Week 4 — “1984,” Part 1, Chapt. 6-8 & Part 2, Chapt. 1-2

[Susan]

Here are a couple questions as possible starting points for this week’s discussion.

Toward the end of Book 1, Winston plays hooky from his expected routine and visits a pub and an antique store in a different area of the city. What/who is he looking for? Who/what does he find?

At the beginning of Book 2, the dark-haired girl Julia surreptitiously passes Winston a note saying “I love you,” and they begin an affair. Their affair has a political agenda for both of them. “In the old days, he thought, a man looked at a girl’s body, and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.”. Do you agree with Winston’s take? What do you think of Julia?

[David]

Susan wrote: "Do you agree with Winston’s take?

Yes. Chapter VI demonstrates that the puritanical sexual repression, the Party forces on itself destroys natural emotional life, replaces human connection with shame, and leaves citizens spiritually crippled and more easily controlled.

Healthy Sexuality is no longer a joyful or loving act since it has been reduced to:
a. A mechanical duty for Party-approved reproduction as domonstrated by his wife's attitude toward sex.

She used even to remind him of it in the morning, as something which had to be done that evening and which must not be forgotten. She had two names for it. One was “making a baby,” and the other was “our duty to the Party” (yes, she had actually used that phrase).

b. A desperate, shame-filled outlet, as demonstrated by Winston's encounter with the old prostitute.

Details of how this control is generated are suggested later in Part 2 Chapter 3(view spoiler)[

It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship. . . .“When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?” That was very true, he thought. There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.

(hide spoiler)]

My question is, doesn't this kind of puritanical repression often backfire leading to underground promiscutity, secret deviance, and greater fixation on the forbidden behavior? Do not people in ultra-restrictive moral environments often rebel with greater intensity, seeking the very freedom they are denied. For example Victorian England was socially puritanical on the surface, but filled with underground brothels, pornography, and sexual double standards. Iran, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, and Nazi Germany had periods of sexual repression, but often experienced resurgent underground cultures, prostitution, and scandals within the elite.

Why doesn't this backlash occur in 1984?

[Zadignose]

Here's where I saw Orwell indulging in his compulsion to state things explicitly. Just when you're thinking "he seems to be treating sex as a political act," he launches into a paragraph concluding "it was a political act." Subtlety, nuance, and innuendo are about to be tossed aside as flagrantly as Julia's clothes.

[David]

Chapter One.7 - Dissidents
Connecting the dots between Jones, Araronson, and Rutherford in 1984 and the four pigs Napoleon executes in Animal Farm
1. 1984, Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford were early revolutionaries—once respected Inner Party members.

The story really began in the middle Sixties, the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all. . . the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials at which they made confession of their crimes. Among the last survivors were three men named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford.

2. In Animal Farm, the four pigs were once part of the leadership who helped overthrow the human farmer.

They were the same four pigs as had protested when Napoleon abolished the Sunday Meetings.

In both cases, once-loyal revolutionaries are: branded as traitors, coerced into false confessions, publicly humiliated, and executed in spectacles designed to instill fear

The purpose is not just elimination, but erasure—to rewrite the revolution’s origin story, suppress memory, and prevent solidarity. These events against original party members is also evidence that the Party was rejecting its own founding principles.

And then Winston writes down a haunting question.

The immediate advantages of falsifying the past were obvious, but the ultimate motive was mysterious. He took up his pen again and wrote:

I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.

What is the ultimate motive of the party's behavior that Winston seeks? Is it about control? Fear? To signal a rejection of their own ideals? These only seem to invite further questions: why rewrite history, why seek such a level of control, why make people fearful, why tip their hat this way that Party principles have changed?

[Susan]

David wrote: "Susan wrote: "Do you agree with Winston’s take?

Yes. Chapter VI demonstrates that the puritanical sexual repression, the Party forces on itself destroys natural emotional life, replaces human conn..."

