Dialectic Journal 6

PAGE 353-354

"He obeyed the Party, but he still hated the Party. In the old days he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of conformity. Now he had retreated a step further: in the mind he had surrendered, but he had hoped to keep the inner heart inviolate. He knew that he was in the wrong, but he preferred to be in the wrong. They would understand that—O’Brien would understand it. It was all confessed in that single foolish cry. He would have to start all over again. It might take years. He ran a hand over his face, trying to familiarize himself with the new shape. There were deep furrows in the cheeks, the cheekbones felt sharp, the nose flattened. Besides, since last seeing himself in the glass he had been given a complete new set of teeth. It was not easy to preserve inscrutability when you did not know what your face looked like. In any case, mere control of the features was not enough. For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could be given a name. From now onwards he must not only think right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst."

This quote is right after he has an outburst in which he cries for Julia. This is months after he's endured torture and he's supposed to be a change man, a man who obeys the party. Nevertheless, he can't seem to give up his love for Julia or his love for hating the Party. He knows this will get him in trouble, though, now more than ever. Compared to before, now he has way more to hide since he "surrendered" his mind to the Party. This shows that even though on the surface, the Party was successful in using psychological torture to control him, it didn't entirely work. We see Winston as weak for giving up and giving up his love for Julia, but there's still something there that isn't entirely letting him let it go. Even with the fact that they made him an entirely new man, new cheekbones, new nose, and new teeth, he was the same person. But, he is really trying to give up that person that he was. He's going to try to keep it a secret from himself. The quote that says that they must keep a secret from themselves to keep a secret well seems to allude to the way the Party hid everything from people. Even the people who were in the Inner Party didn't know the history of Oceania all that well, that's how they were able to keep it from everyone else. It's a part of Oceania but at the same time it's not. This is what Winston is making himself do now, in order to stay alive.