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3 <TITLE>George Orwell's 1984</TITLE>
4 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#1" title="Chapter 1">
5 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#2" title="Chapter 2">
6 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#3" title="Chapter 3">
7 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#4" title="Chapter 4">
8 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#5" title="Chapter 5">
9 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#6" title="Chapter 6">
10 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#7" title="Chapter 7">
11 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#8" title="Chapter 8">
12 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#9" title="Chapter 9">
13 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#10" title="Chapter 10">
14 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#11" title="Chapter 11">
15 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#12" title="Chapter 12">
16 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#13" title="Chapter 13">
17 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#14" title="Chapter 14">
18 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#15" title="Chapter 15">
19 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#16" title="Chapter 16">
20 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#17" title="Chapter 17">
21 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#18" title="Chapter 18">
22 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#19" title="Chapter 19">
23 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#20" title="Chapter 20">
24 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#21" title="Chapter 21">
25 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#22" title="Chapter 22">
26 <LINK rel="chapter" href="#23" title="Chapter 23">
27 <LINK rel="appendix" href="#appendix" title="The Principles of Newspeak">
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59 <H1><a name="1">I</a></H1>
61 It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were
62 striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his
63 breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly
64 through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly
65 enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along
69 The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At
70 one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display,
71 had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous
72 face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about
73 forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome
74 features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the
75 lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at
76 present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours.
77 It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week.
78 The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine
79 and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly,
80 resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the
81 lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the
82 wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that
83 the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS
84 WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
87 Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of
88 figures which had something to do with the production of
89 pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a
90 dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the
91 right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank
92 somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The
93 instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but
94 there was no way of shutting it off completely. He moved over
95 to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his
96 body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the
97 uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face
98 naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt
99 razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.
102 Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world
103 looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were
104 whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun
105 was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no
106 colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered
107 everywhere. The blackmoustachio'd face gazed down from every
108 commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately
109 opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while
110 the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at
111 streetlevel another poster, torn at one corner, flapped
112 fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the
113 single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed
114 down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a
115 bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was
116 the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols
117 did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.
120 Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was
121 still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of
122 the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and
123 transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above
124 the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it,
125 moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision
126 which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as
127 heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were
128 being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what
129 system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire
130 was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched
131 everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your
132 wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from
133 habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every
134 sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every
135 movement scrutinized.
138 Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was
139 safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A
140 kilometre away the Ministry of Truth, his place of work,
141 towered vast and white above the grimy landscape. This, he
142 thought with a sort of vague distaste -- this was London, chief
143 city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the
144 provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood
145 memory that should tell him whether London had always been
146 quite like this. Were there always these vistas of rotting
147 nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with baulks of
148 timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs
149 with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all
150 directions? And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled
151 in the air and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of
152 rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger
153 patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden
154 dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not
155 remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of
156 bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly
160 The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak* -- was
161 startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an
162 enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete,
163 soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air.
164 From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked
165 out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans
170 FREEDOM IS SLAVERY<br>
171 IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH<br>
174 The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three
175 thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding
176 ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just
177 three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So
178 completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that
179 from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of
180 them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four Ministries
181 between which the entire apparatus of government was divided.
182 The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news,
183 entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of
184 Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love,
185 which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty,
186 which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in
187 Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.
190 The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There
191 were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the
192 Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it. It was a
193 place impossible to enter except on official business, and then
194 only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire
195 entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even
196 the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by
197 gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed
201 Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features
202 into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to
203 wear when facing the telescreen. He crossed the room into the
204 tiny kitchen. By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he
205 had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that
206 there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured
207 bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow's breakfast. He
208 took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid with a
209 plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly,
210 oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly
211 a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down
212 like a dose of medicine.
215 Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of
216 his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in
217 swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of
218 the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the
219 burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more
220 cheerful. He took a cigarette from a crumpled packet marked
221 VICTORY CIGARETTES and incautiously held it upright, whereupon
222 the tobacco fell out on to the floor. With the next he was more
223 successful. He went back to the living-room and sat down at a
224 small table that stood to the left of the telescreen. From the
225 table drawer he took out a penholder, a bottle of ink, and a
226 thick, quarto-sized blank book with a red back and a marbled
230 For some reason the telescreen in the living-room was in
231 an unusual position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in
232 the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in
233 the longer wall, opposite the window. To one side of it there
234 was a shallow alcove in which Winston was now sitting, and
235 which, when the flats were built, had probably been intended to
236 hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well
237 back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the
238 telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course,
239 but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not
240 be seen. It was partly the unusual geography of the room that
241 had suggested to him the thing that he was now about to do.
244 But it had also been suggested by the book that he had
245 just taken out of the drawer. It was a peculiarly beautiful
246 book. Its smooth creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, was of
247 a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years
248 past. He could guess, however, that the book was much older
249 than that. He had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy
250 little junk-shop in a slummy quarter of the town (just what
251 quarter he did not now remember) and had been stricken
252 immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it. Party
253 members were supposed not to go into ordinary shops ('dealing
254 on the free market', it was called), but the rule was not
255 strictly kept, because there were various things, such as
256 shoelaces and razor blades, which it was impossible to get hold
257 of in any other way. He had given a quick glance up and down
258 the street and then had slipped inside and bought the book for
259 two dollars fifty. At the time he was not conscious of wanting
260 it for any particular purpose. He had carried it guiltily home
261 in his briefcase. Even with nothing written in it, it was a
262 compromising possession.
265 The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary.
266 This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no
267 longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain
268 that it would be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five
269 years in a forced-labour camp. Winston fitted a nib into the
270 penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an
271 archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had
272 procured one, furtively and with some difficulty, simply
273 because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved
274 to be written on with a real nib instead of being scratched
275 with an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to writing by
276 hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate
277 everything into the speak-write which was of course impossible
278 for his present purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and
279 then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone through his
280 bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act. In small clumsy
287 He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had
288 descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any
289 certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date,
290 since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he
291 believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was
292 never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or
296 For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he
297 writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind
298 hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page, and
299 then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word
300 doublethink. For the first time the magnitude of what he
301 had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with
302 the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future
303 would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen
304 to him: or it would be different from it, and his predicament
305 would be meaningless.
308 For some time he sat gazing stupidly at the paper. The
309 telescreen had changed over to strident military music. It was
310 curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of
311 expressing himself, but even to have forgotten what it was that
312 he had originally intended to say. For weeks past he had been
313 making ready for this moment, and it had never crossed his mind
314 that anything would be needed except courage. The actual
315 writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to
316 paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running
317 inside his head, literally for years. At this moment, however,
318 even the monologue had dried up. Moreover his varicose ulcer
319 had begun itching unbearably. He dared not scratch it, because
320 if he did so it always became inflamed. The seconds were
321 ticking by. He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of
322 the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his
323 ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused
327 Suddenly he began writing in sheer panic, only imperfectly
328 aware of what he was setting down. His small but childish
329 handwriting straggled up and down the page, shedding first its
330 capital letters and finally even its full stops:
333 April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war
334 films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees being
335 bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by
336 shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away with a
337 helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the
338 water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters
339 gunsights, then he was full of holes and the sea round him
340 turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let
341 in the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank.
342 then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter
343 hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been
344 a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three
345 years old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright and
346 hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to
347 burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms round him
348 and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself,
349 all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she
350 thought her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the
351 helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash
352 and the boat went all to matchwood. then there was a wonderful
353 shot of a child's arm going up up up right up into the air a
354 helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up
355 and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a
356 woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started
357 kicking up a fuss and shouting they didnt oughter of showed it
358 not in front of kids they didnt it aint right not in front of
359 kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont
360 suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles
361 say typical prole reaction they never
364 Winston stopped writing, partly because he was suffering
365 from cramp. He did not know what had made him pour out this
366 stream of rubbish. But the curious thing was that while he was
367 doing so a totally different memory had clarified itself in his
368 mind, to the point where he almost felt equal to writing it
369 down. It was, he now realized, because of this other incident
370 that he had suddenly decided to come home and begin the diary
374 It had happened that morning at the Ministry, if anything
375 so nebulous could be said to happen.
378 It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records
379 Department, where Winston worked, they were dragging the chairs
380 out of the cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall
381 opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes
382 Hate. Winston was just taking his place in one of the middle
383 rows when two people whom he knew by sight, but had never
384 spoken to, came unexpectedly into the room. One of them was a
385 girl whom he often passed in the corridors. He did not know her
386 name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department.
387 Presumably -- since he had sometimes seen her with oily hands
388 and carrying a spanner she had some mechanical job on one of
389 the novel-writing machines. She was a bold-looking girl, of
390 about twenty-seven, with thick hair, a freckled face, and
391 swift, athletic movements. A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the
392 Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound several times round the waist
393 of her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the
394 shapeliness of her hips. Winston had disliked her from the very
395 first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because
396 of the atmosphere of hockey-fields and cold baths and community
397 hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed to carry
398 about with her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially
399 the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above
400 all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the
401 Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and
402 nosers-out of unorthodoxy. But this particular girl gave him
403 the impression of being more dangerous than most. Once when
404 they passed in the corridor she gave him a quick sidelong
405 glance which seemed to pierce right into him and for a moment
406 had filled him with black terror. The idea had even crossed his
407 mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That, it
408 was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a
409 peculiar uneasiness, which had fear mixed up in it as well as
410 hostility, whenever she was anywhere near him.
413 The other person was a man named O'Brien, a member of the
414 Inner Party and holder of some post so important and remote
415 that Winston had only a dim idea of its nature. A momentary
416 hush passed over the group of people round the chairs as they
417 saw the black overalls of an Inner Party member approaching.
418 O'Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse,
419 humorous, brutal face. In spite of his formidable appearance he
420 had a certain charm of manner. He had a trick of resettling his
421 spectacles on his nose which was curiously disarming -- in some
422 indefinable way, curiously civilized. It was a gesture which,
423 if anyone had still thought in such terms, might have recalled
424 an eighteenth-century nobleman offering his snuffbox. Winston
425 had seen O'Brien perhaps a dozen times in almost as many years.
426 He felt deeply drawn to him, and not solely because he was
427 intrigued by the contrast between O'Brien's urbane manner and
428 his prize-fighter's physique. Much more it was because of a
429 secretly held belief -- or perhaps not even a belief, merely a
430 hope -- that O'Brien's political orthodoxy was not perfect.
431 Something in his face suggested it irresistibly. And again,
432 perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written in his
433 face, but simply intelligence. But at any rate he had the
434 appearance of being a person that you could talk to if somehow
435 you could cheat the telescreen and get him alone. Winston had
436 never made the smallest effort to verify this guess: indeed,
437 there was no way of doing so. At this moment O'Brien glanced at
438 his wrist-watch, saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and
439 evidently decided to stay in the Records Department until the
440 Two Minutes Hate was over. He took a chair in the same row as
441 Winston, a couple of places away. A small, sandy-haired woman
442 who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was between them. The
443 girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind.
446 The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some
447 monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big
448 telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set
449 one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's
450 neck. The Hate had started.
453 As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the
454 People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here
455 and there among the audience. The little sandy-haired woman
456 gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein was the
457 renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago,
458 nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures
459 of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and
460 then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been
461 condemned to death, and had mysteriously escaped and
462 disappeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from
463 day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the
464 principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest
465 defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against
466 the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies,
467 deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or
468 other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps
469 somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign
470 paymasters, perhaps even -- so it was occasionally rumoured --
471 in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.
474 Winston's diaphragm was constricted. He could never see
475 the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It
476 was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white
477 hair and a small goatee beard -- a clever face, and yet somehow
478 inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the
479 long thin nose, near the end of which a pair of spectacles was
480 perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too,
481 had a sheep-like quality. Goldstein was delivering his usual
482 venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party -- an attack so
483 exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to
484 see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with
485 an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than
486 oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Big Brother,
487 he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was
488 demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he
489 was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom
490 of assembly, freedom of thought, he was crying hysterically
491 that the revolution had been betrayed -- and all this in rapid
492 polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of the habitual
493 style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak
494 words: more Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would
495 normally use in real life. And all the while, lest one should
496 be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein's specious
497 claptrap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there
498 marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army -- row after
499 row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who
500 swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be
501 replaced by others exactly similar. The dull rhythmic tramp of
502 the soldiers' boots formed the background to Goldstein's
506 Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds,
507 uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half
508 the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on
509 the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army
510 behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight or
511 even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger
512 automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than
513 either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with
514 one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other.
515 But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and
516 despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times
517 a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in
518 books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up
519 to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were in
520 spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less.
521 Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A
522 day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his
523 directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the
524 commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of
525 conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The
526 Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be. There were also
527 whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the
528 heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which
529 circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without
530 a title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as the
531 book. But one knew of such things only through vague
532 rumours. Neither the Brotherhood nor the book was a
533 subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if there
534 was a way of avoiding it.
537 In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People
538 were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the
539 tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening
540 bleating voice that came from the screen. The little
541 sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening
542 and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy
543 face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair,
544 his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were
545 standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl
546 behind Winston had begun crying out 'Swine! Swine! Swine!' and
547 suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it
548 at the screen. It struck Goldstein's nose and bounced off; the
549 voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found
550 that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel
551 violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing
552 about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act
553 a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid
554 joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always
555 unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a
556 desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a
557 sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people
558 like an electric current, turning one even against one's will
559 into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one
560 felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be
561 switched from one object to another like the flame of a
562 blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston's hatred was not turned
563 against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against Big
564 Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments
565 his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the
566 screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies.
567 And yet the very next instant he was at one with the people
568 about him, and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to
569 be true. At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother
570 changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an
571 invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against
572 the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation,
573 his helplessness, and the doubt that hung about his very
574 existence, seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable by the
575 mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure of
579 It was even possible, at moments, to switch one's hatred
580 this way or that by a voluntary act. Suddenly, by the sort of
581 violent effort with which one wrenches one's head away from the
582 pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded in transferring his
583 hatred from the face on the screen to the dark-haired girl
584 behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his
585 mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He
586 would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows
587 like Saint Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat at
588 the moment of climax. Better than before, moreover, he realized
589 why it was that he hated her. He hated her because she was
590 young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed
591 with her and would never do so, because round her sweet supple
592 waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm,
593 there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of
597 The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had
598 become an actual sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face
599 changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into
600 the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing,
601 huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring, and seeming to
602 spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the
603 people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their
604 seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief
605 from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big
606 Brother, black-haired, black-moustachio'd, full of power and
607 mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the
608 screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely
609 a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are
610 uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually
611 but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the
612 face of Big Brother faded away again, and instead the three
613 slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:
617 FREEDOM IS SLAVERY<br>
618 IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH<br>
621 But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several
622 seconds on the screen, as though the impact that it had made on
623 everyone's eyeballs was too vivid to wear off immediately. The
624 little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the
625 back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that
626 sounded like 'My Saviour!' she extended her arms towards the
627 screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent
628 that she was uttering a prayer.
631 At this moment the entire group of people broke into a
632 deep, slow, rhythmical chant of 'B-B! ... B-B!' -- over and
633 over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first
634 'B' and the second-a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously
635 savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp
636 of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as
637 much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that
638 was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it
639 was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother,
640 but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate
641 drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise. Winston's
642 entrails seemed to grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hate he could
643 not help sharing in the general delirium, but this sub-human
644 chanting of 'B-B! ... B-B!' always filled him with horror.
645 Of course he chanted with the rest: it was impossible to do
646 otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to
647 do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.
648 But there was a space of a couple of seconds during which the
649 expression of his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him. And
650 it was exactly at this moment that the significant thing
651 happened -- if, indeed, it did happen.
654 Momentarily he caught O'Brien's eye. O'Brien had stood up.
655 He had taken off his spectacles and was in the act of
656 resettling them on his nose with his characteristic gesture.
657 But there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met, and
658 for as long as it took to happen Winston knew -- yes, he
659 knew! -- that O'Brien was thinking the same thing as
660 himself. An unmistakable message had passed. It was as though
661 their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from
662 one into the other through their eyes. 'I am with you,' O'Brien
663 seemed to be saying to him. 'I know precisely what you are
664 feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your
665 disgust. But don't worry, I am on your side!' And then the
666 flash of intelligence was gone, and O'Brien's face was as
667 inscrutable as everybody else's.
670 That was all, and he was already uncertain whether it had
671 happened. Such incidents never had any sequel. All that they
672 did was to keep alive in him the belief, or hope, that others
673 besides himself were the enemies of the Party. Perhaps the
674 rumours of vast underground conspiracies were true after all --
675 perhaps the Brotherhood really existed! It was impossible, in
676 spite of the endless arrests and confessions and executions, to
677 be sure that the Brotherhood was not simply a myth. Some days
678 he believed in it, some days not. There was no evidence, only
679 fleeting glimpses that might mean anything or nothing: snatches
680 of overheard conversation, faint scribbles on lavatory walls --
681 once, even, when two strangers met, a small movement of the
682 hand which had looked as though it might be a signal of
683 recognition. It was all guesswork: very likely he had imagined
684 everything. He had gone back to his cubicle without looking at
685 O'Brien again. The idea of following up their momentary contact
686 hardly crossed his mind. It would have been inconceivably
687 dangerous even if he had known how to set about doing it. For a
688 second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance,
689 and that was the end of the story. But even that was a
690 memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to
694 Winston roused himself and sat up straighter. He let out a
695 belch. The gin was rising from his stomach.
698 His eyes re-focused on the page. He discovered that while
699 he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by
700 automatic action. And it was no longer the same cramped,
701 awkward handwriting as before. His pen had slid voluptuously
702 over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals
705 DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER<br>
706 DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER<br>
707 DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER<br>
708 DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER<br>
709 DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER<br>
711 <p>over and over again, filling half a page.
714 He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was
715 absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not
716 more dangerous than the initial act of opening the diary, but
717 for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and
718 abandon the enterprise altogether.
721 He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was
722 useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he
723 refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went
724 on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no
725 difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He
726 had committed -- would still have committed, even if he had
727 never set pen to paper -- the essential crime that contained
728 all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it.
729 Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever.
730 You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but
731 sooner or later they were bound to get you.
734 It was always at night -- the arrests invariably happened
735 at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking
736 your shoulder, the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of
737 hard faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases there
738 was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply
739 disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed
740 from the registers, every record of everything you had ever
741 done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then
742 forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized
746 For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began
747 writing in a hurried untidy scrawl:
750 theyll shoot me i don't care theyll shoot me in the
751 back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always
752 shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big
756 He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and
757 laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently. There
758 was a knocking at the door.
761 Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope
762 that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt. But
763 no, the knocking was repeated. The worst thing of all would be
764 to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face,
765 from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and
766 moved heavily towards the door.
768 <H1><a name="2">II</a></H1>
769 <p class="no-indent">
770 As he put his hand to the door-knob Winston saw that he
771 had left the diary open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was
772 written all over it, in letters almost big enough to be legible
773 across the room. It was an inconceivably stupid thing to have
774 done. But, he realized, even in his panic he had not wanted to
775 smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book while the ink was
778 He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a
779 warm wave of relief flowed through him. A colourless,
780 crushed-looking woman, with wispy hair and a lined face, was
781 standing outside.</p>
783 'Oh, comrade,' she began in a dreary, whining sort of
784 voice, 'I thought I heard you come in. Do you think you could
785 come across and have a look at our kitchen sink? It's got
788 It was Mrs Parsons, the wife of a neighbour on the same
789 floor. ('Mrs' was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party
790 -- you were supposed to call everyone 'comrade' -- but with
791 some women one used it instinctively.) She was a woman of about
792 thirty, but looking much older. One had the impression that
793 there was dust in the creases of her face. Winston followed her
794 down the passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost
795 daily irritation. Victory Mansions were old flats, built in
796 1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces. The plaster
797 flaked constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in
798 every hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was snow, the
799 heating system was usually running at half steam when it was
800 not closed down altogether from motives of economy. Repairs,
801 except what you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by
802 remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending
803 of a window-pane for two years.</p>
805 'Of course it's only because Tom isn't home,' said Mrs
808 The Parsons' flat was bigger than Winston's, and dingy in
809 a different way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look,
810 as though the place had just been visited by some large violent
811 animal. Games impedimenta -- hockey-sticks, boxing-gloves. a
812 burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out --
813 lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of
814 dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books. On the walls were
815 scarlet banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and a
816 full-sized poster of Big Brother. There was the usual
817 boiled-cabbage smell, common to the whole building, but it was
818 shot through by a sharper reek of sweat, which-one knew this at
819 the first sniff, though it was hard to say how was the sweat of
820 some person not present at the moment. In another room someone
821 with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune
822 with the military music which was still issuing from the
825 'It's the children,' said Mrs Parsons, casting a
826 half-apprehensive glance at the door. 'They haven't been out today.
829 She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the
830 middle. The kitchen sink was full nearly to the brim with
831 filthy greenish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage.
832 Winston knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. He
833 hated using his hands, and he hated bending down, which was
834 always liable to start him coughing. Mrs Parsons looked on
837 'Of course if Tom was home he'd put it right in a moment,'
838 she said. 'He loves anything like that. He's ever so good with
839 his hands, Tom is.'</p>
841 Parsons was Winston's fellow-employee at the Ministry of
842 Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity,
843 a mass of imbecile enthusiasms -- one of those completely
844 unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the
845 Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended. At
846 thirty-five he had just been unwillingly evicted from the Youth
847 League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had
848 managed to stay on in the Spies for a year beyond the statutory
849 age. At the Ministry he was employed in some subordinate post
850 for which intelligence was not required, but on the other hand
851 he was a leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the
852 other committees engaged in organizing community hikes,
853 spontaneous demonstrations, savings campaigns, and voluntary
854 activities generally. He would inform you with quiet pride,
855 between whiffs of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at
856 the Community Centre every evening for the past four years. An
857 overpowering smell of sweat, a sort of unconscious testimony to
858 the strenuousness of his life, followed him about wherever he
859 went, and even remained behind him after he had gone.</p>
861 'Have you got a spanner?' said Winston, fiddling with the
862 nut on the angle-joint.</p>
864 'A spanner,' said Mrs Parsons, immediately becoming
865 invertebrate. 'I don't know, I'm sure. Perhaps the children -'</p>
867 There was a trampling of boots and another blast on the
868 comb as the children charged into the living-room. Mrs Parsons
869 brought the spanner. Winston let out the water and disgustedly
870 removed the clot of human hair that had blocked up the pipe. He
871 cleaned his fingers as best he could in the cold water from the
872 tap and went back into the other room.</p>
874 'Up with your hands!' yelled a savage voice.</p>
876 A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from
877 behind the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic
878 pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made
879 the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were
880 dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red neckerchiefs
881 which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands
882 above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the
883 boy's demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.</p>
885 'You're a traitor!' yelled the boy. 'You're a thought-criminal!
886 You're a Eurasian spy! I'll shoot you, I'll vaporize
887 you, I'll send you to the salt mines!'</p>
889 Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting
890 'Traitor!' and 'Thought-criminal!' the little girl imitating
891 her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly
892 frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon
893 grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating
894 ferocity in the boy's eye, a quite evident desire to hit or
895 kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big
896 enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he
897 was holding, Winston thought.</p>
899 Mrs Parsons' eyes flitted nervously from Winston to the
900 children, and back again. In the better light of the
901 living-room he noticed with interest that there actually
902 was dust in the creases of her face.</p>
904 'They do get so noisy,' she said. 'They're disappointed
905 because they couldn't go to see the hanging, that's what it is.
906 I'm too busy to take them. and Tom won't be back from work in
909 'Why can't we go and see the hanging?' roared the boy in
912 'Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!'
913 chanted the little girl, still capering round.</p>
915 Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be
916 hanged in the Park that evening, Winston remembered. This
917 happened about once a month, and was a popular spectacle.
918 Children always clamoured to be taken to see it. He took his
919 leave of Mrs Parsons and made for the door. But he had not gone
920 six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his
921 neck an agonizingly painful blow. It was as though a red-hot
922 wire had been jabbed into him. He spun round just in time to
923 see Mrs Parsons dragging her son back into the doorway while
924 the boy pocketed a catapult.</p>
926 'Goldstein!' bellowed the boy as the door closed on him.
927 But what most struck Winston was the look of helpless fright on
928 the woman's greyish face.</p>
930 Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen
931 and sat down at the table again, still rubbing his neck. The
932 music from the telescreen had stopped. Instead, a clipped
933 military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a
934 description of the armaments of the new Floating Fortress which
935 had just been anchored between lceland and the Faroe lslands.</p>
937 With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must
938 lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would
939 be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy.
940 Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of
941 all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they
942 were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages,
943 and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel
944 against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they
945 adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs,
946 the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with
947 dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big
948 Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All
949 their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the
950 State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs,
951 thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty
952 to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason,
953 for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not
954 carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little
955 sneak -- 'child hero' was the phrase generally used -- had
956 overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to
957 the Thought Police.</p>
959 The sting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked
960 up his pen half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find
961 something more to write in the diary. Suddenly he began
962 thinking of O'Brien again.</p>
964 Years ago -- how long was it? Seven years it must be -- he
965 had dreamed that he was walking through a pitch-dark room. And
966 someone sitting to one side of him had said as he passed: 'We
967 shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.' It was
968 said very quietly, almost casually -- a statement, not a
969 command. He had walked on without pausing. What was curious was
970 that at the time, in the dream, the words had not made much
971 impression on him. It was only later and by degrees that they
972 had seemed to take on significance. He could not now remember
973 whether it was before or after having the dream that he had
974 seen O'Brien for the first time, nor could he remember when he
975 had first identified the voice as O'Brien's. But at any rate
976 the identification existed. It was O'Brien who had spoken to
977 him out of the dark.</p>
979 Winston had never been able to feel sure -- even after
980 this morning's flash of the eyes it was still impossible to be
981 sure whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy. Nor did it even
982 seem to matter greatly. There was a link of understanding
983 between them, more important than affection or partisanship.
984 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,' he had
985 said. Winston did not know what it meant, only that in some way
986 or another it would come true.</p>
988 The voice from the telescreen paused. A trumpet call,
989 clear and beautiful, floated into the stagnant air. The voice
990 continued raspingly:</p>
992 'Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this
993 moment arrived from the Malabar front. Our forces in South
994 India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that
995 the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within
996 measurable distance of its end. Here is the newsflash -'</p>
998 Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough,
999 following on a gory description of the annihilation of a
1000 Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners,
1001 came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate
1002 ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty.</p>
1004 Winston belched again. The gin was wearing off, leaving a
1005 deflated feeling. The telescreen -- perhaps to celebrate the
1006 victory, perhaps to drown the memory of the lost chocolate --
1007 crashed into 'Oceania, 'tis for thee'. You were supposed to
1008 stand to attention. However, in his present position he was
1011 'Oceania, 'tis for thee' gave way to lighter music.
1012 Winston walked over to the window, keeping his back to the
1013 telescreen. The day was still cold and clear. Somewhere far
1014 away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating roar.
1015 About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London at
1018 Down in the street the wind flapped the torn poster to and
1019 fro, and the word INGSOC fitfully appeared and vanished.
1020 Ingsoc. The sacred principles of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink,
1021 the mutability of the past. He felt as though he were wandering
1022 in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world
1023 where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was
1024 dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a
1025 single human creature now living was on his side? And what way
1026 of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure
1027 for ever? Like an answer, the three slogans on the white
1028 face of the Ministry of Truth came back to him:</p>
1031 FREEDOM IS SLAVERY<br>
1032 IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH</p>
1035 He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket. There,
1036 too, in tiny clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed,
1037 and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even
1038 from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the
1039 covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrappings
1040 of a cigarette Packet -- everywhere. Always the eyes watching
1041 you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or
1042 eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed -- no
1043 escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres
1044 inside your skull.</p>
1046 The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the
1047 Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them,
1048 looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed
1049 before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it
1050 could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombs would not batter
1051 it down. He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary.
1052 For the future, for the past -- for an age that might be
1053 imaginary. And in front of him there lay not death but
1054 annihilation. The diary would be reduced to ashes and himself
1055 to vapour. Only the Thought Police would read what he had
1056 written, before they wiped it out of existence and out of
1057 memory. How could you make appeal to the future when not a
1058 trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece
1059 of paper, could physically survive?</p>
1061 The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten
1062 minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty.</p>
1064 Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new
1065 heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that
1066 nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some
1067 obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making
1068 yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the
1069 human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and
1072 To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is
1073 free, when men are different from one another and do not live
1074 alone -- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be
1077 From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude,
1078 from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink --
1081 He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that
1082 it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his
1083 thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences
1084 of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote:</p>
1086 Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS
1089 Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became
1090 important to stay alive as long as possible. Two fingers of his
1091 right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail
1092 that might betray you. Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a
1093 woman, probably: someone like the little sandy-haired woman or
1094 the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start
1095 wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval,
1096 why he had used an old-fashioned pen, what he had been
1097 writing -- and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He
1098 went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with
1099 the gritty dark-brown soap which rasped your skin like
1100 sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose.</p>
1102 He put the diary away in the drawer. It was quite useless
1103 to think of hiding it, but he could at least make sure whether
1104 or not its existence had been discovered. A hair laid across
1105 the page-ends was too obvious. With the tip of his finger he
1106 picked up an identifiable grain of whitish dust and deposited
1107 it on the corner of the cover, where it was bound to be shaken
1108 off if the book was moved.</p>
1109 <H1><a name="3">III</a></H1>
1110 <p class="no-indent">
1111 Winston was dreaming of his mother.</p>
1113 He must, he thought, have been ten or eleven years old
1114 when his mother had disappeared. She was a tall, statuesque,
1115 rather silent woman with slow movements and magnificent fair
1116 hair. His father he remembered more vaguely as dark and thin,
1117 dressed always in neat dark clothes (Winston remembered
1118 especially the very thin soles of his father's shoes) and
1119 wearing spectacles. The two of them must evidently have been
1120 swallowed up in one of the first great purges of the fifties.</p>
1122 At this moment his mother was sitting in some place deep
1123 down beneath him, with his young sister in her arms. He did not
1124 remember his sister at all, except as a tiny, feeble baby,
1125 always silent, with large, watchful eyes. Both of them were
1126 looking up at him. They were down in some subterranean place --
1127 the bottom of a well, for instance, or a very deep grave -- but
1128 it was a place which, already far below him, was itself moving
1129 downwards. They were in the saloon of a sinking ship, looking
1130 up at him through the darkening water. There was still air in
1131 the saloon, they could still see him and he them, but all the
1132 while they were sinking down, down into the green waters which
1133 in another moment must hide them from sight for ever. He was
1134 out in the light and air while they were being sucked down to
1135 death, and they were down there because he was up here.
1136 He knew it and they knew it, and he could see the knowledge in
1137 their faces. There was no reproach either in their faces or in
1138 their hearts, only the knowledge that they must die in order
1139 that he might remain alive, and that this was part of the
1140 unavoidable order of things.</p>
1142 He could not remember what had happened, but he knew in
1143 his dream that in some way the lives of his mother and his
1144 sister had been sacrificed to his own. It was one of those
1145 dreams which, while retaining the characteristic dream scenery,
1146 are a continuation of one's intellectual life, and in which one
1147 becomes aware of facts and ideas which still seem new and
1148 valuable after one is awake. The thing that now suddenly struck
1149 Winston was that his mother's death, nearly thirty years ago,
1150 had been tragic and sorrowful in a way that was no longer
1151 possible. Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time,
1152 to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship,
1153 and when the members of a family stood by one another without
1154 needing to know the reason. His mother's memory tore at his
1155 heart because she had died loving him, when he was too young
1156 and selfish to love her in return, and because somehow, he did
1157 not remember how, she had sacrificed herself to a conception of
1158 loyalty that was private and unalterable. Such things, he saw,
1159 could not happen today. Today there were fear, hatred, and
1160 pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows.
1161 All this he seemed to see in the large eyes of his mother and
1162 his sister, looking up at him through the green water, hundreds
1163 of fathoms down and still sinking.</p>
1165 Suddenly he was standing on short springy turf, on a
1166 summer evening when the slanting rays of the sun gilded the
1167 ground. The landscape that he was looking at recurred so often
1168 in his dreams that he was never fully certain whether or not he
1169 had seen it in the real world. In his waking thoughts he called
1170 it the Golden Country. It was an old, rabbit-bitten pasture,
1171 with a foot-track wandering across it and a molehill here and
1172 there. In the ragged hedge on the opposite side of the field
1173 the boughs of the elm trees were swaying very faintly in the
1174 breeze, their leaves just stirring in dense masses like women's
1175 hair. Somewhere near at hand, though out of sight, there was a
1176 clear, slow-moving stream where dace were swimming in the pools
1177 under the willow trees.</p>
1179 The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the
1180 field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her
1181 clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white
1182 and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely
1183 looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was
1184 admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her
1185 clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to
1186 annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as
1187 though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could
1188 all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of
1189 the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time.
1190 Winston woke up with the word 'Shakespeare' on his lips.</p>
1192 The telescreen was giving forth an ear-splitting whistle
1193 which continued on the same note for thirty seconds. It was
1194 nought seven fifteen, getting-up time for office workers.
1195 Winston wrenched his body out of bed -- naked, for a member of
1196 the Outer Party received only 3,000 clothing coupons annually,
1197 and a suit of pyjamas was 600 -- and seized a dingy singlet and
1198 a pair of shorts that were lying across a chair. The Physical
1199 Jerks would begin in three minutes. The next moment he was
1200 doubled up by a violent coughing fit which nearly always
1201 attacked him soon after waking up. It emptied his lungs so
1202 completely that he could only begin breathing again by lying on
1203 his back and taking a series of deep gasps. His veins had
1204 swelled with the effort of the cough, and the varicose ulcer
1205 had started itching.</p>
1207 'Thirty to forty group!' yapped a piercing female voice. '
1208 Thirty to forty group! Take your places, please. Thirties to
1211 Winston sprang to attention in front of the telescreen,
1212 upon which the image of a youngish woman, scrawny but muscular,
1213 dressed in tunic and gym-shoes, had already appeared.</p>
1215 'Arms bending and stretching!' she rapped out. 'Take your
1216 time by me. One, two, three, four! One, two,
1217 three, four! Come on, comrades, put a bit of life into it!
1218 One, two, three four! One two, three, four! . .
1221 The pain of the coughing fit had not quite driven out of
1222 Winston's mind the impression made by his dream, and the
1223 rhythmic movements of the exercise restored it somewhat. As he
1224 mechanically shot his arms back and forth, wearing on his face
1225 the look of grim enjoyment which was considered proper during
1226 the Physical Jerks, he was struggling to think his way backward
1227 into the dim period of his early childhood. It was
1228 extraordinarily difficult. Beyond the late fifties everything
1229 faded. When there were no external records that you could refer
1230 to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness. You
1231 remembered huge events which had quite probably not happened,
1232 you remembered the detail of incidents without being able to
1233 recapture their atmosphere, and there were long blank periods
1234 to which you could assign nothing. Everything had been
1235 different then. Even the names of countries, and their shapes
1236 on the map, had been different. Airstrip One, for instance, had
1237 not been so called in those days: it had been called England or
1238 Britain, though London, he felt fairly certain, had always been
1241 Winston could not definitely remember a time when his
1242 country had not been at war, but it was evident that there had
1243 been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood,
1244 because one of his early memories was of an air raid which
1245 appeared to take everyone by surprise. Perhaps it was the time
1246 when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester. He did not
1247 remember the raid itself, but he did remember his father's hand
1248 clutching his own as they hurried down, down, down into some
1249 place deep in the earth, round and round a spiral staircase
1250 which rang under his feet and which finally so wearied his legs
1251 that he began whimpering and they had to stop and rest. His
1252 mother, in her slow, dreamy way, was following a long way
1253 behind them. She was carrying his baby sister -- or perhaps it
1254 was only a bundle of blankets that she was carrying: he was not
1255 certain whether his sister had been born then. Finally they had
1256 emerged into a noisy, crowded place which he had realized to be
1259 There were people sitting all over the stone-flagged
1260 floor, and other people, packed tightly together, were sitting
1261 on metal bunks, one above the other. Winston and his mother and
1262 father found themselves a place on the floor, and near them an
1263 old man and an old woman were sitting side by side on a bunk.
1264 The old man had on a decent dark suit and a black cloth cap
1265 pushed back from very white hair: his face was scarlet and his
1266 eyes were blue and full of tears. He reeked of gin. It seemed
1267 to breathe out of his skin in place of sweat, and one could
1268 have fancied that the tears welling from his eyes were pure
1269 gin. But though slightly drunk he was also suffering under some
1270 grief that was genuine and unbearable. In his childish way
1271 Winston grasped that some terrible thing, something that was
1272 beyond forgiveness and could never be remedied, had just
1273 happened. It also seemed to him that he knew what it was.
1274 Someone whom the old man loved -- a little granddaughter,
1275 perhaps had been killed. Every few minutes the old man kept
1278 'We didn't ought to 'ave trusted 'em. I said so, Ma,
1279 didn't I? That's what comes of trusting 'em. I said so all
1280 along. We didn't ought to 'ave trusted the buggers.</p>
1282 But which buggers they didn't ought to have trusted
1283 Winston could not now remember.</p>
1285 Since about that time, war had been literally continuous,
1286 though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war.
1287 For several months during his childhood there had been confused
1288 street fighting in London itself, some of which he remembered
1289 vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole period, to
1290 say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been
1291 utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken
1292 word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the
1293 existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was
1294 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with
1295 Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever
1296 admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped
1297 along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was
1298 only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and
1299 in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of
1300 furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his
1301 memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the
1302 change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with
1303 Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
1304 The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and
1305 it followed that any past or future agreement with him was
1308 The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth
1309 time as he forced his shoulders painfully backward (with hands
1310 on hips, they were gyrating their bodies from the waist, an
1311 exercise that was supposed to be good for the back muscles) --
1312 the frightening thing was that it might all be true. If the
1313 Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or
1314 that event, it never happened -- that, surely, was more
1315 terrifying than mere torture and death?</p>
1317 The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance
1318 with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in
1319 alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But
1320 where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness,
1321 which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others
1322 accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told
1323 the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became
1324 truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls
1325 the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And
1326 yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been
1327 altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to
1328 everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an
1329 unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality
1330 control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'</p>
1332 'Stand easy!' barked the instructress, a little more
1335 Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his
1336 lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world
1337 of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of
1338 complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies,
1339 to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out,
1340 knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them,
1341 to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying
1342 claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that
1343 the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it
1344 was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again
1345 at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget
1346 it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the
1347 process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to
1348 induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become
1349 unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even
1350 to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of
1353 The instructress had called them to attention again. 'And
1354 now let's see which of us can touch our toes!' she said
1355 enthusiastically. 'Right over from the hips, please, comrades.
1356 One-two! One-two! ...'</p>
1358 Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains
1359 all the way from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by
1360 bringing on another coughing fit. The half-pleasant quality
1361 went out of his meditations. The past, he reflected, had not
1362 merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how
1363 could you establish even the most obvious fact when there
1364 existed no record outside your own memory? He tried to remember
1365 in what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother. He
1366 thought it must have been at some time in the sixties, but it
1367 was impossible to be certain. In the Party histories, of
1368 course, Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the
1369 Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had been
1370 gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended
1371 into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties, when
1372 the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode
1373 through the streets of London in great gleaming motor-cars or
1374 horse carriages with glass sides. There was no knowing how much
1375 of this legend was true and how much invented. Winston could
1376 not even remember at what date the Party itself had come into
1377 existence. He did not believe he had ever heard the word Ingsoc
1378 before 1960, but it was possible that in its Oldspeak
1379 form-'English Socialism', that is to say -- it had been current
1380 earlier. Everything melted into mist. Sometimes, indeed, you
1381 could put your finger on a definite lie. It was not true, for
1382 example, as was claimed in the Party history books, that the
1383 Party had invented aeroplanes. He remembered aeroplanes since
1384 his earliest childhood. But you could prove nothing. There was
1385 never any evidence. Just once in his whole life he had held in
1386 his hands unmistakable documentary proof of the falsification
1387 of an historical fact. And on that occasion</p>
1389 'Smith!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen.
1390 '6079 Smith W.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do
1391 better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please!
1392 That's better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole
1393 squad, and watch me.'</p>
1395 A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body.
1396 His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay!
1397 Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give
1398 you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her
1399 arms above her head and -- one could not say gracefully, but
1400 with remarkable neatness and efficiency -- bent over and tucked
1401 the first joint of her fingers under her toes.</p>
1403 'There, comrades! That's how I want to see
1404 you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four
1405 children. Now look.' She bent over again. 'You see my knees
1406 aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to,' she added as
1407 she straightened herself up. 'Anyone under forty-five is
1408 perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the
1409 privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can
1410 all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the
1411 sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what they
1412 have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade,
1413 that's much better,' she added encouragingly as Winston,
1414 with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees
1415 unbent, for the first time in several years.</p>
1416 <H1><a name="4">IV</a></H1>
1417 <p class="no-indent">
1418 With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the
1419 nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when
1420 his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards
1421 him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his
1422 spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together four small
1423 cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of the
1424 pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.</p>
1426 In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To
1427 the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written
1428 messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the
1429 side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong
1430 slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the
1431 disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or
1432 tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every
1433 room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason
1434 they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any
1435 document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap
1436 of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift
1437 the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon
1438 it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the
1439 enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses
1440 of the building.</p>
1442 Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had
1443 unrolled. Each contained a message of only one or two lines, in
1444 the abbreviated jargon -- not actually Newspeak, but consisting
1445 largely of Newspeak words -- which was used in the Ministry for
1446 internal purposes. They ran:</p>
1448 times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify<br>
1449 times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints
1450 verify current issue<br>
1451 times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify<br>
1452 times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs
1453 unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling</p>
1455 With a faint feeling of satisfaction Winston laid the
1456 fourth message aside. It was an intricate and responsible job
1457 and had better be dealt with last. The other three were routine
1458 matters, though the second one would probably mean some tedious
1459 wading through lists of figures.</p>
1461 Winston dialled 'back numbers' on the telescreen and
1462 called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which
1463 slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay.
1464 The messages he had received referred to articles or news items
1465 which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to
1466 alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For
1467 example, it appeared from The Times of the seventeenth
1468 of March that Big Brother, in his speech of the previous day,
1469 had predicted that the South Indian front would remain quiet
1470 but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in
1471 North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command had
1472 launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa
1473 alone. It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big
1474 Brother's speech, in such a way as to make him predict the
1475 thing that had actually happened. Or again, The Times of
1476 the nineteenth of December had published the official forecasts
1477 of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the
1478 fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the
1479 Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today's issue contained a statement of
1480 the actual output, from which it appeared that the forecasts
1481 were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job was to
1482 rectify the original figures by making them agree with the
1483 later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very
1484 simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes.
1485 As short a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had
1486 issued a promise (a 'categorical pledge' were the official
1487 words) that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration
1488 during 1984. Actually, as Winston was aware, the chocolate
1489 ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the
1490 end of the present week. All that was needed was to substitute
1491 for the original promise a warning that it would probably be
1492 necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.</p>
1494 As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he
1495 clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of
1496 The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic
1497 tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible
1498 unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes
1499 that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole
1500 to be devoured by the flames.</p>
1502 What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the
1503 pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know
1504 in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened
1505 to be necessary in any particular number of The Times
1506 had been assembled and collated, that number would be
1507 reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy
1508 placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous
1509 alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books,
1510 periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks,
1511 cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or
1512 documentation which might conceivably hold any political or
1513 ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by
1514 minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every
1515 prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary
1516 evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any
1517 expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the
1518 moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a
1519 palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as
1520 was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the
1521 deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.
1522 The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than
1523 the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons
1524 whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of
1525 books, newspapers, and other documents which had been
1526 superseded and were due for destruction. A number of The
1527 Times which might, because of changes in political
1528 alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have
1529 been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing
1530 its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it.
1531 Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and
1532 were invariably reissued without any admission that any
1533 alteration had been made. Even the written instructions which
1534 Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as
1535 he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of
1536 forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips,
1537 errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to
1538 put right in the interests of accuracy.</p>
1540 But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of
1541 Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the
1542 substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the
1543 material that you were dealing with had no connexion with
1544 anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that
1545 is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a
1546 fantasy in their original version as in their rectified
1547 version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make
1548 them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's
1549 forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at
1550 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two
1551 millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked
1552 the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the
1553 usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case,
1554 sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven
1555 millions, or than 145 millions. Very likely no boots had been
1556 produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been
1557 produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter
1558 astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while
1559 perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it
1560 was with every class of recorded fact, great or small.
1561 Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally,
1562 even the date of the year had become uncertain.</p>
1564 Winston glanced across the hall. In the corresponding
1565 cubicle on the other side a small, precise-looking, dark-
1566 chinned man named Tillotson was working steadily away, with a
1567 folded newspaper on his knee and his mouth very close to the
1568 mouthpiece of the speakwrite. He had the air of trying to keep
1569 what he was saying a secret between himself and the telescreen.
1570 He looked up, and his spectacles darted a hostile flash in
1571 Winston's direction.</p>
1573 Winston hardly knew Tillotson, and had no idea what work
1574 he was employed on. People in the Records Department did not
1575 readily talk about their jobs. In the long, windowless hall,
1576 with its double row of cubicles and its endless rustle of
1577 papers and hum of voices murmuring into speakwrites, there were
1578 quite a dozen people whom Winston did not even know by name,
1579 though he daily saw them hurrying to and fro in the corridors
1580 or gesticulating in the Two Minutes Hate. He knew that in the
1581 cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day
1582 in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press
1583 the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore
1584 considered never to have existed. There was a certain fitness
1585 in this, since her own husband had been vaporized a couple of
1586 years earlier. And a few cubicles away a mild, ineffectual,
1587 dreamy creature named Ampleforth, with very hairy ears and a
1588 surprising talent for juggling with rhymes and metres, was
1589 engaged in producing garbled versions -- definitive texts, they
1590 were called -- of poems which had become ideologically
1591 offensive, but which for one reason or another were to be
1592 retained in the anthologies. And this hall, with its fifty
1593 workers or thereabouts, was only one sub-section, a single
1594 cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records
1595 Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers
1596 engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs. There were the
1597 huge printing-shops with their sub-editors, their typography
1598 experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking
1599 of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its
1600 engineers, its producers, and its teams of actors specially
1601 chosen for their skill in imitating voices. There were the
1602 armies of reference clerks whose job was simply to draw up
1603 lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall. There
1604 were the vast repositories where the corrected documents were
1605 stored, and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were
1606 destroyed. And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were
1607 the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid
1608 down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this
1609 fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified,
1610 and the other rubbed out of existence.</p>
1612 And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a
1613 single branch of the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was
1614 not to reconstruct the past but to supply the citizens of
1615 Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen
1616 programmes, plays, novels -- with every conceivable kind of
1617 information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a
1618 slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a
1619 child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary. And the
1620 Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the
1621 party, but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level
1622 for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of
1623 separate departments dealing with proletarian literature,
1625 music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced
1626 rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport,
1627 crime and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films
1628 oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed
1629 entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope
1630 known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section --
1631 Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak -- engaged in
1632 producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in
1633 sealed packets and which no Party member, other than those who
1634 worked on it, was permitted to look at.</p>
1636 Three messages had slid out of the pneumatic tube while
1637 Winston was working, but they were simple matters, and he had
1638 disposed of them before the Two Minutes Hate interrupted him.
1639 When the Hate was over he returned to his cubicle, took the
1640 Newspeak dictionary from the shelf, pushed the speakwrite to
1641 one side, cleaned his spectacles, and settled down to his main
1642 job of the morning.</p>
1644 Winston's greatest pleasure in life was in his work. Most
1645 of it was a tedious routine, but included in it there were also
1646 jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in
1647 them as in the depths of a mathematical problem -- delicate
1648 pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to guide you except
1649 your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of
1650 what the Party wanted you to say. Winston was good at this kind
1651 of thing. On occasion he had even been entrusted with the
1652 rectification of The Times leading articles, which were
1653 written entirely in Newspeak. He unrolled the message that he
1654 had set aside earlier. It ran:</p>
1657 times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs
1658 unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling</p>
1661 In Oldspeak (or standard English) this might be rendered:
1662 The reporting of Big Brother's Order for the Day in The Times
1663 of December 3rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes
1664 references to non-existent persons. Rewrite it in full and
1665 submit your draft to higher authority before filing.</p>
1667 Winston read through the offending article. Big Brother's
1668 Order for the Day, it seemed, had been chiefly devoted to
1669 praising the work of an organization known as FFCC, which
1670 supplied cigarettes and other comforts to the sailors in the
1671 Floating Fortresses. A certain Comrade Withers, a prominent
1672 member of the Inner Party, had been singled out for special
1673 mention and awarded a decoration, the Order of Conspicuous
1674 Merit, Second Class.</p>
1676 Three months later FFCC had suddenly been dissolved with
1677 no reasons given. One could assume that Withers and his
1678 associates were now in disgrace, but there had been no report
1679 of the matter in the Press or on the telescreen. That was to be
1680 expected, since it was unusual for political offenders to be
1681 put on trial or even publicly denounced. The great purges
1682 involving thousands of people, with public trials of traitors
1683 and thought-criminals who made abject confession of their
1684 crimes and were afterwards executed, were special show-pieces
1685 not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years. More
1686 commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party
1687 simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One never had
1688 the smallest clue as to what had happened to them. In some
1689 cases they might not even be dead. Perhaps thirty people
1690 personally known to Winston, not counting his parents, had
1691 disappeared at one time or another.</p>
1693 Winston stroked his nose gently with a paper-clip. In the
1694 cubicle across the way Comrade Tillotson was still crouching
1695 secretively over his speakwrite. He raised his head for a
1696 moment: again the hostile spectacle-flash. Winston wondered
1697 whether Comrade Tillotson was engaged on the same job as
1698 himself. It was perfectly possible. So tricky a piece of work
1699 would never be entrusted to a single person: on the other hand,
1700 to turn it over to a committee would be to admit openly that an
1701 act of fabrication was taking place. Very likely as many as a
1702 dozen people were now working away on rival versions of what
1703 Big Brother had actually said. And presently some master brain
1704 in the Inner Party would select this version or that, would
1705 re-edit it and set in motion the complex processes of
1706 cross-referencing that would be required, and then the chosen
1707 lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth.</p>
1709 Winston did not know why Withers had been disgraced.
1710 Perhaps it was for corruption or incompetence. Perhaps Big
1711 Brother was merely getting rid of a too-popular subordinate.
1712 Perhaps Withers or someone close to him had been suspected of
1713 heretical tendencies. Or perhaps -- what was likeliest of all
1714 -- the thing had simply happened because purges and
1715 vaporizations were a necessary part of the mechanics of
1716 government. The only real clue lay in the words 'refs
1717 unpersons', which indicated that Withers was already dead. You
1718 could not invariably assume this to be the case when people
1719 were arrested. Sometimes they were released and allowed to
1720 remain at liberty for as much as a year or two years before
1721 being executed. Very occasionally some person whom you had
1722 believed dead long since would make a ghostly reappearance at
1723 some public trial where he would implicate hundreds of others
1724 by his testimony before vanishing, this time for ever. Withers,
1725 however, was already an unperson. He did not exist: he
1726 had never existed. Winston decided that it would not be enough
1727 simply to reverse the tendency of Big Brother's speech. It was
1728 better to make it deal with something totally unconnected with
1729 its original subject.</p>
1731 He might turn the speech into the usual denunciation of
1732 traitors and thought-criminals, but that was a little too
1733 obvious, while to invent a victory at the front, or some
1734 triumph of over-production in the Ninth Three-Year Plan, might
1735 complicate the records too much. What was needed was a piece of
1736 pure fantasy. Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready made
1737 as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had
1738 recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances. There were
1739 occasions when Big Brother devoted his Order for the Day to
1740 commemorating some humble, rank-and-file Party member whose life
1741 and death he held up as an example worthy to be followed. Today
1742 he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true that there
1743 was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print
1744 and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into
1747 Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite
1748 towards him and began dictating in Big Brother's familiar
1749 style: a style at once military and pedantic, and, because of a
1750 trick of asking questions and then promptly answering them
1751 ('What lessons do we learn from this fact, comrades? The
1752 lesson -- which is also one of the fundamental principles of
1753 Ingsoc -- that,' etc., etc.), easy to imitate.</p>
1755 At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys
1756 except a drum, a sub-machine gun, and a model helicopter. At
1757 six -- a year early, by a special relaxation of the rules -- he
1758 had joined the Spies, at nine he had been a troop leader. At
1759 eleven he had denounced his uncle to the Thought Police after
1760 overhearing a conversation which appeared to him to have
1761 criminal tendencies. At seventeen he had been a district
1762 organizer of the Junior Anti-Sex League. At nine teen he had
1763 designed a hand-grenade which had been adopted by the Ministry
1764 of Peace and which, at its first trial, had killed thirty-one
1765 Eurasian prisoners in one burst. At twenty-three he had
1766 perished in action. Pursued by enemy jet planes while flying
1767 over the Indian Ocean with important despatches, he had
1768 weighted his body with his machine gun and leapt out of the
1769 helicopter into deep water, despatches and all -- an end, said
1770 Big Brother, which it was impossible to contemplate without
1771 feelings of envy. Big Brother added a few remarks on the purity
1772 and single-mindedness of Comrade Ogilvy's life. He was a total
1773 abstainer and a nonsmoker, had no recreations except a daily
1774 hour in the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy,
1775 believing marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible
1776 with a twenty-four-hour-a-day devotion to duty. He had no
1777 subjects of conversation except the principles of Ingsoc, and
1778 no aim in life except the defeat of the Eurasian enemy and the
1779 hunting-down of spies, saboteurs, thoughtcriminals, and
1780 traitors generally.</p>
1782 Winston debated with himself whether to award Comrade
1783 Ogilvy the Order of Conspicuous Merit: in the end he decided
1784 against it because of the unnecessary cross-referencing that it
1787 Once again he glanced at his rival in the opposite
1788 cubicle. Something seemed to tell him with certainty that
1789 Tillotson was busy on the same job as himself. There was no way
1790 of knowing whose job would finally be adopted, but he felt a
1791 profound conviction that it would be his own. Comrade Ogilvy,
1792 unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. It struck him as
1793 curious that you could create dead men but not living ones.
