Who are the proles?

The proles in 1984 are the proletariat, the working-class majority who make up about 85 percent of Oceania’s population. Unlike members of the Inner and Outer Party, the proles are largely ignored by the government because the Party considers them too uneducated and politically unconscious to organize a rebellion.

The Party treats the proles differently from Party members. They are not subjected to the same intense ideological discipline or constant political rituals. They are allowed to drink, gamble, have casual sex, and consume cheap entertainment and pornography produced by the Ministry of Truth. Winston notices that the Party keeps them distracted with “sport, crime, and astrology” as well as “sentimental songs,” while assuming they will never become politically aware enough to threaten the system.

At the same time, Winston believes the proles are humanity’s last hope. Unlike Party members, they still form natural emotional bonds and live according to “private loyalties.” Winston realizes that “The proles had stayed human.” At one point, he admires an ordinary prole woman singing in the courtyard because she represents vitality, fertility, and endurance. Winston thinks, “If there was hope, it lay in the proles!”

Yet Orwell keeps this hope uncertain. The proles have freedom in small personal ways, but they lack the education, organization, and historical awareness needed for revolution. Winston recognizes the paradox that “until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” The Party’s control over information and history keeps them trapped in that condition.

The proles therefore occupy a complicated place in the novel. They are oppressed and manipulated, but they also preserve qualities the Party has nearly destroyed in everyone else: emotion, family loyalty, sexuality, and ordinary human life. Winston sees in them a version of humanity that has not yet been fully conquered.