Winston's Childhood Years Research Paper

At the end of 1984, Winston is a shell of his former self.The Party has succeeded in stripping him of his individuality and natural rights in order to dehumanize and control him. After he was tortured in the Ministry of Love, Winston is released but all his hopes and ideas are in the hands of The Party. He is no longer the man he was in the beginning. As he sits in

Other than Winston’s weak characteristic and his lack of planning, the main cause that contributes to Winston’s downfall is his indulgence. Winston lacks the ability to control himself from anything addictive in life. This personal flaw makes Winston lost in his cause to the destruction of “Big Brother”. In the novel, Winston constantly drinks and smokes to distract himself instead of focusing on a plan to take down “Big Brother”. Winston’s dream is to have a love affair: “Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated” (Book 2, Chapter 1). His illegal love affair with Julia does no good to his objective of bringing down “Big Brother”. The only result that the love affair accomplishes is Winston’s

Winston started as a unique man who hated following the rules and he made a complete 180 following the events in jail. Winston came out a new man, with respect for the Party and Big Brother as well as others around him. Winston had this to say about his new life at the end of the book, “it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.” When he said the struggle was finished he realized he was done fighting Big Brother and the Party and finally was willing to accept them.

Winston’s ordinary life makes him a far cry from the bold heroes of more traditional works, However, the story is less driven by Winston’s actions than by the psychological forces acting on his perception and his internal monologue. His mind, like any other in the novel, is a weak and malleable thing. From cradle to grave citizens of Oceania like Winston are put into government programs, bombarded by continuous propaganda and even brainwashed when necessary. The Party’s power to manipulate thought is a smack in the face to the erudites of Orwell’s generation who found refuge in the enlightened mind and the power of reason. The Party does not usually need to assault individual minds fortified by reason because the human mind and body are always portrayed as weak and fallible things. Winston constantly complains of ulcers and aches. Elders among the proles cannot remember life before the Final revolution that swept the Party into power. “They were like the ant, which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written records were falsified -- when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested” (Orwell 1-8). Men like Winston’s neighbor Parsons are so easily

Throughout the novel, Winston wanted to rebel against the government, but the fear of the thought police made him conform. The party used telescreens and other things to monitor the citizens to make sure they were not thinking for themselves. This is why Winston had to be careful in what he does because if he got caught he would have been killed. When Winston finally found people that he trusted and thought were on his side, he started to begin to do things outside of conformity. This is when the party stepped in and began to punish him with his worst fear of rats to make him conform again. Winston knew that Big Brother was not real, but he was forced to conform by being brainwashed by his

Winston goes through emotional change throughout 1984 that changes his perspective and personality. At the beginning of the book, Winston is filled with hatred towards the Party. “They’ll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother-” (Orwell, 19). Winston’s fury towards the Party and Big Brother is evident. Through his diary entries, you can definitely tell that he harbors an intense anger towards them. So, it may seem that this trait will never change and make him always fight for it. The reader may at first think that he will never change views. But then, Winston completely changes perspective at the end of the book when he states, “He loved Big Brother.” (Orwell, 298). This keeps Winston from becoming another boring character who refuses to change his opinion which makes for an interesting book and a more complex character.

In the novel, Winston is a character who lacks "hero" traits as he has more traits of an everyman than a hero. Winston is an out of shape, average man with a "varicose ulcer above his right ankle" (3). Considering the typical hero, not only does Winston lack the physical strength, he lacks the mentality as well. Throughout the novel, he consistently talks about "overthrowing the Party," but he never actually does it. Instead of overthrowing the Party, he rebels by purchasing a diary and writing sentences such as "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" (20) and " I don’t care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck" (21). Winston chooses to write these into his diary as he is too cowardly to say this in public. As time passes, his

government he lives in daily and the weights of just how wrong it is. Winston works in the

Even though Winston contributed to committing acts against the government that are quite courageous, it was all in a discrete manner. Instead of engaging in an open revolt, Winston’s sexual escapades with Julia and journal entries were in secrecy and remote locations that were never repeated twice, also in the room provided by Mr.Charrington. I interpreted Winston’s approach to act in confidence from everyone around him out of the fear of the reactions of people during the two minute hate, telescreens, hidden microphones, and brainwashed, spying neighbours outing you at the first open moment to save themselves very cowardice rather than make an open revolt. The open revolt would have spoken actions of a hero, “ordinary people doing whatever they can to change social systems that do not respect human decency, even with the knowledge that they can’t possibly succeed”. Basically even if Winston’s public revolt to get others to go against rather than conform to the Party’s laws and live in fear didn’t succeed, it would have been the effort that counts for what a hero would do to better a country, people, or even the world. The fear Winston felt and had thought of in the back of his mind that he mentioned all kept him regretting the actions he took part in.

To me, Winston is definitely a hero, not a perfect hero. Winston´s flaws, in my eyes, do not take away from his heroism. The reasons why he is still a hero of this novel I will be discussing in the following paragraphs.

Additionally, the portrayal of this dystopian society controlled by a totalitarian government might have been understood well by contemporary audiences, mirroring the rules of totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy- the citizens have no influence on the government and have no freedom of choosing the rules that govern and control every part of their lives. Therefore, Winston blames the misery in his life totally and completely on the government and on Big Brother. In Winston’s case, we can see that the propaganda, deprivation, and strict rules fail to make him concur with the party and accept Big Brother- in this situation, the party has to use extreme force and torture to make Winston love the party as well as Big Brother, in order for the party to maintain complete power.

The culture surrounding Winston is very confined. With the telescreens watching everyone and everything, it's hard for anyone to have free thought. An example of how Big Brother can tell if a person is not thinking the way they should be, is that they can tell by facial expressions. Orwell writes "To wear an improper expression... was... a punishable offense" (54) With restrictions like this, it is hard for characters to do what they please. This effects Winston by making him act a certain way so that he can avoid being caught. However, Winston does not seem to mind being caught for some time. When Winston is writing in his journal, he writes "theyll shoot me i dont care" (20). This is just a fragment of what Winston wrote in this entry. The fact that Orwell gave Winston the trait to write with improper grammar signifies how delirious Winston is when he writes this. (make sure you put a conclusion sentence)

The first impression of Winston is a weak, worn down individual. His body was getting older, as illustrated by his limited ability when participating in the daily stretches. Orwell only explains his physical characterization in the beginning and end of the book when he is being tortured. The middle of the book is more focused on characterizing Winston's mind. The reader is constantly wondering how many rules Winston is willing to break at the risk of torture. At first is seems as though his follower-type personality will only let him risk

Despite Winston's passionate hatred for the Party and his desire to test the limits of the Party's power, his capacity to carry out action against the Party is burdened (i.e. lacking positive freedom) by his intense paranoia and overriding belief that he will ultimately suffer scrutiny and brutal torture for the crimes he

Winston is reminiscing about Julia and listening to the news about the war while sitting the in cafe. He was thinking about how much he despised the presences of Big Brother and how Julia once told him that he could control his own reality, however, he thought she was wrong. After experiencing immense amounts of torture from the government, he now no longer has the ability to control his own thoughts. As soon as the victory of the war was announced, Winston felt a wave of joy, love, and sense of security because