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1984
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
After the note, Winston stops taking small risks so that he can take a much bigger one. Has the note made him braver or more afraid?
The tension In the corridor she is at once “an enemy who was trying to kill him” and “a human creature, in pain”; within a day the man who pictured smashing her skull with a cobblestone is gripped by fever at the thought that he might lose her.
How one scrap of paper changes the way Winston sees the dark-haired girl, his own life, and the watching all around him.
Four days after Winston saw the dark-haired girl outside the junk shop, he meets her alone in a long corridor at the Ministry. Her right arm is in a sling. She stumbles and falls on it, and as he helps her up, she slips a folded scrap of paper into his hand, says “Thanks, comrade!”, and walks briskly on. They are standing in front of a telescreen, so he keeps his surprise out of his face. Back at his desk he makes himself wait before reading it. He thinks the message must be political: most likely from the Thought Police, or perhaps, he wildly hopes, from the Brotherhood. It says “I love you.” He reads it again before he drops it into the memory hole. The rest of the day is hard to bear. At the Community Centre that evening he goes through every dull duty without wishing to shirk, because the note has made him want to stay alive, and small risks now seem stupid. In bed he no longer thinks she might be laying a trap. Five nights ago he thought of killing her; now he is in a fever at the thought of losing her. He goes over every way of reaching her and settles on the canteen. For a week nothing works: she comes in late, then sits with other girls under a telescreen, then does not appear for three days, and he fears most of all that she has changed her mind. When she is back, a young man named Wilsher calls Winston to his table and spoils one attempt. The next day a small, beetle-like man ahead of him falls with his tray, and Winston gets to her table. Without looking at each other, between spoonfuls of stew, they arrange to meet in Victory Square that evening. There, as a convoy of Eurasian prisoners passes and the crowd presses in, she stands shoulder to shoulder with him and murmurs a route for Sunday afternoon, from Paddington Station, by train and lane and field path, to a dead tree with moss on it. At the last moment she squeezes his hand. In a few seconds he learns every detail of it, though he does not know the colour of her eyes. He cannot turn to look at her, and the eyes that meet his are those of an old prisoner in the last truck.
Before reading, ask the student what Winston feared about the dark-haired girl, and what he thought of doing to her; the chapter itself will remind them. Then read the chapter in four stretches: the corridor and the note, from the sling to the memory hole; the evening and the night, from lunch with Parsons to the plan for the canteen; the days of waiting, from the later shift to the eleven lines over the stew; and Victory Square, from the column to the old prisoner’s eyes. In each stretch, mark what Winston fears and what he wants. Leave open what the chapter leaves open: why she chose him, what she feels, whether the Brotherhood exists, and how the Sunday meeting will go.
Retell The student retells the chapter as a run of small exchanges, each harder won than the last: the fall and the note in the corridor, the reading at the desk, the dull evening at the Centre, the night of planning, the near misses in the canteen, the eleven lines over the stew, and the route given in Victory Square while the prisoners pass. Look for the order of the steps, and for the trucks and the old prisoner at the end, which a hurried retelling drops.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes two short passages of their own. The first sets two views of one person in front of the speaker at once: a colon between two halves that open the same way, with “also” between commas in the second; then a short sentence opening on “Already”, in which the body moves before the mind decides; then a long sentence whose main clause waits behind “In the moment when”, ending on “as though”. The second is a moment of being trapped: a short, dry sentence that says more than it states; then a sentence that turns on “But for the moment”; then a sentence whose second half has no verb of its own, with one word said twice so that two things go on together.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues the note has made Winston braver, and gathers the stare that lasts “several seconds”, the walk to her table “With ice at his heart”, and the shove “into the heart of the crowd” by a man who usually keeps to its edge. The other argues it has made him more afraid, and gathers his banging heart, “the terrible fear” that she has changed her mind, the days of “agony”, and the speech that only Ampleforth frightens out of him. Each side must answer the other’s best line. Neither may say the note is a trap, or how the Sunday meeting goes.
Purpose Close on the chapter’s shape. It opens on two people in a bright corridor, a telescreen and a cry of pain; it ends on two people in a crowd, hands locked out of sight, staring in front of them while the prisoners pass. In the corridor Winston saw “an enemy” and “a human creature”. In the square the crowd sees the prisoners as “a kind of strange animal”, and the last eyes in the chapter are an old prisoner’s. Ask what the chapter of the love note gains by ending on that gaze instead of on her face.
