In George Orwell's 1984, why does Winston follow an old prole into a bar and attempt to talk to him?

By the
time , the mainin 's seminal novel of an autocratic dystopian futuristic society,
, decides to approach a prole, or proletariat, he has already grown
disillusioned by the government and its increasingly obvious lies. At the beginning of Chapter
7, 's narrator describes Winston's evolving thought process regarding the notion of subversion
to undermine or openly overthrow the ruling regime:

"If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles. If there was hope, it
must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of
the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be
generated."

Winston has become a committed enemy of
the state, but lacks the base of knowledge and resources necessary to achieve his objective. His
attention focuses on several once-loyal Party members who had defected only to return to the
Party fold. These three Party-loyalists-turned-traitors-turned-Party-loyalists have become the
focus of Winston's interest, and his observation of them at "the Chestnut Tree Cafe"
provides an opportunity to attempt to approach them. These three men represent an invaluable
reservoir of knowledge and experience regarding the Party apparatus and the mechanisms that
secure the Party in power. 

"They were men far older
than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost the last great figures left over from the
heroic days of the Party. The glamour of the underground struggle and the civil war still
faintly clung to them."

While the three men have
returned to the Party, Winston knows that their acceptance back into the Party is a mere charade
and that, in the probably not-too-distant future, they will pay the price for having once
betrayed the Party. These men, Winston concluded, were doomed, and to be seen in their presence
was hazardous to one's health. As Winston predicted, the three were executed. These elderly men,
however, represent Winston's best hope of attaining the knowledge and history necessary to
adequately understand the regime's strengths and weaknesses. He has been dependent upon a
children's history book, but knows that this is an unreliable source of information, as all
books and other sources of information have been corrupted to serve the Party's interest. It is
in Chapter 8 when Winston spots another old man, by himself, entering a dingy pub, and sees in
this another opportunity to learn from these one-time revolutionaries. As Orwell writes
regarding Winston's perception of this elderly gentleman, "[h]e and a few others like him
were the last links that now existed with the vanished world of capitalism." To Winston's
disappointment, however, the old man proves unable to recall the past in sufficient or reliable
detail and has clearly suffered mental deterioration with age.

Winston has
followed the old prole into the bar and initiated a conversation with him because he hopes to
learn from him. He is sorely disappointed, however, by this aged man who is more interested in
beer than in remembering the past.