Contents:
Last update: 17.12.2002 (version 3.1)
1) TOC o «1-3» 1984by G.Orwell_______________________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919765 h 2
2) Animal Farmby G.Orwell_______________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919766 h 15
3) Childe Harold byG.G.Byron_____________________________________17
4) The French Lieutenant's Woman by J.Fowles______________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919767 h 18
a) French Lieutenant’s Woman in Russian__________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919768 h 20
5) Gulliver’s Travels by Daniel Defoe________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919769 h 21
6) Heart of Darkness by J.Conrad__________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919770 h 29
7) Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott_____________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919771 h 32
8) Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H.Lawrence_________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919772 h 36
9) Lord of the Flies by W.Golding___________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919773 h 38
10) Middlemarch by G.Eliot_________________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919774 h 42
11) Oliver Twist by Ch.Dickens_____________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919775 h 55
a) The Poor Laws_____________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919776 h 63
b) What does the phrase «justice isblind» normally mean?______________ PAGEREF _Toc27919777 h 64
c) The Victorian middle class'sstereotypes of the poor.________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919778 h 65
12) A Passage to India by E.M.Forster________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919779 h 65
13) Pride and Prejudice by J. Austen_________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919780 h 71
14) Pygmalion by B.Shaw_________________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919781 h 82
15) The Quiet American byG.Greene_________________________________86
16) Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe_______________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919782 h 87
17) The Picture of Dorian Grey by O.Wilde____________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919783 h 92
18) The Time Machine by H. G. Wells(1866 — 1946)____________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919784 h 102
19) Ulysses by J.Joyce___________________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919785 h 103
20) Vanity Fair by W.Thackeray____________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919786 h 109
21) William Shakespeare_________________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919787 h 117
a) Extremely ShortSummaries. Good for Seminars__________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919788 h 117
i) A Midsummer Night's Dream____________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919789 h 117
ii) The Merchant of Venice________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919790 h 118
iii) The Tragedy of Richard II_______________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919791 h 118
iv) Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_____________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919792 h 118
v) Othello_____________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919793 h 119
vi) King Lear, 1594______________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919794 h 119
vii) The First Part of King Henry IV___________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919795 h 119
viii) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar___________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919796 h 120
ix) Macbeth____________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919797 h 120
x) Romeo and Juliet_____________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919798 h 120
b) Full Summaries ofSome Shakespeare's Works___________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919799 h 121
i) Hamlet_____________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919800 h 121
ii) King Lear___________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919801 h 127
iii) Macbeth____________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919802 h 133
iv) The Merchant of Venice________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919803 h 138
v) Othello_____________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919804 h 142
vi) Richard III___________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919805 h 144
vii) Romeo and Juliet_____________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919806 h 149
viii) The Tempest_________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919807 h 152
ix) Twelfth Night________________________________________ PAGEREF _Toc27919808 h 153
22) Wuthering Heights___________________________________________ PAGEREF_Toc27919809 h 156
1984by G.Orwell
Part 1
Chapter 1
Summary:
The book opens on a cold April day with 39-year-oldWinston Smith returning to his dilapidated flat in Victory Mansions. Thehallway sports an enormous poster of a man known as «Big Brother»;the caption reads, «BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.» The eyes of theposter seem to follow Winston as he moves.
Upon entering his flat, Winston dims the telescreen(where someone is reading statistics about pig-iron production), which cannever be turned off completely, and which both receives and transmits. Outside,Winston can see «BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU» posters, a poster withthe word «INGSOC» on it, and the police patrol spying on people.
Winston is living in London, the predominant city ofthe province known as Airstrip One in Oceania. Bombed sites reveal that somesort of war is going on. Winston tries to recall his childhood, to see ifthings have always been like this, but cannot.
Outside his window stands the Ministry of Truth(a.k.a. «Minitrue» in Newspeak, the official language of Oceania), anenormous structure displaying the three slogans of _the Party_: WAR IS PEACE,FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. There are four Ministries: theMinistry of Truth concerns itself with the spread of information through news,entertainment, education and the arts; the Ministry of Peace (Minipax) dealswith war; the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) administers law and order; and theMinistry of Plenty (Miniplenty) handles economic affairs.
