"Winston was gelatinous with fatigue." ― Book 2, Chapter 9
Winston Smith is the main protagonist in George Orwell's 1984, and is the husband of Katherine.
Living as a citizen in Airstrip One, Oceania and being surrounded by the Party's totalitarian regime, Winston attempts his rebellion by hating the Party and being part of the government's opposing group, "The Brotherhood," even if he knows he would end up being manipulated or nearly vaporized by the Party.
Description[]
Winston Smith is a character and a civilian who witnesses the totalitarian regime from his point of view. He is ordinary and uses his strength to achieve his goal and circumstances. He is simple as Orwell uses his name to define his ordinariness: his first name, Winston, is inspired by British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, who was PM during WWII and praised for his bravery and leadership; and his last name, Smith, is the most common surname in the English language. This allows readers to identify with him during his actions and think of themselves being in his place to see the regime for themselves.
He is also a man of the future, except the time he lives in is dehumanized and bleak. He lives in a section in Airstrip One infected by poverty and eats awful and bitter food. Even if he finds himself living in a harsh reality that is imagined by Orwell in the year 1984, he thinks there is still hope and would come up with something to express his feelings and past experiences to the Party through a secret rebellion. No one else would have the strength and courage to stand up against the regime, and Winston could be the first of his kind to attempt his heroic acts, even if it meant placing his life at risk.
Winston believes that everyone deserves to live the life he used to have from his early years before the regime. He thinks people can still fall in love and have sexual relationships and free thoughts of themselves and those parts of their everyday lives. He even hopes once he becomes a member of the Brotherhood, he will successfully defeat the Party and be hailed as a hero. However, none of this can come to fruition, for the Party government is very powerful and manipulative; no matter how much he tries, he is among the opposers who risk being brainwashed or vaporized.
Storyline[]
Childhood[]
Marriage[]
Sometime in adulthood, Winston is married to a tall, fair-haired woman named Katherine.[1] They had been married for 15 months, but their marriage later became estranged, mainly because they couldn't have any children. In Oceania, all marriages between Party members must be approved by a committee on the condition that married couples cannot have sex for pleasure except for procreation so that their offspring would work for the Party's services. The Party doesn't permit divorce, but separation can be encouraged if they fail to reproduce.
Katherine is politically unorthodox to the Party, and Winston finds her unpleasant when they are in bed together. At one point, Winston thinks they should stay celibate. But Katherine refuses and insists they must produce a child to fulfill their duties to the Party. They had sex once per week, and when they failed to have children, they separated.
The Diary[]
Winston returns to his home, a dilapidated apartment called Victory Mansions, on a cold April day.[2] He struggles against the wind as he enters the building. Inside the heavily scented hallway is a portrait of Big Brother, Oceania's leader, and Winston made his way to the stairs instead of using the elevator; at times, it would operate, but now the electricity was turned off during the day as preparations for Hate Week were going underway.
Winston struggles climbing stairs due to a varicose ulcer on his right ankle. He would walk slowly and then stop to rest for a few minutes. A poster of Big Brother is seen on every landing. He goes into his apartment, where a voice speaks from a telescreen in his home. Outside, torn paper and dust blow through the streets and posters are planted everywhere, with one of Big Brother across the street from Victory Mansions and the poster’s eyes gazing at Winston. A flapping poster is printed with INGSOC, and a Thoughtpolice helicopter patrols the city and searches through windows.
The voice in the telescreen continues talking, including about the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen is able to pick up any sounds Winston makes. The Thoughtpolice secretly watches him through the telescreen of every movement or sound he makes. Winston turns his back to the telescreen, knowing he is still safe when being spied on. His workplace, the Ministry of Truth, is a giant pyramid structure that towers over London. He cannot remember if London had always looked like this, from the rotting 19th-century houses to areas destroyed by bombs. From where he is, Winston can read the official slogan of the Party at the Ministry of Truth, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance of Strength.”
The city has three other buildings whose structures are similar to the Ministry of Truth. They are the locations of the 4 Ministries that are part of the government’s apparatus: The Ministry of Truth controls news, education and entertainment; the Ministry of Peace conducts itself with war; the Ministry of Love maintains law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty is responsible for the economy. In Newspeak, they are called Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty. The Ministry of Love is the most ominous and fearful, as there are no windows, and Winston has never been inside it or had been near it. It is impossible to enter and is surrounded by barbed wire, steel doors and hidden machine guns. The exterior of the Ministry of Love is heavily guarded.
Winston turns around abruptly while changing his facial expression toward the telescreen and heads to his tiny kitchen. He had missed the opportunity to have lunch at the canteen when he left the Ministry of Truth early, and despite his hunger, he has to save a hunk of dark bread for breakfast tomorrow. He takes a bottle of Victory Gin from the shelf with an oily stench, pours a teacupful, and drinks it. After his body reacts to the foul taste, he takes out a Victory Cigarette and smokes it. He goes to the living room and sits at a small table left of the telescreen, where he takes out a penholder, a bottle of ink, a blank diary and a marbled covering.
The telescreen is located on a wall opposite the window instead of being on the end wall where it monitors the whole room, and Winston is sitting in an alcove; as long as he is sitting in the alcove, the telescreen cannot see him, although it may still hear him. Winston remembers that he had found the lovely, old book in a window at a secondhand store in a quarter of London he doesn’t know. He becomes fascinated about owning the book, even though Party members aren’t usually supposed to be shopping in ordinary stores. But there is no strict rule about it, and stores may include various things that are impossible to find anywhere.
After a glance around him on the street, he entered the store and bought the book for two dollars fifty. Initially, he didn’t know what he will do with him but is racked with guilt as he took it home in his briefcase, though he found the blank book he bought interesting. He opens a page of the book; since there are no more laws, it isn’t illegal to own a diary, but Winston knows if he’s caught with one, the punishment is either death or 25 years at a forced-labour camp. He fits the nib into the penholder and sucks on it to get the grease out, as the pen is old-fashioned enough to be used for signatures, and Winston thinks the pages inside the diary deserve to be written by a real pen nib instead of an ink pencil. He isn’t used to writing by hand but knows he has risked his life. He dips the pen into the ink, slightly trembling and writes, “April 4th, 1984”. He sits back, unsure if the actual date was in 1984, and knows he is 39 years old and born in 1944 or 1945. It was now impossible to track down any dates within a year or two. He wonders who exactly he was writing the diary for. He thought of the term doublethink, and he thought of how can he communicate with the future. But if the future resembles the present, it would be impossible, and it won't listen to or be different from him.