Easier Read aloud the corridor, the paragraph where Winston weighs what the paper might be, the eleven lines over the stew, and the last two paragraphs in Victory Square. Make two lists as you go: what Winston fears, and what he wants. Talk through the first, 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 two chess lines. The evening’s lecture is “Ingsoc in relation to chess”; that night Winston thinks that reaching the girl is “like trying to make a move at chess when you were already mated.” Is he thinking in the Party’s terms even as he plans to break its rules, or turning its game against it? The essay should meet the objection that the chess image is only a way of saying the task is hard.
1. Back on her feet, the girl says, “Thanks, comrade!” Then she walks on “as briskly as though it had really been nothing.” Who is that line for?Inference
What it asks It asks the student to hear one line as a piece of acting. The girl falls on her injured arm a few metres from Winston; a “sharp cry of pain was wrung out of her”, and her eyes hold “an appealing expression that looked more like fear than pain.” While he helps her up she slips a scrap of paper into his hand. She says “It’s nothing” twice, adds “Thanks, comrade!”, and walks off. The next sentences give Winston an act of his own: not letting one’s feelings show in one’s face is “a habit that had acquired the status of an instinct”, and they are “standing straight in front of a telescreen”. The student decides who the line is meant for. The card must not say the girl works for the Thought Police or that the note is a trap, and must not give her reasons for choosing Winston.
For the telescreen. The word “comrade” is the Party’s, the right thing for one Party member to say to another who has helped her up. The whole incident takes under half a minute, in front of a screen. Her brisk walk and her “It’s nothing” tell any watcher that nothing happened, at the very moment the most dangerous thing in the chapter has happened.
in any case they had been standing straight in front of a telescreen when the thing happened
And with that she walked on in the direction in which she had been going, as briskly as though it had really been nothing.
For Winston. By the time she speaks, the note is in his hand. The line shows him how this has to be done: say the safe word, show nothing, walk on. She tells him, in the Party’s own word, to act as she acts, and he does. He keeps his surprise out of his face and moves the paper to his pocket on his way through the lavatory door.
Her eyes were fixed on his, with an appealing expression that looked more like fear than pain.
Nevertheless it had been very difficult not to betray a momentary surprise, for in the two or three seconds while he was helping her up the girl had slipped something into his hand.
A strong answer A strong response decides who the line is for and argues from the half minute in the corridor. One reader says the telescreen: “comrade” is the Party’s word, they stand “straight in front of a telescreen”, and her brisk walk tells any watcher that nothing happened. Another says Winston: the note is already in his hand, and the line shows him how to carry it, say the safe thing and show nothing, which he does at once. The best answers notice that the line can do both jobs at once, and do not claim to know why she chose him.
2. Winston is sure that whatever is on the paper “must have some kind of political meaning.” Then he reads it: “I love you.” Is that a political message, or the one thing in his life that is not?Theme
What it asks It asks the student to decide what kind of thing a love note is in Oceania. Before he unfolds the paper, Winston is certain: “Whatever was written on the paper, it must have some kind of political meaning.” Every guess he makes is political: “a threat, a summons, an order to commit suicide, a trap of some description”, or, his “wilder possibility”, a message from “some kind of underground organisation”. His intellect tells him it “probably meant death”. What the paper says, in “a large unformed handwriting”, is “I love you.” The student judges whether he was wrong, or right in a way he did not expect. The card must not say the Brotherhood exists or that she belongs to it, since that is only Winston’s hope, and must not give her reasons for writing.
The one thing that is not. Every guess was a message from a power, the Thought Police or an organisation, and the truth is a message from a person. It is written by hand in a world where people send “printed postcards with long lists of phrases”, and it asks nothing of him for any cause. He reads it twice “just to make sure that the words were really there”, as if he cannot believe that something private still exists.
The thing that was written on the paper might be a threat, a summons, an order to commit suicide, a trap of some description.
When he did so, although he knew very well the danger of showing too much interest, he could not resist reading it once again, just to make sure that the words were really there.
Political after all. In Oceania nothing two people share is left alone. The note is “the incriminating thing”, and it goes straight into the memory hole. Answering it at once becomes “a physical problem that had to be solved” against the telescreens. A threat would only have frightened him. These three words send him planning how to beat the Party’s watching, and that may be the most political thing in the chapter.
