Chapter 5
Winston has lunch in the canteen with coworker/comrade Syme, who works in the
Research Department. Syme is a genius of sorts, but too smart for his own good.
Winston imagines that the Party might vaporize Syme someday.
Syme and Winston discuss Syme’s work on revising the Eleventh Edition of the
Newspeak dictionary. Syme tells Winston that the aim of Newspeak is to narrow the
range of thought, with the end goal of making thoughtcrime literally impossible since
there soon will be no words in which to express anti-Party sentiments. In fact, no one
will even be able to conceive of rebellion.
The brunette co-worker Winston fancies but hates suddenly stares at him in the
canteen. Winston is so paranoid he confuses lusty looks with thoughtcrime suspicions.
If this girl is a member of the Thought Police, he’s up criminal creek without an alibi
paddle.
Chapter 6
Winston writes in his diary about sex. Not that this has anything to do with the brunette.
He starts off by discussing his encounter with a prostitute in 1981, moves on to his
fifteen month marriage to Katharine (whereabouts unknown for the last ten years), and
finishes off with the Party’s denouncement of physical attraction and sex for pleasure.
Winston hates on the unthinking, brainwashed followers of the Party, such as
Katharine, as he continues to reminisce about sex with her, which she saw only as a
"duty to the Party" to make baby comrades.
Winston just wants someone to love. Oh, and to break away from the chastity that is so
deeply ingrained in Party loyalty. The sexual act, naturally and lewdly performed, is
rebellion against the Party. Desire is thoughtcrime.
Chapter 7
Winston writes in his diary that if there is hope in overthrowing Party rule, then it lies in
the proles, the disregarded masses comprising 85% of the population of Oceania.
They need to become conscious of their own strength.
The proles are largely untouched by the Party; they’re not smart enough for the Party
to bother brainwashing. Thus these prole people don’t get what’s going on enough to
revolt.
Winston looks through a children’s history book and copies the passage about
capitalists into his diary. The Party claims in said passage that it has increased the
standard of living from past times. But Sherlock Winston suspects this is a lie.
Ultimately, there’s just no way to tell.
Winston thinks (quite eloquently): when the past is erased, and the erasure is
forgotten, the lie becomes truth.
Winston now recalls an occasion when he had proof that the Party was changing
history. At one time, in 1973, Winston had held in his hands evidentiary proof that
certain people who the Party deemed never existed had actually existed.
Unfortunately, Winston destroyed the proof.
Winston realizes the futility of physical evidence, and wonders whether the mind itself
is controllable. He refuses to believe that it is, though, and realizes that the physical
world exists so long as there is a mind to perceive it. Thus, he writes, freedom is the
freedom to think.
Then he thinks, I should give this diary to O’Brien, that guy I have an intellectual crush
on.
Chapter 8
Winston takes a stroll through prole streets, and envies the lives of the ignorant and
the free. He wanders into a pub for beer, and strikes up a conversation with an old man
about life pre-Party. The old man is too incoherent to give a satisfactory answer. That’s
probably the beer.
Winston passes by the secondhand store in which he bought his diary. We meet Mr.
Charrington, a 63-year-old widower who had owned the shop for about 30 years.
Winston purchases a glass paperweight containing pink coral. He likes it because 1)
it’s useless and 2) it has a link to the past.
Chatting with the owner, Winston is soon led upstairs to a room in which Mr.
Charrington and his deceased wife used to live, but that is now abandoned.
Seeing that no telescreen exists on the wall (indeed, there is only a print of St.
Clement’s Church hanging where a telescreen ought to be), Winston ponders the
possibility of renting this room so he could be alone in private.
On his way home, Winston encounters a Party member in blue overalls (Party
uniform), and sees that she is the brunette coworker. He takes this as confirmation that
the brunette was spying on him. Frightened, he temporarily contemplates murdering
her with the paperweight in his pocket.
He finally returns home at 10 p.m., relieved but restless. He tries to write in his diary,
but has little success other than jotting down the Party slogans.