1794 Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now
1795 existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was
1796 forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the
1797 same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.</p>
1798 <H1><a name="5">V</a></H1>
1799 <p class="no-indent">
1800 In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep underground, the lunch
1801 queue jerked slowly forward. The room was already very full and
1802 deafeningly noisy. From the grille at the counter the steam of
1803 stew came pouring forth, with a sour metallic smell which did
1804 not quite overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On the far side of
1805 the room there was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall, where
1806 gin could be bought at ten cents the large nip.</p>
1808 'Just the man I was looking for,' said a voice at
1811 He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the
1812 Research Department. Perhaps 'friend' was not exactly the right
1813 word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades: but
1814 there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that
1815 of others. Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak.
1816 Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged
1817 in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary.
1818 He was a tiny creature, smaller than Winston, with dark hair
1819 and large, protuberant eyes, at once mournful and derisive,
1820 which seemed to search your face closely while he was speaking
1823 'I wanted to ask you whether you'd got any razor blades,'
1826 'Not one!' said Winston with a sort of guilty haste. 'I've
1827 tried all over the place. They don't exist any longer.'</p>
1829 Everyone kept asking you for razor blades. Actually he had
1830 two unused ones which he was hoarding up. There had been a
1831 famine of them for months past. At any given moment there was
1832 some necessary article which the Party shops were unable to
1833 supply. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was darning
1834 wool, sometimes it was shoelaces; at present it was razor
1835 blades. You could only get hold of them, if at all, by
1836 scrounging more or less furtively on the 'free' market.</p>
1838 'I've been using the same blade for six weeks,' he added
1841 The queue gave another jerk forward. As they halted he
1842 turned and faced Syme again. Each of them took a greasy metal
1843 tray from a pile at the end of the counter.</p>
1845 'Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday?' said
1848 'I was working,' said Winston indifferently. 'I shall see
1849 it on the flicks, I suppose.'</p>
1851 'A very inadequate substitute,' said Syme.</p>
1853 His mocking eyes roved over Winston's face. 'I know you,'
1854 the eyes seemed to say, 'I see through you. I know very well
1855 why you didn't go to see those prisoners hanged.' In an
1856 intellectual way, Syme was venomously orthodox. He would talk
1857 with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction of helicopter raids
1858 on enemy villages, and trials and confessions of
1859 thought-criminals, the executions in the cellars of the
1860 Ministry of Love. Talking to him was largely a matter of
1861 getting him away from such subjects and entangling him, if
1862 possible, in the technicalities of Newspeak, on which he was
1863 authoritative and interesting. Winston turned his head a little
1864 aside to avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes.</p>
1866 'It was a good hanging,' said Syme reminiscently. 'I think
1867 it spoils it when they tie their feet together. I like to see
1868 them kicking. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking
1869 right out, and blue a quite bright blue. That's the detail that
1872 'Nex', please!' yelled the white-aproned prole with the
1875 Winston and Syme pushed their trays beneath the grille. On
1876 to each was dumped swiftly the regulation lunch -- a metal
1877 pannikin of pinkish-grey stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of
1878 cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and one saccharine
1881 'There's a table over there, under that telescreen,' said
1882 Syme. 'Let's pick up a gin on the way.'</p>
1884 The gin was served out to them in handleless china mugs.
1885 They threaded their way across the crowded room and unpacked
1886 their trays on to the metal-topped table, on one corner of
1887 which someone had left a pool of stew, a filthy liquid mess
1888 that had the appearance of vomit. Winston took up his mug of
1889 gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the
1890 oily-tasting stuff down. When he had winked the tears out of
1891 his eyes he suddenly discovered that he was hungry. He began
1892 swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among its general
1893 sloppiness, had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was
1894 probably a preparation of meat. Neither of them spoke again
1895 till they had emptied their pannikins. From the table at
1896 Winston's left, a little behind his back, someone was talking
1897 rapidly and continuously, a harsh gabble almost like the
1898 quacking of a duck, which pierced the general uproar of the
1901 'How is the Dictionary getting on?' said Winston, raising
1902 his voice to overcome the noise.</p>
1904 'Slowly,' said Syme. 'I'm on the adjectives. It's
1907 He had brightened up immediately at the mention of
1908 Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside, took up his hunk of
1909 bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and
1910 leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without
1913 'The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,' he said.
1914 'We're getting the language into its final shape -- the shape
1915 it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've
1916 finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all
1917 over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is
1918 inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying
1919 words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're
1920 cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition
1921 won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before
1924 He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of
1925 mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's
1926 passion. His thin dark face had become animated, his eyes had
1927 lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy.</p>
1929 'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of
1930 course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but
1931 there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It
1932 isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After
1933 all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the
1934 opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in
1935 itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like
1936 "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will
1937 do just as well -- better, because it's an exact opposite,
1938 which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger
1939 version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string
1940 of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all
1941 the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning, or "
1942 doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course
1943 we use those forms already. but in the final version of
1944 Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion
1945 of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words -- in
1946 reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that,
1947 Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as
1948 an afterthought.</p>
1950 A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at
1951 the mention of Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately
1952 detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.</p>
1954 'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he
1955 said almost sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still
1956 thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you
1957 write in The Times occasionally. They're good
1958 enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to
1959 stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless
1960 shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the
1961 destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only
1962 language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every
1965 Winston did know that, of course. He smiled,
1966 sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme
1967 bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it
1968 briefly, and went on:</p>
1970 'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow
1971 the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime
1972 literally impossible, because there will be no words in which
1973 to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be
1974 expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly
1975 defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and
1976 forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from
1977 that point. But the process will still be continuing long after
1978 you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the
1979 range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of
1980 course, there's no reason or excuse for committing
1981 thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline,
1982 reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even
1983 for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is
1984 perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added
1985 with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to
1986 you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a
1987 single human being will be alive who could understand such a
1988 conversation as we are having now?'</p>
1990 'Except-' began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.</p>
1992 It had been on the tip of his tongue to say 'Except the
1993 proles,' but he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that
1994 this remark was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had
1995 divined what he was about to say.</p>
1997 'The proles are not human beings,' he said carelessly. '
1998 By 2050 earlier, probably -- all real knowledge of Oldspeak
1999 will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will
2000 have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron --
2001 they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed
2002 into something different, but actually changed into something
2003 contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of
2004 the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could
2005 you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of
2006 freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will
2007 be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we
2008 understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing
2009 to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.'</p>
2011 One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep
2012 conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He
2013 sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not
2014 like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in
2017 Winston had finished his bread and cheese. He turned a
2018 little sideways in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the
2019 table on his left the man with the strident voice was still
2020 talking remorselessly away. A young woman who was perhaps his
2021 secretary, and who was sitting with her back to Winston, was
2022 listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with
2023 everything that he said. From time to time Winston caught some
2024 such remark as 'I think you're so right, I do so
2025 agree with you', uttered in a youthful and rather silly
2026 feminine voice. But the other voice never stopped for an
2027 instant, even when the girl was speaking. Winston knew the man
2028 by sight, though he knew no more about him than that he held
2029 some important post in the Fiction Department. He was a man of
2030 about thirty, with a muscular throat and a large, mobile mouth.
2031 His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at
2032 which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and
2033 presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was
2034 slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that
2035 poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish
2036 a single word. Just once Winston caught a phrase-'complete and
2037 final elimination of Goldsteinism'- jerked out very rapidly
2038 and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line of type cast
2039 solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quack-quack-quacking.
2040 And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was
2041 saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature.
2042 He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures
2043 against thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be
2044 fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian army, he
2045 might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar
2046 front-it made no difference. Whatever it was, you could be
2047 certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc.
2048 As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up
2049 and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a
2050 real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's
2051 brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was
2052 coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in
2053 the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like
2054 the quacking of a duck.</p>
2056 Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle
2057 of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of stew. The
2058 voice from the other table quacked rapidly on, easily audible
2059 in spite of the surrounding din.</p>
2061 'There is a word in Newspeak,' said Syme, 'I don't know
2062 whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It
2063 is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory
2064 meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse, applied to
2065 someone you agree with, it is praise.'</p>
2067 Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought
2068 again. He thought it with a kind of sadness, although well
2069 knowing that Syme despised him and slightly disliked him, and
2070 was fully capable of denouncing him as a thought-criminal if
2071 he saw any reason for doing so. There was something subtly
2072 wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked:
2073 discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could
2074 not say that he was unorthodox. He believed in the principles
2075 of Ingsoc, he venerated Big Brother, he rejoiced over
2076 victories, he hated heretics, not merely with sincerity but
2077 with a sort of restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of information,
2078 which the ordinary Party member did not approach. Yet a faint
2079 air of disreputability always clung to him. He said things that
2080 would have been better unsaid, he had read too many books, he
2081 frequented the Chestnut Tree Café, haunt of painters and
2082 musicians. There was no law, not even an unwritten law, against
2083 frequenting the Chestnut Tree Café, yet the place was somehow
2084 ill-omened. The old, discredited leaders of the Party had been
2085 used to gather there before they were finally purged. Goldstein
2086 himself, it was said, had sometimes been seen there, years and
2087 decades ago. Syme's fate was not difficult to foresee. And yet
2088 it was a fact that if Syme grasped, even for three seconds, the
2089 nature of his, Winston's, secret opinions, he would betray him
2090 instantly to the Thought police. So would anybody else, for
2091 that matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal was not enough.
2092 Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.</p>
2094 Syme looked up. 'Here comes Parsons,' he said.</p>
2096 Something in the tone of his voice seemed to add, 'that
2097 bloody fool'. Parsons, Winston's fellow-tenant at Victory
2098 Mansions, was in fact threading his way across the room -- a
2099 tubby, middle-sized man with fair hair and a froglike face. At
2100 thirty-five he was already putting on rolls of fat at neck and
2101 waistline, but his movements were brisk and boyish. His whole
2102 appearance was that of a little boy grown large, so much so
2103 that although he was wearing the regulation overalls, it was
2104 almost impossible not to think of him as being dressed in the
2105 blue shorts, grey shirt, and red neckerchief of the Spies. In
2106 visualizing him one saw always a picture of dimpled knees and
2107 sleeves rolled back from pudgy forearms. Parsons did, indeed,
2108 invariably revert to shorts when a community hike or any other
2109 physical activity gave him an excuse for doing so. He greeted
2110 them both with a cheery 'Hullo, hullo!' and sat down at the
2111 table, giving off an intense smell of sweat. Beads of moisture
2112 stood out all over his pink face. His powers of sweating were
2113 extraordinary. At the Community Centre you could always tell
2114 when he had been playing table-tennis by the dampness of the
2115 bat handle. Syme had produced a strip of paper on which there
2116 was a long column of words, and was studying it with an
2117 ink-pencil between his fingers.</p>
2119 'Look at him working away in the lunch hour,' said
2120 Parsons, nudging Winston. 'Keenness, eh? What's that you've got
2121 there, old boy? Something a bit too brainy for me, I expect.
2122 Smith, old boy, I'll tell you why I'm chasing you. It's that
2123 sub you forgot to give me.'</p>
2125 'Which sub is that? said Winston, automatically feeling
2126 for money. About a quarter of one's salary had to be earmarked
2127 for voluntary subscriptions, which were so numerous that it was
2128 difficult to keep track of them.</p>
2130 'For Hate Week. You know -- the house-by-house fund. I'm
2131 treasurer for our block. We're making an all-out effort --
2132 going to put on a tremendous show. I tell you, it won't be my
2133 fault if old Victory Mansions doesn't have the biggest outfit
2134 of flags in the whole street. Two dollars you promised me.'</p>
2136 Winston found and handed over two creased and filthy
2137 notes, which Parsons entered in a small notebook, in the neat
2138 handwriting of the illiterate.</p>
2140 'By the way, old boy,' he said. 'I hear that little beggar
2141 of mine let fly at you with his catapult yesterday. I gave him
2142 a good dressing-down for it. In fact I told him I'd take the
2143 catapult away if he does it again.</p>
2145 'I think he was a little upset at not going to the
2146 execution,' said Winston.</p>
2148 ' Ah, well -- what I mean to say, shows the right spirit,
2149 doesn't it? Mischievous little beggars they are, both of them,
2150 but talk about keenness! All they think about is the Spies, and
2151 the war, of course. D'you know what that little girl of mine
2152 did last Saturday, when her troop was on a hike out Berkhamsted
2153 way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off from
2154 the hike, and spent the whole afternoon following a strange
2155 man. They kept on his tail for two hours, right through the
2156 woods, and then, when they got into Amersham, handed him over
2157 to the patrols.'</p>
2159 'What did they do that for?' said Winston, somewhat taken
2160 aback. Parsons went on triumphantly:</p>
2162 'My kid made sure he was some kind of enemy agent -- might
2163 have been dropped by parachute, for instance. But here's the
2164 point, old boy. What do you think put her on to him in the
2165 first place? She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes
2166 -- said she'd never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before.
2167 So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a
2168 nipper of seven, eh?'</p>
2170 'What happened to the man?' said Winston.</p>
2172 'Ah, that I couldn't say, of course. But I wouldn't be
2173 altogether surprised if-' Parsons made the motion of aiming a
2174 rifle, and clicked his tongue for the explosion.</p>
2176 'Good,' said Syme abstractedly, without looking up from
2177 his strip of paper.</p>
2179 'Of course we can't afford to take chances,' agreed
2180 Winston dutifully.</p>
2182 'What I mean to say, there is a war on,' said Parsons.</p>
2184 As though in confirmation of this, a trumpet call floated
2185 from the telescreen just above their heads. However, it was not
2186 the proclamation of a military victory this time, but merely an
2187 announcement from the Ministry of Plenty.</p>
2189 'Comrades!' cried an eager youthful voice. 'Attention,
2190 comrades! We have glorious news for you. We have won the battle
2191 for production! Returns now completed of the output of all
2192 classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living
2193 has risen by no less than 20 per cent over the past year. All
2194 over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous
2195 demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and
2196 offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing
2197 their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which
2198 his wise leadership has bestowed upon us. Here are some of the
2199 completed figures. Foodstuffs-'</p>
2201 The phrase 'our new, happy life' recurred several times.
2202 It had been a favourite of late with the Ministry of Plenty.
2203 Parsons, his attention caught by the trumpet call, sat
2204 listening with a sort of gaping solemnity, a sort of edified
2205 boredom. He could not follow the figures, but he was aware that
2206 they were in some way a cause for satisfaction. He had lugged
2207 out a huge and filthy pipe which was already half full of
2208 charred tobacco. With the tobacco ration at 100 grammes a week
2209 it was seldom possible to fill a pipe to the top. Winston was
2210 smoking a Victory Cigarette which he held carefully horizontal.
2211 The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four
2212 cigarettes left. For the moment he had shut his ears to the
2213 remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out
2214 of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been
2215 demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate
2216 ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he
2217 reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be
2218 reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that
2219 they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes,
2220 they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the
2221 stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table
2222 swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire
2223 to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest
2224 that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too-in
2225 some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed
2226 it. Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?</p>
2228 The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the
2229 telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food,
2230 more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots,
2231 more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more
2232 babies -- more of everything except disease, crime, and
2233 insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and
2234 everything was whizzing rapidly upwards. As Syme had done
2235 earlier Winston had taken up his spoon and was dabbling in the
2236 pale-coloured gravy that dribbled across the table, drawing a
2237 long streak of it out into a pattern. He meditated resentfully
2238 on the physical texture of life. Had it always been like this?
2239 Had food always tasted like this? He looked round the canteen.
2240 A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact
2241 of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed
2242 so close together that you sat with elbows touching; bent
2243 spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy,
2244 grime in every crack; and a sourish, composite smell of bad gin
2245 and bad coffee and metallic stew and dirty clothes. Always in
2246 your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a
2247 feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a
2248 right to. It was true that he had no memories of anything
2249 greatly different. In any time that he could accurately
2250 remember, there had never been quite enough to eat, one had
2251 never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes,
2252 furniture had always been battered and rickety, rooms
2253 underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces,
2254 bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting,
2255 cigarettes insufficient -- nothing cheap and plentiful except
2256 synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew worse as one's
2257 body aged, was it not a sign that this was not the
2258 natural order of things, if one's heart sickened at the
2259 discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the
2260 stickiness of one's socks, the lifts that never worked, the
2261 cold water, the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to
2262 pieces, the food with its strange evil tastes? Why should one
2263 feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral
2264 memory that things had once been different?</p>
2266 He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone was
2267 ugly, and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise
2268 than in the uniform blue overalls. On the far side of the room,
2269 sitting at a table alone, a small, curiously beetle-like man
2270 was drinking a cup of coffee, his little eyes darting
2271 suspicious glances from side to side. How easy it was, thought
2272 Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the
2273 physical type set up by the Party as an ideal-tall muscular
2274 youths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt,
2275 carefree -- existed and even predominated. Actually, so far as
2276 he could judge, the majority of people in Airstrip One were
2277 small, dark, and ill-favoured. It was curious how that
2278 beetle-like type proliferated in the Ministries: little dumpy
2279 men, growing stout very early in life, with short legs, swift
2280 scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small
2281 eyes. It was the type that seemed to flourish best under the
2282 dominion of the Party.</p>
2284 The announcement from the Ministry of Plenty ended on
2285 another trumpet call and gave way to tinny music. Parsons,
2286 stirred to vague enthusiasm by the bombardment of figures, took
2287 his pipe out of his mouth.</p>
2289 'The Ministry of Plenty's certainly done a good job this
2290 year,' he said with a knowing shake of his head. 'By the way,
2291 Smith old boy, I suppose you haven't got any razor blades you
2292 can let me have?'</p>
2294 'Not one,' said Winston. 'I've been using the same blade
2295 for six weeks myself.'</p>
2297 'Ah, well -- just thought I'd ask you, old boy.'</p>
2299 'Sorry,' said Winston.</p>
2301 The quacking voice from the next table, temporarily
2302 silenced during the Ministry's announcement, had started up
2303 again, as loud as ever. For some reason Winston suddenly found
2304 himself thinking of Mrs Parsons, with her wispy hair and the
2305 dust in the creases of her face. Within two years those
2306 children would be denouncing her to the Thought Police. Mrs
2307 Parsons would be vaporized. Syme would be vaporized. Winston
2308 would be vaporized. O'Brien would be vaporized. Parsons, on the
2309 other hand, would never be vaporized. The eyeless creature with
2310 the quacking voice would never be vaporized. The little
2311 beetle-like men who scuttle so nimbly through the labyrinthine
2312 corridors of Ministries they, too, would never be vaporized.
2313 And the girl with dark hair, the girl from the Fiction
2314 Department -- she would never be vaporized either. It seemed to
2315 him that he knew instinctively who would survive and who would
2316 perish: though just what it was that made for survival, it was
2317 not easy to say.</p>
2319 At this moment he was dragged out of his reverie with a
2320 violent jerk. The girl at the next table had turned partly
2321 round and was looking at him. It was the girl with dark hair.
2322 She was looking at him in a sidelong way, but with curious
2323 intensity. The instant she caught his eye she looked away
2326 The sweat started out on Winston's backbone. A horrible
2327 pang of terror went through him. It was gone almost at once,
2328 but it left a sort of nagging uneasiness behind. Why was she
2329 watching him? Why did she keep following him about?
2330 Unfortunately he could not remember whether she had already
2331 been at the table when he arrived, or had come there
2332 afterwards. But yesterday, at any rate, during the Two Minutes
2333 Hate, she had sat immediately behind him when there was no
2334 apparent need to do so. Quite likely her real object had been
2335 to listen to him and make sure whether he was shouting loudly
2338 His earlier thought returned to him: probably she was not
2339 actually a member of the Thought Police, but then it was
2340 precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all.
2341 He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but
2342 perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that
2343 his features had not been perfectly under control. It was
2344 terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in
2345 any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest
2346 thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look
2347 of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that
2348 carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having
2349 something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression
2350 on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced,
2351 for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a
2352 word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.</p>
2354 The girl had turned her back on him again. Perhaps after
2355 all she was not really following him about, perhaps it was
2356 coincidence that she had sat so close to him two days running.
2357 His cigarette had gone out, and he laid it carefully on the
2358 edge of the table. He would finish smoking it after work, if he
2359 could keep the tobacco in it. Quite likely the person at the
2360 next table was a spy of the Thought Police, and quite likely he
2361 would be in the cellars of the Ministry of Love within three
2362 days, but a cigarette end must not be wasted. Syme had folded
2363 up his strip of paper and stowed it away in his pocket. Parsons
2364 had begun talking again.</p>
2366 'Did I ever tell you, old boy,' he said, chuckling round
2367 the stem of his pipe, 'about the time when those two nippers of
2368 mine set fire to the old market-woman's skirt because they saw
2369 her wrapping up sausages in a poster of B.B.? Sneaked up behind
2370 her and set fire to it with a box of matches. Burned her quite
2371 badly, I believe. Little beggars, eh? But keen as mustard!
2372 That's a first-rate training they give them in the Spies
2373 nowadays -- better than in my day, even. What d'you think's the
2374 latest thing they've served them out with? Ear trumpets for
2375 listening through keyholes! My little girl brought one home
2376 the other night -- tried it out on our sitting-room door, and
2377 reckoned she could hear twice as much as with her ear to the
2378 hole. Of course it's only a toy, mind you. Still, gives 'em the
2379 right idea, eh?'</p>
2381 At this moment the telescreen let out a piercing whistle.
2382 It was the signal to return to work. All three men sprang to
2383 their feet to join in the struggle round the lifts, and the
2384 remaining tobacco fell out of Winston's cigarette.</p>
2385 <h1><a name="6">VI</a></h1>
2386 <p class="no-indent">
2387 Winston was writing in his diary:</p>
2389 It was three years ago. It was on a dark evening, in a
2390 narrow side-street near one of the big railway stations. She
2391 was standing near a doorway in the wall, under a street lamp
2392 that hardly gave any light. She had a young face, painted very
2393 thick. It was really the paint that appealed to me, the
2394 whiteness of it, like a mask, and the bright red lips. Party
2395 women never paint their faces. There was nobody else in the
2396 street, and no telescreens. She said two dollars. I</p>
2398 For the moment it was too difficult to go on. He shut his
2399 eyes and pressed his fingers against them, trying to squeeze
2400 out the vision that kept recurring. He had an almost
2401 overwhelming temptation to shout a string of filthy words at
2402 the top of his voice. Or to bang his head against the wall, to
2403 kick over the table, and hurl the inkpot through the window --
2404 to do any violent or noisy or painful thing that might black
2405 out the memory that was tormenting him.</p>
2407 Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous
2408 system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to
2409 translate itself into some visible symptom. He thought of a man
2410 whom he had passed in the street a few weeks back; a quite
2411 ordinary-looking man, a Party member, aged thirty-five to
2412 forty, tallish and thin, carrying a brief-case. They were a few
2413 metres apart when the left side of the man's face was suddenly
2414 contorted by a sort of spasm. It happened again just as they
2415 were passing one another: it was only a twitch, a quiver, rapid
2416 as the clicking of a camera shutter, but obviously habitual. He
2417 remembered thinking at the time: That poor devil is done for.
2418 And what was frightening was that the action was quite possibly
2419 unconscious. The most deadly danger of all was talking in your
2420 sleep. There was no way of guarding against that, so far as he
2423 He drew his breath and went on writing:</p>
2425 I went with her through the doorway and across a
2426 backyard into a basement kitchen. There was a bed against the
2427 wall, and a lamp on the table, turned down very low. She</p>
2429 His teeth were set on edge. He would have liked to spit.
2430 Simultaneously with the woman in the basement kitchen he
2431 thought of Katharine, his wife. Winston was married -- had been
2432 married, at any rate: probably he still was married, so far as
2433 he knew his wife was not dead. He seemed to breathe again the
2434 warm stuffy odour of the basement kitchen, an odour compounded
2435 of bugs and dirty clothes and villainous cheap scent, but
2436 nevertheless alluring, because no woman of the Party ever used
2437 scent, or could be imagined as doing so. Only the proles used
2438 scent. In his mind the smell of it was inextricably mixed up
2439 with fornication.</p>
2441 When he had gone with that woman it had been his first
2442 lapse in two years or thereabouts. Consorting with prostitutes
2443 was forbidden, of course, but it was one of those rules that
2444 you could occasionally nerve yourself to break. It was
2445 dangerous, but it was not a life-and-death matter. To be caught
2446 with a prostitute might mean five years in a forced-labour
2447 camp: not more, if you had committed no other offence. And it
2448 was easy enough, provided that you could avoid being caught in
2449 the act. The poorer quarters swarmed with women who were ready
2450 to sell themselves. Some could even be purchased for a bottle
2451 of gin, which the proles were not supposed to drink. Tacitly
2452 the Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an
2453 outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed.
2454 Mere debauchery did not matter very much, so long as it was
2455 furtive and joyless and only involved the women of a submerged
2456 and despised class. The unforgivable crime was promiscuity
2457 between Party members. But -- though this was one of the crimes
2458 that the accused in the great purges invariably confessed to --
2459 it was difficult to imagine any such thing actually happening.</p>
2461 The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and
2462 women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to
2463 control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all
2464 pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was
2465 the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All marriages
2466 between Party members had to be approved by a committee
2467 appointed for the purpose, and -- though the principle was
2468 never clearly stated -- permission was always refused if the
2469 couple concerned gave the impression of being physically
2470 attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of
2471 marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party.
2472 Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting
2473 minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put
2474 into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into
2475 every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even
2476 organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which
2477 advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were
2478 to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it
2479 was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions.
2480 This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously,
2481 but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the
2482 Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it
2483 could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did
2484 not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should
2485 be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party's
2486 efforts were largely successful.</p>
2488 He thought again of Katharine. It must be nine, ten --
2489 nearly eleven years since they had parted. It was curious how
2490 seldom he thought of her. For days at a time he was capable of
2491 forgetting that he had ever been married. They had only been
2492 together for about fifteen months. The Party did not permit
2493 divorce, but it rather encouraged separation in cases where
2494 there were no children.</p>
2496 Katharine was a tall, fair-haired girl, very straight,
2497 with splendid movements. She had a bold, aquiline face, a face
2498 that one might have called noble until one discovered that
2499 there was as nearly as possible nothing behind it. Very early
2500 in her married life he had decided -- though perhaps it was
2501 only that he knew her more intimately than he knew most people
2502 -- that she had without exception the most stupid, vulgar,
2503 empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had not a thought
2504 in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility,
2505 absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the
2506 Party handed it out to her. 'The human sound-track' he
2507 nicknamed her in his own mind. Yet he could have endured living
2508 with her if it had not been for just one thing -- sex.</p>
2510 As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince and stiffen.
2511 To embrace her was like embracing a jointed wooden image. And
2512 what was strange was that even when she was clasping him
2513 against her he had the feeling that she was simultaneously
2514 pushing him away with all her strength. The rigidlty of her
2515 muscles managed to convey that impression. She would lie there
2516 with shut eyes, neither resisting nor co-operating but
2517 submitting. It was extraordinarily embarrassing, and,
2518 after a while, horrible. But even then he could have borne
2519 living with her if it had been agreed that they should remain
2520 celibate. But curiously enough it was Katharine who refused
2521 this. They must, she said, produce a child if they could. So
2522 the performance continued to happen, once a week quite
2523 regulariy, whenever it was not impossible. She even used to
2524 remind him of it in the morning, as something which had to be
2525 done that evening and which must not be forgotten. She had two
2526 names for it. One was 'making a baby', and the other was 'our
2527 duty to the Party' (yes, she had actually used that phrase).
2528 Quite soon he grew to have a feeling of positive dread when the
2529 appointed day came round. But luckily no child appeared, and in
2530 the end she agreed to give up trying, and soon afterwards they
2533 Winston sighed inaudibly. He picked up his pen again and
2536 She threw herself down on the bed, and at once, without
2537 any kind of preliminary in the most coarse, horrible way you
2538 can imagine, pulled up her skirt. I</p>
2540 He saw himself standing there in the dim lamplight, with
2541 the smell of bugs and cheap scent in his nostrils, and in his
2542 heart a feeling of defeat and resentment which even at that
2543 moment was mixed up with the thought of Katharine's white body,
2544 frozen for ever by the hypnotic power of the Party. Why did it
2545 always have to be like this? Why could he not have a woman of
2546 his own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals of years?
2547 But a real love affair was an almost unthinkable event. The
2548 women of the Party were all alike. Chastity was as deep
2549 ingrained in them as Party loyalty. By careful early
2550 conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was
2551 dinned into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth
2552 League, by lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial
2553 music, the natural feeling had been driven out of them. His
2554 reason told him that there must be exceptions, but his heart
2555 did not believe it. They were all impregnable, as the Party
2556 intended that they should be. And what he wanted, more even
2557 than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even
2558 if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act,
2559 successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime.
2560 Even to have awakened Katharine, if he could have achieved it,
2561 would have been like a seduction, although she was his wife.</p>
2563 But the rest of the story had got to be written down. He
2566 I turned up the lamp. When I saw her in the light</p>
2568 After the darkness the feeble light of the paraffin lamp
2569 had seemed very bright. For the first time he could see the
2570 woman properly. He had taken a step towards her and then
2571 halted, full of lust and terror. He was painfully conscious of
2572 the risk he had taken in coming here. It was perfectly possible
2573 that the patrols would catch him on the way out: for that
2574 matter they might be waiting outside the door at this moment.
2575 If he went away without even doing what he had come here to do
2578 It had got to be written down, it had got to be confessed.
2579 What he had suddenly seen in the lamplight was that the woman
2580 was old. The paint was plastered so thick on her face
2581 that it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask.
2582 There were streaks of white in her hair; but the truly dreadful
2583 detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open, revealing
2584 nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all.</p>
2586 He wrote hurriedly, in scrabbling handwriting:</p>
2588 When I saw her in the light she was quite an old woman,
2589 fifty years old at least. But I went ahead and did it just the
2592 He pressed his fingers against his eyelids again. He had
2593 written it down at last, but it made no difference. The therapy
2594 had not worked. The urge to shout filthy words at the top of
2595 his voice was as strong as ever.</p>
2596 <h1><a name="7">VII</a></h1>
2597 <p class="no-indent">
2598 If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the
2601 If there was hope, it must lie in the proles,
2602 because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per
2603 cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy
2604 the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown
2605 from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of
2606 coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the
2607 legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it
2608 was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in
2609 larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in
2610 the eyes, an inflexion of the voice, at the most, an occasional
2611 whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow
2612 become conscious of their own strength. would have no need to
2613 conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like
2614 a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the
2615 Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it
2616 must occur to them to do it? And yet-!</p>
2618 He remembered how once he had been walking down a crowded
2619 street when a tremendous shout of hundreds of voices women's
2620 voices -- had burst from a side-street a little way ahead. It
2621 was a great formidable cry of anger and despair, a deep, loud
2622 'Oh-o-o-o-oh!' that went humming on like the reverberation of a
2623 bell. His heart had leapt. It's started! he had thought. A
2624 riot! The proles are breaking loose at last! When he had
2625 reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or three hundred
2626 women crowding round the stalls of a street market, with faces
2627 as tragic as though they had been the doomed passengers on a
2628 sinking ship. But at this moment the general despair broke down
2629 into a multitude of individual quarrels. It appeared that one
2630 of the stalls had been selling tin saucepans. They were
2631 wretched, flimsy things, but cooking-pots of any kind were
2632 always difficult to get. Now the supply had unexpectedly given
2633 out. The successful women, bumped and jostled by the rest, were
2634 trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of others
2635 clamoured round the stall, accusing the stall-keeper of
2636 favouritism and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve.
2637 There was a fresh outburst of yells. Two bloated women, one of
2638 them with her hair coming down, had got hold of the same
2639 saucepan and were trying to tear it out of one another's hands.
2640 For a moment they were both tugging, and then the handle came
2641 off. Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet, just for a
2642 moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry
2643 from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could
2644 never shout like that about anything that mattered?</p>
2648 Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and
2649 until after they have rebelled they cannot become
2652 That, he reflected, might almost have been a transcription
2653 from one of the Party textbooks. The Party claimed, of course,
2654 to have liberated the proles from bondage. Before the
2655 Revolution they had been hideously oppressed by the
2656 capitalists, they had been starved and flogged, women had been
2657 forced to work in the coal mines (women still did work in the
2658 coal mines, as a matter of fact), children had been sold into
2659 the factories at the age of six. But simultaneously, true to
2660 the Principles of doublethink, the Party taught that the proles
2661 were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like
2662 animals, by the application of a few simple rules. In reality
2663 very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to
2664 know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their
2665 other activities were without importance. Left to themselves,
2666 like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had
2667 reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to
2668 them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew up
2669 in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed
2670 through a brief blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire,
2671 they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they
2672 died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the
2673 care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours,
2674 films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the
2675 horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not
2676 difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always
2677 among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and
2678 eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of
2679 becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate
2680 them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that
2681 the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was
2682 required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be
2683 appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept
2684 longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they
2685 became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent
2686 led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could
2687 only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils
2688 invariably escaped their notice. The great majority of proles
2689 did not even have telescreens in their homes. Even the civil
2690 police interfered with them very little. There was a vast
2691 amount of criminality in London, a whole world-within-a-world
2692 of thieves, bandits, prostitutes, drug-peddlers, and racketeers
2693 of every description; but since it all happened among the
2694 proles themselves, it was of no importance. In all questions of
2695 morals they were allowed to follow their ancestral code. The
2696 sexual puritanism of the Party was not imposed upon them.
2697 Promiscuity went unpunished, divorce was permitted. For that
2698 matter, even religious worship would have been permitted if the
2699 proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting it. They were
2700 beneath suspicion. As the Party slogan put it: 'Proles and
2701 animals are free.'</p>
2703 Winston reached down and cautiously scratched his varicose
2704 ulcer. It had begun itching again. The thing you invariably
2705 came back to was the impossibility of knowing what life before
2706 the Revolution had really been like. He took out of the drawer
2707 a copy of a children's history textbook which he had borrowed
2708 from Mrs Parsons, and began copying a passage into the diary:</p>
2710 In the old days (it ran), before the glorious
2711 Revolution, London was not the beautiful city that we know
2712 today. It was a dark, dirty, miserable place where hardly
2713 anybody had enough to eat and where hundreds and thousands of
2714 poor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof to
2715 sleep under. Children no older than you had to work twelve
2716 hours a day for cruel masters who flogged them with whips if
2717 they worked too slowly and fed them on nothing but stale
2718 breadcrusts and water.</p>
2720 But in among all this terrible poverty there were just
2721 a few great big beautiful houses that were lived in by rich men
2722 who had as many as thirty servants to look after them. These
2723 rich men were called capitalists. They were fat, ugly men with
2724 wicked faces, like the one in the picture on the opposite page.
2725 You can see that he is dressed in a long black coat which was
2726 called a frock coat, and a queer, shiny hat shaped like a
2727 stovepipe, which was called a top hat. This was the uniform of
2728 the capitalists, and no one else was allowed to wear it.
2729 The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone
2730 else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses,
2731 all the factories, and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them
2732 they could throw them into prison, or they could take his job
2733 away and starve him to death. When any ordinary person spoke to
2734 a capitalist he had to cringe and bow to him, and take off his
2735 cap and address him as 'Sir'. The chief of all the capitalists
2736 was called the King. and</p>
2738 But he knew the rest of the catalogue. There would be
2739 mention of the bishops in their lawn sleeves, the judges in
2740 their ermine robes, the pillory, the stocks, the treadmill, the
2741 cat-o'-nine tails, the Lord Mayor's Banquet, and the practice
2742 of kissing the Pope's toe. There was also something called the
2743 jus primae noctis, which would probably not be mentioned
2744 in a textbook for children. It was the law by which every
2745 capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one
2746 of his factories.</p>
2748 How could you tell how much of it was lies? It
2749 might be true that the average human being was better
2750 off now than he had been before the Revolution. The only
2751 evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your own
2752 bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in
2753 were intolerable and that at some other time they must have
2754 been different. It struck him that the truly characteristic
2755 thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but
2756 simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if
2757 you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies
2758 that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals
2759 that the Party was trying to achieve. Great areas of it, even
2760 for a Party member, were neutral and non-political, a matter of
2761 slogging through dreary jobs, fighting for a place on the Tube,
2762 darning a worn-out sock, cadging a saccharine tablet, saving a
2763 cigarette end. The ideal set up by the Party was something
2764 huge, terrible, and glittering -- a world of steel and
2765 concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons -- a
2766 nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect
2767 unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same
2768 slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting
2769 -- three hundred million people all with the same face. The
2770 reality was decaying, dingy cities where underfed people
2771 shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up
2772 nineteenth-century houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad
2773 lavatories. He seemed to see a vision of London, vast and
2774 ruinous, city of a million dustbins, and mixed up with it was a
2775 picture of Mrs Parsons, a woman with lined face and wispy hair,
2776 fiddling helplessly with a blocked waste-pipe.</p>
2778 He reached down and scratched his ankle again. Day and
2779 night the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics proving
2780 that people today had more food, more clothes, better houses,
2781 better recreations -- that they lived longer, worked shorter
2782 hours, were bigger, healthier, stronger, happier, more
2783 intelligent, better educated, than the people of fifty years
2784 ago. Not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved. The
2785 Party claimed, for example, that today 40 per cent of adult
2786 proles were literate: before the Revolution, it was said, the
2787 number had only been 15 per cent. The Party claimed that the
2788 infant mortality rate was now only 160 per thousand, whereas
2789 before the Revolution it had been 300 -- and so it went on. It
2790 was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very
2791 well be that literally every word in the history books, even
2792 the things that one accepted without question, was pure
2793 fantasy. For all he knew there might never have been any such
2794 law as the jus primae noctis, or any such creature as a
2795 capitalist, or any such garment as a top hat.</p>
2797 Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the
2798 erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth. Just once in his
2799 life he had possessed -- after the event: that was what
2800 counted -- concrete, unmistakable evidence of an act of
2801 falsification. He had held it between his fingers for as long
2802 as thirty seconds. In 1973, it must have been -- at any rate,
2805 it was at about the time when he and Katharine had parted. But
2806 the really relevant date was seven or eight years earlier.</p>
2808 The story really began in the middle sixties, the period
2809 of the great purges in which the original leaders of the
2810 Revolution were wiped out once and for all. By 1970 none of
2811 them was left, except Big Brother himself. All the rest had by
2812 that time been exposed as traitors and counter-
2813 revolutionaries. Goldstein had fled and was hiding no one knew
2814 where, and of the others, a few had simply disappeared, while
2815 the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials
2816 at which they made confession of their crimes. Among the last
2817 survivors were three men named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford.
2818 It must have been in 1965 that these three had been arrested.
2819 As often happened, they had vanished for a year or more, so
2820 that one did not know whether they were alive or dead, and then
2821 had suddenly been brought forth to incriminate themselves in
2822 the usual way. They had confessed to intelligence with the
2823 enemy (at that date, too, the enemy was Eurasia), embezzlement
2824 of public funds, the murder of various trusted Party members,
2825 intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother which had
2826 started long before the Revolution happened, and acts of
2827 sabotage causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
2828 After confessing to these things they had been pardoned,
2829 reinstated in the Party, and given posts which were in fact
2830 sinecures but which sounded important. All three had written
2831 long, abject articles in The Times, analysing the
2832 reasons for their defection and promising to make amends.</p>
2834 Some time after their release Winston had actually seen
2835 all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Café. He remembered the
2836 sort of terrified fascination with which he had watched them
2837 out of the corner of his eye. They were men far older than
2838 himself, relics of the ancient world, almost the last great
2839 figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The
2840 glamour of the underground struggle and the civil war still
2841 faintly clung to them. He had the feeling, though already at
2842 that time facts and dates were growing blurry, that he had
2843 known their names years earlier than he had known that of Big
2844 Brother. But also they were outlaws, enemies, untouchables,
2845 doomed with absolute certainty to extinction within a year or
2846 two. No one who had once fallen into the hands of the Thought
2847 Police ever escaped in the end. They were corpses waiting to be
2848 sent back to the grave.</p>
2850 There was no one at any of the tables nearest to them. It
2851 was not wise even to be seen in the neighbourhood of such
2852 people. They were sitting in silence before glasses of the gin
2853 flavoured with cloves which was the speciality of the café. Of
2854 the three, it was Rutherford whose appearance had most
2855 impressed Winston. Rutherford had once been a famous
2856 caricaturist, whose brutal cartoons had helped to inflame
2857 popular opinion before and during the Revolution. Even now, at
2858 long intervals, his cartoons were appearing in The
2859 Times. They were simply an imitation of his earlier manner,
2860 and curiously lifeless and unconvincing. Always they were a
2861 rehashing of the ancient themes -- slum tenements, starving
2862 children, street battles, capitalists in top hats -- even on
2863 the barricades the capitalists still seemed to cling to their
2864 top hats an endless, hopeless effort to get back into the past.
2865 He was a monstrous man, with a mane of greasy grey hair, his
2866 face pouched and seamed, with thick negroid lips. At one time
2867 he must have been immensely strong; now his great body was
2868 sagging, sloping, bulging, falling away in every direction. He
2869 seemed to be breaking up before one's eyes, like a mountain
2872 It was the lonely hour of fifteen. Winston could not now
2874 remember how he had come to be in the café at such a time. The
2875 place was almost empty. A tinny music was trickling from the
2876 telescreens. The three men sat in their corner almost
2877 motionless, never speaking. Uncommanded, the waiter brought
2878 fresh glasses of gin. There was a chessboard on the table
2879 beside them, with the pieces set out but no game started. And
2880 then, for perhaps half a minute in all, something happened to
2881 the telescreens. The tune that they were playing changed, and
2882 the tone of the music changed too. There came into it -- but it
2883 was something hard to describe. It was a peculiar, cracked,
2884 braying, jeering note: in his mind Winston called it a yellow
2885 note. And then a voice from the telescreen was singing:</p>
2887 Under the spreading chestnut tree<br>
2888 I sold you and you sold me:<br>
2889 There lie they, and here lie we<br>
2890 Under the spreading chestnut tree.</p>
2893 The three men never stirred. But when Winston glanced
2894 again at Rutherford's ruinous face, he saw that his eyes were
2895 full of tears. And for the first time he noticed, with a kind
2896 of inward shudder, and yet not knowing at what he
2897 shuddered, that both Aaronson and Rutherford had broken noses.</p>
2899 A little later all three were re-arrested. It appeared
2900 that they had engaged in fresh conspiracies from the very
2901 moment of their release. At their second trial they confessed
2902 to all their old crimes over again, with a whole string of new
2903 ones. They were executed, and their fate was recorded in the
2904 Party histories, a warning to posterity. About five years after
2905 this, in 1973, Winston was unrolling a wad of documents which
2906 had just flopped out of the pneumatic tube on to his desk when
2907 he came on a fragment of paper which had evidently been slipped
2908 in among the others and then forgotten. The instant he had
2909 flattened it out he saw its significance. It was a half-page
2910 torn out of The Times of about ten years earlier -- the
2911 top half of the page, so that it included the date -- and it
2912 contained a photograph of the delegates at some Party function
2913 in New York. Prominent in the middle of the group were Jones,
2914 Aaronson, and Rutherford. There was no mistaking them, in any
2915 case their names were in the caption at the bottom.</p>
2917 The point was that at both trials all three men had
2918 confessed that on that date they had been on Eurasian soil.
2919 They had flown from a secret airfield in Canada to a rendezvous
2920 somewhere in Siberia, and had conferred with members of the
2921 Eurasian General Staff, to whom they had betrayed important
2922 military secrets. The date had stuck in Winston's memory
2923 because it chanced to be midsummer day; but the whole story
2924 must be on record in countless other places as well. There was
2925 only one possible conclusion: the confessions were lies.</p>
2927 Of course, this was not in itself a discovery. Even at
2928 that time Winston had not imagined that the people who were
2929 wiped out in the purges had actually committed the crimes that
2930 they were accused of. But this was concrete evidence; it was a
2931 fragment of the abolished past, like a fossil bone which turns
2932 up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory. It
2933 was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could
2934 have been published to the world and its significance made
2937 He had gone straight on working. As soon as he saw what
2938 the photograph was, and what it meant, he had covered it up
2939 with another sheet of paper. Luckily, when he unrolled it, it
2940 had been upside-down from the point of view of the telescreen.</p>
2942 He took his scribbling pad on his knee and pushed back his
2943 chair so as to get as far away from the telescreen as possible.
2944 To keep your face expressionless was not difficult, and even
2945 your breathing could be controlled, with an effort: but you
2946 could not control the beating of your heart, and the telescreen
2947 was quite delicate enough to pick it up. He let what he judged
2948 to be ten minutes go by, tormented all the while by the fear
2949 that some accident -- a sudden draught blowing across his desk,
2950 for instance -- would betray him. Then, without uncovering it
2951 again, he dropped the photograph into the memory hole, along
2952 with some other waste papers. Within another minute, perhaps,
2953 it would have crumbled into ashes.</p>
2955 That was ten -- eleven years ago. Today, probably, he
2956 would have kept that photograph. It was curious that the fact
2957 of having held it in his fingers seemed to him to make a
2958 difference even now, when the photograph itself, as well as the
2959 event it recorded, was only memory. Was the Party's hold upon
2960 the past less strong, he wondered, because a piece of evidence
2961 which existed no longer had once existed?</p>
2963 But today, supposing that it could be somehow resurrected
2964 from its ashes, the photograph might not even be evidence.
2965 Already, at the time when he made his discovery, Oceania was no
2966 longer at war with Eurasia, and it must have been to the agents
2967 of Eastasia that the three dead men had betrayed their country.
2968 Since then there had been other changes -- two, three, he could
2969 not remember how many. Very likely the confessions had been
2970 rewritten and rewritten until the original facts and dates no
2971 longer had the smallest significance. The past not only
2972 changed, but changed continuously. What most afflicted him with
2973 the sense of nightmare was that he had never clearly understood
2974 why the huge imposture was undertaken. The immediate advantages
2975 of falsifying the past were obvious, but the ultimate motive
2976 was mysterious. He took up his pen again and wrote:</p>
2978 I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.</p>
2980 He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether
2981 he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a
2982 minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to
2983 believe that the earth goes round the sun; today, to believe
2984 that the past is inalterable. He might be alone in
2985 holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the
2986 thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him: the
2987 horror was that he might also be wrong.</p>
2989 He picked up the children's history book and looked at the
2990 portrait of Big Brother which formed its frontispiece. The
2991 hypnotic eyes gazed into his own. It was as though some huge
2992 force were pressing down upon you -- something that penetrated
2993 inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening
2994 you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the
2995 evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce
2996 that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.
2997 It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or
2998 later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the
2999 validity of experience, but the very existence of external
3000 reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of
3001 heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that
3002 they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might
3003 be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make
3004 four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is
3005 unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist
3006 only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what
3009 But no! His courage seemed suddenly to stiffen of its own
3010 accord. The face of O'Brien, not called up by any obvious
3011 association, had floated into his mind. He knew, with more
3012 certainty than before, that O'Brien was on his side. He was
3013 writing the diary for O'Brien -- to O'Brien: it was like
3014 an interminable letter which no one would ever read, but which
3015 was addressed to a particular person and took its colour from
3018 The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and
3019 ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart
3020 sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him,
3021 the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him
3022 in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to
3023 understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They
3024 were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the
3025 true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that!
3026 The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are
3027 hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the
3028 earth's centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to
3029 O'Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom,
3032 Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make
3033 four. If that is granted, all else follows.</p>
3034 <h1><a name="8">VIII</a></h1>
3035 <p class="no-indent">
3036 From somewhere at the bottom of a passage the smell of
3037 roasting coffee -- real coffee, not Victory Coffee -- came
3038 floating out into the street. Winston paused involuntarily. For
3039 perhaps two seconds he was back in the half-forgotten world of
3040 his childhood. Then a door banged, seeming to cut off the smell
3041 as abruptly as though it had been a sound.</p>
3043 He had walked several kilometres over pavements, and his
3044 varicose ulcer was throbbing. This was the second time in three
3045 weeks that he had missed an evening at the Community Centre: a
3046 rash act, since you could be certain that the number of your
3047 attendances at the Centre was carefully checked. In principle a
3048 Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in
3049 bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or
3050 sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal
3051 recreation: to do anything that suggested a taste for solitude,
3052 even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly
3053 dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife,
3054 it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity. But this
3055 evening as he came out of the Ministry the balminess of the
3056 April air had tempted him. The sky was a warmer blue than he
3057 had seen it that year, and suddenly the long, noisy evening at
3058 the Centre, the boring, exhausting games, the lectures, the
3059 creaking camaraderie oiled by gin, had seemed intolerable. On
3060 impulse he had turned away from the bus-stop and wandered off
3061 into the labyrinth of London, first south, then east, then
3062 north again, losing himself among unknown streets and hardly
3063 bothering in which direction he was going.</p>
3065 'If there is hope,' he had written in the diary, 'it lies
3066 in the proles.' The words kept coming back to him, statement of
3067 a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity. He was somewhere in
3068 the vague, brown-coloured slums to the north and east of what
3069 had once been Saint Pancras Station. He was walking up a
3070 cobbled street of little two-storey houses with battered
3071 doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were
3072 somehow curiously suggestive of ratholes. There were puddles of
3073 filthy water here and there among the cobbles. In and out of
3074 the dark doorways, and down narrow alley-ways that branched off
3075 on either side, people swarmed in astonishing numbers -- girls
3076 in full bloom, with crudely lipsticked mouths, and youths who
3077 chased the girls, and swollen waddling women who showed you
3078 what the girls would be like in ten years' time, and old bent
3079 creatures shuffling along on splayed feet, and ragged
3080 barefooted children who played in the puddles and then
3081 scattered at angry yells from their mothers. Perhaps a quarter
3082 of the windows in the street were broken and boarded up. Most
3083 of the people paid no attention to Winston; a few eyed him with
3084 a sort of guarded curiosity. Two monstrous women with brick-red
3085 forearms folded across thelr aprons were talking outside a
3086 doorway. Winston caught scraps of conversation as he
3089 ' "Yes," I says to 'er, "that's all very well," I says.
