Chapter Summary Key quotes: CHARACTERS Key quotes: THEMES (especially common dystopian themes/motifs)
1 Pp. 1-17 Winston returns to his apartment for his break, "merely a hope - that O'Brien's political orthodoxy wasn't "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
he drinks gin and describes the roles of the ministries and perfect" (10) DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
the presence of newspeak and the telescreens and opens O'BRIEN DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
his diary with anti party views and then recalls the two "He disliked nearly all women" (9) WINSTON + isolation DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
minutes hate with O'Brien whom he believes he can trust Nerves himself for shock, gulps down Victory gin (6) DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" (16) REBELLION
and also fantasises about raping and killing Julia as he WINSTON "and the clocks were striking thirteen" (1) DEFAMILIARISATION
believes she is a strong follower of the political Big Brother's eyes on the poster seeming to follow you (1) SURVEILLENCE
orthodoxy.
2 Winston is shaken up by the near discovery of his diary by "the Parson's flat was bigger than Winston's, and dingy in a different way"
Mrs Parson. When he goes to their apartment, he sees (18) LIVING CONDITIONS
the indoctrination of the youngest generation into the "'you're a traitor', yelled the boy, 'you're a thought criminal" (19)
party when the children dress up and play with each INDOCTRINATION
other as thought police and pretending to vapourised
Winston. The children are disappointed that they cannot
go to see the public hanging.
3 Winston has a dream about his family. Feels his mother " 6079 Smith W! yes, you! " " There had been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood. "
sacrificed herself for him. Dreams of Julia and Golden " the lives of his mother and his sister had been sacrificed to " During his childhood there had been a confused street-fighting in London
Country. While doing exercise (Physical Jerks), he his own. " itself. "
contemplates the power of the Party to destroy the past. " Winston had the word 'Shakespeare' written on his lips. " " In his waking thoughts he called it the Golden Country. "
"While retaining the characteristic dream scenery, are a continuation of
one's intellectual life. "
" 'Who controls the past,' ran the party slogan, 'controls the future: who
controls the present controls the past.' "
4 Winston goes to his job in the records section of the He was a total abstainer and a non-smoker, had no 'All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as
Ministry Of Truth, where he works with a 'speakwrite' (a recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium, and had often as was necessary' p32
machine that types as he dictates into it) and destroys taken a vow of celibacy, believing marriage and the fare of a 'Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the
obsolete documents. Winston must alter the record of a family to be incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day date of the year had become uncertain' p33
speech made in December 1983, which referred to devotion to duty' p37 - Comrade Ogilvy 'people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared
Comrade Withers, one of Big Brother’s former officials and were never heard of again' p35
who has since been vaporized. 'it struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living
ones' p38
5 38-49 - Winston speaks to Syme in the canteen an "He had read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut "The proles are human beings"(42) HUMANITY
intelligent man who works on a revised dictionary of Tree Café, haunt of painters and musicians." (43) SYME "Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is
Newspeak. Syme describes how if there are no words **Introduction of Café, its disreputability and association unconsciousness. (42) ACCEPTANCE
capable of expressing independent thought then no one with undesirables.** "did not quiet overcome the fumes of victory gin" ESCAPE
would be able to rebel. Winston then encounters the "His mocking eyes roved over Winston’s face. ‘I know you,’ the eyes
husband of his neighbour whose plumbing Winston fixed seemed to say, ‘I see through you. I know very well why you didn’t go to
in Chapter II. There is an announcement in an increase in see those prisoners hanged.’" ANXIETY
the ration of chocolate and he sees Julia and thinks she is "Don't you see that the whole aim of newspeak is to narrow the range of
an agent once again thought?" CONTROL
"Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?" LONELINESS/MASS
, HYSTERIA
" Had it always been like this? Had food always tasted like this?" THE
PAST/HYSTERIA
6 Winston writes in his diary about his encounter with a 'Our Duty to the Party' - Katharine 'The unforgivable crime was promiscuity between Party members.'
prole prostitute. 'Her face looked as though it may crack like a cardboard 'The aim of the Party… remove all pleasure from the sexual act.'
He also remembers his wife Katharine who he hasn't met mask.' 'Junior Anti-Sex League.'
for around 11 years. He hated her orthodoxy to the party. 'She would lie there with shut eyes, neither resisting nor co- 'All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem).'
Only stayed with her for sex. operating but submitting.' 'The Party did not permit divorce, but it rather encouraged separation.'
'She has without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty 'The sexual act, performed successfully, was rebellion. Desire was
mind that he had ever encountered.' thoughtcrime.'
7 pp. 54-63 - Winston writes in his diary and contemplates "He knew… that O'Brien was on his side. He was writing the "If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies with the proles." (54) HOPE
the nature of the proles, the impossibility of knowing the diary for O'Brien - to O'Brien." (62) WS + O'BRIEN The three discredited Revolutionaries seen at the Chestnut Tree Café. (59)
truth about the time before the Revolution, the general RESISTANCE
erasure of the past, and the tangible evidence he once "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four." (63)
held of the lie concerning the three discredited Party FREEDOM
members. He concludes with the importance of objective
facts.
8 Winston visits the proles. Bomb falls on the proles which 'Swollen waddling women who showed you what the girls 'Real coffee, not Victory coffee.'
Winston narrowly avoids. He later tries to see into the would be like in ten years time.' 'Ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity.'
past by talking to a drunk old man. Nothing works. He 'The women studied him with a hostile silence.' and 'Behind 'Unknown streets.'
sees the apartment with no telescreen for the first time his back he could feel everyone eyeing his blue overalls.' Repetition of, '"If there Is hope", he had written in the diary, "'it lies in the
and buys an artifact with a coral in it to possess ' He walked on.' - Very casual after bomb, especially in combo proles."'
something physical linking him to the past, a type of with, 'He kicked it into the gutter.' (Clockwork Orange 'Saint Pancras Station.'
evidence. He sees Julia when leaving the shop, and connection), referring to severed hand. 'great purges of the 'fifties and 'sixties.'
remembers O'Brien's words which appeared in his 'swarming life of the streets was going on as though nothing 'Intellectual surrender.' '"It's all wars." said the old man vaguely.'
dream. had happened.' 'The old man's memory was nothing but a rubbish-heap of details.' Not
'The Lottery was the principal if not the only for remaining because of age, but due to mental surrender.'
alive' for the proles. 'The prizes were largely imaginary.' 'Possess of belonging to an age quite different from the present one.' -
Still problem of hunger persists, 'the dull ache in his belly When he buys the artifact.
made consecutive thought impossible. ' "There's no telescreen!" he could not help murmuring.'
' "We shall meet in a place where there is no darkness." 'Many of the disappearances were actually suicides.'
O'Brien said to him.' 'life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or
sleeplessness.'
1 Julia, the dark haired girl, falls and when Winston helps 'Had instinctively started to help her… as though he felt the 'At the sight of the words I love you the desire to stay alive had welled up
her up, she passes him a not saying 'I love you.' pain in his own body.' (p.81) in him.' (p.84)
Eventually they agree to meet in Victory Square under 'He was tempted to take it into one of the water-closets… 'He had imagined her a fool like all the rest of them, her head stuffed with
the noise of the crowd. When they do, while Eurasian that would be shocking folly.' - Bathrooms are the one place, lies and hatred, belly full of ice.'
prisoners are being tormented, Julia gives him 'you could be more certain that the telescreens were 'Laying out a row of instruments on a table.' - Torture Foreshadowing?
