English Literature books summary

English Literature books summary

some way or another‹though they know that they will never commit even the

only feasible act among these options, which is suicide.

They talk about rebelling against the Party in a vague way; Winston

tells her about his unspoken bond with O'Brien, which does not strike her

as at all strange. Though Julia takes it for granted that everyone harbors

hatred for the Party, she does not believe in an organized underground; in

fact, she thinks that Goldstein and the tales about him were invented by

the Party for their own ends.

Julia's intelligence is also shown by her casually offered opinion

that the war with Eurasia is not actually happening‹that the government of

Oceania was dropping the bombs on its own people for the purposes of

keeping the population scared and emotionally subjected to the Party.

Winston has never even thought of this possibility. But for the most part,

Julia does not question Party doctrine unless it touches her own life in

some way; she believes much of the false history she has been taught in

school, and it doesn't seem important to her that this is untrue. Winston

is shocked by this, as well as by the fact that she doesn't seem to recall

that only four years ago Eastasia, and not Eurasia, was Oceania's enemy in

war.

Julia also does not seem to grasp the importance of Winston's story of

the photograph clearing Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford of wrongdoing. In

general she is not interested when Winston starts to delve into the

problems the Party presents. He realizes that people like Julia, who accept

what they are taught because they don't fully understand it, are in a fair

way to remain more sane than persons like himself.

Chapter 6

Summary:

Winston, walking down the long corridor where he had first spoken to

Julia, encounters O'Brien, who addresses him cordially regarding Newspeak

and what he considers Winston's elegant use of it. O'Brien obliquely refers

to Syme as someone who shares this opinion, to whom he had spoken recently;

Winston takes this as some sort of signal.

O'Brien says that he had noticed that Winston had recently used two

words now obsolete in the forthcoming Tenth Edition of the Newspeak

Dictionary, which has not been issued yet but of which O'Brien has an

advance copy. He offers Winston to visit him at his flat to take a look at

the Dictionary; through this device he gives Winston his address.

This whole exchange‹which has taken place under the watchful eye of a

telescreen‹takes only a couple of minutes, but it has sparked in Winston

both a cautious joy in the existence of the conspiracy he had hoped for,

and a dreadful certainty that it is the beginning of the end for him.

Chapter 7

Summary:

Winston awakens from a dream crying. The dream took place inside the

glass paperweight and somehow was about a protective gesture made by his

mother 30 years ago, and repeated in the film he wrote about in his diary

(where a helpless Jewish mother ineffectually tries to protect her child

from the bullets that are about to be fired at them). Within a few seconds

of waking, the memories surrounding this gesture flood back to Winston.

He had been a young boy, and London was a disaster area of starvation,

violence and unrest. His father disappeared, taking his mother's spirit

with him so that she moved through daily life waiting for her own

disappearance. She, Winston, and his baby sister lived in poor quarters and

had not enough to eat; despite his knowledge that the mother and sister

were starving, Winston would demand more food even though his mother would

automatically give him the biggest portion. One day there was a chocolate

ration, and Winston, though he knew the chocolate should be equally divided

between the three of them, found himself demanding the whole piece. After

long argument, his mother gave him 3/4 of the piece and the rest to his

sister. But Winston grabbed the piece from his sister and dashed for the

door, where he stopped at his mother's cry to come back. She looked at him;

the baby wailed; and she drew the baby closer to her, in some way that told

Winston the child was dying. He fled. When he came back a few hours later,

they both had disappeared.

This dream reminds him of the one he had had two months ago, where he

saw his mother and sister sinking away from him. He wants to talk about his

mother to Julia, but she is drifting in and out of sleep. Winston thinks

about love, about the novelty of the past, where people would make an

ineffectual gesture or act knowing that it was ineffectual but doing it

just the same; this indicates to him that they acted of their own accord,

out of their own private loyalties and standards. It strikes him that the

proles had remained like this‹had remained human. For the first time in his

life he feels no contempt or indifference toward the proles, but a strange

sort of respect for them for remaining who they are.

Julia has awakened again, and they talk about their inevitable

parting. Though they know they will be forced to confess and not be able to

help one another, Winston says that the only important thing is that they

should never betray one another, in the sense of being made to stop loving

the other person. Julia considers this and opines that this would be

impossible because they would never be able to get inside you and change

what you think. Winston takes some hope from this, believing in Julia-esque

fashion that you could beat them in the end because they couldn't change

your feelings.

