Winston questions the old man in the pub

Winston enters a dingy prole pub and offers a drink to an old man of at least eighty. He asks the old man whether life was better before the Revolution, but the old man can only remember trivial details such as top hats, lackeys, and a shove from a drunk young gentleman. The old man prefers being old because he no longer has any truck with women. Winston realizes the old man's memory is a rubbish-heap of details, and that the Party's claim to have improved human life can never be tested. The question of whether life before the Revolution was better is unanswerable.