3090 "But if you'd of been in my place you'd of done the same as
3091 what I done. It's easy to criticize," I says, "but you ain't
3092 got the same problems as what I got." '</p>
3094 'Ah,' said the other, 'that's jest it. That's jest where
3097 The strident voices stopped abruptly. The women studied
3098 him in hostile silence as he went past. But it was not
3099 hostility, exactly; merely a kind of wariness, a momentary
3100 stiffening, as at the passing of some unfamiliar animal. The
3101 blue overalls of the Party could not be a common sight in a
3102 street like this. Indeed, it was unwise to be seen in such
3103 places, unless you had definite business there. The patrols
3104 might stop you if you happened to run into them. 'May I see
3105 your papers, comrade? What are you doing here? What time did
3106 you leave work? Is this your usual way home?' -- and so on and
3107 so forth. Not that there was any rule against walking home by
3108 an unusual route: but it was enough to draw attention to you if
3109 the Thought Police heard about it.</p>
3111 Suddenly the whole street was in commotion. There were
3112 yells of warning from all sides. People were shooting into the
3113 doorways like rabbits. A young woman leapt out of a doorway a
3114 little ahead of Winston, grabbed up a tiny child playing in a
3115 puddle, whipped her apron round it, and leapt back again, all
3116 in one movement. At the same instant a man in a concertina-like
3117 black suit, who had emerged from a side alley, ran towards
3118 Winston, pointing excitedly to the sky.</p>
3120 'Steamer!' he yelled. 'Look out, guv'nor! Bang over'ead!
3121 Lay down quick!'</p>
3123 'Steamer' was a nickname which, for some reason, the
3124 proles applied to rocket bombs. Winston promptly flung himself
3125 on his face. The proles were nearly always right when they gave
3126 you a warning of this kind. They seemed to possess some kind of
3127 instinct which told them several seconds in advance when a
3128 rocket was coming, although the rockets supposedly travelled
3129 faster than sound. Winston clasped his forearms above his head.
3130 There was a roar that seemed to make the pavement heave; a
3131 shower of light objects pattered on to his back. When he stood
3132 up he found that he was covered with fragments of glass from
3133 the nearest window.</p>
3135 He walked on. The bomb had demolished a group of houses
3136 200 metres up the street. A black plume of smoke hung in the
3137 sky, and below it a cloud of plaster dust in which a crowd was
3138 already forming around the ruins. There was a little pile of
3139 plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in the middle
3140 of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he
3141 saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist. Apart from
3142 the bloody stump, the hand was so completely whitened as to
3143 resemble a plaster cast.</p>
3145 He kicked the thing into the gutter, and then, to avoid
3146 the crowd, turned down a side-street to the right. Within three
3147 or four minutes he was out of the area which the bomb had
3148 affected, and the sordid swarming life of the streets was going
3149 on as though nothing had happened. It was nearly twenty hours,
3150 and the drinking-shops which the proles frequented ('pubs',
3151 they called them) were choked with customers. From their grimy
3152 swing doors, endlessly opening and shutting, there came forth a
3153 smell of urine, sawdust, and sour beer. In an angle formed by a
3154 projecting house-front three men were standing very close
3155 together, the middle one of them holding a folded-up newspaper
3156 which the other two were studying over his shoulder. Even
3157 before he was near enough to make out the expression on their
3158 faces, Winston could see absorption in every line of their
3159 bodies. It was obviously some serious piece of news that they
3160 were reading. He was a few paces away from them when suddenly
3161 the group broke up and two of the men were in violent
3162 altercation. For a moment they seemed almost on the point of
3165 'Can't you bleeding well listen to what I say? I tell you
3166 no number ending in seven ain't won for over fourteen months!'</p>
3168 'Yes, it 'as, then!'</p>
3170 'No, it 'as not! Back 'ome I got the 'ole lot of 'em for
3171 over two years wrote down on a piece of paper. I takes 'em down
3172 reg'lar as the clock. An' I tell you, no number ending in
3175 'Yes, a seven 'as won! I could pretty near tell you
3176 the bleeding number. Four oh seven, it ended in. It were in
3177 February -- second week in February.'</p>
3179 'February your grandmother! I got it all down in black and
3180 white. An' I tell you, no number-'</p>
3182 'Oh, pack it in!' said the third man.</p>
3184 They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back
3185 when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with
3186 vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out
3187 of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the
3188 proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were
3189 some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal
3190 if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their
3191 delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual
3192 stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who
3193 could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate
3194 calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole
3195 tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems,
3196 forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with
3197 the running of the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry
3198 of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was
3199 aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums
3200 were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being
3201 non-existent persons. In the absence of any real
3202 intercommunication between one part of Oceania and another,
3203 this was not difficult to arrange.</p>
3205 But if there was hope, it lay in the proles. You had to
3206 cling on to that. When you put it in words it sounded
3207 reasonable: it was when you looked at the human beings passing
3208 you on the pavement that it became an act of faith. The street
3209 into which he had turned ran downhill. He had a feeling that he
3210 had been in this neighbourhood before, and that there was a
3211 main thoroughfare not far away. From somewhere ahead there came
3212 a din of shouting voices. The street took a sharp turn and then
3213 ended in a flight of steps which led down into a sunken alley
3214 where a few stall-keepers were selling tired-looking vegetables.
3215 At this moment Winston remembered where he was. The alley led
3216 out into the main street, and down the next turning, not five
3217 minutes away, was the junk-shop where he had bought the blank
3218 book which was now his diary. And in a small stationer's shop
3219 not far away he had bought his penholder and his bottle of ink.</p>
3221 He paused for a moment at the top of the steps. On the
3222 opposite side of the alley there was a dingy little pub whose
3223 windows appeared to be frosted over but in reality were merely
3224 coated with dust. A very old man, bent but active, with white
3225 moustaches that bristled forward like those of a prawn, pushed
3226 open the swing door and went in. As Winston stood watching, it
3227 occurred to him that the old man, who must be eighty at the
3228 least, had already been middle-aged when the Revolution
3229 happened. He and a few others like him were the last links that
3230 now existed with the vanished world of capitalism. In the Party
3231 itself there were not many people left whose ideas had been
3232 formed before the Revolution. The older generation had mostly
3233 been wiped out in the great purges of the fifties and sixties,
3234 and the few who survived had long ago been terrified into
3235 complete intellectual surrender. If there was any one still
3236 alive who could give you a truthful account of conditions in
3237 the early part of the century, it could only be a prole.
3238 Suddenly the passage from the history book that he had copied
3239 into his diary came back into Winston's mind, and a lunatic
3240 impulse took hold of him. He would go into the pub, he would
3241 scrape acquaintance with that old man and question him. He
3242 would say to him: 'Tell me about your life when you were a boy.
3243 What was it like in those days? Were things better than they
3244 are now, or were they worse?'</p>
3246 Hurriedly, lest he should have time to become frightened,
3247 he descended the steps and crossed the narrow street. It was
3248 madness of course. As usual, there was no definite rule against
3249 talking to proles and frequenting their pubs, but it was far
3250 too unusual an action to pass unnoticed. If the patrols
3251 appeared he might plead an attack of faintness, but it was not
3252 likely that they would believe him. He pushed open the door,
3253 and a hideous cheesy smell of sour beer hit him in the face. As
3254 he entered the din of voices dropped to about half its volume.
3255 Behind his back he could feel everyone eyeing his blue
3256 overalls. A game of darts which was going on at the other end
3257 of the room interrupted itself for perhaps as much as thirty
3258 seconds. The old man whom he had followed was standing at the
3259 bar, having some kind of altercation with the barman, a large,
3260 stout, hook-nosed young man with enormous forearms. A knot of
3261 others, standing round with glasses in their hands, were
3262 watching the scene.</p>
3264 'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man,
3265 straightening his shoulders pugnaciously. 'You telling me you
3266 ain't got a pint mug in the 'ole bleeding boozer?'</p>
3268 'And what in hell's name is a pint?' said the barman,
3269 leaning forward with the tips of his fingers on the counter.</p>
3271 'Ark at 'im! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a
3272 pint is! Why, a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four
3273 quarts to the gallon. 'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'</p>
3275 'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and
3276 half litre -- that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the
3277 shelf in front of you.</p>
3279 'I likes a pint,' persisted the old man. 'You could 'a
3280 drawed me off a pint easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding
3281 litres when I was a young man.'</p>
3283 'When you were a young man we were all living in the
3284 treetops,' said the barman, with a glance at the other
3287 There was a shout of laughter, and the uneasiness caused
3288 by Winston's entry seemed to disappear. The old man's
3289 whitestubbled face had flushed pink. He turned away, muttering
3290 to himself, and bumped into Winston. Winston caught him gently
3293 'May I offer you a drink?' he said.</p>
3295 'You're a gent,' said the other, straightening his
3296 shoulders again. He appeared not to have noticed Winston's blue
3297 overalls. 'Pint!' he added aggressively to the barman. 'Pint of
3300 The barman swished two half-litres of dark-brown beer into
3301 thick glasses which he had rinsed in a bucket under the
3302 counter. Beer was the only drink you could get in prole pubs.
3303 The proles were supposed not to drink gin, though in practice
3304 they could get hold of it easily enough. The game of darts was
3305 in full swing again, and the knot of men at the bar had begun
3306 talking about lottery tickets. Winston's presence was forgotten
3307 for a moment. There was a deal table under the window where he
3308 and the old man could talk without fear of being overheard. It
3309 was horribly dangerous, but at any rate there was no telescreen
3310 in the room, a point he had made sure of as soon as he came in.</p>
3312 "E could 'a drawed me off a pint,' grumbled the old man as
3313 he settled down behind a glass. 'A 'alf litre ain't enough. It
3314 don't satisfy. And a 'ole litre's too much. It starts my
3315 bladder running. Let alone the price.'</p>
3317 'You must have seen great changes since you were a young
3318 man,' said Winston tentatively.</p>
3320 The old man's pale blue eyes moved from the darts board to
3321 the bar, and from the bar to the door of the Gents, as though
3322 it were in the bar-room that he expected the changes to have
3325 'The beer was better,' he said finally. 'And cheaper! When
3326 I was a young man, mild beer -- wallop we used to call it --
3327 was fourpence a pint. That was before the war, of course.'</p>
3329 'Which war was that?' said Winston.</p>
3331 'It's all wars,' said the old man vaguely. He took up his
3332 glass, and his shoulders straightened again. "Ere's wishing you
3333 the very best of 'ealth!'</p>
3335 In his lean throat the sharp-pointed Adam's apple made a
3336 surprisingly rapid up-and-down movement, and the beer vanished.
3337 Winston went to the bar and came back with two more
3338 half-litres. The old man appeared to have forgotten his
3339 prejudice against drinking a full litre.</p>
3341 'You are very much older than I am,' said Winston. 'You
3342 must have been a grown man before I was born. You can remember
3343 what it was like in the old days, before the Revolution. People
3344 of my age don't really know anything about those times. We can
3345 only read about them in books, and what it says in the books
3346 may not be true. I should like your opinion on that. The
3347 history books say that life before the Revolution was
3348 completely different from what it is now. There was the most
3349 terrible oppression, injustice, poverty worse than anything we
3350 can imagine. Here in London, the great mass of the people never
3351 had enough to eat from birth to death. Half of them hadn't even
3352 boots on their feet. They worked twelve hours a day, they left
3353 school at nine, they slept ten in a room. And at the same time
3354 there were a very few people, only a few thousands -- the
3355 capitalists, they were called -- who were rich and powerful.
3356 They owned everything that there was to own. They lived in
3357 great gorgeous houses with thirty servants, they rode about in
3358 motor-cars and four-horse carriages, they drank champagne, they
3361 The old man brightened suddenly.</p>
3363 'Top 'ats!' he said. 'Funny you should mention 'em. The
3364 same thing come into my 'ead only yesterday, I dono why. I was
3365 jest thinking, I ain't seen a top 'at in years. Gorn right out,
3366 they 'ave. The last time I wore one was at my sister-in-law's
3367 funeral. And that was -- well, I couldn't give you the date,
3368 but it must'a been fifty years ago. Of course it was only 'ired
3369 for the occasion, you understand.'</p>
3371 'It isn't very important about the top hats,' said Winston
3372 patiently. 'The point is, these capitalists -- they and a few
3373 lawyers and priests and so forth who lived on them -- were the
3374 lords of the earth. Everything existed for their benefit. You
3375 -- the ordinary people, the workers -- were their slaves. They
3376 could do what they liked with you. They could ship you off to
3377 Canada like cattle. They could sleep with your daughters if
3378 they chose. They could order you to be flogged with something
3379 called a cat-o'-nine tails. You had to take your cap off when
3380 you passed them. Every capitalist went about with a gang of
3383 The old man brightened again.</p>
3385 'Lackeys!' he said. 'Now there's a word I ain't 'eard
3386 since ever so long. Lackeys! That reg'lar takes me back, that
3387 does. I recollect oh, donkey's years ago -- I used to sometimes
3388 go to 'Yde Park of a Sunday afternoon to 'ear the blokes making
3389 speeches. Salvation Army, Roman Catholics, Jews, Indians -- all
3390 sorts there was. And there was one bloke -- well, I couldn't
3391 give you 'is name, but a real powerful speaker 'e was. 'E
3392 didn't 'alf give it 'em! "Lackeys!" 'e says, "lackeys of the
3393 bourgeoisie! Flunkies of the ruling class!" Parasites -- that
3394 was another of them. And 'yenas -- 'e definitely called 'em
3395 'yenas. Of course 'e was referring to the Labour Party, you
3398 Winston had the feeling that they were talking at
3401 'What I really wanted to know was this,' he said. 'Do you
3402 feel that you have more freedom now than you had in those days?
3403 Are you treated more like a human being? In the old days, the
3404 rich people, the people at the top-'</p>
3406 'The 'Ouse of Lords,' put in the old man reminiscently.</p>
3408 'The House of Lords, if you like. What I am asking is,
3409 were these people able to treat you as an inferior, simply
3410 because they were rich and you were poor? Is it a fact, for
3411 instance, that you had to call them "Sir" and take off your cap
3412 when you passed them?'</p>
3414 The old man appeared to think deeply. He drank off about a
3415 quarter of his beer before answering.</p>
3417 'Yes,' he said. 'They liked you to touch your cap to 'em.
3418 It showed respect, like. I didn't agree with it, myself, but I
3419 done it often enough. Had to, as you might say.'</p>
3421 'And was it usual -- I'm only quoting what I've read in
3422 history books -- was it usual for these people and their
3423 servants to push you off the pavement into the gutter?'</p>
3425 'One of 'em pushed me once,' said the old man. 'I
3426 recollect it as if it was yesterday. It was Boat Race night --
3427 terribly rowdy they used to get on Boat Race night -- and I
3428 bumps into a young bloke on Shaftesbury Avenue. Quite a gent,
3429 'e was -- dress shirt, top 'at, black overcoat. 'E was kind of
3430 zig-zagging across the pavement, and I bumps into 'im
3431 accidental-like. 'E says, "Why can't you look where you're
3432 going?" 'e says. I say, "Ju think you've bought the bleeding
3433 pavement?" 'E says, "I'll twist your bloody 'ead off if you get
3434 fresh with me." I says, "You're drunk. I'll give you in charge
3435 in 'alf a minute," I says. An' if you'll believe me, 'e puts
3436 'is 'and on my chest and gives me a shove as pretty near sent
3437 me under the wheels of a bus. Well, I was young in them days,
3438 and I was going to 'ave fetched 'im one, only-'</p>
3440 A sense of helplessness took hold of Winston. The old
3441 man's memory was nothing but a rubbish-heap of details. One
3442 could question him all day without getting any real
3443 information. The party histories might still be true, after a
3444 fashion: they might even be completely true. He made a last
3447 'Perhaps I have not made myself clear,' he said. 'What I'm
3448 trying to say is this. You have been alive a very long time;
3449 you lived half your life before the Revolution. In 1925, for
3450 instance, you were already grown up. Would you say from what
3451 you can remember, that life in 1925 was better than it is now,
3452 or worse? If you could choose, would you prefer to live then or
3455 The old man looked meditatively at the darts board. He
3456 finished up his beer, more slowly than before. When he spoke it
3457 was with a tolerant philosophical air, as though the beer had
3460 'I know what you expect me to say,' he said. 'You expect
3461 me to say as I'd sooner be young again. Most people'd say
3462 they'd sooner be young, if you arst' 'em. You got your 'ealth
3463 and strength when you're young. When you get to my time of life
3464 you ain't never well. I suffer something wicked from my feet,
3465 and my bladder's jest terrible. Six and seven times a night it
3466 'as me out of bed. On the other 'and, there's great advantages
3467 in being a old man. You ain't got the same worries. No truck
3468 with women, and that's a great thing. I ain't 'ad a woman for
3469 near on thirty year, if you'd credit it. Nor wanted to, what's
3472 Winston sat back against the window-sill. It was no use
3473 going on. He was about to buy some more beer when the old man
3474 suddenly got up and shuffled rapidly into the stinking urinal
3475 at the side of the room. The extra half-litre was already
3476 working on him. Winston sat for a minute or two gazing at his
3477 empty glass, and hardly noticed when his feet carried him out
3478 into the street again. Within twenty years at the most, he
3479 reflected, the huge and simple question, 'Was life better
3480 before the Revolution than it is now?' would have ceased once
3481 and for all to be answerable. But in effect it was unanswerable
3482 even now, since the few scattered survivors from the ancient
3483 world were incapable of comparing one age with another. They
3484 remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate,
3485 a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead
3486 sister's face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy
3487 years ago: but all the relevant facts were outside the range of
3488 their vision. They were like the ant, which can see small
3489 objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and written
3490 records were falsified -- when that happened, the claim of the
3491 Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to
3492 be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could
3493 exist, any standard against which it could be tested.</p>
3495 At this moment his train of thought stopped abruptly. He
3496 halted and looked up. He was in a narrow street, with a few
3497 dark little shops, interspersed among dwelling-houses.
3498 Immediately above his head there hung three discoloured metal
3499 balls which looked as if they had once been gilded. He seemed
3500 to know the place. Of course! He was standing outside the
3501 junk-shop where he had bought the diary.</p>
3503 A twinge of fear went through him. It had been a
3504 sufficiently rash act to buy the book in the beginning, and he
3505 had sworn never to come near the place again. And yet the
3506 instant that he allowed his thoughts to wander, his feet had
3507 brought him back here of their own accord. It was precisely
3508 against suicidal impulses of this kind that he had hoped to
3509 guard himself by opening the diary. At the same time he noticed
3510 that although it was nearly twenty-one hours the shop was still
3511 open. With the feeling that he would be less conspicuous inside
3512 than hanging about on the pavement, he stepped through the
3513 doorway. If questioned, he could plausibly say that he was
3514 trying to buy razor blades.</p>
3516 The proprietor had just lighted a hanging oil lamp which
3517 gave off an unclean but friendly smell. He was a man of perhaps
3518 sixty, frail and bowed, with a long, benevolent nose, and mild
3519 eyes distorted by thick spectacles. His hair was almost white,
3520 but his eyebrows were bushy and still black. His spectacles,
3521 his gentle, fussy movements, and the fact that he was wearing
3522 an aged jacket of black velvet, gave him a vague air of
3523 intellectuality, as though he had been some kind of literary
3524 man, or perhaps a musician. His voice was soft, as though
3525 faded, and his accent less debased than that of the majority of
3528 'I recognized you on the pavement,' he said immediately.
3529 'You're the gentleman that bought the young lady's keepsake
3530 album. That was a beautiful bit of paper, that was. Cream-
3531 laid, it used to be called. There's been no paper like that
3532 made for -- oh, I dare say fifty years.' He peered at Winston
3533 over the top of his spectacles. 'Is there anything special I
3534 can do for you? Or did you just want to look round?'</p>
3536 'I was passing,' said Winston vaguely. 'I just looked in.
3537 I don't want anything in particular.'</p>
3539 'It's just as well,' said the other, 'because I don't
3540 suppose I could have satisfied you.' He made an apologetic
3541 gesture with his softpalmed hand. 'You see how it is; an empty
3542 shop, you might say. Between you and me, the antique trade's
3543 just about finished. No demand any longer, and no stock either.
3544 Furniture, china, glass it's all been broken up by degrees. And
3545 of course the metal stuff's mostly been melted down. I haven't
3546 seen a brass candlestick in years.'</p>
3548 The tiny interior of the shop was in fact uncomfortably
3549 full, but there was almost nothing in it of the slightest
3550 value. The floorspace was very restricted, because all round
3551 the walls were stacked innumerable dusty picture-frames. In the
3552 window there were trays of nuts and bolts, worn-out chisels,
3553 penknives with broken blades, tarnished watches that did not
3554 even pretend to be in going order, and other miscellaneous
3555 rubbish. Only on a small table in the corner was there a litter
3556 of odds and ends -- lacquered snuffboxes, agate brooches, and
3557 the like -- which looked as though they might include something
3558 interesting. As Winston wandered towards the table his eye was
3559 caught by a round, smooth thing that gleamed softly in the
3560 lamplight, and he picked it up.</p>
3562 It was a heavy lump of glass, curved on one side, flat on
3563 the other, making almost a hemisphere. There was a peculiar
3564 softness, as of rainwater, in both the colour and the texture
3565 of the glass. At the heart of it, magnified by the curved
3566 surface, there was a strange, pink, convoluted object that
3567 recalled a rose or a sea anemone.</p>
3569 'What is it?' said Winston, fascinated.</p>
3571 'That's coral, that is,' said the old man. 'It must have
3572 come from the Indian Ocean. They used to kind of embed it in
3573 the glass. That wasn't made less than a hundred years ago.
3574 More, by the look of it.'</p>
3576 'It's a beautiful thing,' said Winston.</p>
3578 'It is a beautiful thing,' said the other appreciatively.
3579 'But there's not many that'd say so nowadays.' He coughed.
3580 'Now, if it so happened that you wanted to buy it, that'd cost
3581 you four dollars. I can remember when a thing like that would
3582 have fetched eight pounds, and eight pounds was -- well, I
3583 can't work it out, but it was a lot of money. But who cares
3584 about genuine antiques nowadays even the few that's left?'</p>
3586 Winston immediately paid over the four dollars and slid
3587 the coveted thing into his pocket. What appealed to him about
3588 it was not so much its beauty as the air it seemed to possess
3589 of belonging to an age quite different from the present one.
3590 The soft, rainwatery glass was not like any glass that he had
3591 ever seen. The thing was doubly attractive because of its
3592 apparent uselessness, though he could guess that it must once
3593 have been intended as a paperweight. It was very heavy in his
3594 pocket, but fortunately it did not make much of a bulge. It was
3595 a queer thing, even a compromising thing, for a Party member to
3596 have in his possession. Anything old, and for that matter
3597 anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect. The old man had
3598 grown noticeably more cheerful after receiving the four
3599 dollars. Winston realized that he would have accepted three or
3602 'There's another room upstairs that you might care to take
3603 a look at,' he said. 'There's not much in it. Just a few
3604 pieces. We'll do with a light if we're going upstairs.'</p>
3606 He lit another lamp, and, with bowed back, led the way
3607 slowly up the steep and worn stairs and along a tiny passage,
3608 into a room which did not give on the street but looked out on
3609 a cobbled yard and a forest of chimney-pots. Winston noticed
3610 that the furniture was still arranged as though the room were
3611 meant to be lived in. There was a strip of carpet on the floor,
3612 a picture or two on the walls, and a deep, slatternly arm-chair
3613 drawn up to the fireplace. An old-fashioned glass clock with a
3614 twelve-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece. Under the
3615 window, and occupying nearly a quarter of the room, was an
3616 enormous bed with the mattress still on it.</p>
3618 'We lived here till my wife died,' said the old man half
3619 apologetically. 'I'm selling the furniture off by little and
3620 little. Now that's a beautiful mahogany bed, or at least it
3621 would be if you could get the bugs out of it. But I dare say
3622 you'd find it a little bit cumbersome.</p>
3624 He was holdlng the lamp high up, so as to illuminate the
3625 whole room, and in the warm dim light the place looked
3626 curiously inviting. The thought flitted through Winston's mind
3627 that it would probably be quite easy to rent the room for a few
3628 dollars a week, if he dared to take the risk. It was a wild,
3629 impossible notion, to be abandoned as soon as thought of; but
3630 the room had awakened in him a sort of nostalgia, a sort of
3631 ancestral memory. It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it
3632 felt like to sit in a room like this, in an arm-chair beside an
3633 open fire with your feet in the fender and a kettle on the hob;
3634 utterly alone, utterly secure, with nobody watching you, no
3635 voice pursuing you, no sound except the singing of the kettle
3636 and the friendly ticking of the clock.</p>
3638 'There's no telescreen!' he could not help murmuring.</p>
3640 'Ah,' said the old man, 'I never had one of those things.
3641 Too expensive. And I never seemed to feel the need of it,
3642 somehow. Now that's a nice gateleg table in the corner there.
3643 Though of course you'd have to put new hinges on it if you
3644 wanted to use the flaps.'</p>
3646 There was a small bookcase in the other corner, and
3647 Winston had already gravitated towards it. It contained nothing
3648 but rubbish. The hunting-down and destruction of books had been
3649 done with the same thoroughness in the prole quarters as
3650 everywhere else. It was very unlikely that there existed
3651 anywhere in Oceania a copy of a book printed earlier than 1960.
3652 The old man, still carrying the lamp, was standing in front of
3653 a picture in a rosewood frame which hung on the other side of
3654 the fireplace, opposite the bed.</p>
3656 'Now, if you happen to be interested in old prints at all
3657 -' he began delicately.</p>
3659 Winston came across to examine the picture. It was a steel
3660 engraving of an oval building with rectangular windows, and a
3661 small tower in front. There was a railing running round the
3662 building, and at the rear end there was what appeared to be a
3663 statue. Winston gazed at it for some moments. It seemed vaguely
3664 familiar, though he did not remember the statue.</p>
3666 'The frame's fixed to the wall,' said the old man, 'but I
3667 could unscrew it for you, I dare say.'</p>
3669 'I know that building,' said Winston finally. 'It's a ruin
3670 now. It's in the middle of the street outside the Palace of
3673 'That's right. Outside the Law Courts. It was bombed in --
3674 oh, many years ago. It was a church at one time, St Clement's
3675 Danes, its name was.' He smiled apologetically, as though
3676 conscious of saying something slightly ridiculous, and added:
3677 'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's!'</p>
3679 'What's that?' said Winston.</p>
3681 'Oh-"Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's."
3682 That was a rhyme we had when I was a little boy. How it goes on
3683 I don't remember, but I do know it ended up, "Here comes a
3684 candle to light you to bed, Here comes a chopper to chop off
3685 your head." It was a kind of a dance. They held out their arms
3686 for you to pass under, and when they came to "Here comes a
3687 chopper to chop off your head" they brought their arms down and
3688 caught you. It was just names of churches. All the London
3689 churches were in it -- all the principal ones, that is.'</p>
3691 Winston wondered vaguely to what century the church
3692 belonged. It was always difficult to determine the age of a
3693 London building. Anything large and impressive, if it was
3694 reasonably new in appearance, was automatically claimed as
3695 having been built since the Revolution, while anything that was
3696 obviously of earlier date was ascribed to some dim period
3697 called the Middle Ages. The centuries of capitalism were held
3698 to have produced nothing of any value. One could not learn
3699 history from architecture any more than one could learn it from
3700 books. Statues, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of
3701 streets -- anything that might throw light upon the past had
3702 been systematically altered.</p>
3704 'I never knew it had been a church,' he said.</p>
3706 'There's a lot of them left, really,' said the old man,
3707 'though they've been put to other uses. Now, how did that rhyme
3708 go? Ah! I've got it!</p>
3710 "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,<br>
3711 You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's</p>
3713 -- "there, now, that's as far as I can get.
3714 A farthing, that was a small copper coin,
3715 looked something like a cent.'</p>
3717 'Where was St Martin's?' said Winston.</p>
3719 'St Martin's ? That's still standing. It's in Victory
3720 Square, alongside the picture gallery. A building with a kind
3721 of a triangular porch and pillars in front, and a big flight of
3724 Winston knew the place well. It was a museum used for
3725 propaganda displays of various kinds -- scale models of rocket
3726 bombs and Floating Fortresses, waxwork tableaux illustrating
3727 enemy atrocities, and the like.</p>
3729 'St Martin's-in-the-Fields it used to be called,'
3730 supplemented the old man, 'though I don't recollect any fields
3731 anywhere in those parts.'</p>
3733 Winston did not buy the picture. It would have been an
3734 even more incongruous possession than the glass paperweight,
3735 and impossible to carry home, unless it were taken out of its
3736 frame. But he lingered for some minutes more, talking to the
3737 old man, whose name, he discovered, was not Weeks-as one might
3738 have gathered from the inscription over the shop-front -- but
3739 Charrington. Mr Charrington, it seemed, was a widower aged
3740 sixty-three and had inhabited this shop for thirty years.
3741 Throughout that time he had been intending to alter the name
3742 over the window, but had never quite got to the point of doing
3743 it. All the while that they were talking the half-remembered
3744 rhyme kept running through Winston's head. Oranges and lemons
3745 say the bells of St Clement's, You owe me three farthings, say
3746 the bells of St Martin's! It was curious, but when you said it
3747 to yourself you had the illusion of actually hearing bells, the
3748 bells of a lost London that still existed somewhere or other,
3749 disguised and forgotten. From one ghostly steeple after another
3750 he seemed to hear them pealing forth. Yet so far as he could
3751 remember he had never in real life heard church bells ringing.</p>
3753 He got away from Mr Charrington and went down the stairs
3754 alone, so as not to let the old man see him reconnoitring the
3755 street before stepping out of the door. He had already made up
3756 his mind that after a suitable interval -- a month, say -- he
3757 would take the risk of visiting the shop again. It was perhaps
3758 not more dangerous than shirking an evening at the Centre. The
3759 serious piece of folly had been to come back here in the first
3760 place, after buying the diary and without knowing whether the
3761 proprietor of the shop could be trusted. However-!</p>
3763 Yes, he thought again, he would come back. He would buy
3764 further scraps of beautiful rubbish. He would buy the engraving
3765 of St Clement Danes, take it out of its frame, and carry it
3766 home concealed under the jacket of his overalls. He would drag
3767 the rest of that poem out of Mr Charrington's memory. Even the
3768 lunatic project of renting the room upstairs flashed
3769 momentarily through his mind again. For perhaps five seconds
3770 exaltation made him careless, and he stepped out on to the
3771 pavement without so much as a preliminary glance through the
3772 window. He had even started humming to an improvised tune</p>
3774 Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,
3775 You owe me three farthings, say the</p>
3777 Suddenly his heart seemed to turn to ice and his bowels
3778 to water. A figure in blue overalls was coming down the
3779 pavement, not ten metres away. It was the girl from the Fiction
3780 Department, the girl with dark hair. The light was failing, but
3781 there was no difficulty in recognizing her. She looked him
3782 straight in the face, then walked quickly on as though she had
3785 For a few seconds Winston was too paralysed to move. Then
3786 he turned to the right and walked heavily away, not noticing
3787 for the moment that he was going in the wrong direction. At any
3788 rate, one question was settled. There was no doubting any
3789 longer that the girl was spying on him. She must have followed
3790 him here, because it was not credible that by pure chance she
3791 should have happened to be walking on the same evening up the
3792 same obscure backstreet, kilometres distant from any quarter
3793 where Party members lived. It was too great a coincidence.
3794 Whether she was really an agent of the Thought Police, or
3795 simply an amateur spy actuated by officiousness, hardly
3796 mattered. It was enough that she was watching him. Probably she
3797 had seen him go into the pub as well.</p>
3799 It was an effort to walk. The lump of glass in his pocket
3800 banged against his thigh at each step, and he was half minded
3801 to take it out and throw it away. The worst thing was the pain
3802 in his belly. For a couple of minutes he had the feeling that
3803 he would die if he did not reach a lavatory soon. But there
3804 would be no public lavatories in a quarter like this. Then the
3805 spasm passed, leaving a dull ache behind.</p>
3807 The street was a blind alley. Winston halted, stood for
3808 several seconds wondering vaguely what to do, then turned round
3809 and began to retrace his steps. As he turned it occurred to him
3810 that the girl had only passed him three minutes ago and that by
3811 running he could probably catch up with her. He could keep on
3812 her track till they were in some quiet place, and then smash
3813 her skull in with a cobblestone. The piece of glass in his
3814 pocket would be heavy enough for the job. But he abandoned the
3815 idea immediately, because even the thought of making any
3816 physical effort was unbearable. He could not run, he could not
3817 strike a blow. Besides, she was young and lusty and would
3818 defend herself. He thought also of hurrying to the Community
3819 Centre and staying there till the place closed, so as to
3820 establish a partial alibi for the evening. But that too was
3821 impossible. A deadly lassitude had taken hold of him. All he
3822 wanted was to get home quickly and then sit down and be quiet.</p>
3824 It was after twenty-two hours when he got back to the
3825 flat. The lights would be switched off at the main at
3826 twenty-three thirty. He went into the kitchen and swallowed
3827 nearly a teacupful of Victory Gin. Then he went to the table in
3828 the alcove, sat down, and took the diary out of the drawer. But
3829 he did not open it at once. From the telescreen a brassy female
3830 voice was squalling a patriotic song. He sat staring at the
3831 marbled cover of the book, trying without success to shut the
3832 voice out of his consciousness.</p>
3834 It was at night that they came for you, always at night.
3835 The proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you.
3836 Undoubtedly some people did so. Many of the disappearances were
3837 actually suicides. But it needed desperate courage to kill
3838 yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain
3839 poison, were completely unprocurable. He thought with a kind of
3840 astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear,
3841 the treachery of the human body which always freezes into
3842 inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.
3843 He might have silenced the dark-haired girl if only he had
3844 acted quickly enough: but precisely because of the extremity of
3845 his danger he had lost the power to act. It struck him that in
3846 moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external
3847 enemy, but always against one's own body. Even now, in spite of
3848 the gin, the dull ache in his belly made consecutive thought
3849 impossible. And it is the same, he perceived, in all seemingly
3850 heroic or tragic situations. On the battlefield, in the torture
3851 chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting
3852 for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it
3853 fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by
3854 fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment
3855 struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a
3856 sour stomach or an aching tooth.</p>
3858 He opened the diary. It was important to write something
3859 down. The woman on the telescreen had started a new song. Her
3860 voice seemed to stick into his brain like jagged splinters of
3861 glass. He tried to think of O'Brien, for whom, or to whom, the
3862 diary was written, but instead he began thinking of the things
3863 that would happen to him after the Thought Police took him
3864 away. It would not matter if they killed you at once. To be
3865 killed was what you expected. But before death (nobody spoke of
3866 such things, yet everybody knew of them) there was the routine
3867 of confession that had to be gone through: the grovelling on
3868 the floor and screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones,
3869 the smashed teeth, and bloody clots of hair.</p>
3871 Why did you have to endure it, since the end was always
3872 the same? Why was it not possible to cut a few days or weeks
3873 out of your life? Nobody ever escaped detection, and nobody
3874 ever failed to confess. When once you had succumbed to
3875 thoughtcrime it was certain that by a given date you would be
3876 dead. Why then did that horror, which altered nothing, have to
3877 lie embedded in future time?</p>
3879 He tried with a little more success than before to summon
3880 up the image of O'Brien. 'We shall meet in the place where
3881 there is no darkness,' O'Brien had said to him. He knew what it
3882 meant, or thought he knew. The place where there is no darkness
3883 was the imagined future, which one would never see, but which,
3884 by foreknowledge, one could mystically share in. But with the
3885 voice from the telescreen nagging at his ears he could not
3886 follow the train of thought further. He put a cigarette in his
3887 mouth. Half the tobacco promptly fell out on to his tongue, a
3888 bitter dust which was difficult to spit out again. The face of
3889 Big Brother swam into his mind, displacing that of O'Brien.
3890 Just as he had done a few days earlier, he slid a coin out of
3891 his pocket and looked at it. The face gazed up at him, heavy,
3892 calm, protecting: but what kind of smile was hidden beneath the
3893 dark moustache? Like a leaden knell the words came back at him:</p>
3896 FREEDOM IS SLAVERY<br>
3897 IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH</p>
3898 <H1><a name="9">IX</a></H1>
3899 <p class="no-indent">
3900 It was the middle of the morning, and Winston had left the
3901 cubicle to go to the lavatory.</p>
3903 A solitary figure was coming towards him from the other
3904 end of the long, brightly-lit corridor. It was the girl with
3905 dark hair. Four days had gone past since the evening when he
3906 had run into her outside the junk-shop. As she came nearer he
3907 saw that her right arm was in a sling, not noticeable at a
3908 distance because it was of the same colour as her overalls.
3909 Probably she had crushed her hand while swinging round one of
3910 the big kaleidoscopes on which the plots of novels were
3911 'roughed in'. It was a common accident in the Fiction
3914 They were perhaps four metres apart when the girl stumbled
3915 and fell almost flat on her face. A sharp cry of pain was wrung
3916 out of her. She must have fallen right on the injured arm.
3917 Winston stopped short. The girl had risen to her knees. Her
3918 face had turned a milky yellow colour against which her mouth
3919 stood out redder than ever. Her eyes were fixed on his, with an
3920 appealing expression that looked more like fear than pain.</p>
3922 A curious emotion stirred in Winston's heart. In front of
3923 him was an enemy who was trying to kill him: in front of him,
3924 also, was a human creature, in pain and perhaps with a broken
3925 bone. Already he had instinctively started forward to help her.
3926 In the moment when he had seen her fall on the bandaged arm, it
3927 had been as though he felt the pain in his own body.</p>
3929 'You're hurt?' he said.</p>
3931 'It's nothing. My arm. It'll be all right in a second.'</p>
3933 She spoke as though her heart were fluttering. She had
3934 certainly turned very pale.</p>
3936 'You haven't broken anything?'</p>
3938 'No, I'm all right. It hurt for a moment, that's all.'</p>
3940 She held out her free hand to him, and he helped her up.
3941 She had regained some of her colour, and appeared very much
3944 'It's nothing,' she repeated shortly. 'I only gave my
3945 wrist a bit of a bang. Thanks, comrade!'</p>
3947 And with that she walked on in the direction in which she
3948 had been going, as briskly as though it had really been
3949 nothing. The whole incident could not have taken as much as
3950 half a minute. Not to let one's feelings appear in one's face
3951 was a habit that had acquired the status of an instinct, and in
3952 any case they had been standing straight in front of a
3953 telescreen when the thing happened. Nevertheless it had been
3954 very difficult not to betray a momentary surprise, for in the
3955 two or three seconds while he was helping her up the girl had
3956 slipped something into his hand. There was no question that she
3957 had done it intentionally. It was something small and flat. As
3958 he passed through the lavatory door he transferred it to his
3959 pocket and felt it with the tips of his fingers. It was a scrap
3960 of paper folded into a square.</p>
3962 While he stood at the urinal he managed, with a little
3963 more fingering, to get it unfolded. Obviously there must be a
3964 message of some kind written on it. For a moment he was tempted
3965 to take it into one of the water-closets and read it at once.
3966 But that would be shocking folly, as he well knew. There was no
3967 place where you could be more certain that the telescreens were
3968 watched continuously.</p>
3970 He went back to his cubicle, sat down, threw the fragment
3971 of paper casually among the other papers on the desk, put on
3972 his spectacles and hitched the speakwrite towards him. 'five
3973 minutes,' he told himself, 'five minutes at the very least!'
3974 His heart bumped in his breast with frightening loudness.
3975 Fortunately the piece of work he was engaged on was mere
3976 routine, the rectification of a long list of figures, not
3977 needing close attention.</p>
3979 Whatever was written on the paper, it must have some kind
3980 of political meaning. So far as he could see there were two
3981 possibilities. One, much the more likely, was that the girl was
3982 an agent of the Thought Police, just as he had feared. He did
3983 not know why the Thought Police should choose to deliver their
3984 messages in such a fashion, but perhaps they had their reasons.
3985 The thing that was written on the paper might be a threat, a
3986 summons, an order to commit suicide, a trap of some
3987 description. But there was another, wilder possibility that
3988 kept raising its head, though he tried vainly to suppress it.
3989 This was, that the message did not come from the Thought Police
3990 at all, but from some kind of underground organization. Perhaps
3991 the Brotherhood existed after all! Perhaps the girl was part of
3992 it! No doubt the idea was absurd, but it had sprung into his
3993 mind in the very instant of feeling the scrap of paper in his
3994 hand. It was not till a couple of minutes later that the other,
3995 more probable explanation had occurred to him. And even now,
3996 though his intellect told him that the message probably meant
3997 death -- still, that was not what he believed, and the
3998 unreasonable hope persisted, and his heart banged, and it was
3999 with difficulty that he kept his voice from trembling as he
4000 murmured his figures into the speakwrite.</p>
4002 He rolled up the completed bundle of work and slid it into
4003 the pneumatic tube. Eight minutes had gone by. He re-adjusted
4004 his spectacles on his nose, sighed, and drew the next batch of
4005 work towards him, with the scrap of paper on top of it. He
4006 flattened it out. On it was written, in a large unformed
4011 For several seconds he was too stunned even to throw the
4012 incriminating thing into the memory hole. When he did so,
4013 although he knew very well the danger of showing too much
4014 interest, he could not resist reading it once again, just to
4015 make sure that the words were really there.</p>
4017 For the rest of the morning it was very difficult to work.
4018 What was even worse than having to focus his mind on a series
4019 of niggling jobs was the need to conceal his agitation from the
4020 telescreen. He felt as though a fire were burning in his belly.
4021 Lunch in the hot, crowded, noise-filled canteen was torment.
4022 He had hoped to be alone for a little while during the lunch
4023 hour, but as bad luck would have it the imbecile Parsons
4024 flopped down beside him, the tang of his sweat almost defeating
4025 the tinny smell of stew, and kept up a stream of talk about the
4026 preparations for Hate Week. He was particularly enthusiastic
4027 about a papier-mâché model of Big Brother's head, two metres
4028 wide, which was being made for the occasion by his daughter's
4029 troop of Spies. The irritating thing was that in the racket of
4030 voices Winston could hardly hear what Parsons was saying, and
4031 was constantly having to ask for some fatuous remark to be
4032 repeated. Just once he caught a glimpse of the girl, at a table
4033 with two other girls at the far end of the room. She appeared
4034 not to have seen him, and he did not look in that direction
4037 The afternoon was more bearable. Immediately after lunch
4038 there arrived a delicate, difficult piece of work which would
4039 take several hours and necessitated putting everything else
4040 aside. It consisted in falsifying a series of production
4041 reports of two years ago, in such a way as to cast discredit on
4042 a prominent member of the Inner Party, who was now under a
4043 cloud. This was the kind of thing that Winston was good at, and
4044 for more than two hours he succeeded in shutting the girl out
4045 of his mind altogether. Then the memory of her face came back,
4046 and with it a raging, intolerable desire to be alone. Until he
4047 could be alone it was impossible to think this new development
4048 out. Tonight was one of his nights at the Community Centre. He
4049 wolfed another tasteless meal in the canteen, hurried off to
4050 the Centre, took part in the solemn foolery of a 'discussion
4051 group', played two games of table tennis, swallowed several
4052 glasses of gin, and sat for half an hour through a lecture
4053 entitled 'Ingsoc in relation to chess'. His soul writhed with
4054 boredom, but for once he had had no impulse to shirk his
4055 evening at the Centre. At the sight of the words I love
4056 you the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the
4057 taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid. It was not till
4058 twenty-three hours, when he was home and in bed -- in the
4059 darkness, where you were safe even from the telescreen so long
4060 as you kept silent -- that he was able to think continuously.</p>
4062 It was a physical problem that had to be solved: how to
4063 get in touch with the girl and arrange a meeting. He did not
4064 consider any longer the possibility that she might be laying
4065 some kind of trap for him. He knew that it was not so, because
4066 of her unmistakable agitation when she handed him the note.
4067 Obviously she had been frightened out of her wits, as well she
4068 might be. Nor did the idea of refusing her advances even cross
4069 his mind. Only five nights ago he had contemplated smashing her
4070 skull in with a cobblestone, but that was of no importance. He
4071 thought of her naked, youthful body, as he had seen it in his
4072 dream. He had imagined her a fool like all the rest of them,
4073 her head stuffed with lies and hatred, her belly full of ice. A
4074 kind of fever seized him at the thought that he might lose her,
4075 the white youthful body might slip away from him! What he
4076 feared more than anything else was that she would simply change
4077 her mind if he did not get in touch with her quickly. But the
4078 physical difficulty of meeting was enormous. It was like trying
4079 to make a move at chess when you were already mated. Whichever
4080 way you turned, the telescreen faced you. Actually, all the
4081 possible ways of communicating with her had occurred to him
4082 within five minutes of reading the note; but now, with time to
4083 think, he went over them one by one, as though laying out a row
4084 of instruments on a table.</p>
4086 Obviously the kind of encounter that had happened this
4087 morning could not be repeated. If she had worked in the Records
4088 Department it might have been comparatively simple, but he had
4089 only a very dim idea whereabouts in the building the Fiction
4090 Departrnent lay, and he had no pretext for going there. If he
4091 had known where she lived, and at what time she left work, he
4092 could have contrived to meet her somewhere on her way home; but
4093 to try to follow her home was not safe, because it would mean
4094 loitering about outside the Ministry, which was bound to be
4095 noticed. As for sending a letter through the mails, it was out
4096 of the question. By a routine that was not even secret, all
4097 letters were opened in transit. Actually, few people ever wrote
4098 letters. For the messages that it was occasionally necessary to
4099 send, there were printed postcards with long lists of phrases,
4100 and you struck out the ones that were inapplicable. In any case
4101 he did not know the girl's name, let alone her address. Finally
4102 he decided that the safest place was the canteen. If he could
4103 get her at a table by herself, somewhere in the middle of the
4104 room, not too near the telescreens, and with a sufficient buzz
4105 of conversation all round -- if these conditions endured for,
4106 say, thirty seconds, it might be possible to exchange a few
4109 For a week after this, life was like a restless dream. On
4110 the next day she did not appear in the canteen until he was
4111 leaving it, the whistle having already blown. Presumably she
4112 had been changed on to a later shift. They passed each other
4113 without a glance. On the day after that she was in the canteen
4114 at the usual time, but with three other girls and immediately
4115 under a telescreen. Then for three dreadful days she did not
4116 appear at all. His whole mind and body seemed to be afflicted
4117 with an unbearable sensitivity, a sort of transparency, which
4118 made every movement, every sound, every contact, every word
4119 that he had to speak or listen to, an agony. Even in sleep he
4120 could not altogether escape from her image. He did not touch
4121 the diary during those days. If there was any relief, it was in
4122 his work, in which he could sometimes forget himself for ten
4123 minutes at a stretch. He had absolutely no clue as to what had
4124 happened to her. There was no enquiry he could make. She might
4125 have been vaporized, she might have committed suicide, she
4126 might have been transferred to the other end of Oceania: worst
4127 and likeliest of all, she might simply have changed her mind
4128 and decided to avoid him.</p>
4130 The next day she reappeared. Her arm was out of the sling
4131 and she had a band of sticking-plaster round her wrist. The
4132 relief of seeing her was so great that he could not resist
4133 staring directly at her for several seconds. On the following
4134 day he very nearly succeeded in speaking to her. When he came
4135 into the canteen she was sitting at a table well out from the
4136 wall, and was quite alone. It was early, and the place was not
4137 very full. The queue edged forward till Winston was almost at
4138 the counter, then was held up for two minutes because someone
4139 in front was complaining that he had not received his tablet of
4140 saccharine. But the girl was still alone when Winston secured
4141 his tray and began to make for her table. He walked casually
4142 towards her, his eyes searching for a place at some table
4143 beyond her. She was perhaps three metres away from him. Another
4144 two seconds would do it. Then a voice behind him called,
4145 'Smith!' He pretended not to hear. 'Smith!' repeated the
4146 voice, more loudly. It was no use. He turned round. A
4147 blond-headed, silly-faced young man named Wilsher, whom he
4148 barely knew, was inviting him with a smile to a vacant place at
4149 his table. It was not safe to refuse. After having been
4150 recognized, he could not go and sit at a table with an
4151 unattended girl. It was too noticeable. He sat down with a
4152 friendly smile. The silly blond face beamed into his. Winston
4153 had a hallucination of himself smashing a pick-axe right into
4154 the middle of it. The girl's table filled up a few minutes
4157 But she must have seen him coming towards her, and perhaps
4158 she would take the hint. Next day he took care to arrive early.
4159 Surely enough, she was at a table in about the same place, and
4160 again alone. The person immediately ahead of him in the queue
4161 was a small, swiftly-moving, beetle-like man with a flat face
4162 and tiny, suspicious eyes. As Winston turned away from the
4163 counter with his tray, he saw that the little man was making
4164 straight for the girl's table. His hopes sank again. There was
4165 a vacant place at a table further away, but something in the
4166 little man's appearance suggested that he would be sufficiently
4167 attentive to his own comfort to choose the emptiest table. With
4168 ice at his heart Winston followed. It was no use unless he
4169 could get the girl alone. At this moment there was a tremendous
4170 crash. The little man was sprawling on all fours, his tray had
4171 gone flying, two streams of soup and coffee were flowing across
4172 the floor. He started to his feet with a malignant glance at
4173 Winston, whom he evidently suspected of having tripped him up.
4174 But it was all right. Five seconds later, with a thundering
4175 heart, Winston was sitting at the girl's table.</p>
4177 He did not look at her. He unpacked his tray and promptly
4178 began eating. It was all-important to speak at once, before
4179 anyone else came, but now a terrible fear had taken possession
4180 of him. A week had gone by since she had first approached him.
4181 She would have changed her mind, she must have changed her
4182 mind! It was impossible that this affair should end
4183 successfully; such things did not happen in real life. He might
4184 have flinched altogether from speaking if at this moment he had
4185 not seen Ampleforth, the hairy-eared poet, wandering limply
4186 round the room with a tray, looking for a place to sit down. In
4187 his vague way Ampleforth was attached to Winston, and would
4188 certainly sit down at his table if he caught sight of him.
4189 There was perhaps a minute in which to act. Both Winston and
4190 the girl were eating steadily. The stuff they were eating was a
4191 thin stew, actually a soup, of haricot beans. In a low murmur
4192 Winston began speaking. Neither of them looked up; steadily
4193 they spooned the watery stuff into their mouths, and between
4194 spoonfuls exchanged the few necessary words in low
4195 expressionless voices.</p>
4197 'What time do you leave work?'</p>
4199 'Eighteen-thirty.'</p>
4201 'Where can we meet?'</p>
4203 'Victory Square, near the monument.</p>
4205 'It's full of telescreens.'</p>
4207 'It doesn't matter if there's a crowd.'</p>
4211 'No. Don't come up to me until you see me among a lot of
4212 people. And don't look at me. Just keep somewhere near me.'</p>
4216 'Nineteen hours.'</p>
4220 Ampleforth failed to see Winston and sat down at another
4221 table. They did not speak again, and, so far as it was possible
4222 for two people sitting on opposite sides of the same table,
4223 they did not look at one another. The girl finished her lunch
4224 quickly and made off, while Winston stayed to smoke a
4227 Winston was in Victory Square before the appointed time.
4228 He wandered round the base of the enormous fluted column, at
4229 the top of which Big Brother's statue gazed southward towards
4230 the skies where he had vanquished the Eurasian aeroplanes (the
4231 Eastasian aeroplanes, it had been, a few years ago) in the
4232 Battle of Airstrip One. In the street in front of it there was
4233 a statue of a man on horseback which was supposed to represent
4234 Oliver Cromwell. At five minutes past the hour the girl had
4235 still not appeared. Again the terrible fear seized upon
4236 Winston. She was not coming, she had changed her mind! He
4237 walked slowly up to the north side of the square and got a sort
4238 of pale-coloured pleasure from identifying St Martin's Church,
4239 whose bells, when it had bells, had chimed 'You owe me three
4240 farthings.' Then he saw the girl standing at the base of the
4241 monument, reading or pretending to read a poster which ran
4242 spirally up the column. It was not safe to go near her until
4243 some more people had accumulated. There were telescreens all
4244 round the pediment. But at this moment there was a din of
4245 shouting and a zoom of heavy vehicles from somewhere to the
4246 left. Suddenly everyone seemed to be running across the square.
