Instead of going to the Community Center, Winston wanders through prole neighborhoods. He is fearful because he knows the Party disapproves of ownlife, the desire for solitude. Preoccupied with the fact that he may be stopped by a patrol, he is nearly struck by a rocket bomb. Getting to his feet, he sees a severed hand on the pavement and kicks it into the gutter.
Winston passes by a group of proles who are standing outside a pub and arguing about the Lottery. Winston knows that the prizes are largely imaginary and wonders how the proles can be taken in, but still believes that hope lies in the possibility that they will someday rebel against the Party.
Winston follows an old man into another pub, intending to ask him about life before the Revolution. He buys the man beer and asks him about the past, but the old man is incoherent. Winston realizes that there is no one alive who can tell him whether life was better or worse in the past—that history has been obliterated.
The inability of the old prole to satisfy Winston's curiosity about the past is an indicator that the Party has succeeded in its program of mind control. Winston's hope that the proles will rebel seems increasingly futile.
ACTIVE THEMES
Totalitarianism and Communism Theme Icon Reality Control Theme Icon Class Struggle Theme Icon
Next, Winston finds himself outside the junk shop where he had bought the diary. The owner, an intelligent prole named Mr. Charrington, shows him a glass paperweight with a piece of coral inside, which Winston buys, and a print of an old church in an upstairs bedroom. Winston notices that the bedroom has no telescreen. Charrington then teaches Winston a few lines of an old nursery rhyme, "Oranges and Lemons," about the churches of London.
Explanation:
