Category: Book Club

What is the main idea of this chapter?

Were there any words that you did not know?
You can always list them here.

What do you think will happen in the next chapter?
(This is just a spot for you to jot some notes for yourself.)

Winston "wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one."

What does"minority"mean?

Winston is frightened by having received the message from the girl with the dark hair. He thinks she might work for the Thought Police. "But there was another, wilder possibility that kept raising its head, though he tried vainly to suppress it."

What does"suppress"mean?

Sometimes, despite careful planning, Winston and Julia "…reached their rendezvous and then had to walk past one another without a sign . . ."

What does"rendezvous"mean?

What is the main idea of this chapter?

While Winston waits for Julia to meet him in the rented room, he listens to a woman outside the window singing. He knows that "…the words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator," but the woman makes it sound much better than it really is. What does "intervention"mean?

Julia brings real coffee, which is extremely rare: "…one did occasionally meet with [the smell] even now … diffusing itself mysteriously in a crowded street, sniffed for an instant and then lost again."

What does"diffusing"mean?

Winston is impressed by the way the woman in the courtyard sings: "It struck him as a curious fact that he had never heard a member of the Party singing alone and spontaneously."

What does"spontaneously"mean?

Julia sees a rat and "For several moments [Winston] had had the feeling of being back in a nightmare which had recurred from time to time throughout his life."

What does"recurred"mean?

Winston finds the antique paperweight inexhaustibly interesting: "It was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete."

What does"atmosphere"mean?

Were there any words that you did not know?
You can always list them here.

After the meeting with O'Brien, Winston understands that "There was only one meaning that the episode could possibly have. It had been contrived as a way of letting Winston know O'Brien's address."

What does"episode"mean?

When O'Brien asks why they have come, Winston ". . .paused, realizing for the first time the vagueness of his own motives."

What does"motives"mean?

What is the main idea of this chapter?

Winston asks O'Brien whether the Brotherhood exists. What does O'Brien tell him?

Please enter the first three words of a sentence that shows your answers is correct.