Winston makes good on his decision to speak to O'Brien, in hopes that O'Brien has a solution to Big Bother's tyranny. When Winston learns that a secret Brotherhood really does exist, he and Julia are eager to join, even though O'Brien tells them the horrific consequences. Winston and Julia feel so strongly in their hatred of Big Brother and the Party that they are willing to do anything to help the Brotherhood, with one exception: they refuse to never see each other again.
The couple's honesty with O'Brien ultimately leads to their destruction as a couple, an irony that comes back to them at the end of the novel. O'Brien tells the couple that, if they survive, they may become unrecognizable to each other, that they may become entirely different people. Here Orwell foreshadows later events. The fact that O'Brien knows the ending to the nursery rhyme is noteworthy in that it signifies the beginning of the end for Winston. The fact that the ending comes from O'Brien is chilling considering the events that take place later in the story, when O'Brien effectively "ends" Winston as the reader knows him.
