But not until their love was strong did the Party intervene. Both had been watched for years and could have been captured at any time. Note that the couple was caught at their happiest moment, the moment where they let down their guard and felt like an ordinary couple. When Julia and Winston fall in love, they commit the ultimate offense against the Party. Julia uses sex to attack the Party, but it is far less effective a weapon than love. She busies herself with getting around the Party, unlike Winston, who wishes to attack the Party at its center. While Winston is emotional about the Party and its potential downfall, Julia feels his wishes are merely fantasy and is apathetic to the Party's dogma. She understands the Party better than he does and is more cunning in the ways that she defies Party doctrine. Julia is far more intuitive and realistic than Winston. His rebellion is as much for future generations as it is for himself her rebellion is purely incidental to her own desires. She does not do this to destroy the Party but to quench her own desires, and that is the fundamental difference between Winston and Julia. While Winston enjoys sex and intimacy, Julia is an outwardly sexual being and sleeps with Party members regularly - at least before she meets Winston. Her demeanor is that of a zealous Party follower, but just under that thin surface is an individual with unchecked human desires and a willful spirit, which ultimately results in her capture. While Winston simply manages to survive, Julia is a true survivalist, using any means necessary to conduct her self-centered rebellion. She represents the elements of humanity that Winston does not: pure sexuality, cunning, and survival. For example, Hitler and Stalin used this kind of torture to keep their power and did it in the name of "purity." O'Brien represents these leaders and others, who use cruelty and torture as their primary method of control.Julia is Winston Smith's love-interest and his ally in the struggle against Big Brother. The character of O'Brien is not so different from many of the contemporary leaders of the 20th century. If Winston would simply embrace the Party's doctrine, he would be "clean." But it is not really Winston that O'Brien and the Party want to change the Party wants to purify all thought, believing that one stray thought has the potential to corrupt the Party. ![]() O'Brien is trying, through torture, to make Winston "perfect," to "save" him. O'Brien is often seen as a father figure and a friend to Winston. He is not the individual being tortured, though he would have Winston and the reader believe that the "rehabilitation" once happened to him as well. This statement illustrates a consciousness that would be dangerous for an Outer Party member to have, so it is possible that O'Brien shares the same consciousness as Winston, but because of his status in the Party, has no reason to want society to change. ![]() There is no evidence to sustain the idea that O'Brien truly believes in the concepts that he forces upon Winston beyond his statement to Winston in the Ministry of Love that the Party had gotten him (O'Brien) long ago. ![]() Whether or not he truly believes contradictory notions simultaneously, he is determined to teach Winston to do so. O'Brien is not only duplicitous in nature, but he also seems to be able to employ doublethink very well. This effect is partly a result of his mysteriousness and partly because the novel hinges on O'Brien's "turnabout" actions if he were given more time on the page, his true nature would have been revealed too soon. ![]() While Winston is characterized as an individual, a small man in a large society, O'Brien is bigger than life and remains so throughout the novel. Without O'Brien, the Party would be as mysterious to the reader as it is to Winston and Julia. He functions largely to bring the reader into the inner chambers of the Party so that its mechanisms can be revealed. O'Brien represents the Party and all of its contradictions and cruelty. O'Brien seems to be a co-conspirator and friend to Winston Smith until the third part of the novel, when he is revealed as a zealous Party leader who had been closely watching Winston for years. He seems to be close to Big Brother and may even be part of a collective that makes up Big Brother. O'Brien is a prominent leader in the Inner Party, although his official title is not clear.
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