Winston Smith (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
Winston Smith is a fictional character and the protagonist of George Orwell's dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The character was employed by Orwell as an everyman in the setting of the novel, a "central eye ... [the reader] can readily identify with."
Winston Smith portrayed by John Hurt in the 1984 film Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian state in the novel on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism, and Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.
First-edition cover
The novel was completed at Barnhill, Jura.
A 1947 draft manuscript of the first page of Nineteen Eighty-Four, showing the editorial development
A 1931 poster for the first five-year plan of the Soviet Union by Yakov Guminer [ru] reading "The arithmetic of an industrial-financial counter-plan: 2 + 2 plus the enthusiasm of the workers = 5"