1984 Blog 2

Next in 1984 Winston goes into a bar in the prole district and starts to talk to a man about the past. He asks the man if times were different in the past: "Do you feel that you have more freedom now than you had in those days? Are you treated more like a human being?" (Page 100). The man doesn't give him a straight answer and Winston gets frustrated. Winston leaves and finds himself in front of the store in which he bought the diary. He goes inside and encounters the shopkeeper. Winston looks around a bit and decides to buy an old paperweight, which could have been suspicious: "Anything old, and for that matter anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect." (Page 106). The shopkeeper takes Winston to a secret room, a room Winston notices doesn't have a telescreen. The shopkeeper says: "I never had one of those things. Too expensive. And I never seemed to feel the need of it, anyhow." (Page 107). The man, named Mr. Charrington, makes it seem like having a telescreen isn't required and he doesn't seem to care about not having one. Mr. Charrington recites a rhyme about churches: "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's, you owe me three farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's!" (Page 110). The rhyme makes Winston think of the past and what it could have been like and how different it probably was. Winston leaves the shop and notices the dark haired girl and thinks she is spying on him. He considers killing the girl: "He could keep her on track till they were in some quiet place, and then smash her skull in with a cobblestone." (Page 112). In my opinion Winston seems very paranoid. He was scared that the Party would catch him writing bad things in his diary and now he thinks that this girl is spying on him. I understand standing up to the Party and Big Brother is very risky, but if Winston wants to be rebellious he needs to man up and do it!

In Part 2 Winston goes to work and sees the girl with dark hair with an arm sling. The girl falls down and Winston helps her up. In the process the girl slips him a note. He takes the note and after a long while of debating he decides to read it. It turns out that the girl loves him, or so it says. Winston is surprised by this: "For several seconds he was too stunned even to throw the incriminating thing into the memory hole." (Page 118). I was very surprised at this turn of events. I definitely thought she was spying on him since she happened to be wherever he was and it doesn't really make sense to me that she would be in love with him, especially since they have never talked to each other before. A few days after receiving the note Winston sits at the girl's lunch table. They briefly spoke and decided to meet up in private. They met in Victory Square and agreed to meet again at a later date. I honestly think this whole situation is weird. Winston just wants the girl sexually and it's pretty gross since he's way older than her. I think Winston is a pervert and is constantly thinking about sex.

Winston and the girl finally meet up alone and basically have sex. Turns out that Julia has done it plenty of times and Winston loves her for it: "Listen. The more men you've had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?" (Page 137). This seems more like a political agenda and part of Winston's rebellion scheme to me. The two continue their affair and take up residence in the room above Mr. Charrington's shop. I'm pretty confused about what has happened so far. It doesn't make sense that Winston and Julia are an "item" now and Winston is in love with Julia because she is a whore and slept with so many members of the Party. It just shows that it's part of his hate for the Party and doesn't really have anything to do with his "love" for Julia.