A Note on the Appendix

*Nineteen Eighty Four related vol-au-vent*

I'm afraid I can't share the optimism of some that the appendix suggests, through its use of the past tense, that Ingsoc was eventually defeated and that the narrator of the Appendix writes from a free society. I think the narrator might just have mentioned the defeat of Ingsoc and the public execution of O Brien (er, I'm guessing). It would have been a big enough deal, no?