CHAPTER FIVE

Characters

Winston,  Julia,  Mr Charrington.

Settings

The office, the streets of London, Mr Charrington’s shop, the small room (above the shop).

Short summary

Syme disappeared and nobody in the office dared to ask the reason. In that period there were the preparations for the “week of hate”. Everyone was very busy. They had already started the preparations of the slogans, of the songs, and, in many places of the city, there were big animated posters against Eurasia (the present enemy of Oceania). In those days many rocket – bombs exploded, which caused a lot of victims.

Winston and Julia could meet in a small room above the shop of Mr Charrington. There, they felt to be protected., and they could talk about everything without the terror to be discovered.

Sometimes, when they were in that room, they thought that it might be their last meeting, nevertheless,  shortly afterwards, they understood that in the room nobody could make them hurt.

They both decided to live the life day by day, month by month.

When they were talking in the small room, Julia seemed indifferent with respect to the events that had happened in those years. She said that the only important thing was the present, not the future. When Winston talked about the principles of the Socing, the party opposing the present dictatorship, she fell asleep. Julia was a person easily manipulated by the Big Brother, she unconsciously accepted all the party’s principles and decisions.

Personal Comments

This chapter can be divided in two important parts. In the first part there is the description of the “week of hate”. The week of hate is a subject very frequently mentioned in the book. I think that this first part of this chapter represents our own “modern” society, even if alterated and exaggerated in some aspects. George Orwell probably wrote the book thinking of a future based on the roots of the degeneration of his time. This important aspect is visible also in the second part of the chapter, when Winston speaks with Julia about the problems of that society. We understand that Winston  -and like him the other people that used to reason and reflect on their problems - sometimes does not  recognize the reality. Instead the people like Julia go forward and they do not have any problem, they do not ask themselves any question.

Though Winston and Julia know that they are doomed, they sometimes yield to the illusion of permanence, and frequently talk about escaping 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 East Asia, 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, Aaron son 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 saner than persons like himself.

Focus on some relevant points of chapter 5

1.   1. Hate Week

First, we’ll talk about the preparation of the coming “hate-week”.

a. The theme song

The new tune that is to be the theme song of Hate Week (the hate song) has been composed and is being endlessly plugged on the telescreens, and is very popular wherever in the country. But Winston doesn’t like this song, and he calls it barking rhythm, which cannot exactly be called music. I can’t imagine how the barking rhythm could be very popular all over the country! It also tells us the people are loyal to the Party and Winston is more special and rebellious.

b. People’s preparation

The weather during the preparation of the coming “hate-week” is baking hot, but all people are crazy preparing the coming “hate-week”. We can see the Party controls the people in the country. The people believe the Party and if the Party asks them to do something they will devote themselves to finishing their duty. People who are controlled by the Party seem have no feeling and any freedom. They are the tools of the Party, but they still support the Party and the Big Brother. From these we can see the society at that time is too dark, so we can see Winston and Julia don’t believe the Party and even hate the Party.

Squads of volunteers who are organized by Parsons are busy and devoting themselves to preparing the hate-week. They do many things: painting posters, erecting flagstaffs on the roofs and so on. Parsons boasts that Victory Mansions alone will display four hundred meters of bunting. He is in his native element and as happy as a lark. Too hard work and the bad weather but Parsons feels happy. I think he is stupid and he loses himself only think how to work for the Party.

A new poster had suddenly appeared all over London. It had no caption, and represented simply the monstrous figure of a Eurasian soldier, three or four meters high, striding forward with expressionless Mongolian face and enormous boots, a sub-machine gun pointed from his hip. From whatever angle you looked at the poster, the muzzle of the gun, magnified by the fore shortening, seemed to be pointed straight at you. The thing had been plastered on every blank space on every wall, even out numbering the portraits of BIG BROTHER. I think this poster is a sign of this Hate Week. The Party uses it to publicize the event. When people see this poster they will think of the Hate Week. Through this people remember the Party and the rule.

I think the author writes these things to compare the people who believe in the Party with Winston. Then make readers know Winston well. Winston is very special and he is a rebel. They are the preparations for the chapters behind. And at last Winston died. We can see the rebels have not good results.