Winston stares at the blank page as the telescreen begins playing military music. For some weeks, he had been preparing himself to have the power to express himself and had built up enough courage for this moment. He thinks writing the monologues will be easy, but the idea is halted. He even dared not to scratch his varicose ulcer as it would be inflamed. So he sits looking at the blank page for some time while the music of the telescreen plays, and his ankle becomes itchier. And then, in a sudden panic, he writes down on the blank page.
On April 4th, 1984, he describes how he was at the cinema that played war films. An interesting one had a scene where a ship carrying refugees was bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean that amused the audience, followed by a fat man trying to swim away from a helicopter following him. The audience burst into laughter as he drowned. Next, he describes a lifeboat full of children being pursued by a helicopter, with a middle-aged Jewish woman holding a panicking 3-year-old child. The helicopter then dropped a 20-kilo bomb, and the boat exploded, with a child's severed arm being flown into the air. The audience again laughed, but a Prole woman became upset and said they shouldn't play this movie in front of young children until the police arrested her. Nobody knows what happened to her, but they don't care what the Proles think.
Winston stops writing because he suffers from a cramp and doesn't know exactly what he has written. But a certain memory occurred in his mind that nearly prompted him to write it down, and it was from this incident that he decided to leave work early and write an entry.
It was at the Ministry earlier that morning, at around 11 o'clock. The chairs are being rearranged in the Records Department in preparation for the Two Minute Hate. Winston was sitting in the middle row when he spotted two people he knew but had never spoken to before coming into the room unexpectedly. One was a woman around age 27 who he would frequently pass by in the hallways. She wore a sash that belonged to the Junior Anti-Sex League over her overalls. He doesn't know her name, but he knows she is a mechanic in the Fiction Department. He began despising her the moment he saw her and knew why; he may have disliked many women treated unfairly by the party. But the woman he sees seems the most dangerous of all, as he suspects her of being an agent for the Thought Police. While this idea may be unlikely, he still feels uneasy whenever she is near him.
The other person is a large, burly man named O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party who seemed to hold an important position in power that only Winston could think of. He had seen O'Brien several times over the years and began to idolize him not for his physique and polished manner, but he thought he could be an opposer to the Party and was the kind of person he could talk to if he managed to hide from the telescreen. O’Brien glanced at his watch and saw it was 11 o’clock. He decided to stay in the Records Department until the Two-Minute Hate was finished and took his seat in the same row as Winston but was a few seats away from him. The dark-haired woman sits behind him.
The Two-Minute Hate begins, and the face of Emmanuel Goldstein appears on the screen, with some hisses from the audience. Goldstein was once one of the Party's leading members many years ago. But after participating in revolutionary activities, he was sentenced to death; but he mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The Hate programs varied daily, but Goldstein was the principal figure, as he was seen as a traitor, and any treacherous crimes against the Party were from his teachings. It is believed he is still alive and somewhere in hiding, plotting his conspiracies.
Winston couldn’t help but have mixed emotions when he looked into Goldstein’s lean, Jewish face on the screen and watched him abusing Big Brother, wanting to end making peace with Eurasia, and promoting freedom of speech, assembly and thought with a speech that had more Newspeak words than any other Party member would use.
The Hate had barely started for 30 seconds when there were exclamations and cries of rage from half of the audience. While Goldstein was heavily despised and his theories proved wrong, his influence stayed the same. It has also been revealed that Goldstein is the commander of a secret army called The Brotherhood, whose main goals are to overthrow the Party. He had also written a book without a title full of heresies; most people simply refer to it as the book. However, it was only known through rumours that the Brotherhood and the book were something any Party member wouldn’t mention.
Two minutes into the Hate, the audience went into a frenzy. Everyone was yelling as loud as they could drown the maddening voice of Goldstein from the screen. O’Brien’s face looked flushed, and the dark-haired woman got up and yelled, “Swine!”. She suddenly picked up a Newspeak dictionary and threw it at the screen. Winston then realizes he’s joining the others by yelling and kicking his heel against the chair, as the others are filled with fear and resent killing and torture. One moment, Winston would turn his hatred towards Big Brother, the Party and the Thoughtpolice instead of Goldstein and showing pity for him; and the next, he takes part in the resentment towards Goldstein.
At some point, Winston switched his hatred to the dark-haired woman behind him, who he imagined beating to death with a rubber truncheon, tying her naked to a stake and shoot her with arrows, and seizing her and slitting her throat during the climax. He then realizes he hates her so much because she is young and beautiful, but he would never be able to sleep with her.
The Hate soon reached its climax, and Goldstein’s voice now sounds like a sheep bleating. For a brief moment, the face morphed into an actual sheep and then transformed into a Eurasian soldier with a roaring machine gun. He looked like he was about to jump off the screen's surface, and some people in the front row flinched back into their seats. Then the soldier turned into the face of Big Brother with his dark hair and moustache and said some words nobody could understand that were just words of encouragement. Afterwards, Big Brother’s face fades away, and the Party’s slogan is displayed in bold capital letters.
The face of Big Brother seemed to be still seen on screen for a few seconds. Then, a sandy-haired woman in the audience threw herself across the chair before her and murmured something like, “My Saviour!”. Next, she starts uttering a prayer. The audience then began chanting “B-B!” slowly and repeatedly. It went on for 30 seconds and either sounded like a hymn to Big Brother or an act of self-hypnosis. While Winston couldn’t help but take part in the delirium, he was always frightened when he heard the audience chant “B-B!” but chanted with them anyways.
Winston saw O’Brien get up and change his glasses when they both locked eyes on each other. It looked like O’Brien had the same feelings as Winston, and he seemed to tell him he knows about his hatred of the Party and hates them, too. Winston starts to believe that the Brotherhood does exist, while on other days, he doesn’t. There has been no proof of this, but Winston could only make some guesses when he overhears some conversations, sees scribbles on the lavatory walls, and sees two strangers chatting with a hand movement that looks like a recognition signal. He was likely imagining it as he returned to his cubicle without looking back at O’Brien.
He rouses himself and belches from the gin he drank. He looks down at the diary page, and while he has been musing, he has written “Down with Big Brother” repeatedly, which fills half of the page. He felt panicked, knowing that writing these words was more dangerous than opening the diary. He could rip out the pages he wrote but knew that would not be possible. He has committed Thoughtcrime, and sooner or later, the Thought Police will find him. The arrests by the Thought police mainly were at night, and those apprehended were vaporized and wiped out of existence. Winston is filled with hysteria and then writes in a messy scrawl that they can shoot and kill him, but he doesn’t care and wishes for Big Brother’s downfall. He sank back into his chair when a sudden knock came at the door. Trembling, Winston gets up and moves slowly toward the door.
