The moment Winston realized that he’d begun to fade away was when “He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this.” As his memory faded, he did too. This fear instilled in him courage, courage to bring back the “Old London” despite it being that he himself couldn’t quite remember what that happened to be. Winston’s fear of fading away fashions the plot of the rest of the book. The essential energy left even as we reach the resolution of the book seems to be terror, a key emotion in the devising of the remaining plot. The terror that the government poses, the terror that surfaces at the thought of fading away and losing what once was. The constant dread that Winston (and presumably
