In 1984, this quote appears when Winston is relating to Julia a dream that he had about his mother. In this dream, Winston returns to his childhood and relives the last day he spent with his mother and sister. He stole his sister's chocolate ration and ran out of the house, feeling shamed. When he returned some hours later, his mother and sister had disappeared, never to be seen again.
Evidently, this memory is a...
In 1984, this quote appears when Winston is relating to Julia a dream that he had about his mother. In this dream, Winston returns to his childhood and relives the last day he spent with his mother and sister. He stole his sister's chocolate ration and ran out of the house, feeling shamed. When he returned some hours later, his mother and sister had disappeared, never to be seen again.
Evidently, this memory is a painful one for Winston, hence his repression of it for so many years. But the quote is significant for another reason, too: it brings about an important change in how Winston views himself, the party and the proles. He looks back to a time before the party, when people created their own loyalties and controlled their own feelings and thoughts. We see evidence of this in the following line about his mother: "Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside."
When the party came to power, all of this changed: "Once you were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no difference." In other words, the party destroyed the natural feelings and loyalties of ordinary people. This realisation has a profound impact on how Winston views the proles. Previously, he thought of them as lowly people but now he sees them as representatives of this old way of living: "The proles had stayed human. They had not become hardened inside."
This realisation marks a turning point for Winston. It gives him the impetus to continue his rebellion against the party and to keep fighting against Big Brother.
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