1984 Character and Institution Map

Part of: The Deep Reader

In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith falsifies records for the state he privately hates. Julia works in the same ministry, O’Brien belongs to the ruling elite, and a shopkeeper seems to offer a room beyond the Party’s reach.

Contents

• The central relationships

• Winston’s family and marriage

• Colleagues and the Parsons household

• People erased or invented

• Proles and prisoners

• The Party and the four ministries

• Surveillance, organizations and vocabulary

• Places and the three superstates

• Name and abbreviation lookup

• Questions about identity and the ending

The central relationships

Winston Smith

An Outer Party member in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, Winston rewrites documents so that yesterday’s evidence agrees with today’s Party claims. His diary, memories and affair with Julia become attempts to preserve a life outside that work. The narration follows his perceptions closely, including guesses that later prove wrong.

Winston initially suspects Julia of spying on him and imagines O’Brien as a possible ally. Julia becomes his lover; O’Brien becomes his interrogator. After torture and Room 101, Winston is released. The final scene places him in the Chestnut Tree Café, emotionally surrendered to Big Brother.

Julia

Julia operates machinery in the Ministry of Truth’s Fiction Department. Her conspicuous Party enthusiasm and Junior Anti-Sex League sash conceal sexual relationships and a practical talent for evading restrictions. She initiates the affair with Winston, arranges their early meetings and brings scarce food and other comforts to their rented room.

She shares his hatred of the Party but has little interest in his historical arguments or an organized revolution. When O’Brien asks whether they would separate permanently for the cause, she refuses. After their arrest, her treatment takes place offstage. At their later meeting, she and Winston each admit betraying the other; their former desire has gone.

O’Brien

An Inner Party member whom Winston encounters at the Ministry of Truth, O’Brien encourages Winston’s hope that an intelligent opponent of the regime might be hiding inside it. He receives Winston and Julia at his apartment, presents himself as a member of the Brotherhood and arranges delivery of the forbidden book attributed to Goldstein.

In the Ministry of Love, O’Brien uses torture to force Winston to accept Party doctrine. He says he collaborated in writing the book. His earlier performance as a conspirator gives him access to the very hopes he will destroy. The novel gives him no first name and does not confirm that he was ever a dissident.

Mr. Charrington

The apparent elderly proprietor of a secondhand shop sells Winston the diary and glass paperweight, then rents him the upstairs room. His old nursery rhymes, objects and apparently gentle curiosity encourage Winston to associate him with a surviving pre-Party world.

At the arrest, Charrington drops his elderly manner and disguise; Winston sees that he is a much younger member of the Thought Police. A telescreen has been hidden behind the room’s picture of St. Clement’s Church. His shopkeeper persona is a cover. The novel does not establish whether Charrington is his real name.

Martin

O’Brien’s servant admits Winston and Julia to the apartment and joins the supposed conspiratorial meeting. O’Brien introduces him as one of their comrades. Because that meeting is a trap, this introduction cannot establish Martin as an authentic resistance member. His role beyond this meeting is not explained.

Winston’s family and marriage

Katharine — Winston’s estranged wife. Their marriage survives their separation: divorce is unavailable, and Winston does not know where she is. He remembers her rigid loyalty to the Party and her insistence on intercourse as a duty to produce a child; they had none. His affair with Julia is therefore adulterous. A later confession that he murdered Katharine is false: the narrative explicitly says she was still alive.

Winston’s mother and younger sister. They belong to his fragmentary childhood memories. During a period of hunger, he steals chocolate from his little sister and runs away; when he returns, mother and child have disappeared. He never discovers their fate. His mother’s protection of the younger child becomes his strongest remembered example of an attachment that asks for nothing from the Party.

Winston’s father. Winston remembers him less clearly, including his spectacles and dark clothes. His father disappeared before his mother and sister. The novel gives no secure explanation of his disappearance.

The woman called Smith. A drunken older woman in Winston’s earlier place of detention has the same surname and jokes that she might be his mother. Winston briefly considers the possibility. She is not identified as his mother, and the shared name supplies no family connection.

