1984 Key Summaries & Quotations

Syme is explaining Newspeak to Winston and the key concepts of it.

He mentions things such as that by 2050, everyone would be fluent in Newspeak, however the concept of this makes Winston feel uneasy.

Parsons also joins the conversations and talks about how his children are constantly watching out for behaviour that goes against the Party, which again makes Winston feel disturbed.

Winston also sees a dark-haired girl (which we find out later is Julia) staring at her and he wonders if she is part of the thought police.

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words”

“The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought”

“Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent.”

“We’re making an all-out-effort -- going to put on a tremendous show”

“They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols”

Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal

more helicopters, more books, more babies--more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity.

Winston waits for Julia in the room which he has rented from Mr Charrington. He listens to the prole woman outside who is singing a song written by a versificator. Winston realises that the room will lead to his capture and death. Julia bursts in with some items she got from the Inner Party such as real coffee, sugar and tea. Julia turns around and paints her face with makeup and puts on perfume. After making love, they notice a rat in a hole in the floor, and Julia finds out about Winston’s fear of rats.

So that he and Julia can have a private space to conduct their love affair. This is a huge risk, but from the start of the novel, Winston takes a fatalistic attitude towards his death. He knows from the moment he buys and writes in the diary from Mr Charrington's shop that it is only a matter of time before he is arrested and killed. Further, his desire to have a private space with Julia is so great he is willing to take almost any risk.

Winston accepts that he and Julia will be caught and arrested, as does she, but rationalizes that the room is in a prole neighbourhood, presumably far from surveillance. Further, Mr Charrington seems to mind his own business. In this room, Winston has the luxury of enjoying a genuine, old-fashioned love relationship during the brief times he and Julia can get away. Winston fantasizes, too, that the room is a protected space apart from the rest of the world, like the piece of coral encased in glass that he buys as a paperweight.

As it happens, Winston is right that he is doomed from the start. The thought police already know about his affair with Julia. Further, Mr Charrington works for the thought police and has had them under surveillance. The room simply allows Winston and Julia some extra joy before their inevitable end.

The abolished past

Her voice floated upward with the sweet summer air, very tuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy

'Of all horrors in the world -- a rat!

He remembered the half-darkness of a basement kitchen, and a woman's cavernous mouth. It was the very same scent that she had used

the absurd twelve-hour clock

oranges and lemons

glass (repeated phrase)

Winston wakes up crying and tells Julia he has been dreaming. Until then, he has subconsciously believed that he murdered his mother. He remembers after his father left: he, his mother, and his baby sister spent most of their time in underground shelters hiding from air raids, often going without food. Consumed by hunger, Winston stole some chocolate from them and ran away, never to see them again. He hates the Party for having eliminated human feelings. He believes that the proles are still human, but that Party members like him and Julia are forced to suppress their own feelings to the point that they become virtually inhuman.

Winston and Julia worry because they know that if they are captured, they will be tortured and possibly killed, and that renting the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop dramatically increases the likelihood that they will be captured. Fretfully, they reassure one another that although the torture will undoubtedly make them confess their crimes, it cannot make them stop loving each other. They agree that the wisest course of action would be to leave the room forever, but they cannot.