After swallowing some shocking Victory Gin and plyinghimself with a cheap Victory cigarette, Winston carefully tucks himself out ofthe telescreen's visual range with an old book, an old pen and an inkbottle.These are compromising possessions, acquired through various means; Winston issecretly something of a rebel, unhappy with the status quo. What he is about todo--start a diary--is not «illegal» (since, we discover, there are nolaws anymore), but is certainly life-threatening.
Unused to writing by hand, Winston falters momentarilybefore writing «April 4th, 1984.» He sits back, uncertain whether itactually is 1984, and he suddenly wonders for whom he is writing. Here theconcept of _doublethink_ (see Analysis) hits him; his attempt to communicatewith the future is impossible, futile. He is no longer sure what he wanted towrite; the moment has been building for weeks and suddenly he finds himselfwordless. Even when he tries to write, he finds he is not recording theincident which had inspired him to begin the diary on this day.
This incident took place during that morning's«Two Minutes Hate,» a daily, almost orgiastic ritual of propaganda.Winston recalls noticing two people: a girl whose name he does not know butwhom he recognizes as working in the Fiction Department, and O'Brien, animposing man and member of the Inner Party. Winston feels a dislike for thegirl, whose youth gives him the sense that she is a dangerous Party zealot; bycontrast, he feels drawn to O'Brien in a way almost resembling trust, becausehe hopes that O'Brien is secretly politically unorthodox.
The «Two Minutes Hate» begins with footageof Emmanuel Goldstein, «the Enemy of the People,» castigating theParty. Apparently, Goldstein had once been a leading Party member who rebelled,was condemned to death, and disappeared to form the underground Brotherhood.The symbol of ultimate treachery, Goldstein is featured in every Hate as thesource of all crimes against the Party. [Through Winston's reaction, we beginto get the sense that the image and persona of Goldstein are actuallycompletely manufactured, hinting at the possibility that he is in fact apropagandistic creation of the Party. This is reinforced by the observationthat there are always new spies, new Brotherhood members, being exposed every day,despite the Party's brutal efficiency in creating universal hatred forGoldstein.]
As the Hate goes on, people get increasingly workedup, shouting and throwing things at the screen. [It is, Winston notes,impossible to avoid joining in.] The Hate overwhelms the members, sweeping theminto a blind ecstasy of hatred. Winston directs his hatred at the girl,because, he realizes, he wants to sleep with her.
The Hate reaches its climax when the terrifying imagesmelt into the face of Big Brother, who utters soothing words before fading awayinto the three Party slogans. The crowd, passionately relieved at theappearance of their «savior» starts to chant, «B-B!...B-B!» Here Winston catches O'Brien's eye. In an instant, Winston feels thatO'Brien is communicating to him that he is on his side; this is the momentwhich brings him to his diary.
After some reflection, Winston looks again at his pageand finds he has been writing automatically:
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
He knows there is no point in tearing out the page,because he has committed thoughtcrime, and in the end the Thought Police willget him anyway; he, and every last vestige of his existence, will be completelywiped out--«vaporized.»
Suddenly there is a knock at the door. Winston isterrified by this, but knows that to delay would be worse than anything, so hegets up to answer it.
Chapter 2
Summary:
Winston finds Mrs. Parsons, his neighbour, at hisdoor, asking him if he can help repair her kitchen sink. Mrs. Parsons is a ratherhelpless, dusty-looking woman; her husband Tom works with Winston at theMinistry of Truth. Tom is something of an imbecile, slavishly devoted to theParty and quite active in its social workings.
As Winston clears the blockage from the pipe, the Parsonschildren come out and start dancing around him, calling him a«traitor» and a «thought-criminal.» These children, likemany others, are horrid little savages being trained to be good Party membersthrough systematic brainwashing; many denounce their own parents to the ThoughtPolice.
Winston returns to his diary and starts thinking ofO'Brien. About seven years ago he had had a dream where he had been walkingthrough a dark room and someone had said to him, «We shall meet in theplace where there is no darkness.» At some point, Winston identified thevoice as O'Brien's. Whether or not O'Brien is a friend or an enemy--and Winstonstill isn't sure--they are connected by an understanding.