4247 The girl nipped nimbly round the lions at the base of the
4248 monument and joined in the rush. Winston followed. As he ran,
4249 he gathered from some shouted remarks that a convoy of Eurasian
4250 prisoners was passing.</p>
4252 Already a dense mass of people was blocking the south side
4253 of the square. Winston, at normal times the kind of person who
4254 gravitates to the outer edge of any kind of scrimmage, shoved,
4255 butted, squirmed his way forward into the heart of the crowd.
4256 Soon he was within arm's length of the girl, but the way was
4257 blocked by an enormous prole and an almost equally enormous
4258 woman, presumably his wife, who seemed to form an impenetrable
4259 wall of flesh. Winston wriggled himself sideways, and with a
4260 violent lunge managed to drive his shoulder between them. For a
4261 moment it felt as though his entrails were being ground to pulp
4262 between the two muscular hips, then he had broken through,
4263 sweating a little. He was next to the girl. They were shoulder
4264 to shoulder, both staring fixedly in front of them.</p>
4266 A long line of trucks, with wooden-faced guards armed with
4267 sub-machine guns standing upright in each corner, was passing
4268 slowly down the street. In the trucks little yellow men in
4269 shabby greenish uniforms were squatting, jammed close together.
4270 Their sad, Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides of the
4271 trucks utterly incurious. Occasionally when a truck jolted
4272 there was a clank-clank of metal: all the prisoners were wearing
4273 leg-irons. Truck-load after truck-load of the sad faces passed.
4274 Winston knew they were there but he saw them only
4275 intermittently. The girl's shoulder, and her arm right down to
4276 the elbow, were pressed against his. Her cheek was almost near
4277 enough for him to feel its warmth. She had immediately taken
4278 charge of the situation, just as she had done in the canteen.
4279 She began speaking in the same expressionless voice as before,
4280 with lips barely moving, a mere murmur easily drowned by the
4281 din of voices and the rumbling of the trucks.</p>
4283 'Can you hear me?'</p>
4287 'Can you get Sunday afternoon off?'</p>
4291 'Then listen carefully. You'll have to remember this. Go
4292 to Paddington Station-'</p>
4294 With a sort of military precision that astonished him, she
4295 outlined the route that he was to follow. A half-hour railway
4296 journey; turn left outside the station; two kilometres along
4297 the road: a gate with the top bar missing; a path across a
4298 field; a grass-grown lane; a track between bushes; a dead tree
4299 with moss on it. It was as though she had a map inside her
4300 head. 'Can you remember all that?' she murmured finally.</p>
4304 'You turn left, then right, then left again. And the
4305 gate's got no top bar.'</p>
4307 'Yes. What time?'</p>
4309 'About fifteen. You may have to wait. I'll get there by
4310 another way. Are you sure you remember everything?'</p>
4314 'Then get away from me as quick as you can.'</p>
4316 She need not have told him that. But for the moment they
4317 could not extricate themselves from the crowd. The trucks were
4318 still filing post, the people still insatiably gaping. At the
4319 start there had been a few boos and hisses, but it came only
4320 from the Party members among the crowd, and had soon stopped.
4321 The prevailing emotion was simply curiosity. Foreigners,
4322 whether from Eurasia or from Eastasia, were a kind of strange
4323 animal. One literally never saw them except in the guise of
4324 prisoners, and even as prisoners one never got more than a
4325 momentary glimpse of them. Nor did one know what became of
4326 them, apart from the few who were hanged as war-criminals: te
4327 others simply vanished, presumably into forced-labour camps.
4328 The round Mogol faces had given way to faces of a more European
4329 type, dirty, bearded and exhausted. From over scrubby
4330 cheekbones eyes looked into Winston's, sometimes with strange
4331 intensity, and flashed away again. The convoy was drawing to an
4332 end. In the last truck he could see an aged man, his face a
4333 mass of grizzled hair, standing upright with wrists crossed in
4334 front of him, as though he were used to having them bound
4335 together. It was almost time for Winston and the girl to part.
4336 But at the last moment, while the crowd still hemmed them in,
4337 her hand felt for his and gave it a fleeting squeeze.</p>
4339 It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a
4340 long time that their hands were clasped together. He had time
4341 to learn every detail of her hand. He explored the long
4342 fingers, the shapely nails, the work-hardened palm with its row
4343 of callouses, the smooth flesh under the wrist. Merely from
4344 feeling it he would have known it by sight. In the same instant
4345 it occurred to him that he did not know what colour the girl's
4346 eyes were. They were probably brown, but people with dark hair
4347 sometimes had blue eyes. To turn his head and look at her would
4348 have been inconceivable folly. With hands locked together,
4349 invisible among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in
4350 front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of
4351 the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of
4353 <h1><a name="10">X</a></h1>
4354 <p class="no-indent">
4355 Winston picked his way up the lane through dappled light
4356 and shade, stepping out into pools of gold wherever the boughs
4357 parted. Under the trees to the left of him the ground was misty
4358 with bluebells. The air seemed to kiss one's skin. It was the
4359 second of May. From somewhere deeper in the heart of the wood
4360 came the droning of ring doves.</p>
4362 He was a bit early. There had been no difficulties about
4363 the journey, and the girl was so evidently experienced that he
4364 was less frightened than he would normally have been.
4365 Presumably she could be trusted to find a safe place. In
4366 general you could not assume that you were much safer in the
4367 country than in London. There were no telescreens, of course,
4368 but there was always the danger of concealed microphones by
4369 which your voice might be picked up and recognized; besides, it
4370 was not easy to make a journey by yourself without attracting
4371 attention. For distances of less than 100 kilometres it was not
4372 necessary to get your passport endorsed, but sometimes there
4373 were patrols hanging about the railway stations, who examined
4374 the papers of any Party member they found there and asked
4375 awkward questions. However, no patrols had appeared, and on the
4376 walk from the station he had made sure by cautious backward
4377 glances that he was not being followed. The train was full of
4378 proles, in holiday mood because of the summery weather. The
4379 wooden-seated carriage in which he travelled was filled to
4380 overflowing by a single enormous family. ranging from a
4381 toothless great-grandmother to a month-old baby, going out to
4382 spend an afternoon with 'in-laws' in the country, and, as they
4383 freely explained to Winston, to get hold of a little
4384 blackmarket butter.</p>
4386 The lane widened, and in a minute he came to the footpath
4387 she had told him of, a mere cattle-track which plunged between
4388 the bushes. He had no watch, but it could not be fifteen yet.
4389 The bluebells were so thick underfoot that it was impossible
4390 not to tread on them. He knelt down and began picking some
4391 partly to pass the time away, but also from a vague idea that
4392 he would like to have a bunch of flowers to offer to the girl
4393 when they met. He had got together a big bunch and was smelling
4394 their faint sickly scent when a sound at his back froze him,
4395 the unmistakable crackle of a foot on twigs. He went on picking
4396 bluebells. It was the best thing to do. It might be the girl,
4397 or he might have been followed after all. To look round was to
4398 show guilt. He picked another and another. A hand fell lightly
4399 on his shoulder.</p>
4401 He looked up. It was the girl. She shook her head,
4402 evidently as a warning that he must keep silent, then parted
4403 the bushes and quickly led the way along the narrow track into
4404 the wood. Obviously she had been that way before, for she
4405 dodged the boggy bits as though by habit. Winston followed,
4406 still clasping his bunch of flowers. His first feeling was
4407 relief, but as he watched the strong slender body moving in
4408 front of him, with the scarlet sash that was just tight enough
4409 to bring out the curve of her hips, the sense of his own
4410 inferiority was heavy upon him. Even now it seemed quite likely
4411 that when she turned round and looked at him she would draw
4412 back after all. The sweetness of the air and the greenness of
4413 the leaves daunted him. Already on the walk from the station
4414 the May sunshine had made him feel dirty and etiolated, a
4415 creature of indoors, with the sooty dust of London in the pores
4416 of his skin. It occurred to him that till now she had probably
4417 never seen him in broad daylight in the open. They came to the
4418 fallen tree that she had spoken of. The girl hopped over and
4419 forced apart the bushes, in which there did not seem to be an
4420 opening. When Winston followed her, he found that they were in
4421 a natural clearing, a tiny grassy knoll surrounded by tall
4422 saplings that shut it in completely. The girl stopped and
4425 'Here we are,' she said.</p>
4427 He was facing her at several paces' distance. As yet he
4428 did not dare move nearer to her.</p>
4430 'I didn't want to say anything in the lane,' she went on,
4431 'in case there's a mike hidden there. I don't suppose there is,
4432 but there could be. There's always the chance of one of those
4433 swine recognizing your voice. We're all right here.'</p>
4435 He still had not the courage to approach her. 'We're all
4436 right here?' he repeated stupidly.</p>
4438 'Yes. Look at the trees.' They were small ashes, which at
4439 some time had been cut down and had sprouted up again into a
4440 forest of poles, none of them thicker than one's wrist.
4441 'There's nothing big enough to hide a mike in. Besides, I've
4442 been here before.'</p>
4444 They were only making conversation. He had managed to move
4445 closer to her now. She stood before him very upright, with a
4446 smile on her face that looked faintly ironical, as though she
4447 were wondering why he was so slow to act. The bluebells had
4448 cascaded on to the ground. They seemed to have fallen of their
4449 own accord. He took her hand.</p>
4451 'Would you believe,' he said, 'that till this moment I
4452 didn't know what colour your eyes were?' They were brown, he
4453 noted, a rather light shade of brown, with dark lashes. 'Now
4454 that you've seen what I'm really like, can you still bear to
4459 'I'm thirty-nine years old. I've got a wife that I can't
4460 get rid of. I've got varicose veins. I've got five false
4463 'I couldn't care less,' said the girl.</p>
4465 The next moment, it was hard to say by whose act, she was
4466 in his his arms. At the beginning he had no feeling except
4467 sheer incredulity. The youthful body was strained against his
4468 own, the mass of dark hair was against his face, and yes!
4469 actually she had turned her face up and he was kissing the wide
4470 red mouth. She had clasped her arms about his neck, she was
4471 calling him darling, precious one, loved one. He had pulled her
4472 down on to the ground, she was utterly unresisting, he could do
4473 what he liked with her. But the truth was that he had no
4474 physical sensation, except that of mere contact. All he felt
4475 was incredulity and pride. He was glad that this was happening,
4476 but he had no physical desire. It was too soon, her youth and
4477 prettiness had frightened him, he was too much used to living
4478 without women -- he did not know the reason. The girl picked
4479 herself up and pulled a bluebell out of her hair. She sat
4480 against him, putting her arm round his waist.</p>
4482 'Never mind, dear. There's no hurry. We've got the whole
4483 afternoon. Isn't this a splendid hide-out? I found it when I
4484 got lost once on a community hike. If anyone was coming you
4485 could hear them a hundred metres away.'</p>
4487 'What is your name?' said Winston.</p>
4489 'Julia. I know yours. It's Winston -- Winston Smith.'</p>
4491 'How did you find that out?'</p>
4493 'I expect I'm better at finding things out than you are,
4494 dear. Tell me, what did you think of me before that day I gave
4497 He did not feel any temptation to tell lies to her. It was
4498 even a sort of love-offering to start off by telling the worst.</p>
4500 'I hated the sight of you,' he said. 'I wanted to rape you
4501 and then murder you afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought
4502 seriously of smashing your head in with a cobblestone. If you
4503 really want to know, I imagined that you had something to do
4504 with the Thought Police.'</p>
4506 The girl laughed delightedly, evidently taking this as a
4507 tribute to the excellence of her disguise.</p>
4509 'Not the Thought Police! You didn't honestly think that?'</p>
4511 'Well, perhaps not exactly that. But from your general
4512 appearance -- merely because you're young and fresh and
4513 healthy, you understand -- I thought that probably-'</p>
4515 'You thought I was a good Party member. Pure in word and
4516 deed. Banners, processions, slogans, games, community hikes all
4517 that stuff. And you thought that if I had a quarter of a chance
4518 I'd denounce you as a thought-criminal and get you killed off?'</p>
4520 'Yes, something of that kind. A great many young girls are
4521 like that, you know.'</p>
4523 'It's this bloody thing that does it,' she said, ripping
4524 off the scarlet sash of the Junior Anti-Sex League and flinging
4525 it on to a bough. Then, as though touching her waist had
4526 reminded her of something, she felt in the pocket of her
4527 overalls and produced a small slab of chocolate. She broke it
4528 in half and gave one of the pieces to Winston. Even before he
4529 had taken it he knew by the smell that it was very unusual
4530 chocolate. It was dark and shiny, and was wrapped in silver
4531 paper. Chocolate normally was dull-brown crumbly stuff that
4532 tasted, as nearly as one could describe it, like the smoke of a
4533 rubbish fire. But at some time or another he had tasted
4534 chocolate like the piece she had given him. The first whiff of
4535 its scent had stirred up some memory which he could not pin
4536 down, but which was powerful and troubling.</p>
4538 'Where did you get this stuff?' he said.</p>
4540 'Black market,' she said indifferently. 'Actually I am
4541 that sort of girl, to look at. I'm good at games. I was a
4542 troop-leader in the Spies. I do voluntary work three evenings a
4543 week for the Junior Anti-Sex League. Hours and hours I've spent
4544 pasting their bloody rot all over London. I always carry one
4545 end of a banner in the processions. I always Iook cheerful and
4546 I never shirk anything. Always yell with the crowd, that's what
4547 I say. It's the only way to be safe.'</p>
4549 The first fragment of chocolate had melted on Winston's
4550 tongue. The taste was delightful. But there was still that
4551 memory moving round the edges of his consciousness, something
4552 strongly felt but not reducible to definite shape, like an
4553 object seen out of the corner of one's eye. He pushed it away
4554 from him, aware only that it was the memory of some action
4555 which he would have liked to undo but could not.</p>
4557 'You are very young,' he said. 'You are ten or fifteen
4558 years younger than I am. What could you see to attract you in a
4561 'It was something in your face. I thought I'd take a
4562 chance. I'm good at spotting people who don't belong. As soon
4563 as I saw you I knew you were against them.'</p>
4565 Them, it appeared, meant the Party, and above all
4566 the Inner Party, about whom she talked with an open jeering
4567 hatred which made Winston feel uneasy, although he knew that
4568 they were safe here if they could be safe anywhere. A thing
4569 that astonished him about her was the coarseness of her
4570 language. Party members were supposed not to swear, and Winston
4571 himself very seldom did swear, aloud, at any rate. Julia,
4572 however, seemed unable to mention the Party, and especially the
4573 Inner Party, without using the kind of words that you saw
4574 chalked up in dripping alley-ways. He did not dislike it. It
4575 was merely one symptom of her revolt against the Party and all
4576 its ways, and somehow it seemed natural and healthy, like the
4577 sneeze of a horse that smells bad hay. They had left the
4578 clearing and were wandering again through the chequered shade,
4579 with their arms round each other's waists whenever it was wide
4580 enough to walk two abreast. He noticed how much softer her
4581 waist seemed to feel now that the sash was gone. They did not
4582 speak above a whisper. Outside the clearing, Julia said, it was
4583 better to go quietly. Presently they had reached the edge of
4584 the little wood. She stopped him.</p>
4586 'Don't go out into the open. There might be someone
4587 watching. We're all right if we keep behind the boughs.'</p>
4589 They were standing in the shade of hazel bushes. The
4590 sunlight, filtering through innumerable leaves, was still hot
4591 on their faces. Winston looked out into the field beyond, and
4592 underwent a curious, slow shock of recognition. He knew it by
4593 sight. An old, closebitten pasture, with a footpath wandering
4594 across it and a molehill here and there. In the ragged hedge on
4595 the opposite side the boughs of the elm trees swayed just
4596 perceptibly in the breeze, and their leaves stirred faintly in
4597 dense masses like women's hair. Surely somewhere nearby, but
4598 out of sight, there must be a stream with green pools where
4599 dace were swimming?</p>
4601 'Isn't there a stream somewhere near here?' he whispered.</p>
4603 'That's right, there is a stream. It's at the edge of the
4604 next field, actually. There are fish in it, great big ones. You
4605 can watch them lying in the pools under the willow trees,
4606 waving their tails.'</p>
4608 'It's the Golden Country -- almost,' he murmured.</p>
4610 'The Golden Country?'</p>
4612 'It's nothing, really. A landscape I've seen sometimes in
4615 'Look!' whispered Julia.</p>
4617 A thrush had alighted on a bough not five metres away,
4618 almost at the level of their faces. Perhaps it had not seen
4619 them. It was in the sun, they in the shade. It spread out its
4620 wings, fitted them carefully into place again, ducked its head
4621 for a moment, as though making a sort of obeisance to the sun,
4622 and then began to pour forth a torrent of song. In the
4623 afternoon hush the volume of sound was startling. Winston and
4624 Julia clung together, fascinated. The music went on and on,
4625 minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once
4626 repeating itself, almost as though the bird were deliberately
4627 showing off its virtuosity. Sometimes it stopped for a few
4628 seconds, spread out and resettled its wings, then swelled its
4629 speckled breast and again burst into song. Winston watched it
4630 with a sort of vague reverence. For whom, for what, was that
4631 bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it
4632 sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into
4633 nothingness? He wondered whether after all there was a
4634 microphone hidden somewhere near. He and Julia had spoken only
4635 in low whispers, and it would not pick up what they had said,
4636 but it would pick up the thrush. Perhaps at the other end of
4637 the instrument some small, beetle-like man was listening
4638 intently -- listening to that. But by degrees the flood
4639 of music drove all speculations out of his mind. It was as
4640 though it were a kind of liquid stuff that poured all over him
4641 and got mixed up with the sunlight that filtered through the
4642 leaves. He stopped thinking and merely felt. The girl's waist
4643 in the bend of his arm was soft and warm. He pulled her round
4644 so that they were breast to breast; her body seemed to melt
4645 into his. Wherever his hands moved it was all as yielding as
4646 water. Their mouths clung together; it was quite different from
4647 the hard kisses they had exchanged earlier. When they moved
4648 their faces apart again both of them sighed deeply. The bird
4649 took fright and fled with a clatter of wings.</p>
4651 Winston put his lips against her ear. 'Now,' he
4654 'Not here,' she whispered back. 'Come back to the hide-
4655 out. It's safer.'</p>
4657 Quickly, with an occasional crackle of twigs, they
4658 threaded their way back to the clearing. When they were once
4659 inside the ring of saplings she turned and faced him. They were
4660 both breathing fast. but the smile had reappeared round the
4661 corners of her mouth. She stood looking at him for an instant,
4662 then felt at the zipper of her overalls. And, yes! it was
4663 almost as in his dream. Almost as swiftly as he had imagined
4664 it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside
4665 it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole
4666 civilization seemed to be annihilated. Her body gleamed white
4667 in the sun. But for a moment he did not look at her body; his
4668 eyes were anchored by the freckled face with its faint, bold
4669 smile. He knelt down before her and took her hands in his</p>
4671 'Have you done this before?'</p>
4673 'Of course. Hundreds of times -- well scores of times
4675 'With Party members.'</p>
4677 'Yes, always with Party members.'</p>
4679 'With members of the Inner Party?'</p>
4681 'Not with those swine, no. But there's plenty that
4682 would if they got half a chance. They're not so holy as
4685 His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it: he
4686 wished it had been hundreds -- thousands. Anything that hinted
4687 at corruption always filled him with a wild hope. Who knew,
4688 perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of
4689 strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity.
4690 If he could have infected the whole lot of them with leprosy or
4691 syphilis, how gladly he would have done so! Anything to rot, to
4692 weaken, to undermine! He pulled her down so that they were
4693 kneeling face to face.</p>
4695 'Listen. The more men you've had, the more I love you. Do
4696 you understand that?'</p>
4698 'Yes, perfectly.'</p>
4700 'I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue
4701 to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.</p>
4703 'Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the
4706 'You like doing this? I don't mean simply me: I mean the
4707 thing in itself?'</p>
4711 That was above all what he wanted to hear. Not merely the
4712 love of one person but the animal instinct, the simple
4713 undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the
4714 Party to pieces. He pressed her down upon the grass, among the
4715 fallen bluebells. This time there was no difficulty. Presently
4716 the rising and falling of their breasts slowed to normal speed,
4717 and in a sort of pleasant helplessness they fell apart. The sun
4718 seemed to have grown hotter. They were both sleepy. He reached
4719 out for the discarded overalls and pulled them partly over her.
4720 Almost immediately they fell asleep and slept for about half an
4723 Winston woke first. He sat up and watched the freckled
4724 face, still peacefully asleep, pillowed on the palm of her
4725 hand. Except for her mouth, you could not call her beautiful.
4726 There was a line or two round the eyes, if you looked closely.
4727 The short dark hair was extraordinarily thick and soft. It
4728 occurred to him that he still did not know her surname or where
4731 The young, strong body, now helpless in sleep, awoke in
4732 him a pitying, protecting feeling. But the mindless tenderness
4733 that he had felt under the hazel tree, while the thrush was
4734 singing, had not quite come back. He pulled the overalls aside
4735 and studied her smooth white flank. In the old days, he
4736 thought, a man looked at a girl's body and saw that it was
4737 desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you could not
4738 have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure,
4739 because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their
4740 embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow
4741 struck against the Party. It was a political act.</p>
4742 <h1><a name="11">XI</a></h1>
4743 <p class="no-indent">
4744 'We can come here once again,' said Julia. 'It's generally
4745 safe to use any hide-out twice. But not for another month or
4746 two, of course.'</p>
4748 As soon as she woke up her demeanour had changed. She
4749 became alert and business-like, put her clothes on, knotted the
4750 scarlet sash about her waist, and began arranging the details
4751 of the journey home. It seemed natural to leave this to her.
4752 She obviously had a practical cunning which Winston lacked, and
4753 she seemed also to have an exhaustive knowledge of the
4754 countryside round London, stored away from innumerable
4755 community hikes. The route she gave him was quite different
4756 from the one by which he had come, and brought him out at a
4757 different railway station. 'Never go home the same way as you
4758 went out,' she said, as though enunciating an important general
4759 principle. She would leave first, and Winston was to wait half
4760 an hour before following her.</p>
4762 She had named a place where they could meet after work,
4763 four evenings hence. It was a street in one of the poorer
4764 quarters, where there was an open market which was generally
4765 crowded and noisy. She would be hanging about among the stalls,
4766 pretending to be in search of shoelaces or sewing-thread. If
4767 she judged that the coast was clear she would blow her nose
4768 when he approached; otherwise he was to walk past her without
4769 recognition. But with luck, in the middle of the crowd, it
4770 would be safe to talk for a quarter of an hour and arrange
4771 another meeting.</p>
4773 'And now I must go,' she said as soon as he had mastered
4774 his instructions. 'I'm due back at nineteen-thirty. I've got to
4775 put in two hours for the Junior Anti-Sex League, handing out
4776 leaflets, or something. Isn't it bloody? Give me a brush-down,
4777 would you? Have I got any twigs in my hair? Are you sure? Then
4778 good-bye, my love, good-bye!'</p>
4780 She flung herself into his arms, kissed him almost
4781 violently, and a moment later pushed her way through the
4782 saplings and disappeared into the wood with very little noise.
4783 Even now he had not found out her surname or her address.
4784 However, it made no difference, for it was inconceivable that
4785 they could ever meet indoors or exchange any kind of written
4788 As it happened, they never went back to the clearing in
4789 the wood. During the month of May there was only one further
4790 occasion on which they actually succeeded in making love. That
4791 was in another hidlng-place known to Julia, the belfry of a
4792 ruinous church in an almost-deserted stretch of country where
4793 an atomic bomb had fallen thirty years earlier. It was a good
4794 hiding-place when once you got there, but the getting there was
4795 very dangerous. For the rest they could meet only in the
4796 streets, in a different place every evening and never for more
4797 than half an hour at a time. In the street it was usually
4798 possible to talk, after a fashion. As they drifted down the
4799 crowded pavements, not quite abreast and never looking at one
4800 another, they carried on a curious, intermittent conversation
4801 which flicked on and off like the beams of a lighthouse,
4802 suddenly nipped into silence by the approach of a Party uniform
4803 or the proximity of a telescreen, then taken up again minutes
4804 later in the middle of a sentence, then abruptly cut short as
4805 they parted at the agreed spot, then continued almost without
4806 introduction on the following day. Julia appeared to be quite
4807 used to this kind of conversation, which she called 'talking by
4808 instalments'. She was also surprisingly adept at speaking
4809 without moving her lips. Just once in almost a month of nightly
4810 meetings they managed to exchange a kiss. They were passing in
4811 silence down a side-street (Julia would never speak when they
4812 were away from the main streets) when there was a deafening
4813 roar, the earth heaved, and the air darkened, and Winston found
4814 himself lying on his side, bruised and terrified. A rocket bomb
4815 must have dropped quite near at hand. Suddenly he became aware
4816 of Julia's face a few centimetres from his own, deathly white,
4817 as white as chalk. Even her lips were white. She was dead! He
4818 clasped her against him and found that he was kissing a live
4819 warm face. But there was some powdery stuff that got in the way
4820 of his lips. Both of their faces were thickly coated with
4823 There were evenings when they reached their rendezvous and
4824 then had to walk past one another without a sign, because a
4825 patrol had just come round the corner or a helicopter was
4826 hovering overhead. Even if it had been less dangerous, it would
4827 still have been difficult to find time to meet. Winston's
4828 working week was sixty hours, Julia's was even longer, and
4829 their free days varied according to the pressure of work and
4830 did not often coincide. Julia, in any case, seldom had an
4831 evening completely free. She spent an astonishing amount of
4832 time in attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing
4833 literature for the junior Anti-Sex League, preparing banners
4834 for Hate Week, making collections for the savings campaign, and
4835 such-like activities. It paid, she said, it was camouflage. If
4836 you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones. She
4837 even induced Winston to mortgage yet another of his evenings by
4838 enrolling himself for the part-time munition work which was
4839 done voluntarily by zealous Party members. So, one evening
4840 every week, Winston spent four hours of paralysing boredom,
4841 screwing together small bits of metal which were probably parts
4842 of bomb fuses, in a draughty, ill-lit workshop where the
4843 knocking of hammers mingled drearily with the music of the
4846 When they met in the church tower the gaps in their
4847 fragmentary conversation were filled up. It was a blazing
4848 afternoon. The air in the little square chamber above the bells
4849 was hot and stagnant, and smelt overpoweringly of pigeon dung.
4850 They sat talking for hours on the dusty, twig-littered floor,
4851 one or other of them getting up from time to time to cast a
4852 glance through the arrowslits and make sure that no one was
4855 Julia was twenty-six years old. She lived in a hostel with
4856 thirty other girls ('Always in the stink of women! How I hate
4857 women!' she said parenthetically), and she worked, as he had
4858 guessed, on the novel-writing machines in the Fiction
4859 Department. She enjoyed her work, which consisted chiefly in
4860 running and servicing a powerful but tricky electric motor. She
4861 was 'not clever', but was fond of using her hands and felt at
4862 home with machinery. She could describe the whole process of
4863 composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the
4864 Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite
4865 Squad. But she was not interested in the finished product. She
4866 'didn't much care for reading,' she said. Books were just a
4867 commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.</p>
4869 She had no memories of anything before the early sixties
4870 and the only person she had ever known who talked frequently of
4871 the days before the Revolution was a grandfather who had
4872 disappeared when she was eight. At school she had been captain
4873 of the hockey team and had won the gymnastics trophy two years
4874 running. She had been a troop-leader in the Spies and a branch
4875 secretary in the Youth League before joining the Junior
4876 Anti-Sex League. She had always borne an excellent character.
4877 She had even (an infallible mark of good reputation) been
4878 picked out to work in Pornosec, the sub-section of the Fiction
4879 Department which turned out cheap pornography for distribution
4880 among the proles. It was nicknamed Muck House by the people who
4881 worked in it, she remarked. There she had remained for a year,
4882 helping to produce booklets in sealed packets with titles like
4883 Spanking Stories or One Night in a Girls'
4884 School, to be bought furtively by proletarian youths who
4885 were under the impression that they were buying something
4888 'What are these books like?' said Winston curiously.</p>
4890 'Oh, ghastly rubbish. They're boring, really. They only
4891 have six plots, but they swap them round a bit. Of course I was
4892 only on the kaleidoscopes. I was never in the Rewrite Squad.
4893 I'm not literary, dear -- not even enough for that.'</p>
4895 He learned with astonishment that all the workers in
4896 Pornosec, except the heads of the departments, were girls. The
4897 theory was that men, whose sex instincts were less controllable
4898 than those of women, were in greater danger of being corrupted
4899 by the filth they handled.</p>
4901 'They don't even like having married women there,' she
4902 added. Girls are always supposed to be so pure. Here's one who
4905 She had had her first love-affair when she was sixteen,
4906 with a Party member of sixty who later committed suicide to
4907 avoid arrest. 'And a good job too,' said Julia, 'otherwise
4908 they'd have had my name out of him when he confessed.' Since
4909 then there had been various others. Life as she saw it was
4910 quite simple. You wanted a good time; 'they', meaning the
4911 Party, wanted to stop you having it; you broke the rules as
4912 best you couId. She seemed to think it just as natural that
4913 'they' should want to rob you of your pleasures as that you
4914 should want to avoid being caught. She hated the Party, and
4915 said so in the crudest words, but she made no general criticism
4916 of it. Except where it touched upon her own life she had no
4917 interest in Party doctrine. He noticed that she never used
4918 Newspeak words except the ones that had passed into everyday
4919 use. She had never heard of the Brotherhood, and refused to
4920 believe in its existence. Any kind of organized revolt against
4921 the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as
4922 stupid. The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive
4923 all the same. He wondered vaguely how many others like her
4924 there might be in the younger generation people who had grown
4925 up in the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else,
4926 accepting the Party as something unalterable, like the sky, not
4927 rebelling against its authority but simply evading it, as a
4928 rabbit dodges a dog.</p>
4930 They did not discuss the possibility of getting married.
4931 It was too remote to be worth thinking about. No imaginable
4932 committee would ever sanction such a marriage even if
4933 Katharine, Winston's wife, could somehow have been got rid of.
4934 It was hopeless even as a daydream.</p>
4936 'What was she like, your wife?' said Julia.</p>
4938 'She was -- do you know the Newspeak word
4939 goodthinkful? Meaning naturally orthodox, incapable of
4940 thinking a bad thought?'</p>
4942 'No, I didn't know the word, but I know the kind of
4943 person, right enough.'</p>
4945 He began telling her the story of his married life, but
4946 curiously enough she appeared to know the essential parts of it
4947 already. She described to him, almost as though she had seen or
4948 felt it, the stiffening of Katharine's body as soon as he
4949 touched her, the way in which she still seemed to be pushing
4950 him from her with all her strength, even when her arms were
4951 clasped tightly round him. With Julia he felt no difficulty in
4952 talking about such things: Katharine, in any case, had long
4953 ceased to be a painful memory and became merely a distasteful
4956 'I could have stood it if it hadn't been for one thing,'
4957 he said. He toId her about the frigid little ceremony that
4958 Katharine had forced him to go through on the same night every
4959 week. 'She hated it, but nothing would make her stop doing it.
4960 She used to call it -- but you'll never guess.'</p>
4962 'Our duty to the Party,' said Julia promptly.</p>
4964 'How did you know that?'</p>
4966 'I've been at school too, dear. Sex talks once a month for
4967 the over-sixteens. And in the Youth Movement. They rub it into
4968 you for years. I dare say it works in a lot of cases. But of
4969 course you can never tell; people are such hypocrites.'</p>
4971 She began to enlarge upon the subject. With Julia,
4972 everything came back to her own sexuality. As soon as this was
4973 touched upon in any way she was capable of great acuteness.
4974 Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the
4975 Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex
4976 instinct created a world of its own which was outside the
4977 Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if
4978 possible. What was more important was that sexual privation
4979 induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be
4980 transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put
4983 'When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards
4984 you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't
4985 bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with
4986 energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering
4987 and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you're happy
4988 inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother
4989 and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the
4990 rest of their bloody rot?'</p>
4992 That was very true, he thought. There was a direct
4993 intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy.
4994 For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity
4995 which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right
4996 pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using
4997 it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the
4998 Party, and the Party had turned it to account. They had played
4999 a similar trick with the instinct of parenthood. The family
5000 could not actually be abolished, and, indeed, people were
5001 encouraged to be fond of their children, in almost the
5002 old-fashioned way. The children, on the other hand, were
5003 systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy
5004 on them and report their deviations. The family had become in
5005 effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was a device by
5006 means of which everyone could be surrounded night and day by
5007 informers who knew him intimately.</p>
5009 Abruptly his mind went back to Katharine. Katharine would
5010 unquestionably have denounced him to the Thought Police if she
5011 had not happened to be too stupid to detect the unorthodoxy of
5012 his opinions. But what really recalled her to him at this
5013 moment was the stifling heat of the afternoon, which had
5014 brought the sweat out on his forehead. He began telling Julia
5015 of something that had happened, or rather had failed to happen,
5016 on another sweltering summer afternoon, eleven years ago.</p>
5018 It was three or four months after they were married. They
5019 had lost their way on a community hike somewhere in Kent. They
5020 had only lagged behind the others for a couple of minutes, but
5021 they took a wrong turning, and presently found themselves
5022 pulled up short by the edge of an old chalk quarry. It was a
5023 sheer drop of ten or twenty metres, with boulders at the
5024 bottom. There was nobody of whom they could ask the way. As
5025 soon as she realized that they were lost Katharine became very
5026 uneasy. To be away from the noisy mob of hikers even for a
5027 moment gave her a feeling of wrong-doing. She wanted to hurry
5028 back by the way they had come and start searching in the other
5029 direction. But at this moment Winston noticed some tufts of
5030 loosestrife growing in the cracks of the cliff beneath them.
5031 One tuft was of two colours, magenta and brick-red, apparently
5032 growing on the same root. He had never seen anything of the
5033 kind before, and he called to Katharine to come and look at it.</p>
5035 'Look, Katharine! Look at those flowers. That clump down
5036 near the bottom. Do you see they're two different colours?'</p>
5038 She had already turned to go, but she did rather fretfully
5039 come back for a moment. She even leaned out over the cliff face
5040 to see where he was pointing. He was standing a little behind
5041 her, and he put his hand on her waist to steady her. At this
5042 moment it suddenly occurred to him how completely alone they
5043 were. There was not a human creature anywhere, not a leaf
5044 stirring, not even a bird awake. In a place like this the
5045 danger that there would be a hidden microphone was very small,
5046 and even if there was a microphone it would only pick up
5047 sounds. It was the hottest sleepiest hour of the afternoon. The
5048 sun blazed down upon them, the sweat tickled his face. And the
5049 thought struck him ...</p>
5051 'Why didn't you give her a good shove?' said Julia. 'I
5054 'Yes, dear, you would have. I would, if I'd been the same
5055 person then as I am now. Or perhaps I would -- I'm not
5058 'Are you sorry you didn't?'</p>
5060 'Yes. On the whole I'm sorry I didn't.'</p>
5062 They were sitting side by side on the dusty floor. He
5063 pulled her closer against him. Her head rested on his shoulder,
5064 the pleasant smell of her hair conquering the pigeon dung. She
5065 was very young, he thought, she still expected something from
5066 life, she did not understand that to push an inconvenient
5067 person over a cliff solves nothing.</p>
5069 'Actually it would have made no difference,' he said.</p>
5071 'Then why are you sorry you didn't do it?'</p>
5073 'Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this
5074 game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure
5075 are better than other kinds, that's all.'</p>
5077 He felt her shoulders give a wriggle of dissent. She
5078 always contradicted him when he said anything of this kind. She
5079 would not accept it as a law of nature that the individual is
5080 always defeated. In a way she realized that she herself was
5081 doomed, that sooner or later the Thought Police would catch her
5082 and kill her, but with another part of her mind she believed
5083 that it was somehow possible to construct a secret world in
5084 which you could live as you chose. All you needed was luck and
5085 cunning and boldness. She did not understand that there was no
5086 such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in the far
5087 future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of
5088 declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself
5091 'We are the dead,' he said.</p>
5093 'We're not dead yet,' said Julia prosaically.</p>
5095 'Not physically. Six months, a year -- five years,
5096 conceivably. I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably
5097 you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put it
5098 off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So
5099 long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same
5102 'Oh, rubbish! Which would you sooner sleep with, me or a
5103 skeleton? Don't you enjoy being alive? Don't you like feeling:
5104 This is me, this is my hand, this is my leg, I'm real, I'm
5105 solid, I'm alive! Don't you like this?'</p>
5107 She twisted herself round and pressed her bosom against
5108 him. He could feel her breasts, ripe yet firm, through her
5109 overalls. Her body seemed to be pouring some of its youth and
5110 vigour into his.</p>
5112 'Yes, I like that,' he said.</p>
5114 'Then stop talking about dying. And now listen, dear,
5115 we've got to fix up about the next time we meet. We may as well
5116 go back to the place in the wood. We've given it a good long
5117 rest. But you must get there by a different way this time. I've
5118 got it all planned out. You take the train -- but look, I'll
5119 draw it out for you.'</p>
5121 And in her practical way she scraped together a small
5122 square of dust, and with a twig from a pigeon's nest began
5123 drawing a map on the floor.</p>
5124 <h1><a name="12">XII</a></h1>
5125 <p class="no-indent">
5126 Winston looked round the shabby little room above Mr
5127 Charrington's shop. Beside the window the enormous bed was made
5128 up, with ragged blankets and a coverless bolster. The
5129 old-fashioned clock with the twelve-hour face was ticking away
5130 on the mantelpiece. In the corner, on the gateleg table, the
5131 glass paperweight which he had bought on his last visit gleamed
5132 softly out of the half-darkness.</p>
5134 In the fender was a battered tin oilstove, a saucepan, and
5135 two cups, provided by Mr Charrington. Winston lit the burner
5136 and set a pan of water to boil. He had brought an envelope full
5137 of Victory Coffee and some saccharine tablets. The clock's
5138 hands said seventeen-twenty: it was nineteen-twenty really.
5139 She was coming at nineteen-thirty.</p>
5141 Folly, folly, his heart kept saying: conscious,
5142 gratuitous, suicidal folly. Of all the crimes that a Party
5143 member could commit, this one was the least possible to
5144 conceal. Actually the idea had first floated into his head in
5145 the form of a vision, of the glass paperweight mirrored by the
5146 surface of the gateleg table. As he had foreseen, Mr
5147 Charrington had made no difficulty about letting the room. He
5148 was obviously glad of the few dollars that it would bring him.
5149 Nor did he seem shocked or become offensively knowing when it
5150 was made clear that Winston wanted the room for the purpose of
5151 a love-affair. Instead he looked into the middle distance and
5152 spoke in generalities, with so delicate an air as to give the
5153 impression that he had become partly invisible. Privacy, he
5154 said, was a very valuable thing. Everyone wanted a place where
5155 they could be alone occasionally. And when they had such a
5156 place, it was only common courtesy in anyone else who knew of
5157 it to keep his knowledge to himself. He even, seeming almost to
5158 fade out of existence as he did so, added that there were two
5159 entries to the house, one of them through the back yard, which
5160 gave on an alley.</p>
5162 Under the window somebody was singing. Winston peeped out,
5163 secure in the protection of the muslin curtain. The June sun
5164 was still high in the sky, and in the sun-filled court below, a
5165 monstrous woman, solid as a Norman pillar, with brawny red
5166 forearms and a sacking apron strapped about her middle, was
5167 stumping to and fro between a washtub and a clothes line,
5168 pegging out a series of square white things which Winston
5169 recognized as babies' diapers. Whenever her mouth was not
5170 corked with clothes pegs she was singing in a powerful
5173 It was only an 'opeless fancy.<br>
5174 It passed like an Ipril dye,<br>
5175 But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred!<br>
5176 They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!</p>
5179 The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was
5180 one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the
5181 proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of
5182 these songs were composed without any human intervention
5183 whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the
5184 woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an
5185 almost pleasant sound. He could hear the woman singing and the
5186 scrape of her shoes on the flagstones, and the cries of the
5187 children in the street, and somewhere in the far distance a
5188 faint roar of traffic, and yet the room seemed curiously
5189 silent, thanks to the absence of a telescreen.</p>
5191 Folly, folly, folly! he thought again. It was
5192 inconceivable that they could frequent this place for more than
5193 a few weeks without being caught. But the temptation of having
5194 a hiding-place that was truly their own, indoors and near at
5195 hand, had been too much for both of them. For some time after
5196 their visit to the church belfry it had been impossible to
5197 arrange meetings. Working hours had been drastically increased
5198 in anticipation of Hate Week. It was more than a month distant,
5199 but the enormous, complex preparations that it entailed were
5200 throwing extra work on to everybody. Finally both of them
5201 managed to secure a free afternoon on the same day. They had
5202 agreed to go back to the clearing in the wood. On the evening
5203 beforehand they met briefly in the street. As usual, Winston
5204 hardly looked at Julia as they drifted towards one another in
5205 the crowd, but from the short glance he gave her it seemed to
5206 him that she was paler than usual.</p>
5208 'It's all off,' she murmured as soon as she judged it safe
5209 to speak. 'Tomorrow, I mean.'</p>
5213 'Tomorrow afternoon. I can't come.'</p>
5217 'Oh, the usual reason. It's started early this time.'</p>
5219 For a moment he was violently angry. During the month that
5220 he had known her the nature of his desire for her had changed.
5221 At the beginning there had been little true sensuality in it.
5222 Their first love-making had been simply an act of the will. But
5223 after the second time it was different. The smell of her hair,
5224 the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have
5225 got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a
5226 physical necessity, something that he not only wanted but felt
5227 that he had a right to. When she said that she could not come,
5228 he had the feeling that she was cheating him. But just at this
5229 moment the crowd pressed them together and their hands
5230 accidentally met. She gave the tips of his fingers a quick
5231 squeeze that seemed to invite not desire but affection. It
5232 struck him that when one lived with a woman this particular
5233 disappointment must be a normal, recurring event; and a deep
5234 tenderness, such as he had not felt for her before, suddenly
5235 took hold of him. He wished that they were a married couple of
5236 ten years' standing. He wished that he were walking through the
5237 streets with her just as they were doing now but openly and
5238 without fear, talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends
5239 for the household. He wished above all that they had some place
5240 where they could be alone together without feeling the
5241 obligation to make love every time they met. It was not
5242 actually at that moment, but at some time on the following day,
5243 that the idea of renting Mr Charrington's room had occurred to
5244 him. When he suggested it to Julia she had agreed with
5245 unexpected readiness. Both of them knew that it was lunacy. It
5246 was as though they were intentionally stepping nearer to their
5247 graves. As he sat waiting on the edge of the bed he thought
5248 again of the cellars of the Ministry of Love. It was curious
5249 how that predestined horror moved in and out of one's
5250 consciousness. There it lay, fixed in future times, preceding
5251 death as surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it, but
5252 one could perhaps postpone it: and yet instead, every now and
5253 again, by a conscious, wilful act, one chose to shorten the
5254 interval before it happened.</p>
5256 At this moment there was a quick step on the stairs. Julia
5257 burst into the room. She was carrying a tool-bag of coarse
5258 brown canvas, such as he had sometimes seen her carrying to and
5259 fro at the Ministry. He started forward to take her in his
5260 arms, but she disengaged herself rather hurriedly, partly
5261 because she was still holding the tool-bag.</p>
5263 'Half a second,' she said. 'Just let me show you what I've
5264 brought. Did you bring some of that filthy Victory Coffee? I
5265 thought you would. You can chuck it away again, because we
5266 shan't be needing it. Look here.'</p>
5268 She fell on her knees, threw open the bag, and tumbled out
5269 some spanners and a screwdriver that filled the top part of it.
5270 Underneath were a number of neat paper packets. The first
5271 packet that she passed to Winston had a strange and yet vaguely
5274 familiar feeling. It was filled with some kind of heavy,
5275 sand-like stuff which yielded wherever you touched it.</p>
5277 'It isn't sugar?' he said.</p>
5279 'Real sugar. Not saccharine, sugar. And here's a loaf of
5280 bread proper white bread, not our bloody stuff -- and a little
5281 pot of jam. And here's a tin of milk -- but look! This is the
5282 one I'm really proud of. I had to wrap a bit of sacking round
5285 But she did not need to tell him why she had wrapped it
5286 up. The smell was already filling the room, a rich hot smell
5287 which seemed like an emanation from his early childhood, but
5288 which one did occasionally meet with even now, blowing down a
5289 passage-way before a door slammed, or diffusing itself
5290 mysteriously in a crowded street, sniffed for an instant and
5291 then lost again.</p>
5293 'It's coffee,' he murmured, 'real coffee.'</p>
5295 'It's Inner Party coffee. There's a whole kilo here, she
5298 'How did you manage to get hold of all these things?'</p>
5300 'It's all Inner Party stuff. There's nothing those swine
5301 don't have, nothing. But of course waiters and servants and
5302 people pinch things, and -- look, I got a little packet of tea
5305 Winston had squatted down beside her. He tore open a
5306 corner of the packet.</p>
5308 'It's real tea. Not blackberry leaves.'</p>
5310 'There's been a lot of tea about lately. They've captured
5311 India, or something,' she said vaguely. 'But listen, dear. I
5312 want you to turn your back on me for three minutes. Go and sit
5313 on the other side of the bed. Don't go too near the window. And
5314 don't turn round till I tell you.'</p>
5316 Winston gazed abstractedly through the muslin curtain.
5317 Down in the yard the red-armed woman was still marching to and
5318 fro between the washtub and the line. She took two more pegs
5319 out of her mouth and sang with deep feeling:</p>
5321 They sye that time 'eals all things,<br>
5322 They sye you can always forget;<br>
5323 But the smiles an' the tears acrorss the years<br>
5324 They twist my 'eart-strings yet!</p>
5327 She knew the whole drivelling song by heart, it seemed.
5328 Her voice floated upward with the sweet summer air, very
5329 tuneful, charged with a sort of happy melancholy. One had the
5330 feeling that she would have been perfectly content, if the June
5331 evening had been endless and the supply of clothes
5332 inexhaustible, to remain there for a thousand years, pegging
5333 out diapers and singing rubbish. It struck him as a curious
5334 fact that he had never heard a member of the Party singing
5335 alone and spontaneously. It would even have seemed slightly
5336 unorthodox, a dangerous eccentricity, like talking to oneself.
5337 Perhaps it was only when people were somewhere near the
5338 starvation level that they had anything to sing about.</p>
5340 'You can turn round now,' said Julia.</p>
5342 He turned round, and for a second almost failed to
5343 recognize her. What he had actually expected was to see her
5344 naked. But she was not naked. The transformation that had
5345 happened was much more surprising than that. She had painted
5348 She must have slipped into some shop in the proletarian
5349 quarters and bought herself a complete set of make-up
5350 materials. Her lips were deeply reddened, her cheeks rouged,
5351 her nose powdered; there was even a touch of something under
5352 the eyes to make them brighter. It was not very skilfully done,
5353 but Winston's standards in such matters were not high. He had
5354 never before seen or imagined a woman of the Party with
5355 cosmetics on her face. The improvement in her appearance was
5356 startling. With just a few dabs of colour in the right places
5357 she had become not only very much prettier, but, above all, far
5358 more feminine. Her short hair and boyish overalls merely added
5359 to the effect. As he took her in his arms a wave of synthetic
5360 violets flooded his nostrils. He remembered the half-darkness
5361 of a basement kitchen, and a woman's cavernous mouth. It was
5362 the very same scent that she had used; but at the moment it did
5363 not seem to matter.</p>
5365 'Scent too!' he said.</p>
5367 'Yes, dear, scent too. And do you know what I'm going to
5368 do next? I'm going to get hold of a real woman's frock from
5369 somewhere and wear it instead of these bloody trousers. I'll
5370 wear silk stockings and high-heeled shoes! In this room I'm
5371 going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.'</p>
5373 They flung their clothes off and climbed into the huge
5374 mahogany bed. It was the first time that he had stripped
5375 himself naked in her presence. Until now he had been too much
5376 ashamed of his pale and meagre body, with the varicose veins
5377 standing out on his calves and the discoloured patch over his
5378 ankle. There were no sheets, but the blanket they lay on was
5379 threadbare and smooth, and the size and springiness of the bed
5380 astonished both of them. 'It's sure to be full of bugs, but who
5381 cares?' said Julia. One never saw a double bed nowadays, except
5382 in the homes of the proles. Winston had occasionally slept in
5383 one in his boyhood: Julia had never been in one before, so far
5384 as she could remember.</p>
5386 Presently they fell asleep for a little while. When
5387 Winston woke up the hands of the clock had crept round to
5388 nearly nine. He did not stir, because Julia was sleeping with
5389 her head in the crook of his arm. Most of her make-up had
5390 transferred itself to his own face or the bolster, but a light
5391 stain of rouge still brought out the beauty of her cheekbone. A
5392 yellow ray from the sinking sun fell across the foot of the bed
5393 and lighted up the fireplace, where the water in the pan was
5394 boiling fast. Down in the yard the woman had stopped singing,
5395 but the faint shouts of children floated in from the street. He
5396 wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a
5397 normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a
5398 summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making
5399 love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling
5400 any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to
5401 peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never have been a
5402 time when that seemed ordinary? Julia woke up, rubbed her eyes,
5403 and raised herself on her elbow to look at the oilstove.</p>
5405 'Half that water's boiled away,' she said. 'I'll get up
5406 and make some coffee in another moment. We've got an hour. What
5407 time do they cut the lights off at your flats?'</p>
5409 'Twenty-three thirty.'</p>
5411 'It's twenty-three at the hostel. But you have to get in
5412 earlier than that, because -- Hi! Get out, you filthy brute!'</p>
5414 She suddenly twisted herself over in the bed, seized a
5415 shoe from the floor, and sent it hurtling into the corner with
5416 a boyish jerk of her arm, exactly as he had seen her fling the
5417 dictionary at Goldstein, that morning during the Two Minutes
5420 'What was it?' he said in surprise.</p>
5422 'A rat. I saw him stick his beastly nose out of the
5423 wainscoting. There's a hole down there. I gave him a good
5424 fright, anyway.'</p>
5426 'Rats!' murmured Winston. 'In this room!'</p>
5428 'They're all over the place,' said Julia indifferently as
5429 she lay down again. 'We've even got them in the kitchen at the
5430 hostel. Some parts of London are swarming with them. Did you
5431 know they attack children? Yes, they do. In some of these
5432 streets a woman daren't leave a baby alone for two minutes.
