Throughout chapter six of Nineteen Eighty-Four, we get to know more about Winston Smith, who has become one of the main characters in the novel so far. We are welcomed into the novel with knowledge of how Winston lives and how the government is formed. Winston Smith is the character that the reader most identifies with, and the reader sees the world from his point of view. Throughout chapter 6 we get to understand and feel the suffering that exists throughout the society of Oceania. Winston has been defined into someone he does not want to be, controlled by the totalitarianism Government. Most people who Winston associates with have the same struggles with the government controlling what they can and can’t do, who they can or can’t see, and what they can and can’t say.

“Chastity was as deeply ingrained in them as Party loyalty. By careful early conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was dinned into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth League, by lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial music, the natural feeling had been driven out of them.” This quote pushes the beliefs that from an early age people from the party are taught to show loyalty to the party, they do this through remaining virgin. people of the party have been brainwahsed by

In chapter 6 we witness Winston’s confess to his journal about the time he hired a prostitute, which is forbidden and if he was to get caught would have suffered from 5 years in a forced labour camp. In the world where Winston lives sex is discouraged and couples have to have party approval to marry. This party is trying to kill human instincts. Winston elaborates back to us how he recalls the prostitute being old and toothless, and the experience was dreadful.  Winston is hopeful that by writing his experience down in his diary it will help him cope with the reality of the situation, but it fails to succeed. Winston had the approval to marry his wife Katharine, who is very diverting and incapable of an original thought although divorce and separation are discouraged. After 15 months the marriage became very hard to maintain so they were allowed to divorce with it almost being 11 months since Winston last saw Katharine. While Winston and Katherine were still together she insisted on sexual intercourse at least once a week because she understood it was their burden to the party even though Winston did not approve of that idea.

The narrator justifies that organisations like the junior Anti-sex League are so successful in providing an illusion over the party woman that sex is ugly and they all fall into the trap of believing it. Another side of Winston comes clear in this chapter. He seems to know that sex could be something more than intolerable. We visualize through Winston’s diary that memories of the lack of love that he actually aches for attention and love or even an intimate connection with someone who wants to be with him. As readers, we sense Winston’s emotions throughout this quote “And what he wanted, more even than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thought crime.” The Narrarator emphasises the idea that Winston views sex as a rebellious act and thrives of the want for it.

After witnessing his emotions forced between the pages of his diary, around the interference with the prostitute the author shows how intensely the party takes all the enjoyment out of life, turning one of their humanities best gifts into being loveless and offensive. We see this through the way the narrator tells the readers about the sexual act performed by Winston has been described as rebellious.