He is about to touch the doorknob when he sees that he has left the diary open with the words “Down with Big Brother,” large enough to be seen by the whole room.[3] Despite his panicked state, Winston knows he can’t close the diary while the ink is still wet. He opens the door and is relieved to see his neighbour Mrs. Parsons, who lives on the same floor as Winston and whose husband, Tom, works with Winston at the Ministry of Truth. She says she thought he heard him come inside and asks him to look at her blocked kitchen sink. He follows her down the passage.
Victory Mansions is an old building already falling apart, with plaster flakes falling from the ceiling and walls. The pipes were bursting, and the roofs leaked during winter, with the heating system only running half steam. Repairs had to be done by remote committees. Mrs. Parsons explains that Tom isn’t home and needs Winston to fix her sink. The Parsons’ apartment is larger than Winston’s, but everything is battered. Sports gear lay on the floor, and dirty dishes and exercise books were on the table. On the walls were the Youth League and Spies banners and a poster of Big Brother. The room, as usual, smelled of cabbage, but the stench was stronger by sweat. In another room, someone listened to military music blaring from the telescreen. Mrs. Parsons says the apartment is messy because her children didn’t go out today, but she breaks off her words in the middle, which was her usual habit.
The kitchen sink is nearly full of disgusting, greenish water that smelled worse than cabbage. Winston kneels to examine the pipe’s angle joint, but he hates using his hands and bending down, which causes him to start coughing. Mrs. Parsons looks on helplessly and admits her husband is more experienced working with his hands. As he uses a wrench to remove some hair from the sink's pipe, Mrs. Parsons's 9-year-old son orders him to put his hands up, pointing a toy gun at him. His younger sister mimics him with a fragment of wood.
Winston nervously raises his hands, and the boy tells him he is a traitor and will either vaporize or send him to the salt mines. The children shout, "Traitor!" as they jump around Winston with their toy weapons. Mrs. Parsons says the children are disappointed because they couldn't watch a hanging, as she was busy and her husband won't be home in time to take them. The hangings occur once a month at the Park and are popular to watch, especially for children. Winston is about to leave when something hard hits him in the back of his neck. He turns around to see Mrs. Parsons dragging her son away after he shoots him with a slingshot, and the boy calls him "Goldstein." Winston notices how frightened and helpless Mrs. Parsons looks.
Winston returns to his apartment and goes past the telescreen. He sits at the table while rubbing his neck. The telescreen now plays a military voice reading about The Floating Fortress, a military base stationed between Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Winston imagines Mrs. Parsons' children watching her for signs of unorthodoxy within the next two years. The children loved and adored the Party, from their propaganda to military marches, and it was common for most parents to be afraid of their children. The Times even wrote a paragraph about how a boy became a hero for denouncing his parents to the Thoughtpolice after eavesdropping on them.
After the pain from the slingshot wears away, Winston takes his pen but doesn't know what he'll write next and then dreams about O'Brien again. He dreams that he entered a pitch-black room, and someone inside the room told him, "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness." in a quiet tone. Winston ponders about the message and is convinced it was O'Brien who said this to him. He doesn't know what the message means and isn't sure if he can trust O'Brien. All he knows is that it will happen one day. A loud voice from the telescreen announces that the Oceanian forces have achieved victory in South India, with a possible end in sight for the war, followed by another announcement that the chocolate rations will be reduced to 20 grammes.
Winston belches again from the gin and looks out the window with his back to the telescreen. He watches a rocket bomb explode further away, and about 20-30 rocket bombs drop on the city a week. Down the street, a torn INGSOC poster flaps through the wind. Winston finds himself alone where the past is dead and the future unpredictable, as the slogans of the Party are repeated in his mind. He takes out a 25 cent coin and sees the three slogans imprinted on the coin, with Big Brother's face on the back. He knows that Big Brother's face is always watching him, wherever he goes or does, and he cannot escape it. He trembles when he sees the Ministry of Truth headquarters, which is so strong, it cannot be destroyed or raided. He ponders if he should write about the past or future in the diary when the telescreen strikes fourteen, and he has to return to work in 10 minutes.
Winston takes the pen and writes an entry for the future, where everyone has free thoughts and where there isn't Big Brother, doublethink or solitude. He reflects he would be dead by now and writes that thoughtcrime is death. He imagines someone wondering what he is doing during his lunch break, such as writing a diary entry. He goes into the bathroom to wash off the ink and hides the diary in a drawer, hoping it won't be discovered. He even covers the corner of the diary's cover with some white dust, which would come off if the book was removed.
Winston then dreams about his mother, who disappeared when he was 10 or 11 years old during the 1950s purge.[4]His mother and sister are inside a saloon on a sinking ship, looking up at him from below. He knows that they will drown in the water and it’s a recognition in his mind that they are sacrificing themselves so he could live. He doesn’t remember how his mother died, but knows it has happened 30 years ago, and he became distraught when he learns that his mother died loving him and was loyal to her family above everything else.
Suddenly, he is standing on a short turf in a summer evening overlooking a pasture. He has seen it so many times in his dreams that he isn’t sure it is real or not, even calling it Golden Country that features elm trees with a warm breeze. He spots the girl with dark hair approaching him, and strips off her clothes until she’s naked and tosses her clothes aside. Winston even wishes the government and Big Brother can be easily removed like changing clothes. He then wakes up, gets out of bed naked and has a violent coughing fit until his varicose ulcer starts itching. The telescreen will be playing “Physical Jerks,” a government-enforced exercise program in 3 minutes.
As Winston immediately starts exercise and listening to the telescreen, he struggles to remember the time period in his childhood. His earliest memory when there was a surprise air raid attack and he and his father hurry to an underground bomb shelter. His mother then followed behind him carrying his baby sister in a bundle of blankets, although he wasn’t sure if his sister was born yet at the time. They arrived in a crowded station that he realized was the Tube station. Everyone was gathered tightly and sitting on metal bunks, so Winston and his family sat down on the floor, and an elderly couple sat near them on a metal bunk. The old man cried and smelled of gin, and Winston assumed that he had a grandchild who was killed in the bombing. The old man kept on lamenting that he wished he didn’t trust the “buggers”. Since then, the Party has been in an ongoing war with the other nations in the world, but it hasn’t always been the same war. Since Winston’s childhood, there has been street brawls in London, which he clearly remembers. But there hasn’t been any historical records about any other alignments than the current one. Winston only knows that for 4 years, Oceania is at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, and there hasn’t been any admittance that they have been grouped in 3 different lines. None of this was actually true, as Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia, and the Party has changed these beliefs and political alliances with doublethink, a term used for changing history, and they control what is real or fake.
Winston hates doing the exercise, which spreads pain throughout his body and has a coughing fit again. He tries to remember when he has first heard the name Big Brother, and assumes it must have been during the 1960s, though this is impossible to verify. In the Party’s version of history, Big Brother became the leader of the Revolution since its earliest days, but there is no evidence if the legend is true. Even Winston doesn’t remember when the Party rose to power, nor did he believe the word “Ingsoc” existed before 1960. Therefore, all of the Party’s claims about their inventions and achievements are lies.
