1984 blog post #7

"'They can't get inside you,' she had said. But they could get inside you. 'What happens to you here is for ever,' O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your own acts, from which you could never recover. Something was killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out" (Orwell ch6).


The fact that Winston now acknowledges that Julia was wrong shows his change in attitude towards her. Before he was taken into the Ministry of love, he never would have discredited anything she said. He had a faith in her that took the ministry's worst punishment to break. That he is resigned to the fact that Julia is wrong and that the ministry can infiltrate the mind shows that he has indeed betrayed her.


Until he was threatened by the rats, Winston's one goal was to keep his heart's allegiance to Julia. He reconciled himself to giving up his mind and body, but he hoped that, secretly, his heart could remain his own. He knew in the back of his mind that O'Brien would eventually find out, and this is confirmed when O'Brien says that Winston's final task is to love Big Brother. This is the ultimate berayal and submission to the party, as Winston is surrendering the final piece of his humanity that is his own. After he surrenders this, he gains a new humanity, approved by the party.


O'Brien says that what happens to you in the ministry of love stays with you forever. It makes sense that Winston would never have the slightest hint of a negative thought towards the party ever again. However, one line in the passage suggest that something may remain in him. In response to hearing about the invasion of Africa, Winston thinks, "An extraordinary medley of feeling -- but it was not a medley, exactly; rather it was successive layers of feeling, in which one could not say which layer was undermost -- struggled inside him" (Orwell, ch6). Although Winston doesn't remember WHAT is struggling inside him, he can still feel that it is there. This shows that, perhaps, Winston did not lose absolutely every trace of his past self.