Chapter 8

Summary:

Winston and Julia arrive together at O'Brien's flat. The neighborhood

of Inner Party residences is a whole new world of wealth, cleanliness and

luxury with which neither Winston nor Julia is familiar. O'Brien's servant

Martin takes them in to O'Brien's office or drawing-room, where O'Brien is

working. Winston, already afraid, feels suddenly embarrassed‹what if he has

made a mistake and O'Brien is not sympathetic?

As O'Brien approaches, he astonishes the couple by shutting off the

telescreen, which, he explains, is an Inner Party privilege. He stands

sternly before them, waiting for a short while, before his face relaxes and

he breaks the silence.

Winston explains that they are there because they believe that O'Brien

works for an underground organization which they wish to belong to. Martin

enters, but O'Brien says he is one of them, so they all sit down with a

glass of wine (which neither Winston nor Julia has ever tasted) and talk

about the Brotherhood. O'Brien asks a series of questions to test how far

Winston and Julia will go to further the goals of the Brotherhood; when he

asks whether they are willing to separate from one another, they both reply

in the negative. O'Brien asks Julia whether she understands that even if

Winston survives, he would be substantially altered both in physique and

identity; she nods, pale.

O'Brien dismisses Martin, telling him to look carefully at Winston and

Julia before he goes. Martin gives them a long look without any

friendliness or emotion in it whatsoever, then leaves. O'Brien explains

that the Brotherhood is unusual because each agent works alone, with no

support, minimal information, and no link to one another except the common

ideal they hold for the destruction of the Party. Matter-of-factly, he

outlines their lives: they will work for a while, then be caught, forced to

confess and executed. "We are the dead," he says, echoing Winston's words

to Julia a couple of chapters ago.

O'Brien dismisses Julia, then settles some details with Winston about

getting him a copy of the book, i.e. Goldstein's heretical text exposing

the true nature of the current world and the methods by which the

Brotherhood will destroy the Party. After working out these plans, O'Brien

says to Winston, "We shall meet again . . . in the place where there is no

darkness." Winston's last question to him regards the nursery rhyme of the

bells, of which O'Brien knows the final line: "When I grow rich,' say the

bells of Shoreditch."

Chapter 9

Summary:

Winston, exhausted after five days of intense work, and carrying in

his briefcase the book, goes to Mr. Charrington's shop.

The rush of work had begun on the sixth day of Hate Week, when‹at the

climax of hatred directed at Eurasia‹suddenly Oceania's alliance switched,

so that the enemy was now Eastasia and Eurasia was an ally. Remarkably, the

change occurred without any admission that it had taken place; the anti-

Eurasia posters and propaganda everywhere were suddenly deemed sabotage,

the work of Goldstein and his agents, and promptly torn down, while the

venomous speaker who had been castigating Eurasia shifted to vilifying

Eastasia without losing a beat. During the confusion, Winston is handed a

briefcase containing the book.

Winston and his fellow workers at the Ministry had spent 90 hours

rewriting history so that no trace of the war with Eurasia could be found

in the documents of the past 5 years. After the monumental task had been

completed, every Ministry worker had been given the rest of the day off, so

Winston had headed for the upstairs room.

As he waits for Julia to arrive, he starts to read the book, entitled

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. He starts off looking

at Chapter 1, entitled "Ignorance is Strength," but breaks off to enjoy the

fact that he is reading, and takes up again with Chapter 3, "War is Peace."

This lengthy chapter discusses the history of events that led to the

current state of the world with its three superpowers, Oceania, Eurasia,

and Eastasia, and the territory they have theoretically been fighting over

for a quarter-century (which comprises a wide swath of land across Africa,

the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and Indonesia).

First, the nature of war has changed: it has become continuous, and

therefore its aims are different. It is continuous because none of the

superpowers could ever win, and unnecessary in the old sense because each

could sustain itself materially and ideologically they're almost identical.

According to Goldstein, the aim of warfare is no longer conquest; it

is to use up production surplus while not raising the standard of living at

home. The reason for this is, essentially, that those in power wish to

maintain a hierarchical society‹an aim that was threatened by scientific

progress, whereby machines could raise the general standard of living to

the point where wealth could theoretically be evenly distributed. Because

hierarchy depends on poverty and ignorance, as well as keeping people too

busy to complain about conditions, it became the goal of the ruling class

to somehow maintain industry while not distributing goods. The only way to

do so was continuous warfare, which addresses this need practically but

also psychologically, by correctly maintaining the morale of the Party.

