Part 11, chapter 1
Summary: Chapter I
At work one morning, Winston walks toward the men’s room and notices the dark-haired girl with her arm in a sling. She falls, and when Winston helps her up, she passes him a note that reads, “I love you.” Winston tries desperately to figure out the note’s meaning. He has long suspected that the dark-haired girl is a political spy monitoring his behavior, but now she claims to love him. Before Winston can fully comprehend this development, Parsons interrupts him with talk about his preparations for Hate Week. The note from the dark-haired girl makes Winston feel a sudden, powerful desire to live.
After several days of nervous tension during which he does not speak to her, Winston manages to sit at the same lunchroom table as the girl. They look down as they converse to avoid being noticed, and plan a meeting in Victory Square where they will be able to hide from the telescreens amid the movement of the crowds. They meet in the square and witness a convoy of Eurasian prisoners being tormented by a venomous crowd. The girl gives Winston directions to a place where they can have their tryst, instructing him to take a train from Paddington Station to the countryside. They manage to hold hands briefly, in which time Winston “learned every detail of her hand”, but dare not look into each other’s eyes.

Character details:
Winston:
* revealed to still experience moments of empathy, despite his thought that the girl may be an enemy, he “had instinctively started forward to help her … it was as though he felt the pain in his own body” – a stark contrast with his earlier desire to “smash her skull in with a cobblestone.” * Is hopeful that the message did not come from the Thought Police at all, but from some kind of underground organisation; “though his intellect told him that the message probably meant death – still, that was not what he believed, and the unreasonable hope persisted, and his heart banged, and it was with difficulty that he kept his voice from trembling as he murmured his figures into the speak-write.” (113) * “At the sight of the words ‘I love your’ the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid.” (115) * - desperate to get in contact with Julia in case she changed her mind * Interesting values re: Julia not appearing for three days: “She might have been vaporized, she might have committed suicide, she might have been transferred to the other end of Oceania; worst and likeliest of all, she might simply have changed her mind and decided to avoid him” (117) – shows his self-centred attitude and desperation for meaningful contact with another person. * violent urge “to smash a pickaxe right into the middle” of Wilsher’s face after he beckons Winston to sit with him (118); the next day he trips up another man to get to Julia’s table – these actions highlight his desperation for human contact

Julia: * Takes an enormous risk in slipping the note into Winston’s hand * Her ability to outline the route to their rendezvous “with military precision” (121) suggests she has done this before, as indeed we learn later.
Themes;
Language – loss of the necessity to think
“Few people ever wrote letters. For the messages that is was occasionally necessary to send, there were printed postcards with long lists of phrases and you struck out the ones that were inapplicable.”
Totalitarianism:
* The convoy of Eurasian prisoners: “a long line of trucks with wooden-faced guards armed with sub-machine guns standing upright in each corner was passing slowly down the street.” Significantly, it is the eyes an “aged prisoner” that gaze back, “mournfully at Winston” at the end of the chapter, rather than being able to gaze into Julia’s eyes, and suggesting that their love is doomed and punishable by death – either literal of metaphorical. * Foreigners “were a kind of strange animal. One literally never saw them except in the guise of prisoners, and even as prisoners one never got more than a momentary glimpse .. Nor did one know what became of them, apart from the few who were hanged as war-criminal, the others simply vanished, presumable into the forced-labour camp.” (122)