The voice from the telescreen interrupts Winston’s thoughts and orders him to bend forward. He nervously finishes his stretches and remembers that any evidence of disapproval is punishable.
Job at the Ministry of Truth/Meeting Julia[]
Winston is at work at the Ministry of Truth, preparing the speakwrite, his mouthpiece and glasses, before clipping together 4 small cylinders that are sucked into a pneumatic tube next to his desk.[5] Inside his cubicle are 3 orifices: a small pneumatic tube for written messages, and a larger one for newspaper. At the side wall is a large oblong slit that is protected by wired grating, and the last is for throwing out wasted paper. They are called memory holes, and any documents that need to be erased from public record (or any scraps of paper lying about) they will be dropped into the memory hole, where they will be destroyed in an enormous incinerator.
Winston unrolls and examines 4 slips of paper that consists mostly of Newspeak, which the Ministry uses for internal uses. He places the fourth paper aside, as he’ll deal with it last. He dials “back numbers” on the telescreen and several newspapers from The Times pop out of the pneumatic tube. In the newspaper he examines, it says that on March 17th, Big Brother delivered a speech and predicted that the South Indian army would remain silent, but a Eurasian offensive would be launched in North Africa. However, the offensive was launched in North Africa instead. Now, Winston has to “correct” the newspaper to ensure that Big Brother’s prediction had come true. Therefore, his job is to “correct” any historical records in documents and newspapers that will suit the Party’s message that they are always right. Another newspaper details about how the Ministry of Plenty promised that they won’t reduce a chocolate ration, that was dated February 1984. Winston is aware that the chocolate ration is supposed to be reduced to twenty grammes at the end of the present week, but now he must change it to the current time in April. He pushes the newspapers into the pneumatic tube and disposes any notes he made into the memory hole.
He doesn’t know exactly what happens to the newspapers after they are slid through the pneumatic tube, and believes that after they have been collected and assembled, the original copy is destroyed and the replaced copy placed in the Party’s files. Books, pamphlets, posters, films, soundtracks, cartoons and photographs are also changed up to date. The largest section of the Records Department are responsible for tracking down and collecting any other documents that are due to be destroyed and recopied. Sometimes, Winston has to quickly dispose of any documents that might contain some forgery, although the events he is changing doesn’t exist anyway. He glances down the hall and sees a man named Tilliotson working in his cubicle and his mouth close to the mouthpiece of the speakwrite. It appears he is trying to say something secretive away from the telescreen, and flashes a hostile look in Winston’s direction.
Winston hardly knows Tilliotson or what his job is. Most people working in the Records Department don’t normally talk about their jobs, and Winston doesn’t know their names, although he has seen them in the corridors or participating in the Two Minute Hate. A woman who works in a cubicle next to him deletes any names from the Press who have been vaporized. A few cubicles away, a poet named Ampleforth rewrites poetry that can be used as propaganda for the Party and for Big Brother. Throughout the Ministry of Truth, everyone has their own jobs, including Pornosec (in Newspeak) that produces the lowest kind of pornography.
Winston is about to work on 3 messages sent from the pneumatic tube, when his work is interrupted by the Two Minute Hate. When it is finished, Winston takes out a Newspeak dictionary, places the speakwrite to one side, and starts his main job of the day. He always takes pleasure in his job, as he always knows what he is doing. One one occasion, he corrects articles from The Times that are written entirely in Newspeak. He reads the article that details about Big Brother’s Order of the Day praising an organization known as FFCC for suppling cigarettes and other comforts to sailors in the Floating Fortresses. Comrade Withers was a respected Party member who was awarded an Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second Class. But 3 months later, FFCC was dissolved for no reason, and it was likely that Withers and his associates were now enemies of the Party. Withers was then subsequently tried, executed and vaporized, although none of this was mentioned in the Press or on the telescreen. When someone is vaporized, they are never seen again and nobody knows what really happened to them, as Winston has known 30 people who have been vaporized.
He glances at Tilliotson bending over the speakwrite again and wonders if Tilliotson has the same job like him, as it’s possible that Tilliotson might also rewrite history in the Party’s way. Winston also doesn’t know why Comrade Withers had become an enemy to the Party, and assumes it was either corruption or incompetence. Either way, Withers is now an unperson, as he no longer exists and Winston must change any accurate references to him. He invents a new name for Withers, Comrade Ogilvy, and with the speakwrite, he invents a fictional biography about Comrade Ogilvy. At 3 years old, Ogilvy had a drum, machine gun and model helicopter. At 6 years old, he joined the Spies, and became a troop leader at nine years old. Then, at 11 years old, he denounced his uncle to the Thoughtpolice after he overheard a conversation that he was a criminal. At 17 years old, he was a district organizer of the Junior Anti-Sex League, and at aged 19, he invented a hand grenade that the Ministry of Peace used in its first trial that killed 31 Eurasian prisoners. He was 23 years old when he was killed in action. Big Brother even remarked that Ogilvy was a nonsmoker, spent an hour of recreation in a gymnasium, and took the vow of celibacy, as having a family would be in the way to his devotion of duty. He often discussed about the principles of Ingsoc and pursued any enemies in the Eurasian army.
Winston wonders if he should award Comrade Ogilvy the Order of Conspicuous Merit, but decides not to as it could cross-reference to Ogilvy’s original counterpart. He glances at Tilliotson again and reflects what his coworker could be working on, now that Comrade Ogilvy is his newest creation.
The underground canteen is crowded and noisy as everyone in the Ministry of Truth lines up for lunch. On the far side of the room is a hole in the hole that is used to serve gin for ten cents.[6] Winston meets his “friend” and coworker Syme, a short man who works as a philologist in the Research Department and is working with some experts in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. Syme asks Winston if he has razor blades, and Winston replies that he has searched everywhere, but they don’t exist anymore. There has been a famine for the past few months, and the Party shops are facing a shortage of razor blades, even though Syme is hoarding two that are unused.
Winston adds he has been using the same razor blade for 6 weeks as he and the others in the queue take a tray from the counter. Syme asks him if he had watched the prisoners hanged yesterday, and Winston replies he was working. Syme recalls it was a good execution and describes the gruesome details of the hangings. Winston and Syme are served their lunch, including bread, stew, cheese and coffee. After they are served some gin, Winston and Syme make their way through the crowd and sit at a table under a telescreen. Winston and Syme don’t speak until they finish their gin, and the canteen gets loud from the excessive talking.