It’s striking how much of what we’d consider “normal” human social life has been subverted by the Party — the image that keeps returning to me is Winston’s assumption that her children will eventually turn in Mrs Parsons. This combines with a demand for total conformity and a great deal of surveillance. However in this section we learn that this is not all true for the “proles,” including the antique dealer who has never had a telescreen because they are too expensive. Apparently there is a class element but how that works isn’t clear to me

[Susan]

Zadignose wrote: "Here's where I saw Orwell indulging in his compulsion to state things explicitly. Just when you're thinking "he seems to be treating sex as a political act," he launches into a paragraph concluding..."

Oddly enough, what you say is quite true in some sections, and yet it seems to me there is a lyricism and depth in the sections in the antique store and in Winston and Julia’s encounter in the countryside where we get a subtler picture of Winston himself.

[Susan]

”.. What is the ultimate motive of the party's behavior that Winston seeks? Is it about control? Fear? To signal a rejection of their own ideals? These only seem to invite further questions: why rewrite history, why seek such a level of control, why make people fearful, why tip their hat this way that Party principles have changed?”

Good questions! The Party does seem to be about control and fear. Are we seeing just the consequences of an ideology without seeing the ideology itself?

[Susan]

I’m puzzling over Winston’s fascination with the past. Is it part of a hunt to “the truth?” Why the paperweight?

[Susan]

Also, does anyone else find Julia a bit unreal as a character? She seems such total wish fulfillment for Winston, but I didn’t get much of a sense of her as an individual except as a risk taker.

[David]

Should we be suspicious of Mr. Charrington?

But he lingered for some minutes more, talking to the old man, whose name, he discovered, was not Weeks—as one might have gathered from the inscription over the shopfront—but Charrington.

The inscription over the shopfront is false, which may mark him as a member of the Party. Or perhaps the confession of his true name marks him as a member of the resistance Winston is hoping for? Either way, it is clear that Mr. Charrington is not whom he appears to be?

[David]

Susan wrote: "I’m puzzling over Winston’s fascination with the past. Is it part of a hunt to 'the truth?' Why the paperweight?"

Orwell gives us this:

What appealed to him about it was not so much its beauty as the air it seemed to possess of belonging to an age quite different from the present one. The soft, rainwatery glass was not like any glass that he had ever seen. The thing was doubly attractive because of its apparent uselessness, though he could guess that it must once have been intended as a paperweight. It was very heavy in his pocket, but fortunately it did not make much of a bulge. It was a queer thing, even a compromising thing, for a Party member to have in his possession. Anything old, and for that matter anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect.

1. The paperweight belonged to an age quite different from the present one. Winston has come to associate truth with accurate historical memory. So the truth he seeks here is not just about facts, but about a time when language corresponded more closely with reality. Of course he has no way of knowing if this previous age was better, but the paperweight is meaningful to him as a symbol of his hope that it was, and could be again.

2. The paperweight's uselessness is also important. In a regime where everything must serve the Party, possessing something as useless as a paperweight becomes an act of quiet rebellion; it has no value other than the private meaning Winston has given to it. Winston may not consciously register that the object is also practically useless to the rebellion growing in his mind.

Is this a suggestion that this kind of personal inward meaning is what is needed to motivate a rebellion or is it just doomed sentimentality?

[David]

Susan wrote: "Also, does anyone else find Julia a bit unreal as a character? She seems such total wish fulfillment for Winston, but I didn’t get much of a sense of her as an individual except as a risk taker."

Julia can seem too good to be true, her forward approach raises suspicions of entrapment and I wonder if Winston's first instinct to kill her is the correct one. That shows how deeply the Party has damaged people’s ability to trust each other, and quite frankly how deeply this book as affected my mind because I do not fully trust her either.

But she could also be read as a kind of complement, a foil, to Winston’s resistance. Being older, Winston rebels passively in his mind ideologically; he obsesses over the past and the nature of truth and freedom. Julia, by contrast, lives in the present. She’s younger, more pragmatic, and resists in a more superficial way through instinct, secrecy, and personal pleasure.

