Book 1 Chapter 7-8, Book 2 chapter 1-2

" He was walking up a cobbled street of little two-story houses with battered doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were somehow curiously suggestive of rat holes. there were puddles of filthy water here and there among the cobbles" (82).


When I was reading this for the first time I realized the type of conditions that these proles were put into. It sounded like they were living lives where they are just surviving and not really going anywhere in their lives, almost as if they were stuck. Throughout the passage, there is more description of this town area that he was walking through, it reminded me of a bad neighborhood where people don't really care about the looks of their housing and how clean it could be. All the people want to do is just live and get paid to do the same thing for the rest of their lives. It seems that if the proles were exposed to more of the outside world and had more information on what is going on around the world then they would have the potential to make a difference to the type of lifestyle that everyone is living.

"They remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister's face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago; but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision" (93).

This passage shows how they keep the proles away from all the things that happen around the world like history in the past that could have shaped the lives that they live now. When Winston was talking to that old man it is pretty clear that the man had no idea of all the huge changes that might have happened when he was young. It was almost as if they were kept away from the real world and they were there only to keep the human population high. This passage makes it clear that throughout the story there is a reason for why the party doesn't want proles to know about the truth that has happened in their lives. Does this mean that the Party has lost all their feelings towards humans and no longer care about what conditions they are put in? I think think that most people in the party have lost their human morals and they are used to a life where all the hard workers are proles that are oblivious to their surroundings.


"Already he had instinctively started forward to help her. In the moment when he had seen her fall on the bandaged arm, it had been as though he felt the pain in his own body... the whole incident could not have taken as much as half a minute" (106).

This passage proves how even though they are always being watched, once they are put into a situation that involves helping one another. They do not think twice to help each other and make sure that they are ok. It's an instinct that he has which proves that he is not another machine or worker towards the system that he lives in. He knows that there is something wrong in the way that he is living life. Before he knew that Julia was doing all of this on purpose, we can see that despite all the suspiciousness that Winston had towards her. He helped her out to stand up without hesitation proving that Winston still has human morals in feeling sympathy for others. Since Julia gave Winston a note and they know each other a bit better now. I think that this is going to be a start towards a change in the story, maybe they will work together to make a change in the lifestyle that they are currently living in.