Winston asks Syme about his dictionary. Syme says he is making slow progress and is now working on adjectives. Leaning closer so nobody else can hear, Syme says that the dictionary is an 11th edition of Newspeak, which eliminates words from the language and narrows the range of people’s thoughts. Syme estimates that by 2050, everyone will be fluent in Newspeak and won’t have thoughts to form a rebellion. He sympathizes with Winston for still thinking and talking in Oldspeak. However, Winston suspects Syme will likely be vaporized because he’s too intelligent, reads too much, and spends all his time at the Chestnut Tree Cafe, which the Party resents. He overhears a conversation at a table next to him between a man from the Fiction Department and a woman who is possibly his secretary, but the man speaks in a quacking voice. Syme says it is called Duckspeak, which means when someone talks without speaking or quacks like a duck. Again, Winston thinks Syme will definitely be vaporized and wonders if he should denounce him as a thoughtcrime criminal.
Mr. Parsons, Winston’s neighbour at Victory Mansions and coworker, appears and joins Winston and Syme at their table. He demands Winston a donation of 2 dollars for Hate Week. Winston hands him the money, and then Mr. Parsons tells him that he has heard of his son shooting him with a slingshot, and he gave him a severe reprimanding. Winston says that he was upset about not going to the execution. Mr. Parsons then recalls that his daughter and some other girls followed a suspicious-looking man for 2 hours before they turned him over to the authorities. Winston wonders what happened to the man, and Mr. Parsons gestures with a rifle, suggesting the suspicious man may have been executed.
Just then, the telescreen announces the increase in food production, and the standard of living in Oceania has increased by 20 percent. As such, everyone in Oceania expresses their gratitude to Big Brother for improving the chocolate rations. However, Winston is appalled, as there isn't enough food, clothing or cigarettes in Oceania, and the Party announces the raise of 20 grammes of chocolate for everyone. He gazes around the canteen and at his gravy, recalling that he doesn't remember what life was like when the food tasted awful, the clothes were worn out, and the buildings were dilapidated and underheated. He considers the announcement as doublethink and has always told lies to people to ensure them that life will get better.
Mr. Parsons asks Winston if he has any razor blades he can use, and Winston says no. He hears the quacking voice again and then thinks that within 2 years, Mrs. Parsons's children will denounce her to the Thoughtpolice, and she'll be vaporized. He also knows he will be vaporized, as well as Syme and O'Brien. However, Mr. Parsons will never be vaporized, nor will the man with the quacking voice and the woman with dark hair from the Fiction Department. At that moment, he sees the woman with dark hair sitting at the next table and staring at him before turning away. Winston wonders why she is staring at and following him, especially when he knows she sat right behind him during the Two Minute Hate. He assumes that she's not a member of the Thoughtpolice but could be a spy. He then becomes terrified as he is committing "facecrime," when someone reveals their thoughts or emotions to someone else that could be considered disloyal to the Party. Mr. Parsons talks again by recalling the time his children set fire to a woman's skirt because they caught her rolling up sausages in a Big Brother poster or the other time his daughter brought home an ear trumpet and used it to listen to her family's conversation behind the sitting room door. The telescreen then lets out a whistle, signalling that it's time to return to work, and everyone immediately rushes out of the canteen.
Winston writes another entry in his journal. 3 years ago, he was in a dark, narrow side street near one of the railway stations, when he spotted a prostitute standing near a doorway.[7] He pauses and tries to erase the painful memory from his mind, as he finds it difficult to keep going. When he keeps writing, he remembers his marriage and when he was seeing the prostitute, he wondered why he couldn’t have his own woman to love instead of all the other women that were involved in the Party. He was horrified to see that the prostitute was an old, ugly woman with white hair and no teeth, but had sex with her anyway. He finishes his entry, but it doesn’t help him get over his anger or depression, and longs to shout profanities at the top of his voice.
He writes another journal entry, hoping that the working class citizens, called Proles, must rebel against the Party.[8] The Proles make up 85% of the population, and they need to become conscious of their strength if rebelling is an option, but the Brotherhood, if it does exist, might not assemble the large population. He remembers walking on a crowded street when he witnessed a riot from hundreds of prole women at a street market. One of the stalls was selling flimsy tin saucepans that were always difficult to find. He watched in disgust as two women fought over a saucepan. He reflects that there may be a transcript from a Party textbook, claiming that they have liberated female proles from slavery. Before the Revolution, the women have been starved, flogged and worked hard labour in the coal mines. Children as young as 6 years old were being sold into factories. Since the Party considers the proles to be worthless as humans, it isn’t believed that they commit doublethink. Additionally, very little is known about the proles, but as long as they continued to work and reproduce, then their activities didn’t matter much.
The proles have even been adapted to their own lifestyle that has been passed down ancestrally. They were born and raised in the gutters, started working at age 12, endured a period of sex and beauty, got married at 20, middle aged at 30, and died at age 60. Their lives are often occupied with issues and hobbies, such as sports, childcare and gambling, and several agents of the Thoughtpolice had spread false rumours and eliminated several individuals who they thought were dangerous, but none of them have been indoctrinated. Because of this, the proles don’t know that the Party is oppressing them, and they live in areas in the city where they don’t have telescreens in their homes, and they were allowed to live their lives.
Winston scratches his ulcer and reads a children’s history book he borrowed from Mrs. Parsons, and copies a passage in the diary. Before the days of the Revolution, London was a dreary, filthy and miserable place where thousands of people were starving, had no shoes, and lived in poverty and fear. Children were forced to work 12 hours a day and they were beaten by their cruel masters and fed only stale bread crusts and water. However, a bunch of wealthy men live in wealthy houses and have dozens of servants, and they were known as the capitalists. They were overweight, ugly men who are dressed in long, black coats and top hats that were the uniforms of the capitalists, and nobody is allowed to wear them. They owned all the land, houses, factories and money. Anyone who disobeys them would be imprisoned, or eliminated from their jobs and starved to death. Whenever anyone speaks to a capitalist, they have to bow to him and address him as “sir”. There was even a law where a capitalist was allowed to have a sexual relationship with any woman working in one of his factories.
Winston suspects that everything that the Party says, even on the telescreens, are lies. From the book’s passage and in the diary, he writes that the Party has improved the standard of living, including offering people more food, clothing and houses. They also claimed that because of their improvement, people started to live longer and healthier lives, worked shorter hours and are well educated. According to the Party, 40% of adult proles were literate, and before the Revolution, it was 15%. The infant mortality rate was now only 160 per thousand, and before the Revolution, it was 300. He then recalls an event when he had proof that the Party is changing history. It might have been in the year 1973, around the time he had separated from Katherine, but the story took part 7 or 8 years earlier.
In the 1960s, the original leaders of the Revolution were seen as traitors and many were killed. By 1970, there were none left, and it’s believed some of them disappeared or executed at a later date. Goldstein and several others had fled and went into hiding, and the last survivors were three men named Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford. It was around 1965 that these men were arrested before they vanished for about a year. Everyone didn’t know if they were alive or dead until they suddenly reappeared and “confessed” to various crimes such as working with the enemy Eurasia, the murder of some trusted Party members, plotting against Big Brother which happened before the Revolution, and acts of sabotage that caused thousands of deaths. After confessing, they were temporarily pardoned and they wrote articles for The Times, analyzing the details why they defected and promising to compensate for their actions.
After the 3 survivors were released, Winston remembers seeing them once at the Chestnut Tree Cafe, which serves as a gathering place for out-of-favour Party members and criminals accused of thoughtcrimes. He had a feeling he had known their names years earlier. Nobody sat at any tables near them, and the men sit alone with their glasses of gin. Rutherford fascinates Winston the most, and he was once a famous caricaturist, whose cartoons that appeared in The Times provoked popular opinions before and during the Revolution. These cartoons depicted the old days when the capitalists’ days were rife, which included filthy slums and starving children. Rutherford was a large, bulky man but his once powerful body was slowly wasting away. Winston doesn’t remember how he came into the cafe around this time, but the cafe was empty and music was playing from the telescreens. The 3 men sit in silence as a waiter brought them glasses of gin, and the music from the telescreens changed into a song. The men didn’t stir, and Winston notices Rutherford’s eyes were filled with tears, and both Aaronson and Jones had broken noses. A little later, they were arrested again and at their second trial. They confessed not only their old crimes, but a bunch of new ones. They were then executed and 5 years later, Winston was going through some documents that came out of the pneumatic tube when he discovered a fragment piece of paper. It was a half-torn page from The Times dated 10 years ago, and featured a photograph of some delegates at a Party function in New York. Aaronson, Jones and Rutherford were pictured in the photograph, and at their trials, they confessed to being on enemy soil in Eurasia. They had flown from a secret airfield in Canada and arrived in Siberia, where they conferred with members of the Eurasian General Staff and betrayed some important military secrets. The date had been stuck in Winston’s memory, but knows that Aaronson, Rutherford and Jones were innocent because their confessions were lies.
Winston covered the photograph with a sheet of paper and when he unrolled it, it was upside down from the telescreen’s point of view. He pushed his chair back to stay out of view from the telescreen, and fearing that the photograph would be discovered by accident and would get him into trouble, he tossed the photograph into the memory hole along with other papers, where they would be incinerated. Years later, Winston regrets disposing the photograph, but hopes that if it was resurrected from the ashes, he would keep it as proof of the real memory. At the time when he discovered it, Oceania was no longer at war with Eurasia, and according to the agents of Eastasia, the three dead men had betrayed their country. But since then, the confessions have been likely rewritten, which makes Winston mystified that the Party has been falsifying the past. He takes his pen again and writes that he understands how, but doesn’t understand why. He questions about his sanity, believing that the past inalterable is making him insane. The thought of O’Brien then came into his mind. He is convinced that O’Brien is on his side and he is writing this diary for him. He’s convinced that he’s right and the Party is wrong and writes this in his diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows”.
Winston smells roasting coffee, and finds himself back in his childhood, before a door closes and shuts off the smell.[9] It has been the second time in three weeks he missed an evening at the Community Centre, even if Party members have no time for recreational activities. He turns from a bus stop and walks into the narrow, labyrinth London streets. He strolls in a slum, prole neighbourhood when he remembers what he wrote in the diary, “if there is hope, it lies in the proles.” The proles in the streets pay no attention to Winston, except for two hostile women who stare at him suspiciously, which makes him fearful that the Party hates people who prefer to live in solitude and imagines a patrol officer coming after him. Suddenly, there are warning cries as everyone rushes back into their homes. A man in a black suit runs out of a side alleyway and points excitedly to a rocket bomb falling from a sky.
Winston covers his face as the rocket bomb, and survives. The bomb has destroyed 200 houses up the street. Winston finds a severed hand, kicks it into a gutter and goes down a side street that takes him into a busy street. The pubs are filled with customers that are filled with foul smells of urine and soul beer. He sees some men standing close together outside a pub and reading a newspaper, but when he approaches them, they break up and two of them get into an argument about the lottery. He thinks that the lottery prizes are largely imaginary and wonders how the proles can be taken in. He still believes in the possibility that the proles will rebel against the Party. As he walks down a street where stallkeepers are selling vegetables, he is struck with a feeling that he has been in his neighbourhood before, and then realizes he is heading to the main street, where he bought the diary at the second hand shop. At the next shop close by, he also bought his penholder and bottle of ink. He pauses and spots a shabby pub across the street with dirty windows, where he sees an old, prole man go inside. Winston thinks that the old man may have been middle-aged during the Revolution years, and he may be one of the last links from the world of capitalism. Remembering from his diary entry, he thinks about going into the pub and asking the old man what life had been like at the turn of the century before the Party and Big Brother rose to power.
Winston enters the pub, where everyone stares at him, and the old man is at the bar arguing with the bartender over a pint. The old man then bumps into Winston, and Winston asks if he can offer him a drink. The pub becomes busy and Winston notices there isn’t a telescreen in sight. He asks the old man if he has seen any changes since he was a young man, and he replies that the beer was cheaper back then, before the war started. Winston asks what war was it, and the old man says it was all the wars. Winston tells him that he mist have remembered what life was like when he was a younger man in the years before the Party and Big Brother, as many people at his age don’t remember anything about the past. He explains that the history books aren’t always accurate, and they explain that life before the Revolution was full of oppression, poverty and injustice. In London, many people didn’t have enough to eat and couldn’t afford to wear shoes. They left school at age nine and worked 12 hours a day. However, there were some capitalists who were powerful and wealthy, and lived luxurious lifestyles. The old man suddenly brightens and says he hasn’t worn a top hat since his sister-in-law’s funeral, and guesses it was 50 years ago. Winston says that the capitalists were such powerful men, and regular people like the old man were their slaves and they could do whatever they want with them. He asks the old man if he has more freedom now than he had years ago, and if the capitalists ever mistreated him back then. He even asks him if he prefers living life in the past or the present.
The old man chatters incoherently and his memory is too vague to remember anything, so Winston gives up asking him questions. He is about to buy another beer when the old man suddenly gets up and heads to the washroom. He wanders into the street and reflects if life was better before the Revolution, and there are very few survivors from that time period who could compare life before and after the Revolution. He walks down a narrow street, and suddenly stops when he finds himself in front of the second-hand shop where he bought the diary. He shudders that he risked himself buying the diary here and vowed to never go near here again. Despite his fears, he finds himself entering the shop, and if he was questioned, he would say he came to buy some razor blades.
