1984
Winston Smith's name means Joy stone, but throughout the book, he never shows any characteristics that would make you think of him as really joyful or share any characteristics with a stone like being sturdy or brave, so why do you think the author chooses this as his name?
Hello Kurt. As you have already mentioned, Winston displays no characteristics of the meaning of his name. He is neither happy, nor sturdy, and being the main character of the story, he is also not heroic. This is important in that he is simply your average brainwashed citizen. The only thing significant about him is that he is slightly rebellious, and even then he has phases where he feels he shouldn’t do what he is doing (with Julia). I think that the reason that he called the character “Winston Smith” is to simply emphasize the fact that he is totally ordinary. It is a very simple name, both names being pretty common. Another reason this name could be important is that at the end Winston is brainwashed and tortured into loving Big Brother, finally becoming “happy”. This can account for the part of his name that means “joy”. The stone part of his name can come from the fact that a stone is an object. With this object you can do things with it (such as bludgeon someone to death or skip rocks at your local lake) but other than that they are not essential. They are disposable, in essence. They are also at the complete mercy of the one who owns it, and in this metaphor, Winston Smith is a stone and the government is the one who owns said stone.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the book Orwell uses lots of irony as a thought provoking literary device, with lots of clever uses such as the names of the different departments. An example of this is the job of the ministry of truth is to rewrite historical documents to make sure the members stick with big brother and have no thoughts of positive rebellion. Also they do this to match the constantly changing current party line. Winston could have been named to be ironic because in the book he is seemingly the opposite of joyful. Always trying to find who he is and what the party is actually trying to accomplish. He also works for the ministry of truth and is trying to rebel to find the truth about himself. The name Winston also has six variant forms: Win, Winn, Winsten, Winstonn, Wynstan, and Wynston. Once you see this, it is even more ironic because in the end Winston does not win and just ends up converting to big brother and seemingly agrees with everything he says. The history of the name Winston is that it is from a surname from an English place name since Orwell was an English author he could have just chosen the name out of popularity. If he chose the name out of popularity it might be because Winston is not that outgoing of a character and seems like a “normal Joe” thus choosing a popular name would make sense, saying that there is nothing special about him that stands out dramatically than other people in his given situation. His last name Smith is also very popular, and its derivations are an occupational name for a man who works with metal.
ReplyDeleteThe Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty. (Orwell 8)
DeleteThanks andy for posting and you bring up many great points, and I agree with the part about him loving big brother accounting for the joy part of his name, and comparing Winston to a stone that the government owns that is disposable is a unique way to look at it and makes a lot of sense, but when I think of Winston's name meaning stone, I don't think about it that way, I look at it from a what kind of traits do they share kind of perspective, but this has truly opened my eyes.
ReplyDeleteI like how you are trying to come at this question Jessica, and many of your points make sense and they all are thoroughly researched, I would probably agree more with the irony rather than Orwell naming his character based on popularity. It would make more sense that he named him Winston Smith out of irony since Orwell was an author and because Winston is nothing like the meaning of his names. Since Orwell was a famous author, I would just think he named Winston based off of literature rather than popularity, but no one can be 100% sure. Well done on the research Jessica.
ReplyDelete