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Book 2, Chapter 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in 1984, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Totalitarianism and Communism
The Individual vs. Collective Identity
Reality Control
Sex, Love, and Loyalty
Class Struggle
Summary
Analysis
One morning a while later, Winston wakes up in tears. He is in the room above Mr. Charrington's shop with Julia, who asks him what's wrong. He responds that he had a dream of his mother, and that the dream made him realize that for his entire adult life he has subconsciously believed that he murdered her. In the dream, Winston saw the room where he, his mother, and his younger sister lived after his father disappeared. They were poor and nearly starving. One day, when a chocolate ration was issued, he demanded the whole piece and his mother gave him most of it, and the rest to his sister. He snatched the chocolate out of his crying sister's hand and ran off to eat it. When he returned to the room his mother and sister were gone. He never saw them again.
In the safety of the room above Mr. Charrington's shop, in the private reality that Winston and Julia have built for themselves beyond the Party's surveillance, they begin to more fully regain their identities as individuals by reclaiming their own history and memory. And by sharing his history with Julia, Winston deepens his connection with her. It is only by having privacy that a person can then choose to share details of his or her life with another. The Party, with its surveillance, destroys that ability to share, and therefore destroys people's sense of their own past.
Themes
Winston says he hates the Party because it has persuaded people that their feelings and impulses are unimportant. He believes that the proles alone have stayed human, by holding on to primitive emotions that Winston has only recently re-learned. He remembers with shame how he kicked the severed hand into the gutter.
Winston warns Julia that if she continues to see him she will die. He tells her that at the end they must not betray each other, though whether they do or not will not make any difference in what happens to them. They know they should leave the room and never come back, but can't bring themselves to do it. They agree that they will never stop loving each other, and are comforted by the thought that though the Party can torture or even kill them, it can't get inside their heads and alter their feelings.
Winston and Julia believe that while the Party can disappear people and change public history by doctoring articles and photographs, that it can't interfere with the realities of their own heads. They are willing to face pain and death for their love, and can't give up the individuality that love gives to them.
Themes
