Brother

"Big Brother" is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence. more...

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In the society that Orwell describes, everyone is under complete surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens. The people are constantly reminded of this by the phrase "Big Brother is watching you", which is the core "truth" of the propaganda system in this state. The physical description of "Big Brother" is reminiscent of Joseph Stalin or Lord Kitchener.

In the novel

Existence

In the novel, it is not clear if Big Brother actually exists as a person or is an image crafted by the Party. However, since Inner Party torturer O'Brien at one point tells Winston Smith that Big Brother can never die, the apparent implication is that Big Brother is the personification of the totalitarian Party ruling Oceania. Another possibility is that Big Brother really exists or existed as a man. In the event of his death, the Inner Party would simply maintain the illusion of his leadership (and this may already be happening. At any rate, he is probably not as young as he is depicted on the telescreens.)

In a book supposedly written by the rebel Emmanuel Goldstein (but later revealed to have a more complex origin) it is stated that "nobody has ever seen Big Brother. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence; emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization." (See Goldstein's book)

In Party propaganda, however, Big Brother is presented as a real person; one of the founders of the Party along with Goldstein. At one point in the year 1984, the protagonist of Orwell's novel tries "to remember in what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother. He thought it must have been at some time in the sixties, but it was impossible to be certain. In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in great gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages with glass sides. There was no knowing how much of this legend was true and how much invented."

In the year 1984, Big Brother (as seen on posters and on the telescreen) appears as a ruggedly handsome man of about 45. If so, he could hardly have had an active role in politics already in the 1940s or even earlier, suggesting that his evolving biography is pure invention: this would be an easy lie for the Party to keep up, because of the Ministry of Truth. If his image was first introduced in the 1960s, 45 would then have been a reasonable age if he had been politically active since the 1940s. But like a cartoon character, he apparently stayed the same age indefinitely. Goldstein's book comments: "We may be reasonably sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was born."

Read more at Wikipedia.org