Sunday, December 30, 2007

Part TWO: Chapter 1-4

Part 2, Chapters 1-4

At work one morning, Winston leaves his cubicle to go to the bathroom. In the corridor, he sees the dark-haired girl (Julia) again. She falls on her right arm, which is already injured and in a sling. When Winston helps her up she slips a small piece of paper into his hand. He tries not to look surprised; they are standing in front of a telescreen.

Winston returns to his desk. After waiting eight minutes, he finds a way to read it without rousing too much suspicion. He reads "I love you." Winston is stunned and it is difficult for him to work for the rest of the day. After work, he goes to the Community Center as is normal, and attempts to conceal his boredom.

"At the sight of the words I love you the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid."

He decides the best place to contact her without arousing suspicion would be in the middle of the cafeteria, not too near the telescreens, where a buzz of voices should drown out their voices.

After a week of failed attempts, Winston, by tripping up another man who is heading for her table, manages to sit at a table alone with Julia. Without looking at each other and conversing in low voices, they arrange to meet in nineteen hours at Victory Square, where the crowd will hopefully shelter them from the telescreens.

When they meet in the square, a huge crowd rushes to watch a convoy of Eurasian prisoners passing by. Winston pushes through the crowd until he is next to the girl; their shoulders and arms are pressed together and he can almost feel the warmth of her cheek. Softly she tells him to get Sunday afternoon off and describes a place in the country where he can meet her. In the last moment before the crowd disperses, she briefly squeezes his hand.

He takes the train into the country and meets her at the appointed spot.

She leads him to a clearing, where the trees are young and too small for microphones to be hidden. They kiss. The girl tells him her name - Julia. She already knows his. He admits that before she gave him the note he hated her and thought she might be a Thought Police spy. She is delighted that her disguise works so well. Julia explains that she takes part in all the Party activities as a cover, for safety. She pulls off her Junior Anti-Sex League sash and gives Winston some black-market chocolate.

Winston asks her why she is attracted to him. Julia responds that she could tell by his face he was against the Party. They wander together through the woods, speaking in whispers. They find a pasture that Winston recognizes; it is almost exactly like the Golden Country. They hear a thrush singing: "by degrees the flood of music drove all speculations out of his mind. It was as though it were a kind of liquid stuff that poured all over him and got mixed up with the sunlight that filtered through the leaves."

They kiss again.

They return to the clearing and Julia flings off her clothes. Winston kneels in front of her and asks her if she has done this before. She says she has, many times, with Outer Party members. He tells her that he hates purity and goodness, that the more corrupt she is the more he will love her.

"Not merely the love of one person, but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces."

Winston and Julia have sex. They fall asleep on the grass. Winston wakes first and watches Julia. He reflects that what they have done is a political act.

When Julia awakens, she is businesslike and begins arranging their departure. She will leave first and Winston a half-an-hour later, both of them taking different routes home. They decide to meet again in four days' time, in a street where there is an open market, and she will blow her nose to signal it is safe to talk. She kisses him and leaves to go and hand out pamphlets for the Junior Anti-Sex League.

During the month of May, they meet nightly, often in the streets, a different place every evening. They walk through the crowds for up to half an hour, not quite next to each other and never looking at each other. They speak in low voices, starting and stopping their conversation depending on when they pass a Party member or telescreen. At times, when they reach a meeting place, they are forced to walk past each other without recognition because of a patrol or overhead helicopter. Because Winston and Julia both work long hours and Julia spends a lot of time in the evenings on volunteer work, their meetings are infrequent. Julia persuades Winston to take on additional Party responsibilities as camouflage, and he spends one evening a week doing boring volunteer work in a weapons factory.

One night as they are walking down a side street, a rocket bomb falls nearby and the blast knocks them down. Winston sees Julia's face next to his, her face, even her lips, completely white. He is terrified that she is dead, but when he reaches out for her he finds he is kissing a live, warm face. Both of them are completely covered with powdery white plaster dust.

Only once that month do they have time alone to talk and make love; they meet in the tower of a ruined church in the country. They talk for hours, sitting on the dusty floor. Unlike Winston, Julia understands why the Party discourages sex:

"What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship."

Winston tells Julia of a community hike that he went on with his former wife, Katharine. They lost the rest of the group, and ended up next to a cliff. He tells Julia he was tempted to push her, and Julia says that she would have. Winston points out that nothing they do makes a difference.

"She did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse. 'We are the dead,' he said."

Winston and Julia plan to meet again in the clearing, but the evening before she tells him that it won't be possible; she is having her period. He feels a moment of violent anger:

"The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all around him. She had become a physical necessity"

Winston realizes he has true affection for her. He wishes that they had a place to be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they meet.

The next day he suggests that they rent the room above Mr. Charrington's junk-shop. She agrees, despite the knowledge that this decision is much too dangerous, and difficult to hide from the Party.

He rents the room, and Mr. Charrington takes it calmly when he realizes that Winston wants it for a love affair. There are a few pieces of furniture, including a double bed, usually only found in prole homes. Julia has never slept in one before. As Winston waits for her in the room, he hears a woman singing outside as she hangs out her wash.

Julia arrives with her tool bag, from which she unpacks black-market goods: real sugar, white bread, jam, real coffee, and tea. She asks Winston to turn around for a few minutes, and when she tells him to look at her again, she has put on make-up and perfume. He is amazed by how pretty she looks.

After they have sex, Julia decides to make coffee. She spots a rat in a corner of the room and throws a shoe at it. Winston has a panicked reaction; he has a phobia about rats. She comforts him and they drink coffee and eat bread and jam. Julia looks at the glass paperweight and is fascinated by it. She notices the engraving of St. Clement's Dane - she knows another line to the "Oranges and lemons" church rhyme that Mr. Charrington recited about it. She declares that one day she will take the picture down and clean behind for bugs.

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