As long as they remain at war, the three superstates support one

another. The standards of living in all three are actually the same, as are

their socio-political systems. The techniques of warfare haven't really

changed in 30-40 years, because they don't need to. None of the superstates

ever undertakes a major risk, i.e. one that could lead to a serious defeat.

Not much fighting really goes on and it never approaches the heartland of

any of the three powers, because that would jeopardize cultural integrity

and risk people finding that other humans are pretty much the same as they,

which could prove the undoing of these governments. Whatever fighting or

strategy there is a dance of alliances, where each power tries to swallow

up an ally and then do the same with its remaining opponent.

When war becomes continuous, it is no longer dangerous, therefore no

recourse to the past and lessons learned then is necessary; neither is

efficiency; neither is any need to even address reality. Reality can be

shaped however the ruling class chooses.

Thus war is waged by the state upon its own citizens, not for conquest

but for maintaining the social structure. Because its nature has been so

altered, and that the same effects can be achieved through a state of

peace, "war is peace"‹the true meaning of the Party slogan.

Winston stops reading. The book is reassuring because it helps him to

know he is not insane. Julia comes in, and is less interested in the book

than in Winston.

Later, as they lie in bed, he starts to read it to her, from Chapter

1, which discusses class differences and the historical nature of the class

struggle between High, Middle and Low.

Socialist movements aiming for liberty and equality were more and more

openly abandoned over the first half of the twentieth century, until the

three currently dominating world movements‹Ingsoc in Oceania, Neo-

Bolshevism in Eurasia, and Death-Worship in Eastasia‹had emerged with their

new aims of "unfreedom and inequality." Their intent: to become the High,

and then freeze the cycle of class struggle so as to permanently maintain

their status. To this end, technical advances were anathema because they

promoted human equality, which was to be fought at all costs.

By the middle of the century, the new totalitarian forces had emerged

from the Middle, but with a difference: they were less concerned with

wealth than with power, and they had learned from history how they might

maintain their power and stifle all opposition. Technologies enabled 24-

hour surveillance and complete mind control; and the "abolition of private

property" really meant the appropriation of all property by the Party as a

group.

According to history, the new ruling class could only be toppled one

of four ways. It could be conquered by an external power; this has

effectually ceased to be a possibility with the mutual unconquerability of

the three superstates. It could stimulate mass revolt due to its own

inefficiency; but the masses have no standards of comparison to even show

them the inefficiency or misery of Party rule. It could allow for the rise

of a strong Middle class, or it could lose its confidence in itself and its

ability to govern through the rise of certain attitudes in its own ranks.

These last two comprise an educational problem, and are solved through the

use of doublethink and the relative flexibility between the Outer Party and

Inner Party. Because Party membership is not hereditary, the Party is not a

class in the historical sense; it is concerned with propagating itself,

rather than with putting forth its children.

There is a discussion of Oceanic society and a detailed description of

the everyday life of a Party member, which delves into the mental

disciplines of "crimestop" (the ability to protect yourself from committing

thoughtcrime using stupidity), "blackwhite" (either an opponent's insolent

claim that black is white, or a Party member's laudable willingness to

claim black is white for the Party's sake), and doublethink (which in

reality encompasses all).

The alteration of history is explained as having two reasons: to

prevent Party members from having a standard of comparison, and to protect

the Party's supposed infallibility. "The mutability of the past is the

central tenet of Ingsoc," Goldstein writes, starting to touch upon the

issue that haunts Winston. According to Ingsoc, the past is defined by

record and memory; and since the Party creates and controls both of those,

it creates the past.

Here Goldstein comes to the practice of doublethink, and after a

detailed discussion of it (though nothing Winston doesn't already know),

claims that ultimately it is doublethink which has allowed the Party to

freeze the pendulum of social class struggle, because through doublethink

the Party is able to learn from past errors while maintaining the illusion

of its infallibility. Through the use of doublethink, the Party is able to

create an atmosphere of "controlled insanity," which is the ideal for

permanently keeping human equality at bay.

But when Goldstein comes to the central question‹i.e., why is it

necessary to forever avoid human equality? Winston stops reading, aware

that Julia has fallen asleep. He closes the book and reflects that he still

doesn't understand why (his question from a previous chapter). He knew

everything in those chapters already. But he derives comfort from the

feeling that he is not mad, and falls asleep with a feeling that he is

safe.

