Winston Smith begins writing in a forbidden diary, knowing the act is punishable by death.

Winston finds himself writing 'DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER' repeatedly in his diary after hearing a knock at his door.

Winston notices the dark-haired girl watching him across the Ministry canteen and suspects she may be spying on him.

Winston visits a prole shopkeeper named Charrington and is shown a quiet upstairs apartment with no telescreen.

The dark-haired girl slips Winston a note at work that reads 'I love you.'

Winston and Julia meet in the countryside and have their first successful sexual encounter.

Winston rents the upstairs apartment above Charrington's shop as a private refuge for his affair with Julia.

O'Brien stops Winston in the Ministry hallway and invites him to collect a new Newspeak dictionary.

Winston and Julia visit O'Brien's flat and openly confess their anti-Party beliefs to him.

Mid-rally during Hate Week, Oceania's war allegiances suddenly switch and the crowd instantly roars against the new enemy.

A telescreen hidden behind a painting activates in the apartment, and Thought Police flood in to arrest Winston and Julia.

The shopkeeper Charrington, now visibly younger and sterner, is revealed as a member of the Thought Police.

O'Brien serves as Winston's torturer in the Ministry of Love, systematically administering pain to extract confessions.

Winston betrays Julia in Room 101, begging that she be subjected to the rat torture in his place.

Released from the Ministry of Love, Winston drinks Victory Gin at a café and finds himself genuinely loving Big Brother.

Winston Smith, an Outer Party member in totalitarian Oceania, begins committing thoughtcrimes by writing in a forbidden diary and expressing hatred for Big Brother. His defiance escalates when the dark-haired girl Julia reveals her love for him, and the two begin a secret affair in a rented apartment above a prole shopkeeper's store. Believing the Inner Party member O'Brien to be a fellow dissident, Winston and Julia visit his flat and openly confess their anti-Party beliefs, unknowingly implicating themselves. Their sanctuary is shattered when Thought Police storm the apartment, and the seemingly sympathetic shopkeeper Charrington is revealed as one of their agents. Winston is handed over to O'Brien, who turns out to be his torturer rather than his ally, and is broken through relentless pain until he betrays Julia. Released as a hollow, obedient man, Winston finds he has been fully remade by the Party and genuinely loves Big Brother.

Winston's rebellion, love affair, and final defeat by the Party.

Winston helps neighbor Mrs. Parsons unclog her drain and is unsettled by her aggressive, spy-trained children.

Winston performs mandatory morning exercises and reflects on how the Party's erasure of records makes truth impossible to verify.

Winston rectifies records at the Ministry of Truth, erasing all historical trace of a Party member named Withers.

Winston eats lunch with his colleague Syme, who proudly boasts about destroying words in the Newspeak Dictionary.

Winston writes in his diary about his unsatisfying marriage to Katharine and his encounters with a prostitute.

Winston writes in his diary that any hope of overthrowing the Party lies with the proletariat.

Winston recalls holding a photograph that proved three executed Party members were innocent of the charges against them.

A bomb explodes in the prole district, and Winston casually kicks a severed human hand out of his path.

Winston questions an elderly prole man in a pub about whether life was better before the Party came to power.

Winston buys a small coral paperweight from Charrington's shop as a forbidden connection to the pre-Party past.

Winston and Julia use the cover of a crowded public parade to arrange their next secret countryside meeting.

Julia confesses to Winston that she has had numerous previous affairs with other Outer Party members.

Julia arrives at the secret apartment wearing makeup and bringing contraband sugar, bread, and real coffee.

Parsons is brought into Winston's Ministry of Love holding cell, having been reported by his own young daughter.

Winston and Julia have a cold, distant encounter after both are released, confessing they betrayed each other under torture.

Pool 2 traces the texture of daily life under Party rule, from the decay of Winston's apartment building to the propaganda routines enforced at work and in the canteen. Winston's growing suspicion of the Party's lies is sharpened by small but telling moments, such as realizing that a broadcast announcing improved rations actually describes a cut. His visits to Charrington's shop give him a physical connection to the forbidden past through a small coral paperweight, while Julia's arrival at their secret apartment with contraband luxuries shows the small rebellions that punctuate their affair. The pool moves through the secondary characters who populate Winston's world — Syme, Parsons, and an elderly prole — each illustrating a different relationship to the Party's power. It closes with Parsons loyally accepting his own arrest and the cold, ruined reunion between Winston and Julia after the Party has finished with them both.

The everyday details and secondary threads of Winston's world.

At the Two Minutes Hate, Winston believes he and O'Brien share a fleeting look of mutual anti-Party understanding.

Winston dedicates his diary to the future and to a time when thought is free before hiding it away.

The Party's telescreen announces improved rations, but Winston realizes the new figures actually represent a reduction.

Winston recalls nearly pushing his wife Katharine off a cliff during a Party-organized group hiking excursion.

Syme vanishes from the Ministry without explanation, just as Winston had predicted he eventually would.

Winston wakes in the apartment and reflects that the proles, unlike Party members, remain genuinely loyal to one another.

Winston and Julia agree inside the apartment that no matter what happens, the Party can never reach inside their minds.

O'Brien turns off the telescreen in his flat before allowing Winston and Julia to speak freely.

O'Brien serves wine, answers questions about the Brotherhood, and promises to send Winston a copy of Goldstein's book.

The Thought Police smash the coral paperweight during the raid on the apartment above Charrington's shop.

O'Brien appears in Winston's Ministry of Love holding cell and confirms that the Party got to him long ago.

O'Brien forces Winston to strip and confront his emaciated, broken body in a full-length mirror.

Winston practices writing 'FREEDOM IS SLAVERY' and 'TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE' in his Ministry cell.

O'Brien tells Winston that obedience alone is insufficient — he must genuinely love Big Brother from within.

The novel's appendix describes Newspeak entirely in the past tense, hinting that the Party's reign may have eventually ended.

Pool 3 traces the pivotal moments of recognition and decision that quietly drive Winston toward his destruction. From his early belief that O'Brien secretly shares his hatred of the Party, to his conviction that the proles represent humanity's last hope, Winston's inner certainties fuel risks he cannot survive. The visit to O'Brien's flat is a false summit — Winston believes he has found an ally, but O'Brien is recording every confession to use against him later. The shattering of the coral paperweight during the arrest signals the violent end of the private world Winston and Julia briefly inhabited. In the Ministry of Love, Winston's identity is dismantled piece by piece through torture and psychological manipulation, culminating in O'Brien's demand that Winston not merely obey but truly love Big Brother. The novel's final hint — an appendix written in the past tense — leaves open the question of whether the Party's reign ultimately survived.