Winston feels isolated, yet pursued, everywhere faced(literally) by Big Brother. He knows his thoughtcrime--his diary--will resultonly in annihilation. Yet somehow, he takes heart in the idea that in the veryact of recording truths he is keeping himself sane and carrying on humanity. Hereturns to his diary and starts to write «to the future or to the past, toa time when thought is free.»
«Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrimeIS death,» Winston writes, and in doing so recognizes himself as alreadydead. He now must simply stay alive as long as possible.
Winston carefully washes the ink from his hands andputs the diary away before going back to work.
Chapter 3
Summary:
Winston dreams of his mother that she and his babysister are sinking down away from him, having in some way given their lives sohe could survive. He barely remembers his family, as they had likely fallenvictim to a purge in the 1950s. His mother's death, he feels, was a particulartragedy, arising from a loyalty and complex emotion which are no longerpossible.
The dream shifts suddenly to an idyllic spot Winstoncalls «the Golden Country,» where the dark-haired girl comes to himand in one graceful, careless gesture, tears off her clothes and flings themaside. Winston feels no desire for her, but instead a strong admiration of thedefiance of the gesture, which itself belongs to a previous time, just likeWinston's mother's love. Winston wakes up saying the word«Shakespeare.»
Winston is awakened by the telescreen. The PhysicalJerks--morning exercises--begin, directed by a woman on the screen. As heexercises, Winston tries to remember the era of his childhood. He recalls anair raid which caught everyone off guard, and since which Oceania had beencontinuously at war. Currently, in 1984, Oceania is at war with Eurasia andallied with Eastasia.
Although there are no records kept to contradict thegiven current alignment, Winston knows that four years ago the alliance wasreversed; still, the present situation is always officially represented asthough it has always been. Winston is terrified by the thought that by sothoroughly controlling history and information, the Party might actually becreating a new truth. He reflects that the past has been destroyed because itonly exists in his own memory. Only once has Winston held proof that ahistorical fact had been officially falsified--but his thoughts are interruptedby the woman on screen shouting at him, Winston Smith, to try harder.
Chapter 4
Summary:
Winston is at his job in the Records Department in theMinistry of Truth. He receives four assignments, tiny slips of paper on whichare written (mostly in Newspeak) his instructions. As it turns out, thesemessages involve the «correction» of past issues of the Times, wherea speech of Big Brother's is «misreported» («malreported»in Newspeak) or statistics forecasting manufacturing output are«misprinted.» The first three assignments are simple; the fourth one,which mentions «unpersons,» is an enticingly elaborate task whichinvolves some use of imagination, and Winston sets it aside to be dealt withlast, almost like a dessert.
Winston uses his speakwrite (a sort of dictaphone) toquickly deal with each of the first three assignments; he rewrites thearticles, pushes his work through the pneumatic tube in his cubicle, anddisposes of the original message and any notes through the «memoryhole,» which leads to a furnace. In this way, newspapers, books, cartoons,even films and photographs, are continually re-edited so as to conform with thecurrent state of political and economic affairs, and to make it appear asthough the Party has always been correct in its predictions or consistent inits alliances. Any and all prior editions are destroyed, no matter how manyrevisions are made.
Winston reflects that in many cases, what he is doing isnot really forgery, because the original statistics or «facts» aremade up to begin with. Nobody really knows anything except that on paper,millions of pairs of boots are being produced, while on the streets, half ofOceania's population runs barefoot.
Looking around, Winston notes that he hardly knows thepeople in his Department, or what they do exactly. Across the hall from himTillotson, who flashes him a hostile look, sits with his speakwrite; a womanfrom the Two Minutes Hate, whose husband had been vaporized, works next toWinston at tracking down and eliminating references to «unpersons»(people whose existences had been obliterated); and the dreamy Ampleforth worksa few cubicles away at rewriting poems so their ideologies will correspond withthe dominant one. As Winston reflects on the Department as a whole, thestaggering size of the operation becomes evident, especially as it is only onepart of the Ministry of Truth, which not only supplies materials to Partymembers but to the «proles» (proletariat) as well.
