George Orwell As A Modern Hero Essay - 1483 Words

Heroes in the Writing of George Orwell Can a hero still be a hero although he succumbs to his weakness? What if he becomes the very thing he was against or want to eradicate? In our modern world, we find many examples of heroes in stories, movies, and even the news that usually have a positive connotation related to them, and many of their story arcs usually have a positive resolution, similar to the classic romantic stories long ago. The author George Orwell completely flips the notion of the classic hero on its head, but does it well enough that it makes us question what is a true hero. George Orwell’s definition of a hero is quite different than the one we might be familiar with. He believed that true heroes were ordinary people doing†¦show more content†¦1) These televisions constantly transmitted propaganda in favor of INGSOC, but the most terrifying system of it was the audio and video transmitter. With it, the thought police could spy on every citizen to see what they were doing, and punish them accordingly if they were doing something that was deemed illegal. The poster of Big Brother with the words â€Å"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU† (Orwell, ch. 1) posted all over the city transmitted the citizens living situation: they were constantly being monitored by a government that controlled every detail of their lives. When Orwell introduces Winston Smith, he does not describe some special chosen hero ready to liberate the world of repression. Instead, he describes a regular man, living life in this tough world. Winston â€Å"was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle† and â€Å"went slowly† because of his frail deposition (Orwell, ch. 1). Orwell begins the novel describing Smith’s weaknesses, like his older age and his health problems. These details quickly clash against what Smith is about to do, something that is punishable by the thought police. In a book, which was â€Å"a compromising possession†, he was about to â€Å"open a diary† (Orwell, ch. 1). Although what he was doing was not illegal, â€Å"if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death†, since INGSOC never said their citizens could have a diary. He began to write trivial things in his diary, like movies heShow MoreRelatedMartin Luther King Compare And Contrast782 Words   |  4 Pages Compare and Contrast Essay The year of 2017 has been one of the most politically heated and controversial years of the twenty-first century. 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