2. The room over Mr. Charrington’s shop

Second we will talk about their happiest time in the room over Mr. Charrington’s shop.

   a. The room

The room over Mr. Carrington’s shop is Winston and Julia’ home. When they spend their time there. They feel very happy, nobody troubles them, and other people can’t see them. In this room they can do everything that they like. In this room they needn’t to pretend. They can be themselves in this room, so they call this room it their paradise. From this we can learn that when they stay outside this room although they fight against the Party, they must pretend themselves that they support the Party. Every day the play a role to let other people think they are loyal to the Party, because they know if somebody know they are the rebel they have only one way that it die. It seems that they are very clever, but I think they fight against the Party is the stupidest thing. They know this fact, but they still hate the Party, so whatever they pretend how perfect their results are die. And when they stay in the room it is another world, in this “world” they act themselves

I think compare this room and the outside world as if the other people and Winston and Julia. I think the outside world is dark and boring, but in this room it is alive and they are freedom there. They are opposite. We also can thrust out Winston has a bad result.

b. Mr. Charrington

Mr. Charrington, I want to say something about him. From the chapter 5 I know he is an old man who like collecting the old things. And he doesn’t like talking to the others. He even doesn’t go out of his shop and almost nobody come to his shop. He is a closing man. From the chapters before we see the Party use new speaks it not allows people to think the past and the old things, but Mr. Charrington still collects the old thing. It’s really a strange thing to Winston.

3.  The differences and the similarities between Winston and Julia

Third we ‘d like to talk about the similarities and the differences between Winston and Julia.

In common with Winston and Julia is that they both hate the Party and fight against the party, so they are together. At first they think it is only a way to fight against the Party but at last they really fall in love.

The difference between them is that Winston is maturer than Julia, and Winston thinks more than Julia so he thinks more deeply than Julia. From the chapter 5 Winston and Julia’s sentences, we can learn it.

Sometimes he talked to her of the Records Department and the impudent forgeries that he committed there. Such things did not appear to horrify her. She did not feel the abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truths. He told her the story of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford and the momentous slip of paper, which he had once held between his fingers. It did not make much impression on her. At first, indeed, she failed to grasp the point of the story.

‘Were they friends of yours?’ she said.

‘No, I never knew them. They were Inner Party members. Besides, they were far older men than I was. They belonged to the old days, before the Revolution. I barely knew them by sight.’

‘Then what was there to worry about? People are being killed off all the time, aren’t they?’

He tried to make her understand.

But sometimes Julia is more acute than Winston: He told her of the strange intimacy that existed, or seemed to exist, between himself and O’Brien, and of the impulse he sometimes felt, simply to walk into O’Brien’s presence, announce that he was the enemy of the Party, and demand his help. Curiously enough, this did not strike her as an impossibly rash thing to do. She was used to judging people by their faces, and it seemed natural to her that Winston should believe O’Brien to be trustworthy on the strength of a single flash of the eyes.

CHAPTER SIX

Characters

Winston,  O’Brein.

Settings

The corridor of the ministry.

Summary

Winston went all over the corridor of the Ministry when suddenly someone called him behind his back. It was O’Brien. Winston was face to face with O’Brein and at first he wanted to run away. Nevertheless he started to speak to him. O’Brien confessed to Winston he appreciated his articles written in their new language: Newspeak. He suggested him to go to his house and take the tenth edition of Newspeak’s dictionary. So O’Brien gave him his address. This was the only way to know the address of someone, otherwise, people had to make a written request to the Big Brother. Winston was worried about the matter, he was scared that the thought– police could discover him.

Personal Comments

This chapter is not a very important chapter. There is no important and new “crossroads” in the continuation of the events. We also can understand, again and better, the ruthless of Big Brother’s  dictatorship. This chapter represents only a transition and it is nothing else but a connection with the next chapters. In the end of the chapter there is a short summary of Winston’s rebellion path. Winston had moved from thoughts to words, and later from words to actions. “What was happening was only the working-out of a process that had started years ago. The first step had been a secret, involuntary thought, the second had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last step was something that would happen in the Ministry of Love.”

Winston attempted a dangerous path, though unintentionally.

By starting the chapter 6 with Syme's disappearance, Orwell reminds us that every moment of idyllic freedom or pleasure is closely dogged by the destruction wrought by the Party. Once again, Winston, last seen in the upstairs room with Julia, is mired back in the world of eternal surveillance and fear. Syme's disappearance is treated with one paragraph, no more, mirroring the ease and silence with which he has slipped out of existence. This opening is chilling in both its abrupt intrusion on the reader's sympathetic sense of comfort in Winston's hideout, and in its distanced, clinical brevity in treating Syme's vaporization.

