1984 Predictions After Reading Eight Chapters

            After the first eight chapters of 1984, it is difficult to make predictions about what will happen next because the book seems to be primarily concerned with the explication of the world in which Winston lives and not with actual events. Aside from the existence of Winston, Big Brother’s world seems entirely devoid of hope and Winston himself is merely his pawn, so the future does not look bright. I predict that Winston will get vaporized by the Thought Police, but I do not think that his diary will be his downfall. Although writing a diary is a radical move of rebellion in that society of oppression, it would not make a good book for Winston to die because he wrote a diary. He must commit some much greater crime first. The fact that Winston so seriously wants to get information from the old man in the bar and wants to live in the quaint room of the antique shop with no surveillance show that he is bursting at the seams. He cannot stand the suppression and he considers the ability of the proles to provide the manpower for the rebellion. Unfortunately, Winston has been brainwashed by the Party to believe that “Until [the Proles] become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.” In this statement, the circular reasoning implies that the Proles can never rebel, but at some point Winston will realize that he is intelligent enough to bring them back to consciousness. After he makes them rise, he will succeed in making some advances against the Party before being vaporized. It is difficult to tell at this point, but given how extensively the Party uses doublethink, if Winston or some other mastermind set up serious opposition, the Party is probably not actually as hard to destroy as it seems.