This was a great read for so many reasons, not the least of which is that it left me wanting to know more about where things would end up with all of them. So much is left to my imagination and I like it that way. It feels very real and in that way reminds me of the Rabbit series by John Updike. Good stuff.
Let's see what happened to the fictional characters going forward from the story? Dan and Fran try to save their marriage by having another baby.
Carolyn runs into Dan a few years later and their conversation is something like Winston's encounter with Julia at the end of 1984: "I betrayed you," she said baldly. "I betrayed you," he said. She gave him another quick look of dislike. "Sometimes," she said, "they threaten you with something – something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself." "All you care about is yourself," he echoed. "And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer." "No," he said, "you don't feel the same."Some time after being restored to orthodox thought and reintegrated into Oceania society, Winston encounters Julia in a park. Julia reveals that she has endured a similar ordeal to Winston, and each admits betraying the other: