1984

Winston is relieved when he answers the door and sees his neighbor Mrs. Parsons instead of the Thought Police. Mrs. Parsons requests Winston’s assistance in unclogging the drain in her family’s flat, a chore Winston is accustomed to in their rundown building. While helping in the Parsons flat, Winston is both annoyed and unsettled by the Parsons children as they play realistic spy games. Children in Oceania are raised to love Big Brother and report their parents to the authorities for any anti-Party behavior, making it common for parents to grow to fear their own children. Winston returns to his own flat briefly before preparing to leave for work again. He dedicates his diary “to the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free” (35) before carefully storing it away.

Winston dreams of his family, although he doesn’t have many solid memories of them. His parents might have been picked up in an early purge, and Winston has a vague sense that his mother and sister were somehow sacrificed to save him, but he can’t remember details of his past, and the Party has destroyed any historical references to times before the revolution.