Winston Smith’s Revolution and Humanity: "George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four"
- Autores: María Carmen González Varela
- Localización: Taking stock to look ahead: celebrating forty years of English studies in Spain / coord. por María Ferrández San Miguel, Claus Peter Neumann, 2018, ISBN 978-84-16723-51-5, págs. 63-68
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in 1949. The novel is articulated around Winston Smith, the writer’s antihero. Winston’s life is characterised by paranoia, control and isolation. Nevertheless, Smith’s life dramatically changes when he meets Julia, Orwell’s female protagonist and anti-heroine. In this paper, I will be critically examining Winston Smith’s role as antihero and humanity-seeker. As O’Brien—a member of the Inner Party—states, Winston has become “the last man in Europe” (Orwell 2000, 244), since the male protagonist has been gradually deprived of his emotions and humanity. Furthermore, Julia’s personal rebellion is also essential when analysing the male protagonist’s journey, since Julia’s sexual revolution connects Smith to the humanity he has desperately longed for. Julia’s condition as “a rebel from the waist downwards” (Orwell 2000, 141), is carefully articulated in the novel in terms of her sexuality, which I will be discussing from the perspective of gender studies
