Chapter VII
Winston writes in his diary that hope for overthrowing the Party must lie with the proles, the 85 % of Oceania’s population who are ignored and never disciplined politically. He muses that the Party cannot be toppled from within and that the proles need only become conscious of their strength. He remembers a recent street scene where a crowd of two‑hundred women erupted in a loud, desperate chant at a market stall selling tin saucepans; the women fought over the pans, tearing one apart, and the riot collapsed into petty quarrels. The episode convinces Winston that a collective roar could be powerful, but the proles never channel it into political rebellion.
He then describes the Party’s doublethink about the proles: they are kept in subjugation like animals, denied education, and left to their own filth, gambling, drinking, and occasional promiscuity. He notes that Thought Police only eliminate isolated dangerous individuals; the proles are largely ignored by telescreens and the civil police.
Winston pulls out a children’s history textbook borrowed from Mrs Parsons and copies a passage that portrays pre‑Revolution London as a squalid slum where capitalists in top hats owned everything, describing imagined medieval punishments such as jus primae noctis. He doubts the veracity of the text, questioning how much of it is fabricated.
His thoughts turn to the great purges of the 1960s when original Revolutionary leaders were eliminated. By 1970 only Big Brother remained; Goldstein had vanished. Three men—Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford—had been arrested in 1965, released after coerced confessions, and later seen by Winston in the Chestnut Tree Café. He recalls Rutherford’s grotesque, senile appearance and the eerie moment when the telescreen music changed to a cracked, jeering “yellow note” while a voice sang a twisted version of the Party song about the chestnut tree. The three men remain silent, their faces wet with tears, and later they are re‑arrested, confess again, and are executed.
Later, in 1973, Winston finds a half‑page torn from an old Times issue showing Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford at a Party function in New York, with a caption confirming they had allegedly met Eurasian staff and betrayed secrets—evidence Winston believes to be a lie. He hides the photograph, later discarding it into a memory‑hole while fearing the telescreen’s detection. He reflects on how the Party constantly rewrites history, making the past fluid, and wonders why such falsifications are undertaken.
Winston writes that he understands the mechanics (“HOW”) of the Party’s control but not the motive (“WHY”). He questions his sanity, compares his doubts to past heresies, and affirms a belief in objective reality: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” He feels O’Brien’s presence, sees his diary as a secret letter to him, and resolves to defend common sense against the Party’s tyranny.