While she may seem less developed as a character, I think Orwell’s making a point that Winston and Julia represent two kinds of rebellion. His is about thought and memory. Hers is about experience and pleasure.

If neither one alone is enough, the question becomes, do their combined complimentary rebellious natures pose a real threat to the party?

[David]

Orwell never fully explains class selection but it seems hereditary to some degree.
- Inner Party members likely come from Inner Party families.
- Outer Party members are generally born into their caste, recall,

All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and—though the principle was never clearly stated—permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party.

- Proles are left among themselves, breeding without much Party intervention.

It is likely that birth and early observation combine to fix your class..

I do wonder about the proles.

As the Party slogan put it: “Proles and animals are free.”

If you could choose between outer party and prole, which class would you choose?

[David]

Orwell's Implicit Population Structure:
-Inner Party (≈ 2%) — true ruling elite
-Outer Party (≈ 13%) — administrative and enforcement class
-Proles (≈ 85%) — the masses, largely neglected and distracted

In practice:
-The Inner Party strictly controls the Outer Party through constant surveillance, propaganda, purges, and psychological manipulation.
-The Outer Party, in turn, keeps the Proles marginalized, distracted, and inert.
-The Proles are left largely alone, so long as they do not show signs of political consciousness.

Thus:
-The Inner Party does not directly control the entire society day-to-day.
-They rigidly control the 13% Outer Party, who perform the bureaucratic and surveillance work.
-By controlling the key nodes of administration, communication, and memory, the Inner Party indirectly controls everyone.

In effect, a very small elite rules by strictly controlling a slightly larger elite, and neglecting the masses.

Is this realistic? For comparison the 1790 Census indicated the state of South Carolina had the highest percentage of slaves at 43% and the concerns of a slave revolt were not insignificant. According to Wikipedia, Historians in the 20th century identified 250 to 311 slave uprisings in U.S. and colonial history. How misplaced is Winston's hope in the proles gaining consciousness and rebelling?

[David]

Comparing Benjamin the Donkey in Animal Farm and Winston Smith in 1984

Winston famously declares:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

But does it? This seems a bold defense, but is it as protective as Winston believes? Truth may be necessary condition for freedom, but is it sufficient?

The answer becomes clear when we compare Winston to Benjamin the donkey in Animal Farm. Benjamin is cynical, detached, and perceptive. He sees through the lies and manipulations of Napoleon and the pigs but chooses silence, convinced that nothing meaningful can be done. He famously remarks, "Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey." His silence is a self-protective response to tyranny. Benjamin knows the truth but does not act until it's tragically too late—only when Boxer, his friend, is being sent to the slaughterhouse does he raise the alarm, but by then resistance is futile.

Winston also perceives the truth of his world. He sees through the Party’s revisionism and the manipulation of language and memory. He clings to objective truth as a moral anchor, believing that recognizing it is sufficient for freedom. Yet like Benjamin, Winston is isolated. His rebellion is a passive one, writing in a diary, pursuing love, buying old paperweights is never collective or transformative.

This is why I view Benjamin, and now Winston with a sympathetic eye. Through these characters, Orwell shows how impotent that truth without action is. Benjamin’s passivity ensures his survival but costs him any chance at change. Winston’s defiance, lacking solidarity or power, is noble but doomed. Truth is necessary for freedom but not sufficient; it must be supported not just by thought, but by will, courage, and collective resistance that just isn't going to arrive, neither from the other farm animals, nor the proles, whom the party interestingly equates to animals.

[Susan]

David wrote: "Should we be suspicious of Mr. Charrington?
But he lingered for some minutes more, talking to the old man, whose name, he discovered, was not Weeks—as one might have gathered from the inscription..."

In the world of 1984, one should probably be suspicious of everyone, but I took the name difference as signaling this was an environment where the past was not erased and tidied up but honored by being kept (or kept due to lack of funds to have it changed)

[David]

Why does the Party, so dependent upon erasing history, allow this particular statue to remain in Victory Square?

