Most reviews that I have read of the novel paint Smith as a tragic hero, “the last man in Europe” who valiantly tried and failed to rebel against Big Brother. But having read the novel this is not the impression I get. What I get is that Smith was a weak contemptable fool whose fall was inevitable. My take on the character is that Smith is the prototypical “liberal idiot”, long on idealism and short on cajones, and perhaps even a whipping boy for Orwell’s own disillusionment with socialism and the political left.
For starters, it can be argued that Smith was broken not in a Ministry of Love torture cell but decades eariler. When he and his mother and baby sister are struggling to survive in the chaos of the civil war, he lets hunger turn him into a starving animal. He steals their last bar of chocolate and then runs away, leaving his family presumably to die either of starvation or at the hands of the revolutionaries. Smith turned his back on the love of his family then to save himself.
Decades later as an adult, Smith works for the Ministry of Truth. Despite all his ruminating and lamenting the fact that history is no longer reliable and the truth impossible to obtain, Smith actually helps the party continually falsify the records. He even takes personal pride in a tricky job well done. Now it can be argued that Smith had little choice- resigning from the Outer Party would be suicidal-; and perhaps falsifying records that are already garbage isn’t much of a sellout. But that Smith hangs onto the pathetic Oceanic equivalent of a middle-class existence despite his supposed hatred for what it stands for is at best hypocritical and at worst collabaration.
Then Smith tries his hand at “fighting the power”. Supposedly being recruited into the “Brotherhood” by O’Brien, he vows to do anything to overthrow the Party. Including:
“commit murder”; “commit acts of sabotage which may cause the deaths of hundreds of innocent people”; “betray your country to a foreign power”; “to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases”; “to throw sulphuric acid in a chid’s face”.
What Smith isn’t asked is, “would you give up your last chocolate bar to someone else and starve to death?”; “would you stick your face in a cagefull of hungry rats?”; “Would you accept being slowly beaten to death?”. One gets the feeling that Smith might not have been able to say yes to those.
And speaking of being beaten: Smith is, at bottom, a coward. He has no physical courage at all. About to be arrested by the Thought Police, he forgoes even a futile attempt at escape because:
“One thing alone mattered: to keep still, to keep still and not give them an excuse to hit you!”
After having previously sworn to commit suicide if necessary to protect the “Brotherhood”, Smith reflects that:
“Everything came back to his sick body, which shrank trembling from the smallest pain. He was not certain that he would use the razor blade even if he got the chance. It was more natural to exist from moment to moment, accepting another ten minute’s life even with the certainty that there was torture at the end of it”.
And when he finally does take a truncheon blow:
“The elbow! He had slumped to his knees, almost paralyzed, clasping the stricken elbow with his other hand. Everything had exploded into yellow light. Inconceivable, inconceivable that one blow could cause such pain! The light cleared and he could see the other two looking down at him. The guard was laughing at his contortions. One question at any rate was answered. Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase of pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there were no heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over as he writhed on the floor, clutching uselessly at his disabled left arm”.
Even though Smith consoles himself with the thought that everyone gives in, no one holds out, yet it is impossible to avoid the impression that O’Brien, Inner Party member and Smith’s torturer, really would do anything that Big Brother demanded of him, including dying by torture without a sound in an Eastasian torture cell. Or for that matter, even the stupid oxlike Proles endure an existence of grueling physical labor that would kill Smith in a month. The distinguishing mark of an Outer Party member, it seems, is an absolute lack of courage.
In summary, whatever else O’Brien might claim, one thing seems true: Winston Smith’s rebellion against Big Brother was a shallow and hypocritical one.