Winston sees the elderly store owner inside, who recognizes Winston when he bought a keepsake album here and asks what he can do for him. Winston replies he’s just browsing and passing by. The old man says his store has been full and tight with too much antiques. While Winston looks around the shop, he spots something shiny and gleaming on a table in the corner. It is a glass paperweight with a pink sea anemone inside it. Winston admires it, and the old man tells him that if he wants to buy it, it will cost him four dollars. He also admits that nobody seem to be interested in genuine antiques. Winston pays for the paperweight and puts it in his pocket, which is heavy but doesn’t bulge. The old man invites Winston to view a room upstairs for any furniture he’s interested in. He leads Winston up the steep stairs with a lit lamp and into a small hallway that leads to a bedroom that looks out into a cobblestone yard.
The old man explains that he and his wife lived in here until her death, and he’s slowly selling all the furniture in here. He raises his lamp to light the room, which looks cozy and relaxing with a large, mahogany bed. Winston thinks this would be an easy room to rent out for a few dollars, as it would him some privacy and comfort. Then, he notices there’s no telescreen in the room, and the old man says he never had one as they’re too expensive and doesn’t seem to need one. Winston views an empty bookcase in the corner, when the old man stands in front of a picture hanging on the other side of the fireplace, opposite the bed. Winston views the picture on the wall, that features a church with a statue at the rear end. He seems to recognize the building, but not the statue. The old man says the picture is screwed onto the wall, and Winston then recognizes the building, as it stood outside the Palace of Justice, although it’s now in ruins. The old man explains that it’s St. Clement’s Church, and it was destroyed by bombs years ago. He recalls a nursery rhyme about St. Clement’s, but doesn’t know all of it, except he remembers the last two verses, “Here comes a candle to light you to bed, Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.”
Winston tries to figure out exactly how old the church is. It is difficult to determine an age of a London building, and anything new and impressive is claimed to have been built during the Revolution, while another other old building was assumed to have been built during the Middle Ages. The old man then remembers the first verses of the nursery rhyme: “Orange and lemons, says the bells of St. Clement’s. You owe me three farthings, says the bells of St. Martin’s.” Winston asks about St. Martin’s Church, and the old man replies that it’s still standing and is located at Victory Square, next to the picture gallery. Winston knows that place as it’s an art gallery museum that exhibits propaganda displays. He doesn’t buy the picture as it would be impossible to take it home unless it’s been unscrewed. He learns that the old man’s name is Mr. Charrington, not the name “Weeks” that’s displayed on the store front. He’s a 63-year-old widower who owned the shop for 30 years, and never changed the name of the store. While he chats with Mr. Charrington, the first verses of the St. Clement’s nursery rhyme play in his mind. He quickly leaves the shop, deciding he will risk returning within a month. Even if he doesn’t fully trust the storeowner, he hopes to buy the portrait of St. Clement’s, remove it from its frame, and bring it home. He also considers the risk of renting out the bedroom upstairs.
As he walks home, Winston hums the nursery rhyme when he sees someone in blue overalls, and then recognizes her as the dark-haired woman from the Fiction Department. She looks straight at him and then quickly walks away. For a moment, Winston is too shocked to move, and then turns right and goes into the wrong direction. He’s convinced that the woman is spying on him and following him at the backstreet, even assuming she’s has been following him since he left the pub. The glass paperweight in his pocket makes it difficult for him to walk, and he considers taking it out and throwing it away. He also has a terrible stomachache and worries he won’t find the nearest lavatory in time, but the pain soon goes away. Feeling terrified, he stops and wonders what he should do, and even imagines finding the woman and then kill her by smashing her head in with a cobblestone, but doesn’t. He even considers hurrying to the Community Centre and staying there until it closed, where he will hopefully establish an alibi. However, he decides he must get home quickly.
Winston finally arrives home at 10 pm, where he heads into his kitchen, drinks some Victory Gin, sits down at the table in the alcove and takes out the diary from the drawer. He doesn’t immediately open it and a patriotic song plays from the telescreen. He worries what will happen if the authorities catch him, as they will always come to arrest someone at night. Some people even commit suicide before they are arrested, and he imagines the consequences after he’s caught and arrested, such as being tortured and executed. He opens the diary, but the dark-haired woman is always on his mind. He tries to think about O’Brien and the supposed message he said to him, “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.” He tries to smoke a cigarette and takes a coin out of his pocket, seeing the face of Big Brother, and the Party slogan plays in his mind.
One morning at work, Winston leaves his cubicle and heads to the restroom.[10] As he walks down the hallway, he sees the dark haired woman, who he saw outside the second hand shop four days ago. He notices her right arm is in a sling, and he assumes she had her hand crushed from one of the kaleidoscopes at the Fiction Department. She suddenly stumbles and falls onto her face, crying in pain. Winston quickly gets over his thoughts of her being an enemy and asks if she’s hurt. She replies no and he helps her get up. After she walks away, Winston heads to the washroom, when he felt a piece of paper folded into a square inside his pocket. While at an urinal, he unfolds the paper to read the message written on it. He considers reading it inside a toilet cubicle, but couldn’t risk it with a telescreen watching him.
He returns to his cubicle and tosses the paper among the other papers on his desk, anxious to read it while he worked. He assumes that the woman is either an agent for the Thought Police, and what was written on the note might be a threat. His second thought is that the note might be from the Brotherhood and the woman might be their member. 8 minutes later, he opens the note, and it reads “I love you”. For a few seconds, he is too stunned to toss it into the memory hole, but can’t resist reading it again to assure the message is really there. He struggles to work throughout the morning, and at lunchtime, he hopes to eat alone when Parsons joins him, who talks about his preparations for Hate Week and shows off a papier-mâché model he made of Big Brother’s head. Winston hardly pays attention to him as he glimpses the dark-haired woman sitting with two other women at a table at the end of the room, who doesn’t see him. Later that afternoon, Winston has to falsify some documents production reports dated two years ago, which will take him several hours to complete. During that time, he manages to keep the woman out of his mind, until her face becomes overbearing. After having some lunch at the canteen, he rushes to the Community Centre where he plays two games of table tennis, drinks several glasses of gin, and attends a lecture about “Ingsoc in relation to chess” for half an hour.
Winston becomes bored at the Community Centre, but the words “I love you” gives him an intense desire to live. Later, while he’s at home in bed, he thinks about how he will arrange a meeting with the woman. He no longer considers her to be a threat to him and imagines her naked like he had seen her in his dream. While she appeared agitated when she gave him the note, he is sure that she means it. He finds it difficult to find the Fiction Department at work, but following her home from work would be risky. Even sending letters through emails unnecessary, as he doesn’t know her name or address, and all letters would be opened in transit. He decides the best way to meet her is in the canteen, and if she sat at one of the middle tables away from the telescreens and with a loud buzz of voices, it may be possible for the meeting to go as planned.