Colleagues and the Parsons household

Syme

A philologist working on the eleventh edition of the Newspeak dictionary, Syme explains how reducing vocabulary is meant to restrict thought. His enthusiasm is orthodox, but his intelligence and frankness make Winston fear for him. He later disappears; his name is removed from the Chess Committee list, and nobody speaks of him. The novel gives no scene or independent report of his death.

Ampleforth

Winston’s colleague adapts older poems into politically acceptable versions. When they meet in detention, he thinks he may have been arrested because he left the word God at the end of a line in a Kipling poem: he could find no other suitable rhyme. This is his explanation of what may have happened, not a confirmed charge. Guards take him to Room 101.

Tillotson

A Records Department worker in a cubicle across from Winston, Tillotson dictates secretively into his speakwrite. Winston suspects they may be preparing rival versions of the same falsified report, but he does not know Tillotson’s assignment.

Tom Parsons

Winston’s neighbor at Victory Mansions works at the Ministry of Truth. Energetic, incurious and devoted to collective activities, Parsons collects subscriptions and helps organize Hate Week. Winston assumes a man so loyal will be safe.

In detention, Parsons says his seven-year-old daughter heard him say “Down with Big Brother!” in his sleep and reported him. He remains proud of her and grateful to the Party for catching him. His eventual sentence and fate are not given.

Mrs. Parsons and the children

Mrs. Parsons asks Winston to unblock the family’s kitchen sink. She appears frightened by her children, whose games imitate arrests and executions. Both children wear the Spies uniform. The son attacks Winston with a catapult; it is the younger daughter who later reports her father, according to Parsons.

People erased or invented

Comrade Withers. An Inner Party official praised in an earlier speech by Big Brother, Withers is subsequently treated as an unperson. Winston must rewrite the speech to remove him. The reason for his disgrace is unknown; Winston takes the instruction to erase him as an indication that he is already dead.

Comrade Ogilvy. Winston invents this exemplary young Party hero to replace the passage praising Withers. Ogilvy’s childhood loyalty, military achievements and heroic death are all Winston’s fabrication. He belongs to an invented newspaper biography inside the novel, not to Winston’s remembered acquaintances.

Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford. Former revolutionary leaders appear together in Winston’s memories of the purges and the Chestnut Tree Café. Their confessions accuse them of treason; a dated photograph Winston later handles places them in New York when they supposedly committed an incriminating act elsewhere. For Winston, it is direct evidence that a confession was false. The three men have already been executed when he finds the photograph. He destroys it; during interrogation, O’Brien produces another copy and destroys that too.

Rutherford was a political cartoonist before his fall from favor.

Proles and prisoners

The proles are the large working population outside the Party. Winston places his hope in their numbers and surviving family attachments, although he never discovers a movement capable of turning that hope into action.

The old man in the pub. Winston buys him beer and asks about life before the Revolution. The man remembers personal inconveniences and social encounters, but cannot supply the broad historical comparison Winston wants. He is separate from Charrington.

The woman singing in the yard. An unnamed prole hangs washing below the rented room, singing a popular song manufactured by the Ministry of Truth. Winston associates her strength and fertility with future generations. The novel never identifies her as a rebel or an informant.

The elderly sex worker. In his diary, Winston recalls a furtive encounter with a prole woman whom he realizes is much older when he turns up the lamp. She is a different person from Julia, the singing woman and the woman called Smith in detention.

Bumstead J., the chinless prisoner. The telescreen addresses him as prisoner 2713 Bumstead J. He offers bread to a starving man and is savagely beaten for it. The initial J. is given; a full first name is not.

The skull-faced prisoner. This unnamed, starving man recoils from the offer of bread. When ordered to Room 101, he begs the guards to take someone else, offering up his family and accusing Bumstead. He is not Bumstead. His terror anticipates the demand later made of Winston: save yourself by giving another person to the torturer.

The Party and the four ministries

Big Brother is the leader’s face on posters, coins and telescreens, credited with every achievement and made the object of public devotion. Winston never meets him. Whether a separate individual stands behind the image remains unresolved.

The Inner Party is the small ruling group to which O’Brien belongs. Its members enjoy privileges unavailable to ordinary Party workers, illustrated by his apartment, wine and apparent ability to turn off the telescreen.

