Part Two, Chapter 3 — Teaching Companion

What it asks It asks the student to weigh the narrator’s tone at the start of the chapter against what follows. Waking in the clearing, Julia becomes “alert and businesslike” and plans the journey home: a route “quite different from the one by which he had come”, a different station, and half an hour between them. “It seemed natural to leave this to her.” She gives him the rule, and the narrator adds that she says it “as though enunciating an important general principle.” The student decides whether the phrase gently mocks a practical tip or names the rule her whole life runs on. The card must not tie her rules to any organised resistance; they are her own.

One reading

The narrator is smiling. It is a tip for getting home, said with the weight of a law, and “as though” marks the gap. Julia’s rules are about routes, times and twigs in her hair. Winston’s thinking runs to the Party, the family and the future; hers stops at the next meeting. The joke is gentle, and it is on how small her rules are.

• she said, as though enunciating an important general principle
• Life as she saw it was quite simple.

Another reading

She has found one. Never be where you are expected is how she lives: a new meeting place every evening, a hide-out used twice and no more, the small rules kept so the big ones can be broken. The chapter ends with her giving the same rule for the next trip. A principle is a rule you keep every time, and she keeps this one.

• For the rest they could meet only in the streets, in a different place every evening and never for more than half an hour at a time.
• But you must get there by a different way this time.

Listen for

• Hears where her knowledge comes from: the countryside is “stored away from innumerable community hikes”. The Party’s own outings taught her the ways out.
• Notices that Winston lets her lead: “It seemed natural to leave this to her.” The narrator names what she has and he lacks, “a practical cunning”.
• Weighs her goodbye: “Have I got any twigs in my hair? Are you sure? Then good-bye, my love, good-bye!” Care and love come in one breath, and the love comes after the care.
• Keeps to the page: her rules are for not getting caught, and nothing in the chapter ties them to the Brotherhood or any group.

If stuck

• What does Julia plan for the journey home, and why does Winston go a different way?
• What does “as though” tell you about how the narrator hears her?
• Can a small, practical rule also be a way of life?

A strong answer A strong response decides whether the narrator is smiling at Julia or naming a real principle, and argues from the opening and the last page. One reader hears gentle mockery: a tip about trains said like a law, from a woman for whom “Life as she saw it was quite simple.” Another hears a true principle: a new place every evening, a hide-out used twice and no more, and the same rule again at the end, “a different way this time.” The best answers notice where her knowledge came from, the Party’s “community hikes”, and keep her rules her own.

What it asks It asks the student to read the order of one short passage, and above all its last sentence. The lovers are walking in silence down a side street, where Julia “would never speak”, when a rocket bomb falls “quite near at hand”. Winston finds Julia’s face “deathly white, as white as chalk. Even her lips were white.” The narrator gives his thought as it comes: “She was dead!” He holds her and finds “a live warm face”, but “some powdery stuff” gets in the way of his lips. The passage ends: “Both of their faces were thickly coated with plaster.” The student says what that last sentence adds: it tells why she looked dead, and it puts the same white on Winston’s face as on hers. The card must not claim more about the bomb than the page gives: it “must have dropped quite near at hand.”

One reading

It brings death back. The warm face seemed to answer “She was dead!”, but the passage does not end there. It ends with both of them white, his face as well as hers. Before Winston ever says “We are the dead”, the chapter shows the two of them looking like the dead, and their one kiss of the month comes in the dust of a bomb.

• Both of their faces were thickly coated with plaster.
• Suddenly he became aware of Julia’s face a few centimetres from his own, deathly white, as white as chalk.

Another reading

It explains the white, and so takes the fear away. The deathly look was only plaster, dust on the surface, and the last lines are almost comic: “some powdery stuff” in the way of a kiss. Under it is “a live warm face”. The passage shows in small what Julia will say in the belfry: they are not dead yet.

• He clasped her against him and found that he was kissing a live warm face.
• But there was some powdery stuff that got in the way of his lips.

Listen for

• Hears “Both”: Winston saw death on her face, but his own was just as white.
• Notices where it happens: in a side street, where Julia never speaks, so the one kiss comes where they are most careful.
• Hears “as white as chalk”. Chalk comes back later: the quarry where Winston stood behind Katharine is “an old chalk quarry”.
• Keeps to the page: “She was dead!” is Winston’s thought in the moment, and the next sentence corrects it. The page says only that the bomb “must have dropped quite near at hand”.