5433 It's the great huge brown ones that do it. And the nasty thing
5434 is that the brutes always-'</p>
5436 'Don't go on!' said Winston, with his eyes tightly
5439 'Dearest! You've gone quite pale. What's the matter? Do
5440 they make you feel sick?'</p>
5442 'Of all horrors in the world -- a rat!'</p>
5444 She pressed herself against him and wound her limbs round
5445 him, as though to reassure him with the warmth of her body. He
5446 did not reopen his eyes immediately. For several moments he had
5447 had the feeling of being back in a nightmare which had recurred
5448 from time to time throughout his life. It was always very much
5449 the same. He was standing in front of a wall of darkness, and
5450 on the other side of it there was something unendurable,
5451 something too dreadful to be faced. In the dream his deepest
5452 feeling was always one of self-deception, because he did in
5453 fact know what was behind the wall of darkness. With a deadly
5454 effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own brain, he could
5455 even have dragged the thing into the open. He always woke up
5456 without discovering what it was: but somehow it was connected
5457 with what Julia had been saying when he cut her short.</p>
5459 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'it's nothing. I don't like rats,
5462 'Don't worry, dear, we're not going to have the filthy
5463 brutes in here. I'll stuff the hole with a bit of sacking
5464 before we go. And next time we come here I'll bring some
5465 plaster and bung it up properly.'</p>
5467 Already the black instant of panic was half-forgotten.
5468 Feeling slightly ashamed of himself, he sat up against the
5469 bedhead. Julia got out of bed, pulled on her overalls, and made
5470 the coffee. The smell that rose from the saucepan was so
5471 powerful and exciting that they shut the window lest anybody
5472 outside should notice it and become inquisitive. What was even
5473 better than the taste of the coffee was the silky texture given
5474 to it by the sugar, a thing Winston had almost forgotten after
5475 years of saccharine. With one hand in her pocket and a piece of
5476 bread and jam in the other, Julia wandered about the room,
5477 glancing indifferently at the bookcase, pointing out the best
5478 way of repairing the gateleg table, plumping herself down in
5479 the ragged arm-chair to see if it was comfortable, and
5480 examining the absurd twelve-hour clock with a sort of tolerant
5481 amusement. She brought the glass paperweight over to the bed to
5482 have a look at it in a better light. He took it out of her
5483 hand, fascinated, as always, by the soft, rainwatery appearance
5486 'What is it, do you think?' said Julia.</p>
5488 'I don't think it's anything-I mean, I don't think it was
5489 ever put to any use. That's what I like about it. It's a little
5490 chunk of history that they've forgotten to alter. It's a
5491 message from a hundred years ago, if one knew how to read it.'</p>
5493 'And that picture over there' -- she nodded at the
5494 engraving on the opposite wall-'would that be a hundred years
5497 'More. Two hundred, I dare say. One can't tell. It's
5498 impossible to discover the age of anything nowadays.'</p>
5500 She went over to look at it. 'Here's where that brute
5501 stuck his nose out,' she said, kicking the wainscoting
5502 immediately below the picture. 'What is this place? I've seen
5503 it before somewhere.'</p>
5505 'It's a church, or at least it used to be. St Clement's
5506 Danes its name was.' The fragment of rhyme that Mr Charrington
5507 had taught him came back into his head, and he added
5508 half-nostalgically: "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St
5511 To his astonishment she capped the line:</p>
5513 'You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's,<br>
5514 When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey -- '</p>
5517 'I can't remember how it goes on after that. But anyway I
5518 remember it ends up, "Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
5519 here comes a chopper to chop off your head!"</p>
5521 It was like the two halves of a countersign. But there
5522 must be another line after 'the bells of Old Bailey'. Perhaps
5523 it could be dug out of Mr Charrington's memory, if he were
5524 suitably prompted.</p>
5526 'Who taught you that?' he said.</p>
5528 'My grandfather. He used to say it to me when I was a
5529 little girl. He was vaporized when I was eight -- at any rate,
5530 he disappeared. I wonder what a lemon was,' she added
5531 inconsequently. 'I've seen oranges. They're a kind of round
5532 yellow fruit with a thick skin.'</p>
5534 'I can remember lemons,' said Winston. 'They were quite
5535 common in the fifties. They were so sour that it set your teeth
5536 on edge even to smell them.'</p>
5538 'I bet that picture's got bugs behind it,' said Julia.
5539 'I'll take it down and give it a good clean some day. I suppose
5540 it's almost time we were leaving. I must start washing this
5541 paint off. What a bore! I'll get the lipstick off your face
5544 Winston did not get up for a few minutes more. The room
5545 was darkening. He turned over towards the light and lay gazing
5546 into the glass paperweight. The inexhaustibly interesting thing
5547 was not the fragment of coral but the interior of the glass
5548 itself. There was such a depth of it, and yet it was almost as
5549 transparent as air. It was as though the surface of the glass
5550 had been the arch of the sky, enclosing a tiny world with its
5551 atmosphere complete. He had the feeling that he could get
5552 inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the
5553 mahogany bed and the gateleg table, and the clock and the steel
5554 engraving and the paperweight itself. The paperweight was the
5555 room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own,
5556 fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.</p>
5557 <h1><a name="13">XIII</a></h1>
5558 <p class="no-indent">
5559 Syme had vanished. A morning came, and he was missing from
5560 work: a few thoughtless people commented on his absence. On the
5561 next day nobody mentioned him. On the third day Winston went
5562 into the vestibule of the Records Department to look at the
5563 notice-board. One of the notices carried a printed list of the
5564 members of the Chess Committee, of whom Syme had been one. It
5565 looked almost exactly as it had looked before -- nothing had
5566 been crossed out -- but it was one name shorter. It was enough.
5567 Syme had ceased to exist: he had never existed.</p>
5569 The weather was baking hot. In the labyrinthine Ministry
5570 the windowless, air-conditioned rooms kept their normal
5571 temperature, but outside the pavements scorched one's feet and
5572 the stench of the Tubes at the rush hours was a horror. The
5573 preparations for Hate Week were in full swing, and the staffs
5574 of all the Ministries were working overtime. Processions,
5575 meetings, military parades, lectures, waxworks, displays, film
5576 shows, telescreen programmes all had to be organized; stands
5577 had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs
5578 written, rumours circulated, photographs faked. Julia's unit in
5579 the Fiction Department had been taken off the production of
5580 novels and was rushing out a series of atrocity pamphlets.
5581 Winston, in addition to his regular work, spent long periods
5582 every day in going through back files of The Times and
5583 altering and embellishing news items which were to be quoted in
5584 speeches. Late at night, when crowds of rowdy proles roamed the
5585 streets, the town had a curiously febrile air. The rocket bombs
5586 crashed oftener than ever, and sometimes in the far distance
5587 there were enormous explosions which no one could explain and
5588 about which there were wild rumours.</p>
5590 The new tune which was to be the theme-song of Hate Week
5591 (the Hate Song, it was called) had already been composed and
5592 was being endlessly plugged on the telescreens. It had a
5593 savage, barking rhythm which could not exactly be called music,
5594 but resembled the beating of a drum. Roared out by hundreds of
5595 voices to the tramp of marching feet, it was terrifying. The
5596 proles had taken a fancy to it, and in the midnight streets it
5597 competed with the still-popular 'It was only a hopeless
5598 fancy'. The Parsons children played it at all hours of the
5599 night and day, unbearably, on a comb and a piece of toilet
5600 paper. Winston's evenings were fuller than ever. Squads of
5601 volunteers, organized by Parsons, were preparing the street for
5602 Hate Week, stitching banners, painting posters, erecting
5603 flagstaffs on the roofs, and perilously slinging wires across
5604 the street for the reception of streamers. Parsons boasted that
5605 Victory Mansions alone would display four hundred metres of
5606 bunting. He was in his native element and as happy as a lark.
5607 The heat and the manual work had even given him a pretext for
5608 reverting to shorts and an open shirt in the evenings. He was
5609 everywhere at once, pushing, pulling, sawing, hammering,
5610 improvising, jollying everyone along with comradely
5611 exhortations and giving out from every fold of his body what
5612 seemed an inexhaustible supply of acrid-smelling sweat.</p>
5614 A new poster had suddenly appeared all over London. It had
5615 no caption, and represented simply the monstrous figure of a
5616 Eurasian soldier, three or four metres high, striding forward
5617 with expressionless Mongolian face and enormous boots, a
5618 submachine gun pointed from his hip. From whatever angle you
5619 looked at the poster, the muzzle of the gun, magnified by the
5620 foreshortening, seemed to be pointed straight at you. The thing
5621 had been plastered on every blank space on every wall, even
5622 outnumbering the portraits of Big Brother. The proles, normally
5623 apathetic about the war, were being lashed into one of their
5624 periodical frenzies of patriotism. As though to harmonize with
5625 the general mood, the rocket bombs had been killing larger
5626 numbers of people than usual. One fell on a crowded film
5627 theatre in Stepney, burying several hundred victims among the
5628 ruins. The whole population of the neighbourhood turned out for
5629 a long, trailing funeral which went on for hours and was in
5630 effect an indignation meeting. Another bomb fell on a piece of
5631 waste ground which was used as a playground and several dozen
5632 children were blown to pieces. There were further angry
5633 demonstrations, Goldstein was burned in effigy, hundreds of
5634 copies of the poster of the Eurasian soldier were torn down and
5635 added to the flames, and a number of shops were looted in the
5636 turmoil; then a rumour flew round that spies were directing the
5637 rocket bombs by means of wireless waves, and an old couple who
5638 were suspected of being of foreign extraction had their house
5639 set on fire and perished of suffocation.</p>
5641 In the room over Mr Charrington's shop, when they could
5642 get there, Julia and Winston lay side by side on a stripped bed
5643 under the open window, naked for the sake of coolness. The rat
5644 had never come back, but the bugs had multiplied hideously in
5645 the heat. It did not seem to matter. Dirty or clean, the room
5646 was paradise. As soon as they arrived they would sprinkle
5647 everything with pepper bought on the black market, tear off
5648 their clothes, and make love with sweating bodies, then fall
5649 asleep and wake to find that the bugs had rallied and were
5650 massing for the counter-attack.</p>
5652 Four, five, six -- seven times they met during the month
5653 of June. Winston had dropped his habit of drinking gin at all
5654 hours. He seemed to have lost the need for it. He had grown
5655 fatter, his varicose ulcer had subsided, leaving only a brown
5656 stain on the skin above his ankle, his fits of coughing in the
5657 early morning had stopped. The process of life had ceased to be
5658 intolerable, he had no longer any impulse to make faces at the
5659 telescreen or shout curses at the top of his voice. Now that
5660 they had a secure hiding-place, almost a home, it did not even
5661 seem a hardship that they could only meet infrequently and for
5662 a couple of hours at a time. What mattered was that the room
5663 over the junk-shop should exist. To know that it was there,
5664 inviolate, was almost the same as being in it. The room was a
5665 world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk.
5666 Mr Charrington, thought Winston, was another extinct animal. He
5667 usually stopped to talk with Mr Charrington for a few minutes
5668 on his way upstairs. The old man seemed seldom or never to go
5669 out of doors, and on the other hand to have almost no
5670 customers. He led a ghostlike existence between the tiny, dark
5671 shop, and an even tinier back kitchen where he prepared his
5672 meals and which contained, among other things, an unbelievably
5673 ancient gramophone with an enormous horn. He seemed glad of the
5674 opportunity to talk. Wandering about among his worthless stock,
5675 with his long nose and thick spectacles and his bowed shoulders
5676 in the velvet jacket, he had always vaguely the air of being a
5677 collector rather than a tradesman. With a sort of faded
5678 enthusiasm he would finger this scrap of rubbish or that -- a
5679 china bottle-stopper, the painted lid of a broken snuffbox, a
5680 pinchbeck locket containing a strand of some long-dead baby's
5681 hair -- never asking that Winston should buy it, merely that he
5682 should admire it. To talk to him was like listening to the
5683 tinkling of a worn-out musical-box. He had dragged out from the
5684 corners of his memory some more fragments of forgotten rhymes.
5685 There was one about four and twenty blackbirds, and another
5686 about a cow with a crumpled horn, and another about the death
5687 of poor Cock Robin. 'It just occurred to me you might be
5688 interested,' he would say with a deprecating little laugh
5689 whenever he produced a new fragment. But he could never recall
5690 more than a few lines of any one rhyme.</p>
5692 Both of them knew-in a way, it was never out of their
5693 minds that what was now happening could not last long. There
5694 were times when the fact of impending death seemed as palpable
5695 as the bed they lay on, and they would cling together with a
5696 sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned soul grasping at
5697 his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five
5698 minutes of striking. But there were also times when they had
5699 the illusion not only of safety but of permanence. So long as
5700 they were actually in this room, they both felt, no harm could
5701 come to them. Getting there was difficult and dangerous, but
5702 the room itself was sanctuary. It was as when Winston had gazed
5703 into the heart of the paperweight, with the feeling that it
5704 would be possible to get inside that glassy world, and that
5705 once inside it time could be arrested. Often they gave
5706 themselves up to daydreams of escape. Their luck would hold
5707 indefinitely, and they would carry on their intrigue, just like
5708 this, for the remainder of their natural lives. Or Katharine
5709 would die, and by subtle manoeuvrings Winston and Julia would
5710 succeed in getting married. Or they would commit suicide
5711 together. Or they would disappear, alter themselves out of
5712 recognition, learn to speak with proletarian accents, get jobs
5713 in a factory and live out their lives undetected in a
5714 back-street. It was all nonsense, as they both knew. In reality
5715 there was no escape. Even the one plan that was practicable,
5716 suicide, they had no intention of carrying out. To hang on from
5717 day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that
5718 had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one's
5719 lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air
5722 Sometimes, too, they talked of engaging in active
5723 rebellion against the Party, but with no notion of how to take
5724 the first step. Even if the fabulous Brotherhood was a reality,
5725 there still remained the difficulty of finding one's way into
5726 it. He told her of the strange intimacy that existed, or seemed
5727 to exist, between himself and O'Brien, and of the impulse he
5728 sometimes felt, simply to walk into O'Brien's presence,
5729 announce that he was the enemy of the Party, and demand his
5730 help. Curiously enough, this did not strike her as an
5731 impossibly rash thing to do. She was used to judging people by
5732 their faces, and it seemed natural to her that Winston should
5733 believe O'Brien to be trustworthy on the strength of a single
5734 flash of the eyes. Moreover she took it for granted that
5735 everyone, or nearly everyone, secretly hated the Party and
5736 would break the rules if he thought it safe to do so. But she
5737 refused to believe that widespread, organized opposition
5738 existed or could exist. The tales about Goldstein and his
5739 underground army, she said, were simply a lot of rubbish which
5740 the Party had invented for its own purposes and which you had
5741 to pretend to believe in. Times beyond number, at Party rallies
5742 and spontaneous demonstrations, she had shouted at the top of
5743 her voice for the execution of people whose names she had never
5744 heard and in whose supposed crimes she had not the faintest
5745 belief. When public trials were happening she had taken her
5746 place in the detachments from the Youth League who surrounded
5747 the courts from morning to night, chanting at intervals 'Death
5748 to the traitors!' During the Two Minutes Hate she always
5749 excelled all others in shouting insults at Goldstein. Yet she
5750 had only the dimmest idea of who Goldstein was and what
5751 doctrines he was supposed to represent. She had grown up since
5752 the Revolution and was too young to remember the ideological
5753 battles of the fifties and sixties. Such a thing as an
5754 independent political movement was outside her imagination: and
5755 in any case the Party was invincible. It would always exist,
5756 and it would always be the same. You could only rebel against
5757 it by secret disobedience or, at most, by isolated acts of
5758 violence such as killing somebody or blowing something up.</p>
5760 In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far
5761 less susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in
5762 some connexion to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled
5763 him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not
5764 happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were
5765 probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, 'just to
5766 keep people frightened'. This was an idea that had literally
5767 never occurred to him. She also stirred a sort of envy in him
5768 by telling him that during the Two Minutes Hate her great
5769 difficulty was to avoid bursting out laughing. But she only
5770 questioned the teachings of the Party when they in some way
5771 touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to accept the
5772 official mythology, simply because the difference between truth
5773 and falsehood did not seem important to her. She believed, for
5774 instance, having learnt it at school, that the Party had
5775 invented aeroplanes. (In his own schooldays, Winston
5776 remembered, in the late fifties, it was only the helicopter
5777 that the Party claimed to have invented; a dozen years later,
5778 when Julia was at school, it was already claiming the
5779 aeroplane; one generation more, and it would be claiming the
5780 steam engine.) And when he told her that aeroplanes had been in
5781 existence before he was born and long before the Revolution,
5782 the fact struck her as totally uninteresting. After all, what
5783 did it matter who had invented aeroplanes? It was rather more
5784 of a shock to him when he discovered from some chance remark
5785 that she did not remember that Oceania, four years ago, had
5786 been at war with Eastasia and at peace with Eurasia. It was
5787 true that she regarded the whole war as a sham: but apparently
5788 she had not even noticed that the name of the enemy had
5789 changed. 'I thought we'd always been at war with Eurasia,' she
5790 said vaguely. It frightened him a little. The invention of
5791 aeroplanes dated from long before her birth, but the switchover
5792 in the war had happened only four years ago, well after she was
5793 grown up. He argued with her about it for perhaps a quarter of
5794 an hour. In the end he succeeded in forcing her memory back
5795 until she did dimly recall that at one time Eastasia and not
5796 Eurasia had been the enemy. But the issue still struck her as
5797 unimportant. 'Who cares?' she said impatiently. 'It's always
5798 one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all
5801 Sometimes he talked to her of the Records Department and
5802 the impudent forgeries that he committed there. Such things did
5803 not appear to horrify her. She did not feel the abyss opening
5804 beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truths. He
5805 told her the story of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford and the
5806 momentous slip of paper which he had once held between his
5807 fingers. It did not make much impression on her. At first,
5808 indeed, she failed to grasp the point of the story.</p>
5810 'Were they friends of yours?' she said.</p>
5812 'No, I never knew them. They were Inner Party members.
5813 Besides, they were far older men than I was. They belonged to
5814 the old days, before the Revolution. I barely knew them by
5817 'Then what was there to worry about? People are being
5818 killed off all the time, aren't they?'</p>
5820 He tried to make her understand. 'This was an exceptional
5821 case. It wasn't just a question of somebody being killed. Do
5822 you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has been
5823 actually abolished? If it survives anywhere, it's in a few
5824 solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of
5825 glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the
5826 Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record
5827 has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten,
5828 every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and
5829 building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And
5830 that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.
5831 History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present
5832 in which the Party is always right. I know, of course,
5833 that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for
5834 me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After
5835 the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence
5836 is inside my own mind, and I don't know with any certainty that
5837 any other human being shares my memories. Just in that one
5838 instance, in my whole life, I did possess actual concrete
5839 evidence after the event -- years after it.'</p>
5841 'And what good was that?'</p>
5843 'It was no good, because I threw it away a few minutes
5844 later. But if the same thing happened today, I should keep it.'</p>
5846 'Well, I wouldn't!' said Julia. 'I'm quite ready to take
5847 risks, but only for something worth while, not for bits of old
5848 newspaper. What could you have done with it even if you had
5851 'Not much, perhaps. But it was evidence. It might have
5852 planted a few doubts here and there, supposing that I'd dared
5853 to show it to anybody. I don't imagine that we can alter
5854 anything in our own lifetime. But one can imagine little knots
5855 of resistance springing up here and there -- small groups of
5856 people banding themselves together, and gradually growing, and
5857 even leaving a few records behind, so that the next generations
5858 can carry on where we leave off.'</p>
5860 'I'm not interested in the next generation, dear. I'm
5861 interested in us.</p>
5863 'You're only a rebel from the waist downwards,' he told
5866 She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms
5867 round him in delight.</p>
5869 In the ramifications of party doctrine she had not the
5870 faintest interest. Whenever he began to talk of the principles
5871 of Ingsoc, doublethink, the mutability of the past, and the
5872 denial of objective reality, and to use Newspeak words, she
5873 became bored and confused and said that she never paid any
5874 attention to that kind of thing. One knew that it was all
5875 rubbish, so why let oneself be worried by it? She knew when to
5876 cheer and when to boo, and that was all one needed. If he
5877 persisted in talking of such subjects, she had a disconcerting
5878 habit of falling asleep. She was one of those people who can go
5879 to sleep at any hour and in any position. Talking to her, he
5880 realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy
5881 while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a
5882 way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most
5883 successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They
5884 could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of
5885 reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what
5886 was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in
5887 public events to notice what was happening. By lack of
5888 understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed
5889 everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because
5890 it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass
5891 undigested through the body of a bird.</p>
5892 <h1><a name="14">XIV</a></h1>
5893 <p class="no-indent">
5894 It had happened at last. The expected message had come.
5895 All his life, it seemed to him, he had been waiting for this to
5898 He was walking down the long corridor at the Ministry and
5899 he was almost at the spot where Julia had slipped the note into
5900 his hand when he became aware that someone larger than himself
5901 was walking just behind him. The person, whoever it was, gave a
5902 small cough, evidently as a prelude to speaking. Winston
5903 stopped abruptly and turned. It was O'Brien.</p>
5905 At last they were face to face, and it seemed that his
5906 only impulse was to run away. His heart bounded violently. He
5907 would have been incapable of speaking. O'Brien, however, had
5908 continued forward in the same movement, laying a friendly hand
5909 for a moment on Winston's arm, so that the two of them were
5910 walking side by side. He began speaking with the peculiar grave
5911 courtesy that differentiated him from the majority of Inner
5914 'I had been hoping for an opportunity of talking to you,'
5915 he said. 'I was reading one of your Newspeak articles in The
5916 Times the other day. You take a scholarly interest in
5917 Newspeak, I believe?'</p>
5919 Winston had recovered part of his self-possession. 'Hardly
5920 scholarly,' he said. 'I'm only an amateur. It's not my subject.
5921 I have never had anything to do with the actual construction of
5924 'But you write it very elegantly,' said O'Brien. 'That is
5925 not only my own opinion. I was talking recently to a friend of
5926 yours who is certainly an expert. His name has slipped my
5927 memory for the moment.'</p>
5929 Again Winston's heart stirred painfully. It was
5930 inconceivable that this was anything other than a reference to
5931 Syme. But Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an
5932 unperson. Any identifiable reference to him would have
5933 been mortally dangerous. O'Brien's remark must obviously have
5934 been intended as a signal, a codeword. By sharing a small act
5935 of thoughtcrime he had turned the two of them into accomplices.
5936 They had continued to stroll slowly down the corridor, but now
5937 O'Brien halted. With the curious, disarming friendliness that
5938 he always managed to put in to the gesture he resettled his
5939 spectacles on his nose. Then he went on:</p>
5941 'What I had really intended to say was that in your
5942 article I noticed you had used two words which have become
5943 obsolete. But they have only become so very recently. Have you
5944 seen the tenth edition of the Newspeak Dictionary?'</p>
5946 'No,' said Winston. 'I didn't think it had been issued
5947 yet. We are still using the ninth in the Records Department.'</p>
5949 'The tenth edition is not due to appear for some months, I
5950 believe. But a few advance copies have been circulated. I have
5951 one myself. It might interest you to look at it, perhaps?'</p>
5953 'Very much so,' said Winston, immediately seeing where
5956 'Some of the new developments are most ingenious. The
5957 reduction in the number of verbs -- that is the point that will
5958 appeal to you, I think. Let me see, shall I send a messenger to
5959 you with the dictionary? But I am afraid I invariably forget
5960 anything of that kind. Perhaps you could pick it up at my flat
5961 at some time that suited you? Wait. Let me give you my
5964 They were standing in front of a telescreen. Somewhat
5965 absentmindedly O'Brien felt two of his pockets and then
5966 produced a small leather-covered notebook and a gold
5967 ink-pencil. Immediately beneath the telescreen, in such a position
5968 that anyone who was watching at the other end of the instrument
5969 could read what he was writing, he scribbled an address, tore
5970 out the page and handed it to Winston.</p>
5972 'I am usually at home in the evenings,' he said. 'If not,
5973 my servant will give you the dictionary.'</p>
5975 He was gone, leaving Winston holding the scrap of paper,
5976 which this time there was no need to conceal. Nevertheless he
5977 carefully memorized what was written on it, and some hours
5978 later dropped it into the memory hole along with a mass of
5981 They had been talking to one another for a couple of
5982 minutes at the most. There was only one meaning that the
5983 episode could possibly have. It had been contrived as a way of
5984 letting Winston know O'Brien's address. This was necessary,
5985 because except by direct enquiry it was never possible to
5986 discover where anyone lived. There were no directories of any
5987 kind. 'If you ever want to see me, this is where I can be
5988 found,' was what O'Brien had been saying to him. Perhaps there
5989 would even be a message concealed somewhere in the dictionary.
5990 But at any rate, one thing was certain. The conspiracy that he
5991 had dreamed of did exist, and he had reached the outer edges of
5994 He knew that sooner or later he would obey O'Brien's
5995 summons. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps after a long delay -- he was
5996 not certain. What was happening was only the working-out of a
5997 process that had started years ago. The first step had been a
5998 secret, involuntary thought, the second had been the opening of
5999 the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from
6000 words to actions. The last step was something that would happen
6001 in the Ministry of Love. He had accepted it. The end was
6002 contained in the beginning. But it was frightening: or, more
6003 exactly, it was like a foretaste of death, like being a little
6004 less alive. Even while he was speaking to O'Brien, when the
6005 meaning of the words had sunk in, a chilly shuddering feeling
6006 had taken possession of his body. He had the sensation of
6007 stepping into the dampness of a grave, and it was not much
6008 better because he had always known that the grave was there and
6009 waiting for him.</p>
6010 <h1><a name="15">XV</a></h1>
6011 <p class="no-indent">
6012 Winston had woken up with his eyes full of tears. Julia
6013 rolled sleepily against him, murmuring something that might
6014 have been 'What's the matter?'</p>
6016 'I dreamt-' he began, and stopped short. It was too
6017 complex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and
6018 there was a memory connected with it that had swum into his
6019 mind in the few seconds after waking.</p>
6021 He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the
6022 atmosphere of the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in which
6023 his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a
6024 landscape on a summer evening after rain. It had all occurred
6025 inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glass was
6026 the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everything was flooded
6027 with clear soft light in which one could see into interminable
6028 distances. The dream had also been comprehended by -- indeed,
6029 in some sense it had consisted in -- a gesture of the arm made
6030 by his mother, and made again thirty years later by the Jewish
6031 woman he had seen on the news film, trying to shelter the small
6032 boy from the bullets, before the helicopter blew them both to
6035 'Do you know,' he said, 'that until this moment I believed
6036 I had murdered my mother?'</p>
6038 'Why did you murder her?' said Julia, almost asleep.</p>
6040 'I didn't murder her. Not physically.'</p>
6042 In the dream he had remembered his last glimpse of his
6043 mother, and within a few moments of waking the cluster of small
6044 events surrounding it had all come back. It was a memory that
6045 he must have deliberately pushed out of his consciousness over
6046 many years. He was not certain of the date, but he could not
6047 have been less than ten years old, possibly twelve, when it had
6050 His father had disappeared some time earlier, how much
6051 earlier he could not remember. He remembered better the
6052 rackety, uneasy circumstances of the time: the periodical
6053 panics about air-raids and the sheltering in Tube stations, the
6054 piles of rubble everywhere, the unintelligible proclamations
6055 posted at street corners, the gangs of youths in shirts all the
6056 same colour, the enormous queues outside the bakeries, the
6057 intermittent machine-gun fire in the distance -- above all, the
6058 fact that there was never enough to eat. He remembered long
6059 afternoons spent with other boys in scrounging round dustbins
6060 and rubbish heaps, picking out the ribs of cabbage leaves,
6061 potato peelings, sometimes even scraps of stale breadcrust from
6062 which they carefully scraped away the cinders; and also in
6063 waiting for the passing of trucks which travelled over a
6064 certain route and were known to carry cattle feed, and which,
6065 when they jolted over the bad patches in the road, sometimes
6066 spilt a few fragments of oil-cake.</p>
6068 When his father disappeared, his mother did not show any
6069 surprise or any violent grief, but a sudden change came over
6070 her. She seemed to have become completely spiritless. It was
6071 evident even to Winston that she was waiting for something that
6072 she knew must happen. She did everything that was needed --
6073 cooked, washed, mended, made the bed, swept the floor, dusted
6074 the mantelpiece -- always very slowly and with a curious lack
6075 of superfluous motion, like an artist's lay-figure moving of
6076 its own accord. Her large shapely body seemed to relapse
6077 naturally into stillness. For hours at a time she would sit
6078 almost immobile on the bed, nursing his young sister, a tiny,
6079 ailing, very silent child of two or three, with a face made
6080 simian by thinness. Very occasionally she would take Winston in
6081 her arms and press him against her for a long time without
6082 saying anything. He was aware, in spite of his youthfulness and
6083 selfishness, that this was somehow connected with the
6084 never-mentioned thing that was about to happen.</p>
6086 He remembered the room where they lived, a dark,
6087 closesmelling room that seemed half filled by a bed with a
6088 white counterpane. There was a gas ring in the fender, and a
6089 shelf where food was kept, and on the landing outside there was
6090 a brown earthenware sink, common to several rooms. He
6091 remembered his mother's statuesque body bending over the gas
6092 ring to stir at something in a saucepan. Above all he
6093 remembered his continuous hunger, and the fierce sordid battles
6094 at mealtimes. He would ask his mother naggingly, over and over
6095 again, why there was not more food, he would shout and storm at
6096 her (he even remembered the tones of his voice, which was
6097 beginning to break prematurely and sometimes boomed in a
6098 peculiar way), or he would attempt a snivelling note of pathos
6099 in his efforts to get more than his share. His mother was quite
6100 ready to give him more than his share. She took it for granted
6101 that he, 'the boy', should have the biggest portion; but
6102 however much she gave him he invariably demanded more. At every
6103 meal she would beseech him not to be selfish and to remember
6104 that his little sister was sick and also needed food, but it
6105 was no use. He would cry out with rage when she stopped
6106 ladling, he would try to wrench the saucepan and spoon out of
6107 her hands, he would grab bits from his sister's plate. He knew
6108 that he was starving the other two, but he could not help it;
6109 he even felt that he had a right to do it. The clamorous hunger
6110 in his belly seemed to justify him. Between meals, if his
6111 mother did not stand guard, he was constantly pilfering at the
6112 wretched store of food on the shelf.</p>
6114 One day a chocolate-ration was issued. There had been no
6115 such issue for weeks or months past. He remembered quite
6116 clearly that precious little morsel of chocolate. It was a
6117 two-ounce slab (they still talked about ounces in those days)
6118 between the three of them. It was obvious that it ought to be
6119 divided into three equal parts. Suddenly, as though he were
6120 listening to somebody else, Winston heard himself demanding in
6121 a loud booming voice that he should be given the whole piece.
6122 His mother told him not to be greedy. There was a long, nagging
6123 argument that went round and round, with shouts, whines, tears,
6124 remonstrances, bargainings. His tiny sister, clinging to her
6125 mother with both hands, exactly like a baby monkey, sat looking
6126 over her shoulder at him with large, mournful eyes. In the end
6127 his mother broke off three-quarters of the chocolate and gave
6128 it to Winston, giving the other quarter to his sister. The
6129 little girl took hold of it and looked at it dully, perhaps not
6130 knowing what it was. Winston stood watching her for a moment.
6131 Then with a sudden swift spring he had snatched the piece of
6132 chocolate out of his sister's hand and was fleeing for the
6135 'Winston, Winston!' his mother called after him. 'Come
6136 back! Give your sister back her chocolate!'</p>
6138 He stopped, but did not come back. His mother's anxious
6139 eyes were fixed on his face. Even now he was thinking about the
6140 thing, he did not know what it was that was on the point of
6141 happening. His sister, conscious of having been robbed of
6142 something, had set up a feeble wail. His mother drew her arm
6143 round the child and pressed its face against her breast.
6144 Something in the gesture told him that his sister was dying. He
6145 turned and fled down the stairs. with the chocolate growing
6146 sticky in his hand.</p>
6148 He never saw his mother again. After he had devoured the
6149 chocolate he felt somewhat ashamed of himself and hung about in
6150 the streets for several hours, until hunger drove him home.
6151 When he came back his mother had disappeared. This was already
6152 becoming normal at that time. Nothing was gone from the room
6153 except his mother and his sister. They had not taken any
6154 clothes, not even his mother's overcoat. To this day he did not
6155 know with any certainty that his mother was dead. It was
6156 perfectly possible that she had merely been sent to a
6157 forced-labour camp. As for his sister, she might have been
6158 removed, like Winston himself, to one of the colonies for
6159 homeless children (Reclamation Centres, they were called) which
6160 had grown up as a result of the civil war, or she might have
6161 been sent to the labour camp along with his mother, or simply
6162 left somewhere or other to die.</p>
6164 The dream was still vivid in his mind, especially the
6165 enveloping protecting gesture of the arm in which its whole
6166 meaning seemed to be contained. His mind went back to another
6167 dream of two months ago. Exactly as his mother had sat on the
6168 dingy whitequilted bed, with the child clinging to her, so she
6169 had sat in the sunken ship, far underneath him, and drowning
6170 deeper every minute, but still looking up at him through the
6171 darkening water.</p>
6173 He told Julia the story of his mother's disappearance.
6174 Without opening her eyes she rolled over and settled herself
6175 into a more comfortable position.</p>
6177 'I expect you were a beastly little swine in those days,'
6178 she said indistinctly. 'All children are swine.'</p>
6180 'Yes. But the real point of the story-'</p>
6182 From her breathing it was evident that she was going off
6183 to sleep again. He would have liked to continue talking about
6184 his mother. He did not suppose, from what he could remember of
6185 her, that she had been an unusual woman, still less an
6186 intelligent one; and yet she had possessed a kind of nobility,
6187 a kind of purity, simply because the standards that she obeyed
6188 were private ones. Her feelings were her own, and could not be
6189 altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an
6190 action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you
6191 loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to
6192 give, you still gave him love. When the last of the chocolate
6193 was gone, his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was
6194 no use, it changed nothing, it did not produce more chocolate,
6195 it did not avert the child's death or her own; but it seemed
6196 natural to her to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also
6197 covered the little boy with her arm, which was no more use
6198 against the bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing
6199 that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses,
6200 mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time
6201 robbing you of all power over the material world. When once you
6202 were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel,
6203 what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no
6204 difference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you nor
6205 your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted clean
6206 out of the stream of history. And yet to the people of only two
6207 generations ago this would not have seemed all-important,
6208 because they were not attempting to alter history. They were
6209 governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What
6210 mattered were individual relationships, and a completely
6211 helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying
6212 man, could have value in itself. The proles, it suddenly
6213 occurred to him, had remained in this condition. They were not
6214 loyal to a party or a country or an idea, they were loyal to
6215 one another. For the first time in his life he did not despise
6216 the proles or think of them merely as an inert force which
6217 would one day spring to life and regenerate the world. The
6218 proles had stayed human. They had not become hardened inside.
6219 They had held on to the primitive emotions which he himself had
6220 to re-learn by conscious effort. And in thinking this he
6221 remembered, without apparent relevance, how a few weeks ago he
6222 had seen a severed hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it
6223 into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk.</p>
6225 'The proles are human beings,' he said aloud. 'We are not
6228 'Why not?' said Julia, who had woken up again.</p>
6230 He thought for a little while. 'Has it ever occurred to
6231 you. he said, 'that the best thing for us to do would be simply
6232 to walk out of here before it's too late, and never see each
6235 'Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several times. But I'm
6236 not going to do it, all the same.'</p>
6238 'We've been lucky,' he said 'but it can't last much
6239 longer. You're young. You look normal and innocent. If you keep
6240 clear of people like me, you might stay alive for another fifty
6243 'No. I've thought it all out. What you do, I'm going to
6244 do. And don't be too downhearted. I'm rather good at staying
6247 'We may be together for another six months -- a year --
6248 there's no knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do
6249 you realize how utterly alone we shall be? When once they get
6250 hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that
6251 either of us can do for the other. If I confess, they'll shoot
6252 you, and if I refuse to confess, they'll shoot you just the
6253 same. Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying,
6254 will put off your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of
6255 us will even know whether the other is alive or dead. We shall
6256 be utterly without power of any kind. The one thing that
6257 matters is that we shouldn't betray one another, although even
6258 that can't make the slightest difference.'</p>
6260 'If you mean confessing,' she said, 'we shall do that,
6261 right enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it.
6262 They torture you.'</p>
6264 'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What
6265 you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they
6266 could make me stop loving you -- that would be the real
6269 She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said
6270 finally. 'It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you
6271 say anything -- anything -- but they can't make you believe it.
6272 They can't get inside you.'</p>
6274 'No,' he said a little more hopefully, 'no; that's quite
6275 true. They can't get inside you. If you can feel that
6276 staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any
6277 result whatever, you've beaten them.'</p>
6279 He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear.
6280 They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your
6281 head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness
6282 they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another
6283 human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less true when you
6284 were actually in their hands. One did not know what happened
6285 inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess:
6286 tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that registered your
6287 nervous reactions, gradual wearing-down by sleeplessness and
6288 solitude and persistent questioning. Facts, at any rate, could
6289 not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by enquiry, they
6290 could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was
6291 not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it
6292 ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings: for that
6293 matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted
6294 to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that
6295 you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose
6296 workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained
6298 <h1><a name="16">XVI</a></h1>
6299 <p class="no-indent">
6300 They had done it, they had done it at last!</p>
6302 The room they were standing in was long-shaped and softly
6303 lit. The telescreen was dimmed to a low murmur; the richness of
6304 the dark-blue carpet gave one the impression of treading on
6305 velvet. At the far end of the room O'Brien was sitting at a
6306 table under a green-shaded lamp, with a mass of papers on
6307 either side of him. He had not bothered to look up when the
6308 servant showed Julia and Winston in.</p>
6310 Winston's heart was thumping so hard that he doubted
6311 whether he would be able to speak. They had done it, they had
6312 done it at last, was all he could think. It had been a rash act
6313 to come here at all, and sheer folly to arrive together; though
6314 it was true that they had come by different routes and only met
6315 on O'Brien's doorstep. But merely to walk into such a place
6316 needed an effort of the nerve. It was only on very rare
6317 occasions that one saw inside the dwelling-places of the Inner
6318 Party, or even penetrated into the quarter of the town where
6319 they lived. The whole atmosphere of the huge block of flats,
6320 the richness and spaciousness of everything, the unfamiliar
6321 smells of good food and good tobacco, the silent and incredibly
6322 rapid lifts sliding up and down, the white-jacketed servants
6323 hurrying to and fro -- everything was intimidating. Although he
6324 had a good pretext for coming here, he was haunted at every
6325 step by the fear that a black-uniformed guard would suddenly
6326 appear from round the corner, demand his papers, and order him
6327 to get out. O'Brien's servant, however, had admitted the two of
6328 them without demur. He was a small, dark-haired man in a white
6329 jacket, with a diamond-shaped, completely expressionless face
6330 which might have been that of a Chinese. The passage down which
6331 he led them was softly carpeted, with cream-papered walls and
6332 white wainscoting, all exquisitely clean. That too was
6333 intimidating. Winston could not remember ever to have seen a
6334 passageway whose walls were not grimy from the contact of human
6337 O'Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers and seemed
6338 to be studying it intently. His heavy face, bent down so that
6339 one could see the line of the nose, looked both formidable and
6340 intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds he sat without
6341 stirring. Then he pulled the speakwrite towards him and rapped
6342 out a message in the hybrid jargon of the Ministries:</p>
6344 'Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise stop
6345 suggestion contained item six doubleplus ridiculous verging
6346 crimethink cancel stop unproceed constructionwise antegetting
6347 plusfull estimates machinery overheads stop end message.'</p>
6349 He rose deliberately from his chair and came towards them
6350 across the soundless carpet. A little of the official
6351 atmosphere seemed to have fallen away from him with the
6352 Newspeak words, but his expression was grimmer than usual, as
6353 though he were not pleased at being disturbed. The terror that
6354 Winston already felt was suddenly shot through by a streak of
6355 ordinary embarrassment. It seemed to him quite possible that he
6356 had simply made a stupid mistake. For what evidence had he in
6357 reality that O'Brien was any kind of political conspirator?
6358 Nothing but a flash of the eyes and a single equivocal remark:
6359 beyond that, only his own secret imaginings, founded on a
6360 dream. He could not even fall back on the pretence that he had
6361 come to borrow the dictionary, because in that case Julia's
6362 presence was impossible to explain. As O'Brien passed the
6363 telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned
6364 aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap.
6365 The voice had stopped.</p>
6367 Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise.
6368 Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken
6369 aback to be able to hold his tongue.</p>
6371 'You can turn it off!' he said.</p>
6373 'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that
6376 He was opposite them now. His solid form towered over the
6377 pair of them, and the expression on his face was still
6378 indecipherable. He was waiting, somewhat sternly, for Winston
6379 to speak, but about what? Even now it was quite conceivable
6380 that he was simply a busy man wondering irritably why he had
6381 been interrupted. Nobody spoke. After the stopping of the
6382 telescreen the room seemed deadly silent. The seconds marched
6383 past, enormous. With difficulty Winston continued to keep his
6384 eyes fixed on O'Brien's. Then suddenly the grim face broke down
6385 into what might have been the beginnings of a smile. With his
6386 characteristic gesture O'Brien resettled his spectacles on his
6389 'Shall I say it, or will you?' he said.</p>
6391 'I will say it,' said Winston promptly. 'That thing is
6392 really turned off?'</p>
6394 'Yes, everything is turned off. We are alone.'</p>
6396 'We have come here because-'</p>
6398 He paused, realizing for the first time the vagueness of
6399 his own motives. Since he did not in fact know what kind of
6400 help he expected from O'Brien, it was not easy to say why he
6401 had come here. He went on, conscious that what he was saying
6402 must sound both feeble and pretentious:</p>
6404 'We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some
6405 kind of secret organization working against the Party, and that
6406 you are involved in it. We want to join it and work for it. We
6407 are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles of
6408 Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are also adulterers. I
6409 tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your mercy.
6410 If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other way, we
6413 He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, with the feeling
6414 that the door had opened. Sure enough, the little yellow-faced
6415 servant had come in without knocking. Winston saw that he was
6416 carrying a tray with a decanter and glasses.</p>
6418 'Martin is one of us,' said O'Brien impassively. 'Bring
6419 the drinks over here, Martin. Put them on the round table. Have
6420 we enough chairs? Then we may as well sit down and talk in
6421 comfort. Bring a chair for yourself, Martin. This is business.
6422 You can stop being a servant for the next ten minutes.'</p>
6424 The little man sat down, quite at his ease, and yet still
6425 with a servant-like air, the air of a valet enjoying a
6426 privilege. Winston regarded him out of the corner of his eye.
6427 It struck him that the man's whole life was playing a part, and
6428 that he felt it to be dangerous to drop his assumed personality
6429 even for a moment. O'Brien took the decanter by the neck and
6430 filled up the glasses with a dark-red liquid. It aroused in
6431 Winston dim memories of something seen long ago on a wall or a
6432 hoarding -- a vast bottle composed of electric lights which
6433 seemed to move up and down and pour its contents into a glass.
6434 Seen from the top the stuff looked almost black, but in the
6435 decanter it gleamed like a ruby. It had a sour-sweet smell. He
6436 saw Julia pick up her glass and sniff at it with frank
6439 'It is called wine,' said O'Brien with a faint smile. 'You
6440 will have read about it in books, no doubt. Not much of it gets
6441 to the Outer Party, I am afraid.' His face grew solemn again,
6442 and he raised his glass: 'I think it is fitting that we should
6443 begin by drinking a health. To our Leader: To Emmanuel
6446 Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine
6447 was a thing he had read and dreamed about. Like the glass
6448 paperweight or Mr Charrington's half-remembered rhymes, it
6449 belonged to the vanished, romantic past, the olden time as he
6450 liked to call it in his secret thoughts. For some reason he had
6451 always thought of wine as having an intensely sweet taste, like
6452 that of blackberry jam and an immediate intoxicating effect.
6453 Actually, when he came to swallow it, the stuff was distinctly
6454 disappointing. The truth was that after years of gin-drinking
6455 he could barely taste it. He set down the empty glass.</p>
6457 'Then there is such a person as Goldstein?' he said.</p>
6459 'Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do
6462 'And the conspiracy -- the organization? Is it real? It is
6463 not simply an invention of the Thought Police?'</p>
6465 'No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call it. You will
6466 never learn much more about the Brotherhood than that it exists
6467 and that you belong to it. I will come back to that presently.'
6468 He looked at his wrist-watch. 'It is unwise even for members of
6469 the Inner Party to turn off the telescreen for more than half
6470 an hour. You ought not to have come here together, and you will
6471 have to leave separately. You, comrade' -- he bowed his head to
6472 Julia -- 'will leave first. We have about twenty minutes at our
6473 disposal. You will understand that I must start by asking you
6474 certain questions. In general terms, what are you prepared to
6477 'Anything that we are capable of,' said Winston.</p>
6479 O'Brien had turned himself a little in his chair so that
6480 he was facing Winston. He almost ignored Julia, seeming to take
6481 it for granted that Winston could speak for her. For a moment
6482 the lids flitted down over his eyes. He began asking his
6483 questions in a low, expressionless voice, as though this were a
6484 routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers were known
6487 'You are prepared to give your lives?'</p>
6491 'You are prepared to commit murder?'</p>
6495 'To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of
6496 hundreds of innocent people?'</p>
6500 'To betray your country to foreign powers?'</p>
6504 'You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to
6505 corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming
6506 drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal
6507 diseases -- to do anything which is likely to cause
6508 demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?'</p>
6512 'If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to
6513 throw sulphuric acid in a child's face -- are you prepared to
6518 'You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the
6519 rest of your life as a waiter or a dock-worker?'</p>
6523 'You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order
6528 'You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never
6529 see one another again?'</p>
6531 'No!' broke in Julia.</p>
6533 It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before he
6534 answered. For a moment he seemed even to have been deprived of
6535 the power of speech. His tongue worked soundlessly, forming the
6536 opening syllables first of one word, then of the other, over
6537 and over again. Until he had said it, he did not know which
6538 word he was going to say. 'No,' he said finally.</p>
6540 'You did well to tell me,' said O'Brien. 'It is necessary
6541 for us to know everything.'</p>
6543 He turned himself toward Julia and added in a voice with
6544 somewhat more expression in it:</p>
6546 'Do you understand that even if he survives, it may be as
6547 a different person? We may be obliged to give him a new
6548 identity. His face, his movements, the shape of his hands, the
6549 colour of his hair -- even his voice would be different. And
6550 you yourself might have become a different person. Our surgeons
6551 can alter people beyond recognition. Sometimes it is necessary.
6552 Sometimes we even amputate a limb.'</p>
6554 Winston could not help snatching another sidelong glance
6555 at Martin's Mongolian face. There were no scars that he could
6556 see. Julia had turned a shade paler, so that her freckles were
6557 showing, but she faced O'Brien boldly. She murmured something
6558 that seemed to be assent.</p>
6560 'Good. Then that is settled.'</p>
6562 There was a silver box of cigarettes on the table. With a
6563 rather absent-minded air O'Brien pushed them towards the
6564 others, took one himself, then stood up and began to pace
6565 slowly to and fro, as though he could think better standing.
6566 They were very good cigarettes, very thick and well-packed,
6567 with an unfamiliar silkiness in the paper. O'Brien looked at
6568 his wrist-watch again.</p>
6570 'You had better go back to your Pantry, Martin,' he said.
6571 'I shall switch on in a quarter of an hour. Take a good look at
6572 these comrades' faces before you go. You will be seeing them
6573 again. I may not.</p>
6575 Exactly as they had done at the front door, the little
6576 man's dark eyes flickered over their faces. There was not a
6577 trace of friendliness in his manner. He was memorizing their
6578 appearance, but he felt no interest in them, or appeared to
6579 feel none. It occurred to Winston that a synthetic face was
6580 perhaps incapable of changing its expression. Without speaking
6581 or giving any kind of salutation, Martin went out, closing the
6582 door silently behind him. O'Brien was strolling up and down,
6583 one hand in the pocket of his black overalls, the other holding
6586 'You understand,' he said, 'that you will be fighting in
6587 the dark. You will always be in the dark. You will receive
6588 orders and you will obey them, without knowing why. Later I
6589 shall send you a book from which you will learn the true nature
6590 of the society we live in, and the strategy by which we shall
6591 destroy it. When you have read the book, you will be full
6592 members of the Brotherhood. But between the general aims that
6593 we are fighting for and the immediate tasks of the moment, you
6594 will never know anything. I tell you that the Brotherhood
6595 exists, but I cannot tell you whether it numbers a hundred
6596 members, or ten million. From your personal knowledge you will
6597 never be able to say that it numbers even as many as a dozen.
6598 You will have three or four contacts, who will be renewed from
6599 time to time as they disappear. As this was your first contact,
6600 it will be preserved. When you receive orders, they will come
6601 from me. If we find it necessary to communicate with you, it
6602 will be through Martin. When you are finally caught, you will
6603 confess. That is unavoidable. But you will have very little to
6604 confess, other than your own actions. You will not be able to
6605 betray more than a handful of unimportant people. Probably you
6606 will not even betray me. By that time I may be dead, or I shall
6607 have become a different person, with a different face.'</p>
6609 He continued to move to and fro over the soft carpet. In
6610 spite of the bulkiness of his body there was a remarkable grace
6611 in his movements. It came out even in the gesture with which he
6612 thrust a hand into his pocket, or manipulated a cigarette. More
6613 even than of strength, he gave an impression of confidence and
6614 of an understanding tinged by irony. However much in earnest he
6615 might be, he had nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs
6616 to a fanatic. When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal
6617 disease, amputated limbs, and altered faces, it was with a
6618 faint air of persiflage. 'This is unavoidable,' his voice
6619 seemed to say; 'this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly.
6620 But this is not what we shall be doing when life is worth
6621 living again.' A wave of admiration, almost of worship, flowed
6622 out from Winston towards O'Brien. For the moment he had
6623 forgotten the shadowy figure of Goldstein. When you looked at
6624 O'Brien's powerful shoulders and his blunt-featured face, so
6625 ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible to believe that he
6626 could be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was not equal
6627 to, no danger that he could not foresee. Even Julia seemed to
6628 be impressed. She had let her cigarette go out and was
6629 listening intently. O'Brien went on:</p>
6631 'You will have heard rumours of the existence of the
6632 Brotherhood. No doubt you have formed your own picture of it.
6633 You have imagined, probably, a huge underworld of conspirators,
6634 meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling messages on walls,
6635 recognizing one another by codewords or by special movements of
6636 the hand. Nothing of the kind exists. The members of the
6637 Brotherhood have no way of recognizing one another, and it is
6638 impossible for any one member to be aware of the identity of
6639 more than a few others. Goldstein himself, if he fell into the
6640 hands of the Thought Police, could not give them a complete
6641 list of members, or any information that would lead them to a
6642 complete list. No such list exists. The Brotherhood cannot be
6643 wiped out because it is not an organization in the ordinary
6644 sense. Nothing holds it together except an idea which is
6645 indestructible. You will never have anything to sustain you,
6646 except the idea. You will get no comradeship and no
6647 encouragement. When finally you are caught, you will get no
6648 help. We never help our members. At most, when it is absolutely
6649 necessary that someone should be silenced, we are occasionally
6650 able to smuggle a razor blade into a prisoner's cell. You will
6651 have to get used to living without results and without hope.
6652 You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will
6653 confess, and then you will die. Those are the only results that
6654 you will ever see. There is no possibility that any perceptible
6655 change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead.
6656 Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it
6657 as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away
6658 that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand
6659 years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area
6660 of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can
6661 only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to
6662 individual, generation after generation. In the face of the
6663 Thought Police there is no other way.'</p>
6665 He halted and looked for the third time at his
6668 'It is almost time for you to leave, comrade,' he said to
6669 Julia. 'Wait. The decanter is still half full.'</p>
6671 He filled the glasses and raised his own glass by the
6674 'What shall it be this time?' he said, still with the same
6675 faint suggestion of irony. 'To the confusion of the Thought
6676 Police? To the death of Big Brother? To humanity? To the
6679 'To the past,' said Winston.</p>
6681 'The past is more important,' agreed O'Brien gravely.</p>
6683 They emptied their glasses, and a moment later Julia stood
6684 up to go. O'Brien took a small box from the top of a cabinet
6685 and handed her a flat white tablet which he told her to place
6686 on her tongue. It was important, he said, not to go out
6687 smelling of wine: the lift attendants were very observant. As
6688 soon as the door had shut behind her he appeared to forget her
6689 existence. He took another pace or two up and down, then
6692 'There are details to be settled,' he said. 'I assume that
6693 you have a hiding-place of some kind?'</p>
6695 Winston explained about the room over Mr Charrington's
6698 'That will do for the moment. Later we will arrange
6699 something else for you. It is important to change one's
6700 hiding-place frequently. Meanwhile I shall send you a copy of
6701 the book' -- even O'Brien, Winston noticed, seemed to
6702 pronounce the words as though they were in italics-
6703 'Goldstein's book, you understand, as soon as possible. It may
6704 be some days before I can get hold of one. There are not many
6705 in existence, as you can imagine. The Thought Police hunt them
6706 down and destroy them almost as fast as we can produce them. It
6707 makes very little difference. The book is indestructible. If
6708 the last copy were gone, we could reproduce it almost word for
6709 word. Do you carry a brief-case to work with you?' he added.</p>
6711 'As a rule, yes.'</p>
6713 'What is it like?'</p>
6715 'Black, very shabby. With two straps.'</p>
6717 'Black, two straps, very shabby -- good. One day in the
6718 fairly near future-I cannot give a date -- one of the messages
6719 among your morning's work will contain a misprinted word, and
6720 you will have to ask for a repeat. On the following day you
6721 will go to work without your brief-case. At some time during
6722 the day, in the street, a man will touch you on the arm and say
6723 "I think you have dropped your brief-case." The one he gives
6724 you will contain a copy of Goldstein's book. You will return it
6725 within fourteen days.'</p>
6727 They were silent for a moment.</p>
6729 'There are a couple of minutes before you need go,' said
6730 O'Brien. 'We shall meet again -- if we do meet again-'</p>
6732 Winston looked up at him. 'In the place where there is no
6733 darkness?' he said hesitantly.</p>
6735 O'Brien nodded without appearance of surprise. 'In the
6736 place where there is no darkness,' he said, as though he had
6737 recognized the allusion. 'And in the meantime, is there
6738 anything that you wish to say before you leave? Any message?
