What does Winston trace in the dust at the end of the novel 1984?

's
tracing of "2+2=5" in the dust on the table is fraught with great significance. He'd
always insisted that, no matter how hard it tried, the Party would never penetrate the core of
his inner being. And yet it has. Thanks to the brutal physical and psychological torture he
endured at the Ministry of Love, he's internalized the Party edict that whatever it says is
true, no matter how blatantly contradictory or absurd.

As Winston traces this
impossible equation in the dust, he does so unthinkingly. And that was the whole point of the
Party's breaking him, physically and mentally. The Party doesn't want Winston to think; it
simply wants him to believe whatever it tells him to believe. And in order to achieve this
outcome, it has had to plumb the very depths of Winston's soul, something he was always so
certain could never happen.