O’Brien makes contact with Winston, who has been waiting for this moment all his life. During his brief meeting with O’Brien in the hallway at the Ministry of Truth, Winston is anxious and excited.
O’Brien alludes to Syme and tells Winston that he can see a Newspeak dictionary if he will come to O’Brien’s house one evening.
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Winston feels that his meeting with O’Brien continues a path in his life that began the day of his first rebellious thought.
He thinks gloomily that this path will lead him to the Ministry of Love, where he expects to be killed. Though he accepts his fate, he is thrilled to have O’Brien’s address.
SECTION 7
One morning, Winston wakes up crying in the room above Mr. Charrington’s antiques shop. Julia is with him and asks him what is wrong.
He tells her that he has been dreaming of his mother and that until that moment, he has subconsciously believed that he murdered her. He is suddenly gripped with a sequence of memories that he had repressed.
He remembers his childhood after his father left: he, his mother, and his baby sister spent most of their time in underground shelters hiding from air raids, often going without food.
Consumed by hunger, Winston stole some chocolate from them and ran away, never to see them again. He hates the Party for having eliminated human feelings.
He believes that the proles are still human, but that Party members like him and Julia are forced to suppress their own feelings to the point that they become virtually inhuman.
Winston and Julia worry because they know that if they are captured, they will be tortured and possibly killed, and that renting the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop dramatically increases the likelihood that they will be captured.
Fretfully, they reassure one another that although the torture will undoubtedly make them confess their crimes, it cannot make them stop loving each other. They agree that the wisest course of action would be to leave the room forever, but they cannot.
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SparkNotes Editors. “George Orwell 1984.” SparkNotes.com, SparkNotes LLC, 2005.