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George Orwell's Winston Smith is a character that exists only on the basis that he believes he is an individual The world presented in 1984 is one that does not allow for uniqueness, yet the tragic hero of Winston Smith is driven to find himself by attempting rebellion.
Because of the shear bleakness of the world, Winston Smith is nothing but a plaything to do the bidding of those above him. He works in an office known as the Ministry of Truth, where he spends all day changing records to reflect current Party interests. The area in where he resides in is Airstrip One, formerly known as England, which is part of a super power known as Oceania. In 1984, there are three super powers encompassing the whole of the Earth. All three are constantly at war with each other and have fought each other to a stalemate from which each are doomed to forever. The society that exists, like the other two super powers', is totalitarian, and throughout this society exist secret agents called Thought Police, that remove any rebellious factions that threaten the rule of the Party. Such is the world of Winston Smith, a world of unrelenting orthodoxy and gruesome discipline. In all this, barely exists Winston Smith.
Winston Smith is lost in this world, he is tired of the telescreens, tired of the poor quality of life, and most of all, he is tired of being an anonymous object. There is a need to define one's own individuality before there can be a journey of hope. There
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is no point to destination without origin. In Winston Smith's quest, he tries to find ways of defining himself, not publicly, but privately to himself, for it would be suicide to show self-definition openly. His first step to rebellion is the purchase of diary and a pen. In it he expresses his feelings to the one person that he feels he can trust, himself. He explores his own thought process by putting it on paper, thus he is given a chance to examine a real person, himself. As the novel progresses, Winston Smith is confronted by a female known as Julia. Julia, to Winston, serves more than one purpose. She is his idealization of woman and she is another way of self-definition. She, as a maternal/lover figure, subconsciously brings about childhood memories as shown when Winston is reminded of chocolate and the poem "Oranges and Lemons say the bells of Saint Clement's."
With the advent of Julia, there is a more acute channel for Winston to find his identity. Even if the person found is nothing more than Winston Smith's embodiment of his hatred for the Party, he has still found a niche for which he can escape the chasm of nonexistence. This identity founded on Julia's lifestyle is pleasing because in every sense it opposes Party dogma. This is illustrated in the words of Winston Smith when he says to Julia, "I hate purity, I hate goodness, I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones." Because of the sexual act, Winston Smith is able to rediscover nature's gift to man, the fantasy. In the idealization of Julia, Winston directs himself and his devotion to her and not the Party. This rebellious act causes Winston to exists with a purpose
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other than that of Big Brother. He experiences deeper emotion which Winston had only hinted at in his diary. Winston obviously is driven by this for he would not continue meeting with Julia under such dangerous conditions if he did not feel moved to risk his life. A being in love abandons all previous modes of thought and exists knowingly of the possible consequences, but ignoring them the same. Near the end of the novel, Winston realizes that he can never be a true individual when the Thought Police appear. There will be no more Julia, Winston Smith will be forced to turn away from the mirror and march towards his eventual execution, finding that the only person he can ever be is, Big Brother.
Though Winston achieves intellectual freedom, he is severed from his course by a power much greater than he. The thought of total failure and capture was constant in the mind of Winston, but with the odds playing out that he would eventually be caught he risked it and tried to draw the greatest amount of life from his brief taste of pseudo-freedom. But, to Winston Smith, that semi-freedom was the most concrete thing that he ever experienced in his life and it was his freedom, not a ghastly perversion as imposed by Big Brother. And in that fleeting moment, Winston Smith was what he wanted to be, a free human.