If stuck

• What happens just before the kiss, and what does Winston think when he sees Julia’s face?
• Why are their faces white, and whose faces are they?
• Can a last sentence change how you remember what came before it?

A strong answer A strong response says what the plaster sentence adds, and argues from the order of the passage: “She was dead!”, then “a live warm face”, then the plaster. One reader hears death come back: the passage ends on both of them white, so the lovers look like the dead before Winston ever says “We are the dead”. Another hears the fear explained away: the white is only dust, and under it is a warm face, as Julia will say, “not dead yet”. The best answers notice “Both”, hear the chalk that comes back at the quarry, and keep the bomb to what the page says.

What it asks It asks the student to test Julia’s rule at the one place the chapter shows what keeping it costs Winston. She spends “an astonishing amount of time” at lectures and demonstrations, handing out leaflets for the Junior Anti-Sex League, making banners for Hate Week and collecting for the savings campaign. “It paid, she said; it was camouflage. If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones.” She “even induced Winston to mortgage yet another of his evenings” with munition-work “done voluntarily by zealous Party members”. He spends “four hours of paralysing boredom” making what are “probably parts of bomb fuses”. The munition-work is not a rule the Party sets; it is part of looking “zealous”, which is how Julia keeps the small rules. The student judges whether rules that put his hands to that work are still small ones. The card must not say what the fuses are used for; the page says only “probably”.

One reading

Small. Four dull hours change nothing in the Party’s war: the fuses would be made with him or without him. What the hours buy is the look of a “zealous” member, and that look keeps the meetings going. Julia’s own record shows the rule works: she has a spotless name and breaks the biggest rule there is.

• It paid, she said; it was camouflage.
• She had always borne an excellent character.

Another reading

Not small at all. A few paragraphs after a rocket bomb throws him to the ground, the rule has Winston building what are probably parts of bombs. The line between small rules and big ones is Julia’s own. By another measure, the small rules are where the Party gets its work done, by the hands of people who hate it. The rule they break is private; the rules they keep serve the Party in public.

• So, one evening every week, Winston spent four hours of paralysing boredom, screwing together small bits of metal which were probably parts of bomb fuses, in a draughty ill-lit workshop where the knocking of hammers mingled drearily with the music of the telescreens.
• A rocket bomb must have dropped quite near at hand.

Listen for

• Weighs “mortgage”: an evening signed away now to pay for something later. What exactly is being bought?
• Counts the hours. Winston works sixty a week and Julia more, and the camouflage eats the evenings that might have been theirs.
• Hears “probably”: Winston does not even know for sure what he is making. Does not knowing make the work smaller, or worse?
• Keeps to the page: nothing says where his fuses go, or who fired the rocket bomb.

If stuck

• What does Julia spend her evenings doing, and why does she say she does it?
• What does Winston do at the workshop, and what is it like for him?
• Who decides whether a rule is small or big?

A strong answer A strong response judges how small the small rules are, and argues from the paragraph on camouflage. One reader says small: four dull hours change nothing in the war, and they buy the look of a “zealous” member, which Julia’s “excellent character” shows works. Another says it is not small at all: it puts Winston’s hands to what are “probably parts of bomb fuses”, soon after a bomb nearly killed them both, so the small rules may be where the Party gets its work done. The best answers weigh “mortgage”, hear “probably”, and do not claim to know where the fuses go.

What it asks It asks the student to set Julia beside the buyers of the booklets she helped to make. For a year she worked in Pornosec, which “turned out cheap pornography for distribution among the proles”: booklets “in sealed packets with titles like Spanking Stories”, bought “furtively by proletarian youths who were under the impression that they were buying something illegal.” The Party makes the forbidden thing and sells it as forbidden. Julia, meanwhile, breaks the rule the Party sets for its own members, and has done since she was sixteen. As she sees it, “You wanted a good time; ‘they’, meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you could.” The student judges whether her rule-breaking is any more real than theirs. The card must not treat Pornosec as only a joke, and must not say Julia is only using Winston.

