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The chapter begins with our lovers lolling sleepily in bed at their love nest. Winston had a disturbing dream. It is about his lost mother and his feral childhood. Political instability and civil war had reduced life to its most base form, leaving little reality for human dignity and the higher feelings and sympathies, a condition which Big Brother and the Party will build on. This is our theme and subject matter for the chapter.
_ _ _
Winston had woken up with his eyes full of tears. Julia rolled sleepily against him, murmuring something that might have been 'What's the matter?'
'I dreamt -' he began, and stopped short. It was too complex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and there was a memory connected with it that had swum into his mind in the few seconds after waking.
He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmosphere of the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening after rain. It had all occurred inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glass was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everything was flooded with clear soft light in which one could see into interminable distances. The dream had also been comprehended by -- indeed, in some sense it had consisted in -- a gesture of the arm made by his mother, and made again thirty years later by the Jewish woman he had seen on the news film, trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets, before the helicopter blew them both to pieces.
'Do you know,' he said, 'that until this moment I believed I had murdered my mother?'
'Why did you murder her?' said Julia, almost asleep.
'I didn't murder her. Not physically.'
-- 1984
_ _ _
The news film and the Jewish woman refers back to the first chapter. I did not cover it, but when Winston first opens his new diary, he was having difficulty about what to write, and he just started writing about going to the movies. I will put that material in the comments section of this post.
_ _ _
Winston had woken up with his eyes full of tears. Julia rolled sleepily against him, murmuring something that might have been 'What's the matter?'
'I dreamt -' he began, and stopped short. It was too complex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and there was a memory connected with it that had swum into his mind in the few seconds after waking.
He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmosphere of the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening after rain. It had all occurred inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glass was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everything was flooded with clear soft light in which one could see into interminable distances. The dream had also been comprehended by -- indeed, in some sense it had consisted in -- a gesture of the arm made by his mother, and made again thirty years later by the Jewish woman he had seen on the news film, trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets, before the helicopter blew them both to pieces.
'Do you know,' he said, 'that until this moment I believed I had murdered my mother?'
'Why did you murder her?' said Julia, almost asleep.
'I didn't murder her. Not physically.'
-- 1984
_ _ _
The news film and the Jewish woman refers back to the first chapter. I did not cover it, but when Winston first opens his new diary, he was having difficulty about what to write, and he just started writing about going to the movies. I will put that material in the comments section of this post.
