I FOUND OUT WHAT PROLES ARE!!! It's really not that complicated. The proles are basically normal people, those who are not part of the inner party or the outer party. Most of them are illiterate, but they somehow are able to do complicated calculations and predictions on lottery numbers, their only entertainment. The barman doesn't even know what a pint or a quart is! He says he "only serves liters and half liters".
When I first saw the word "proles", I thought that they were some kind of human robot or machine... And the reason why I thought that is horrible. IN a conversation between Syme and Winston about the Newspeak dictionary, Syme exclaimed that by the year 2050, not a single human being would be able to understand the conversation that they are presently having. Winston was about to say "except for the proles" but stopped mid sentence. Syme, who is not an idiot, knew what Winston was going to say, and told him: "the proles are'n't real people." I could never have guessed he was talking about actual human beings, not machines. When I figured out what proles are, I had an explosion of hatred towards Syme. I could not, and still cannot, believe that someone would dare say such a thing!!!! Even in a totalitarian society!!! It made me think of the way Hitler would dehumanize the Jews during WWII. Of course, this book was written right after WWII ended, so maybe the writer, George Orwell, still had propaganda in his mind... Or he wanted the readers to connect the proles to propaganda in WWII. Winston says that hope lies in the proles because they are not under the weight of the party as much as it's actual members. Once, he said to Julia, the mysterious black headed girl with whom he falls in love with, that "they are dead, the proles are alive" (or something along those lines). He probably said that because the proles are more freedom in a way... Of course there are many rules like that proles usually cannot drink gin or beer, but they are easily broken. Their lives are not as much filled with fear as the party members. They may be illiterate, but they are intelligent, in a way that they may be able to preserve the little culture they have, so that by the year 2050 they can still talk in Oldspeak.
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