Winston rents a room

Not quite half way through the book.

The fatal move.

Though his fatal error, perhaps born of his death wish, is displayed from the very beginning, his wholly groundless and misplaced confidence in O'Brien.

Reading 1984.

Comrade Ogilvy

Who would have guessed Orwell had any sense of humor at all.

Winston Smith's invention of Comrade Ogilvy early on in 1984, complete with his absurd death, is a wonderful satire. 

At twenty-three he had perished in action. 

Pursued by enemy jet planes while flying over the Indian Ocean with important despatches [sic], he had weighted his body with his machine gun and leapt out of the helicopter into deep water, despatches and all - an end, said Big Brother, which it was impossible to contemplate without feelings of envy.

Or maybe it's only amusing after a bit of whiskey.

A perfect model

At the bottom of the social pyramid are the proles, the little people, the powerless.

At the top are the true elites, the Inner Party.

And in between are the dupes of the regime, the true believers, the serious and responsible, respectable people.

The Outer Party.

Winston Smith, even before he is individually savaged by the state in the person of O'Brien, gets it.

But then again, he doesn't.

Salvation, he thinks, must come from the proles.

And that is like counting on all the molecules of your TV set quite at random to lurch, spontaneously and simultaneously, three feet to the left - thus causing the set to lurch three feet to the left.

And, anyway, they are as close to impervious to moral/political/ideological bullshit as anyone can be, the proles are.

Hence they are not revolutionaries - or at any rate never revolutionaries for something, though the little people, driven past endurance, do sometimes - rather often, historically, really - revolt against their masters, spreading death, destruction, and horror.

As slaves have done, from time to time.

Think of Spartacus's rebellion.

And, anyway, there is no salvation from the human condition.

Reading 1984.