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Rereading Nineteen Eighty Four – Part III Chap 6 (10)

Winston, having been tortured and recreated, given a job, able to walk the streets,  had seen Julia.  

She was  in the Park, on a cold day in March.  He had been hurrying along with frozen hands and watering eyes when he saw her not ten metres  from him.

It struck him that she had changed in some ill-defined way. They almost passed without a sign, but then he turned and followed her, not very eagerly.

He knew there was no danger.  

Julia  did not speak, walking in oblique way across the grass.  It seemed she wanted to escape him, at first,  then resigned herself to having him at her side.

They stood in  a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind.

It was vilely cold.  He put his arm round her waist.

———————-

This was  a woman he had loved.  This was a person he had shared his thoughts with.  She was his reason for living his miserable dull life.  

The fact he hadn’t raced after her, that she hadn’t immediately gone to him, and that he put his arm around her waist as a ‘protocol’  is the first flag that Winston and Julia have been totally changed.

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Written by jaylar

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