George Orwell once offered this definition of heroism: ordinary people doing whatever they can to change social systems that do not respect human decency, even with the knowledge that they can’t possibly succeed. In Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, Orwell creates an ordinary person, an “everyman” who stands for all the oppressed citizens of Oceania. Yet, as the novel closes, Winston cries as his love for Big Brother overwhelms him. Is Winston the novel’s hero, by Orwell’s definition? Is he a hero that readers can admire and emulate? Explain your position by tracing Winston’s actions throughout the novel and considering the results of those actions.

Orwell's definition of heroism calls for an ordinary person who fights, knowing that success is impossible, against a tyrannical social system. In my opinion, Winston Smith easily qualifies as a hero according to this definition.
Winston is certainly an ordinary person by most standards. As he says himself, "I'm thirty-nine years old. I've got a wife that I can't get rid of. I've got varicose veins. I've got five false teeth." He also lives in an ordinary apartment, in a building whose hallways smell of "boiled cabbage and old rag mats," where the lift is usually broken.
The social system, represented by the Party, is certainly tyrannical and cares little for human decency. The citizens are kept under constant surveillance, with no privacy. Many, like Winston, are hungry and in poor health. At the beginning of the novel, for example, Winston has nothing but "a hunk of dark-coloured bread" in the kitchen. And at the Ministry of Truth, where Winston works, he and the other workers are served a stew which is described as "a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit." As well as all this, the Party teaches "that the proles [are] natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals."
It's clear also that Winston is willing to fight against the Party, at least as much as he can and as far as he is able. The only real option available to him in this regard is the Brotherhood, which he joins in full knowledge of the risks to his own life. When he joins the Brotherhood, along with Julia, and is asked what he would be prepared to do to overthrow the Party, Winston responds, "Anything that we are capable of." He says that he is willing to give his life, to commit murder, sabotage, and treason. In short, he declares himself ready to "do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party." Winston also tries to fight back in other, more subtle ways. He keeps a diary, for example, to try and record the truth about the Party for future generations. He does this knowing that, if caught, he will be "punished by death, or at least by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp."
The one aspect of Orwell's definition of heroism that we may perhaps question in relation to Winston Smith is whether he really believes that a successful rebellion is impossible. He joins the Brotherhood because he believes in O'Brien. Indeed, when he looks at O'Brien, Winston finds it "impossible to believe that he could be defeated." Winston also, throughout the novel, repeatedly declares that he has hope in the proles. "If there is hope," he says, "it lies in the proles."
Nonetheless, Winston is aware throughout the novel that the fight will be dangerous and extremely difficult. O'Brien tells him that he will "have to get used to living without results and without hope" and that he "will be caught . . . will confess, and . . . will die." He also tells Winston that there is "no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime." The fact that Winston, accepting all that O'Brien tells him, still agrees to fight, and to give himself entirely to the fight, does, I think, satisfy Orwell's definition of a hero. Winston is willing to be a martyr for the cause, and by the end of the novel, although not in the way he envisioned, he becomes exactly that.