Chapter 8

In this chapter, O'Brien, Winston, Julia and Martin meet in the place where there is no darkness. O'Brien asks Winston many questions to see what Winston is really willing to do and how much he hates the Party to be able to join the Brotherhood. He was very brutal when asking those questions to Winston and apparently this was already a routine to O'brien probably because these are questions he's already asked himself many times. I think the Brotherhood and the Party is almost the same thing because if O'Brien asked if he's willing to throw sulphuric acid in a child's face, commit suicide if told to do so and such things well the Party is doing similiar things, killing innocent people if needed.
O'Brien said that Brotherhood can't be wiped out because it's not an organization in the ordinary sence, it's just an idea which can never be destroyed, it's an opinion of the people, something that can never be changed. Winston and even Julia feel a great admiration for O'Brien, from his ideas to his gestures like something as simple as the way he manipulated a cigarette. I feel a slight feeling of admiration for him but I view O'Brien more like a determine type of person who takes facts just as they are, he knows if he goes against the Party the way that he is, eventually he'll get caught and either have to commit suicide or get caught, tortured and killed right before confessing.
Goldstein's book is undestructible because as much as the Thought Police hunts it down and destroys them, the people that are part of the Brotherhood already have it memorized so once again this is also why Brotherhood is undestructible as well, because everyone part of this organization already knows what this book is all about and what the rules are and results might be. You become part of Brotherhood once you read that book, so Winston isn't even part of this group yet and he's telling O'Brien so many things that can get him killed if only O'Brien decided to confess, but Winston has already done so much that telling O'Brien all these things won't make much a difference when he gets caught, he's already sneaked around with Julia, had sex with her and now joining the Brotherhood, telling him what he's willing to do, he's secret place to meet with Julia is already guaranteed he'll get killed once caught.
When O'Brien finished the stanza of the poem, Winston felt much more comfortable with him than what he already was because that already made him know for a fact that O'Brien was just like him, that they both shared the same thoughts and opinions and how important it is to them the past.

Chapter 7

"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 the clear soft light in which one could see into the interminable distances." I think this dream was revealing how after Winston and Julia get caught, people will then start thinking about the world they're living in and the government that's controlling them and they'll rebell against it and after a big group gathers up to fight for their rights, they'll beat the Party and that's when that "clear soft light" will appear, meaning everyone will for once gain peace and freedom.
Winston and Julia are aware of the concequences that their actions will bring. They know that eventually they'll get caught, even if he confesses or not she'll get shot and he'll get tortured. But the only thing Winston holds on to is loyalty between them. Eventhough he knows that won't do much and at the end it won't change their destiny, he still holds on to that hope that she'll never betray him.
Winston says that no matter what his feelings for her will always exist no matter what the Party does to him because they both agreed that there's no way they could get inside you and they can make you say anything but they can't make you believe it.

Chapter 6

I think O'Brien was giving Winston a dumb excuse to go to his house or just so Winston could have his address. I really don't believe neither O'Brien is so interested in giving Winston the dictionary nor Winston in receiving it.
Little by little the rebellion is growing more intense . The first step was involuntary thought, when Winston was just starting to think about how corrupt the Party is . The second step moved on to words, his diar entries, and then it went on to actions, his dates and sexual intercourse with Julia. After that his death is what he predicts. I think they will get caught, and once they're caught, no matter what they try to do, death is inevitable.

