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1984
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
At the end Winston sees his life and Julia's inside the paperweight, “fixed in a sort of eternity.” Is that a hopeful picture or a frightening one?
The tension Waiting on the bed, Winston thinks of the cellars of the Ministry of Love, “fixed in future time,” and of how he and Julia have chosen “to shorten the interval”; an hour later Julia paints her face and declares, “In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.”
What the rented room lets Winston and Julia become, and the shadows that come into it with them.
Winston waits in the room above Mr Charrington’s shop, which he has rented for meetings with Julia. A pan of water heats on an oilstove, and the old clock with its twelve-hour face says seven-twenty. His heart keeps saying “Folly, folly”: no Party crime is harder to hide, and he expects them to be caught within weeks. Mr Charrington let the room without fuss, talking of privacy and mentioning a second way into the house. In the yard below, a big prole woman pegs out diapers and sings a song written by a machine, and she sings it well. The chapter goes back to how the room began. Extra work before Hate Week had kept the lovers apart; when Julia had to call off their meeting, Winston’s anger turned to tenderness, and he wished they had a place to be alone together, like a married couple. Both knew renting the room was lunacy. Waiting on the bed, he thinks of the cellars of the Ministry of Love, an end they cannot avoid and have chosen to bring nearer. Julia arrives with a tool-bag of Inner Party food: real sugar, white bread, jam, milk, tea and a kilo of coffee. She has him turn his back, and paints her face with make-up he guesses she bought in a prole shop. She wears scent too, and plans a frock: in this room, she says, she will be “a woman, not a Party comrade.” They go to bed and sleep. Winston wakes near nine and wonders whether such an evening was ever ordinary. Julia sees a rat by the wainscoting and throws a shoe at it. Her talk of rats that go after babies sends Winston back into a lifelong nightmare of “a wall of darkness”, with something behind it that he knows and will not face. Julia promises to stop up the hole. She makes the coffee and looks round the room; Winston calls the glass paperweight a chunk of history “they’ve forgotten to alter”. The engraving is of St Clement’s church, and when Winston gives the rhyme’s first line, Julia caps it with lines learned from a grandfather who was vaporised, or disappeared, when she was eight. She wonders what a lemon was. As she gets ready to wash off her paint, Winston gazes into the glass and feels that the room, with Julia’s life and his own, is inside it, “fixed in a sort of eternity.”
Before reading, ask the student what a room of their own would be worth to two people who are watched all day. Then read the chapter in four stretches: the waiting, from the opening to “shorten the interval before it happened”; Julia’s bag and face, from her quick step on the stairs to “not a Party comrade”; the bed and the rat, to her promise to “bung it up properly”; and the coffee, the rhyme and the glass, to the end. In each stretch, mark one thing the room gives them and one thing that comes into it with them. Leave open what the chapter leaves open: what lies behind the wall of darkness, and what becomes of the room.
Retell The student retells the chapter in order: Winston waiting while the woman sings in the yard, the day Julia could not come and the idea of the room, the Ministry of Love he expects, Julia’s bag and painted face, the bed, the rat and the nightmare, then the coffee, the rhyme and the glass. Look for the singing woman and the “Folly, folly” refrain, which a hurried retelling drops, and for the last picture, the room inside the paperweight.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes two passages of their own. The first is three sentences about a dread that comes and goes: one that opens on “It was curious how”, one that pins the dread in place with a comparison as sure as counting, and a long one that sets two verbs on either side of “but”, turns at a colon and ends on a choice. The second is two sentences about a quiet hour: a long sentence that wonders whether such an hour was ever normal and piles up phrases with a repeated word, then a short question that doubts it.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that the paperweight is a hopeful picture, and gathers “the arch of the sky”, the “tiny world with its atmosphere complete”, the history “they’ve forgotten to alter” and Julia’s “a woman, not a Party comrade.” The other argues that it is frightening, and gathers “fixed in future time”, the coral that cannot move, the rat and the “wall of darkness”, and the “Folly, folly” that never stops. Each side must answer the other’s best line. Neither may say what becomes of the room or what lies behind the wall.
