O'Brien (Nineteen Eighty-Four) O'Brien (Nineteen Eighty-Four) O'Brien (known as O'Connor in the 1956 film adaptation of the novel) is a fictional character and the main antagonist in George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four". The protagonist Winston Smith, living in a dystopian society governed by the Party, feels strangely drawn to Inner Party member O'Brien. Orwell never reveals O'Brien's first name. O'Brien is a member of the Inner Party and, like Winston Smith, works in the Ministry of Truth. There, he holds an administrative position that is so distant that Winston has only a vague idea of its nature. Winston suspects that O'Brien secretly opposes
Nineteen Eighty-Four dystopian novel "We" by Zamyatin to have influenced "Nineteen Eighty-Four", and that the novel bears significant similarities in its plot and characters to "Darkness at Noon", written years before by Koestler, who was a personal friend of Orwell. The novel is in the public domain in Canada, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and Oman. It will be in the public domain in the United Kingdom, the EU, and Brazil in 2021 (70 years after the author's death), and in the United States in 2044. "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is set in Oceania, one of three inter-continental superstates that divided the world after a