One reading

More real. The proles’ crime is staged: the Party made the booklets and wants them bought. Julia’s is one the Party truly forbids. She has kept it up since she was sixteen, and her first lover killed himself to avoid arrest, so the risk is real. And the Party wants her kind of pleasure destroyed, because it makes a world “outside the Party’s control”.

• She had had her first love-affair when she was sixteen, with a Party member of sixty who later committed suicide to avoid arrest.
• It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible.

Another reading

In one way, no more real than theirs. Both are private pleasures that leave the Party’s power just as it was. Julia hates the Party but makes no general criticism of it, and cares for its doctrine only where it touches her own life. Like the boys with their packets, she has a secret that changes nothing outside it. What differs is the risk.

• She hated the Party, and said so in the crudest words, but she made no general criticism of it.
• Except where it touched upon her own life she had no interest in Party doctrine.

Listen for

• Hears the narrator’s aside: being picked for Pornosec is “an infallible mark of good reputation”. The Party trusts its purest girls with its dirtiest work.
• Notices why the workers are girls: men are thought to be “in greater danger of being corrupted by the filth they handled.” Julia’s reply: “Girls are always supposed to be so pure. Here’s one who isn’t, anyway.”
• Weighs “They only have six plots”: the proles’ forbidden thrill is made to a formula, and Julia, who helped make it, finds it “boring, really”.
• Keeps to the page: what the young proles believe is the narrator’s account, and nothing in the chapter says Julia does not love Winston.

If stuck

• What did Julia do in Pornosec, and who bought what she made?
• What happened to Julia’s first lover, and why?
• Can breaking a rule be real if it changes nothing for anyone else?

A strong answer A strong response judges whether Julia’s rule-breaking is more real than the proles’, and argues from Pornosec and her story. One reader says it is: the proles buy a crime the Party wrote, while hers is one the Party punishes and wants destroyed, because it lies “outside the Party’s control”. Another says that in one way it is not: like theirs, it is a private pleasure that leaves the Party’s power as it was, and she “made no general criticism of it.” The best answers hear “an infallible mark of good reputation” and take Pornosec seriously, as a picture of how the Party handles the proles.

What it asks It asks the student to weigh Katharine’s unease against what happens next. Lost on a community hike in Kent, she and Winston come to “the edge of an old chalk quarry”, a drop of ten or twenty metres. “As soon as she realised that they were lost Katharine became very uneasy. To be away from the noisy mob of hikers even for a moment gave her a feeling of wrong-doing.” She wants to go back. Winston sees a tuft of loosestrife “of two colours, magenta and brick-red, apparently growing on the same root”, and calls her to look. “She had already turned to go, but she did rather fretfully come back for a moment.” She leans out; he steadies her with a hand on her waist; it occurs to him “how completely alone they were”; “And the thought struck him.…” The student judges whether her unease was only the Party’s training at work, or the one true sense of danger in the scene. The card must not say Winston truly meant to push her; the story breaks off, and he says he is “not certain.” It must not say what has become of Katharine.

One reading

Yes, she was wrong. Her unease is the Party talking. Winston calls her “goodthinkful”, “naturally orthodox”. She feels guilty for a couple of minutes out of the crowd, which breaks no law and harms no one. What she fears is being unwatched, and the Party taught her that fear. The thought that strikes Winston is his own, and nothing she could have sensed.

• To be away from the noisy mob of hikers even for a moment gave her a feeling of wrong-doing.
• Meaning naturally orthodox, incapable of thinking a bad thought?

Another reading

No, she was right for the wrong reason. She thinks the danger lies in being away from the group. It turns out to lie in the man beside her, in the very solitude she feared. Winston weighs the risk of a microphone and finds it “very small”. Her fear of being alone, the Party’s fear, is for once pointed at something real. Nothing in the story says he would have acted, but the danger in that thought was real.

• At this moment it suddenly occurred to him how completely alone they were.
• In a place like this the danger that there would be a hidden microphone was very small, and even if there was a microphone it would only pick up sounds.

Listen for

• Sets her unease beside Julia’s crowds. Julia talks only in the main streets, where it is safe “in the middle of the crowd”, and Katharine feels safe only with the mob. One uses the crowd as cover; the other cannot bear to leave it.
• Hears what calls her back: the loosestrife, “apparently growing on the same root”. Winston has “never seen anything of the kind before”, and his innocent delight is what brings her to the edge.
• Weighs where the story stops: “And the thought struck him.…” The narrator never states the thought, and Julia fills the gap: “Why didn’t you give her a good shove?”
• Keeps to the page: the chapter does not say Winston meant to push her, and says nothing of what became of Katharine.

