Unicode String Issue

I am storing some unicode characters "" in a char array.
When I view(x/30s <variable name>) the values in gdb it show me something like:
0x80ac47c: "?\004>\004 "
0x80ac482: "A\0048\004;\004L\004D\004>\004=\004:\0045\004/"

Why it is happening so and what are these \004 representing?

gdb works at a low level. It does not use locale to "see" unicode, it sees ASCII. \004 or \nnn is an octal number.