Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in 1984, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Totalitarianism and Communism
The Individual vs. Collective Identity
Reality Control
Sex, Love, and Loyalty
Class Struggle
Summary
Analysis
Julia and Winston travel back to London separately, by different routes. But before they leave they arrange to meet at a crowded market four days later.
Private life in any location where the Party can watch them is impossible.
Themes
For several weeks Julia and Winston meet at irregular times in the streets of London, but do not return to the clearing. As Winston works 60 hours a week and Julia is busy with the Junior Anti-Sex League, they find it difficult to meet.
Now a couple, Winston and Julia can already feel how the Party represses sexuality: through the sheer volume of work and constant surveillance.
Themes
One night they have sex in an abandoned church. While In the church, Julia tells Winston about herself. She is 26, lives in a hostel with 30 other girls, and works on novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department. Though she doesn't like to read, she's comfortable with machinery and enjoys her job. She was a troop leader in the Spies and because of her reputation for chastity was selected to work in Pornosec, the all-girl section of the Fiction Department that produces pornography for the proles. Julia doesn't believe in the existence of the Brotherhood. She just hates the Party and likes outwitting it, committing small acts of rebellion without getting caught.
Winston sees his relationship as deeply political. Julia doesn't. Her dislike of reading indicates that, unlike Winston, she's no intellectual. Her dislike of the party is still intense, but not as deep as Winston's. She does not think of overthrowing the party, as Winston does. She just enjoys beating it in the limited way that she can. While the Party keeps its members sexually repressed, it keeps the Proles quiet by actually publishing pornography for them.
Themes
Julia also understands the Party's policy on sex better than Winston does. She explains to him that depriving people of sex induces hysteria, which can be transformed by the Party into hatred of the Party's enemies and worship of Big Brother.
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Winston, in turn, tells Julia about a time when he was on a community hike with Katharine and nearly pushed his wife off a cliff. He tells Julia that whether or not he pushed his wife doesn't matter, because failure in the face of the Party's oppression is inevitable. Winston adds that they will eventually be caught, that they are dead. Julia, who believes only in private rebellion rather than organized revolt against the party, tells him to stop talking about dying, and begins planning their next meeting.
Winston understands that the Party will see their actions as a revolt, and that the Party sees everything. Julia, who is not interested in overthrowing the Party, doesn't understand this. She thinks her rebellion is private and small. But to the Party, any rebellion is a threat, because it could incite others to follow.
Themes