If stuck

• Why are Winston and Katharine at the edge of the quarry, and what does she want to do?
• What brings her back to the edge?
• Can a person be afraid of the wrong thing and still be right to be afraid?

A strong answer A strong response judges Katharine’s unease, and argues from the story Winston tells. One reader calls it foolish: a “goodthinkful” woman feeling guilty for two minutes away from the group, with the Party’s fear of being unwatched built into her. Another says she was right for the wrong reason: the danger was not away from the crowd but beside her, in the solitude where Winston notices “how completely alone they were.” The best answers hear what calls her back, the two-coloured loosestrife, set her fear of being alone beside Julia’s use of crowds, and do not say Winston meant to push her.

What it asks It asks the student to notice an order the chapter chooses. Julia’s first words are a plan: “We can come here once again”, though “not for another month or two”. A few paragraphs later the narrator looks ahead: “As it happened they never went back to the clearing in the wood.” The chapter then follows a month of street meetings and the afternoon in the belfry, and closes with Julia planning again: “We may as well go back to the place in the wood. We’ve given it a good long rest.” She begins drawing the route in the dust. The student judges what the early sentence does to the last page. The card must not say why they never went back, or which of the two is proved right; the chapter leaves both open.

One reading

It casts a shadow. We hear her plan knowing it will not happen, so her confidence sounds the way Winston hears it in the belfry: “very young”, still expecting “something from life”. The narrator knows something she does not, and so do we. Her plans hold for now, but the reader has already seen one of them come to nothing.

• As it happened they never went back to the clearing in the wood.
• We may as well go back to the place in the wood.

Another reading

It hardly matters, and that is her strength. “As it happened” is a shrug, not a doom: things simply went another way. They lost the clearing and found the belfry and the streets. Julia never rests on one plan; she always has the next route ready. Knowing this one fails shows how little one failure stops her.

• That was in another hiding-place known to Julia, the belfry of a ruinous church in an almost-deserted stretch of country where an atomic bomb had fallen thirty years earlier.
• I’ve got it all planned out.

Listen for

• Hears “As it happened”: the narrator gives no reason, only that it came out that way.
• Notices that the chapter opens and closes on Julia making plans, and that between them she gets them to the belfry, “a good hiding-place when once you got there”.
• Weighs whose side the early sentence takes. A student may say it backs Winston’s gloom; another may say one lost hide-out proves nothing about the end.
• Keeps to the page: the chapter does not say why they never went back.

If stuck

• What does Julia say about the clearing at the very start of the chapter?
• What does she plan at the very end?
• Does knowing how something turns out change how you feel about someone who does not know yet?

A strong answer A strong response says what the early sentence does to Julia’s last plan, and argues from the chapter’s order. One reader hears a shadow: we know “they never went back”, so her “I’ve got it all planned out” sounds more hopeful than she knows. Another hears a shrug: “As it happened” carries no doom, the belfry and the streets took the clearing’s place, and her way never rests on one plan. The best answers notice that the chapter opens and closes on her plans, and do not say why they never went back.

What it asks It asks the student to make sense of a regret for an act that, by Winston’s own account, would have changed nothing. Hearing the quarry story, Julia asks at once, “Why didn’t you give her a good shove?” and adds, “I would have.” Winston answers, “I would have, if I’d been the same person then as I am now. Or perhaps I would – I’m not certain.” Asked if he is sorry, he says, “On the whole I’m sorry I didn’t.” Holding her, he thinks she does not understand “that to push an inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing.” He says the push “would have made no difference,” and when Julia asks why he is sorry, he answers, “Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this game that we’re playing, we can’t win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that’s all.” The student builds a thesis on what the push would have given him, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say Winston truly meant to push her, or what has become of Katharine.

One reading

An act. Pushing her would not change the game, but it would be his own deed instead of a missed chance. If every rebel loses, the only choice left is the kind of failure, and something done is a better failure than something not done. The push would have proved he could act.

• Only because I prefer a positive to a negative.
• Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that’s all.

