Chapter 6

 

In chapter 6, we can get to know more about Winston’s personal life in terms of his relationships with his wife katherine, the prole prostitutes and how the party controlled citizens relationships.

Winston’s wife is called Katherine, she is a tall woman who Winston describes as an epitome of a “vulgar and empty minded” since all she had in her mind was a collection of slogans. They had been apart since the time she disappeared which was around 9 or 10 years ago. As we can see from her personality Winston was not truthfully in love with her, he was only interested in the intimate relationships. Here we can see that Winston was not a good man because he was using Katherine for intimate relationships, he did not truly love her. The reason why they parted ways was because she wanted to have a child but after so many tries they were not able to do so.

         In the continuation of the chapter Winston was bemuse whether to go with the prostitute or to resist it but in the end, he was defeated by the seductive scent and went along with the prostitute. Only the proles were allowed to be prostitutes, and use scent. The party was against prostitution, the punishment was 5 years of forced labour camp but if you were not caught nothing happened. One prostitute could cost a bottle of gin, in fact the party forbidden the proles to drink gin, I believe that is the reason why the prostitutes sold themselves for a bottle of gin because that was the only way they could get gin since they we not allowed to buy it. We can see that this is also happening in our society and it has always happened, prostitution has been a way to escape from poverty and a form of getting an income. The proles were the working class, the forgotten population, the not prominent, the ones that the government underestimated. The treatment of the party towards the proles is not unexpected since what is happening with the proles is the same as what is happening now in the 21st century where towns and villages are forgotten by the government, money is not invested in poor areas, leading the majority of  the  population left uneducated and without job opportunities. The most discriminating fact I read in the novel was knowing that the party allowed “submerged and despised” women such as the proles to get prostituted but not the members of the party. In addition,  it was egregious to do debauchery with members of the party since it was seen as a abominable promiscuity.

        The party is selfish but wants reverence from their citizens, how is this possible? The party only accepted marriages if they were going to beget children for the service of the party.The only way the citizens were allow to have children was if it was through artificial insemination, ARTSEM ( word in newspeak for artificial insemination) . Its not a free place to live in, it is odious and eerie to say that a child will born in service of the party, its as if every child's destiny was already written, they were born to serve like slaves and had no other options in life. In addition, they only allow artificial insemination because the party believed that intimate relationships were morally wrong and seen as a disgusting act. This is completely wrong, since intimate relationships are part of nature, and every child if its possible should be born the natural way, or by the decision of the parents and not by the party. This shows that the party had a great influence on their citizens life, where the leader had superior power over everyone.

       At the end of the chapter we find out that the prostitute Winston was with  was nothing more than a old woman with red lips and full of “paint” in her face which we can consider she was wearing a handful of makeup. He says that he wanted to shout “filthy words” since it wasn't something he was expecting. This is a satire ending since we would imagine the prostitute to be a beautiful  woman but in the end it was all the opposite.

Chapter 5

      Winston in this chapter goes to a canteen where he eats lunch next to his comrade Syme. Syme is a philologist who is working on adjectives of the eleventh edition of the Newspeak dictionary . His beliefs are pure orthodox, keen of his job because he finds it beautiful to cut out the language into less words to communicate with. The purpose of the eleventh edition of the Newspeak dictinary is to slowly eliminate and obsolete the oldspeak words by 2050, this way no subsidiary words will exist any longer. For example, if we want to say the antonymous of "good" we will say "ungood" instead of "bad". The government wants to create a culture where people will no longer need to think, in other words orthodox, "no thinking, no need to think".
Behind Winton's table there was man who spoke stridently in a way that he didn't quiet understand but he knew it was all about how great Big brother and the political party was. Syme explained to Winston that the man was talking in "duckspeak" This word had two meanings, if you used " duckspeak" to your opponent it meant abuse and if you spoke "duckspeak" with someone you agree with it meant praising.

