In this passage, Orwell includes two details that foreshadows a shocking end and expresses the significance of the past. The mysterious reference to the song of St.Clement alerts Winston’s interest in the past, and the last line of the song states, “here comes a chopper to chop off your head!”(146). The song indirectly foreshadows Winston and Julia’s miserable ending. Winston and Julia were captured by the thought police and Winston was tortured by O'Brien. The act of …show more content…
Julia finds out where the rats were coming from and beings to kick the wainscoting immediately below the picture. Winston realizes, “It’s a church, or at least it used to be. St. Clement’s Dane its name was”(146). This picture symbolizes Winston’s stolen past.Winston’s obsession toward this picture is to restore the parts of the past that are unknown to him. Furthermore, Winston develops his fixation on the glass paperweight. He states, “the inexhaustibility interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass itself”(147). The paperweight symbolizes the past, but also represents a spell that makes Winston dream without fear. He imagines his life inside of the glass paperweight.
In conclusion, Orwell’s purpose in this passage is to convey the effect of Winston's stolen and mysterious past. The party members are the ones responsible of altering the past; they refer to this as substituting one piece of nonsense for another. Winston’s fixation on finding out the past leads to his miserable