When was the right time to arrest Winston?

[Sandy]

Winston had been under suspicion from the very beginning according to his feelings towards O'Brien, why was he arrested after he had spent so much time with Julia and had read 2 chapters of Goldstein's book?
Wasn't the talk between Winston and Julia obvious enough?
Why did the Party want Winston and Julia to read the book?

[Christian Keifer]

to give them some more rope to hang themselves with if anything

[Yefim]

They wanted him to understand just what was happening to make breaking him even more complete.

They were also probably gathering data on what to use in Room 101

[Duane]

Well, let's see... Are you asking from a Doylist or a Watsonian standpoint?

The Doylist explanation is that Orwell wanted Winston and Julia to get busted right at their moment of greatest happiness, when they were alone together in a private room, naked and embracing each other. You can't ask for a more savage, vicious example of totalitarian State cruelty than that...

[Sandy]

Duane wrote: "Well, let's see... Are you asking from a Doylist or a Watsonian standpoint?

The Doylist explanation is that Orwell wanted Winston and Julia to get busted right at their moment of greatest happines..."

Thanks Duane, yes, I'm asking from a Doylist standpoint. :)
But how did the Party know that a girl would love Winston. ;)
They had been very happy many times in the rented room.
It looks to me, the Party wanted Winston to read Goldstein's book...

[Sandy]

Yefim wrote: "They wanted him to understand just what was happening to make breaking him even more complete.

They were also probably gathering data on what to use in Room 101"

Good point, yes, from part III we can see they knew exactly what Winston was afraid of.

[Yefim]

Because of the incident with the rat in the room. There was also, presumably, something that Julia was afraid of that they found out by watching her. They needed to know what that was before they could arrest them, because they needed to be arrested together. So, if they didn't know, they had to wait to arrest Winston, too.

And then came O'Brien and the Goldstein book, so they decided that they might as well let Winston read it first, and then arrest him afterwards.

[Duane]

But how did the Party know that a girl would love Winston. ;)
They had been very happy many times in the rented room.
It looks to me, the Party wanted Winston to read Goldstein's book...

My guess is (trying to play Orwell here) that since they were already watching Winston (and probably Julia as well - I mean, after all, she'd been seducing Party members on a regular basis) they just watched the situation develop gratuitously, and then pounced on them at an opportune moment. Obviously Orwell wanted Winston to be at the happiest moment of his life when he got nabbed (NICE GUY, George), which pretty much requires being madly in love, especially for the first time in a miserable worthless existence. Also, they had to at least let them stay together long enough to actually believe they had a future of some sort together so the State could smash *that* fantasy as well, for maximum terror effect (Again, channeling George here, with the malign collusion of my Inner Asshole... .)

Goldstein's and his book are probably the most interesting aspect of Orwell's plot... Somebody somewhere in a thread far, far away, was going on about how O'Brien told Winston that he would never know whether Goldstein and the book were even real or not. I would say, yeah, they wanted him to read enough of it that he was able to gain hope for the future, so they could smash *that* as well... O'Brien wanted Winston to view the future as "a boot stomping on a human face, forever", so getting him into that book and thereby holding out hope to him so they could dash it thoroughly would be a consistent strategy from Orwell's point of view...