Chapter 10

Summary:

Winston awakens, feeling like he has slept for a long time; but the

old-fashioned clock says 8:30, i.e. 20:30. The woman outside starts singing

the love song she always sings, waking Julia, who gets up to light the

stove. Oddly, there is no oil left, although she had made sure it was full.

Remarking that it is colder, she gets dressed; Winston follows suit. He

goes to the window and looks out‹no sun. As he watches the prole woman,

Julia joins him, and he is surprised to find that he thinks the huge lady

beautiful. She must have had many children, he reflects, noting also that

he and Julia can never do that; but with hope he thinks about the millions

of people like that woman, who live their lives and will eventually rise up

to construct a new world. He knows that while he and Julia are dead, they

can yet share in the future by somehow passing along the secret that "2 + 2

= 4."

He says, "We are the dead." Julia echoes him.

And then they are startled by a voice from the wall echoing them. "You

are the dead."

At last, they have been caught. There had been a telescreen behind the

picture. Winston and Julia are ordered to remain still and untouching, in

the middle of the room, hands behind their heads, while storm troopers

surround the house and burst in through a window.

Winston remains as still as he can, trying to avoid being struck. One

of the storm troopers smashes the paperweight. Another hits Julia in the

solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her and sending her to the floor.

She is picked up and ignominiously carried out as Winston watches

helplessly.

Various uninteresting thoughts begin to hit Winston. It becomes

apparent that he and Julia have overslept‹that it is now 9:00 in the

morning, rather than in the evening. But he does not pursue this train of

thought.

Mr. Charrington enters, but he is altered in accent and appearance.

Winston realizes that he is a member of the Thought Police.

Part 3

Chapter 1

Summary:

Winston is in the Ministry of Love (he presumes), in a high-ceilinged

bare white cell with a telescreen in each wall and a bench running along

the perimeter. He has not eaten since he was arrested, and he has no

conception of how long ago that was.

Before being brought to this place he had been taken to a prison full

of both "common criminals" (i.e. prole gangsters, thieves, prostitutes,

etc.) and political prisoners like himself. He notes that the common

criminals comport themselves with almost no fear of consequences, in direct

contrast to the political prisoners, and that they have set up a sort of

hierarchical social order within the prison.

One huge, drunken woman is brought in kicking and screaming and dumped

on Winston's lap. She seems to take a liking to him, asks his name, and is

surprised to find that it is the same as hers. She speculates that she

might be his mother; he reflects that it is possible, given her age and the

potential changes time may have wrought.

In this prison, Winston hears for the first time a reference to "Room 101,"

which he does not understand.

In the cell in the Ministry of Love, Winston has nothing to do except

sit still and think. He is so paralyzed by hunger and fear that he cannot

even feel for Julia. Dreading torture, he thinks hopefully of the razor

blade O'Brien might send.

People start to come into the cell. The first is Ampleforth, the poet

from Winston's department. They talk briefly before the telescreen shouts

at them to be quiet. After a while, Ampleforth is taken out to Room 101.

The next person to enter is, to Winston's utter surprise, Parsons, whose

daughter denounced him to the Thought Police for saying "Down with Big

Brother" over and over again in his sleep.

After Parsons is removed, various other prisoners are brought in and

taken out. Again, someone is assigned to be taken to Room 101, and Winston

observes her fear without comprehending it. A starving man is brought in;

everyone in the cell seems to realize at once that he is dying of

starvation. Another prisoner, a chinless man, gets up to offer him a crust

of bread. The telescreen roars at him to freeze and drop the bread. An

officer and a guard enter; the guard smashes the man in the mouth, sending

him across the cell and breaking his dental plate.

After this, the starving man is summoned to Room 101. In mortal

terror, he flings himself into a posture of supplication, begging them not

to send him there. The officer is implacable. The prisoner begs them to do

anything to him, anything else but Room 101; still no relenting.

Desperately, he tries to point the finger at the chinless man, shrieking

that they should be taking him instead; the guards move forward to remove

him by force. He grabs one of the iron legs supporting the bench and puts

up a surprisingly good fight before his fingers are broken by a vicious

kick and he is dragged away.

An unknown amount of time passes, and Winston is alone. He is tortured

by hunger, thirst, and panic; he still hopes for the razor blade; his

thoughts of Julia are distant and cannot compete with his fright of the

pain he knows he will be suffering.

