Winston Smith — 1984

Winston Smith — the Ministry of Truth clerk who secretly rebels against Oceania's totalitarian regime and writes in an illegal diary — is the perfect vehicle for Orwell's exploration of how totalitarianism destroys not just individual freedom but individual consciousness itself. His defeat and re-education in Room 101, culminating in his genuine love for Big Brother, is one of literature's most devastatingly pessimistic endings and one of its most politically serious.