In the security of their love nest, Julia and Winston are starting to get a little restless for more, dreaming of revolution or escape. I guess that this, too, is as natural as drawing in the next breath. Not long ago this love nest and the dark-haired girl would have been an impossible dream for our bitter and sexually deprived Winston, but now he hungers for more. It works against happiness that one always wants more. Of course, it does not really matter, since the Party is already onto them, and Big Brother is only letting them frolic freely for the time-being in order to study them, as well as to expand their porn collection.
_ _ _
Sometimes, too, they talked of engaging in active rebellion against the Party, but with no notion of how to take the first step. Even if the fabulous Brotherhood was a reality, there still remained the difficulty of finding one's way into it. He told her of the strange intimacy that existed, or seemed to exist, between himself and O'Brien, and of the impulse he sometimes felt, simply to walk into O'Brien's presence, announce that he was the enemy of the Party, and demand his help. Curiously enough, this did not strike her as an impossibly rash thing to do. She was used to judging people by their faces, and it seemed natural to her that Winston should believe O'Brien to be trustworthy on the strength of a single flash of the eyes. Moreover she took it for granted that everyone, or nearly everyone, secretly hated the Party and would break the rules if he thought it safe to do so. But she refused to believe that widespread, organized opposition existed or could exist. The tales about Goldstein and his underground army, she said, were simply a lot of rubbish which the Party had invented for its own purposes and which you had to pretend to believe in. Times beyond number, at Party rallies and spontaneous demonstrations, she had shouted at the top of her voice for the execution of people whose names she had never heard and in whose supposed crimes she had not the faintest belief. When public trials were happening she had taken her place in the detachments from the Youth League who surrounded the courts from morning to night, chanting at intervals 'Death to the traitors!' During the Two Minutes Hate she always excelled all others in shouting insults at Goldstein. Yet she had only the dimmest idea of who Goldstein was and what doctrines he was supposed to represent. She had grown up since the Revolution and was too young to remember the ideological battles of the fifties and sixties. Such a thing as an independent political movement was outside her imagination: and in any case the Party was invincible. It would always exist, and it would always be the same. You could only rebel against it by secret disobedience or, at most, by isolated acts of violence such as killing somebody or blowing something up.
-- 1984
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Unfortunately, as we have discussed before, Winston is not as good a judge of character and faces as Julia is. But, again, they were doomed before he even mentioned his O’Brien fixation. Poor Julia may have a better sense of people, but I think she picked the wrong horse in going for Winston, a man who just has too strong a death instinct.
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