1984 Discussion (Chapter 2, Part I)

• Is her arm really broken? Does she really like Winston? Is the girl from the fiction department for real about her message to Winston, or do you think otherwise?

So we find out that the girl from the fiction department has a crush on Winston. This is revealed when she secretly slips him a note with the phrase "I love you." on it as he helps her up from a fall. Winston is immediately swept off of his feet, and I find this a scary thing. Anytime in my life when things end up moving really fast, I tend to get apprehensive. Now, there is a gray area with this in that I have also done things at a rapid pace to speed up the process to completion, and in the end it works out. It is just curious to me that Winston goes from wanting to bash her head in for seeing him exit the junk shop to falling head over heels for her.

There are some weird things that are circumnavigating around this entire situation. For one thing, we still do not know her name. Secondly, how or when did she injure her arm? Winston goes 4 days from the junk show encounter to her falling down in front of him, and he seemingly only helps her up because of her injured arm, could it have been all for show? Now she does end up getting her arm put in a sort of cast later on, but she disappears for three days before this happens. What is with these two disappearances? Lastly, on the subsequent encounters with Winston she is setting them up. She suggests the monument at Victory Square, and she gives him the directions to the remote field that they will meet at the Sunday after the Victory Square meeting. Gut feel...it just feels like this is a set up.

• Has Winston always shared the same affection for the girl you think?

I really think Winston has always liked her. If you look back at his description of the girl from part one, he says he has disliked her from the very beginning and casts her as a spy. Think about back to elementary school, you would often do the same thing with a young boy or girl you liked, you would always deny, deny, deny. Winston actually sees the girl stripping naked in one of his dreams, so seemingly he is thinking about her in a way that makes her appear in his dreams in a positive fashion. The only thing that throws this off, is the fact that he wanted to murder her for seeing him outside the junk shop...

• Describe the precautions taken by Winston and the girl to conceal their encounters

Throughout their encounters in part eight, one thing is for certain, Winston and the girl are very careful to disclose they are in communication with each other. The first way we see this is the message that the girl slips to Winston while he lends a hand in helping her up from her fall. This falls under the radar of the telescreen. Winston subsequently reads the message of love, and disposes of it down the memory hole. Next, Winston and the girl talk in the canteen, but Winston has to be careful in the canteen still. They stay clear of the direct sight of the telescreens, and the crowd in the canteen helps to drown out their conversation. When they sit at the same table, they are eating while talking and doing so in a low murmur. I don't even think they look at each other. The same ensues when they meet in the crowd at Victory Square. They are standing shoulder to shoulder and still speaking so softly, and again, they have to do it in the wild crowd gathering around the Eurasian prisoners. Hopefully when they meet next, they can do so in a more relaxed setting and actually can have a real conversation.