Julia

Julia plays an interesting role in this novel. As well as breaking up the grim mood of the novel, she clearly has a positive effect on Winston. We notice these effects through symbols such as Winston's varicose ulcer, which tends not to act up when Julia`s presence features largely in the novel. As well as this Winston seems less given to his vices when he is engaged in his affair with Julia. Julia, basically, is a ray of hope in the novel. While they both eventually accept the inevitability of their eventual capture and submission, they seem to see their affair as a relief from the world that the part set up, and proof that one can find happiness in a world such as that.

"It was as though some huge force were pressing down ... upon you – something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable…what then?"


Another quote I like from this novel, this paragraph really gives an insight into the horror of life under the party. As well as this it really causes the reader to consider the nature of reality.

The Ending

"He gazed up at the enormous face.  Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache.  O cruel, needless misunderstanding!  O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!  Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose.  But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.  He had won the victory over himself.  He loved Big Brother" (p. 300)


Possibly the most surreal moment in the novel, this quote represents the ultimate failure of Winston`s rebellion. 
Winston sits in the chestnut tree cafe, a massive symbol of the victims of the party`s oppression throughout the novel,and makes reference to the suppression of `false memories``, which he never doubted before. Throughout the novel, Winston`s vices are seen to fade in correlation with the presence of Julia in the narrative, however now we see Winston essentially living in a drunken stupor in the cafe. While these references are made we are watching Winston make a chess game with himself , making a metaphor of ``White always mates``, white being Big Brother in Winston`s mind. This quote immediately follows Winston`s rejoice over the oceanic army`s victory in a war that Winston previously knew to be false.