Purpose Close on the chapter’s shape. It opens with Winston looking round the room, where the paperweight “gleamed softly out of the half-darkness”, and it ends with him gazing into the same glass as “The room was darkening.” Between them come the ticking clock, the pan boiling away and the hour before lights-out. Ask what the chapter gains by ending on something fixed after an evening of time running out.
Easier Read aloud the opening to the end of Mr Charrington’s talk of privacy, the singing in the yard, Julia’s bag from “Half a second” to “not a Party comrade”, the rat from “Hi! Get out” to “bung it up properly”, and the last paragraph. Make two lists as you go: what the room gives them, and what comes into it with them. Talk through the second, third and fourth discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions in order, then write both written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.
Harder Ask for one argued essay on the room as a home. Julia plans to plaster the rat-hole, shows how to mend the gate-leg table and means to clean the picture; Winston lies still and looks into the glass. Which of them is making the room a home, and can a home kept in secret be more than borrowed time? The essay should meet the objection that each of them is guarding the room in a different way.
1. The song in the yard was written by a machine, with no person involved at all. Yet Winston hears “a sort of happy melancholy” in the woman’s voice. Where does the feeling in that song come from?Tone
What it asks It asks the student to account for feeling in a song that no person wrote. The words come from a sub-section of the Music Department and were “composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator.” Winston calls them “dreadful rubbish”, yet the woman sings “so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound”, and later her voice is “very tuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy.” The student says where that feeling comes from: the voice, the listener, or the words themselves. The card must not say what the woman thinks or feels; the chapter gives only what Winston hears and imagines.
The voice. The words belong to the machine, but the sound is hers. She turns rubbish into “an almost pleasant sound”, and she knows the song “by heart”. A song is made again each time someone sings it, and no versificator can sing. The feeling is what a person adds to words that were never meant to hold any.
But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.
She knew the whole drivelling song by heart, it seemed.
The listener. The feeling is Winston’s. He is waiting in a room his heart calls “suicidal folly”, for a love he expects to end in the Ministry of Love, and the song is about an “’opeless fancy” that stole a heart. He hears his own evening in it. The machine wrote the words; the man behind the curtain brings the melancholy.
It was only an ’opeless fancy,
Folly, folly, his heart kept saying: conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly.
A strong answer A strong response says where the song’s feeling comes from, and argues from the two passages about the singing. One reader gives it to the voice: she turns “dreadful rubbish” into “an almost pleasant sound”, and no machine can sing. Another gives it to the listener: the words of an “’opeless fancy” fit a man waiting in a room his heart calls folly. The best answers track how Winston’s words for the song stay harsh while his words for the voice grow warm, and never claim to know what the woman feels.
2. Of everything in her bag, Julia is proudest of the coffee. It is Inner Party coffee, and she calls the Inner Party “those swine.” Why would she be proudest of that?Character
What it asks It asks the student to read Julia’s pride in her bag. Packet after packet replaces a substitute: “Real sugar. Not saccharine, sugar.”, “proper white bread, not our bloody stuff”, “real tea. Not blackberry leaves.” Then: “This is the one I’m really proud of. I had to wrap a bit of sacking round it, because –”. The smell fills the room, “like an emanation from his early childhood”. “It’s Inner Party coffee. There’s a whole kilo here,” she says, and when he asks how she got it: “It’s all Inner Party stuff. There’s nothing those swine don’t have, nothing. But of course waiters and servants and people pinch things”. The student says why her pride settles on the coffee. The card must not say more about how Julia got the goods than she says herself.
The getting. The coffee is the best thing the Inner Party keeps for itself, and she has a whole kilo of it. She scorns the people who own it, and is proud to have got hold of their own coffee. The pride is in beating “those swine” at their own table.
It’s Inner Party coffee. There’s a whole kilo here
There’s nothing those swine don’t have, nothing.
