Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [506]

Life as she saw it was quite simple. You wanted a good time; ‘they’, meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as best you could. She seemed to think it was just as natural that ‘they’ should want to rob you of your pleasures as that you should want to avoid being caught. She hated the Party, and said so in the crudest words, but she made no general criticism of it. Except where it touched upon her own life she had no interest in Party doctrine. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 506

Note

Julia’s pragmatism is defined by its limits — she evades the Party without analyzing it, treating it as weather rather than ideology. The passage sets up the contrast with Winston’s analytical torment, which the narrator will later dramatize.