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 toured the UK and played an extended run in London's West End. The play opened on Broadway in 2017. In the decades since the publication of "Nineteen Eighty-Four", there have been numerous comparisons to Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World", which had been published 17 years earlier, in 1932. They are both predictions of societies dominated by a central government and are both based on extensions of the trends of their times. However, members of the ruling class of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" use brutal force, torture and mind control to keep individuals in line, while rulers in "Brave New World" keep