1984 summary 2

Chapter 3 –

• Winston & Julia pursue their secret relationship, meeting as if by chance in a series of different locations & very occasionally making love in safe hiding places.
• Their relationship is a difficult one to maintain since it is hard to find times when they can both be free.
• And if there seems any chance of them being seen together by the authorities, they have to abandon their plans. On one occasion a rocket bomb falls quite close to them.
• After the second time they make love, which they do in the belfry of a ruined church, they have more chance than usual to talk.
• Winston learns that Julia is 26 years old, works in Pornosec and has been having such affairs for a decade.
• He wonders how many young people share her view, that any attempt to overthrow the Party is so futile as to be almost inconceivable but that is nonetheless possible and even fun to have a good time secretly.
• Julia suggests that Party represses sex because it needs its members to be frustrated & overheated, so that it can harness the resulting energy and aggression.
• Winston tells her how he almost pushed his wife over a cliff to be rid of her, and is now rather sorry he didn’t.
• Although Julia knows that one day they will be caught by the Thought Police, she tells Winston to stop thinking about such morbid thoughts and to focus more on the present.

Chapter 4 –

• Winston rents a room about the junk shop and with the convenience of the owner, Mr. Charrington, he and Julia use it as a place where they can be together, almost as an ordinary couple would have lived back in the “abolished past”
• He knows that this is a dangerous expedient, since it makes discovery more likely, but as working hours have been increased with the approach of Hate Week, it has become more and more difficult to arrange meetings.
• When Julia first joins him in the room, she brings a bag full of luxuries which she has managed to obtain, items such as proper sugar, bread, coffee and tea.
• Normally these foods are only available to members of the Inner Party. She tells Winston she has a surprise for him and makes him turn his back for a short while.
• During this time he listens to a large female prole singing a sentimental song while pegging out washing beneath their window, a figure he finds appealing in her closeness to natural life & her indifference to the concerns of the Party.
• When he looks around, the surprise turns out to be that Julia has bought some make-up and scent from a proletarian shop in order to make herself more feminine.
• Winston is disturbed to find that rats are able to get into their room. He had a particular horror of them, associated with a recurring nightmare in which something terrible awaits him on the other side of a “wall of darkness” (p.151).
• He becomes even more upset when Julia starts telling him about how in some parts of London rats attack children.
• Later his mind turns again to the nursery rhyme “Oranges and Lemons”, which Julia also knows, and to his glass paperweight, which seems to him to be a symbol of happiness and security.

Chapter 5 –

• As Winston had predicted, Syme vanishes one day and all records of his existence are erased.
• Atmosphere of hysteria increases as preparations for Hate Week advance,
• Pamphlets, posters and a “Hate Song” are used to stir emotion, so that even the proles are caught up, while rocket bombs fall on a cinema and a children’s play area, leading to funeral processions and angry demonstrations.
• Winston & Julia find their secret room a valuable refuge from all this turmoil and Mr Charrington is happy to show them artefacts of the past and recite old nursery rhymes for them.
• Although Winston still fears they will be caught, for the moment he experiences renewed health and confidence.
• He and Julia continues to discuss the Party and their opposition to it.
•  She assumes that secret dissent is common and she also suggests that the rocket bombs falling on London are sent by the Party  to increase hatred of the enemy.
• But in general she does not care as to who is the current ally an enemy, she did not even recall the switch 4 years previously.

Chapter 6 –

• O’Brien asks Winston whether he knows that 2 of the words used in his articles have been made obsolete in the latest edition of the Newspeak Dictionary and invites him to his home to see a copy.
• In raising this subject, O’Brien mentions a friend of Winston’s who is an expert on Newspeak. The reference can only be to Syme, but he is now an “unperson” and any thought of him is a “thoughtcrime”.
• This convinces Winston that O’Brien must be a conspirator against the Party who is covertly inviting him to make contact.
• Winston is anxious to do so, but is also frightened, because he believes it to be a further step towards his death.