1984 by George Orwell -- Characters

Syme

- Winston Smith's "friend" - worked in the Research Department - tiny creature with dark hair and large, protuberant eyes - "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words." - Winston Smith thinks that one of these days he will be vaporized because he is too intelligent, he sees too clearly, and he speaks too plainly - frequented the Chestnut Tree Café

The Parsons Kids

- a handsome, tough-looking boy of 9 - a small girl of about 7 - dress in the blue shorts, gray shirt, and red neckerchief Spies uniform - play-pretend that they're apprehending Winston Smith for being a thought-criminal - they want to see the hanging - like tiger cubs that will grow into being man-eaters - the boy catapulted something at Winston Smith

inner party man

- a little Rumpelstiltskin figure - contorted with hatred - announced at the end of Hate Week that they were at war with Eastasia and not Eurasia

Tom Parsons

- always smells and looks sweaty - Winston Smith's fellow employee at the Ministry of Truth - fat but active with a frog-like face - very stupid - wanted to stay in the Youth League past 35 years old - makes an appearance at the Community Center every evening - proud of his kids for being snitches - brought into the prison too - brought in for "Thoughtcrime" and was very distressed about it - apparently said "Down with Big Brother!" in his sleep and his daughter denounced him - proud of his daughter for turning him in to the Thought Police - used and clogged the toilet

Katherine

- Winston Smith's ex-wife - tall, fair-haired girl - straight with splendid movements and a bold, aquiline face - nothing behind her noble-looking face - did not enjoy having sex with Winston Smith (or probably anyone) - stiffened up as soon as they made bodily contact - wanted to make a baby for Oceania and fulfill their duty to the Party - after she could not get pregnant for a while, they parted ways - Winston Smith thinks of her while he relives and writes about his encounter with a 50 year old Prole prostitute with no teeth and thick makeup

O'Brien

- Inner Party member - his job is extremely important - has a habit of resettling his spectacles on his nose - during the chanting of Big Brother after the Two Minutes Hate, Winston Smith caught his eye as he was adjusting his spectacles - Winston Smith thinks that their thoughts flowed between them through their eyes and that he understands him and his thoughts - 7 years ago Winston Smith had dreamed that he was walking in a pitch-dark room and he saw this man sitting there who said to him "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness."

Martin

- O'Brien's servant - pretty expressionless - possibly underwent facial surgery

Jones, Aaronson, & Rutherford

- among the last survivors (including Big Brother) - arrested and vanished for a year or more - after confessing to intelligence with the enemy (Eurasia), embezzlement of public funds, the murder of Party members, and intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother, they were reinstated in the Party and given jobs that were in fact sinecures - Winston Smith had seen all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Café drinking gin and not doing much - later all three were once again arrested - they confessed to their old crimes again and added on some new ones - five years after their trial and execution in 1973, Winston Smith was unrolling documents from a pneumatic tube and saw a photograph of the delegates at a Party function in New York, including the three men - the photograph was dated the same date that they had confessed to have been conspiring on Eurasian soil: on Midsummer Day - Winston Smith now knew of at least one example of concrete evidence of a falsification and he had scribbled notes down at that time

Wilsher

- blonde-headed, silly-faced young man - Winston Smith barely knows him - invites Winston Smith to a vacant place at his table, and Winston Smith cannot refuse - keeps Winston Smith from sitting with Julia at the canteen

Bumstead

- chinless, toothy face like a rodent - fat, mottled cheeks - pale-gray eyes flitted nervously around - dug into the pocket of his overalls and held out a grimy piece of bread to the emaciated man - beat up by officers and fell beneath the toilet seat with blood oozing from his mouth and noise - faintly whimpered or squeaked - as he got up a dental plate fell out of his mouth

woman with white hair

- enormous wreck of a woman - about 60 - great tumbling breasts - thick coils of white hair - carried into the prison kicking and shouting by four guards - she got dumped across Winston Sith's lap - cursed after the guards - seemed to flirt with him - her name is Smith too - "I might be your mother!"

Julia

- girl with dark hair - from the Fiction Department - 26 years old - Winston Smith thinks she is spying on him from the Thought Police - in the Junior Anti-Sex League and wears the scarlet sash around her waist - Winston Smith hates her, wants to rape and then murder her - in the Prole neighborhood, Winston Smith sees her and considers following her and smashing her head in with a cobblestone - falls in a corridor and when Winston Smith goes to help her up she slips him a folded up note that says "I love you" - first truly talk in the canteen to plan their next meeting - hold hands with Winston Smith at Victory Square - light brown eyes - worked in Pornosec (an infallible mark of good reputation) - she is a model citizen on the outside, but rebellious in truth - has sex with Winston Smith in the Golden Country - Winston Smith and her continue to meet and "talk in installments" - has greater hope of individualism, happiness, and life than Winston Smith - thinks of the Party as something as unchangeable as the sky, and doesn't believe in the Brotherhood

