What is your opinion of Julia? Is she a realist or a cynic ?

In the context in which George Orwell's novel
1984 takes place, there is no real distinction between a realist
and a cynic. So autocratic is the society Orwell depicts, and so dystopian, that any
individual who accurately perceives the situation in which he or she exists can easily
appear both a realist and a cynic, and Julia certainly qualifies. The episode in Chapter
10 when Winston more-or-less formally makes Julia's acquaintance illustrates the nature
of Julia's character quite well. Inquiring of his new-found friend the origins of the
chocolate she has shared with him, he receives the following
reply:

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'Black market,’ she said
indifferently. ’Actually I am that sort of girl, to look at. I’m good at games. I was a
troop-leader in the Spies. I do voluntary work three evenings a week for the Junior
Anti-Sex League. Hours and hours I’ve spent pasting their bloody rot all over London. I
always carry one end of a banner in the processions. I always Iook cheerful and I never
shirk anything. Always yell with the crowd, that’s what I say. It’s the only way to be
safe.’

Julia is
very much a realist in her perception of the society in which she lives, and of the
requirements of continuing to exist in that society with a modicum of privilege. She is,
however, exceptionally cynical in her interpretation of the government's dictates and of
the nature of that society. Under the circumstances in which she lives, Julia is both a
realist and a cynic, as it would, for any citizen possessed of even a modicum of
critical thought in the society depicted in 1984, be impossible to
be otherwise.