearing, Winston expresses to Julia that, “I hate purity, I hate goodness. I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones” (104). His repetition of hate and want show his black-and-white thinking. He believes plainly that the Party is pure evil, and nothing could change that, thus making this an example of an instrument of hatred. The metaphor of “corrupt to the bones” shows that Winston truly believes that is how life should be like, to be free to do and be with anyone he chooses. Later, Winston and Julia have been captured and taken into the Ministry of Love for their disobedience of the rules and of thoughtcrime. They have now been there for a pretty long time and have been separated. Winston has not come to acceptance of everything that the Party preaches, pretty much mastering and understanding doublethink. All of a sudden, Winston exclaims in his room, “Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!” (230). This is his first time really expressing that he does loves her and is concerned for her well-being. Then, he realizes what a mistake that was, and he is scared out of his mind of what is going to happen to him because of his foolish action. This is another example of his self-destructive behavior and how he has doomed himself again. He then goes into rehab again for his “insanity” and is finally put to the last test to see if he has come from the “dark side” into the “light.” When he is threatened with the cage of rats, Winston finally breaks down and says, “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!” (236). This act of desperation completes his coming to and belief of the Party and to Big Brother and demonstrates that Winston is now broken. His hope and soul is now crippled beyond repair showing that he will do what it takes for himself to survive, accomplishing the Party’s goal of further diminishing loyalty and love and promoting self-preservation and solitude.
Julia is a girl who works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. She considers herself an enemy of the