The door opens again, and O'Brien enters. Winston is shocked into

forgetting the telescreen for the first time in years. "They've got you

too!" he exclaims, to which O'Brien replies, "They got me a long time ago,"

and steps aside to reveal a guard with a truncheon. O'Brien was not, after

all, the co-conspirator Winston had thought; but somehow, now, he sees that

he has always known this was the case. This thought flits through his mind

almost unnoticed as he watches the guard's truncheon..

The blow falls on Winston's elbow and he is blinded by pain. Writhing

on the floor, he cannot think of anything except that there are no heroes

in the face of pain.

Chapter 2

Summary:

For an indeterminate amount of time, Winston has been tortured, first

with frequent and vicious beatings, then with extensive interrogations

where the nagging of his questioners wore him down even more than the

beatings. He has confessed all manner of impossible crimes and implicated

everybody he knows. His memories are discontinuous and in some cases

hallucinatory. Through it all he has the sense that O'Brien has been in

charge of his life in the Ministry of Love‹that O'Brien dictates when

Winston shall be tortured and fed. Winston is not sure when it was, but he

recalls hearing a voice telling him not to worry, because "I shall save

you, I shall make you perfect." Winston is not certain whether it is

O'Brien's voice, but it is the same voice he heard in his old dream.

Winston drifts into a consciousness that he is in a room with O'Brien,

strapped to a bed. O'Brien is in control of some sort of pain-generating

device which will play a part in the current interrogation.

O'Brien begins by telling Winston that he is insane because he does

not have control of his memory, and that he recalls false events. He

mentions the photograph of Jones, Rutherford and Aaronson as a

hallucination Winston has had‹and then holds up the very photograph. Before

Winston's eyes, O'Brien proceeds to dispose of the photograph through a

memory hole and immediately deny that it ever existed. Winston feels

helpless because he realizes it is quite possible that O'Brien is not

lying, that he in fact believes that the photograph never existed.

They talk about the nature of the past and reality; O'Brien tells

Winston that reality exists only in the mind of the Party, and that Winston

has got to make an effort to destroy himself in order to become "sane." He

then asks Winston if he recalls writing in his diary that "Freedom is the

freedom to say that 2 + 2 =4," and this touches off a whole round of

torture. O'Brien holds up four fingers and asks Winston how many there are,

if the Party says there are five. Winston, for a long while, can only see

four, and suffers increasing levels of pain for it. O'Brien does not accept

Winston merely saying that he sees five; he has to actually believe it. At

last, Winston's senses are so dazed by pain that he is no longer sure how

many fingers there are.

O'Brien allows him a respite (for which Winston is lovingly grateful),

and asks him why he thinks people are brought to the Ministry of Love. When

Winston guesses that it is to make people confess or to punish them,

O'Brien suddenly becomes quite animated, and almost indignant in his

explanation. The point is not to hear about or punish petty crimes; it is

to actually change the Party's enemy, i.e. to empty him of himself and his

dangerous individualistic ideas, and to fill that void with the Party. This

precludes the possibility of martyrdom and the subsequent threat of people

rising up against the Party later. Even Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford,

O'Brien tells Winston, were in the end filled only with penitence and

adoration of Big Brother.

Winston feels that O'Brien's mind contains his own, and is not quite

sure which one of them is mad, though he thinks it must be himself since it

doesn't seem likely that O'Brien is.

O'Brien looks down at him sternly. He tells him, "What happens to you

here is for ever. . . . Things will happen to you from which you could not

recover, if you lived a thousand years." These things, notably, will wipe

out all human feeling from Winston‹in other words, they will take away his

humanity, and he will be nothing but a shell filled with the Party.

At this point, Winston is hooked up to another device which does not

pain him but seems to knock out some part of his brain, so that for a short

while he can remember nothing of his own accord but merely takes, and

believes, whatever O'Brien tells him to be truth. The effect wears off, but

it has made its point: that it is, in fact, possible for the Party to get

inside him and make him believe its truth.

The session is drawing to its close, and O'Brien mentions how he

agrees with Winston's diary entry about how it doesn't matter whether

O'Brien was an enemy or a friend because he could be talked to.

Magnanimously, he allows Winston to ask any question he desires; but his

answers are yet cruel, "truthful" only in the sense that they reference the

Party's truth.