The giving. She guessed he would bring the substitute, and she tells him to throw it away: they will not need it. The real coffee is for him as much as for her, and later she is the one who gets up and makes it. The pride is a host’s: the coffee turns a rented room into a place where someone is looked after.
Did you bring some of that filthy Victory Coffee? I thought you would.
You can chuck it away again, because we shan’t be needing it.
A strong answer A strong response says why Julia is proudest of the coffee, and argues from her words over the bag. One reader hears the getting: it is “Inner Party coffee”, a whole kilo, and her pride is in having what “those swine” keep for themselves. Another hears the giving: she guessed he would bring “that filthy Victory Coffee”, tells him to “chuck it away again”, and makes the real thing for him later. The best answers hear the pairs of real and substitute, notice the sacking and the shut window, and keep Julia’s source to what she says.
3. Winston turns round expecting to see Julia naked. Instead she has painted her face, which is “much more surprising than that.” What can paint do that taking off her clothes cannot?Character
What it asks It asks the student to take Julia’s make-up seriously. Winston guesses she slipped into a shop in the prole quarters and bought “a complete set of make-up materials”. “It was not very skilfully done”, but “He had never before seen or imagined a woman of the Party with cosmetics on her face.” She becomes “not only very much prettier, but, above all, far more feminine.” She wears scent, and plans a frock, “silk stockings and high-heeled shoes”, and says, “In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.” The student says what the paint does that nakedness cannot. The card must not treat the make-up as a joke, and must say no more about the woman the scent recalls than the page does.
Paint makes a self. Undressing shows what is already there; painting a face is a choice, planned, bought and put on. Nakedness is what Winston expected. The paint is new, and it says who she means to be in this room. The frock and the heels she plans go further the same way.
He had never before seen or imagined a woman of the Party with cosmetics on her face.
In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.
Paint is for being seen. Nakedness is for a lover; a painted face is meant to be looked at, the way a woman once dressed to go out. In this room it is a public self that can only be shown in private, and it does not last the evening. Before they leave she must wash it off, and her verdict is “What a bore!”
I’ll wear silk stockings and high-heeled shoes!
I must start washing this paint off. What a bore!
A strong answer A strong response says what the paint does that undressing cannot, and argues from the moment Winston turns round. One reader says paint makes a self: it is chosen and bought, never “seen or imagined” on a Party woman, and it carries her “a woman, not a Party comrade.” Another says paint is for being seen: a public face that can only be worn in private, and must be washed off before they go. The best answers take the paint seriously, hear “far more feminine” against the overalls, and weigh the scent that brings back another woman.
4. After the rat, Winston is back in a nightmare he has had all his life. In it, his deepest feeling is “self-deception,” because he knows what lies behind the “wall of darkness.” How can he fool himself about something he knows?Inference
What it asks It asks the student to read the nightmare the rat opens. Julia throws a shoe at a rat in the wainscoting and talks of rats that go after babies; Winston cuts her off, eyes shut: “Of all horrors in the world – a rat!” For several moments he is in a dream that “had recurred from time to time throughout his life.” He stands before a wall of darkness with “something unendurable” behind it. “In the dream his deepest feeling was always one of self-deception, because he did in fact know what was behind the wall of darkness.” He could drag it out only “with a deadly effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own brain.” The student says how a man can fool himself about what he knows. The card must not say what lies behind the wall; the chapter never names it.
By never finishing the thought. Knowing is not the same as facing. He always wakes before he looks, and when Julia’s talk comes near the thing, he stops her in the middle of her sentence. To look would be like tearing out part of his own mind. The fooling is what keeps him whole.
He always woke up without discovering what it was: but somehow it was connected with what Julia had been saying when he cut her short.
With a deadly effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own brain, he could even have dragged the thing into the open.
By going on with it awake. The self-deception does not stay in the dream. A moment later he tells Julia it is nothing, only a dislike of rats, and soon the panic is “half-forgotten”. He fools her, then himself, and he is back in the evening.
it’s nothing. I don’t like rats, that’s all.