Winston was in Victory Square before the appointed time. He wandered round the base of the enormous fluted column, at the top of which Big Brother’s statue gazed southward toward the skies where he had vanquished the Eurasian airplanes (the Eastasian airplanes, it had been, a few years ago) in the Battle of Airstrip One. In the street in front of it there was a statue of a man on horseback which was supposed to represent Oliver Cromwell.
Part Two, Chapter 1

There must be reason Orwell mentions this detail.

[Thomas]

Susan wrote: "I’m puzzling over Winston’s fascination with the past. Is it part of a hunt to “the truth?” Why the paperweight?"

Winston's job in the Ministry of Truth is to rewrite history in accord with the Party slogan, "Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." He knows the past has been completely replaced with a fake history that glorifies the Party, so he treats any tangible remnant of real history as an artifact of truth. He tells that long story about Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford because he once held concrete evidence of how their history had been altered.

That little bit of dangerous evidence means a lot to him, so it makes sense that he's looking for more in the antique shop and talking to old timers in the bar. Sometimes he almost acts like an addict, but his addiction is for signs of the truth that the Party has failed to cover up.

[David]

Thomas wrote: "Sometimes he almost acts like an addict, but his addiction is for signs of the truth that the Party has failed to cover up."

I like describing Winston’s relationship with the past as an addiction. It captures the intensity of his obsession to resolve the cognitive dissonance he lives with in his daily job fabricating history for the Party. It is as if he is trying to patch a rip in reality.

If this were a Robin Cook novel, Winston would be the protagonist who stumbles on something small and seemingly insignificant, then obsessively follows the trail all the way up to the dangerous implications of those occupying the top levels of power.

[Susan]

David wrote: "Why does the Party, so dependent upon erasing history, allow this particular statue to remain in Victory Square?Winston was in Victory Square before the appointed time. He wandered round the base o..."

Good question. Is there some parallel between Cromwell’s rigid faith-based revolution and the Party doctrine that makes the Party keep his statue? Or is the Party’s editing and re-editing of the past targeted at the Party’s past instead of the whole of English history? I suspect it may be something about Cromwell but my knowledge of English history of that period is pretty superficial so I’m just speculating. Maybe someone else has more insight?

[Susan]

David wrote: ".. If you could choose between outer party and prole, which class would you choose?."

I think I might like to run an antique shop ;), but I’m not sure if that’s a prole occupation or how it fits the social structure. The absence of an telescreen is a big attraction. Interestingly enough, Winston seems to enjoy the challenges of his job, even though he deplores the untruthful results.

[David]

Susan wrote: "I suspect it may be something about Cromwell. . ."

Cromwell remains a controversial figure to this day, and his rule serves as a precedent for the Party; an historical example of revolution followed by authoritarian control. For British readers, it is an “it already happened here, once” moment.

Cromwell is often portrayed as a hero for overthrowing the monarchy of King Charles I during the English Civil War of the 1640s and establishing the English Republic. Yet he is also vilified for ruling as Lord Protector, a near-dictator who imposed strict puritanical laws. Like the Party's revolution against capitalism, and like the revolution against Farmer Jones in Animal Farm, Cromwell’s regime began with the promise of freedom but ended in severe repression.

The statue is a reminder that revolutions promising liberty can lead instead to far more brutal tyrannical systems of authoritarianism. I am confident the statue’s mention is meant to demonstrate that it can and has happened here. I am less confident the statue survives because Cromwell’s authoritarian legacy is ideologically acceptable to the Party, but I would not be surprised if that was the case. I suspect the Party members may be the only ones aware of the ugly side of Cromwell's history.

[Thomas]

Does it make a difference that the statue is not of Cromwell at all? I'm not sure that it does, but it's actually a statue of King George IV. My first thought is that even if concrete artifacts of the past remain, they have been reinterpreted by the party to mean something other than what they actually are supposed to represent.

