1984, Chapter 4 quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Where is the room that Winston rents for his meetings with Julia?

   • In a basement near Victory Square
   • Above a prole pub in the city centre
   • Correct answer: Above Mr Charrington's junk shop
   • In a disused wing of the Ministry of Truth

   Winston rents the room above Mr. Charrington's antique and junk shop in the prole district, where he previously bought his diary and the glass paperweight.

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2. 2

   Question 2. What makes the rented room feel private to Winston?

   • It is located inside a government building
   • It has soundproof walls
   • Mr Charrington promised to guard the door
   • Correct answer: It appears to have no telescreen

   Winston can hear the singing woman, the children and the distant traffic, yet the room seems curiously silent "thanks to the absence of a telescreen." Even so, he knows that renting it is folly.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Which of the following is NOT among the luxuries Julia brings to the room?

   • Real coffee and white sugar
   • Correct answer: Victory Gin
   • White bread and jam
   • Makeup and perfume

   Julia brings real coffee, white sugar, bread, jam, tea, makeup, and perfume — all black-market luxuries. Victory Gin is the cheap, mass-produced alcohol the Party provides to Outer Party members and is the opposite of a luxury.

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4. 4

   Question 4. How does Julia obtain the black-market luxuries she brings to the room?

   • Correct answer: She gets them through Inner Party connections
   • She manufactures them herself
   • She steals them from the Ministry of Plenty stores
   • She trades with smugglers from Eurasia

   Julia says the food is "all Inner Party stuff," since "There's nothing those swine don't have," and waiters, servants and others pinch things from them.

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5. 5

   Question 5. What animal causes Winston to reveal his deepest fear?

   • Correct answer: A rat
   • A snake
   • A spider
   • A cockroach

   A rat sticks its nose out of a hole in the wainscoting, and Winston shuts his eyes in horror: "Of all horrors in the world—a rat!" He cannot bear even to hear Julia describe them.

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6. 6

   Question 6. How does Julia react when she sees Winston's fear of the rat?

   • She insists they find a different meeting place
   • She screams and runs from the room
   • She laughs at his reaction
   • Correct answer: She calmly promises to block the hole

   Julia reacts practically and calmly, promising to block the rat hole. Her composed response contrasts with Winston's paralyzing fear and highlights her pragmatic nature.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What nursery rhyme recurs in this chapter?

   • Jack and Jill went up the hill
   • London Bridge Is Falling Down
   • Correct answer: Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's
   • Ring Around the Rosie

   Winston recites "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's," which Mr. Charrington taught him. Julia surprises him by knowing additional lines from her grandfather.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What does Winston see when he gazes into the glass paperweight?

   • A miniature version of Big Brother's face
   • Correct answer: The room itself, with the coral representing his and Julia's lives
   • The red-armed woman in the yard pegging out her washing
   • An image of the Golden Country

   Winston explicitly imagines the paperweight as the room, with the coral inside representing his and Julia's lives "fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal."

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9. 9

   Question 9. What picture hangs on the wall of the rented room?

   • A photograph of pre-Revolution London
   • A portrait of Big Brother
   • A painting of the Golden Country
   • Correct answer: An engraving of St Clement's Church

   A steel engraving hangs on the opposite wall. Winston tells Julia it shows a church, or what used to be one: St Clement Danes, the church of the old "Oranges and lemons" rhyme.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What is Winston's emotional state regarding renting the room?

    • Terrified of the Ministry of Love and considering giving the room up
    • Optimistic that they will never be caught
    • Correct answer: Fatalistic — he knows it will lead to capture but does it anyway
    • Indifferent about the consequences

    Winston knows the plan is "conscious, gratuitous, suicidal folly" and that they cannot use the room for long without being caught, yet he and Julia take it anyway, as though "intentionally stepping nearer to their graves."

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11. 11

    Question 11. What does the glass paperweight primarily symbolize in this chapter?

    • The weight of Party oppression
    • Correct answer: The fragile private world Winston and Julia have created
    • Winston's desire for material wealth
    • The permanence of Big Brother's power

    Winston imagines the room inside the paperweight, with the coral as his and Julia's lives "fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal": a tiny, sealed private world, as delicate as the glass around it.

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12. 12

    Question 12. Why is the rented room's location in the prole district significant?

    • Correct answer: The Party considers proles too insignificant to surveil closely
    • Prole districts have better living conditions
    • Proles are allies of the resistance movement
    • The Party monitors prole districts more heavily than Inner Party homes

    In the prole quarter life is less closely policed: the room has no telescreen, and the woman below sings alone and freely, something Winston has never heard a Party member do. That gap is what lets the lovers find a room at all.

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13. 13

    Question 13. What does Winston feel when Julia starts describing the rats?

    • As if he were trapped in the dreaded cellars of the Ministry of Love
    • As if he were back in the Golden Country of his dreams
    • As if he were back in the basement kitchen of his memory
    • Correct answer: As if he were back in a nightmare that had recurred all his life

    Winston shuts his eyes and cries "DON'T GO ON!" He feels he is back in a recurring nightmare: something unendurable waits on the other side of a wall of darkness, and he always wakes before he learns what it is.

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14. 14

    Question 14. What theme does Julia's smuggling of real food and cosmetics primarily illustrate?

    • Correct answer: Domesticity and personal pleasure as forms of political rebellion
    • The efficiency of the Party's economic system
    • The corruption and weakness of the Inner Party
    • The futility of all resistance against the Party

    Julia's smuggling illustrates that in a totalitarian state controlling every aspect of life, even mundane domestic pleasures — real food, makeup, comfort — become acts of political defiance against Party authority.

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