6741 Winston thought. There did not seem to be any further
6742 question that he wanted to ask: still less did he feel any
6743 impulse to utter high-sounding generalities. Instead of
6744 anything directly connected with O'Brien or the Brotherhood,
6745 there came into his mind a sort of composite picture of the
6746 dark bedroom where his mother had spent her last days, and the
6747 little room over Mr Charrington's shop, and the glass
6748 paperweight, and the steel engraving in its rosewood frame.
6749 Almost at random he said:</p>
6751 'Did you ever happen to hear an old rhyme that begins
6752 "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's"?'</p>
6754 Again O'Brien nodded. With a sort of grave courtesy he
6755 completed the stanza:</p>
6757 'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,<br>
6758 You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's,<br>
6759 When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey<br>
6760 When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch.'</p>
6762 'You knew the last line!' said Winston.</p>
6764 'Yes, I knew the last line. And now, I am afraid, it is
6765 time for you to go. But wait. You had better let me give you
6766 one of these tablets.'</p>
6768 As Winston stood up O'Brien held out a hand. His powerful
6769 grip crushed the bones of Winston's palm. At the door Winston
6770 looked back, but O'Brien seemed already to be in process of
6771 putting him out of mind. He was waiting with his hand on the
6772 switch that controlled the telescreen. Beyond him Winston could
6773 see the writing-table with its green- shaded lamp and the
6774 speakwrite and the wire baskets deep- laden with papers. The
6775 incident was closed. Within thirty seconds, it occurred to him,
6776 O'Brien would be back at his interrupted and important work on
6777 behalf of the Party.</p>
6778 <h1><a name="17">XVII</a></h1>
6779 <p class="no-indent">
6780 Winston was gelatinous with fatigue. Gelatinous was the
6781 right word. It had come into his head spontaneously. His body
6782 seemed to have not only the weakness of a jelly, but its
6783 translucency. He felt that if he held up his hand he would be
6784 able to see the light through it. All the blood and lymph had
6785 been drained out of him by an enormous debauch of work, leaving
6786 only a frail structure of nerves, bones, and skin. All
6787 sensations seemed to be magnified. His overalls fretted his
6788 shoulders, the pavement tickled his feet, even the opening and
6789 closing of a hand was an effort that made his joints creak.</p>
6791 He had worked more than ninety hours in five days. So had
6792 everyone else in the Ministry. Now it was all over, and he had
6793 literally nothing to do, no Party work of any description,
6794 until tomorrow morning. He could spend six hours in the
6795 hiding-place and another nine in his own bed. Slowly, in mild
6796 afternoon sunshine, he walked up a dingy street in the
6797 direction of Mr Charrington's shop, keeping one eye open for
6798 the patrols, but irrationally convinced that this afternoon
6799 there was no danger of anyone interfering with him. The heavy
6800 brief-case that he was carrying bumped against his knee at each
6801 step, sending a tingling sensation up and down the skin of his
6802 leg. Inside it was the book, which he had now had in his
6803 possession for six days and had not yet opened, nor even looked
6806 On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the
6807 speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters,
6808 the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of
6809 trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the
6810 caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming
6811 of guns -- after six days of this, when the great orgasm was
6812 quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had
6813 boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got
6814 their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be
6815 publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would
6816 unquestionably have torn them to pieces -- at just this moment
6817 it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war
6818 with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an
6821 There was, of course, no admission that any change had
6822 taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness
6823 and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the
6824 enemy. Winston was taking part in a demonstration in one of the
6825 central London squares at the moment when it happened. It was
6826 night, and the white faces and the scarlet banners were luridly
6827 floodlit. The square was packed with several thousand people,
6828 including a block of about a thousand schoolchildren in the
6829 uniform of the Spies. On a scarlet-draped platform an orator of
6830 the Inner Party, a small lean man with disproportionately long
6831 arms and a large bald skull over which a few lank locks
6832 straggled, was haranguing the crowd. A little Rumpelstiltskin
6833 figure, contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of the
6834 microphone with one hand while the other, enormous at the end
6835 of a bony arm, clawed the air menacingly above his head. His
6836 voice, made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth an endless
6837 catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings,
6838 rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying
6839 propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was almost
6840 impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and
6841 then maddened. At every few moments the fury of the crowd
6842 boiled over and the voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild
6843 beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from thousands of
6844 throats. The most savage yells of all came from the
6845 schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps
6846 twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and
6847 a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker's hand. He
6848 unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing
6849 altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he
6850 was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without
6851 words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd.
6852 Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a
6853 tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the
6854 square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the
6855 wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein
6856 had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters
6857 were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled
6858 underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in
6859 clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that
6860 fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it
6861 was all over. The orator, still gripping the neck of the
6862 microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his free hand
6863 clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech. One
6864 minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting
6865 from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except
6866 that the target had been changed.</p>
6868 The thing that impressed Winston in looking back was that
6869 the speaker had switched from one line to the other actually in
6870 midsentence, not only without a pause, but without even
6871 breaking the syntax. But at the moment he had other things to
6872 preoccupy him. It was during the moment of disorder while the
6873 posters were being torn down that a man whose face he did not
6874 see had tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Excuse me, I
6875 think you've dropped your brief-case.' He took the brief-case
6876 abstractedly, without speaking. He knew that it would be days
6877 before he had an opportunity to look inside it. The instant
6878 that the demonstration was over he went straight to the
6879 Ministry of Truth, though the time was now nearly twenty-three
6880 hours. The entire staff of the Ministry had done likewise. The
6881 orders already issuing from the telescreen, recalling them to
6882 their posts, were hardly necessary.</p>
6884 Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been
6885 at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature
6886 of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records
6887 of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films,
6888 sound-tracks, photographs -- all had to be rectified at
6889 lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was
6890 known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within
6891 one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance
6892 with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere. The work
6893 was overwhelming, all the more so because the processes that it
6894 involved could not be called by their true names. Everyone in
6895 the Records Department worked eighteen hours in the
6896 twenty-four, with two three-hour snatches of sleep. Mattresses
6897 were brought up from the cellars and pitched all over the
6898 corridors: meals consisted of sandwiches and Victory Coffee
6899 wheeled round on trolleys by attendants from the canteen. Each
6900 time that Winston broke off for one of his spells of sleep he
6901 tried to leave his desk clear of work, and each time that he
6902 crawled back sticky-eyed and aching, it was to find that
6903 another shower of paper cylinders had covered the desk like a
6904 snowdrift, halfburying the speakwrite and overflowing on to the
6905 floor, so that the first job was always to stack them into a
6906 neat enough pile to give him room to work. What was worst of
6907 all was that the work was by no means purely mechanical. Often
6908 it was enough merely to substitute one name for another, but
6909 any detailed report of events demanded care and imagination.
6910 Even the geographical knowledge that one needed in transferring
6911 the war from one part of the world to another was considerable.
6913 <p>By the third day his eyes ached unbearably and his
6914 spectacles needed wiping every few minutes. It was like
6915 struggling with some crushing physical task, something which
6916 one had the right to refuse and which one was nevertheless
6917 neurotically anxious to accomplish. In so far as he had time to
6918 remember it, he was not troubled by the fact that every word he
6919 murmured into the speakwrite, every stroke of his ink-pencil,
6920 was a deliberate lie. He was as anxious as anyone else in the
6921 Department that the forgery should be perfect. On the morning
6922 of the sixth day the dribble of cylinders slowed down. For as
6923 much as half an hour nothing came out of the tube; then one
6924 more cylinder, then nothing. Everywhere at about the same time
6925 the work was easing off. A deep and as it were secret sigh went
6926 through the Department. A mighty deed, which could never be
6927 mentioned, had been achieved. It was now impossible for any
6928 human being to prove by documentary evidence that the war with
6929 Eurasia had ever happened. At twelve hundred it was
6930 unexpectedly announced that all workers in the Ministry were
6931 free till tomorrow morning. Winston, still carrying the
6932 brief-case containing the book, which had remained
6933 between his feet while he worked and under his body while he
6934 slept, went home, shaved himself, and almost fell asleep in his
6935 bath, although the water was barely more than tepid.</p>
6937 With a sort of voluptuous creaking in his joints he
6938 climbed the stair above Mr Charrington's shop. He was tired,
6939 but not sleepy any longer. He opened the window, lit the dirty
6940 little oilstove and put on a pan of water for coffee. Julia
6941 would arrive presently: meanwhile there was the book. He
6942 sat down in the sluttish armchair and undid the straps of the
6945 A heavy black volume, amateurishly bound, with no name or
6946 title on the cover. The print also looked slightly irregular.
6947 The pages were worn at the edges, and fell apart, easily, as
6948 though the book had passed through many hands. The inscription
6949 on the title-page ran:</p>
6951 THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF
6952 OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM<br>
6954 Emmanuel Goldstein</p>
6957 Winston began reading:</p>
6960 Ignorance is Strength</p>
6963 Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of
6964 the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the
6965 world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been
6966 subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different
6967 names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude
6968 towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the
6969 essential structure of society has never altered. Even after
6970 enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same
6971 pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will
6972 always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way
6975 The aims of these groups are entirely irreconcilable...</p>
6977 Winston stopped reading, chiefly in order to appreciate
6978 the fact that he was reading, in comfort and safety. He
6979 was alone: no telescreen, no ear at the keyhole, no nervous
6980 impulse to glance over his shoulder or cover the page with his
6981 hand. The sweet summer air played against his cheek. From
6982 somewhere far away there floated the faint shouts of children:
6983 in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice
6984 of the clock. He settled deeper into the arm-chair and put his
6985 feet up on the fender. It was bliss, it was etemity. Suddenly,
6986 as one sometimes does with a book of which one knows that one
6987 will ultimately read and re-read every word, he opened it at a
6988 different place and found himself at Chapter III. He went on
6996 The splitting up of the world into three great
6997 super-states was an event which could be and indeed was
6998 foreseen before the middle of the twentieth century. With the
6999 absorption of Europe by Russia and of the British Empire by the
7000 United States, two of the three existing powers, Eurasia and
7001 Oceania, were already effectively in being. The third,
7002 Eastasia, only emerged as a distinct unit after another decade
7003 of confused fighting. The frontiers between the three
7004 super-states are in some places arbitrary, and in others they
7005 fluctuate according to the fortunes of war, but in general they
7006 follow geographical lines. Eurasia comprises the whole of the
7007 northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass, from
7008 Portugal to the Bering Strait. Oceania comprises the Americas,
7009 the Atlantic islands including the British Isles, Australasia,
7010 and the southern portion of Africa. Eastasia, smaller than the
7011 others and with a less definite western frontier, comprises
7012 China and the countries to the south of it, the Japanese
7013 islands and a large but fluctuating portion of Manchuria,
7014 Mongolia, and Tibet.</p>
7016 In one combination or another, these three super-states
7017 are permanently at war, and have been so for the past
7018 twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the desperate,
7019 annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the
7020 twentieth centary. It is a warfare of limited aims between
7021 combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no
7022 material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine
7023 ideological difference. This is not to say that either the
7024 conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has
7025 become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary,
7026 war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and
7027 such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the
7028 reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals
7029 against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying
7030 alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed
7031 by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But in a
7032 physical sense war involves very small numbers of people,
7033 mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few
7034 casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the
7035 vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only
7036 guess at, or round the Floating Fortresses which guard
7037 strategic spots on the sea lanes. In the centres of
7038 civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of
7039 consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb
7040 which may cause a few scores of deaths. War has in fact changed
7041 its character. More exactly, the reasons for which war is waged
7042 have changed in their order of importance. Motives which were
7043 already present to some small extent in the great wars of the
7044 early twentieth centuary have now become dominant and are
7045 consciously recognized and acted upon.</p>
7047 To understand the nature of the present war -- for in
7048 spite of the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is
7049 always the same war -- one must realize in the first place that
7050 it is impossible for it to be decisive. None of the three
7051 super-states could be definitively conquered even by the other
7052 two in combination. They are too evenly matched, and their
7053 natural defences are too formidable. Eurasia is protected by
7054 its vast land spaces. Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and
7055 the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity and industriousness of
7056 its inhabitants. Secondly, there is no longer, in a material
7057 sense, anything to fight about. With the establishment of
7058 self-contained economies, in which production and consumption
7059 are geared to one another, the scramble for markets which was a
7060 main cause of previous wars has come to an end, while the
7061 competition for raw materials is no longer a matter of life and
7062 death. In any case each of the three super-states is so vast
7063 that it can obtain almost all the materials that it needs
7064 within its own boundaries. In so far as the war has a direct
7065 economic purpose, it is a war for labour power. Between the
7066 frontiers of the super-states, and not permanently in the
7067 possession of any of them, there lies a rough quadrilateral
7068 with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hong
7069 Kong, containing within it about a fifth of the population of
7070 the earth. It is for the possession of these thickly-populated
7071 regions, and of the northern ice-cap, that the three powers are
7072 constantly struggling. In practice no one power ever controls
7073 the whole of the disputed area. Portions of it are constantly
7074 changing hands, and it is the chance of seizing this or that
7075 fragment by a sudden stroke of treachery that dictates the
7076 endless changes of alignment.</p>
7078 All of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals,
7079 and some of them yield important vegetable products such as
7080 rubber which in colder climates it is necessary to synthesize
7081 by comparatively expensive methods. But above all they contain
7082 a bottomless reserve of cheap labour. Whichever power controls
7083 equatorial Africa, or the countries of the Middle East, or
7084 Southern India, or the Indonesian Archipelago, disposes also of
7085 the bodies of scores or hundreds of millions of ill-paid and
7086 hard-working coolies. The inhabitants of these areas, reduced
7087 more or less openly to the status of slaves, pass continually
7088 from conqueror to conqueror, and are expended like so much coal
7089 or oil in the race to turn out more armaments, to capture more
7090 territory, to control more labour power, to turn out more
7091 armaments, to capture more territory, and so on indefinitely.
7092 It should be noted that the fighting never really moves beyond
7093 the edges of the disputed areas. The frontiers of Eurasia flow
7094 back and forth between the basin of the Congo and the northern
7095 shore of the Mediterranean; the islands of the Indian Ocean and
7096 the Pacific are constantly being captured and recaptured by
7097 Oceania or by Eastasia; in Mongolia the dividing line between
7098 Eurasia and Eastasia is never stable; round the Pole all three
7099 powers lay claim to enormous territories which in fact are
7100 largely unihabited and unexplored: but the balance of power
7101 always remains roughly even, and the territory which forms the
7102 heartland of each super-state always remains inviolate.
7103 Moreover, the labour of the exploited peoples round the Equator
7104 is not really necessary to the world's economy. They add
7105 nothing to the wealth of the world, since whatever they produce
7106 is used for purposes of war, and the object of waging a war is
7107 always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.
7108 By their labour the slave populations allow the tempo of
7109 continuous warfare to be speeded up. But if they did not exist,
7110 the structure of world society, and the process by which it
7111 maintains itself, would not be essentially different.</p>
7113 The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the
7114 principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously
7115 recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the
7116 Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without
7117 raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of
7118 the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the
7119 surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial
7120 society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to
7121 eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not
7122 have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction
7123 had been at work. The world of today is a bare, hungry,
7124 dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before
7125 1914, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future
7126 to which the people of that period looked forward. In the early
7127 twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably
7128 rich, leisured, orderly, and efficient -- a glittering
7129 antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete --
7130 was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person.
7131 Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed,
7132 and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on
7133 developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the
7134 impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions,
7135 partly because scientific and technical progress depended on
7136 the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a
7137 strictly regimented society. As a whole the world is more
7138 primitive today than it was fifty years ago. Certain backward
7139 areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way
7140 connected with warfare and police espionage, have been
7141 developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped,
7142 and the ravages of the atomic war of the nineteen-fifties have
7143 never been fully repaired. Nevertheless the dangers inherent in
7144 the machine are still there. From the moment when the machine
7145 first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people
7146 that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great
7147 extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine
7148 were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt,
7149 illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few
7150 generations. And in fact, without being used for any such
7151 purpose, but by a sort of automatic process -- by producing
7152 wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute --
7153 the machine did raise the living standards of the average
7154 humand being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at
7155 the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth
7158 But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth
7159 threatened the destruction -- indeed, in some sense was the
7160 destruction -- of a hierarchical society. In a world in which
7161 everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a
7162 house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a
7163 motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps
7164 the most important form of inequality would already have
7165 disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no
7166 distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in
7167 which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and
7168 luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power
7169 remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in
7170 practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if
7171 leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass
7172 of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would
7173 become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and
7174 when once they had done this, they would sooner or later
7175 realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they
7176 would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society
7177 was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. To
7178 return to the agricultural past, as some thinkers about the
7179 beginning of the twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not a
7180 practicable solution. It conflicted with the tendency towards
7181 mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout
7182 almost the whole world, and moreover, any country which
7183 remained industrially backward was helpless in a military sense
7184 and was bound to be dominated, directly or indirectly, by its
7185 more advanced rivals.</p>
7187 Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in
7188 poverty by restricting the output of goods. This happened to a
7189 great extent during the final phase of capitalism, roughly
7190 between 1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was
7191 allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital
7192 equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were
7193 prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity.
7194 But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since the
7195 privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made
7196 opposition inevitable. The problem was how to keep the wheels
7197 of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the
7198 world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be
7199 distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was
7200 by continuous warfare.</p>
7202 The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily
7203 of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a
7204 way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere,
7205 or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might
7206 otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and
7207 hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of
7208 war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a
7209 convenient way of expending labour power without producing
7210 anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for
7211 example, has locked up in it the labour that would build
7212 several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as
7213 obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody,
7214 and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is
7215 built. In principle the war effort is always so planned as to
7216 eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare
7217 needs of the population. In practice the needs of the
7218 population are always underestimated, with the result that
7219 there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life;
7220 but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy
7221 to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of
7222 hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the
7223 importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the
7224 distinction between one group and another. By the standards of
7225 the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party
7226 lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few
7227 luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the
7228 better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food
7229 and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private
7230 motor-car or helicopter -- set him in a different world from a
7231 member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party
7232 have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged
7233 masses whom we call 'the proles'. The social atmosphere is that
7234 of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of
7235 horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And
7236 at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and
7237 therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a
7238 small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of
7241 War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary
7242 destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically
7243 acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste
7244 the surplus labour of the world by building temples and
7245 pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even
7246 by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to
7247 them. But this would provide only the economic and not the
7248 emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned
7249 here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant
7250 so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of
7251 the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to
7252 be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow
7253 limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous
7254 and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred,
7255 adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is
7256 necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a
7257 state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually
7258 happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does
7259 not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is
7260 needed is that a state of war should exist. The splitting of
7261 the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and
7262 which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now
7263 almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the
7264 more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that
7265 war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his
7266 capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a
7267 member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war
7268 news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire
7269 war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged
7270 for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such
7271 knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of
7272 doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for
7273 an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real,
7274 and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the
7275 undisputed master of the entire world.</p>
7277 All members of the Inner Party believe in this coming
7278 conquest as an article of faith. It is to be achieved either by
7279 gradually acquiring more and more territory and so building up
7280 an overwhelming preponderance of power, or by the discovery of
7281 some new and unanswerable weapon. The search for new weapons
7282 continues unceasingly, and is one of the very few remaining
7283 activities in which the inventive or speculative type of mind
7284 can find any outlet. In Oceania at the present day, Science, in
7285 the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is
7286 no word for 'Science'. The empirical method of thought, on
7287 which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded,
7288 is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And
7289 even technological progress only happens when its products can
7290 in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all
7291 the useful arts the world is either standing still or going
7292 backwards. The fields are cultivated with horse-ploughs while
7293 books are written by machinery. But in matters of vital
7294 importance -- meaning, in effect, war and police espionage --
7295 the empirical approach is still encouraged, or at least
7296 tolerated. The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole
7297 surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the
7298 possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two
7299 great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is
7300 how to discover, against his will, what another human being is
7301 thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million
7302 people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand. In
7303 so far as scientific research still continues, this is its
7304 subject matter. The scientist of today is either a mixture of
7305 psychologist and inquisitor, studying with real ordinary
7306 minuteness the meaning of facial expressions, gestures, and
7307 tones of voice, and testing the truth-producing effects of
7308 drugs, shock therapy, hypnosis, and physical torture; or he is
7309 chemist, physicist, or biologist concerned only with such
7310 branches of his special subject as are relevant to the taking
7311 of life. In the vast laboratories of the Ministry of Peace, and
7312 in the experimental stations hidden in the Brazilian forests,
7313 or in the Australian desert, or on lost islands of the
7314 Antarctic, the teams of experts are indefatigably at work. Some
7315 are concerned simply with planning the logistics of future
7316 wars; others devise larger and larger rocket bombs, more and
7317 more powerful explosives, and more and more impenetrable
7318 armour- plating; others search for new and deadlier gases, or
7319 for soluble poisons capable of being produced in such
7320 quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole continents, or
7321 for breeds of disease germs immunized against all possible
7322 antibodies; others strive to produce a vehicle that shall bore
7323 its way under the soil like a submarine under the water, or an
7324 aeroplane as independent of its base as a sailing-ship; others
7325 explore even remoter possibilities such as focusing the sun's
7326 rays through lenses suspended thousands of kilometres away in
7327 space, or producing artificial earthquakes and tidal waves by
7328 tapping the heat at the earth's centre.</p>
7330 But none of these projects ever comes anywhere near
7331 realization, and none of the three super-states ever gains a
7332 significant lead on the others. What is more remarkable is that
7333 all three powers already possess, in the atomic bomb, a weapon
7334 far more powerful than any that their present researches are
7335 likely to discover. Although the Party, according to its habit,
7336 claims the invention for itself, atomic bombs first appeared as
7337 early as the nineteen-forties, and were first used on a large
7338 scale about ten years later. At that time some hundreds of
7339 bombs were dropped on industrial centres, chiefly in European
7340 Russia, Western Europe, and North America. The effect was to
7341 convince the ruling groups of all countries that a few more
7342 atomic bombs would mean the end of organized society, and hence
7343 of their own power. Thereafter, although no formal agreement
7344 was ever made or hinted at, no more bombs were dropped. All
7345 three powers merely continue to produce atomic bombs and store
7346 them up against the decisive opportunity which they all believe
7347 will come sooner or later. And meanwhile the art of war has
7348 remained almost stationary for thirty or forty years.
7349 Helicopters are more used than they were formerly, bombing
7350 planes have been largely superseded by self-propelled
7351 projectiles, and the fragile movable battleship has given way
7352 to the almost unsinkable Floating Fortress; but otherwise there
7353 has been little development. The tank, the submarine, the
7354 torpedo, the machine gun, even the rifle and the hand grenade
7355 are still in use. And in spite of the endless slaughters
7356 reported in the Press and on the telescreens, the desperate
7357 battles of earlier wars, in which hundreds of thousands or even
7358 millions of men were often killed in a few weeks, have never
7361 None of the three super-states ever attempts any manoeuvre
7362 which involves the risk of serious defeat. When any large
7363 operation is undertaken, it is usually a surprise attack
7364 against an ally. The strategy that all three powers are
7365 following, or pretend to themselves that they are following, is
7366 the same. The plan is, by a combination of fighting,
7367 bargaining, and well-timed strokes of treachery, to acquire a
7368 ring of bases completely encircling one or other of the rival
7369 states, and then to sign a pact of friendship with that rival
7370 and remain on peaceful terms for so many years as to lull
7371 suspicion to sleep. During this time rockets loaded with atomic
7372 bombs can be assembled at all the strategic spots; finally they
7373 will all be fired simultaneously, with effects so devastating
7374 as to make retaliation impossible. It will then be time to sign
7375 a pact of friendship with the remaining world-power, in
7376 preparation for another attack. This scheme, it is hardly
7377 necessary to say, is a mere daydream, impossible of
7378 realization. Moreover, no fighting ever occurs except in the
7379 disputed areas round the Equator and the Pole: no invasion of
7380 enemy territory is ever undertaken. This explains the fact that
7381 in some places the frontiers between the superstates are
7382 arbitrary. Eurasia, for example, could easily conquer the
7383 British Isles, which are geographically part of Europe, or on
7384 the other hand it would be possible for Oceania to push its
7385 frontiers to the Rhine or even to the Vistula. But this would
7386 violate the principle, followed on all sides though never
7387 formulated, of cultural integrity. If Oceania were to conquer
7388 the areas that used once to be known as France and Germany, it
7389 would be necessary either to exterminate the inhabitants, a
7390 task of great physical difficulty, or to assimilate a
7391 population of about a hundred million people, who, so far as
7392 technical development goes, are roughly on the Oceanic level.
7393 The problem is the same for all three super-states. It is
7394 absolutely necessary to their structure that there should be no
7395 contact with foreigners, except, to a limited extent, with war
7396 prisoners and coloured slaves. Even the official ally of the
7397 moment is always regarded with the darkest suspicion. War
7398 prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes
7399 on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden
7400 the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact
7401 with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures
7402 similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about
7403 them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be
7404 broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which
7405 his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on
7406 all sides that however often Persia, or Egypt, or Java, or
7407 Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be
7408 crossed by anything except bombs.</p>
7410 Under this lies a fact never mentioned aloud, but tacitly
7411 understood and acted upon: namely, that the conditions of life
7412 in all three super-states are very much the same. In Oceania
7413 the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is
7414 called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a
7415 Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps
7416 better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of
7417 Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the
7418 other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as
7419 barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense. Actually the
7420 three philosophies are barely distinguishable, and the social
7421 systems which they support are not distinguishable at all.
7422 Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same
7423 worship of semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and
7424 for continuous warfare. It follows that the three super-states
7425 not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no
7426 advantage by doing so. On the contrary, so long as they remain
7427 in conflict they prop one another up, like three sheaves of
7428 corn. And, as usual, the ruling groups of all three powers are
7429 simultaneously aware and unaware of what they are doing. Their
7430 lives are dedicated to world conquest, but they also know that
7431 it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and
7432 without victory. Meanwhile the fact that there is no
7433 danger of conquest makes possible the denial of reality which
7434 is the special feature of Ingsoc and its rival systems of
7435 thought. Here it is necessary to repeat what has been said
7436 earlier, that by becoming continuous war has fundamentally
7437 changed its character.</p>
7439 In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something
7440 that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable
7441 victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main
7442 instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with
7443 physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a
7444 false view of the world upon their followers, but they could
7445 not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair
7446 military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of
7447 independence, or some other result generally held to be
7448 undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious.
7449 Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or
7450 religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five,
7451 but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to
7452 make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or
7453 later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to
7454 illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be
7455 able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly
7456 accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and
7457 history books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but
7458 falsification of the kind that is practised today would have
7459 been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far
7460 as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most
7461 important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost,
7462 no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.</p>
7464 But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases
7465 to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing
7466 as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the
7467 most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have
7468 seen, researches that could be called scientific are still
7469 carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a
7470 kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not
7471 important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer
7472 needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought
7473 Police. Since each of the three super-states is unconquerable,
7474 each is in effect a separate universe within which almost any
7475 perversion of thought can be safely practised. Reality only
7476 exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life -- the
7477 need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid
7478 swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and
7479 the like. Between life and death, and between physical pleasure
7480 and physical pain, there is still a distinction, but that is
7481 all. Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the
7482 past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar
7483 space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and
7484 which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the
7485 Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to
7486 prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large
7487 enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at
7488 the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but
7489 once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into
7490 whatever shape they choose.</p>
7492 The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of
7493 previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles
7494 between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an
7495 angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But
7496 though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the
7497 surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the
7498 special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs.
7499 War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the
7500 past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might
7501 recognize their common interest and therefore limit the
7502 destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the
7503 victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are
7504 not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by
7505 each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of
7506 the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but
7507 to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war',
7508 therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate
7509 to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The
7510 peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the
7511 Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared
7512 and been replaced by something quite different. The effect
7513 would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of
7514 fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace,
7515 each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each
7516 would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from
7517 the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was
7518 truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This --
7519 although the vast majority of Party members understand it only
7520 in a shallower sense -- is the inner meaning of the Party
7521 slogan: War is Peace.</p>
7523 Winston stopped reading for a moment. Somewhere in remote
7524 distance a rocket bomb thundered. The blissful feeling of being
7525 alone with the forbidden book, in a room with no telescreen,
7526 had not worn off. Solitude and safety were physical sensations,
7527 mixed up somehow with the tiredness of his body, the softness
7528 of the chair, the touch of the faint breeze from the window
7529 that played upon his cheek. The book fascinated him, or more
7530 exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told him nothing that
7531 was new, but that was part of the attraction. It said what he
7532 would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his
7533 scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind
7534 similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more
7535 systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are
7536 those that tell you what you know already. He had just turned
7537 back to Chapter I when he heard Julia's footstep on the stair
7538 and started out of his chair to meet her. She dumped her brown
7539 tool-bag on the floor and flung herself into his arms. It was
7540 more than a week since they had seen one another.</p>
7542 'I've got the book,' he said as they disentangled
7545 'Oh, you've got it? Good,' she said without much interest,
7546 and almost immediately knelt down beside the oilstove to make
7549 They did not return to the subject until they had been in
7550 bed for half an hour. The evening was just cool enough to make
7551 it worth while to pull up the counterpane. From below came the
7552 familiar sound of singing and the scrape of boots on the
7553 flagstones. The brawny red-armed woman whom Winston had seen
7554 there on his first visit was almost a fixture in the yard.
7555 There seemed to be no hour of daylight when she was not
7556 marching to and fro between the washtub and the line,
7557 alternately gagging herself with clothes pegs and breaking
7558 forth into lusty song. Julia had settled down on her side and
7559 seemed to be already on the point of falling asleep. He reached
7560 out for the book, which was lying on the floor, and sat up
7561 against the bedhead.</p>
7563 'We must read it,' he said. 'You too. All members of the
7564 Brotherhood have to read it.'</p>
7566 'You read it,' she said with her eyes shut. 'Read it
7567 aloud. That's the best way. Then you can explain it to me as
7570 The clock's hands said six, meaning eighteen. They had
7571 three or four hours ahead of them. He propped the book against
7572 his knees and began reading:</p>
7576 Ignorance is Strength</p>
7579 Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of
7580 the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the
7581 world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been
7582 subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different
7583 names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude
7584 towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the
7585 essential structure of society has never altered. Even after
7586 enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same
7587 pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will
7588 always return to equilibnum, however far it is pushed one way
7591 'Julia, are you awake?' said Winston.</p>
7593 'Yes, my love, I'm listening. Go on. It's marvellous.'</p>
7595 He continued reading:</p>
7597 The aims of these three groups are entirely
7598 irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they
7599 are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High.
7600 The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an
7601 abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much
7602 crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of
7603 anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all
7604 distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be
7605 equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in
7606 its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods
7607 the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later
7608 there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief
7609 in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both.
7610 They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on
7611 their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for
7612 liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their
7613 objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old
7614 position of servitude, and themselves become the High.
7615 Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other
7616 groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over
7617 again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even
7618 temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an
7619 exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no
7620 progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of
7621 decline, the average human being is physically better off than
7622 he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no
7623 softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought
7624 human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of
7625 the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a
7626 change in the name of their masters.</p>
7628 By the late nineteenth century the recurrence of this
7629 pattern had become obvious to many observers. There then rose
7630 schools of thinkers who interpreted history as a cyclical
7631 process and claimed to show that inequality was the unalterable
7632 law of human life. This doctrine, of course, had always had its
7633 adherents, but in the manner in which it was now put forward
7634 there was a significant change. In the past the need for a
7635 hierarchical form of society had been the doctrine specifically
7636 of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and
7637 by the priests, lawyers, and the like who were parasitical upon
7638 them, and it had generally been softened by promises of
7639 compensation in an imaginary world beyond the grave. The
7640 Middle, so long as it was struggling for power, had always made
7641 use of such terms as freedom, justice, and fraternity. Now,
7642 however, the concept of human brotherhood began to be assailed
7643 by people who were not yet in positions of command, but merely
7644 hoped to be so before long. In the past the Middle had made
7645 revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had
7646 established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown.
7647 The new Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny
7648 beforehand. Socialism, a theory which appeared in the early
7649 nineteenth century and was the last link in a chain of thought
7650 stretching back to the slave rebellions of antiquity, was still
7651 deeply infected by the Utopianism of past ages. But in each
7652 variant of Socialism that appeared from about 1900 onwards the
7653 aim of establishing liberty and equality was more and more
7654 openly abandoned. The new movements which appeared in the
7655 middle years of the century, Ingsoc in Oceania, Neo-Bolshevism
7656 in Eurasia, Death-Worship, as it is commonly called, in
7657 Eastasia, had the conscious aim of perpetuating unfreedom and
7658 inequality. These new movements, of course, grew out of the old
7659 ones and tended to keep their names and pay lip-service to
7660 their ideology. But the purpose of all of them was to arrest
7661 progress and freeze history at a chosen moment. The familiar
7662 pendulum swing was to happen once more, and then stop. As
7663 usual, the High were to be turned out by the Middle, who would
7664 then become the High; but this time, by conscious strategy, the
7665 High would be able to maintain their position permanently.</p>
7667 The new doctrines arose partly because of the accumulation
7668 of historical knowledge, and the growth of the historical
7669 sense, which had hardly existed before the nineteenth century.
7670 The cyclical movement of history was now intelligible, or
7671 appeared to be so; and if it was intelligible, then it was
7672 alterable. But the principal, underlying cause was that, as
7673 early as the beginning of the twentieth century, human equality
7674 had become technically possible. It was still true that men
7675 were not equal in their native talents and that functions had
7676 to be specialized in ways that favoured some individuals
7677 against others; but there was no longer any real need for class
7678 distinctions or for large differences of wealth. In earlier
7679 ages, class distinctions had been not only inevitable but
7680 desirable. Inequality was the price of civilization. With the
7681 development of machine production, however, the case was
7682 altered. Even if it was still necessary for human beings to do
7683 different kinds of work, it was no longer necessary for them to
7684 live at different social or economic levels. Therefore, from
7685 the point of view of the new groups who were on the point of
7686 seizing power, human equality was no longer an ideal to be
7687 striven after, but a danger to be averted. In more primitive
7688 ages, when a just and peaceful society was in fact not
7689 possible, it had been fairly easy to believe it. The idea of an
7690 earthly paradise in which men should live together in a state
7691 of brotherhood, without laws and without brute labour, had
7692 haunted the human imagination for thousands of years. And this
7693 vision had had a certain hold even on the groups who actually
7694 profited by each historical change. The heirs of the French,
7695 English, and American revolutions had partly believed in their
7696 own phrases about the rights of man, freedom of speech,
7697 equality before the law, and the like, and have even allowed
7698 their conduct to be influenced by them to some extent. But by
7699 the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the main
7700 currents of political thought were authoritarian. The earthly
7701 paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it
7702 became realizable. Every new political theory, by whatever name
7703 it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation. And
7704 in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about
7705 1930, practices which had been long abandoned, in some cases
7706 for hundreds of years -- imprisonment without trial, the use of
7707 war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract
7708 confessions, the use of hostages, and the deportation of whole
7709 populations-not only became common again, but were tolerated
7710 and even defended by people who considered themselves
7711 enlightened and progressive.</p>
7713 It was only after a decade of national wars, civil wars,
7714 revolutions, and counter-revolutions in all parts of the world
7715 that Ingsoc and its rivals emerged as fully worked-out
7716 political theories. But they had been foreshadowed by the
7717 various systems, generally called totalitarian, which had
7718 appeared earlier in the century, and the main outlines of the
7719 world which would emerge from the prevailing chaos had long
7720 been obvious. What kind of people would control this world had
7721 been equally obvious. The new aristocracy was made up for the
7722 most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union
7723 organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers,
7724 journalists, and professional politicians. These people, whose
7725 origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades
7726 of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by
7727 the barren world of monopoly industry and centralized
7728 government. As compared with their opposite numbers in past
7729 ages, they were less avaricious, less tempted by luxury,
7730 hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more conscious of what
7731 they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition. This
7732 last difference was cardinal. By comparison with that existing
7733 today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and
7734 inefficient. The ruling groups were always infected to some
7735 extent by liberal ideas, and were content to leave loose ends
7736 everywhere, to regard only the overt act and to be uninterested
7737 in what their subjects were thinking. Even the Catholic Church
7738 of the Middle Ages was tolerant by modern standards. Part of
7739 the reason for this was that in the past no government had the
7740 power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The
7741 invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate
7742 public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process
7743 further. With the development of television, and the technical
7744 advance which made it possible to receive and transmit
7745 simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an
7746 end. Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough
7747 to be worth watching, could be kept for twentyfour hours a day
7748 under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official
7749 propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed.
7750 The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the
7751 will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all
7752 subjects, now existed for the first time.</p>
7754 After the revolutionary period of the fifties and sixties,
7755 society regrouped itself, as always, into High, Middle, and
7756 Low. But the new High group, unlike all its forerunners, did
7757 not act upon instinct but knew what was needed to safeguard its
7758 position. It had long been realized that the only secure basis
7759 for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most
7760 easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called
7761 'abolition of private property' which took place in the middle
7762 years of the century meant, in effect, the concentration of
7763 property in far fewer hands than before: but with this
7764 difference, that the new owners were a group instead of a mass
7765 of individuals. Individually, no member of the Party owns
7766 anything, except petty personal belongings. Collectively, the
7767 Party owns everything in Oceania, because it controls
7768 everything, and disposes of the products as it thinks fit. In
7769 the years following the Revolution it was able to step into
7770 this commanding position almost unopposed, because the whole
7771 process was represented as an act of collectivization. It had
7772 always been assumed that if the capitalist class were
7773 expropriated, Socialism must follow: and unquestionably the
7774 capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land,
7775 houses, transport -- everything had been taken away from them:
7776 and since these things were no longer private property, it
7777 followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc, which grew
7778 out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its
7779 phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the
7780 Socialist programme; with the result, foreseen and intended
7781 beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.</p>
7783 But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go
7784 deeper than this. There are only four ways in which a ruling
7785 group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without,
7786 or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to
7787 revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to
7788 come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and
7789 willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and
7790 as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling
7791 class which could guard against all of them would remain in
7792 power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the
7793 mental attitude of the ruling class itself.</p>
7795 After the middle of the present century, the first danger
7796 had in reality disappeared. Each of the three powers which now
7797 divide the world is in fact unconquerable, and could only
7798 become conquerable through slow demographic changes which a
7799 government with wide powers can easily avert. The second
7800 danger, also, is only a theoretical one. The masses never
7801 revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely
7802 because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not
7803 permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even
7804 become aware that they are oppressed. The recurrent economic
7805 crises of past times were totally unnecessary and are not now
7806 permitted to happen, but other and equally large dislocations
7807 can and do happen without having political results, because
7808 there is no way in which discontent can become articulate. As
7809 fcr the problem of overproduction, which has been latent in our
7810 society since the development of machine technique, it is
7811 solved by the device of continuous warfare (see Chapter III),
7812 which is also useful in keying up public morale to the
7813 necessary pitch. From the point of view of our present rulers,
7814 therefore, the only genuine dangers are the splitting-off of a
7815 new group of able, under-employed, power-hungry people, and the
7816 growth of liberalism and scepticism in their own ranks. The
7817 problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of
7818 continuously moulding the consciousness both of the directing
7819 group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately
7820 below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be
7821 influenced in a negative way.</p>
7823 Given this background, one could infer, if one did not
7824 know it already, the general structure of Oceanic society. At
7825 the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is
7826 infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement,
7827 every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all
7828 wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly
7829 from his leadership and inspiration. Nobody has ever seen Big
7830 Brother. He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the
7831 telescreen. We may be reasonably sure that he will never die,
7832 and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was
7833 born. Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to
7834 exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a
7835 focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which
7836 are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an
7837 organization. Below Big Brother comes the Inner Party. its
7838 numbers limited to six millions, or something less than 2 per
7839 cent of the population of Oceania. Below the Inner Party comes
7840 the Outer Party, which, if the Inner Party is described as the
7841 brain of the State, may be justly likened to the hands. Below
7842 that come the dumb masses whom we habitually refer to as 'the
7843 proles', numbering perhaps 85 per cent of the population. In
7844 the terms of our earlier classification, the proles are the
7845 Low: for the slave population of the equatorial lands who pass
7846 constantly from conqueror to conqueror, are not a permanent or
7847 necessary part of the structure.</p>
7849 In principle, membership of these three groups is not
7850 hereditary. The child of Inner Party parents is in theory not
7851 born into the Inner Party. Admission to either branch of the
7852 Party is by examination, taken at the age of sixteen. Nor is
7853 there any racial discrimination, or any marked domination of
7854 one province by another. Jews, Negroes, South Americans of pure
7855 Indian blood are to be found in the highest ranks of the Party,
7856 and the administrators of any area are always drawn from the
7857 inhabitants of that area. In no part of Oceania do the
7858 inhabitants have the feeling that they are a colonial
7859 population ruled from a distant capital. Oceania has no
7860 capital, and its titular head is a person whose whereabouts
7861 nobody knows. Except that English is its chief lingua
7862 franca and Newspeak its official language, it is not
7863 centralized in any way. Its rulers are not held together by
7864 blood-ties but by adherence to a common doctrine. It is true
7865 that our society is stratified, and very rigidly stratified, on
7867 what at first sight appear to be hereditary lines. There is far
7868 less to- and-fro movement between the different groups than
7869 happened under capitalism or even in the pre-industrial age.
7870 Between the two branches of the Party there is a certain amount
7871 of interchange, but only so much as will ensure that weaklings
7872 are excluded from the Inner Party and that ambitious members of
7873 the Outer Party are made harmless by allowing them to rise.
7874 Proletarians, in practice, are not allowed to graduate into the
7875 Party. The most gifted among them, who might possibly become
7876 nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the Thought
7877 Police and eliminated. But this state of affairs is not
7878 necessarily permanent, nor is it a matter of principle. The
7879 Party is not a class in the old sense of the word. It does not
7880 aim at transmitting power to its own children, as such; and if
7881 there were no other way of keeping the ablest people at the
7882 top, it would be perfectly prepared to recruit an entire new
7883 generation from the ranks of the proletariat. In the crucial
7884 years, the fact that the Party was not a hereditary body did a
7885 great deal to neutralize opposition. The older kind of
7886 Socialist, who had been trained to fight against something
7887 called 'class privilege' assumed that what is not hereditary
7888 cannot be permanent. He did not see that the continuity of an
7889 oligarchy need not be physical, nor did he pause to reflect
7890 that hereditary aristocracies have always been shortlived,
7891 whereas adoptive organizations such as the Catholic Church have
7892 sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years. The
7893 essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance,
7894 but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way
7895 of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is
7896 a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. The
7897 Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with
7898 perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important,
7899 provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the
7902 All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental
7903 attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to
7904 sustain the mystique of the Party and prevent the true nature
7905 of present-day society from being perceived. Physical
7906 rebellion, or any preliminary move towards rebellion, is at
7907 present not possible. From the proletarians nothing is to be
7908 feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation
7909 to generation and from century to century, working, breeding,
7910 and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without
7911 the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.
7912 They could only become dangerous if the advance of industrial
7913 technique made it necessary to educate them more highly; but,
7914 since military and commercial rivalry are no longer important,
7915 the level of popular education is actually declining. What
7916 opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a
7917 matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual
7918 liberty because they have no intellect. In a Party member, on
7919 the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on
7920 the most unimportant subject can be tolerated.</p>
7922 A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of
7923 the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure
7924 that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working
7925 or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without
7926 warning and without knowing that he is being inspected. Nothing
7927 that he does is indifferent. His friendships, his relaxations,
7928 his behaviour towards his wife and children, the expression of
7929 his face when he is alone, the words he mutters in sleep, even
7930 the characteristic movements of his body, are all jealously
7931 scrutinized. Not only any actual misdemeanour, but any
7932 eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous
7933 mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of an inner
7934 struggle, is certain to be detected. He has no freedom of
7935 choice in any direction whatever. On the other hand his actions
7936 are not regulated by law or by any clearly formulated code of
7937 behaviour. In Oceania there is no law. Thoughts and actions
7938 which, when detected, mean certain death are not formally
7939 forbidden, and the endless purges, arrests, tortures,
7940 imprisonments, and vaporizations are not inflicted as
7941 punishment for crimes which have actually been committed, but
7942 are merely the wiping-out of persons who might perhaps commit a
7943 crime at some time in the future. A Party member is required to
7944 have not only the right opinions, but the right instincts. Many
7945 of the beliefs and attitudes demanded of him are never plainly
7946 stated, and could not be stated without laying bare the
7947 contradictions inherent in Ingsoc. If he is a person naturally
7948 orthodox (in Newspeak a goodthinker), he will in all
7949 circumstances know, without taking thought, what is the true
7950 belief or the desirable emotion. But in any case an elaborate
7951 mental training, undergone in childhood and grouping itself
7952 round the Newspeak words crimestop, blackwhite, and
7953 doublethink, makes him unwilling and unable to think too
7954 deeply on any subject whatever.</p>
7956 A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and
7957 no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a
7958 continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal
7959 traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the
7960 power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his
7961 bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and
7962 dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the
7963 speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or
7964 rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired
7965 inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the
7966 discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is
7967 called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the
7968 faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the
7969 threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of
7970 not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors,
7971 of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical
7972 to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of
7973 thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.
7974 Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. But
7975 stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full
7976 sense demands a control over one's own mental processes as
7977 complete as that of a contortionist over his body. Oceanic
7978 society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is
7979 omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in
7980 reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not
7981 infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment
7982 flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is
7983 blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has
7984 two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it
7985 means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in
7986 contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it
7987 means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party
7988 discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to
7989 believe that black is white, and more, to know
7990 that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed
7991 the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past,
7992 made possible by the system of thought which really embraces
7993 all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as
7996 The alteration of the past is necessary for two reasons,
7997 one of which is subsidiary and, so to speak, precautionary. The
7998 subsidiary reason is that the Party member, like the
7999 proletarian, tolerates present-day conditions partly because he
8000 has no standards of comparison. He must be cut off from the
8001 past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries,
8002 because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better
8003 off than his ancestors and that the average level of material
8004 comfort is constantly rising. But by far the more important
8005 reason for the readjustment of the past is the need to
8006 safeguard the infallibility of the Party. It is not merely that
8007 speeches, statistics, and records of every kind must be
8008 constantly brought up to date in order to show that the
8009 predictions of the Party were in all cases right. It is also
8010 that no change in doctrine or in political alignment can ever
8011 be admitted. For to change one's mind, or even one's policy, is
8012 a confession of weakness. If, for example, Eurasia or Eastasia
8013 (whichever it may be) is the enemy today, then that country
8014 must always have been the enemy. And if the facts say otherwise
8015 then the facts must be altered. Thus history is continuously
8016 rewritten. This day-to-day falsification of the past, carried
8017 out by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability
8018 of the regime as the work of repression and espionage carried
8019 out by the Ministry of Love.</p>
8021 The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc.
8022 Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but
8023 survive only in written records and in human memories. The past
8024 is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since
8025 the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full
8026 control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past
8027 is whatever the Party chooses to make it. It also follows that
8028 though the past is alterable, it never has been altered in any
8029 specific instance. For when it has been recreated in whatever
8030 shape is needed at the moment, then this new version is
8031 the past, and no different past can ever have existed. This
8032 holds good even when, as often happens, the same event has to
8033 be altered out of recognition several times in the course of a
8034 year. At all times the Party is in possession of absolute
8035 truth, and clearly the absolute can never have been different
8036 from what it is now. It will be seen that the control of the
8037 past depends above all on the training of memory. To make sure
8038 that all written records agree with the orthodoxy of the moment
8039 is merely a mechanical act. But it is also necessary to
8040 remember that events happened in the desired manner. And
8041 if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or to tamper
8042 with written records, then it is necessary to forget
8043 that one has done so. The trick of doing this can be learned
8044 like any other mental technique. It is learned by the
8045 majority of Party members, and certainly by all who are
8046 intelligent as well as orthodox. In Oldspeak it is called,
8047 quite frankly, 'reality control'. In Newspeak it is called
8048 doublethink, though doublethink comprises much
8051 Doublethink means the power of holding two
8052 contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and
8053 accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which
8054 direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that
8055 he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of
8056 doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is
8057 not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not
8058 be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be
8059 unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
8060 hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of
8061 Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use
8062 conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose
8063 that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while
8064 genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become
8065 inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to
8066 draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to
8067 deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to
8068 take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is
8069 indispensably necessary. Even in using the word
8070 doublethink it is necessary to exercise
8071 doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one
8072 is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink
8073 one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie
8074 always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means
8075 of doublethink that the Party has been able -- and may,
8076 for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years --
8077 to arrest the course of history.</p>
8079 All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because
8080 they ossified or because they grew soft. Either they became
8081 stupid and arrogant, failed to adjust themselves to changing
8082 circumstances, and were overthrown; or they became liberal and
8083 cowardly, made concessions when they should have used force,
8084 and once again were overthrown. They fell, that is to say,
8085 either through consciousness or through unconsciousness. It is
8086 the achievement of the Party to have produced a system of
8087 thought in which both conditions can exist simultaneously. And
8088 upon no other intellectual basis could the dominion of the
8089 Party be made permanent. If one is to rule, and to continue
8090 ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality. For
8091 the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own
8092 infallibility with the Power to learn from past mistakes.</p>
8094 It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of
8095 doublethink are those who invented doublethink
8096 and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our
8097 society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening
8098 are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is.
8099 In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the
8100 delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane. One clear
8101 illustration of this is the fact that war hysteria increases in
8102 intensity as one rises in the social scale. Those whose
8103 attitude towards the war is most nearly rational are the
8104 subject peoples of the disputed territories. To these people
8105 the war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro
8106 over their bodies like a tidal wave. Which side is winning is a
8107 matter of complete indifference to them. They are aware that a
8108 change of overlordship means simply that they will be doing the
8109 same work as before for new masters who treat them in the same
8110 manner as the old ones. The slightly more favoured workers whom
8111 we call 'the proles' are only intermittently conscious of the
8112 war. When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of
8113 fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable
8114 of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening. It is
8115 in the ranks of the Party, and above all of the Inner Party,
8116 that the true war enthusiasm is found. World-conquest is
8117 believed in most firmly by those who know it to be impossible.
