George Orwell's 1984: Is Winston A Hero?

1984 by George Orwell has many literary aspects to it. The specific ones to be analyzed are the if Winston is a hero, nostalgia, symbol of paperweight, conflict of truth, and the family dynamics of 1984.
Winston is not the typical hero of the story that saves the people from oppression and tyranny. However, Winston isn’t a hero. A hero is supposed to face danger and overcome it through bravery and strength. Winston does not do that, quite the opposite is shown on page 286 when in midst of having rats unleashed on him, he screams, “Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia. Not me!” ( Orwell 286). Instead of face danger and overcome it, Winston cowardly reflects the danger onto someone he once loved for self-preservation. Quite early on in the hero’s journey
A feeling of wanting to know how the past really was. “This feeling of nostalgia returns in the details of the nursery rhymes that Winston loves…Winston’s choice to toast to the past when he visits O’Brien.”(Porter 3). When Winston saw the wine he was to drink, he thought that it had the same essence as the paperweight and reminded him of the past. Winston, in his thoughts said “ it belonged to the vanished, romantic past, the olden time as he liked to call it in his secret thoughts.”(Orwell). Winston asks again and again a man at a bar about the past from page 88 to 92. For instance, he asks: “Would you say, from what you can remember, that life in 1925 was better that it is now, or worse?” (Orwell 92). Winston wanted to know about the past enough that he paid for a man’s drinks and risked asking people about the past. At this time, people could be arrested for talking about a past different from the one the Party published. Winston was risking being killed or imprisoned by asking the man about life before the party. He desperately wanted to