Winston Smith

Winston Smith is the protagonist of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, a low-ranking member of the ruling Party in the totalitarian superstate of Oceania. Employed at the Ministry of Truth altering historical records to match the Party's ever-changing official version of events, Winston privately despises the regime and its all-seeing leader, Big Brother, and begins secretly recording his forbidden thoughts in a diary, an act that itself constitutes a capital offense under the Party's constant surveillance. He begins a clandestine love affair with a younger Party member, Julia, and the two seek out what they believe is an underground resistance movement, only to be betrayed, arrested by the Thought Police, and subjected to prolonged psychological torture by the Party official O'Brien in the Ministry of Love, designed not merely to punish Winston but to break his inner will and make him genuinely love Big Brother. Winston Smith's ultimate defeat, ending the novel utterly loyal to the regime that destroyed him, has made him one of the defining figures in dystopian fiction for the totalizing power of the surveillance state Orwell depicted.