1984 Summary & ending explained

Winston Smith climbed the stairs of Victory Mansions slowly on a sharp, sunny April afternoon, resting on every landing, because the lift was broken again and the sore above his ankle throbbed. On each landing the same poster stared down at him: a vast face with a black moustache, and eyes that seemed to follow him up the stairs. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.

In his flat a voice was talking out of the wall, reeling off production figures to nobody. The telescreen never switched off. It heard anything louder than a whisper, and it saw everything in front of it. But the room had an odd shape. Next to the window there was a shallow alcove, and if Winston sat there, tucked against the wall, the screen couldn't see him.

He sat there now with a book on his knees. It was old and lovely, with creamy pages and a marbled cover, bought in a junk shop in a part of town no Party member should be seen in. There was no law against owning it. There were no laws at all. There was only the Thought Police, and they didn't need laws.

He dipped his pen and wrote a date he wasn't even sure of. April 4th, 1984. Then he stopped. Who was this for? The future? The past? It made no difference. The moment he'd written that first line, he was a dead man.

He thought about the Two Minutes Hate that morning: the whole department on its feet, howling at the bleating face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the traitor. A dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department had flung a dictionary at the screen. And O'Brien, a big, quiet man of the Inner Party, had met Winston's eye for one second, and Winston could have sworn the look said: I know what you think. I think it too.

Winston looked down. While his mind wandered, his hand had kept moving on its own, in large, sloppy capitals, line after line. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER.

Then someone knocked at the door.