1984 is Winston the good guy?

[Moles1080]

Can we sympathise with Winston Smith? On one hand, winston is shown as the last gladiator to fight for virtue, love, objective goodness etc. But on the other he is turned into a snivelling wreck in his failure to uphold what he fights for. Do you think we are meant to sympathise with him, and accept that winston's failing was the fall of all men - or do are we meant to see his weakness and be stronger than he was?
:wave: :D
Miles.

[hmmm]

No one could uphold their beliefs against the party. As described by O'brien they always rehabilitate the criminals. Always. I think Orwell was trying to push the fact that the party can not be destroyed. I like that the book ends like this. Its more real than a stupid hollywood movie that always ends happy and perfect.

I think Orwell did this on purpose to show that if we let things go for to long unchecked there may be a point when we can't fix the problem. Personally I don't think anyone could resist the party for very long.

[simon]

I don't think we are meant to sympathise with him, but to recognize the existence of weakness in ourselves and know that no matter how strong we think we are, humans are a bunch of pushovers in the end.

[seeker]

who is ever the good guy? not anyone who is human.

i like what simon said but i think hmm put it better; thats real life, thats the breakable fragile human, that is who your hero is. we all enjoy seeing the fantastic examples of spiderman and such, but thats just what they are, fantasy. we need these examples ,this is true, but they do not exist in the way many assume, as always being strong and unbreakabale.

no, a real hero exists only for a moment, before he returns to his normal descisions; that is , the bad ones.

[Stanislaw]

Some people can be real heros, mother terresa, its just not in the hollywood-grab-a-gun-and-shoot-everything-that-moves hero, besides the term "hero" is rather qualative, what may be a hero to one person may be a villian to another, ex. Gandhi, or the dali lama.

[Moles1080]

i think also Orwell is trying to tell us that we must prevent this from occuring - i mean look at the way he builds up Winston's vigour in 'Part II' - "They can never get into you... there are a few cubic centimetres in head that are yours - they can't get to that." [paraphrased] We want him to stand up to Big Brother (despite this hope being crushed in room 101), and we thus live in the world of desperation that Winston too lives in. I mean didn't you feel manipulated just like winston when you found out that O'Brien was shockingly a member of the thought police? Maybe if we don't have sympathy for him, i think we have certainly an empathy of a sort for this Winston.

The guy we see at the end though is just hollow soul, and I think this is what makes it awkward to direct sympathetic feelings to 'Winston', for he no longer is winston, but just an inebriated robot, and we can't help but feel detatched from him. it's sad! kinda a failed 'good guy', if one at all. :nod:

[Stanislaw]

Maybe that is why one "dies" when they love big brother, they are not murdered its just that everything that was their free spirit is dead and they have completely bought into the propoganda.

( My history class is 101), Maybe I am in trouble JK;

[Rumble]

I think Winston is a hero in the literary sense. He's a decent guy but nothing more--he has serious flaws and these make him all the more human. It's not hard to sympathize with a regular guy trying to scrape through life, with a ruined marriage and childhood regrets--he's an Everyman in a horrible society.

When the party swallows him and spits out the empty shell, it destroys any one of us. That's Orwell's point, I think.

[subterranean]

Can we sympathise with Winston Smith? On one hand, winston is shown as the last gladiator to fight for virtue, love, objective goodness etc. But on the other he is turned into a snivelling wreck in his failure to uphold what he fights for. Do you think we are meant to sympathise with him, and accept that winston's failing was the fall of all men - or do are we meant to see his weakness and be stronger than he was?
:wave: :D
Miles.

It's easier to speak than to experience the nightmare it self.

I do sympathise with Winston. He's no hero, he's just an ordinary man like so many of us. He has his limits and I don't see him as somekind of "disgrace" for the human race, or to see his fall is the fall of all men (to use your terms ).

[Shore Dude]

My intial feeling was that Winston was a tragic hero. And I like how Stan described hero as being qualitative.

[MiSaNtHrOpE]

I also like how the book ended, and for the same reason. It would be impossible for one man to step up against the entire human race and the singular Party. In Orwell's world, everyone was governed in a similar fashion, brainwashed and neglected, and they would counter him probably before the Thought Police would because he would be rising up against what they think they love, similar to John's attempt to "free" the Epsilons in Brave New World by destroying the Soma.

