1984
by George Orwell
Table of Contents
O'Brien
O’Brien—O’Brien is a sly and cunning Inner Party official who identifies Winston as someone likely prone to independent thinking. He lures him in with suggestive looks and comments, allowing Winston to spin a fantasy about joining a resistance movement and essentially letting him hang himself with his own rope. As an interrogator, he combines brutality with psychological manipulation, forcing Winston to identify with his own oppressor. He is an articulate spokesman for a brutal and heartless philosophy. His intellectual blind spots (he believes, for example, that the Earth is the center of the universe), however, reveal the way he himself has been shaped and molded.
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