Book Three Chapters 1-3

"He felt the smash of truncheons of his elbows and iron-shod boots on his shins; he saw himself groveling on the floor, screaming for mercy through broken teeth. He hardly thought of Julia. He could not fix his mind on her. He loved her and would not betray her; but that was only a fact, known as he knew the rules of arithmetic. He felt no love for her, and he hardly even wondered what was happening to her. He thought oftener of O'Brien, with a flickering hopes. O'Brien must know that he had been arrested. The Brotherhood, he had said, never tried to save its members." (Page 229)

This quote from Chapter 1 of Book 3 can be interpreted in many different ways. For me, I decided to focus on how Winston can barely even think about Julia. He was too busy with his aching hunger in his stomach and screaming through his roughed-up mouth. While he claims that he would not betray her as he loved her, he could care less about her. The gruesomeness of the situation he found himself in did not allow him to thinking about things that didn't matter at that point. Maybe, just maybe, Winston knew he was gonna die and knew nobody was going to come to his rescue. He was looking for the only bright side he could think of and hoped his razor blade would save him or a miracle from O'Brien would come. For me personally, I think Winston knew he was never going to leave prison alive. He knew this was the end of the road but tried to focus on other things as long as his other thoughts of his pain permitted him