Winston Smith, a Hero or Not

Winston Smith is the main character of a novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four written by George Orwell and published in 1949.  The novel presents an imaginary future of 1984 governed by a group known as the Party, whose ruler and dictator is a Big Brother. The Party controls all aspects of people’s lives, including their thoughts. The name of the state is Oceania where Winston is a resident. He loathes the social systems that govern the citizens therein. They are ruled by intense fear. They have no civil rights and liberties. The people are segregated into three different social classes: the Proles (poor), the Party (middle class) and the Inner Party (the rich). No one could however, question the Big Brother’s system of ruling. Thinking about questioning the government’s principles would also be a crime (Orwell 34). Winston secretly hates the Party and starts to rebel. He starts a diary in which he exposes his rebellious thoughts. He does this even though he knows that keeping a diary is a crime and that one day he will be caught by the police and most probably killed. This act of rebellion and others discussed below first reveal him as a hero. However, it ultimately denied of his heroism by his giving in to the party’s rule. He is a hero that fails. He does not fit properly in Orwell’s definition of a hero: an ordinary person doing whatever they can to change social systems that do not respect human decency, even with the knowledge that they can’t possibly succeed. Orwell’s definition denotes a hero as a person who does not give up despite the harshness of the circumstances. The whole reading of the novel, therefore, presents a courageous man who rebels the system of ruling but not a hero.

 

The author first presents him as a perfectly normal person. He is a quiet 39-year-old man living in Oceania in 1984. He works as a clerk in the Ministry of Truth, where he fakes historical documents to match with the demands and opinions of his leader, Big Brother. He is presented as a small and frail looking man, with a varicose ulcer above his right ankle. He is not fit physically and has to stop several times when ascending the stairs and has difficulty in regulating physical jerks. His appearance can be misleading as it is against the conventional heroic mode, but it can’t disqualify anyone who is unfit for being a hero. While at the Ministry of Truth, he loves and is good at his job of rewriting history, but he worries about faking it and wants to know the truth and write the exact things of what really happen. However, he does not come out loud and demand to know the truth, but only decides to keep a personal record of occurrences, the diary, where he outpours his rebellious thoughts. The author also presents him as a very fearful man. Though his act of keeping a diary is an act of rebellion, he is afraid that he will be caught one day: Winston is terrified that the Thought Police will come for him, now that he has indulged in such utterly forbidden ideas, but when there is a knock on the door, it is only his neighbor Mrs Parsons, with a plumbing difficulty. His level of braveness is less than that of a hero. Heroes are never afraid of being caught.

 

He has been married to Katherine, but they have been separated for over a decade because he felt that she was too indoctrinated into the Party for his comfort. He makes friends with Mr. Charrington, a parole proprietor of a junk-shop. It is there that he meets Julia, who works in another department therein. She feigns to fall and hurt herself. When Winston aids her to get up she slips a note in his hand that says, “I love you”.  He is surprised and troubled by the note as sexual relations between Party members are forbidden. They decide to be meeting secretly. Unlike Julia, who is not afraid to get what she wants and who tries to get pleasure in a manner that is strictly forbidden, Winston fears that they will be caught (Luigi 31). Heroes are not afraid to get what they want.

 

More importantly, he does not take time to contemplate about O’ Brien’s intentions of initiating them into the Brotherhood, a secret organization committed at fighting Big Brother. O’Brien finds an excuse to accord Winston his home address. Winston had always believed O’Brien not to be politically conformist. He believed O’Brien could sympathize with his resentment of the Party. Both Winston and Julia visit him where he gives them a copy of “The Book,” which contains the truth about Big Brother. They go back to it to their room where the Thought Police burst in to apprehend them. It is then that Winston also discovers that this good friend Mr. Charrington, who, he thought, resented the Party, was a Thought Police agent. Winston and Julia are both arrested, but taken separately to the Ministry of love. It is therein that he discovers that O’Brien is an orthodox government agent and had tricked him. Winston is thus revealed as not being wise in discerning the people he should share with his thoughts and those he shouldn’t. A hero takes time to know about the people he associates with. They are very cautious with who they talk to. Winston, however, does not seem wise; he easily falls into traps.

 

It is in the Ministry of love where Winston is tortured and brainwashed. He gives in when a cage of rats is placed on his head. Heroes do not surrender. Typical leaders are not afraid to die in the name of their causes and for the sake of humanity. They are arrested and tortured and but do not give in to something they do not believe in. Nelson Mandela, for instance, was imprisoned and tortured for 27 years. During this time, he received several promises that he could be released if he stopped his rebellion against the rule of the then white government in South Africa. He chose to remain in jail and even die in there rather than give in to the principles of the government (Mandela 3).

 

In spite of all these faults, he proves to be a man who has his morals in the correct place. He believes that every person has the right to freedom, including that of speech and thought. He also shows courage by rebelling and by standing by his decision when he is arrested. Unlike a hero, however, extensive torture and brainwashing makes his surrender to the principles of the Party. He is reinstated to the status of a whole-hearted slave who loves Big Brother (Sessions). He also betrays Julia and eliminates his love for her. By giving in, he does not send a message of hope to the people but sends that of despair. Heroes, though some of them are killed eventually, send a message of hope to the people. Overall, Winston does not fit in Orwell’s description of a hero; he does not do all he can to change the social system (Welstead 11).

Works Cited

Luigi, Song Danwen, and Bai Chao. “Characters of Nineteen Eighty-four.” The World in a Book (n.d.). Print.

Mandela, Nelson. Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. London: Little, Brown and Company, 1995. Print.

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty Four. New York: Routledge, 1949. Print.

Sessions, Lisa. “A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classic Edition of George Orwell’s 1984.” Signet Classic (n.d.). Print.

Welstead, Adam. “Unreality, Truth and Subjectivity in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four.” Research Scholar (2013). Print.