Already the black instant of panic was half-forgotten.
A strong answer A strong response explains how Winston can fool himself about what he knows, and argues from the paragraph on the dream and the minutes after it. One reader says he never finishes the thought: he wakes before he looks and cuts Julia off, because looking would be “like wrenching a piece out of his own brain”. Another says the fooling goes on awake: he tells Julia “it’s nothing”, and the panic is soon “half-forgotten”. The best answers set Julia’s calm beside his panic and never say what is behind the wall.
5. Julia learned the rhyme from her grandfather. She says he “was vaporised when I was eight – at any rate, he disappeared.” Why might she correct herself?Character
What it asks It asks the student to read one correction. Winston gives the rhyme’s first line, and “To his astonishment she capped the line”. Asked who taught her, she says, “My grandfather. He used to say it to me when I was a little girl. He was vaporised when I was eight – at any rate, he disappeared.” Then: “I wonder what a lemon was,” she adds “inconsequently”. The student says why she might trade “vaporised” for “disappeared”. The card must not say what happened to the grandfather, which Julia herself does not claim to know, and must not read a hidden message into the rhyme beyond Winston’s sense that it is “like the two halves of a countersign.”
Accuracy. She does not know what was done to him, only that he was gone. The word “disappeared” is the one thing she can be sure of. Even her own family’s past is something she can only half know, like the rhyme she can only half remember.
He was vaporised when I was eight – at any rate, he disappeared.
I can’t remember how it goes on after that.
Habit. “Vaporised” names something done to him; “disappeared” names only an absence, the careful word. She has just said that in this room she will be “a woman, not a Party comrade”, yet the care with words comes in with her. Even here, the worst thing is said and then softened, and she moves straight on to lemons.
He was vaporised when I was eight – at any rate, he disappeared.
In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.
A strong answer A strong response says why Julia might correct herself, and argues from her few lines about her grandfather. One reader hears accuracy: she knows only that he was gone, so “disappeared” is all she can claim, as the rhyme is all she can half remember. Another hears habit: the careful word comes into the room with her, just after she has said she will be “a woman, not a Party comrade”, and she turns “inconsequently” to lemons. The best answers weigh the lemons, keep the rhyme to Winston’s countersign, and do not say what happened to him.
1. Winston’s heart keeps calling the room “conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly.” After the evening he spends there, which of those three words fits it worst?
What it asks It asks the student to test Winston’s own verdict against the evening. The refrain comes twice: “Folly, folly, his heart kept saying: conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly.” and “Folly, folly, folly! he thought again.” Each word makes its own charge. “Conscious”: they chose it knowing, and “Both of them knew that it was lunacy.” “Gratuitous”: done without need or cause. “Suicidal”: “It was as though they were intentionally stepping nearer to their graves.” The student picks the word the evening answers best, builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say they are caught in this room, or when; Winston only expects it.
Gratuitous. The room answers a need, not a whim. The idea grew out of “a deep tenderness” on the street, when Winston wished for a place to be alone together without having to make love every time. The evening gives them that: sleep, talk, a bed, real coffee, and Julia’s painted face. Something wanted for that reason is not done for nothing.
He wished above all that they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met.
In this room I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.
Conscious. The chapter shows how little of the choice is fully awake. The idea did not come from thought; it “floated into his head” as a picture of the paperweight. The end he is choosing comes and goes in his mind. They know it is lunacy, but the knowing is never held for long.
Actually the idea had first floated into his head in the form of a vision of the glass paperweight mirrored by the surface of the gate-leg table.
It was curious how that predestined horror moved in and out of one’s consciousness.
A strong answer A strong response names the word that fits worst, argues from the evening, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says “gratuitous”: the room grew out of “a deep tenderness” and a wish for a place to be alone together, and the evening gives them that, down to Julia’s “a woman, not a Party comrade.” Another says “conscious”: the idea “floated into his head”, and the horror moves “in and out of one’s consciousness”. The strongest objection is Winston’s own count, a few weeks “without being caught”, which keeps “suicidal” standing whichever word falls. A good revision tests whether one word can fail while the folly still stands.