        Parson was a tubby man, who lived in Victory mansion as Winston does. Parson's daughter gave a man to the patrols because he was wearing subtle shoes, from that judgement they came into the conclusion that the man was a foreigner and he must be killed.  All the sudden, there was a telescreen announcement from the ministry of plenty, everyone was thanking big brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week and only yesterday it was announced that the chocolate ration will be reduced to twenty grammar. People in this society its like they live in reverie since, they had believed everything they heard in the news. Winston was careful of his face expression, since if you had a incredulous face while a victory was mentioned it was considered to be a FACECRIME. A loud bell rung and everyone went back to work. 

Chapter 4

Winston works in the ministry of truth, his job is to rectify the documents that are subjected as “errors, misprints, and misquotations”.  The truth is that Winston's job is to actually do forgery. His job is to make the party look good in front of the citizens. Some of his work tools are: speakwrite which is a device that records what you say, a memory hole where Winston throws the older documents which are purged and destroyed forever. Once Winston rectifies the document, he clips the speakwrite corrections to the appropriate copy of ‘The Times’ and pushed them in to the pneumatic tube. Not only were newspapers rectify but also books, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoon, photographs, to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideology significance.

Tillotson is dark chinned man who might have the same job as Winston but he is not very sure of this since no one in the ministry of truth talks about their job. Winston suspects that they might have the same job since he also has a speakwrite.

The proletariat or the working class had a different newspaper, they had literature, music, drama, sport, crime, astrology, sensational five- cent novelettes, sex with ooze,

cheap pornography and only the proletarians could take a look at. The members of the party could not look at this kind of newspapers.

In this chapter we also see that Winston who was in charge of writing about Mr. Withers or the comrade for receiving the Order of Conspicuous Merit was canceled. Winston received a message where the information he sent was incorrect since no one with that name existed. Winston imagined that maybe the party killed him. People who were “evaporated” were first arrested and then killed, sometimes they were arrested and send free for 1 or 2 years and then executed. Mr. Withers was now “UNPERSON” a person who does not exist and never existed. Now Winston’s job was to create someone who does not exist. Winston has to write a type of speech that Big brother might say in a way of thanking a man who has always been loyal to the party. Winston invented the man Comrade Ogilvy. This mas will be remembered as a hero to the society of Oceania due to his loyal service. This were the kind of jobs were Winston had to use his imagination and the principles of Ingsoc: newspeak, doublethink, and mutability of the past.

Chapter 3

Winston Smith was trying to understand his inscrutable memories he had about his family. All he remembered is that the last time he saw his family was when he was 11 or 10 years old. He believed that his mother, father and his sister all disappeared in the great purges of the 50’s. He knew that his family died sinking down in the green water of about a hundred fathoms. Winston went back to a dream, he found himself in a pasture where a woman flung her clothes disdainfully aside but it did not caught Winston’s attention.

It was seven fifteen time to wake up because “the physical jerks” were about to begin. His trainee appeared in the telescreen, she was a scrawny woman, and very enthusiastic about the exercise they were about to do. Winston had a grimy look in his face, which was good for this occasion. He went back and recalled  that when he was a child: the maps, and countries were all different. For example, airship one was called Britain or England.

During Winston's life time he was consciousness that Oceania had always been in war even though he was not sure of who was the enemy, since there were no written record, and no spoken word and nothing was ever mentioned. The only war he knows about was the one happening at that moment, the war of Oceania that had Eastasia as alliance against Eurasia. Only four years ago he had as knowledge that Oceania was at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. The party says that Oceania has never been in alliance with Eurasia, but Winston knows that that knowledge he has must be annihilated.  He knew that if everyone was deceived by the falsehood told by the party then all the records will be written in the party’s most beneficial perspective making a lie become a true fact, since it will be passed down through generations. Another lie told by the party is that big brother was a leader since the 30’s and even though Winston had difficulty remembering what actually happen, he knew that big brother appeared at around the 60’s but the party says that big brother appeared around the 30’s.

The trainee from the telescreen caught Winston’s attention because even though Winston’s body was doing exercise, he soul was actually not there. He kept pondering about his imperceptible memories.

Party’s slogan

“Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: 
who controls the present controls the past.”