Chapter 2 Part 5

Julia and Winston are now literally like a couple. No matter what they want their end to come together. "Winston and Julia would succeed in getting married. Or they would commit suicide together. Or they would disappear, alter themselves out of recognition, learn to speak with proletarian accents, get jobs in a factory, and live out their lives undetected in a back street". They don't care about the place in which they're in, as long as they're together in a safe place they're satisfied, like mentioned in the book, "Dirty or clean, the room was paradise." "As soon as they arrive they would sprinkle everything with pepper bought on the black market, tear off their clothes and make love with sweating bodies."
They were willing to do the riskiest things for each other to accomplish their lust. "So as long as they were actually in this room, they both felt, no harm could come to them. Getting there was difficult and dangerous, but the room itself was sanctuary."
Winston was confessing his biggest secrets to Julia. "He told her the strange intimacy that existed, or seemed to exist between himself and O'Brien and of the impulse he sometimes felt simply to walk into O'Brien presence, announce that he was the enemy of the party, and demand his help." As of now Winston was trusting Julia with eyes shut.
As they were chatting about things, Julia concluded "that everyone, or nearly everyone, secretly hated the party and would break the rules if he thought it safe to do so." They also discovered that the party gives themselves credit for what they haven't done. Winston remembered in the late fifties the party had only claimed to have invented the helicopter, then years later when Julia was in school, she was taught that the party had invented the airplane, "one generation more, and it would be claiming the steam engine."
Winston and Julia are now thinking of what they can do to leave some evidence for the next generation. I think this chapter of the book is one of the foreshadows of the book.

1984=2007?

Read Part I, Chapter VIII. This brings us to the end of Part I. You have two days to do this. Written assignment: Post to your blogs -- What are your thoughts and analysis of Part I? Describe in detail your personal feelings and mood taken from reading Part I? Questions to consider: How does life in 2007 reflect society in 1984? How has reading this book impacted the way you view society? What do you think will happen as the story unfolds?

There has been times when I've thought about the probability of this book describing what we are all living in today. The cameras in the street, stores, buildings, subway, etc (which on the book would be the telescreens)...Are they really put up by the government so they could watch our everyday, every moment steps? I have concluded that is not a trick of the government to justify their interest in spying on us. Why would the government want to watch millions of people everyday, what can they possibly do if by that one camera in the subway hundreds of people pass by and the image isn't even clear enough to distinguish who that person that just passed by is, on top of that, that person they might be spying on might pass by that camera just once a month or so, I find this probability of cameras being used for the government to spy on us very doubtful.
In the book the party claims there is "Thought Police", this is something I also highly doubt because how can they possibly read anyones mind, plus it takes a while for the "Thought Police" to go after the thought criminals. So what I think is that the party is trying to terrify the citizens making them believe there's thought police always watching for their thought so that way plebescites won't have any thoughts which might affect the party like going against them.
Although I doubt many things about the book being compared to the world we live in today, there was this one things that really caught my attention and still disconcerts me. The day Mr. Sipkin came back from getting "fired", he told us, "If I would have really gotten fired, they wouldn't have let me speak to you guys, they would have just told me to leave right there and then and come back for my stuff some other time when no students were around." I started to compare these words with what happens in the book, if someone commits a crime, the police breaks into their home and takes them and no one ever knows what happened to them. So my question is, are we living in a world where people can get extinct?
It's said that in Winston's job, no one talks to anyone because they don't trust each other. Winston is always aware of what facial expressions he makes because just with that he can give himself away. For example the time when they were giving an announcement from the Ministry of Plenty, at the end of it, he noticed a girl looking at him with curious intensity. This filled Winston up with questons, 'Why was she watching him? Why did she keep following him about?' 'He thought that she was not actually a part of the Thought Police but that it was precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen, the smallest thing could give you away.' I have known from previous experiences that you cannot fully trust anyone, but reading this book has made my believe stronger.

Are We Proles?

To our family, we might be the most important thing they have, but to the government we're nothing but just one of the many plebiscites. It doesn't affect them our feelings towards anything, they just do what they feel is best, not best for us but for the most part what is best and most convenient for them. For example, when we hear about people on the news that have been in an accident, raped, killed, stabbed, etc, we might be shocked for the moment, but it doesn't affect us. We don't have any emotion towards it but worry about ourselves and the ones we love because it might happen to us. But other than that it's no big deal, the next day we won't even remember what we saw on the news. This is the same thing with the government, we're just one out of a whole bunch, they don't worry about us, they just worry about they're economical stability and reputation.