huge to desire to know objective reality. He remembers that the Party did not invent airplanes. He wishes he could remember the rest of the "oranges and lemons" rhyme. He clings to his childhood memories. He goes into the Proles' territory seeking physical manifestations of the old days, such as the paperweight he buys. He wants to know.

4. Appreciation of beauty: Winston loves the physical qualities of the old-fashioned journal he buys and the look of ink on a page. He loves the beauty of the piece of coral in the wavy glass of his paperweight. He appreciates Julia's beauty and appreciates it when she puts on makeup.

5. Rebelliousness: Winston pushes back against the state. He wants to be his own person, dangerous as that is, and he acts on his desires. He meets Julia secretly, and he wishes to be part of a political rebellion.

6. Optimism/wishful thinking: Winston wants to believe in an organized underground movement opposing the regime and wants to believe O'Brien is part of it. Despite the fact that he keeps saying he knows he and Julia will be caught, he acts out of wishful thinking, such as that O'Brien is on his side and Mr. Charrington a harmless old man.

7. Capacity for relationship: Winston is able to actually love Julia, which works to humanize him and defuse his violent fantasies. The two create something like a normal domestic love relationship in the room above Mr. Charrington's shop.

• Winston is fatalistic.  In other words, he thinks that the worst is going to happen to him.  You can see that right away at the end of Chapter 1.  As soon as he writes "Down With Big Brother" in his diary, he knows he's dead.  He wants to rip up the pages but he figures there's no use -- no matter what, he's dead.
• He's rebellious.  You clearly have to be very rebellious to want to go against the Party in this society.  The fact that he writes the diary is proof enough of that.
• He's individualistic.  By this, I mean that he wants to have an identity and memory of his own.  That's why he says that the freedom to say 2+2=4 is the basis for everything.  He wants to decide for himself what is true and what isn't.

Orwell presents Winston Smith as a kind of everyman character, making it easier for the reader to identify with him. Because Winston's such a recognizably human character in the midst of this dehumanizing environment, we find ourselves empathizing with his predicament and ask ourselves what we would do in such an appalling situation.

At the same time, Winston displays a number of character traits that lift him above the common herd. Despite the constant efforts of the Party to brainwash the citizens of Oceania, he's still a thoughtful individual—an intellectual with an acute awareness of what's going on around him and what it means for himself and society as a whole.

Because he's such an intelligent individual, Winston realizes that the present political system is thoroughly rotten to the core and needs to be completely destroyed. He sees through the endless lies, propaganda, and crude sloganizing of the Party to behold the terrible truth of life in Oceania.

From this realization of the truth comes incredible bravery, which at times blurs into outright foolishness. For as the story unfolds, Winston comes to take on increasingly dangerous risks in defying the regime, such as conducting an illicit affair with Julia and getting himself involved with what he thinks is an elaborate, high-level plot to end the Party's rule.

Winston's risky behavior is an expression of another facet of his personality: a deep-seated romanticism that gives him the hope that, one day, the Party will be overthrown, and its hateful tyranny will be brought to an end once and for all.