For several seconds he was too stunned even to throw the incriminating thing into the memory hole.
Whichever way you turned, the telescreen faced you.
A strong answer A strong response decides what kind of message “I love you” is in Winston’s world, and argues from the minutes before and after he reads it. One reader says it is the one thing that is not political: every guess was a message from a power, and the truth is three handwritten words from a person, which he reads twice to be sure they are there. Another says it is political after all: it is “the incriminating thing”, and it turns at once into a problem of how to beat the telescreens. The best answers notice that love was not on his list at all, keep the dread in view, and do not claim the Brotherhood is real.
3. For three days she does not come to the canteen. Winston thinks she might have been vaporised, or killed herself, or been sent away. But the “worst and likeliest of all” is that she has changed her mind. Why is that worse to him than her death?Character
What it asks It asks the student to weigh Winston’s ranking of disasters. For three days she does not appear, and he has “absolutely no clue as to what had happened to her.” He names death, suicide and transfer, and then puts above them all the plainest possibility: “worst and likeliest of all, she might simply have changed her mind and decided to avoid him.” The same fear came first on the night of the note, when he feared “more than anything else” that she would change her mind if he did not reach her quickly. The student explains why that loss would be worse to him than her death. The card must not say how the affair goes, and must not give her reasons or her thoughts about him.
The note itself. If she is vaporised, her three words were still true when she wrote them, and they stay the one real thing that has happened to him. If she changes her mind, the note becomes what such things are in his world: things that “did not happen in real life”. Her death would take her away; a change of mind would take the words back.
She might have been vaporised, she might have committed suicide, she might have been transferred to the other end of Oceania: worst and likeliest of all, she might simply have changed her mind and decided to avoid him.
It was impossible that this affair should end successfully; such things did not happen in real life.
Something in himself. Vaporisation or a transfer would be the Party’s doing, a fate that can fall on anyone. A change of mind would be her own choice, and a verdict on him. In the days of waiting he does not touch his diary, and even in sleep he cannot escape her image. If she turns away, he is left with all of that and nothing to show for it.
What he feared more than anything else was that she would simply change her mind if he did not get in touch with her quickly.
He did not touch the diary during those days.
A strong answer A strong response explains why a change of mind would be worse to Winston than her death, and argues from his days of waiting. One reader says it would take the note itself: a dead girl’s three words stay true, but a girl who turns away unsays them, and leaves him sure that such things “did not happen in real life”. Another says it would wound something in Winston: vaporisation is the Party’s doing, but a change of mind would be her verdict on a man who has stopped touching his diary and staked his days on reaching her. The best answers hear “worst and likeliest” as his habit of expecting the worst, and do not say why she was missing.
4. When they finally speak, over the stew, their talk is eleven short lines of times and places. Neither of them says a word about the note. Where in that talk is his answer to it?Inference
What it asks It asks the student to read a talk that is all practical as the answer to a note that is all feeling. A week after the note, the little man’s fall gets Winston to her table. With Ampleforth wandering nearby, there is “perhaps a minute in which to act.” They eat without looking up and exchange “the few necessary words in low expressionless voices”: when she leaves work, where to meet, whether there is a signal, what time. Neither mentions the note. The student finds where, if anywhere, his answer to it lies. The card must not treat the canteen as plot logistics, and must not say how the Sunday meeting goes.
In his first question. For a week Winston has not answered the note, and at her table “a terrible fear had taken possession of him.” To ask “What time do you leave work?” is to say yes. The plainest line is the answer, because asking it is the risk. Under the telescreens, a timetable is the only love letter two people can say aloud.
‘What time do you leave work?’
There was perhaps a minute in which to act.
In her answers, which he cannot have expected. Winston asks; she decides. She has the time, the place and the rule ready, and she overrules his one objection, that the square is full of telescreens. The narrator later says she “had immediately taken charge of the situation, just as she had done in the canteen.” The answer is not in any one word but in what the words show: someone has thought this out, down to the crowd they will hide in.
‘It doesn’t matter if there’s a crowd.’
She had immediately taken charge of the situation, just as she had done in the canteen.
A strong answer A strong response places Winston’s answer to the note somewhere in the talk, or argues that it lies in the talk as a whole. One reader puts it in his first question: with “a terrible fear” on him, asking “What time do you leave work?” is his yes. Another puts it in her answers: she has the place and time ready and overrules his worry with “It doesn’t matter if there’s a crowd”, and the narrator says she “had immediately taken charge”. The best answers hear “All right.” and notice that under the telescreens a plan is the only thing that can be said aloud.
5. Winston cannot turn his head to look at her. Instead, the eyes that meet his are an old prisoner’s, gazing at him “mournfully” out of “nests of hair”. What might the old man be mourning?Author's choice
What it asks It asks the student to read the chapter’s last look. While the girl gives him the route, a convoy of Eurasian prisoners passes in trucks, guarded at each corner, and the prisoners’ leg-irons clank when a truck jolts. The crowd’s “prevailing emotion was simply curiosity”; to them foreigners are “a kind of strange animal”, and no one knows what becomes of them. Winston sees them “only intermittently”. In the last truck stands an aged man “with wrists crossed in front of him, as though he were used to having them bound together.” As her hand squeezes his, “instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair.” The student says what that gaze might be mourning. The card must not leave out the prisoners, and must not say how the affair ends or what becomes of Winston: the chapter stops before the journey, and gives Winston no thought about the old man at all.
His own life. He is old and bound for wherever the prisoners go, and the chapter says the others “simply vanished, presumably into forced-labour camps.” His wrists are crossed from long habit of being tied. He mourns what has been done to him, and Winston happens to be in the line of his eyes. The chapter lets that sorrow pass in front of two people who may not look at each other.
Nor did one know what became of them, apart from the few who were hanged as war-criminals: the others simply vanished, presumably into forced-labour camps.
In the last truck he could see an aged man, his face a mass of grizzled hair, standing upright with wrists crossed in front of him, as though he were used to having them bound together.
The two of them. The prisoners’ eyes have been looking “into Winston’s, sometimes with strange intensity”, and flashing away; the last one gazes. It comes at the moment their hands are locked, unseen in the crowd, and in the place where the girl’s eyes should be. A man used to having his wrists bound looks at two people whose clasped hands must stay hidden, and his sorrow may be for what their love has to live beside.
From over scrubby cheekbones eyes looked into Winston’s, sometimes with strange intensity, and flashed away again.
With hands locked together, invisible among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair.
A strong answer A strong response names what the old man might be mourning and argues from the last paragraphs. One reader says his own life: he is old, his wrists are crossed from long binding, and the prisoners “simply vanished, presumably into forced-labour camps”. Another says the two beside the road: his eyes come “instead of the eyes of the girl”, at the moment their hands lock unseen, as if the chapter set a witness where her face should be. The best answers notice the crossed wrists beside the clasped hands, ask whose word “mournfully” is, and say nothing about what becomes of Winston.
1. Before the note, Winston imagined her as “a fool like all the rest of them”. Now he thinks of her body “as he had seen it in his dream”, and he still does not know her name. How much of his new picture of her comes from her, and how much from him?
What it asks It asks the student to test how much Winston’s new picture of the girl rests on the girl. That night, in bed, he thinks over the “new development”. Five nights earlier he had “contemplated smashing her skull in with a cobblestone; but that was of no importance.” Now he thinks of “her naked, youthful body”, and “A kind of fever seized him at the thought that he might lose her”. From her own acts he learns a few things: her “unmistakable agitation” in the corridor, the route she gives with “a sort of military precision that astonished him”, a hand with a “work-hardened palm”. He does not learn her name, and he does not know the colour of her eyes. The student builds a thesis on how much of the picture comes from her and how much from him, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not smooth away his violent thoughts, and must not give her name, her reasons, or what she thinks of him.
Mostly from him. The old picture came from fear and the new one from desire, and both were made in his own head, the first from a guess and the second from a dream. The violence has not gone, only moved: days later a friendly young man waves him to a seat, and he sees himself “smashing a pickaxe right into the middle of” his face. And the fever is about losing something he wants: “the white youthful body might slip away from him!”
Only five nights ago he had contemplated smashing her skull in with a cobblestone; but that was of no importance.
A kind of fever seized him at the thought that he might lose her, the white youthful body might slip away from him!
More from her than the old picture ever did. He drops the trap theory because of something he saw, “her unmistakable agitation”. Each meeting then corrects him: she takes charge at the table, gives the route as though she had “a map inside her head”, and her palm is “work-hardened”. The man who called her a fool is astonished by her. He is learning her the only ways this world allows, by touch and by what she does.