A restless week passes. The next day, the woman doesn’t appear in the canteen until Winston was leaving, assuming she now works a different shift and they walk past each other without a glance. Another day, she was in the canteen, but is sitting with three other women and are directly under a telescreen. For the next three days, she doesn’t appear in the canteen at all, which makes Winston more restless. He doesn’t touch the diary during those days and finds relief in his work. Since he hasn’t seen her for three days, he doesn’t know what happened to her, and thinks of the dreaded possibilities, such as being vaporized or committed suicide, with the worst possible outcome that she decided to avoid him.
Finally one day, she appears in the canteen, her arm out of the sling and has a band of sticking plaster on her wrist. Winston is so relieved to see her that he couldn’t stop staring at her for several seconds. The following day, he sees her sitting alone at a table far away from the wall and the canteen isn’t full yet. As Winston waits in line, she remains at her seat, and when he approaches her with his tray, a blonde-haired woman called Wilsher, who he hardly knows, calling to him and inviting him to sit with her. Because he cannot refuse to sit with the woman unattended, he ends up sitting with Wilsher, and their table quickly fills up. The next day, Winston again finds the dark-haired woman sitting alone at the same table. His hopes are almost dashed when a smaller man approaches the woman’s table, but he falls onto the floor and his tray flying from his hands, even glancing at Winston spitefully for allegedly tripping him. Within seconds, Winston is at the woman’s table.
Winston doesn’t look at her and eats quietly, worrying that she must have changed her mind about meeting him. While they eat their spoonfuls of soup, they finally speak. Winston asks what time she finishes work and where they should meet. The woman replies that she’s done at 18 o’clock and they should meet at Victory Square, near the monument. She tells him not to approach her until she’s in a crowd of people and must not look at her, too. They agree to meet within 19 hours. Afterwards, they don’t talk again, and the woman leaves her table while Winston stays behind to smoke a cigarette.
Before the appointed time, Winston arrives at Victory Square and wanders around the monument, waiting for the woman to arrive. Five minutes later, she still hasn’t appeared and again, he’s filled with dread that she changed her mind. He then sees her standing at the base of the monument, pretending to read a poster on the column. Because there are telescreens all around Victory Square, it isn’t safe to approach her without a crowd of people around her. Suddenly, he hears the sounds of heavy vehicles and a large crowd rushes into the square. The woman joins the crowd and Winston follows her, and hears people saying that a convoy of Eurasian prisoners is passing by. He struggles to make his way through the crowd, and is almost within arm’s length of her when he is blocked by an enormous prole couple. After he forces his way through them, he stands next to the woman as they watch a long line of trucks slowly drive down the street. The Eurasian prisoners sit inside each truck with some guards armed with sub machine guns standing in each corner.
With her voice dimmed by the moving trucks and loud voices, the girl asks Winston if he can get the day off on Sunday. Winston replies yes, and she asks him to go to Paddington Station and then gives him a complicated route to follow that will take him into the countryside and ends at a dead, mossy tree. She says they will meet there at 15 o’clock and tells Winston to quickly leave her. The truck convoy passes by quickly and the crowd begins to disperse. Winston manages to squeeze the girl’s hand for a few seconds and they gaze into each other’s eyes.
Romance with Julia/Plans of Rebellion[]
Winston arrives early at the designated meeting spot in the countryside.[11] He had no trouble following directions, as he rode a crowded carriage at the train station and made sure he wasn’t being followed by patrols. He arrives at a footpath the girl described him to find. But the path is covered with bluebells, so he picks most of them to clear the way, and also hopes to offer a bunch of bluebells to the girl when he meets her. He starts picking the bluebells when he hears someone approaching him. He feels a hand touch him and looks up to see the girl shaking her head as a warning for him to stay silent. She then walks down a narrow path leading into the forest and he follows her, still holding the bluebells in his hands. They arrive at the fallen tree and the girl walks between two bushes and Winston follows her into a natural clearing, a small grassy knoll surrounded by tall saplings, which is the designated meeting spot.
The girl says she didn’t speak when they were walking in the lane in case they would be heard, but says they are safe here. Winston is too nervous to approach her, and the girls points out that they are surrounded by trees so thick that they cannot be heard, and she has been here before. Winston slowly approaches her and drops the bluebells. He holds her hand and notices her eyes are light brown with dark lashes. He describes himself to her, kisses her and pulls her down to the ground. The girl gets up and introduces herself as Julia, and already knows his name. She asks him what he thought of her before she passed her note to him. Winston explains that he immediately hated, and wanted to rape and kill her, and even imagined her working as a spy for the Thoughtpolice, judging by her young appearance. Julia laughs, rips of her Junior Anti-Sex League sash and throws it onto a tree branch. She removes a small slab of chocolate from her overall pockets, breaks it into small pieces, and gives one to Winston.
Winston smells the chocolate, and notices it’s different from normal chocolate, as this one is dark and shiny, and wrapped in silver paper. It also tastes good, but disposes it when it reminds him of a memory he can’t get over with. Julia says she got the chocolate from the black market and works three days a week for the Junior Anti-Sex League walking and protesting on the streets. He tells her that she looks young and what makes her attracted to older men. Julia replies that there is something in him that makes her attracted to him and is good at spotting people that don’t belong. They leave the clearing and walk further into the shade, where Winston touches her waist and notices it’s soft without her sash. Once they are outside the clearing, Julia tells him not to go further into the open, as someone may see them but they are safe if they are behind the trees. The couple stand in the shade of hazel bushes, where Winston looks out into the field and asks if there is a stream nearby. Julia says there is a stream at the edge of the next field, and Winston murmurs it reminds him of the Golden Country.
A songbird appears close to the and starts singing, which fascinates the couple as they listen to its song. Winston wonders if there is still a hidden microphone nearby, as he and Julia spoke in low whispers, and the microphone would only listen to the songbird, not their voices. They start to make out when the songbird flies away and Julia says they should make love back at their hideout. They hurry back to the clearing where Julia removes her clothing and tells him she has slept with dozens of Party members. Winston pulls her toward him and tells her that the more men she had sex with, the more he loves her, and wants everyone to commit crimes against the Party. Afterwards, they have sex and fall asleep within half an hour. Winston wakes up first and watches Julia sleeping naked and peacefully on the ground, and realizes he doesn’t know her surname or her address. However, he considers the sex they just had is a political act and a blow struck against the Party.
After Julia awakens, she says it’s still safe to come here, but they shouldn’t return to their hideout for the next month or two.[12]