Another reading

A different self. The regret is less about Katharine than about the man he was then, the husband who went along with the weekly ceremony. He measures that man by the one he is now, who says he would have done it. The push would have given him, back then, the self he has now. And he is “not certain” even of that.

• I would have, if I’d been the same person then as I am now.
• Or perhaps I would – I’m not certain.

Listen for

• Notices how the story is first named: “something that had happened, or rather had failed to happen”. Winston thinks of it as a non-event before he tells it.
• Tests “made no difference” against the chapter. Katharine would have denounced him if she had not been “too stupid to detect the unorthodoxy of his opinions”; yet even with her gone, “No imaginable committee would ever sanction such a marriage”. Which way does that cut?
• Hears Julia beside him. She says “I would have” with no “perhaps”, and then asks the one thing he has not explained: “Then why are you sorry you didn’t do it?”
• Revises by asking what kind of hopeless man prefers “a positive”. A strong revision may hold that his gloom is not passive: a man who counts himself already lost still wants to have acted.

If stuck

• What does Julia say when the story stops, and how does Winston answer?
• Why does Winston think the push would have changed nothing?
• Can it matter to do something even when you know it will not change the result?

A strong answer A strong response states what the push would have given Winston, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says an act: in a game he cannot win, “a positive” is a better failure than a missed chance, so the push would have proved he could act. The strongest objection is his own doubt, “Or perhaps I would – I’m not certain”, which makes the regret about the man he was then, not about a deed. A good revision might hold that both come to one wish, to be a man who acts, and test it against Julia’s plain “I would have.” The best answers keep the story where it stops and never say he meant it.

What it asks It asks the student to judge the argument that closes the chapter. Winston thinks that Julia “did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness”, and that “from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse.” He says, “We are the dead.” Julia answers “prosaically”, “We’re not dead yet.” He allows “Six months, a year – five years, conceivably”, but says it makes very little difference. She asks, “Which would you sooner sleep with, me or a skeleton? Don’t you enjoy being alive?” He says, “Yes, I like that.” She tells him to stop talking about dying and plans the next meeting, drawing the route in the dust with a twig from a pigeon’s nest. The student builds a thesis on which of them sees their danger more truly, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say either is proved right; the chapter leaves the argument open. It must not make Julia part of any organised resistance, or say she does not love Winston.

One reading

Winston. He knows the danger is total: the Party will catch them in the end. Julia half knows it herself. To count yourself already dead is to leave the Party nothing to threaten. Her joy in being alive is real, but it rests on luck, and Winston sees that luck runs out.

• In a way she realised that she herself was doomed, that sooner or later the Thought Police would catch her and kill her, but with another part of her mind she believed that it was somehow possible to construct a secret world in which you could live as you chose.
• In this game that we’re playing, we can’t win.

Another reading

Julia. She sees the danger in its real shape: routes, times, crowds, the next street corner. She knows that an arrested man gives names, and is glad her first lover died before he could give hers. Winston’s talk of being dead is a theory; her care is what has kept them safe all month. Seeing yourself as a corpse may even make you careless, while loving life gives you a reason to stay hidden.

• otherwise they’d have had my name out of him when he confessed
• The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same.

Listen for

• Hears whose voice says Julia “did not understand”. The narrator is giving Winston’s view from inside his head; a student may ask whether the book agrees.
• Notices that Winston gives way: “Yes, I like that.” Then he lets her plan. Does that settle the argument, or only end it?
• Weighs “presumably”: Winston assumes the young fear death more, yet Julia is the calmer of the two.
• Revises by pulling apart two questions: who sees the end more truly, and who sees the daily danger more truly. A strong revision may hold that Winston is right about the end and Julia right about every day before it, and ask which of the two the question is really about.

If stuck

• What does Winston mean by “We are the dead”, and how does Julia answer?
• What has Julia done all chapter to keep them safe?
• Can someone see a danger clearly and still be wrong about how to live with it?

A strong answer A strong response states which of them sees their danger more truly, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Winston: the Party will catch them, Julia half knows she is “doomed”, and a man who counts himself dead has nothing left to lose. The strongest objection is everything Julia does: the routes, the crowds, the hide-outs, and her plain sense that an arrested man gives names, while his theory has kept no one safe. A good revision might hold that he is truer about the end and she is truer about each day’s danger, and keep the argument as open as the chapter does.