Winston realizes suddenly that O'Brien knows what he is going to ask,

and he does: "What is in Room 101?" But O'Brien merely responds that

everyone knows what is in Room 101, and Winston is put to sleep.

Chapter 3

Summary:

Some time has passed. After innumerable sessions with O'Brien, Winston

has completed the first "stage in his re-integration"‹learning‹and O'Brien

judges that it is time for him to move on to the second, understanding.

O'Brien quotes Winston's diary entry about understanding "how" but not

"why." He mentions Goldstein's book, informing Winston that he was one of

the people who wrote it, and that it is true as a description of the world

but that its discussion of insurrection is nonsense and impossible; the

Party, he says, will rule forever, and Winston must get that into his head.

That said, he turns to the question of why the Party holds onto its

power. Winston answers incorrectly and suffers for it. O'Brien answers his

own question: "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake." Power is

defined as something that must be collective, and as power over human

beings. Almost as an aside, O'Brien says the Party already controls matter.

Winston, roused, argues that they do not, but O'Brien silences him using

plenty of doublethink, and returns to the idea of holding power over men.

Since power over others depends on making the subject suffer, the

Party's view of the future is a world based upon hatred, fear, and

destruction. All instincts of love and beauty will be eradicated and only

power, ever more refined and absolute, will remain.

Winston, horrified, again attempts to argue against the possibility

that such a world could ever last eternally. When O'Brien asks why Winston

thinks it should fail, he cites his belief that the spirit of man will

prevail. Ironically, O'Brien asks Winston if he thinks he is a man. Winston

replies that he does. O'Brien tells him that he must be the last man, and

bids him take off his clothes and go look in the mirror at the end of the

room.

When Winston sees himself, he has a nasty shock. He is a skeleton,

dirty, broken, disgusting. He is, as O'Brien cruelly emphasizes, falling

apart. He breaks down into tears. Once again, O'Brien's manner changes to

near-kindness, as he tells Winston that he can get himself out of this

state because he got himself into it. He lists the humiliations Winston has

suffered, and asks him whether there is a single degradation he has not

experienced. Winston looks up and replies that he has not betrayed Julia.

O'Brien seems to understand this, and agrees, looking at Winston

thoughtfully. Far from taking this as any sort of hint, Winston is flooded

with his old worship of O'Brien, almost grateful that he has understood

without explanation.

Chapter 4

Summary:

More time has passed, and Winston is no longer being tortured. In

fact, he is being fed and kept clean and allowed to sleep. At first he is

only interested in sleep and no conscious mental activity; he dreams

abundantly, always happy peaceful dreams, with Julia, his mother, or

O'Brien‹the three people he cares about.

Gradually he grows stronger, though he is shocked at how weak he had

become. Correspondingly, his mind becomes more active, and he sits down to

try and re-educate himself. He reviews everything he has been told, writes

down Party slogans and falsities such as "2 + 2 = 5," all the while

reflecting how easy it has been to mentally surrender, to "think as they

think."

Still, he is troubled by some mental objections, and tries to practice

crimestop, which is the conscious stopping of thought before it leads you

into thoughtcrime. He finds that it is difficult to attain the stupidity

necessary to avoid seeing blatant logical flaws. At the back of his mind,

he wonders how soon he will be shot. The only thing he knows is that they

always shoot you in the back of the head.

Winston has a dream or reverie in which he is walking down the

corridor, waiting to be shot, feeling happy and at peace. He walks into the

Golden Country..

Suddenly he bolts awake, having heard himself cry out longingly for

Julia.

He had had a fleeting sensation of her being inside him, and at that

moment had loved her more than at any previous moment. Somehow he feels she

is still alive and that she needs his help.

Despairing, Winston lies back, waiting for the tramp of boots in the

corridor. His thoughtcrime sprang from the fact that while he has tamed his

mind to the Party, he has tried to keep his innermost self‹his heart‹away

from them. He wonders how much time he has added to his torment by the cry.

Rebelliously, he decides to lock his hatred of the Party so far inside

him that it is even a secret from himself, and envisions the final moment

where, just before the bullet hits him, all his hatred would explode. This,

he feels, is the last avenue of freedom open to him: to have his final

heretical thought right before their bullet reached him.

But this will be difficult. He thinks of Big Brother and wonders what he

really feels toward him.

O'Brien enters at that moment with an officer and guards. He orders

Winston to stand up and examines him. He asks Winston what he feels towards

Big Brother. Winston replies that he hates him. The last step, O'Brien

tells him, is to learn to love Big Brother, and he orders Winston to be

taken to Room 101.