The Outer Party supplies the administrative workforce. Winston and Julia belong to it. Its members live under strict discipline, surveillance and shortages.

The proles, short for proletarians, form the majority. They have more latitude in private pleasures than Party members, but endure poverty, managed entertainment and political exclusion. Police agents circulate in their neighborhoods.

The Party’s three slogans appear on the Ministry of Truth and recur throughout public life: “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength.”

Within the Ministry of Truth, several names are easy to confuse:

Surveillance, organizations and vocabulary

The Thought Police and public organizations

The Thought Police detect and punish political disloyalty through observation, informants and infiltration. Charrington is a member. O’Brien helps entrap Winston and directs his interrogation; his exact official post is not given.

The Spies train children to watch for enemies and suspicious behavior. The Parsons children belong to the organization. Children’s zeal makes parents vulnerable inside their own homes.

The Youth League is another organization through which the Party directs young people’s activities. Julia has acquired practical skills and an excellent public reputation through organized Party work.

The Junior Anti-Sex League promotes sexual restraint and directs loyalty away from private attachments. Julia wears its scarlet sash as part of her public appearance. The sash offers no reliable clue to her private conduct.

The Two Minutes Hate and Hate Week are collective events focused on enemies. Goldstein is the central target of the daily Hate. During Hate Week, the foreign enemy changes in the middle of a speech; banners and records must immediately be altered to match.

Goldstein and the Brotherhood

Emmanuel Goldstein is presented by Party propaganda as a former revolutionary leader turned traitor, responsible for organized opposition. His face appears during the Two Minutes Hate. Winston has no independent access to him.

The Brotherhood is the alleged underground resistance associated with Goldstein. O’Brien claims to recruit Winston and Julia into it, then later refuses to tell Winston whether it exists. The apartment meeting is evidence of a police trap; it cannot establish the existence or membership of a genuine wider organization.

The book, titled The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, is attributed to Goldstein. Winston reads its analysis of class rule and permanent war. O’Brien later says he helped write it, endorsing its description of the system but dismissing its program for overthrowing the Party.

Newspeak and other terms

Places and the three superstates

London → Airstrip One → Oceania. London is Winston’s city. Airstrip One is the territory formerly called Britain, now part of Oceania. The book attributed to Goldstein describes Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia as rival superstates with shifting alliances; Winston’s limited access to reliable information leaves the wider world beyond his ability to verify.

At the opening, Oceania is at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia. During Hate Week, Eastasia becomes the enemy, and the Party insists that it has always been so. By the final café scene, the announced war is against Eurasia again.

Orwell gives a different shape to political betrayal in the Animal Farm character map.

Name and abbreviation lookup

Questions about identity and the ending

Is Big Brother a real person?

He is real as the regime’s public image and the object of its demands for love. The novel never settles whether he exists as a separate, living individual. O’Brien answers Winston’s question by identifying Big Brother with the Party and evading the distinction Winston wants to make.

Is Goldstein real, and does the Brotherhood exist?

The regime uses Goldstein as an enemy, and O’Brien uses the Brotherhood to lure Winston into a trap. Neither role settles whether the person or organization exists independently.

Do Winston and Julia betray each other before their arrest?

The arrest exposes Charrington’s surveillance. The novel identifies no voluntary betrayal by either lover that led to it. Both betray the other after capture: Julia acknowledges hers after release; Winston’s is dramatized in Room 101, where he begs that the rats be used on Julia instead.

Is Winston executed at the end?

No literal execution is narrated. The bullet in the final passage belongs to Winston’s dreamlike imagining while he sits in the café. His submission has already occurred: he welcomes the reported victory and loves Big Brother.

Does the Newspeak appendix prove the Party eventually falls?

Its retrospective description of Newspeak leaves room for that reading, but it does not narrate a fall or give a successor government. It says Newspeak was expected to replace Oldspeak by about 2050. The project is still unfinished during Winston’s life.

At their last meeting, Winston and Julia can name their betrayal, but neither recovers the feeling that once made the other worth protecting.

Sources

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Primary text: Project Gutenberg Australia, eBook 0100021, updated November 2008; Parts One, Two and Three, and “The Principles of Newspeak.” This electronic text does not identify a particular print edition.