Dont you remember how enthusiastic everyone was in 1984 about the false news, the Two Minutes Hate, Big Brother's claimed triumphs, and the development of Newspeak, them being none-the-wiser? I would only expect, if Winston was to rise up, that he would be crushed by everyone, including the civilians themselves.

[kaka]

In one sense Winston Smith is a hero - despite his failings. After all, he rejects the prevailing orthodoxy, and he tries to resist as best he can in his environment. Of course, he's naive - but in the world that Orwell paints in "1984" everyone (with the possible exception of a few very senior Party members) is denied access to the knowledge that might help them combat or avoid naivete. Nobody outside a tiny clique is in any sense "empowered" - absolutely the reverse! The Party has seen to it that no ordinary citizen has any power of any kind, however vaguely defined.

Of course, Winston cracks completely under torture, but that's absolutely standard. One can't "blame" him for that.

It's important that O'Brien (and comrades) don't just want to break Winston; they want to make him a complete mockery of everything that he once was.

I'll try to sum up the paradox. Yes, in many ways Winston is a hero of sorts in a world where the Party has already robbed everyone of any meaningful opportunity to be heroic.

[Teacher]

Orwell is clear in his criticism of both the dictator and the dictated.

In both Animal Farm (and especially 1984) Orwell is equally critical of those among us who allow such abuses to take place.

In other words, Winston and those like him are just as responsible for Big Brother's rise to power as Big Brother himself.

Look through history, Orwell tells us. At every turn we see the dictator rise up with the support of the people to some degree or another.

Orwell's concept here is more important now than at any point in American history.
:confused:

[imaditzyreader]

Ya. I also think that Orwell is trying to prove how it is the fault of the people who support such leaders. However, I think that if you must have a hero in this novel, that person is obviously going to be Winston. He at least tries to fix things and such. I do not think that it is his fault that he caves under the pressures of room 101. It is said in the book that who ever goes in there is changed. He could not resist the mental pressures, and niether should we have expected him to. At the end he caved under pressure and found a false security in his life. This security was breached by the captian of the police and by O'Brien.

He did no less than was possible and his only mistakes were being a tad too gullible in a world were that was deadly.

[kaka]

Teacher >>>"Orwell is clear in his criticism of both the dictator and the dictated". <<<

As far as the dictated are concerned - in "Animal Farm" perhaps, in "Nineteen Eighty-Four", a resounding NO. Once the kind of dictatorship portrayed has emerged, ordinary members of the public are powerless. Moreover, the dictatorship had, it is suggested in the novel, come into being when Winston was very young, far too young to do anything about it, far too young to retain any memories as an adult that might offer a counter-vision. (Obviously, Winston can't be responsible for what happened politically when he was a child).

The Party's iron grip on all the knowledge needed to form alternative visions - and of course its ability to smash opposition long before it stands even the remotest chance of being just a shade organized is what makes this dsytopia so frightening: this is simply no way out of the nightmare - absolutely none.

Incidenally, it's worth bearing in mind when and where the novel was written (Britain, 1943-48). Are we expected to assume that Orwell chose the name Winston in a fit of absent-mindedness? Surely it's no coincidence that the name of the hero (or central character) is none other than the given name of Britain's much admired leader in WWII.

I don't think there are any easy 'lessons' to be drawn from the novel.

[softball336]

I don't see complete heros or bad guys in 1984. I sympathized with Winston, but he was a hero to no one. He didn't end up fighting for what he believed in and was stopped before he possibly could. The only brave thing that Winston did was think things. O'Brien was the "bad guy", but what did he do wrong? He was taught to act this way and was only doing what he was supposed to do in this world that was warped, but was the only world he knew.

[crisaor]

O'Brien was the "bad guy", but what did he do wrong? He was taught to act this way and was only doing what he was supposed to do in this world that was warped, but was the only world he knew.
So, in other words, if it's the only thing you know, you're entitled to impose horrors upon humanity? I dread at your perception of the world.