Analyzing Themes In George Orwell's 'Chestnut Tree Café'

1984 Essay
In George Orwell’s book 1984, there are many different themes and settings. The Chestnut Tree Café has some very isolated people and the people of party don’t like to associate with them, the room above the junk shop has the theme rebellion, and the theme of the park where Winston and Julia last met is betrayal.
The Chestnut Tree Café is a very special place for the proles. That café is where the proles gather and associate with each other. Before Winston met Julia the café was a very mysterious, dingy-looking, place where the proles hung out. The proles are isolated people that don’t really care about the party any longer. The proles are the people who have committed a crime and were once tortured until they confessed all of the truth and nothing but the truth and after that they were set free to live until big brother wanted them dead. “On the opposite side of the alley there was a dingy little pub whose windows appeared to be frosted over but in reality were merely coated with dust” (Orwell 95). The people of the party didn’t like to associate with the proles because that could make them look like a traitor.
Next is the theme for the room above the junk shop. Winston was renting the room upstairs from Mr.
Charrington’s junkshop. The room was said to have had no telescreen but in the end the found out that it really did and it was just hidden behind a big painting on the wall. Winston and Julia did a ton of things that they were not suppose to do in that room, Winston enjoyed renting the room from Mr. Charrington.
“It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in a room like this, in an armchair beside an open fire with your feet in the fender and a kettle on the knob, utterly alone, utterly secure, with nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you, no sound except the singing of the kettle and the friendly ticking of the clock” (Orwell 107).
In all reality, that room is what got Winston and Julia caught and tortured, if they had not been rebels and did what the party asked them to do they would still be alive. Finally, a good example for the theme of the park where Winston and Julia last met is betrayal. Betrayal is a good example for this setting because this is where Winston and Julia tell each other that they betrayed one another. Julia didn’t even know Winston but her love for him came on pretty quick, Winston should have known that it was to good to be real. Party members are not suppose to have sexual intercourse or even a secretive relationship and that is exactly what they did in the room above the junk shop. They promised each other that they love one another so much they would never betray on each other, but O’Brien made them by finding out what they most feared and he used that against them in a way of torture to get the truth out of them. Winston and Julia both betrayed each other by telling O’Brien what they had done, but that wasn’t what O’Brien wanted. What O’Brien wanted was for Winston to say that Julia deserved to be tortured more than him and that is exactly what Winston does when O’Brien uses the rats as a torturing method. Julia says, “Sometimes they threaten you with something—something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, ‘don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so’” (Orwell 319). Betrayal is an act of being disloyal to someone or something whether you want to or not and that is exactly what Winston and Julia did. In conclusion, the book 1984 has many settings, in which change themes.
First, in the setting of the Chestnut Tree Café the theme changes from it being a mysterious place to it just being an isolated place where the proles hang out. The second setting was the room upstairs from the junk shop, the theme changes in that from being a private place to being a place where they were actually being listened to. The last setting is the park where Winston and Julia last met, the theme changes very quickly within the time of the book for that setting. The theme goes from being a peaceful park to being a park known for betrayal. If Julia didn’t give the note to Winston they would have never got caught and nothing bad would have ever happened to
them.