He knew that it was not so, because of her unmistakable agitation when she handed him the note.
With a sort of military precision that astonished him, she outlined the route that he was to follow.
A strong answer A strong response states how much of the new picture comes from the girl, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says mostly from him: the old picture came from fear and the new from a dream, the violence only moves, to a pickaxe in Wilsher’s face, and the fever is for a body that “might slip away from him”. The strongest objection is that she corrects him at each step: her “unmistakable agitation” ends the trap theory, and her “military precision” astonishes the man who thought her a fool. A good revision might hold that his feeling runs ahead of his knowledge, and notice that he learns her hand while her eyes stay unknown.
2. After the note, Winston stops taking small risks so that he can take a much bigger one. Has the note made him braver or more afraid?
What it asks It asks the student to weigh what the note does to Winston’s nerve. At the sight of the three words, “the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid.” So he sits through the evening at the Community Centre, with its lecture on “Ingsoc in relation to chess”, and “for once he had had no impulse to shirk”. Then he sets about the one great risk: reaching her under the telescreens, which takes a week of near misses. The student builds a thesis on whether the note has made him braver or more afraid, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say the note is a trap, that the Brotherhood exists, or how the Sunday meeting goes.
Braver. The note gives him something worth risking his life for, and he takes risks to reach it. He stares straight at her “for several seconds” in a watched canteen, follows the little man to her table “With ice at his heart”, and in Victory Square, though he usually keeps to the edge of a crowd, shoves into the middle of it. Giving up the small risks is not timidity. It is saving himself for the one that matters.
Winston, at normal times the kind of person who gravitates to the outer edge of any kind of scrimmage, shoved, butted, squirmed his way forward into the heart of the crowd.
The relief of seeing her was so great that he could not resist staring directly at her for several seconds.
More afraid. Before the note he had little to lose; now he has her, and fear runs through every page that follows: his heart bangs, “a terrible fear” seizes him twice that she has changed her mind, and three days pass in “agony”. At her table he might have said nothing at all, if a new fear, Ampleforth with his tray, had not forced him to speak. What drives him is the dread of losing her.
He might have flinched altogether from speaking if at this moment he had not seen Ampleforth, the hairy-eared poet, wandering limply round the room with a tray, looking for a place to sit down.
Again the terrible fear seized upon Winston.
A strong answer A strong response states whether the note has made Winston braver or more afraid, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says braver: he saves himself for the one risk that matters, stares at her “for several seconds”, and shoves “into the heart of the crowd” though he usually keeps to the edge. The strongest objection is that fear runs through every page after the note, “the terrible fear” more than once, and that at her table he speaks only because Ampleforth frightens him into it. A good revision might hold that the note has made him both, because “the desire to stay alive” gives him more to lose and more to act for, and his courage now works through fear rather than without it.
Fortunately the piece of work he was engaged on was mere routine, the rectification of a long list of figures, not needing close attention.The act of putting something right (Latin rectus, straight or right). In the Ministry it means changing figures to agree with what the Party now says. Winston can do this rectification with his heart banging and his mind on the note: the lie is such routine work that it needs no close attention.
The girl nipped nimbly round the lions at the base of the monument and joined in the rush.Quickly and lightly, with easy control of the body (from nimble, quick to take hold, Old English niman, to take). She slips nimbly round the lions, while Winston has to shove, butt and squirm through the same crowd. The word adds to what he is learning about her: she is quick and sure.
Their sad Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides of the trucks, utterly incurious.Showing no wish to know or look (Latin in-, not, and curiosus, careful, eager to know). The prisoners look out “utterly incurious” at a crowd whose “prevailing emotion was simply curiosity”. The word turns the looking round: the people being stared at do not care to look back. Later some eyes do look into Winston’s, “sometimes with strange intensity”.
But for the moment they could not extricate themselves from the crowd.To free yourself, with effort, from something that holds you fast (Latin extricare, to free from tangles). The crowd that hid them now traps them. She tells him to get away “as quick as you can”, and they cannot, so their hands meet in the last moments, “while the crowd still hemmed them in”.
The trucks were still filing past, the people still insatiably gaping.In a way that can never be filled or satisfied (Latin in-, not, and satiare, to fill). The crowd gapes at the prisoners insatiably, yet the chapter says its “prevailing emotion was simply curiosity”. A hunger to look, with little behind the looking.