2. At the end Winston sees his life and Julia's inside the paperweight, “fixed in a sort of eternity.” Is that a hopeful picture or a frightening one?
What it asks It asks the student to judge the picture that ends the chapter. As the room darkens, Winston gazes into the paperweight. “The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself.” The glass is like “the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete.” He feels he is inside it, with the bed, the table, the clock and the engraving. “The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.” Earlier he called it “a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter”, and, waiting on the bed, he saw the cellars of the Ministry of Love “fixed in future time.” The student builds a thesis on whether the picture is hopeful or frightening, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say what becomes of the room, the paperweight or the lovers; the chapter does not tell.
Hopeful. The glass is a sky over a world complete in itself, and the room is inside it with them. The paperweight is a piece of history “they’ve forgotten to alter”; to be fixed inside it is to be kept, out of reach, as the coral has been kept since “a hundred years ago”. Julia’s painted face, the coffee and the rhyme are what the glass now holds.
It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete.
It’s a little chunk of history that they’ve forgotten to alter.
Frightening. The word “fixed” is the one Winston used, earlier that evening, for the cellars “fixed in future time.” The coral cannot move. The room that holds them also holds the rat and the nightmare it opened, and the clock has been counting the evening down. To be fixed in it forever is to have no way out.
There it lay, fixed in future time, preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100.
The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.
A strong answer A strong response states whether the last picture is hopeful or frightening, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says hopeful: the glass is “the arch of the sky” over a world complete, a piece of history “they’ve forgotten to alter”, and the lovers are kept inside it like the coral. The strongest objection is the word “fixed”, which Winston used for the cellars “fixed in future time”, and the rat and the nightmare that are in the room too. A good revision might hold that the picture is both at once, safety and a trap, and weigh what “a sort of” leaves open.
It was curious how that predestined horror moved in and out of one’s consciousness.Settled in advance and impossible to escape (pre-, before, and destine, to set a course for). Winston calls the cellars of the Ministry of Love a “predestined horror”: to him they are not a risk he runs but an appointment already made.
One could not avoid it, but one could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and again, by a conscious, wilful act, one chose to shorten the interval before it happened.Done on purpose, and stubbornly, whatever sense says (will and -ful). Winston’s “conscious, wilful act” is the choice to bring the end nearer. The word carries both freedom and a kind of obstinacy, and both fit.
The smell was already filling the room, a rich hot smell which seemed like an emanation from his early childhood, but which one did occasionally meet with even now, blowing down a passage-way before a door slammed, or diffusing itself mysteriously in a crowded street, sniffed for an instant and then lost again.Something that flows out from a source, as light from a lamp or a smell from a kitchen (Latin emanare, to flow out). The coffee seems “like an emanation from his early childhood”: Winston does not call up the memory; it drifts out of the past and finds him.
Winston gazed abstractedly through the muslin curtain.With the mind elsewhere, not really seeing what the eyes rest on (abstract, from Latin abstrahere, to draw away). Winston looks at the yard abstractedly while Julia changes behind him; even so, the singing woman is what his thoughts settle on.
I wonder what a lemon was,’ she added inconsequently.In a way that does not follow from what came just before (in-, not, and consequent, following on). Julia goes straight from her vanished grandfather to wondering what a lemon was. The narrator names the jump and leaves the reader to wonder why she makes it.
It was like the two halves of a countersign.A secret reply to a password: one person gives the sign, the other must answer it rightly (counter, in reply, and sign). When Julia caps his line of the rhyme, it feels to Winston like the answer that proves two people are on the same side.
The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself.Without ever running out or being used up (in-, not, and exhaust, to use up). The glass is “inexhaustibly interesting”: Winston can look into it forever and never reach the end of it. Earlier he imagines the singing woman with a supply of clothes just as “inexhaustible”.