At last, after disposing of some more messages andattending the Hate, Winston settles down to work away at his engagingassignment: rewriting a highly «unsatisfactory» article in an issueof the Times which references people who no longer exist. Winston reads theoriginal article, where Big Brother's Order for the Day praises an organizationcalled the FFCC and awards the Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second Class, to oneComrade Withers, a member of the Inner Party. Three months after this, however,the FFCC had been dissolved and its members presumably disgraced, though therewas no report of this. Winston knows that this is the way it usually happens:people who somehow displease the Party simply vanish and are never heard fromagain. Although Winston does not know why Withers fell from grace, he does knowthat the man is most likely dead, since he is called an «unperson.»
Winston decides to rewrite the speech entirely on anew topic: the commemoration of the exemplary life of Comrade Ogilvy. Ogilvy,of course, is purely Winston's invention, but he will be given life through afew lines and a faked photograph or two. Winston creates Ogilvy's life‹that ofa textbook good Party member from the age of three‹and his heroic death with azesty enjoyment of the process.
Although Winston is fairly certain that other people,including Tillotson, have been given the same assignment, he also believes thathis own version will be the one that is chosen.
Chapter 5
Summary:
Winston is in the rather unpleasant canteen, where hemeets up with Syme‹not exactly his «friend» (since you have comradesrather than friends), but one whose society is more pleasant to Winston thanthat of others. Syme, a philologist, works in the Research Department and isone of a team of experts who are compiling the Eleventh Edition of the NewspeakDictionary. (See Appendix for an in-depth discussion of Newspeak and pointsrelevant to this chapter.)
Syme asks Winston if he has any razor blades‹there iscurrently a shortage, as there always is of one item or another. Winston liesthat he hasn't, though he has been saving two unused ones against the razorblade famine. As he and Syme go through the queue, Syme discusses yesterday'spublic hanging of prisoners with a relish that demonstrates his rabid yetsomehow intellectual orthodoxy.
As they eat their disgusting and somewhatunidentifiable lunch, Winston gets Syme talking about the Dictionary'sprogress. Syme, immediately fired with enthusiasm and a strange love forNewspeak, goes into a panegyric about the destruction of words and the natureof Newspeak, which is, he points out, the only language which gets smallerevery year. This limiting of vocabulary, Syme points out, is aimed at limitingthought so that unorthodoxy will become literally impossible, since there willno longer exist words to express or explain concepts that run counter to theaccepted ideology.
Syme discourses so intelligently upon these topicsthat Winston suddenly thinks that Syme will certainly be vaporized someday,despite his political orthodoxy. He is too intelligent for the Party to allowhim to stick around. In addition, he is somehow «shady»‹not subtleenough, too well-read, with a tendency to frequent the Chestnut Street Cafe,where long ago the old Party leaders would meet before they were discredited,and Goldstein was rumored to have spent time.
Parsons, Winston's neighbor, appears in the canteenand makes his way over to Winston and Syme (who takes out some work to avoidhaving to interact with Parsons). Parsons, a large man with a dumb devotion tothe Party and its ideals, asks Winston for his subscription payment for theupcoming «Hate Week.» Parsons talks proudly about his monstrouschildren, the younger of whom turned in a suspicious-looking person to theauthorities.
Discussion is halted by an announcement from theMinistry of Plenty, describing how production is up and the standard of livinghas been raised. It is reported that a demonstration has been held to thankB.B. for raising the chocolate ration to 20 grams/week, and Winston wondersincredulously whether people can swallow this after having been told the daybefore that the ration was being reduced from 30 grams/week to 20. Yet thepeople around him, either through not thinking at all or through doublethink,do accept it, forcing him to wonder whether he is the only person around whohas a memory.
Depressed, Winston looks around, at the horrid food,ugly clothes, and bleak surroundings. Somehow he feels that things should bebetter, even though he has never known a time when they were‹when food tastedpleasant and things worked as they were supposed to. Even the people look uglyto him, belying the Party's Aryan ideal.
The announcement ends, and Winston lapses into areverie thinking about who he knows will likely be vaporized, and who willnot‹namely, Parsons, the girl with the dark hair, and the man at a nearby tablewho has been speaking in a quack about the wonders and achievements of theParty.
Winston is startled out of his reverie by theawareness that the girl with the dark hair is sitting at the next table, and islooking at him. She turns away, but Winston is terrified because she has beenturning up near him a good deal lately. He worries that she may be an amateurspy and that he may have committed facecrime, the unconscious betrayal ofunorthodox opinions via facial expressions or tics.
