Charlie Character Analysis

A young, shiftless man from a respectable family who, like Orwell, lives at the Hotel des Trois Moineaux. Charlie characterizes his savage rape of a young prostitute as the day he discovered the true nature of love. During the rape, Charlie considers murdering the young woman and only refrains out of fear of the law. To Charlie, love is brutal, unsatisfying, and over in a moment. Orwell describes him as pink-faced and pig-like with abnormally short arms, and lips “excessively red and wet, like cherries.”