The rest of the chapter can be roughly split into two parts: one detailing the Party's outward preparations for Hate Week, and the other analyzing and exploring the differences between Winston's and Julia's respective interpretations of the Party and its acts.

The preparations for Hate Week take on a new meaning after Julia's astute observation that the war with Eurasia is probably not even happening. The huge posters and propaganda stem from the same source as the bombings; in fact, the bombings are just an extension of the campaign. Though this may seem shocking, it is not at all difficult to see why this is going on. The Party as a control device is clearly using war. It allows for an easy manipulation of feelings by keeping people in a constant state of emotional dependence upon the state. It can be used (and is used here) to summon up vast reserves of hatred against a non-existent enemy, thereby directing such feelings away from you. It gets people to accept low standards of living and poor rations by making them feel like they're doing their duty and can't accept more from their government at such a time. Overall, war against an external way is a time-honored device for deflecting criticism and discontent from one's own government.

We have seen Winston's perspective on the atrocities of the Party, but Julia embodies an interesting challenge to his ideas, because of the odd combination she represents the native intelligence and unquestioning acceptance of some of the Party's hogwash. (It is well to note that Winston embodies this combination as well, but with a different kind of intelligence, and different areas of susceptibility to propaganda.) Julia brings home for Winston the idea that not knowing what the Party stands for is somehow safer because it makes things easier. Julia has only dim notions of Goldstein and Party doctrine, and is bored when Winston talks about these things. Because she doesn't think about them, it is far easier for her to accept the ridiculous contradictions demanded of her to accept.

Focus on some relevant points of chapter 6

In Chapter 6 the most important thing is O’Brien and Winston’s meeting.

Winston runs into O’Brien

In this chapter they have been talking to one another for a couple of minutes at the most. There is only one meaning that the episode could possibly have. It has been contrived as a way of letting Winston know O’Brien’s address.

Now let’s have a look about a couple of minutes’conversation. O’Brien is very clever when he wants to tell Winston his address. He pretends to talk about Winston’s Newspeak articles in ‘The Times’, but we know he approaches Winston to knock down him. But Winston thinks O’Brien is his friend. We can see O’Brien pretends himself to be the best among Winston, Julia and himself. Winston and Julia pretend themselves very well but O’Brien (the Party) discovers the truth at last. It proves rebels have no good results again. Then O’Brien’s movement also tells us something. First such as: they had continued to stroll slowly down the corridor, but now O’Brien halted. With the curious, disarming friendliness that he always managed to put in to the gesture he resettled his spectacles on his nose. We can see he really knows how to pretend himself well. And then he writes a note, with his address on, but he intentionally writes it by standing in front of a telescreen. From this we can learn O’Brien is not Winston’s friend in fact, but the poor Winston does not discover it and still likes him. From the chapters later we know O’Brien Winston’s purpose is to change Winston’s thinking. He wants to make Winston support the party and he is successful in changing Winston.

In the before chapters we know Winston does not like Julia, but he likes O’Brien. But now we know Julia is his lover but O’Brien is his enemy. What an amazing situation! So there is nothing completed right. In this situation something may be right but in another situation it may be not.

Once again, a dream of Winston's comes true: namely, an interaction with O'Brien that seems to establish a mutual "thoughtcrimeful" tendency. Winston regards the conversation as a summons for which he has been waiting for his whole life. His sense about O'Brien appears justified, and one can infer that his feelings about mankind as a whole, given his relationship with Julia, and his bond with O'Brien, are definitely improving.

It is interesting that the exchange should have come about through a discussion of Newspeak‹somehow, the language that is being created to quash rebellion has become a vehicle for organizing it. Yet in an odd way this makes sense, since appearance nearly always must contradict actuality, especially with regard to delicate matters of subterfuge. The whole act seems in line with the concept of "doublethink," and Orwell, as we have seen, quite frequently lays out contradictions like this, highlighting the fundamentally contradictory nature of the society.

Once again, however, Winston's happiness is mixed with fear, as he knows that he has started irreversibly down a path, which will end in the Ministry of Love. He feels like he already has one foot in the grave; and though the reader would like to hope that Winston would never get caught, s/he has an uncomfortable sense of foreshadowing here.

by Giuseppe, Li Yang , and Qi Xin