In this chapter, Orwell provides solid evidence to the reader that everything Winston thinks about his environment, as told to us through the narrator, is genuine. The telescreen is indeed watching him closely, and it is at this moment that the reader is fully aware of the reality of Winston’s situation. His life and the political situation in Oceania are really as bad as they seem.
An overview of Winston’s perception of the past is given here in an attempt to assist the reader in understanding Winston’s world and how it came to pass. The England-Britain-London of the past, Ingsoc in Oceania parlance (or, in Oldspeak, English Socialism) is briefly addressed. The premise of English Socialism is quite different from the society that prevails in Oceania. The Golden Country that Winston dreams about symbolizes the pastoral European landscape, the beauty obviously lacking in Winston’s life. Winston waking with “Shakespeare” on his lips is part British nostalgia, part foreshadowing—Julia is named for Shakespeare’s Juliet, reminding the reader of another story of forbidden love.
Orwell addresses, again, the problem of fact and memory. “The past … had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory.” Memory and history are major themes in the novel. Winston muses that the history books claim that the Party invented airplanes (a claim actually made by the German government during World War II). Yet Winston is certain that he remembers planes before the Party’s existence. Of course, he has no way to prove it.
