Winston Smith
Winston, the novel’s protagonist, is a minor member of the ruling Party in near-future London. He is a skinny, intellectual, and calculated thirty-nine-year-old. He finds unobtrusive methods to rebel, or at least he believes them to go unnoticed. He main desire is to remain human under repressing circumstances, as he hates the totalitarian regime and enforced repression that are characteristic of his government.
Quotes
Winston writes this in his forbidden diary early in the novel. It reflects his belief that Party members, even rebellious ones, will never be able to overthrow the Party from within, but that such sweeping action would only be possible by the much more numerous, but brutally poor social group made up of the proletarians, or “proles” in the language of the novel: ‘If there is hope it lies in the proles’
Winston writes this in his forbidden diary after he has spent some time thinking about the nature of the Party and its control of the population: ‘I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY’
Winston is speaking to Julia as they first get to know one another. He’s not jealous or concerned about the number of sexual partners Julia’s had, but instead delights in her past experience because each one represents an act of rebellion against the party, and Julia’s rebelliousness is one of the qualities that is most attractive to Winston: ‘Listen. The more men you’ve had, the more I love you … I hate purity. I hate goodness. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones’
Winston and Julia are talking about the fact that whatever they do, they will inevitably end up in the hands of the Thought Police: ‘In this game that we’re playing, we can’t win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that’s all’
Winston and Julia are talking about whether they should break off their romance to try to stay alive as long as possible: ‘I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you’re more afraid of it than I am’
Winston writing in his diary in chapter 1: ‘DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER’
Winston is explaining his paperweight to Julia. As with many things in the novel, its value to Winston is measured in terms of its ability to serve as a connection to the past: ‘I don’t think it’s anything—I mean, I don’t think it was ever put to any use. That’s what I like about it. It’s a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter. It’s a message from a hundred years ago, if one knew how to read it’
Winston is speaking to Julia and outlining his understanding of where his own small resistances and rebellions fit into the larger story of someday overthrowing the Party: ‘I don’t imagine that we can alter anything in our own lifetime. But one can imagine little knots of resistance springing up here and there’
Here Winston is speaking to O’Brien, when he is invited over to O’Brien’s apartment. Winston and Julia are revealing their opposition to the party, because they believe that O’Brien is a member of the Brotherhood who works to overthrow the Party: ‘Winston is speaking to Julia and outlining his understanding of where his own small resistances and rebellions fit into the larger story of someday overthrowing the Party’