8118 This peculiar linking-together of opposites -- knowledge with
8119 ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism-is one of the chief
8120 distinguishing marks of Oceanic society. The official ideology
8121 abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical
8122 reason for them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every
8123 principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood,
8124 and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism. It preaches
8125 a contempt for the working class unexampled for centuries past,
8126 and it dresses its members in a uniform which was at one time
8127 peculiar to manual workers and was adopted for that reason. It
8128 systematically undermines the solidarity of the family, and it
8129 calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the
8130 sentiment of family loyalty. Even the names of the four
8131 Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence
8132 in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of
8133 Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with
8134 lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of
8135 Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not
8136 accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they
8137 are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only
8138 by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained
8139 indefinitely. In no other way could the ancient cycle be
8140 broken. If human equality is to be for ever averted -- if the
8141 High, as we have called them, are to keep their places
8142 permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be
8143 controlled insanity.</p>
8145 But there is one question which until this moment we have
8146 almost ignored. It is; why should human equality be
8147 averted? Supposing that the mechanics of the process have been
8148 rightly described, what is the motive for this huge, accurately
8149 planned effort to freeze history at a particular moment of
8152 Here we reach the central secret. As we have seen. the
8153 mystique of the Party, and above all of the Inner Party,
8154 depends upon doublethink. But deeper than this lies the
8155 original motive, the never-questioned instinct that first led
8156 to the seizure of power and brought doublethink, the
8157 Thought Police, continuous warfare, and all the other necessary
8158 paraphernalia into existence afterwards. This motive really
8159 consists ... Winston became aware of silence, as one becomes
8160 aware of a new sound. It seemed to him that Julia had been very
8161 still for some time past. She was lying on her side, naked from
8162 the waist upwards, with her cheek pillowed on her hand and one
8163 dark lock tumbling across her eyes. Her breast rose and fell
8164 slowly and regularly.</p>
8170 'Julia, are you awake?'</p>
8172 No answer. She was asleep. He shut the book, put it
8173 carefully on the floor, lay down, and pulled the coverlet over
8176 He had still, he reflected, not learned the ultimate
8177 secret. He understood how; he did not understand
8178 why. Chapter I, like Chapter III, had not actually told
8179 him anything that he did not know, it had merely systematized
8180 the knowledge that he possessed already. But after reading it
8181 he knew better than before that he was not mad. Being in a
8182 minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There
8183 was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth
8184 even against the whole world, you were not mad. A yellow beam
8185 from the sinking sun slanted in through the window and fell
8186 across the pillow. He shut his eyes. The sun on his face and
8187 the girl's smooth body touching his own gave him a strong,
8188 sleepy, confident feeling. He was safe, everything was all
8189 right. He fell asleep murmuring 'Sanity is not statistical,'
8190 with the feeling that this remark contained in it a profound
8191 wisdom. When he woke it was with the sensation of having slept
8192 for a long time, but a glance at the old-fashioned clock told
8193 him that it was only twenty-thirty. He lay dozing for a while;
8194 then the usual deep-lunged singing struck up from the yard
8197 'It was only an 'opeless fancy,<br>
8198 It passed like an Ipril dye,<br>
8199 But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred<br>
8200 They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!'</p>
8202 The driveling song seemed to have kept its popularity. You
8203 still heard it all over the place. It had outlived the Hate
8204 Song. Julia woke at the sound, stretched herself luxuriously,
8205 and got out of bed.</p>
8207 'I'm hungry,' she said. 'Let's make some more coffee.
8208 Damn! The stove's gone out and the water's cold.' She picked
8209 the stove up and shook it. 'There's no oil in it.'</p>
8211 'We can get some from old Charrington, I expect.'</p>
8213 'The funny thing is I made sure it was full. I'm going to
8214 put my clothes on,' she added. 'It seems to have got colder.'</p>
8216 Winston also got up and dressed himself. The indefatigable
8219 'They sye that time 'eals all things,<br>
8220 They sye you can always forget;<br>
8221 But the smiles an' the tears acrorss the years<br>
8222 They twist my 'eart-strings yet!'</p>
8225 As he fastened the belt of his overalls he strolled across
8226 to the window. The sun must have gone down behind the houses;
8227 it was not shining into the yard any longer. The flagstones
8228 were wet as though they had just been washed, and he had the
8229 feeling that the sky had been washed too, so fresh and pale was
8230 the blue between the chimney-pots. Tirelessly the woman marched
8231 to and fro, corking and uncorking herself, singing and falling
8232 silent, and pegging out more diapers, and more and yet more. He
8233 wondered whether she took in washing for a living or was merely
8234 the slave of twenty or thirty grandchildren. Julia had come
8235 across to his side; together they gazed down with a sort of
8236 fascination at the sturdy figure below. As he looked at the
8237 woman in her characteristic attitude, her thick arms reaching
8238 up for the line, her powerful mare-like buttocks protruded, it
8239 struck him for the first time that she was beautiful. It had
8240 never before occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty,
8241 blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then
8242 hardened, roughened by work till it was coarse in the grain
8243 like an over-ripe turnip, could be beautiful. But it was so,
8244 and after all, he thought, why not? The solid, contourless
8245 body, like a block of granite, and the rasping red skin, bore
8246 the same relation to the body of a girl as the rose-hip to the
8247 rose. Why should the fruit be held inferior to the flower?</p>
8249 'She's beautiful,' he murmured.</p>
8251 'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia.</p>
8253 'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.</p>
8255 He held Julia's supple waist easily encircled by his arm.
8256 From the hip to the knee her flank was against his. Out of
8257 their bodies no child would ever come. That was the one thing
8258 they could never do. Only by word of mouth, from mind to mind,
8259 could they pass on the secret. The woman down there had no
8260 mind, she had only strong arms, a warm heart, and a fertile
8261 belly. He wondered how many children she had given birth to. It
8262 might easily be fifteen. She had had her momentary flowering, a
8263 year, perhaps, of wild-rose beauty and then she had suddenly
8264 swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and
8265 coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing,
8266 darning, cooking, sweeping, polishing, mending, scrubbing,
8267 laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over
8268 thirty unbroken years. At the end of it she was still singing.
8269 The mystical reverence that he felt for her was somehow mixed
8270 up with the aspect of the pale, cloudless sky, stretching away
8271 behind the chimney-pots into interminable distance. It was
8272 curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in
8273 Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the
8274 sky were also very much the same -- everywhere, all over the
8275 world, hundreds of thousands of millions of people just like
8276 this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by
8277 walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same --
8278 people who had never learned to think but who were storing up
8279 in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would
8280 one day overturn the world. If there was hope, it lay in the
8281 proles! Without having read to the end of the book, he
8282 knew that that must be Goldstein's final message. The future
8283 belonged to the proles. And could he be sure that when their
8284 time came the world they constructed would not be just as alien
8285 to him, Winston Smith, as the world of the Party? Yes, because
8286 at the least it would be a world of sanity. Where there is
8287 equality there can be sanity. Sooner or later it would happen,
8288 strength would change into consciousness. The proles were
8289 immortal, you could not doubt it when you looked at that
8290 valiant figure in the yard. In the end their awakening would
8291 come. And until that happened, though it might be a thousand
8292 years, they would stay alive against all the odds, like birds,
8293 passing on from body to body the vitality which the Party did
8294 not share and could not kill.</p>
8296 'Do you remember,' he said, 'the thrush that sang to us,
8297 that first day, at the edge of the wood?'</p>
8299 'He wasn't singing to us,' said Julia. 'He was singing to
8300 please himself. Not even that. He was just singing.'</p>
8302 The birds sang, the proles sang. the Party did not sing.
8303 All round the world, in London and New York, in Africa and
8304 Brazil, and in the mysterious, forbidden lands beyond the
8305 frontiers, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in the villages
8306 of the endless Russian plain, in the bazaars of China and Japan
8307 -- everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure, made
8308 monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death
8309 and still singing. Out of those mighty loins a race of
8310 conscious beings must one day come. You were the dead, theirs
8311 was the future. But you could share in that future if you kept
8312 alive the mind as they kept alive the body, and passed on the
8313 secret doctrine that two plus two make four.</p>
8315 'We are the dead,' he said.</p>
8317 'We are the dead,' echoed Julia dutifully.</p>
8319 'You are the dead,' said an iron voice behind them.</p>
8321 They sprang apart. Winston's entrails seemed to have
8322 turned into ice. He could see the white all round the irises of
8323 Julia's eyes. Her face had turned a milky yellow. The smear of
8324 rouge that was still on each cheekbone stood out sharply,
8325 almost as though unconnected with the skin beneath.</p>
8327 'You are the dead,' repeated the iron voice.</p>
8329 'It was behind the picture,' breathed Julia.</p>
8331 'It was behind the picture,' said the voice. 'Remain
8332 exactly where you are. Make no movement until you are ordered.'</p>
8334 It was starting, it was starting at last! They could do
8335 nothing except stand gazing into one another's eyes. To run for
8336 life, to get out of the house before it was too late -- no such
8337 thought occurred to them. Unthinkable to disobey the iron voice
8338 from the wall. There was a snap as though a catch had been
8339 turned back, and a crash of breaking glass. The picture had
8340 fallen to the floor uncovering the telescreen behind it.</p>
8342 'Now they can see us,' said Julia.</p>
8344 ' Now we can see you,' said the voice. ' Stand out in the
8345 middle of the room. Stand back to back. Clasp your hands behind
8346 your heads. Do not touch one another.'</p>
8348 They were not touching, but it seemed to him that he could
8349 feel Julia's body shaking. Or perhaps it was merely the shaking
8350 of his own. He could just stop his teeth from chattering, but
8351 his knees were beyond his control. There was a sound of
8352 trampling boots below, inside the house and outside. The yard
8353 seemed to be full of men. Something was being dragged across
8354 the stones. The woman's singing had stopped abruptly. There was
8355 a long, rolling clang, as though the washtub had been flung
8356 across the yard, and then a confusion of angry shouts which
8357 ended in a yell of pain.</p>
8359 'The house is surrounded,' said Winston.</p>
8361 'The house is surrounded,' said the voice.</p>
8363 He heard Julia snap her teeth together. 'I suppose we may
8364 as well say good-bye,' she said.</p>
8366 'You may as well say good-bye,' said the voice. And then
8367 another quite different voice, a thin, cultivated voice which
8368 Winston had the impression of having heard before, struck in;
8369 'And by the way, while we are on the subject, "Here comes a
8370 candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off
8373 Something crashed on to the bed behind Winston's back. The
8374 head of a ladder had been thrust through the window and had
8375 burst in the frame. Someone was climbing through the window.
8376 There was a stampede of boots up the stairs. The room was full
8377 of solid men in black uniforms, with iron-shod boots on their
8378 feet and truncheons in their hands.</p>
8380 Winston was not trembling any longer. Even his eyes he
8381 barely moved. One thing alone mattered; to keep still, to keep
8382 still and not give them an excuse to hit you! A man with a
8383 smooth prize-fighter's jowl in which the mouth was only a slit
8384 paused opposite him balancing his truncheon meditatively
8385 between thumb and forefinger. Winston met his eyes. The feeling
8386 of nakedness, with one's hands behind one's head and one's face
8387 and body all exposed, was almost unbearable. The man protruded
8388 the tip of a white tongue, licked the place where his lips
8389 should have been, and then passed on. There was another crash.
8390 Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and
8391 smashed it to pieces on the hearth-stone.</p>
8393 The fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink like a sugar
8394 rosebud from a cake, rolled across the mat. How small, thought
8395 Winston, how small it always was! There was a gasp and a thump
8396 behind him, and he received a violent kick on the ankle which
8397 nearly flung him off his balance. One of the men had smashed
8398 his fist into Julia's solar plexus, doubling her up like a
8399 pocket ruler. She was thrashing about on the floor, fighting
8400 for breath. Winston dared not turn his head even by a
8401 millimetre, but sometimes her livid, gasping face came within
8402 the angle of his vision. Even in his terror it was as though he
8403 could feel the pain in his own body, the deadly pain which
8404 nevertheless was less urgent than the struggle to get back her
8405 breath. He knew what it was like; the terrible, agonizing pain
8406 which was there all the while but could not be suffered yet,
8407 because before all else it was necessary to be able to breathe.
8408 Then two of the men hoisted her up by knees and shoulders, and
8409 carried her out of the room like a sack. Winston had a glimpse
8410 of her face, upside down, yellow and contorted, with the eyes
8411 shut, and still with a smear of rouge on either cheek; and that
8412 was the last he saw of her.</p>
8414 He stood dead still. No one had hit him yet. Thoughts
8415 which came of their own accord but seemed totally uninteresting
8416 began to flit through his mind. He wondered whether they had
8417 got Mr Charrington. He wondered what they had done to the woman
8418 in the yard. He noticed that he badly wanted to urinate, and
8419 felt a faint surprise, because he had done so only two or three
8420 hours ago. He noticed that the clock on the mantelpiece said
8421 nine, meaning twenty-one. But the light seemed too strong.
8422 Would not the light be fading at twenty-one hours on an August
8423 evening? He wondered whether after all he and Julia had
8424 mistaken the time -- had slept the clock round and thought it
8425 was twenty-thirty when really it was nought eight-thirty on the
8426 following morning. But he did not pursue the thought further.
8427 It was not interesting.</p>
8429 There ws another, lighter step in the passage. Mr
8430 Charrington came into the room. The demeanour of the
8431 black-uniformed men suddenly became more subdued. Something had also
8432 changed in Mr Charrington's appearance. His eye fell on the
8433 fragments of the glass paperweight.</p>
8435 'Pick up those pieces,' he said sharply.</p>
8437 A man stooped to obey. The cockney accent had disappeared;
8438 Winston suddenly realized whose voice it was that he had heard
8439 a few moments ago on the telescreen. Mr Charrington was still
8440 wearing his old velvet jacket, but his hair, which had been
8441 almost white, had turned black. Also he was not wearing his
8442 spectacles. He gave Winston a single sharp glance, as though
8443 verifying his identity, and then paid no more attention to him.
8444 He was still recognizable, but he was not the same person any
8445 longer. His body had straightened, and seemed to have grown
8446 bigger. His face had undergone only tiny changes that had
8447 nevertheless worked a complete transformation. The black
8448 eyebrows were less bushy, the wrinkles were gone, the whole
8449 lines of the face seemed to have altered; even the nose seemed
8450 shorter. It was the alert, cold face of a man of about
8451 five-and-thirty. It occurred to Winston that for the first time
8452 in his life he was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the
8454 <h1><a name="18">XVIII</a></h1>
8455 <p class="no-indent">
8456 He did not know where he was. Presumably he was in the
8457 Ministry of Love, but there was no way of making certain. He
8458 was in a high-ceilinged windowless cell with walls of
8459 glittering white porcelain. Concealed lamps flooded it with
8460 cold light, and there was a low, steady humming sound which he
8461 supposed had something to do with the air supply. A bench, or
8462 shelf, just wide enough to sit on ran round the wall, broken
8463 only by the door and, at the end opposite the door, a lavatory
8464 pan with no wooden seat. There were four telescreens, one in
8467 There was a dull aching in his belly. It had been there
8468 ever since they had bundled him into the closed van and driven
8469 him away. But he was also hungry, with a gnawing, unwholesome
8470 kind of hunger. It might be twenty-four hours since he had
8471 eaten, it might be thirty-six. He still did not know, probably
8472 never would know, whether it had been morning or evening when
8473 they arrested him. Since he was arrested he had not been fed.</p>
8475 He sat as still as he could on the narrow bench, with his
8476 hands crossed on his knee. He had already learned to sit still.
8477 If you made unexpected movements they yelled at you from the
8478 telescreen. But the craving for food was growing upon him. What
8479 he longed for above all was a piece of bread. He had an idea
8480 that there were a few breadcrumbs in the pocket of his
8481 overalls. It was even possible -- he thought this because from
8482 time to time something seemed to tickle his leg -- that there
8483 might be a sizeable bit of crust there. In the end the
8484 temptation to find out overcame his fear; he slipped a hand
8485 into his pocket.</p>
8487 'Smith!' yelled a voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith
8488 W.! Hands out of pockets in the cells!'</p>
8490 He sat still again, his hands crossed on his knee. Before
8491 being brought here he had been taken to another place which
8492 must have been an ordinary prison or a temporary lock-up used
8493 by the patrols. He did not know how long he had been there;
8494 some hours at any rate; with no clocks and no daylight it was
8495 hard to gauge the time. It was a noisy, evil-smelling place.
8496 They had put him into a cell similar to the one he was now in,
8497 but filthily dirty and at all times crowded by ten or fifteen
8498 people. The majority of them were common criminals, but there
8499 were a few political prisoners among them. He had sat silent
8500 against the wall, jostled by dirty bodies, too preoccupied by
8501 fear and the pain in his belly to take much interest in his
8502 surroundings, but still noticing the astonishing difference in
8503 demeanour between the Party prisoners and the others. The Party
8504 prisoners were always silent and terrified, but the ordinary
8505 criminals seemed to care nothing for anybody. They yelled
8506 insults at the guards, fought back fiercely when their
8507 belongings were impounded, wrote obscene words on the floor,
8508 ate smuggled food which they produced from mysterious
8509 hiding-places in their clothes, and even shouted down the
8510 telescreen when it tried to restore order. On the other hand
8511 some of them seemed to be on good terms with the guards, called
8512 them by nicknames, and tried to wheedle cigarettes through the
8513 spyhole in the door. The guards, too, treated the common
8514 criminals with a certain forbearance, even when they had to
8515 handle them roughly. There was much talk about the
8516 forced-labour camps to which most of the prisoners expected to
8517 be sent. It was 'all right' in the camps, he gathered, so long
8518 as you had good contacts and knew the ropes. There was bribery,
8519 favouritism, and racketeering of every kind, there was
8520 homosexuality and prostitution, there was even illicit alcohol
8521 distilled from potatoes. The positions of trust were given only
8522 to the common criminals, especially the gangsters and the
8523 murderers, who formed a sort of aristocracy. All the dirty jobs
8524 were done by the politicals.</p>
8526 There was a constant come-and-go of prisoners of every
8527 description: drug-peddlers, thieves, bandits, black-marketeers,
8528 drunks, prostitutes. Some of the drunks were so violent
8529 that the other prisoners had to combine to suppress
8530 them. An enormous wreck of a woman, aged about sixty, with
8531 great tumbling breasts and thick coils of white hair which had
8532 come down in her struggles, was carried in, kicking and
8533 shouting, by four guards, who had hold of her one at each
8534 corner. They wrenched off the boots with which she had been
8535 trying to kick them, and dumped her down across Winston's lap,
8536 almost breaking his thigh-bones. The woman hoisted herself
8537 upright and followed them out with a yell of 'F-- bastards!'
8538 Then, noticing that she was sitting on something uneven, she
8539 slid off Winston's knees on to the bench.</p>
8541 'Beg pardon, dearie,' she said. 'I wouldn't 'a sat on you,
8542 only the buggers put me there. They dono 'ow to treat a lady,
8543 do they?' She paused, patted her breast, and belched. 'Pardon,'
8544 she said, 'I ain't meself, quite.'</p>
8546 She leant forward and vomited copiously on the floor.</p>
8548 'Thass better,' she said, leaning back with closed eyes.
8549 'Never keep it down, thass what I say. Get it up while it's
8550 fresh on your stomach, like.'</p>
8552 She revived, turned to have another look at Winston and
8553 seemed immediately to take a fancy to him. She put a vast arm
8554 round his shoulder and drew him towards her, breathing beer and
8555 vomit into his face.</p>
8557 'Wass your name, dearie?' she said.</p>
8559 'Smith,' said Winston.</p>
8561 'Smith?' said the woman. 'Thass funny. My name's Smith
8562 too. Why,' she added sentimentally, 'I might be your mother!'</p>
8564 She might, thought Winston, be his mother. She was about
8565 the right age and physique, and it was probable that people
8566 changed somewhat after twenty years in a forced-labour camp.</p>
8568 No one else had spoken to him. To a surprising extent the
8569 ordinary criminals ignored the Party prisoners. 'The polits,'
8570 they called them, with a sort of uninterested contempt. The
8571 Party prisoners seemed terrified of speaking to anybody, and
8572 above all of speaking to one another. Only once, when two Party
8573 members, both women, were pressed close together on the bench,
8574 he overheard amid the din of voices a few hurriedly-whispered
8575 words; and in particular a reference to something called 'room
8576 one-oh-one', which he did not understand.</p>
8578 It might be two or three hours ago that they had brought
8579 him here. The dull pain in his belly never went away, but
8580 sometimes it grew better and sometimes worse, and his thoughts
8581 expanded or contracted accordingly. When it grew worse he
8582 thought only of the pain itself, and of his desire for food.
8583 When it grew better, panic took hold of him. There were moments
8584 when he foresaw the things that would happen to him with such
8585 actuality that his heart galloped and his breath stopped. He
8586 felt the smash of truncheons on his elbows and iron-shod boots
8587 on his shins; he saw himself grovelling on the floor, screaming
8588 for mercy through broken teeth. He hardly thought of Julia. He
8589 could not fix his mind on her. He loved her and would not
8590 betray her; but that was only a fact, known as he knew the
8591 rules of arithmetic. He felt no love for her, and he hardly
8592 even wondered what was happening to her. He thought oftener of
8593 O'Brien, with a flickering hope. O'Brien might know that he had
8594 been arrested. The Brotherhood, he had said, never tried to
8595 save its members. But there was the razor blade; they would
8596 send the razor blade if they could. There would be perhaps five
8597 seconds before the guard could rush into the cell. The blade
8598 would bite into him with a sort of burning coldness, and even
8599 the fingers that held it would be cut to the bone. Everything
8600 came back to his sick body, which shrank trembling from the
8601 smallest pain. He was not certain that he would use the razor
8602 blade even if he got the chance. It was more natural to exist
8603 from moment to moment, accepting another ten minutes' life even
8604 with the certainty that there was torture at the end of it.</p>
8606 Sometimes he tried to calculate the number of porcelain
8607 bricks in the walls of the cell. It should have been easy, but
8608 he always lost count at some point or another. More often he
8609 wondered where he was, and what time of day it was. At one
8610 moment he felt certain that it was broad daylight outside, and
8611 at the next equally certain that it was pitch darkness. In this
8612 place, he knew instinctively, the lights would never be turned
8613 out. It was the place with no darkness: he saw now why O'Brien
8614 had seemed to recognize the allusion. In the Ministry of Love
8615 there were no windows. His cell might be at the heart of the
8616 building or against its outer wall; it might be ten floors
8617 below ground, or thirty above it. He moved himself mentally
8618 from place to place, and tried to determine by the feeling of
8619 his body whether he was perched high in the air or buried deep
8622 There was a sound of marching boots outside. The steel
8623 door opened with a clang. A young officer, a trim
8624 black-uniformed figure who seemed to glitter all over with polished
8625 leather, and whose pale, straight-featured face was like a wax
8626 mask, stepped smartly through the doorway. He motioned to the
8627 guards outside to bring in the prisoner they were leading. The
8628 poet Ampleforth shambled into the cell. The door clanged shut
8631 Ampleforth made one or two uncertain movements from side
8632 to side, as though having some idea that there was another door
8633 to go out of, and then began to wander up and down the cell. He
8634 had not yet noticed Winston's presence. His troubled eyes were
8635 gazing at the wall about a metre above the level of Winston's
8636 head. He was shoeless; large, dirty toes were sticking out of
8637 the holes in his socks. He was also several days away from a
8638 shave. A scrubby beard covered his face to the cheekbones,
8639 giving him an air of ruffianism that went oddly with his large
8640 weak frame and nervous movements.</p>
8642 Winston roused hirnself a little from his lethargy. He
8643 must speak to Ampleforth, and risk the yell from the
8644 telescreen. It was even conceivable that Ampleforth was the
8645 bearer of the razor blade.</p>
8647 'Ampleforth,' he said.</p>
8649 There was no yell from the telescreen. Ampleforth paused,
8650 mildly startled. His eyes focused themselves slowly on Winston.</p>
8652 'Ah, Smith!' he said. 'You too!'</p>
8654 'What are you in for?'</p>
8656 'To tell you the truth -- ' He sat down awkwardly on the
8657 bench opposite Winston. 'There is only one offence, is there
8660 'And have you committed it?'</p>
8662 'Apparently I have.'</p>
8664 He put a hand to his forehead and pressed his temples for
8665 a moment, as though trying to remember something.</p>
8667 'These things happen,' he began vaguely. 'I have been able
8668 to recall one instance -- a possible instance. It was an
8669 indiscretion, undoubtedly. We were producing a definitive
8670 edition of the poems of Kipling. I allowed the word "God" to
8671 remain at the end of a line. I could not help it!' he added
8672 almost indignantly, raising his face to look at Winston. 'It
8673 was impossible to change the line. The rhyme was "rod". Do you
8674 realize that there are only twelve rhymes to "rod" in the
8675 entire language? For days I had racked my brains. There
8676 was no other rhyme.'</p>
8678 The expression on his face changed. The annoyance passed
8679 out of it and for a moment he looked almost pleased. A sort of
8680 intellectual warmth, the joy of the pedant who has found out
8681 some useless fact, shone through the dirt and scrubby hair.</p>
8683 'Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole
8684 history of English poetry has been determined by the fact that
8685 the English language lacks rhymes?'</p>
8687 No, that particular thought had never occurred to Winston.
8688 Nor, in the circumstances, did it strike him as very important
8691 'Do you know what time of day it is?' he said.</p>
8693 Ampleforth looked startled again. 'I had hardly thought
8694 about it. They arrested me -- it could be two days ago --
8695 perhaps three.' His eyes flitted round the walls, as though he
8696 half expected to find a window somewhere. 'There is no
8697 difference between night and day in this place. I do not see
8698 how one can calculate the time.'</p>
8700 They talked desultorily for some minutes, then, without
8701 apparent reason, a yell from the telescreen bade them be
8702 silent. Winston sat quietly, his hands crossed. Ampleforth, too
8703 large to sit in comfort on the narrow bench, fidgeted from side
8704 to side, clasping his lank hands first round one knee, then
8705 round the other. The telescreen barked at him to keep still.
8706 Time passed. Twenty minutes, an hour -- it was difficult to
8707 judge. Once more there was a sound of boots outside. Winston's
8708 entrails contracted. Soon, very soon, perhaps in five minutes,
8709 perhaps now, the tramp of boots would mean that his own turn
8712 The door opened. The cold-faced young officer stepped into
8713 the cell. With a brief movement of the hand he indicated
8716 'Room 101,' he said.</p>
8718 Ampleforth marched clumsily out between the guards, his
8719 face vaguely perturbed, but uncomprehending.</p>
8721 What seemed like a long time passed. The pain in Winston's
8722 belly had revived. His mind sagged round and round on the same
8723 trick, like a ball falling again and again into the same series
8724 of slots. He had only six thoughts. The pain in his belly; a
8725 piece of bread; the blood and the screaming; O'Brien ; Julia;
8726 the razor blade. There was another spasm in his entrails, the
8727 heavy boots were approaching. As the door opened, the wave of
8728 air that it created brought in a powerful smell of cold sweat.
8729 Parsons walked into the cell. He was wearing khaki shorts and a
8732 This time Winston was startled into self-forgetfulness.</p>
8734 'You here!' he said.</p>
8736 Parsons gave Winston a glance in which there was neither
8737 interest nor surprise, but only misery. He began walking
8738 jerkily up and down, evidently unable to keep still. Each time
8739 he straightened his pudgy knees it was apparent that they were
8740 trembling. His eyes had a wide-open, staring look, as though he
8741 could not prevent himself from gazing at something in the
8742 middle distance.</p>
8744 'What are you in for?' said Winston.</p>
8746 'Thoughtcrime!' said Parsons, almost blubbering. The tone
8747 of his voice implied at once a complete admission of his guilt
8748 and a sort of incredulous horror that such a word could be
8749 applied to himself. He paused opposite Winston and began
8750 eagerly appealing to him: 'You don't think they'll shoot me, do
8751 you, old chap? They don't shoot you if you haven't actually
8752 done anything -- only thoughts, which you can't help? I know
8753 they give you a fair hearing. Oh, I trust them for that!
8754 They'll know my record, won't they? You know what kind of chap
8755 I was. Not a bad chap in my way. Not brainy, of course, but
8756 keen. I tried to do my best for the Party, didn't I? I'll get
8757 off with five years, don't you think? Or even ten years? A chap
8758 like me could make himself pretty useful in a labour-camp. They
8759 wouldn't shoot me for going off the rails just once?'</p>
8761 'Are you guilty?' said Winston.</p>
8763 'Of course I'm guilty!' cried Parsons with a servile
8764 glance at the telescreen. 'You don't think the Party would
8765 arrest an innocent man, do you?' His frog-like face grew
8766 calmer, and even took on a slightly sanctimonious expression.
8767 'Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man,' he said
8768 sententiously. 'It's insidious. It can get hold of you without
8769 your even knowing it. Do you know how it got hold of me? In my
8770 sleep! Yes, that's a fact. There I was, working away, trying to
8771 do my bit -- never knew I had any bad stuff in my mind at all.
8772 And then I started talking in my sleep. Do you know what they
8773 heard me saying?'</p>
8775 He sank his voice, like someone who is obliged for medical
8776 reasons to utter an obscenity.</p>
8778 "Down with Big Brother!" Yes, I said that! Said it over
8779 and over again, it seems. Between you and me, old man, I'm glad
8780 they got me before it went any further. Do you know what I'm
8781 going to say to them when I go up before the tribunal? "Thank
8782 you," I'm going to say, "thank you for saving me before it was
8785 'Who denounced you?' said Winston.</p>
8787 'It was my little daughter,' said Parsons with a sort of
8788 doleful pride. 'She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was
8789 saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty
8790 smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any grudge
8791 for it. In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her up in
8792 the right spirit, anyway.'</p>
8794 He made a few more jerky movements up and down, several
8795 times, casting a longing glance at the lavatory pan. Then he
8796 suddenly ripped down his shorts.
8797 'Excuse me, old man,' he said. 'I can't help it. It's the
8800 He plumped his large posterior into the lavatory pan.
8801 Winston covered his face with his hands.</p>
8803 'Smith!' yelled the voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith
8804 W! Uncover your face. No faces covered in the cells.'</p>
8806 Winston uncovered his face. Parsons used the lavatory,
8807 loudly and abundantly. It then turned out that the plug was
8808 defective and the cell stank abominably for hours afterwards.</p>
8810 Parsons was removed. More prisoners came and went,
8811 mysteriously. One, a woman, was consigned to 'Room 101', and,
8812 Winston noticed, seemed to shrivel and turn a different colour
8813 when she heard the words. A time came when, if it had been
8814 morning when he was brought here, it would be afternoon; or if
8815 it had been afternoon, then it would be midnight. There were
8816 six prisoners in the cell, men and women. All sat very still.
8817 Opposite Winston there sat a man with a chinless, toothy face
8818 exactly like that of some large, harmless rodent. His fat,
8819 mottled cheeks were so pouched at the bottom that it was
8820 difficult not to believe that he had little stores of food
8821 tucked away there. His pale-grey eyes flitted timorously from
8822 face to face and turned quickly away again when he caught
8825 The door opened, and another prisoner was brought in whose
8826 appearance sent a momentary chill through Winston. He was a
8827 commonplace, mean-looking man who might have been an engineer
8828 or technician of some kind. But what was startling was the
8829 emaciation of his face. It was like a skull. Because of its
8830 thinness the mouth and eyes looked disproportionately large,
8831 and the eyes seemed filled with a murderous, unappeasable
8832 hatred of somebody or something.</p>
8834 The man sat down on the bench at a little distance from
8835 Winston. Winston did not look at him again, but the tormented,
8836 skull-like face was as vivid in his mind as though it had been
8837 straight in front of his eyes. Suddenly he realized what was
8838 the matter. The man was dying of starvation. The same thought
8839 seemed to occur almost simultaneously to everyone in the cell.
8840 There was a very faint stirring all the way round the bench.
8841 The eyes of the chinless man kept flitting towards the
8842 skull-faced man, then turning guiltily away, then being dragged
8843 back by an irresistible attraction. Presently he began to
8844 fidget on his seat. At last he stood up, waddled clumsily
8845 across the cell, dug down into the pocket of his overalls, and,
8846 with an abashed air, held out a grimy piece of bread to the
8847 skull- faced man.</p>
8849 There was a furious, deafening roar from the telescreen.
8850 The chinless man jumped in his tracks. The skull-faced man had
8851 quickly thrust his hands behind his back, as though
8852 demonstrating to all the world that he refused the gift.</p>
8854 'Bumstead!' roared the voice. '2713 Bumstead J.! Let fall
8855 that piece of bread!'</p>
8857 The chinless man dropped the piece of bread on the floor.</p>
8859 'Remain standing where you are,' said the voice. 'Face the
8860 door. Make no movement.'</p>
8862 The chinless man obeyed. His large pouchy cheeks were
8863 quivering uncontrollably. The door clanged open. As the young
8864 officer entered and stepped aside, there emerged from behind
8865 him a short stumpy guard with enormous arms and shoulders. He
8866 took his stand opposite the chinless man, and then, at a signal
8867 from the officer, let free a frightful blow, with all the
8868 weight of his body behind it, full in the chinless man's mouth.
8869 The force of it seemed almost to knock him clear of the floor.
8870 His body was flung across the cell and fetched up against the
8871 base of the lavatory seat. For a moment he lay as though
8872 stunned, with dark blood oozing from his mouth and nose. A very
8873 faint whimpering or squeaking, which seemed unconscious, came
8874 out of him. Then he rolled over and raised himself unsteadily
8875 on hands and knees. Amid a stream of blood and saliva, the two
8876 halves of a dental plate fell out of his mouth.</p>
8878 The prisoners sat very still, their hands crossed on their
8879 knees. The chinless man climbed back into his place. Down one
8880 side of his face the flesh was darkening. His mouth had swollen
8881 into a shapeless cherry-coloured mass with a black hole in the
8885 From time to time a little blood dripped on to the breast
8886 of his overalls. His grey eyes still flitted from face to face,
8887 more guiltily than ever, as though he were trying to discover
8888 how much the others despised him for his humiliation.</p>
8891 The door opened. With a small gesture the officer
8892 indicated the skull-faced man.</p>
8894 'Room 101,' he said.</p>
8896 There was a gasp and a flurry at Winston's side. The man
8897 had actually flung himself on his knees on the floor, with his
8898 hand clasped together.</p>
8900 'Comrade! Officer!' he cried. 'You don't have to take me
8901 to that place! Haven't I told you everything already? What else
8902 is it you want to know? There's nothing I wouldn't confess,
8903 nothing! Just tell me what it is and I'll confess straight off.
8904 Write it down and I'll sign it -- anything! Not room 101!'</p>
8906 'Room 101,' said the officer.</p>
8908 The man's face, already very pale, turned a colour Winston
8909 would not have believed possible. It was definitely,
8910 unmistakably, a shade of green.</p>
8912 'Do anything to me!' he yelled. 'You've been starving me
8913 for weeks. Finish it off and let me die. Shoot me. Hang me.
8914 Sentence me to twenty-five years. Is there somebody else you
8915 want me to give away? Just say who it is and I'll tell you
8916 anything you want. I don't care who it is or what you do to
8917 them. I've got a wife and three children. The biggest of them
8918 isn't six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and cut
8919 their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and watch
8920 it. But not Room 101!'</p>
8922 'Room 101,' said the officer.</p>
8924 The man looked frantically round at the other prisoners,
8925 as though with some idea that he could put another victim in
8926 his own place. His eyes settled on the smashed face of the
8927 chinless man. He flung out a lean arm.</p>
8929 'That's the one you ought to be taking, not me!' he
8930 shouted. 'You didn't hear what he was saying after they bashed
8931 his face. Give me a chance and I'll tell you every word of it.
8932 He's the one that's against the Party, not me.' The
8933 guards stepped forward. The man's voice rose to a shriek. 'You
8934 didn't hear him!' he repeated. 'Something went wrong with the
8935 telescreen. He's the one you want. Take him, not me!'</p>
8937 The two sturdy guards had stooped to take him by the arms.
8938 But just at this moment he flung himself across the floor of
8939 the cell and grabbed one of the iron legs that supported the
8940 bench. He had set up a wordless howling, like an animal. The
8941 guards took hold of him to wrench him loose, but he clung on
8942 with astonishing strength. For perhaps twenty seconds they were
8943 hauling at him. The prisoners sat quiet, their hands crossed on
8944 their knees, looking straight in front of them. The howling
8945 stopped; the man had no breath left for anything except hanging
8946 on. Then there was a different kind of cry. A kick from a
8947 guard's boot had broken the fingers of one of his hands. They
8948 dragged him to his feet.</p>
8950 'Room 101,' said the officer.</p>
8952 The man was led out, walking unsteadily, with head sunken,
8953 nursing his crushed hand, all the fight had gone out of him.</p>
8955 A long time passed. If it had been midnight when the
8956 skull-faced man was taken away, it was morning: if morning, it
8957 was afternoon. Winston was alone, and had been alone for hours.
8958 The pain of sitting on the narrow bench was such that often he
8959 got up and walked about, unreproved by the telescreen. The
8960 piece of bread still lay where the chinless man had dropped it.
8961 At the beginning it needed a hard effort not to look at it, but
8962 presently hunger gave way to thirst. His mouth was sticky and
8963 evil-tasting. The humming sound and the unvarying white light
8964 induced a sort of faintness, an empty feeling inside his head.
8965 He would get up because the ache in his bones was no longer
8966 bearable, and then would sit down again almost at once because
8967 he was too dizzy to make sure of staying on his feet. Whenever
8968 his physical sensations were a little under control the terror
8969 returned. Sometimes with a fading hope he thought of O'Brien
8970 and the razor blade. It was thinkable that the razor blade
8971 might arrive concealed in his food, if he were ever fed. More
8972 dimly he thought of Julia. Somewhere or other she was suffering
8973 perhaps far worse than he. She might be screaming with pain at
8974 this moment. He thought: 'If I could save Julia by doubling my
8975 own pain, would I do it? Yes, I would.' But that was merely an
8976 intellectual decision, taken because he knew that he ought to
8977 take it. He did not feel it. In this place you could not feel
8978 anything, except pain and foreknowledge of pain. Besides, was
8979 it possible, when you were actually suffering it, to wish for
8980 any reason that your own pain should increase? But that
8981 question was not answerable yet.</p>
8983 The boots were approaching again. The door opened. O'Brien
8986 Winston started to his feet. The shock of the sight had
8987 driven all caution out of him. For the first time in many years
8988 he forgot the presence of the telescreen.</p>
8990 'They've got you too!' he cried.</p>
8992 'They got me a long time ago,' said O'Brien with a mild,
8993 almost regretful irony. He stepped aside. from behind him there
8994 emerged a broad-chested guard with a long black truncheon in
8997 'You know him, Winston,' said O'Brien. 'Don't deceive
8998 yourself. You did know it -- you have always known it.'</p>
9000 Yes, he saw now, he had always known it. But there was no
9001 time to think of that. All he had eyes for was the truncheon in
9002 the guard's hand. It might fall anywhere; on the crown, on the
9003 tip of the ear, on the upper arm, on the elbow-</p>
9005 The elbow! He had slumped to his knees, almost paralysed,
9006 clasping the stricken elbow with his other hand. Everything had
9007 exploded into yellow light. Inconceivable, inconceivable that
9008 one blow could cause such pain! The light cleared and he could
9009 see the other two looking down at him. The guard was laughing
9010 at his contortions. One question at any rate was answered.
9011 Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase
9012 of pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should
9013 stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the
9014 face of pain there are no heroes, no heroes, he thought over
9015 and over as he writhed on the floor, clutching uselessly at his
9016 disabled left arm.</p>
9017 <h1><a name="19">XIX</a></h1>
9018 <p class="no-indent">
9019 He was lying on something that felt like a camp bed,
9020 except that it was higher off the ground and that he was fixed
9021 down in some way so that he could not move. Light that seemed
9022 stronger than usual was falling on his face. O'Brien was
9023 standing at his side, looking down at him intently. At the
9024 other side of him stood a man in a white coat, holding a
9025 hypodermic syringe.</p>
9027 Even after his eyes were open he took in his surroundings
9028 only gradually. He had the impression of swimming up into this
9029 room from some quite different world, a sort of underwater
9030 world far beneath it. How long he had been down there he did
9031 not know. Since the moment when they arrested him he had not
9032 seen darkness or daylight. Besides, his memories were not
9033 continuous. There had been times when consciousness, even the
9034 sort of consciousness that one has in sleep, had stopped dead
9035 and started again after a blank interval. But whether the
9036 intervals were of days or weeks or only seconds, there was no
9039 With that first blow on the elbow the nightmare had
9040 started. Later he was to realize that all that then happened
9041 was merely a preliminary, a routine interrogation to which
9042 nearly all prisoners were subjected. There was a long range of
9043 crimes -- espionage, sabotage, and the like -- to which
9044 everyone had to confess as a matter of course. The confession
9045 was a formality, though the torture was real. How many times he
9046 had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued, he could
9047 not remember. Always there were five or six men in black
9048 uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists,
9049 sometimes it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods,
9050 sometimes it was boots. There were times when he rolled about
9051 the floor, as shameless as an animal, writhing his body this
9052 way and that in an endless, hopeless effort to dodge the kicks,
9053 and simply inviting more and yet more kicks, in his ribs, in
9054 his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his groin, in his
9055 testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were
9056 times when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked,
9057 unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the guards continued
9058 to beat him but that he could not force hirnself into losing
9059 consciousness. There were times when his nerve so forsook him
9060 that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began,
9061 when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough
9062 to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary
9063 crimes. There were other times when he started out with the
9064 resolve of confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced
9065 out of him between gasps of pain, and there were times when he
9066 feebly tried to compromise, when he said to himself: 'I will
9067 confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes
9068 unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will
9069 tell them what they want.' Sometimes he was beaten till he
9070 could hardly stand, then flung like a sack of potatoes on to
9071 the stone floor of a cell, left to recuperate for a few hours,
9072 and then taken out and beaten again. There were also longer
9073 periods of recovery. He remembered them dimly, because they
9074 were spent chiefly in sleep or stupor. He remembered a cell
9075 with a plank bed, a sort of shelf sticking out from the wall,
9076 and a tin wash-basin, and meals of hot soup and bread and
9077 sometimes coffee. He remembered a surly barber arriving to
9078 scrape his chin and crop his hair, and businesslike,
9079 unsympathetic men in white coats feeling his pulse, tapping his
9080 reflexes, turning up his eyelids, running harsh fingers over
9081 him in search for broken bones, and shooting needles into his
9082 arm to make him sleep.</p>
9084 The beatings grew less frequent, and became mainly a
9085 threat, a horror to which he could be sent back at any moment
9086 when his answers were unsatisfactory. His questioners now were
9087 not ruffians in black uniforms but Party intellectuals, little
9088 rotund men with quick movements and flashing spectacles, who
9089 worked on him in relays over periods which lasted -- he
9090 thought, he could not be sure -- ten or twelve hours at a
9091 stretch. These other questioners saw to it that he was in
9092 constant slight pain, but it was not chiefly pain that they
9093 relied on. They slapped his face, wrung his ears. pulled his
9094 hair, made him stand on one leg, refused him leave to urinate,
9095 shone glaring lights in his face until his eyes ran with water;
9096 but the aim of this was simply to humiliate him and destroy his
9097 power of arguing and reasoning. Their real weapon was the
9098 merciless questioning that went on and on, hour after hour,
9099 tripping him up, laying traps for him, twisting everything that
9100 he said, convicting him at every step of lies and
9101 self-contradiction until he began weeping as much from shame as
9102 from nervous fatigue Sometimes he would weep half a dozen times
9103 in a single session. Most of the time they screamed abuse at
9104 him and threatened at every hesitation to deliver him over to
9105 the guards again; but sometimes they would suddenly change
9106 their tune, call him comrade, appeal to him in the name of
9107 Ingsoc and Big Brother, and ask him sorrowfully whether even
9108 now he had not enough loyalty to the Party left to make him
9109 wish to undo the evil he had done. When his nerves were in rags
9110 after hours of questioning, even this appeal could reduce him
9111 to snivelling tears. In the end the nagging voices broke him
9112 down more completely than the boots and fists of the guards. He
9113 became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed,
9114 whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to find out
9115 what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly,
9116 before the bullying started anew. He confessed to the
9117 assassination of eminent Party members, the distribution of
9118 seditious pamphlets, embezzlement of public funds, sale of
9119 military secrets, sabotage of every kind. He confessed that he
9120 had been a spy in the pay of the Eastasian government as far
9121 back as 1968. He confessed that he was a religious believer, an
9122 admirer of capitalism, and a sexual pervert. He confessed that
9123 he had murdered his wife, although he knew, and his questioners
9124 must have known, that his wife was still alive. He confessed
9125 that for years he had been in personal touch with Goldstein and
9126 had been a member of an underground organization which had
9127 included almost every human being he had ever known. It was
9128 easier to confess everything and implicate everybody. Besides,
9129 in a sense it was all true. It was true that he had been the
9130 enemy of the Party, and in the eyes of the Party there was no
9131 distinction between the thought and the deed.</p>
9133 There were also memories of another kind. They stood out
9134 in his mind disconnectedly, like pictures with blackness all
9137 He was in a cell which might have been either dark or
9138 light, because he could see nothing except a pair of eyes. Near
9139 at hand some kind of instrument was ticking slowly and
9140 regularly. The eyes grew larger and more luminous. Suddenly he
9141 floated out of his seat, dived into the eyes, and was swallowed
9144 He was strapped into a chair surrounded by dials, under
9145 dazzling lights. A man in a white coat was reading the dials.
9146 There was a tramp of heavy boots outside. The door clanged
9147 open. The waxed-faced officer marched in, followed by two
9150 'Room 101,' said the officer.</p>
9152 The man in the white coat did not turn round. He did not
9153 look at Winston either; he was looking only at the dials.</p>
9155 He was rolling down a mighty corridor, a kilometre wide,
9156 full of glorious, golden light, roaring with laughter and
9157 shouting out confessions at the top of his voice. He was
9158 confessing everything, even the things he had succeeded in
9159 holding back under the torture. He was relating the entire
9160 history of his life to an audience who knew it already. With
9161 him were the guards, the other questioners, the men in white
9162 coats, O'Brien, Julia, Mr Charrington, all rolling down the
9163 corridor together and shouting with laughter. Some dreadful
9164 thing which had lain embedded in the future had somehow been
9165 skipped over and had not happened. Everything was all right,
9166 there was no more pain, the last detail of his life was laid
9167 bare, understood, forgiven.</p>
9169 He was starting up from the plank bed in the
9170 half-certainty that he had heard O'Brien's voice. All through his
9171 interrogation, although he had never seen him, he had had the
9172 feeling that O'Brien was at his elbow, just out of sight. It
9173 was O'Brien who was directing everything. It was he who set the
9174 guards on to Winston and who prevented them from killing him.
9175 It was he who decided when Winston should scream with pain,
9176 when he should have a respite, when he should be fed, when he
9177 should sleep, when the drugs should be pumped into his arm. It
9178 was he who asked the questions and suggested the answers. He
9179 was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor,
9180 he was the friend. And once -- Winston could not remember
9181 whether it was in drugged sleep, or in normal sleep, or even in
9182 a moment of wakefulness -- a voice murmured in his ear: 'Don't
9183 worry, Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years I have
9184 watched over you. Now the turning-point has come. I shall save
9185 you, I shall make you perfect.' He was not sure whether it was
9186 O'Brien's voice; but it was the same voice that had said to
9187 him, 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,'
9188 in that other dream, seven years ago.</p>
9190 He did not remember any ending to his interrogation. There
9191 was a period of blackness and then the cell, or room, in which
9192 he now was had gradually materialized round him. He was almost
9193 flat on his back, and unable to move. His body was held down at
9194 every essential point. Even the back of his head was gripped in
9195 some manner. O'Brien was looking down at him gravely and rather
9196 sadly. His face, seen from below, looked coarse and worn, with
9197 pouches under the eyes and tired lines from nose to chin. He
9198 was older than Winston had thought him; he was perhaps
9199 forty-eight or fifty. Under his hand there was a dial with a
9200 lever on top and figures running round the face.</p>
9202 'I told you,' said O'Brien, 'that if we met again it would
9205 'Yes,' said Winston.</p>
9207 Without any warning except a slight movement of O'Brien's
9208 hand, a wave of pain flooded his body. It was a frightening
9209 pain, because he could not see what was happening, and he had
9210 the feeling that some mortal injury was being done to him. He
9211 did not know whether the thing was really happening, or whether
9212 the effect was electrically produced; but his body was being
9213 wrenched out of shape, the joints were being slowly torn apart.
9214 Although the pain had brought the sweat out on his forehead,
9215 the worst of all was the fear that his backbone was about to
9216 snap. He set his teeth and breathed hard through his nose,
9217 trying to keep silent as long as possible.</p>
9219 'You are afraid,' said O'Brien, watching his face, 'that
9220 in another moment something is going to break. Your especial
9221 fear is that it will be your backbone. You have a vivid mental
9222 picture of the vertebrae snapping apart and the spinal fluid
9223 dripping out of them. That is what you are thinking, is it not,
9226 Winston did not answer. O'Brien drew back the lever on the
9227 dial. The wave of pain receded almost as quickly as it had
9230 'That was forty,' said O'Brien. 'You can see that the
9231 numbers on this dial run up to a hundred. Will you please
9232 remember, throughout our conversation, that I have it in my
9233 power to inflict pain on you at any moment and to whatever
9234 degree I choose? If you tell me any lies, or attempt to
9235 prevaricate in any way, or even fall below your usual level of
9236 intelligence, you will cry out with pain, instantly. Do you
9237 understand that?'</p>
9239 'Yes,' said Winston.</p>
9241 O'Brien's manner became less severe. He resettled his
9242 spectacles thoughtfully, and took a pace or two up and down.
9243 When he spoke his voice was gentle and patient. He had the air
9244 of a doctor, a teacher, even a priest, anxious to explain and
9245 persuade rather than to punish.</p>
9247 'I am taking trouble with you, Winston,' he said, 'because
9248 you are worth trouble. You know perfectly well what is the
9249 matter with you. You have known it for years, though you have
9250 fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged. You
9251 suffer from a defective memory. You are unable to remember real
9252 events and you persuade yourself that you remember other events
9253 which never happened. Fortunately it is curable. You have never
9254 cured yourself of it, because you did not choose to. There was
9255 a small effort of the will that you were not ready to make.
9256 Even now, I am well aware, you are clinging to your disease
9257 under the impression that it is a virtue. Now we will take an
9258 example. At this moment, which power is Oceania at war with?'</p>
9260 'When I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia.</p>
9262 'With Eastasia. Good. And Oceania has always been at war
9263 with Eastasia, has it not?'</p>
9265 Winston drew in his breath. He opened his mouth to speak
9266 and then did not speak. He could not take his eyes away from
9269 'The truth, please, Winston. Your truth. Tell me
9270 what you think you remember.'</p>
9272 'I remember that until only a week before I was arrested,
9273 we were not at war with Eastasia at all. We were in alliance
9274 with them. The war was against Eurasia. That had lasted for
9275 four years. Before that -- '</p>
9277 O'Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand.</p>
9279 'Another example,' he said. 'Some years ago you had a very
9280 serious delusion indeed. You believed that three men, three
9281 one-time Party members named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford men
9282 who were executed for treachery and sabotage after making the
9283 fullest possible confession -- were not guilty of the crimes
9284 they were charged with. You believed that you had seen
9285 unmistakable documentary evidence proving that their
9286 confessions were false. There was a certain photograph about
9287 which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had
9288 actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something
9291 An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O'Brien's
9292 fingers. For perhaps five seconds it was within the angle of
9293 Winston's vision. It was a photograph, and there was no
9294 question of its identity. It was the photograph. It was
9295 another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and
9296 Rutherford at the party function in New York, which he had
9297 chanced upon eleven years ago and promptly destroyed. For only
9298 an instant it was before his eyes, then it was out of sight
9299 again. But he had seen it, unquestionably he had seen it! He
9300 made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench the top half of
9301 his body free. It was impossible to move so much as a
9302 centimetre in any direction. For the moment he had even
9303 forgotten the dial. All he wanted was to hold the photograph in
9304 his fingers again, or at least to see it.</p>
9306 'It exists!' he cried.</p>
9308 'No,' said O'Brien.</p>
9310 He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the
9311 opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail
9312 slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it
9313 was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the
9316 'Ashes,' he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It
9317 does not exist. It never existed.'</p>
9319 'But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I
9320 remember it. You remember it.'</p>
9322 'I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.</p>
9324 Winston's heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a
9325 feeling of deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain
9326 that O'Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But
9327 it was perfectly possible that O'Brien had really forgotten the
9328 photograph. And if so, then already he would have forgotten his
9329 denial of remembering it, and forgotten the act of forgetting.
9330 How could one be sure that it was simple trickery? Perhaps that
9331 lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen: that was
9332 the thought that defeated him.</p>
9334 O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More than
9335 ever he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a wayward
9336 but promising child.</p>
9338 'There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the
9339 past,' he said. 'Repeat it, if you please.'</p>
9341 "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls
9342 the present controls the past," repeated Winston obediently.</p>
9344 "Who controls the present controls the past," said
9345 O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your
9346 opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?'</p>
9348 Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston.
9349 His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know
9350 whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save him from
9351 pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the
9354 O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician,
9355 Winston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered
9356 what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does
9357 the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or
9358 other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is
9359 still happening?'</p>
9363 'Then where does the past exist, if at all?'</p>
9365 'In records. It is written down.'</p>
9367 'In records. And- ?'</p>
9369 'In the mind. In human memories.</p>
9371 'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all
9372 records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past,
9375 'But how can you stop people remembering things?' cried
9376 Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. 'It is
9377 involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory?