[Susan]

Thomas wrote: "Does it make a difference that the statue is not of Cromwell at all? I'm not sure that it does, but it's actually a statue of King George IV. My first thought is that even if concrete artifacts of ..."

This twist seems right in line with the world of 1984, actually. Even when you think you know who the statue is, you don’t really. The Party has repurposed it by renaming it. Here’s a picture btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestr...

[David]

Thomas wrote: ". . .but it's actually a statue of King George IV."

There are two statues of men on horseback at Trafalgar Square adjacent to Nelson's column. The Equestrian Statue of King George IV is on the North side of the column and the Equestrian Statue of King Charles I to the South.

I located four statues of Oliver Cromwell on google maps, but all are standing and are not near the column:
1. Standing in front of Westminster Hall.
2. Standing in front of St. Ives Chruch.
3. Standing in front of the Warrington Academy.
4. Standing near Wythenshawe Hall in Manchester.

I have three hypotheses.
1. It is another demonstration of Big Brother renaming one of the statues and shaping historical narratives to to serve their purposes.
2. Orwell is playing a brilliant joke on the reader by making us doubt our own information or recollections about identity of the statues.
3. Both.

It should be noted that I verified these statues on Google maps. However, I am not sure how much I can trust Google anymore. I could have sworn that body of water bordering the Southeastern United States was called the Gulf of Mexico. . .

[David]

Big Brother is not watching you here—but your fellow readers are!

Orwell gave us a world where truth is rewritten, language is shrunk, and minds are kept carefully quiet. But in our group, discussion is freedom.

What caught your attention in this week’s reading?

Did something feel eerily familiar or disturbingly alien?

Did you underline a passage that sparked a thought or a question?

Whether it’s a small observation or a grand theory, your voice adds depth to the conversation. So go ahead: open the diary, scrawl in the margins, question the telescreen and join in.

SILENCE IS SUBMISSION
CURIOSITY IS RESISTANCE
DISCUSSION IS FREEDOM

[La_mariane]

David wrote: "Orwell's Implicit Population Structure:
-Inner Party (≈ 2%) — true ruling elite
-Outer Party (≈ 13%) — administrative and enforcement class
-Proles (≈ 85%) — the masses, largely neglected and distr..."

The Party is kind of like the catholic Church in the past (Middle Age untill Europe became a largely secular continent) : a ruling elit that were not subject to their own rules / members of the Church, like priests and "sisters" whose life was better than they would have otherwise been / everybody else.

They even have the same shame / revulsion regarding sex.

[David]

La_mariane wrote: "The Party is kind of like the catholic Church in the past "

I agree that it is a fair comparison. I think a case can be made that the church still controls a lot of people today, although in a more nuanced and more voluntary way. I am amazed that such a small number of people at the top can control so many.

[La_mariane]

David wrote: "La_mariane wrote: "The Party is kind of like the catholic Church in the past "

I agree that it is a fair comparison. I think a case can be made that the church still controls a lot of people today..."

My mind went straight to the Catholic church because I'm from Europe, but I'm sure many other religious institutions around the world would fit the description., I'm just less familiar with them. It's the desire to control the mind of people (and not just their actions) that strikes me as unhinged / completely over the top.

[David]

La_mariane wrote: "'. . .I'm sure many other religious institutions around the world would fit the description."

I get you on this one. Even before Julia and Winston agree that the Party "can't get inside you" one gets the sinking feeling they can.

She thought it over. “They can’t do that,” she said finally. “It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything—anything—but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.” “No,” he said a little more hopefully, “no; that’s quite true. They can’t get inside you."

The sense that the Party can get inside an individual is not without precedent; we know religious institutions already have been doing so for hundreds of years.Building on that idea of total mental control, it’s interesting to consider how many religious traditions, present God not just as powerful, but as jealous. The commandment “You shall have no other gods before me” isn’t just about ritual obedience demanding exclusive loyalty of the mind and heart. In many cases, even entertaining doubt or questioning the doctrine are taboo and treated as a kind of betrayal. Even when "Good New" rules come along, you still have to believe, or risk going to Hell.

