Winston decides to take a stroll through one of the prole neighborhoods. A bomb falls nearby, a common occurrence, but Winston is unhurt and continues walking, but not before he kicks a severed prole hand into the gutter. He enters a pub and begins speaking to an old man about the time before the war. The man refuses to answer Winston’s questions with any kind of accuracy. Winston then returns to the little antique shop where he purchased the diary. He talks for a while with the shop’s owner, Mr. Charrington, who sells him an antique paperweight and shows him an upstairs room. Winston is shocked that the room has no telescreen. Mr. Charrington also shows Winston a drawing of a church that he recognizes as a museum downtown and teaches him the beginning of a nursery rhyme.
Upon leaving the shop, Winston sees the dark-haired girl from the fiction department. He is sure that she is following him, and he imagines smashing her in the head with a cobblestone or the paperweight he has just purchased. He is paralyzed with fear. He also remembers again the dream in which O’Brien said to him, “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness” and muses about when he will be detected as a thought-criminal. This chapter and Part 1 end with the repetition of Party’s three slogans.