Rutherford

- had the greatest impression on Winston Smith out of the three men - once a famous caricaturist specializing in political concerns - a "monstrous man" - when the chestnut tree song played , Winston Smith noticed that his eyes were full of tears

singing Prole woman

- large - red armed - always singing while doing the washing (diapers) - inspires Winston Smith - Winston Smith thinks she is beautiful - is hurt during the raid

Mrs. Parsons

- lives in Victory Mansions on Winston Smith's floor - about 30, but looks much older - gives the impression that there was dust in the creases of her face - asks Winston Smith to unblock her kitchen sink because her husband Tom is not home

emaciated man

- looked like a skull - dying of starvation - Bumstead offered him a piece of bread - the guards come to take him to Room 101 - he protests saying he'll confess anything and would rather die - says he would watch his wife and three kids have their throats cut rather than go into Room 101 - then deflects and tells the officers to take Bumstead instead - he is taken anyways but puts up a fight, holding the bench legs and howling like an animal - a kick from a guard's boot breaks the fingers on one of his hands

Emmanuel Goldstein

- object of the Party members' Two Minutes Hate - the Enemy of the People - had once been a leading figure of the Party, almost on Big Brother's level - after engaging in counterrevolutionary activities, he escaped a death sentence and disappeared - Jewish, white hair, goatee beard, long thin nose, and spectacles - face and voice of a sheep - advocated for freedom of speech, press, assembly, and thought (all the while using Newspeak)

Winston Smith

- protagonist - Outer Party member - works at the Ministry of Truth (the Minitrue in Newspeak) - his job is to rewrite history in newspapers, etc. in the Records Department - lives in Victory Mansions - 39 years old - has a varicose ulcer on his right ankle - has five false teeth - his mom is tall, statuesque, silent, and fair hair - his dad was darker and thinner; and he dressed in dark clothes, wore spectacles, and wore especially memorable thin soled shoes - his parents were probably swallowed up in one of the first great purges of the Fifties - does not remember how or exactly when, but he dreams that in some way the lives of his mother and his sister had been sacrificed for his own - wants to rebel against and overthrow Big Brother and INGSOC - has a diary he is writing "to O'Brien" - says he hates purity and loves Julia more with the more men she's slept with - tells Julia about how 11 years ago on a community hike with Katherine in Kent he regrets not pushing Katherine off of a cliff

little man

- swiftly moving, beetlelike man with a flat face - tiny, suspicious eyes - was heading straight for Julia's table but then falls and spills all of his food, suspecting Winston Smith of having tripped him

Mr. Charrington

- the 30-year-owner of the junk shop in which Winston Smith had bought his diary - a prole - 60, frail and bowed, white hair, bushy black eyebrows, long nose, mild eyes with thick spectacles - he wore a black velvet jacket and had a soft voice - remembered selling Winston Smith the diary - sold Winston Smith a glass hemisphere with a piece of pink coral from the Indian Ocean in it for $4 - his wife died, and now he is trying to sell the furniture in the room that they used to live in - wanted to sell Winston Smith an old print of St. Clement's Dane, which is now a ruin in front of the Palace of Justice Law Courts - sings a children's rhyme about St. Clement's and St. Martin's (which is in Victory Square, now as a propaganda museum) that makes Winston Smith think that he has heard church bells ringing even though logically he couldn't have - Winston Smith originally thought that his name was "Weeks" because of an inscription above the entrance to the store - SNAKE - member of the thought police - actually has less bushy eyebrows, no wrinkles, a shorter nose, with a cold face - actually about 35 years old - a member of the Thought Police - apprehends Julia and Winston Smith

Comrade Ogilvy

- the person Winston Smith creates to fill the gap in the article about Comrade Withers - not a real person - perfect model

Comrade Withers

- was a prominent member of the Inner Party - singled out in the press for working with an organization called FFCC (which supplied cigarettes and other comforts to the sailors in the Floating Fortresses) - he was awarded a decoration, the Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second Class - three months later the FFCC was dissolved with no reasons why given - vaporized / gone / killed - an unperson

Ampleforth

- works a few cubicles away from Winston Smith - a mild, ineffectual, dreamy creature - hair ears and a talent for juggling with rhymes - worked in producing garbled versions of poems that had become ideological offensive - brought into the prison - shoeless with toes sticking out of his socks - brought to prison because while producing a definitive edition of the poems of Kipling he allowed "God" to remain in a line - brought to Room 101 before Winston Smith

man with blank discs for eyes

- works in the Fiction Department - has a young woman as his secretary - his spectacles catching the light make it appear as if he has two blank discs instead of eyes - a stream of words constantly poured from his mouth -- like the quaking of a duck - Winston Smith feels as if he is like a dummy rather than a human

Tillotson

- works in the corresponding cubicle on the other side of Winston Smith - a small, precise-looking, dark-chinned man - hostile looks towards Winston Smith - secretive when he works - Winston Smith thinks he's working on the same thing as him

woman with sandy hair

- works in the next cubicle to Winston Smith - after the Two Minutes Hate she shouts "My Savior!" at Big Brother and prays - deletes from the press the names of people who had been vaporized - her husband had been vaporized