Parsons tells Winston another horrid story about hisdisgusting children, and they are signalled to return to work.
Chapter 6
Summary:
Winston is writing in his diary about an encounter hehad three years ago with a prostitute. The memory is embarrassing and difficultfor him, and he feels an almost irresistible urge to scream obscenities orburst out into some violent action to relieve his tension.
Of course he doesn't give in to the urge, and steelshimself to continue writing. His writing is interlaced with the memory ofKatharine, his wife, to whom he would technically still be married‹unless shewere dead‹although they are separated, because the Party does not permitdivorce. Katharine was physically attractive but, Winston soon discovered,completely brainwashed by the Party, even in matters of sex. According to theParty, there should be no pleasure in sex, which was an act intended to begetchildren for the future of the Party. Katharine bought into this ideology tothe point where sex was an outright unpleasant act for Winston; since nochildren were conceived, the couple were allowed to separate. Perhaps becauseof his experience with Katharine, Winston believes that none of the women inthe Party have retained their natural sex drive.
Winston continues to write about his experience withthe prostitute, who had led him into a dark room with a bed. When he turned upthe light, he discovered to his horror that the woman was old, at least 50. Buthe proceeded anyway.
Despite having gotten it all out, Winston does notfeel any less inclined to shout obscenities.
Chapter 7
Summary:
Once again Winston is writing in his diary. «Ifthere is hope,» he writes, «it lies in the proles.» Winstonreasons that the proles are so numerous that if they simply woke up they couldbring down the Party. But would they ever wake up? He remembers a day when hehad been walking and heard a great cry of anger; in hope, he hurried to thespot to see what was happening. As it turned out, a stall that had been sellingsaucepans had run out, and the disappointed women were momentarily united intheir despair. But, to Winston's disgust, rather than remaining united andsurging up against the source of their misery, they turned on each otherinstead, fighting over the pans.
Winston reflects on the Party's attitude toward theproles, itself an exercise in doublethink: while the Party claims to haveliberated the proles from the horrendous bonds of capitalism, it also teachesthat the proles are inferior and must be kept in line with a few simple rules.But in general, the Party leaves the proles alone, to live as they have alwayslived, outside of the Party's strict moral and behavioral dictates.
What Winston is not sure of is whether life before theRevolution was really that much worse than it is in 1984. He looks at achildren's history book which he has borrowed from Mrs. Parsons, reading apassage about life before the Revolution, when most people were poor andmiserable, and all money and power were concentrated into the hands of a veryfew evil persons known as capitalists. Yet he can never be sure how much of itis lies; he only has an instinctive feeling in his bones that life doesn't haveto be as miserable as it is, and that there must have been something better atone time. Life, in fact, not only belies the constant stream of Partypropaganda, it does not even approach the Party's avowed ideal of a militarilyordered society in which every moment of every day is a triumphant struggle forthe principles of Ingsoc.
Considering the regular erasure of the past, Winstononce again recalls the one time (mentioned earlier) when he had held concreteevidence of the falsification of history. In the mid-1960s, three of the lastsurviving original leaders of the Revolution, Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford,had been arrested, vanished temporarily, and then had returned to makespectacular confessions of treachery. Afterwards, they had been pardoned,reinstated in the Party and given hollow but important-sounding positions.
Winston had seen them in the Chestnut Street Cafe witha mixture of fascination at how they embodied history and terror at thecertainty of their imminent destruction. No one sat near them; they sat aloneat a table with an untouched chessboard and glasses of gin. Winston noticedthat Rutherford, once a strong man, looked as though he were breaking up before his eyes.
A song came over the telescreen: «Under thespreading chestnut tree/ I sold you and you sold me:/ There lie they, and herelie we/ Under the spreading chestnut tree.» The three men remainedmotionless, but Winston saw that Rutherford's eyes were full of tears, andsuddenly noticed that both Aaronson and Rutherford had broken noses.
Shortly after this, they were re-arrested and executedafter a second trial. Five years later, in about 1973, Winston was at his workwhen among his assignment-related documents he found part of a page from anearlier edition of the Times, dated about 10 years earlier, showing aphotograph of Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford at a Party function in New York.At their trials, the men had confessed to have been in Eurasia consorting withthe enemy on that very date. Clearly the confessions were untrue. Though thiswas not in itself surprising, the existence of this piece of paper was concreteevidence of the Party's action.
