(In which Winston finds love...or at least sex...or at worst sex and someone who makes him feel differently than he normally does)
This next section of the novel begins with more detail in regard to the society's "values", as they may be loosely termed.
Leftover from previous chapters: I still find the differences between the two castes to be fascinating. The Party is kept under strict rules at all times. The Proles are given few, if any, rules as long as they maintain their patriotism. The Party is given exclusive rights to the possession and consumption of alcohol which is manufactured by Big Brother. The Proles are given exclusive rights to possession and consumption of pornography which is manufactured by big brother. I suppose that both are made to keep each caste compliant. That alcohol "cheers" the members of the Party so they don't feel as closed in and oppressed, I suppose. The pornography, I guess, keeps the Proles titillated and encourages breeding which creates more workers.
Chapter eight begins with the information that the Party is pretty much required to be engaging in communal activities when not working, eating or sleeping. "Enforced" community participation is ultimately another way to figure out who is loyal and who is not.
"...to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity."
Ownlife would generally bring out the Thought Police after you...as would walking home by a different route.
Another way the Proles were pacified was by the institution of "The Lottery", which is rather identical to our own lottery systems. In the world of Big Brother the prizes were imaginary, but kept the potentially unruly Proles happy by thinking of how one day they'd be living the good life. Sounds very familiar. Not that I'm saying the Lotteries in our world are imaginary, but I do wonder if they serve a very similar purpose among the lower class. When I was at my poorest, for all intents and purposes homeless, a lot of people I knew spend about as much money on scratch tickets and Powerball as they did on food. One guy who worked at the same pizza place that I washed dishes for would take home a whole pizza every night so that he wouldn't have to buy food and thereby "increase" his chances of winning. Yeah.
Winston goes among the Proles, not expressly forbidden because, you know, there are no laws to break only imprisonment or execution to fear, in order to possibly find an old timer who might remember the days before the glorious revolution. Every man avoids his direct questioning. Winston then moves on and finds himself in front of the very shop where he purchased the journal. He goes in cautiously, looks around, and finds a glass paperweight with a piece of coral in it. It fascinates him because of its absolute uselessness. He then discovers a second floor with a bed and a picture of a seashore.
Upon departing the store he notices a girl with a red sash about her waist pass him. He'd seen her before, shouting the loudest at the 2 minute Hate. Worried he would be found out, that she might have been following him as a spy, he considers strangling her or bashing her head in with a rock.
Fortunately he did neither of these things (Well, I say "fortunately" not knowing how it will end). Days later she trips right in front of him. When he reaches down to help her up she slips him a note that says "I love you". The notion rocks his entire world. It takes days for them to be able to meet to discuss this because romantic love is supremely frowned upon by Big Brother. Weeks later they are finally able to meet in a wooded area where they have sex.
As it turns out she is a "rebel from the waist down" named Julia. She was born after the revolution and so has known nothing else. She pushes the party line in public and works hard in the community centers and then uses sex as her rebellion. Winston was certainly not her first. In many ways, provided that she isn't a spy for Big Brother, she's exactly the sort of the person that is a threat to Big Brother. She will pay lip service to all but secretly hold no convictions. The generation after her will be the one to revolt.
Winston analyses his feelings for Julia and can't bring himself to regard it as Pure Love or Pure Lust.
"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."
I'm not sure that this has any more redeeming value than Winston's wife who only has sex with him because it is her "duty to the Party". To the modern perception they should be lauded for doing "Something...anything that makes them feel like they are moving forward". Personally...I'm not so sure. In the end this little act of "rebellion" doesn't actually strike a blow against anyone in any way...except perhaps in their minds.
Orwell does a great job of showing just how love or even infatuation can change someone's perception of life. Everything seems brighter, happier; the food tastes better (or in this case less bad), the flowers (were there any) smell sweeter. Everything is more bearable with those precious hormones pumping through our systems.
Orwell also does a good job of describing what the side effects of a sexually repressed society are.
"What was more was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship." Huh. Hadn't thought of it that way.
Julia explains, "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 Minute Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot."
Sex does inevitably lead to children, generally speaking.
"The family could not be abolished, and, indeed, people were encouraged to be fond of their children in almost the old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew him intimately."
Yeesh. Totalitarian systems always, always, distort traditional systems to their own purposes.
The two move their love affair, quite dangerously, into the room above the junk shop where Winston bought the journal. Whereas before they would take extra precautions and never meet in the same place twice, they meet at the room above frequently.
"Both of them knew it was lunacy. It was as thought they were intentionally stepping nearer to their graves."
My favorite part of the entire book so far has been those moments in the room. He's not very descriptive of what goes on there. The before and after he is, but not the during of course.
I've spent the last 15 years feeling something very similar. Not the passion of "new love" but the bits that stay as you move through the years. No matter what I am doing, if it's with my love the whole thing is at least 10 times better. I've given up going to movies that only I want to see. All experiences without her are shades dimmer. For a long time I was even planning a trip to all the cities that I ever lived in so that I could "redeem" them with her. A silly notion, but I want to show her every place I ever went or ever explored. Sadly I mostly lived on military bases so I can't ever truly fulfill that, but the point remains. When the couple notice bugs and rats in the room it doesn't matter as much as it would otherwise. There's this feeling I get with my wife that sounds crazy to explain. When we are together, side by side, it's like that little area is all that exists in the world. Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being called it "A Nation of Two". That's close. The space traveling sphere from The Fountain is closer. It feels as if nothing else exists or matters or even could ever matter. I swear I think that's why God has created children as a consequence of sex. They move us beyond our comfortable little zone by necessity and draw us out into a broader world.
It's like that paperweight with the coral inside it.
Pax,
W
