O'Brien (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

O'Brien (known as O'Connor in the 1956 film adaptation of the novel) is a fictional character and the main antagonist in George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

O’Brien then extracts a series of pledges from the couple that they are prepared to do anything to serve the Brotherhood, except (at Julia's protest) to separate from each other.

He is part of a false flag resistance movement whose goal is to find thought-criminals (anyone who has ideas deemed to be unacceptable by the Party), lure them in by pretending to be on their side, then arrest and help them to become "sane" (ideologically conformant).

This would mean that he was born about 1934 to 1936, that he was a young man at the time of the Revolution which brought the Party to power, and that unlike Winston he clearly remembers the world as it was before - though he does not share these reminiscences with his prisoner (except for demonstrating that he knows the full text of "Oranges and Lemons").

The torture scenes (undertaken by O'Brien) were influenced in part by the stories leaked out of the USSR of the punishments inflicted on political prisoners in mental hospitals and the Gulag.

[3] Canadian actor Lorne Greene played O'Brien in a 1953 adaptation on the CBS anthology series Studio One (S06E01) called "1984".

[4] In the adaptation broadcast on 26 April 1953 on The United States Steel Hour radio program, Alan Hewitt played O'Brien.

[6] In the highly successful Almeida Theatre and West End production of 1984 directed by Robert Icke O’Brien was played by Tim Dutton.