Winston carefully calmed himself, then disposed of theevidence through the memory hole. If it had happened today, he thinks, he wouldhave kept the photograph; somehow the fact of its existence, the fact that hehad held it in his hand, is reassuring to him. But he knows that because thepast is continually rewritten, the photograph today might not even be evidence.
Winston does not understand why such an effort isbeing made to falsify the past (i.e. the long-term goal). Perhaps, he thinks,he is crazy; this does not scare him, though. What scares him is that he mightbe wrong in thinking the past unchangeable. He picks up the book and looks atthe picture of B.B. on the frontispiece. In a sort of despairing fear, Winstonthinks to himself that the Party will eventually claim that 2 + 2 = 5, and thatyou would have to believe it; and again he is tormented by the fear that theymight, after all, be right.
But abruptly, his belief in common sense reassertsitself, and he somehow feels that he is writing his diary to O'Brien.Defiantly, he defends the truth of the obvious, writing, «Freedom is thefreedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all elsefollows.»
Chapter 8
Summary:
Winston is walking through the streets, taking a riskin missing his second evening at the Community Centre in three weeks, buthaving been unable to pass up the lovely evening air. He has been walkingaimlessly through the streets, observing the people and their surroundings,which are equally dilapidated. Identifiable as a Party member by his blueoveralls, he is watched warily by the inhabitants, and reflects that it wouldbe dangerous to run into the patrols here, since it could draw you to theThought Police's attention.
Suddenly there is a commotion and people start boltingindoors; Winston is warned by a passerby that a bomb is about to fall. He throwshimself down to protect himself against the blast. The bomb falls 200 metersaway on a group of houses. He approaches the site and comes upon a severedhuman hand, which he kicks into the gutter before turning into a side street toavoid the crowd.
Winston passes a group of men who are arguing aboutthe Lottery, which is the one public event the proles really attend to and sinktheir energy and powers of calculation into. However, as Winston knows, the bigprizes are awarded to fictitious persons, and only small sums are actually paidout by the Ministry of Plenty.
Winston walks into a neighborhood which seemsfamiliar; after a short while he recognizes it as the area where he hadpurchased his diary, penholder and ink. He pauses, and sees an old man enteringa pub across the alley. He is suddenly seized with the impulse to try and findout from this old man what life was like before the Revolution.
He hurries into the pub, creating a bit of a pause inactivity, and, after witnessing an argument between the old man (who demands apint) and the barman (who only deals in liters and half-liters), Winston buysthe old man a beer. They sit in a noisy corner near a window and Winston triesto get the old man to tell him about the past. However, the man latches ontodetails that are too small to prove to Winston one way or another whether theParty histories are true or false.
Winston leaves, thinking sadly that even now, whenthere are survivors of the pre-Revolution days, it is impossible to find outwhether the big picture had changed for better or worse. He walks on, notthinking where he is going, until he stops and realizes that he is outside thejunk-shop where he had bought the diary.
After some hesitation, he judges it safer to enter theshop than loiter outside of it, and starts to talk with the proprietor, Mr.Charrington. Winston wanders through the shop, and his attention is caught by aglass paperweight with a coral inside. Captivated by its beauty, Winston buysit for $4.00 and puts it into his pocket. The man, cheered by the money,invites Winston to see an upstairs room. It is a bedroom furnished withold-fashioned furniture, but most importantly, with no telescreen. Winstonfeels a nostalgic security, almost a familiarity with the room, and the thoughtflashes through his mind that it might be possible to rent this room‹though heimmediately abandons the notion.
The proprietor shows Winston an engraving of an oldchurch which had been bombed long ago, St. Clement's Dane. He quotes an oldnursery rhyme: «Oranges and lemons,' say the bells of St. Clement's, Youowe me three farthings,' say the bells of St. Martin's»; he doesn'tremember the rhyme in full, but he does recall the ending: «Here comes acandle to light you to bed, Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.»He talks a little about the churches in the rhyme; Winston wonders when theyhad been built, to what era they belonged.