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Rereading Nineteen Eighty Four – Part II Chap. 5 (8)

During a time alone together,  Winston told Julia that aeroplanes had been in existence before he was born and long before the Revolution. This fact struck her as totally uninteresting.

To Julia it was unimportant who had invented what and when.

What really surprised Winston, however,  was that she did not not remember that Oceania  had been at war with Eastasia and at peace with Eurasia only four years ago.

It was true that she regarded the whole war as a sham: but apparently she had not even noticed that the name of the enemy had changed.

‘I thought we’d always been at war with Eurasia,’ she said vaguely.

The invention of aeroplanes dated from long before her birth, but the switch over in the war had happened only four years ago, well after she was grown.

He argued with her about it for perhaps a quarter of an hour. In the end he succeeded in forcing her memory back until she did dimly recall that at one time Eastasia and not Eurasia had been the enemy. But the issue still struck her as unimportant.

‘Who cares?’ she said impatiently. ‘It’s always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway.’

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Written by jaylar

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