That's Amore

“Eight minutes had gone by. He readjusted his spectacles on his nose, sighed, and drew the next batch of work toward him, with the scrap of paper on top of it. He flattened it out. On it was written, in a large unformed handwriting: I love you.”

--p 108

Well, this is a rather interesting plot twist, eh? Personally, I was more than a bit surprised when Winston read the note and discovered those three little words. Like Winston, I was expecting the note to entail details about where Winston could meet with a Brotherhood operative, or even with Goldstein himself. I thought that Orwell’s main focus in this book involved Winston’s attempt to rebel against Big Brother. Now, however, I have a feeling that Orwell’s plot is not as grandiose as I believed. Perhaps Orwell’s tale will turn out to be a romance story amid a harsh, unaccepting society (unlikely). Perhaps the tale is simply supposed to be that of a regular man in his futile life within an oppressive government. This possibility seems rather likely. I now doubt that Orwell’s intent is to write of Winston’s endeavor to bring down Big Brother; after all, Orwell’s intent in writing 1984 was not to teach how to overcome socialism, but rather to warn against accepting socialism before it is implemented.