These jealous but all powerful entities sound like the Party’s logic in 1984. Big Brother isn’t content with external compliance. Like a jealous god, he demands singular devotion. Competing loyalties, whether to Julia, to truth, to memory, or to any alternate authority, must be eradicated.

[Thomas]

David wrote: "The commandment “You shall have no other gods before me” isn’t just about ritual obedience demanding exclusive loyalty of the mind and heart. In many cases, even entertaining doubt or questioning the doctrine are taboo and treated as a kind of betrayal. "

It's interesting though that the Israelites break that commandment over and over again. God punishes them, and they do it again. God punishes them again, and they do it again. The disobedience of the Israelites and God's refusal to abandon them is almost the whole story of the Hebrew Bible.

It occurs to me that the reason why religion is prohibited in 1984 is because freedom itself is prohibited. Proles are allowed religious belief, if they want it, because "only proles and animals are free," but Party members are simply brainwashed. Religion is not even a concept and the word "God" is systematically deleted from the language. It would make sense if Big Brother were cast as God, but religious belief requires the freedom to make moral choices, and this is something the Party can't abide.

[David]

Thomas wrote: "It's interesting though that the Israelites break that commandment over and over again."

Yes, freedom,specifically free will, underlies much of the recurring disobedience we see in the Hebrew Bible. That disobedience is punished or forgiven to varying degrees, but the ideological demand remains absolute. God is still portrayed as jealous, exclusive, and intolerant of rivals; in short, authoritarian. These demands, of God and man, for complete loyalty of mind and heart may not always be met, but they remain central, with divine responses ranging from wrath to mercy.

In 1984 forgiveness is absent and enforcement is absolute; the Party sees this as an improvement. O'Brien makes this clear when he explains how history has progressed:

“In the Middle Ages there was the Inquisition. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy and ended by perpetuating it. . .

...Later, in the twentieth century, there were the totalitarians...they knew one must not make martyrs. But even they failed. The dead men became martyrs and their degradation was forgotten...because the confessions that they had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them true. And above all we do not allow the dead to rise up against us. . .

...We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When you finally surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. . .

. . .We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him...We make him one of ourselves before we kill him."

In the end Winston writes something else that O'Brien tell him,

“We are the priests of power,” he said. “God is power.

So I can agree that traditional religion requires the freedom to choose and because of it, God is traditionally seen as a source of moral order, mercy, and forgiveness. Under the Party’s logic, God is reduced to the will to dominate.

To me this suggests that Orwell is demonstrating how an authoritarian regime would appropriates the religious structure, but empties it of all transcendent meaning. There is no forgiveness, no justice, no higher moral order; only power for its own sake. If so, when power becomes total, it takes on the authoritarian form of God and religion without its redemptive aspects.

[Thomas]

It looks to me like the goal of the Party is to extract and destroy the human soul, the thing that makes one individual different from every other individual. Ultimately Winston and Julia become pieces of machinery; they no longer exist as human beings.

It is curious that at the end Orwell writes that Winston wins "the victory over himself" and loves Big Brother. But shortly before this he says that he received the "long hoped-for bullet," and I suspect this was necessary before his "love" for Big Brother is possible. At one point O'Brien tells him that everyone is cured, sooner or later, and eventually he will be shot. This made no sense to me when I first read it -- why not just shoot him? But I think it turns out that in the world of 1984 a person can die, existentially, as a human being, but continue living as a Party member.

[Michael]

Thomas wrote: "David wrote: " Proles are allowed religious belief, if they want it, because "only proles and animals are free," but Party members are simply brainwashed..."

I keep coming back to this. Why do the proles not matter? We tend to read this as a picture of the whole society, but the 85% have a different set of rules and live a different reality. Why focus on the on the Winstons and the Julias?