Winston and Julia clung together, fascinated. The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself, almost as though the bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity. Sometimes it stopped for a few seconds, spread out and resettled its wings, then swelled its speckled breast and again burst into song. Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence. For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness?
– George Orwell
1984. Part 2, Chapter 2. During their first secret meeting, Winston and Julia listen to the singing of a thrush which lands on a bough just metres from them. This symbolises how the thrush gets to live life as it chooses – ‘free as a bird’.
