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 (2003) reports that the title "1984" was chosen simply as an inversion of the year 1948, the year in which it was being completed, and that the date was meant to give an immediacy and urgency to the menace of totalitarian rule. Throughout its publication history, "Nineteen Eighty-Four" has been either banned or legally challenged, as subversive or ideologically corrupting, like the dystopian novels "We" (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, "Brave New World" (1932) by Aldous Huxley, "Darkness at Noon" (1940) by Arthur Koestler, "Kallocain" (1940) by Karin Boye and "Fahrenheit 451" (1953) by Ray Bradbury. Some writers consider the Russian