Chapter 5

Summary:

Winston has been taken to Room 101 and strapped into a chair. O'Brien

enters and tells him what is in Room 101: the worst thing in the world,

which varies between individuals but is always something unendurable to the

person in the chair. For Winston, it is rats.

A mask with a cage attached to it is brought in. From its

construction, it is clear that the mask is designed to fit over Winston's

face, and at the pulling of a lever, the rats inside the cage‹enormous,

ravenous brutes‹will be free to attack him.

O'Brien casually mentions Winston's recurring nightmare, and tells him

what he already knows: that behind the dark wall of his nightmare were

rats. Winston, beyond panic, begs O'Brien to tell him what he wishes him to

do. O'Brien does not answer, but engages in a sort of ponderous mental

torture by bringing the contraption closer and pedantically musing on rats.

Winston's terror increases, but at the last moment it occurs to him

what must be done, and that is to beg that this be done to Julia rather

than to him.

He has saved himself; O'Brien shuts the cage door rather than opens

it.

Chapter 6

Summary:

It is 15:00 and Winston sits alone in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He is

anxiously listening for news of the war with Eurasia.

However, Winston is not able to keep his mind on one topic for very

long these days, and he gulps down his glass of clove-flavored gin. He is

fatter and pinker now‹to the point of looking unhealthy. Without being

asked, a waiter brings him the current issue of the Times, opened to the

chess problem, and a chessboard; he sees that Winston's glass is empty and

refills it. The waiters know Winston's habits and bill him irregularly

(and, he suspects, they undercharge him), though with his new higher-paying

job this wouldn't have presented a problem either way.

An announcement from the Ministry of Plenty reveals that Oceania is in

the midst of the Tenth Three-Year Plan. Winston starts to attack the chess

problem. The telescreen announcer advises everyone to listen for an

important announcement at 15:30, which Winston knows must be about the

fighting in Africa. He has the sinking feeling that it will be bad news;

the thought that this could lead to the end of the Party triggers a

powerful but unclear reaction in him. He imagines a mysterious force

assembling to the rear of the Eurasian army, cutting off its

communications, and feels that by willing it he can bring that force into

existence.

His thoughts wander; almost unconsciously he traces the equation "2 +

2 = 5" on the table. He recalls Julia saying "They can't get inside you,"

but knows she is wrong; he remembers O'Brien saying "What happens to you

here is for ever," and knows he is right.

He had encountered Julia one freezing, dead March day in the Park.

Knowing that the Party no longer cared about what he did, he had followed

her, but not very eagerly. Something about her had changed. She had not

been particularly excited about having him around, but resigned herself.

They walked. He had put his arm around her waist; she did not respond. He

had realized that the change in her was not so much the scar across her

face or her pallor, but that her waist had thickened and stiffened into

something like a corpse or marble.

They did not speak or kiss. When Julia looked at him, it was with

contempt and dislike. They seated themselves on a bench and finally Julia

had said, "I betrayed you." He told her he had betrayed her as well. From

her explanation‹that they threaten you with the unendurable and you place

your loved one inside it instead of yourself, thereby changing forever how

you feel about the person‹it seems apparent that she, too, had been taken

to Room 101.

There was nothing more to say, and they had parted uncomfortably, with

empty words about meeting again, but really only the desire to get away

from one another.

Recalling Julia's words about betrayal, Winston reflects that he had

really wished for her to be devoured by the rats instead of himself‹but

before he can even get to the word "rats" in his thoughts (which we know he

will never do anyway), a voice from the telescreen starts to sing, "Under

the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me . . ."

Winston's eyes fill with tears. A waiter passes by and refills his

glass; he thinks about how dependent he has become on gin, drinking it

every hour of the day. No one cares how he spends his days. His "job"

involves dealing with trivialities that arise from the current work being

done on the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. His sub-sub-

committee consists of four other people like himself.

He thinks briefly again about the struggle in Africa, then picks up a

chess piece, and somehow triggers a memory of his childhood. His mother,

after entreating him to be good, had bought him the game Snakes and

Ladders, and although he had not been interested in it at first, he was

soon captivated, and the three of them had a happy, enjoyable afternoon.

