Chapter 8

Winston Smith takes a walk around at the neighborhood of the proles. By the time he gets there, he experiences a bomb, nicknamed a “steamer” by the proles. Winston decides to go in the pub, here he finds people drinking gin and talking about the lottery. The lottery was managed by the Ministry of plenty, and there was a small chance that a prole could win it. In the pub he finds an old man, who had lived before the revolution. Winston was trying to know more about how life was before the revolution but the man never said any interesting facts about the past. After the bungle plan of getting information from the old man, Winston entered to the antique shop where he once bought his diary. In the shop he bought a convoluted glass that was less than a 100 years old. The convoluted glass was going to be used as a paperweight. The owner of the antique shop was a man who had lived before the revolution, his name was Charrington, a 64 year old window. Charrington taught a nursery rhyme to Winston, “Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clement’s, You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin’s!” . After getting out of the shop, he finds himself with the dark- haired girl from the fiction department. He believes that she him is following him and envisaged hitting her in the head with a cobblestone. He also remembers what O’Brien had said to him in a dream “ We shall meet in the places where there is no darkness” and starts envisioning what it would be if the thought police took him away. 

The nursery rhyme, “ you owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin’s” comes form the poem oranges and lemons. In the real world, this is a nursery rhyme and a singing game which are are about churches near the city of London. 

Poem

Oranges and lemons,

Say the bells of St. Clement's.You owe me five farthings,Say the bells of St. Martin's.When will you pay me?Say the bells of Old Bailey.When I grow rich,Say the bells of Shoreditch.When will that be?Say the bells of Stepney.I do not know,Says the great bell of Bow.Here comes a candle to light you to bed,And here comes a chopper to chop off your head![1]

The games works this way, there are two people on both sides holding hands in a form of an arch,  the players will pass through, if the arch drops and the children are caught in the middle: they are out, and will have to make another arch. We do not know the meaning of the nursery rhyme but there is one theory that its about child sacrifices. I believed its a rhyme about people been killed for their crimes, we can find it in the last line, “And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!”. The interesting fact that Winston mentions is that he has never heard the sound of bells. If he has never heard the sound of bells it must mean that there are no churches since it might be prohibited. In the addition, there must be some reason why the party does not allow people to worship a God or Gods. We still don't know why Winston always writes to O’Brien in his diary and even dreams about what he says. What O’Brien might meant by  “ We shall meet in the places where there is no darkness” it must mean that the only way they can get to know each other is after the party is overthrown because that's when peace and light will shine through. It wont be possible to do it now because the telescreen is always watching them. In the next chapter I believe that the Thought Police will start tracking Winston because he is too curious of the past, which is seen as a threat by the party.

Chapter 7

‘Proles and animals are free‘ is the party's slogan of this chapter. In chapter seven we are introduced to the lifestyle of the proles, how life was before the revolution, and the the leaders involved in the revolution. Before the revolution London was a filthy city ,where the poor people did not have a roof to live or food to eat. During this time in history we find ourselves with customs such as:  kissing the pope's toe, and the use of pillory for humiliation and punishment, sometimes the device was be used for killing. By the phrase ‘Proles and animals are free‘ we are introduced to how the proles were perceived by the party. We can see that the proles were as less important as the animals, the proles were the subordinate class. This is so discriminating and humiliating, and a perfect example of how cruel and indifferent the party was.

The proles were the working class, thought to be innocuous and not peril by the party, but Winston knew that if one day the proles become conscious they will rebel against the party and maybe even. Now lets take a look at the life phases of the proles before the revolution.  At the age of 12 the proles started working, they married at the age of 20, and died at the age of 60. The proles were controlled by powerful men called the capitalists, they  were the owners of the lands in where the proles lived. The capitalists had the proles in their hands, they let the workers starved, flogged them, and fed them by bread crusts and water. The capitalists were also allowed to be in internal relationships with the women that worked in his land. You could identify the capitalists  by the clothes they wore, a frock coat which was a long black coat, and a stovepipe which is a queer shiny hat. They were treated with reverence and honor. We can compare this lifestyle as the lives of the peasants in the feudal system. The peasant will be the proles and the lords would be the capitalists. This system was discriminatory because people did not have a the freedom to be what they wanted to be and who they wanted to be, such as having access to an education to have a better future other than a worker of the capitalists.

Before the revolution children were sold on factories and capitalists having around 30 servants in their houses.  After the revolution was not so different as before the revolution since even now,  women worked on mines. The party always painted a perfect image of the way big brother was governing, but the truth was that everyone knew it was not like that but they had no choice than to believe it.  The party said that thanks to the revolution the proles were free. The party did not taught the proles their ideologies, they were only persuade to have a primitive patriotism, just in case the party needed to add longer hours of work and shorter wages, this way they will accept without no rejection. Part of the doublethink principle is that the proles should be considered to be natural inferiors, and kept in subjection like animals. I believe the party was discriminating them and lowering their self-esteem, so the proles could not have confidence in themselves and never succeed . This way the proles would never question their lifestyle and accept the partys desire. I wonder why the proles has not rebel against the party and the populations of the proles that way they can rebel against the party with more support.

    The proles were allowed to commit promiscuity, they were allowed to divorce, and they were allowed to have a religion as long as they had a reasonable reason. This was a fair law for the proles since they can at least have a their own options in their relationships.

Winston says that in the telescreen he hears how the revolution has brought jubilance to the citizens: , the mortality rate of infants is lower, there is more food, and that everyone has a better lifestyle. But no one knew if it was true since history was always changing to the benefit of the party. We now have evidence of how the party lies and lies all the time.

Before the revolution we had leaders like big brother, Goldstein, Aaronson, Jones, and Rutherford but most of them were wiped out before the sixties because they were mostly accused of being traitors and counter revolutionaries. Some of the leaders disappeared, some executed after they confessed their crime. Big brother was a leader that survived since he was not accused of any crime. Other leaders like Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford were accused, arrested and charged of treason to the Party, the strange fact was that Winston had seen the three men at a café when they were rearrested for conspiracies with Eurasia and then were executed.

Later on in the chapter Winston finds a photograph of the three men attending a prominent Party function on the same date they were said to have been launching conspiracies on Eurasian soil. This strange fatc shows how the party makes up and change history according to their benefit. Winston says that the party has such an amaizing energy to persuade the citizens that they even make you believe that 2 plus two is 5 and not 4. At the end of the chapter we have two prominent and worth emphasizing phrases that causes you to ponder.

“ I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY “, this slogan is telling  us that he knows how to falsify a document since he works in the department of truth but doesn't understand why the government is making them do this. I assume that the government is doing this so, the citizens never know the truth! and there we can understand why its called the ministry of truth. Their main purpose is to eliminate doubts, erase true history that can cause rebeliation, contradictions to their ideologies. The second phrase is “ Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.“ in this phrase we can understand that since the party makes them believe that two plus two is five this means that Winston is conscious that he is not living a free country, he knows he is been controlled by the party and has no other choice to accepted.