Recalling himself, Winston shakes this off as a false memory, and is

picking up the chess piece again when a trumpet-call from the telescreen

startles him. The trumpet-call always signifies a victory, and excitement

spreads through the cafe and the streets like wildfire. The announcement is

that the very strategy Winston had imagined has taken place, utterly

defeating Eurasia and giving Oceania control of all of Africa.

Caught up in the excitement of this news, Winston looks up at the

portrait of Big Brother, overwhelmed, and feels the "final, healing

change": He loves Big Brother.

Appendix

Summary:

The Appendix details the underlying principles of Newspeak

(essentially that it was designed to limit the range of thought), and

details the word classes as follows:

The A vocabulary consisted of everyday words used in the expression of

simple thoughts, usually involving concrete objects or physical actions.

The B vocabulary consisted of words created to hold political

connotations and impose a politically desirable state of mind upon the

user. These were all compound words, like "Ingsoc" or "doublethink." Many

meant the opposite of what they really were, in keeping with the concept of

doublethink.

The C vocabulary consisted of scientific and technical terms which it

behooved no one but scientists and technicians to use.

The grammar of Newspeak had two notable characteristics:

There was an almost complete interchangeability between different parts

of speech. A noun and verb were basically the same, and formed the

root for all other forms of the word. Adjectives were formed by

tacking "-ful" onto the end of the word; adverbs, by adding the suffix

"-wise." Any word could be negated by the prefix "un-," and other

prefixes like "plus-" and "doubleplus-" could strengthen the word.

The grammar was exceedingly regular, with very few exceptions. All past

tenses were formed using "-ed," all plurals with "-s" or "-es," and

comparatives with "-er" and "-est."

Euphony was privileged above everything, including grammatical

regularity, except precision of meaning. This is because the end goal was

to produce words that could be spoken so quickly that they would not have

the time to prompt thought; in other words, so that people could speak

without thinking at all.

The meanings of Newspeak words were carefully controlled so that in many

cases most connotations were destroyed. For instance, the word "free" still

existed, but only in the sense of something being "free from" something

else, e.g. "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used with

reference to political freedom, as this meaning had been drilled out of the

word.

This also precluded the ability to argue heretical opinions. Though, for

instance, it would have been possible to say "Big Brother is ungood," there

were not the words necessary to defend or argue this assertion. Through

this process, Oldspeak would become not only obsolete but impossible to

understand or translate, since its words hold meanings and can express

ideas that would be inexpressible in Newspeak (except using the single word

"crimethink").

Animal Farm by G.Orwell

Chapter One: Summary

As the story opens on Mr. Jones's farm, the farm animals are preparing

to meet after Mr. Jones goes to sleep, to hear the words that the old and

well-respected pig, Old Major, wants to say to them. The animals gather

around as Old Major tells them that he had a dream the previous night and

senses that he will not live much longer. As the animals prepare for his

speech, the narrator identifies several of the animals which will become

more important in the story: the cart-horses Boxer and Clover, the old

donkey Benjamin, and Mollie the pretty mare. Before he dies, he wants to

tell the animals what he has observed and learned in his twelve years. Old

Major goes on to say that animals in England are cruelly kept in slavery by

man, who steals the animals' labor and is "the only creature that consumes

without producing". He describes his vision of an England in which animals

are free and live in complete harmony and cooperation, free of the tyranny

of man and his evil habits.

Old Major tells the animals that they must all band together to fight

the common enemy, Man, and rise up in rebellion when the opportunity comes.

He exhorts them to remain true to their animal ways, and then leads them in

a rousing song of revolution, called "Beasts of England". They are stirred

into a frenzy by Old Major's speech and sing the song five consecutive

times, until Mr. Jones stirs and fires a shot into the air to quiet them

down. Soon the whole farm falls asleep.

Chapter Two: Summary

Three days later, Old Major dies and is buried. His revolutionary

fervor lives on, and the animals begin to flesh in the revolutionary

ideology with which they will overthrow Mr. Jones. Two of the pigs,

Snowball and Napoleon, emerge as the leaders of the animals. Snowball is

naturally vivacious, while Napoleon "has a reputation for getting his own

way". Another pig named Squealer also becomes prominent for his persuasive

speaking ability. These three pigs create a system of tenets and name it

"Animalism," and begin imparting it to the rest of the animals, often

simplifying and slowly reasoning with the less-intelligent animals such as

the Sheep, or the frivolous animals, like Mollie the white mare. The cart-

horses Boxer and Clover are the most responsive of all the animals, and

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