9378 You have not controlled mine!'</p>
9380 O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the
9383 'On the contrary,' he said, 'you have not
9384 controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here
9385 because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You
9386 would not make the act of submission which is the price of
9387 sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only
9388 the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that
9389 reality is something objective, external, existing in its own
9390 right. You also believe that the nature of reality is
9391 self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you
9392 see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same
9393 thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not
9394 external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.
9395 Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any
9396 case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is
9397 collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the
9398 truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except
9399 by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that
9400 you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of
9401 self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself
9402 before you can become sane.'</p>
9404 He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he
9405 had been saying to sink in.</p>
9407 'Do you remember,' he went on, ' writing in your diary,
9408 "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four"?'</p>
9410 'Yes,' said Winston.</p>
9412 O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston,
9413 with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.</p>
9415 'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?</p>
9419 'And if the party says that it is not four but five --
9424 The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial
9425 had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over
9426 Winston's body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in
9427 deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not
9428 stop. O'Brien watched him, the four fingers still extended. He
9429 drew back the lever. This time the pain was only slightly
9432 'How many fingers, Winston?'</p>
9436 The needle went up to sixty.</p>
9438 'How many fingers, Winston?'</p>
9440 'Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!'</p>
9442 The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at
9443 it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his
9444 vision. The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars,
9445 enormous, blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably
9448 'How many fingers, Winston?'</p>
9450 'Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!'</p>
9452 'How many fingers, Winston?'</p>
9454 'Five! Five! Five!'</p>
9456 'No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still
9457 think there are four. How many fingers, please?'</p>
9459 'Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop
9462 Abruptly he was sitting up with O'Brien's arm round his
9463 shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds.
9464 The bonds that had held his body down were loosened. He felt
9465 very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were
9466 chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a
9467 moment he clung to O'Brien like a baby, curiously comforted by
9468 the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the feeling that
9469 O'Brien was his protector, that the pain was something that
9470 came from outside, from some other source, and that it was
9471 O'Brien who would save him from it.</p>
9473 'You are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.</p>
9475 'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing
9476 what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.</p>
9478 Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes
9479 they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You
9480 must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.'</p>
9482 He laid Winston down on the bed. The grip of his limbs
9483 tightened again, but the pain had ebbed away and the trembling
9484 had stopped, leaving him merely weak and cold. O'Brien motioned
9485 with his head to the man in the white coat, who had stood
9486 immobile throughout the proceedings. The man in the white coat
9487 bent down and looked closely into Winston's eyes, felt his
9488 pulse, laid an ear against his chest, tapped here and there,
9489 then he nodded to O'Brien.</p>
9491 'Again,' said O'Brien.</p>
9493 The pain flowed into Winston's body. The needle must be at
9494 seventy, seventy-five. He had shut his eyes this time. He knew
9495 that the fingers were still there, and still four. All that
9496 mattered was somehow to stay alive until the spasm was over. He
9497 had ceased to notice whether he was crying out or not. The pain
9498 lessened again. He opened his eyes. O'Brien had drawn back the
9501 'How many fingers, Winston?'</p>
9503 'Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I
9504 could. I am trying to see five.'</p>
9506 'Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or
9507 really to see them?'</p>
9509 'Really to see them.'</p>
9511 'Again,' said O'Brien.</p>
9513 Perhaps the needle was eighty -- ninety. Winston could not
9514 intermittently remember why the pain was happening. Behind his
9515 screwed-up eyelids a forest of fingers seemed to be moving in a
9516 sort of dance, weaving in and out, disappearing behind one
9517 another and reappearing again. He was trying to count them, he
9518 could not remember why. He knew only that it was impossible to
9519 count them, and that this was somehow due to the mysterious
9520 identity between five and four. The pain died down again. When
9521 he opened his eyes it was to find that he was still seeing the
9522 same thing. Innumerable fingers, like moving trees, were still
9523 streaming past in either direction, crossing and recrossing. He
9524 shut his eyes again.</p>
9526 'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'</p>
9528 'I don't know. I don't know. You will kill me if you do
9529 that again. Four, five, six -- in all honesty I don't know.'</p>
9531 'Better,' said O'Brien.</p>
9533 A needle slid into Winston's arm. Almost in the same
9534 instant a blissful, healing warmth spread all through his body.
9535 The pain was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes and
9536 looked up gratefully at O'Brien. At sight of the heavy, lined
9537 face, so ugly and so intelligent, his heart seemed to turn
9538 over. If he could have moved he would have stretched out a hand
9539 and laid it on O'Brien arm. He had never loved him so deeply as
9540 at this moment, and not merely because he had stopped the pain.
9541 The old feeling, that it bottom it did not matter whether
9542 O'Brien was a friend or an enemy, had come back. O'Brien was a
9543 person who could be talked to. Perhaps one did not want to be
9544 loved so much as to be understood. O'Brien had tortured him to
9545 the edge of lunacy, and in a little while, it was certain, he
9546 would send him to his death. It made no difference. In some
9547 sense that went deeper than friendship, they were intimates:
9548 somewhere or other, although the actual words might never be
9549 spoken, there was a place where they could meet and talk.
9550 O'Brien was looking down at him with an expression which
9551 suggested that the same thought might be in his own mind. When
9552 he spoke it was in an easy, conversational tone.</p>
9554 'Do you know where you are, Winston?' he said.</p>
9556 'I don't know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love.'</p>
9558 'Do you know how long you have been here?'</p>
9560 'I don't know. Days, weeks, months -- I think it is
9563 'And why do you imagine that we bring people to this
9566 'To make them confess.'</p>
9568 'No, that is not the reason. Try again.'</p>
9570 'To punish them.'</p>
9572 'No!' exclaimed O'Brien. His voice had changed
9573 extraordinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern
9574 and animated. 'No! Not merely to extract your confession, not
9575 to punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here?
9576 To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston,
9577 that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands
9578 uncured? We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you
9579 have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act:
9580 the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our
9581 enemies, we change them. Do you understand what I mean by
9584 He was bending over Winston. His face looked enormous
9585 because of its nearness, and hideously ugly because it was seen
9586 from below. Moreover it was filled with a sort of exaltation, a
9587 lunatic intensity. Again Winston's heart shrank. If it had been
9588 possible he would have cowered deeper into the bed. He felt
9589 certain that O'Brien was about to twist the dial out of sheer
9590 wantonness. At this moment, however, O'Brien turned away. He
9591 took a pace or two up and down. Then he continued less
9594 'The first thing for you to understand is that in this
9595 place there are no martyrdoms. You have read of the religious
9596 persecutions of the past. In the Middle Ages there was the
9597 Inquisitlon. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy,
9598 and ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at
9599 the stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because
9600 the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed them
9601 while they were still unrepentant: in fact, it killed them
9602 because they were unrepentant. Men were dying because they
9603 would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally all the glory
9604 belonged to the victim and all the shame to the Inquisitor who
9605 burned him. Later, in the twentieth century, there were the
9606 totalitarians, as they were called. There were the German Nazis
9607 and the Russian Communists. The Russians persecuted heresy more
9608 cruelly than the Inquisition had done. And they imagined that
9609 they had learned from the mistakes of the past; they knew, at
9610 any rate, that one must not make martyrs. Before they exposed
9611 their victims to public trial, they deliberately set themselves
9612 to destroy their dignity. They wore them down by torture and
9613 solitude until they were despicable, cringing wretches,
9614 confessing whatever was put into their mouths, covering
9615 themselves with abuse, accusing and sheltering behind one
9616 another, whimpering for mercy. And yet after only a few years
9617 the same thing had happened over again. The dead men had become
9618 martyrs and their degradation was forgotten. Once again, why
9619 was it? In the first place, because the confessions that they
9620 had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make
9621 mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that are uttered
9622 here are true. We make them true. And above all we do not allow
9623 the dead to rise up against us. You must stop imagining that
9624 posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never
9625 hear of you. You will be lifted clean out from the stream of
9626 history. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into the
9627 stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you, not a name in a
9628 register, not a memory in a living brain. You will be
9629 annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You will
9630 never have existed.'</p>
9632 Then why bother to torture me? thought Winston, with a
9633 momentary bitterness. O'Brien checked his step as though
9634 Winston had uttered the thought aloud. His large ugly face came
9635 nearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.</p>
9637 'You are thinking,' he said, 'that since we intend to
9638 destroy you utterly, so that nothing that you say or do can
9639 make the smallest difference -- in that case, why do we go to
9640 the trouble of interrogating you first? That is what you were
9641 thinking, was it not?'</p>
9643 'Yes,' said Winston.</p>
9645 O'Brien smiled slightly. 'You are a flaw in the pattern,
9646 Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not tell
9647 you just now that we are different from the persecutors of the
9648 past? We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with
9649 the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us,
9650 it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic
9651 because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never
9652 destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we
9653 reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we
9654 bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely,
9655 heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill
9656 him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should
9657 exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it
9658 may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any
9659 deviation. In the old days the heretic walked to the stake
9660 still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even
9661 the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked
9662 up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the
9663 bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.
9664 The command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The
9665 command of the totalitarians was "Thou shalt". Our command is
9666 "Thou art". No one whom we bring to this place ever
9667 stands out against us. Everyone is washed clean. Even those
9668 three miserable traitors in whose innocence you once believed
9669 -- Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford -- in the end we broke them
9670 down. I took part in their interrogation myself. I saw them
9671 gradually worn down, whimpering, grovelling, weeping -- and in
9672 the end it was not with pain or fear, only with penitence. By
9673 the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of
9674 men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they
9675 had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how
9676 they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they
9677 could die while their minds were still clean.'</p>
9679 His voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation, the
9680 lunatic enthusiasm, was still in his face. He is not
9681 pretending, thought Winston, he is not a hypocrite, he believes
9682 every word he says. What most oppressed him was the
9683 consciousness of his own intellectual inferiority. He watched
9684 the heavy yet graceful form strolling to and fro, in and out of
9685 the range of his vision. O'Brien was a being in all ways larger
9686 than himself. There was no idea that he had ever had, or could
9687 have, that O'Brien had not long ago known, examined, and
9688 rejected. His mind contained Winston's mind. But in that
9689 case how could it be true that O'Brien was mad? It must be he,
9690 Winston, who was mad. O'Brien halted and looked down at him.
9691 His voice had grown stern again.</p>
9693 'Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston,
9694 however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once
9695 gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you
9696 live out the natural term of your life, still you would never
9697 escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever.
9698 Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the
9699 point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to
9700 you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand
9701 years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human
9702 feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will
9703 you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or
9704 laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be
9705 hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you
9706 with ourselves.'</p>
9708 He paused and signed to the man in the white coat. Winston
9709 was aware of some heavy piece of apparatus being pushed into
9710 place behind his head. O'Brien had sat down beside the bed, so
9711 that his face was almost on a level with Winston's.</p>
9713 'Three thousand,' he said, speaking over Winston's head to
9714 the man in the white coat.</p>
9716 Two soft pads, which felt slightly moist, clamped
9717 themselves against Winston's temples. He quailed. There was
9718 pain coming, a new kind of pain. O'Brien laid a hand
9719 reassuringly, almost kindly, on his.</p>
9721 'This time it will not hurt,' he said. 'Keep your eyes
9724 At this moment there was a devastating explosion, or what
9725 seemed like an explosion, though it was not certain whether
9726 there was any noise. There was undoubtedly a blinding flash of
9727 light. Winston was not hurt, only prostrated. Although he had
9728 already been lying on his back when the thing happened, he had
9729 a curious feeling that he had been knocked into that position.
9730 A terrific painless blow had flattened him out. Also something
9731 had happened inside his head. As his eyes regained their focus
9732 he remembered who he was, and where he was, and recognized the
9733 face that was gazing into his own; but somewhere or other there
9734 was a large patch of emptiness, as though a piece had been
9735 taken out of his brain.</p>
9737 'It will not last,' said O'Brien. 'Look me in the eyes.
9738 What country is Oceania at war with?'</p>
9740 Winston thought. He knew what was meant by Oceania and
9741 that he himself was a citizen of Oceania. He also remembered
9742 Eurasia and Eastasia; but who was at war with whom he did not
9743 know. In fact he had not been aware that there was any war.</p>
9745 'I don't remember.'</p>
9747 'Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that
9752 'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the
9753 beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since
9754 the beginning of history, the war has continued without a
9755 break, always the same war. Do you remember that?'</p>
9759 ' Eleven years ago you created a legend about three men
9760 who had been condemned to death for treachery. You pretended
9761 that you had seen a piece of paper which proved them innocent.
9762 No such piece of paper ever existed. You invented it, and later
9763 you grew to believe in it. You remember now the very moment at
9764 which you first invented it. Do you remember that?'</p>
9768 'Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw
9769 five fingers. Do you remember that?'</p>
9773 O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the
9774 thumb concealed.</p>
9776 'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?'</p>
9780 And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the
9781 scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was
9782 no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old
9783 fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back
9784 again. But there had been a moment -- he did not know how long,
9785 thirty seconds, perhaps -- of luminous certainty, when each new
9786 suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and
9787 become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been
9788 three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had
9789 faded but before O'Brien had dropped his hand; but though he
9790 could not recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers
9791 a vivid experience at some period of one's life when one was in
9792 effect a different person.</p>
9794 'You see now,' said O'Brien, 'that it is at any rate
9797 'Yes,' said Winston.</p>
9799 O'Brien stood up with a satisfied air. Over to his left
9800 Winston saw the man in the white coat break an ampoule and draw
9801 back the plunger of a syringe. O'Brien turned to Winston with a
9802 smile. In almost the old manner he resettled his spectacles on
9805 'Do you remember writing in your diary,' he said, 'that it
9806 did not matter whether I was a friend or an enemy, since I was
9807 at least a person who understood you and could be talked to?
9808 You were right. I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to
9809 me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be
9810 insane. Before we bring the session to an end you can ask me a
9811 few questions, if you choose.'</p>
9813 'Any question I like?'</p>
9815 'Anything.' He saw that Winston's eyes were upon the dial.
9816 'It is switched off. What is your first question?'</p>
9818 'What have you done with Julia?' said Winston.</p>
9820 O'Brien smiled again. 'She betrayed you, Winston.
9821 Immediately-unreservedly. I have seldom seen anyone come over
9822 to us so promptly. You would hardly recognize her if you saw
9823 her. All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her
9824 dirty-mindedness -- everything has been burned out of her. It
9825 was a perfect conversion, a textbook case.'</p>
9827 'You tortured her?'</p>
9829 O'Brien left this unanswered. 'Next question,' he said.</p>
9831 'Does Big Brother exist?'</p>
9833 'Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the
9834 embodiment of the Party.'</p>
9836 'Does he exist in the same way as I exist?</p>
9838 'You do not exist,' said O'Brien.</p>
9840 Once again the sense of helplessness assailed him. He
9841 knew, or he could imagine, the arguments which proved his own
9842 nonexistence; but they were nonsense, they were only a play on
9843 words. Did not the statement, 'You do not exist', contain a
9844 logical absurdity? But what use was it to say so? His mind
9845 shrivelled as he thought of the unanswerable, mad arguments
9846 with which O'Brien would demolish him.</p>
9848 'I think I exist,' he said wearily. 'I am conscious of my
9849 own identity. I was born and I shall die. I have arms and legs.
9850 I occupy a particular point in space. No other solid object can
9851 occupy the same point simultaneously. In that sense, does Big
9854 'It is of no importance. He exists.'</p>
9856 'Will Big Brother ever die?'</p>
9858 'Of course not. How could he die? Next question.'</p>
9860 'Does the Brotherhood exist?'</p>
9862 'That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set
9863 you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to be
9864 ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the answer
9865 to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be
9866 an unsolved riddle in your mind.'</p>
9868 Winston lay silent. His breast rose and fell a little
9869 faster. He still had not asked the question that had come into
9870 his mind the first. He had got to ask it, and yet it was as
9871 though his tongue would not utter it. There was a trace of
9872 amusement in O'Brien's face. Even his spectacles seemed to wear
9873 an ironical gleam. He knows, thought Winston suddenly, he knows
9874 what I am going to ask! At the thought the words burst out of
9877 'What is in Room 101?'</p>
9879 The expression on O'Brien's face did not change. He
9882 'You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knows
9883 what is in Room 101.'</p>
9885 He raised a finger to the man in the white coat. Evidently
9886 the session was at an end. A needle jerked into Winston's arm.
9887 He sank almost instantly into deep sleep.</p>
9888 <h1><a name="20">XX</a></h1>
9889 <p class="no-indent">
9890 'There are three stages in your reintegration,' said
9891 O'Brien. 'There is learning, there is understanding, and there
9892 is acceptance. It is time for you to enter upon the second
9895 As always, Winston was lying flat on his back. But of late
9896 his bonds were looser. They still held him to the bed, but he
9897 could move his knees a little and could turn his head from side
9898 to side and raise his arms from the elbow. The dial, also, had
9899 grown to be less of a terror. He could evade its pangs if he
9900 was quick-witted enough: it was chiefly when he showed
9901 stupidity that O'Brien pulled the lever. Sometimes they got
9902 through a whole session without use of the dial. He could not
9903 remember how many sessions there had been. The whole process
9904 seemed to stretch out over a long, indefinite time -- weeks,
9905 possibly -- and the intervals between the sessions might
9906 sometimes have been days, sometimes only an hour or two.</p>
9908 'As you lie there,' said O'Brien, 'you have often wondered
9909 you have even asked me -- why the Ministry of Love should
9910 expend so much time and trouble on you. And when you were free
9911 you were puzzled by what was essentially the same question. You
9912 could grasp the mechanics of the Society you lived in, but not
9913 its underlying motives. Do you remember writing in your diary,
9914 "I understand how: I do not understand why"? It was when
9915 you thought about "why" that you doubted your own sanity. You
9916 have read the book, Goldstein's book, or parts of it, at
9917 least. Did it tell you anything that you did not know already?'</p>
9919 'You have read it?' said Winston.</p>
9921 'I wrote it. That is to say, I collaborated in writing it.
9922 No book is produced individually, as you know.'</p>
9924 'Is it true, what it says?'</p>
9926 'A description, yes. The programme it sets forth is
9927 nonsense. The secret accumulation of knowledge -- a gradual
9928 spread of enlightenment -- ultimately a proletarian rebellion
9929 -- the overthrow of the Party. You foresaw yourself that that
9930 was what it would say. It is all nonsense. The proletarians
9931 will never revolt, not in a thousand years or a million. They
9932 cannot. I do not have to tell you the reason: you know it
9933 already. If you have ever cherished any dreams of violent
9934 insurrection, you must abandon them. There is no way in which
9935 the Party can be overthrown. The rule of the Party is for ever.
9936 Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.'</p>
9938 He came closer to the bed. 'For ever!' he repeated. 'And
9939 now let us get back to the question of "how" and "why". You
9940 understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in
9941 power. Now tell me why we cling to power. What is our motive?
9942 Why should we want power? Go on, speak,' he added as Winston
9943 remained silent.</p>
9945 Nevertheless Winston did not speak for another moment or
9946 two. A feeling of weariness had overwhelmed him. The faint, mad
9947 gleam of enthusiasm had come back into O'Brien's face. He knew
9948 in advance what O'Brien would say. That the Party did not seek
9949 power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority.
9950 That it sought power because men in the mass were frail
9951 cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the
9952 truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by
9953 others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for
9954 mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the
9955 great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the party was
9956 the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil
9957 that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of
9958 others. The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing
9959 was that when O'Brien said this he would believe it. You could
9960 see it in his face. O'Brien knew everything. A thousand times
9961 better than Winston he knew what the world was really like, in
9962 what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what
9963 lies and barbarities the Party kept them there. He had
9964 understood it all, weighed it all, and it made no difference:
9965 all was justified by the ultimate purpose. What can you do,
9966 thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent
9967 than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then
9968 simply persists in his lunacy?</p>
9970 'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly.
9971 'You believe that human beings are not fit to govern
9972 themselves, and therefore-'</p>
9974 He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot
9975 through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up
9978 'That was stupid, Winston, stupid!' he said. 'You should
9979 know better than to say a thing like that.'</p>
9981 He pulled the lever back and continued:</p>
9983 'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is
9984 this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are
9985 not interested in the good of others ; we are interested solely
9986 in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only
9987 power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand
9988 presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the
9989 past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even
9990 those who resembled ourselves, were- cowards and hypocrites.
9991 The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to
9992 us in their methods, but they never had the courage to
9993 recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even
9994 believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a
9995 limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a
9996 paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not
9997 like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the
9998 intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an
9999 end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to
10000 safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to
10001 establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is
10002 persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of
10003 power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'</p>
10005 Winston was struck, as he had been struck before, by the
10006 tiredness of O'Brien's face. It was strong and fleshy and
10007 brutal, it was full of intelligence and a sort of controlled
10008 passion before which he felt himself helpless; but it was
10009 tired. There were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged from
10010 the cheekbones. O'Brien leaned over him, deliberately bringing
10011 the worn face nearer.</p>
10013 'You are thinking,' he said, 'that my face is old and
10014 tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not
10015 even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not
10016 understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The
10017 weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism. Do you die
10018 when you cut your fingernails?'</p>
10020 He turned away from the bed and began strolling up and
10021 down again, one hand in his pocket.</p>
10023 'We are the priests of power,' he said. 'God is power. But
10024 at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It
10025 is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The
10026 first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The
10027 individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an
10028 individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery".
10029 Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is
10030 freedom. Alone -- free -- the human being is always defeated.
10031 It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die,
10032 which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make
10033 complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity,
10034 if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the
10035 Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing
10036 for you to realize is that power is power over human beings.
10037 Over the body but, above all, over the mind. Power over matter
10038 -- external reality, as you would call it -- is not important.
10039 Already our control over matter is absolute.'</p>
10041 For a moment Winston ignored the dial. He made a violent
10042 effort to raise himself into a sitting position, and merely
10043 succeeded in wrenching his body painfully.</p>
10045 'But how can you control matter?' he burst out. 'You don't
10046 even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are
10047 disease, pain, death-'</p>
10049 O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. 'We
10050 control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside
10051 the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing
10052 that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I
10053 could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I
10054 do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must
10055 get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of
10056 Nature. We make the laws of Nature.'</p>
10058 'But you do not! You are not even masters of this planet.
10059 What about Eurasia and Eastasia? You have not conquered them
10062 'Unimportant. We shall conquer them when it suits us. And
10063 if we did not, what difference would it make? We can shut them
10064 out of existence. Oceania is the world.'</p>
10066 'But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is
10067 tiny helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions
10068 of years the earth was uninhabited.'</p>
10070 'Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How
10071 could it be older? Nothing exists except through human
10072 consciousness.'</p>
10074 'But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals --
10075 mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here
10076 long before man was ever heard of.'</p>
10078 'Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not.
10079 Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there
10080 was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would
10081 be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.'</p>
10083 'But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars!
10084 Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of
10085 our reach for ever.'</p>
10087 'What are the stars?' said O'Brien indifferently. 'They
10088 are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if
10089 we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the
10090 centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.'</p>
10092 Winston made another convulsive movement. This time he did
10093 not say anything. O'Brien continued as though answering a
10094 spoken objection:</p>
10096 'For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When
10097 we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often
10098 find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun
10099 and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres
10100 away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce
10101 a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant,
10102 according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians
10103 are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?'</p>
10105 Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said, the
10106 swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he
10107 knew, that he was in the right. The belief that nothing
10108 exists outside your own mind -- surely there must be some way
10109 of demonstrating that it was false? Had it not been exposed
10110 long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he
10111 had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners of O'Brien's
10112 mouth as he looked down at him.</p>
10114 'I told you, Winston,' he said, 'that metaphysics is not
10115 your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is
10116 solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism.
10117 Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different
10118 thing: in fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression,'
10119 he added in a different tone. 'The real power, the power we
10120 have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but
10121 over men.' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of
10122 a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one man
10123 assert his power over another, Winston?'</p>
10125 Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.</p>
10127 'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough.
10128 Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying
10129 your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and
10130 humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and
10131 putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
10132 Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating?
10133 It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that
10134 the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is
10135 torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world
10136 which will grow not less but more merciless as it
10137 refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards
10138 more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded
10139 on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world
10140 there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and
10141 self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already
10142 we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived
10143 from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child
10144 and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman.
10145 No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer.
10146 But in the future there will be no wives and no friends.
10147 Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one
10148 takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated.
10149 Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a
10150 ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are
10151 at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty
10152 towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of
10153 Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of
10154 triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no
10155 literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no
10156 more need of science. There will be no distinction between
10157 beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment
10158 of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be
10159 destroyed. But always -- do not forget this, Winston -- always
10160 there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing
10161 and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there
10162 will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an
10163 enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future,
10164 imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.'</p>
10166 He paused as though he expected Winston to speak. Winston
10167 had tried to shrink back into the surface of the bed again. He
10168 could not say anything. His heart seemed to be frozen. O'Brien
10171 'And remember that it is for ever. The face will always be
10172 there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society,
10173 will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated
10174 over again. Everything that you have undergone since you have
10175 been in our hands -- all that will continue, and worse. The
10176 espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the
10177 executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a
10178 world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the
10179 Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the
10180 opposition, the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his
10181 heresies will live for ever. Every day, at every moment, they
10182 will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon and yet
10183 they will always survive. This drama that I have played out
10184 with you during seven years will be played out over and over
10185 again generation after generation, always in subtler forms.
10186 Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming
10187 with pain, broken up, contemptible -- and in the end utterly
10188 penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own
10189 accord. That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A
10190 world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after
10191 triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve
10192 of power. You are beginning, I can see, to realize what that
10193 world will be like. But in the end you will do more than
10194 understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become part of
10197 Winston had recovered himself sufficiently to speak. 'You
10198 can't!' he said weakly.</p>
10200 'What do you mean by that remark, Winston?'</p>
10202 'You could not create such a world as you have just
10203 described. It is a dream. It is impossible.'</p>
10207 'It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and
10208 hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.'</p>
10212 'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It
10213 would commit suicide.'</p>
10215 'Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is
10216 more exhausting than love. Why should it be? And if it were,
10217 what difference would that make? Suppose that we choose to wear
10218 ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the tempo of
10219 human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference
10220 would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the
10221 individual is not death? The party is immortal.'</p>
10223 As usual, the voice had battered Winston into
10224 helplessness. Moreover he was in dread that if he persisted in
10225 his disagreement O'Brien would twist the dial again. And yet he
10226 could not keep silent. Feebly, without arguments, with nothing
10227 to support him except his inarticulate horror of what O'Brien
10228 had said, he returned to the attack.</p>
10230 'I don't know -- I don't care. Somehow you will fail.
10231 Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you.'</p>
10233 'We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are
10234 imagining that there is something called human nature which
10235 will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we
10236 create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps
10237 you have returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the
10238 slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your mind.
10239 They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the Party. The
10240 others are outside -- irrelevant.'</p>
10242 'I don't care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or
10243 later they will see you for what you are, and then they will
10244 tear you to pieces.'</p>
10246 'Do you see any evidence that that is happening? Or any
10247 reason why it should?'</p>
10249 'No. I believe it. I know that you will fail. There
10250 is something in the universe -- I don't know, some spirit, some
10251 principle -- that you will never overcome.'</p>
10253 'Do you believe in God, Winston?'</p>
10257 'Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?'</p>
10259 'I don't know. The spirit of Man.'</p>
10261 'And do you consider yourself a man?.'</p>
10265 'If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your
10266 kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that
10267 you are alone? You are outside history, you are
10268 non-existent.' His manner changed and he said more harshly:
10269 'And you consider yourself morally superior to us, with our
10270 lies and our cruelty?'</p>
10272 'Yes, I consider myself superior.'</p>
10274 O'Brien did not speak. Two other voices were speaking.
10275 After a moment Winston recognized one of them as his own. It
10276 was a sound-track of the conversation he had had with O'Brien,
10277 on the night when he had enrolled himself in the Brotherhood.
10278 He heard himself promising to lie, to steal, to forge, to
10279 murder, to encourage drug-taking and prostitution, to
10280 disseminate venereal diseases, to throw vitriol in a child's
10281 face. O'Brien made a small impatient gesture, as though to say
10282 that the demonstration was hardly worth making. Then he turned
10283 a switch and the voices stopped.</p>
10285 'Get up from that bed,' he said.</p>
10287 The bonds had loosened themselves. Winston lowered himself
10288 to the floor and stood up unsteadily.</p>
10290 'You are the last man,' said O'Brien. 'You are the
10291 guardian of the human spirit. You shall see yourself as you
10292 are. Take off your clothes.'</p>
10294 Winston undid the bit of string that held his overalls
10295 together. The zip fastener had long since been wrenched out of
10296 them. He could not remember whether at any time since his
10297 arrest he had taken off all his clothes at one time. Beneath
10298 the overalls his body was looped with filthy yellowish rags,
10299 just recognizable as the remnants of underclothes. As he slid
10300 them to the ground he saw that there was a three-sided mirror
10301 at the far end of the room. He approached it, then stopped
10302 short. An involuntary cry had broken out of him.</p>
10304 'Go on,' said O'Brien. 'Stand between the wings of the
10305 mirror. You shall see the side view as well.'</p>
10307 He had stopped because he was frightened. A bowed,
10308 grey-coloured, skeleton-like thing was coming towards him. Its
10309 actual appearance was frightening, and not merely the fact that
10310 he knew it to be himself. He moved closer to the glass. The
10311 creature's face seemed to be protruded, because of its bent
10312 carriage. A forlorn, jailbird's face with a nobby forehead
10313 running back into a bald scalp, a crooked nose, and
10314 battered-looking cheekbones above which his eyes were fierce
10315 and watchful. The cheeks were seamed, the mouth had a drawn-in
10316 look. Certainly it was his own face, but it seemed to him that
10317 it had changed more than he had changed inside. The emotions it
10318 registered would be different from the ones he felt. He had
10319 gone partially bald. For the first moment he had thought that
10320 he had gone grey as well, but it was only the scalp that was
10321 grey. Except for his hands and a circle of his face, his body
10322 was grey all over with ancient, ingrained dirt. Here and there
10323 under the dirt there were the red scars of wounds, and near the
10324 ankle the varicose ulcer was an inflamed mass with flakes of
10325 skin peeling off it. But the truly frightening thing was the
10326 emaciation of his body. The barrel of the ribs was as narrow as
10327 that of a skeleton: the legs had shrunk so that the knees were
10328 thicker than the thighs. He saw now what O'Brien had meant
10329 about seeing the side view. The curvature of the spine was
10330 astonishing. The thin shoulders were hunched forward so as to
10331 make a cavity of the chest, the scraggy neck seemed to be
10332 bending double under the weight of the skull. At a guess he
10333 would have said that it was the body of a man of sixty,
10334 suffering from some malignant disease.</p>
10336 'You have thought sometimes,' said O'Brien, 'that my face
10337 -- the face of a member of the Inner Party -- looks old and
10338 worn. What do you think of your own face?'</p>
10340 He seized Winston's shoulder and spun him round so that he
10341 was facing him.</p>
10343 'Look at the condition you are in!' he said. 'Look at this
10344 filthy grime all over your body. Look at the dirt between your
10345 toes. Look at that disgusting running sore on your leg. Do you
10346 know that you stink like a goat? Probably you have ceased to
10347 notice it. Look at your emaciation. Do you see? I can make my
10348 thumb and forefinger meet round your bicep. I could snap your
10349 neck like a carrot. Do you know that you have lost twenty-five
10350 kilograms since you have been in our hands? Even your hair is
10351 coming out in handfuls. Look!' He plucked at Winston's head and
10352 brought away a tuft of hair. 'Open your mouth. Nine, ten,
10353 eleven teeth left. How many had you when you came to us? And
10354 the few you have left are dropping out of your head. Look
10357 He seized one of Winston's remaining front teeth between
10358 his powerful thumb and forefinger. A twinge of pain shot
10359 through Winston's jaw. O'Brien had wrenched the loose tooth out
10360 by the roots. He tossed it across the cell.</p>
10362 'You are rotting away,' he said; 'you are falling to
10363 pieces. What are you? A bag of filth. Now turn around and look
10364 into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you? That
10365 is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity. Now put
10366 your clothes on again.'</p>
10368 Winston began to dress himself with slow stiff movements.
10369 Until now he had not seemed to notice how thin and weak he was.
10370 Only one thought stirred in his mind: that he must have been in
10371 this place longer than he had imagined. Then suddenly as he
10372 fixed the miserable rags round himself a feeling of pity for
10373 his ruined body overcame him. Before he knew what he was doing
10374 he had collapsed on to a small stool that stood beside the bed
10375 and burst into tears. He was aware of his ugliness, his
10376 gracelessness, a bundle of bones in filthy underclothes sitting
10377 weeping in the harsh white light: but he could not stop
10378 himself. O'Brien laid a hand on his shoulder, almost kindly.</p>
10380 'It will not last for ever,' he said. 'You can escape from
10381 it whenever you choose. Everything depends on yourself.'</p>
10383 'You did it!' sobbed Winston. 'You reduced me to this
10386 'No, Winston, you reduced yourself to it. This is what you
10387 accepted when you set yourself up against the Party. It was all
10388 contained in that first act. Nothing has happened that you did
10391 He paused, and then went on:</p>
10393 'We have beaten you, Winston. We have broken you up. You
10394 have seen what your body is like. Your mind is in the same
10395 state. I do not think there can be much pride left in you. You
10396 have been kicked and flogged and insulted, you have screamed
10397 with pain, you have rolled on the floor in your own blood and
10398 vomit. You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed
10399 everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation
10400 that has not happened to you?'</p>
10402 Winston had stopped weeping, though the tears were still
10403 oozing out of his eyes. He looked up at O'Brien.</p>
10405 'I have not betrayed Julia,' he said.</p>
10407 O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully. 'No,' he said;
10408 'no; that is perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia.'</p>
10410 The peculiar reverence for O'Brien, which nothing seemed
10411 able to destroy, flooded Winston's heart again. How
10412 intelligent, he thought, how intelligent! Never did O'Brien
10413 fail to understand what was said to him. Anyone else on earth
10414 would have answered promptly that he had betrayed Julia.
10415 For what was there that they had not screwed out of him under
10416 the torture? He had told them everything he knew about her, her
10417 habits, her character, her past life; he had confessed in the
10418 most trivial detail everything that had happened at their
10419 meetings, all that he had said to her and she to him, their
10420 black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague plottings
10421 against the Party -- everything. And yet, in the sense in which
10422 he intended the word, he had not betrayed her. He had not
10423 stopped loving her; his feelings towards her had remained the
10424 same. O'Brien had seen what he meant without the need for
10427 'Tell me,' he said, 'how soon will they shoot me?'</p>
10429 'It might be a long time,' said O'Brien. 'You are a
10430 difficult case. But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured
10431 sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you.'</p>
10432 <h1><a name="21">XXI</a></h1>
10433 <p class="no-indent">
10434 He was much better. He was growing fatter and stronger
10435 every day, if it was proper to speak of days.</p>
10437 The white light and the humming sound were the same as
10438 ever, but the cell was a little more comfortable than the
10439 others he had been in. There was a pillow and a mattress on the
10440 plank bed, and a stool to sit on. They had given him a bath,
10441 and they allowed him to wash himself fairly frequently in a tin
10442 basin. They even gave him warm water to wash with. They had
10443 given him new underclothes and a clean suit of overalls. They
10444 had dressed his varicose ulcer with soothing ointment. They had
10445 pulled out the remnants of his teeth and given him a new set of
10448 Weeks or months must have passed. It would have been
10449 possible now to keep count of the passage of time, if he had
10450 felt any interest in doing so, since he was being fed at what
10451 appeared to be regular intervals. He was getting, he judged,
10452 three meals in the twenty-four hours; sometimes he wondered
10453 dimly whether he was getting them by night or by day. The food
10454 was surprisingly good, with meat at every third meal. Once
10455 there was even a packet of cigarettes. He had no matches, but
10456 the never-speaking guard who brought his food would give him a
10457 light. The first time he tried to smoke it made him sick, but
10458 he persevered, and spun the packet out for a long time, smoking
10459 half a cigarette after each meal.</p>
10461 They had given him a white slate with a stump of pencil
10462 tied to the corner. At first he made no use of it. Even when he
10463 was awake he was completely torpid. Often he would lie from one
10464 meal to the next almost without stirring, sometimes asleep,
10465 sometimes waking into vague reveries in which it was too much
10466 trouble to open his eyes. He had long grown used to sleeping
10467 with a strong light on his face. It seemed to make no
10468 difference, except that one's dreams were more coherent. He
10469 dreamed a great deal all through this time, and they were
10470 always happy dreams. He was in the Golden Country, or he was
10471 sitting among enormous glorious, sunlit ruins, with his mother,
10472 with Julia, with O'Brien -- not doing anything, merely sitting
10473 in the sun, talking of peaceful things. Such thoughts as he had
10474 when he was awake were mostly about his dreams. He seemed to
10475 have lost the power of intellectual effort, now that the
10476 stimulus of pain had been removed. He was not bored, he had no
10477 desire for conversation or distraction. Merely to be alone, not
10478 to be beaten or questioned, to have enough to eat, and to be
10479 clean all over, was completely satisfying.</p>
10481 By degrees he came to spend less time in sleep, but he
10482 still felt no impulse to get off the bed. All he cared for was
10483 to lie quiet and feel the strength gathering in his body. He
10484 would finger himself here and there, trying to make sure that
10485 it was not an illusion that his muscles were growing rounder
10486 and his skin tauter. Finally it was established beyond a doubt
10487 that he was growing fatter; his thighs were now definitely
10488 thicker than his knees. After that, reluctantly at first, he
10489 began exercising himself regularly. In a little while he could
10490 walk three kilometres, measured by pacing the cell, and his
10491 bowed shoulders were growing straighter. He attempted more
10492 elaborate exercises, and was astonished and humiliated to find
10493 what things he could not do. He could not move out of a walk,
10494 he could not hold his stool out at arm's length, he could not
10495 stand on one leg without falling over. He squatted down on his
10496 heels, and found that with agonizing pains in thigh and calf he
10497 could just lift himself to a standing position. He lay flat on
10498 his belly and tried to lift his weight by his hands. It was
10499 hopeless, he could not raise himself a centimetre. But after a
10500 few more days -- a few more mealtimes -- even that feat was
10501 accomplished. A time came when he could do it six times
10502 running. He began to grow actually proud of his body, and to
10503 cherish an intermittent belief that his face also was growing
10504 back to normal. Only when he chanced to put his hand on his
10505 bald scalp did he remember the seamed, ruined face that had
10506 looked back at him out of the mirror.</p>
10508 His mind grew more active. He sat down on the plank bed,
10509 his back against the wall and the slate on his knees, and set
10510 to work deliberately at the task of re-educating himself.</p>
10512 He had capitulated, that was agreed. In reality, as he saw
10513 now, he had been ready to capitulate long before he had taken
10514 the decision. From the moment when he was inside the Ministry
10515 of Love -- and yes, even during those minutes when he and Julia
10516 had stood helpless while the iron voice from the telescreen
10517 told them what to do -- he had grasped the frivolity, the
10518 shallowness of his attempt to set himself up against the power
10519 of the Party. He knew now that for seven years the Thought
10520 police had watched him like a beetle under a magnifying glass.
10521 There was no physical act, no word spoken aloud, that they had
10522 not noticed, no train of thought that they had not been able to
10523 infer. Even the speck of whitish dust on the cover of his diary
10524 they had carefully replaced. They had played sound-tracks to
10525 him, shown him photographs. Some of them were photographs of
10526 Julia and himself. Yes, even ... He could not fight against
10527 the Party any longer. Besides, the Party was in the right. It
10528 must be so; how could the immortal, collective brain be
10529 mistaken? By what external standard could you check its
10530 judgements? Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of
10531 learning to think as they thought. Only!</p>
10533 The pencil felt thick and awkward in his fingers. He began
10534 to write down the thoughts that came into his head. He wrote
10535 first in large clumsy capitals:</p>
10538 FREEDOM IS SLAVERY</p>
10541 Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it:</p>
10544 TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE</p>
10547 But then there came a sort of check. His mind, as though
10548 shying away from something, seemed unable to concentrate. He
10549 knew that he knew what came next, but for the moment he could
10550 not recall it. When he did recall it, it was only by
10551 consciously reasoning out what it must be: it did not come of
10552 its own accord. He wrote:</p>
10558 He accepted everything. The past was alterable. The past
10559 never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia.
10560 Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. Jones, Aaronson,
10561 and Rutherford were guilty of the crimes they were charged
10562 with. He had never seen the photograph that disproved their
10563 guilt. It had never existed, he had invented it. He remembered
10564 remembering contrary things, but those were false memories,
10565 products of self-deception. How easy it all was! Only surrender,
10566 and everything else followed. It was like swimming against a
10567 current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled,
10568 and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the
10569 current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your
10570 own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case. He
10571 hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was easy,
10574 Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were
10575 nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished,'
10576 O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap
10577 bubble.' Winston worked it out. 'If he thinks he floats
10578 off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him
10579 do it, then the thing happens.' Suddenly, like a lump of
10580 submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought
10581 burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it.
10582 It is hallucination.' He pushed the thought under instantly.
10583 The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or
10584 other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real'
10585 things happened. But how could there be such a world? What
10586 knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All
10587 happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds,
10590 He had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he
10591 was in no danger of succumbing to it. He realized,
10592 nevertheless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The
10593 mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought
10594 presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive.
10595 Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak.</p>
10597 He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He
10598 presented himself with propositions -- 'the Party says the
10599 earth is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water'
10600 -- and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the
10601 arguments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed
10602 great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arithmetical
10603 problems raised, for instance, by such a statement as 'two and
10604 two make five' were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed
10605 also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to
10606 make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be
10607 unconscious of the crudest logical errors. Stupidity was as
10608 necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.</p>
10610 All the while, with one part of his mind, he wondered how
10611 soon they would shoot him. 'Everything depends on yourself,'
10612 O'Brien had said; but he knew that there was no conscious act
10613 by which he could bring it nearer. It might be ten minutes
10614 hence, or ten years. They might keep him for years in solitary
10615 confinement, they might send him to a labour-camp, they might
10616 release him for a while, as they sometimes did. It was
10617 perfectly possible that before he was shot the whole drama of
10618 his arrest and interrogation would be enacted all over again.
10619 The one certain thing was that death never came at an expected
10620 moment. The tradition -- the unspoken tradition: somehow you
10621 knew it, though you never heard it said-was that they shot you
10622 from behind; always in the back of the head, without warning,
10623 as you walked down a corridor from cell to cell.</p>
10625 One day -- but 'one day' was not the right expression;
10626 just as probably it was in the middle of the night: once -- he
10627 fell into a strange, blissful reverie. He was walking down the
10628 corridor, waiting for the bullet. He knew that it was coming in
10629 another moment. Everything was settled, smoothed out,
10630 reconciled. There were no more doubts, no more arguments, no
10631 more pain, no more fear. His body was healthy and strong. He
10632 walked easily, with a joy of movement and with a feeling of
10633 walking in sunlight. He was not any longer in the narrow white
10634 corridors in the Ministry of Love, he was in the enormous
10635 sunlit passage, a kilometre wide, down which he had seemed to
10636 walk in the delirium induced by drugs. He was in the Golden
10637 Country, following the foot-track across the old
10638 rabbit-cropped pasture. He could feel the short springy turf
10639 under his feet and the gentle sunshine on his face. At the edge
10640 of the field were the elm trees, faintly stirring, and
10641 somewhere beyond that was the stream where the dace lay in the
10642 green pools under the willows.</p>
10644 Suddenly he started up with a shock of horror. The sweat
10645 broke out on his backbone. He had heard himself cry aloud:</p>
10647 'Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!'</p>
10649 For a moment he had had an overwhelming hallucination of
10650 her presence. She had seemed to be not merely with him, but
10651 inside him. It was as though she had got into the texture of
10652 his skin. In that moment he had loved her far more than he had
10653 ever done when they were together and free. Also he knew that
10654 somewhere or other she was still alive and needed his help.</p>
10656 He lay back on the bed and tried to compose himself. What
10657 had he done? How many years had he added to his servitude by
10658 that moment of weakness?</p>
10660 In another moment he would hear the tramp of boots
10661 outside. They could not let such an outburst go unpunished.
10662 They would know now, if they had not known before, that he was
10663 breaking the agreement he had made with them. He obeyed the
10664 Party, but he still hated the Party. In the old days he had
10665 hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of conformity.
10666 Now he had retreated a step further: in the mind he had
10667 surrendered, but he had hoped to keep the inner heart
10668 inviolate. He knew that he was in the wrong, but he preferred
10669 to be in the wrong. They would understand that- O'Brien would
10670 understand it. It was all confessed in that single foolish cry.</p>
10672 He would have to start all over again. It might take
10673 years. He ran a hand over his face, trying to familiarize
10674 himself with the new shape. There were deep furrows in the
10675 cheeks, the cheekbones felt sharp, the nose flattened. Besides,
10676 since last seeing himself in the glass he had been given a
10677 complete new set of teeth. It was not easy to preserve
10678 inscrutability when you did not know what your face looked
10679 like. In any case, mere control of the features was not enough.
10680 For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a
10681 secret you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all
10682 the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must
10683 never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that
10684 could be given a name. From now onwards he must not only think
10685 right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he
10686 must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of matter
10687 which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of
10688 him, a kind of cyst.</p>
10690 One day they would decide to shoot him. You could not tell
10691 when it would happen, but a few seconds beforehand it should be
10692 possible to guess. It was always from behind, walking down a
10693 corridor. Ten seconds would be enough. In that time the world
10694 inside him could turn over. And then suddenly, without a word
10695 uttered, without a check in his step, without the changing of a
10696 line in his face -- suddenly the camouflage would be down and
10697 bang! would go the batteries of his hatred. Hatred would fill
10698 him like an enormous roaring flame. And almost in the same
10699 instant bang! would go the bullet, too late, or too early. They
10700 would have blown his brain to pieces before they could reclaim
10701 it. The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out
10702 of their reach for ever. They would have blown a hole in their
10703 own perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom.</p>
10705 He shut his eyes. It was more difficult than accepting an
10706 intellectual discipline. It was a question of degrading
10707 himself, mutilating himself. He had got to plunge into the
10708 filthiest of filth. What was the most horrible, sickening thing
10709 of all? He thought of Big Brother. The enormous face (because
10710 of constantly seeing it on posters he always thought of it as
10711 being a metre wide), with its heavy black moustache and the
10712 eyes that followed you to and fro, seemed to float into his
10713 mind of its own accord. What were his true feelings towards Big
10716 There was a heavy tramp of boots in the passage. The steel
10717 door swung open with a clang. O'Brien walked into the cell.
10718 Behind him were the waxen-faced officer and the black-uniformed
10721 'Get up,' said O'Brien. 'Come here.'</p>
10723 Winston stood opposite him. O'Brien took Winston's
10724 shoulders between his strong hands and looked at him closely.</p>
10726 'You have had thoughts of deceiving me,' he said. 'That
10727 was stupid. Stand up straighter. Look me in the face.'</p>
10729 He paused, and went on in a gentler tone:</p>
10731 'You are improving. Intellectually there is very little
10732 wrong with you. It is only emotionally that you have failed to
10733 make progress. Tell me, Winston -- and remember, no lies: you
10734 know that I am always able to detect a lie -- tell me, what are
10735 your true feelings towards Big Brother?'</p>
10739 'You hate him. Good. Then the time has come for you to
10740 take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not enough
10741 to obey him: you must love him.'</p>
10743 He released Winston with a little push towards the guards.</p>
10745 'Room 101,' he said.</p>
10746 <h1><a name="22">XXII</a></h1>
10747 <p class="no-indent">
10748 At each stage of his imprisonment he had known, or seemed
10749 to know, whereabouts he was in the windowless building.
10750 Possibly there were slight differences in the air pressure. The
10751 cells where the guards had beaten him were below ground level.
10752 The room where he had been interrogated by O'Brien was high up
10753 near the roof. This place was many metres underground, as deep
10754 down as it was possible to go.</p>
10756 It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But
10757 he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that
10758 there were two small tables straight in front of him, each
10759 covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two from him,
10760 the other was further away, near the door. He was strapped
10761 upright in a chair, so tightly that he could move nothing, not
10762 even his head. A sort of pad gripped his head from behind,
10763 forcing him to look straight in front of him.</p>
10765 For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and
10766 O'Brien came in.</p>
10768 'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101.
10769 I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it.
10770 The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.'</p>
10772 The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something
10773 made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on
10774 the further table. Because of the position in which O'Brien was
10775 standing. Winston could not see what the thing was.</p>
10777 'The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from
10778 individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by
10779 fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths.
10780 There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even
10783 He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a
10784 better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire
10785 cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the
10786 front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask, with
10787 the concave side outwards. Although it was three or four metres
10788 away from him, he could see that the cage was divided
10789 lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind
10790 of creature in each. They were rats.</p>
10792 'In your case, said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world
10793 happens to be rats.'</p>
10795 A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain
10796 what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first
10797 glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of the
10798 mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him. His
10799 bowels seemed to turn to water.</p>
10801 'You can't do that!' he cried out in a high cracked voice.
10802 'You couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible.'</p>
10804 'Do you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of panic that
10805 used to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in
10806 front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was
10807 something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that
10808 you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open.
10809 It was the rats that were on the other side of the wall.'</p>
10811 'O'Brien!' said Winston, making an effort to control his
10812 voice. 'You know this is not necessary. What is it that you
10813 want me to do?'</p>
10815 O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the
10816 schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He looked
10817 thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were addressing an
10818 audience somewhere behind Winston's back.</p>
10820 'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There
10821 are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain,
10822 even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something
10823 unendurable -- something that cannot be contemplated. Courage
10824 and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a
10825 height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come
10826 up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with
10827 air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is
10828 the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are
10829 a form of pressure that you cannot withstand. even if you
10830 wished to. You will do what is required of you.</p>
10832 'But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't
10833 know what it is?'</p>
10835 O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the
10836 nearer table. He set it down carefully on the baize cloth.
10837 Winston could hear the blood singing in his ears. He had the
10838 feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He was in the middle of
10839 a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with sunlight,
10840 across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances.
10841 Yet the cage with the rats was not two metres away from him.
10842 They were enormous rats. They were at the age when a rat's
10843 muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown instead of
10846 'The rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible
10847 audience, 'although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of
10848 that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor
10849 quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave
10850 her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats
10851 are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will
10852 strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people.
10853 They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human
10854 being is helpless.'</p>
10856 There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed
10857 to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they
10858 were trying to get at each other through the partition. He
10859 heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come
10860 from outside himself.</p>
10862 O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed
10863 something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a
10864 frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was
10865 hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably.
10866 O'Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from
10867 Winston's face.</p>
10869 'I have pressed the first lever,' said O'Brien. 'You
10870 understand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit
10871 over your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever,
10872 the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will
10873 shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap
10874 through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore
10875 straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first.
10876 Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the
10879 The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a
10880 succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in
10881 the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his
10882 panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left -- to
10883 think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the
10884 brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of
10885 nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything
10886 had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming
10887 animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea.
10888 There was one and only one way to save himself. He must
10889 interpose another human being, the body of another human
10890 being, between himself and the rats.</p>
10892 The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out
10893 the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of
10894 hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now.
10895 One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly
10896 grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands
10897 against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could
10898 see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic
10899 took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.</p>
10901 'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said
10902 O'Brien as didactically as ever.</p>
10904 The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his
10905 cheek. And then -- no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny
10906 fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had
10907 suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just
10908 one person to whom he could transfer his punishment --
10909 one body that he could thrust between himself and the
10910 rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.</p>
10912 'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't
10913 care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the
10914 bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!'</p>
10916 He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from
10917 the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen
10918 through the floor, through the walls of the building, through
10919 the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into
10920 outer space, into the gulfs between the stars -- always away,
10921 away, away from the rats. He was light years distant, but
10922 O'Brien was still standing at his side. There was still the
10923 cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through the darkness
10924 that enveloped him he heard another metallic click, and knew
10925 that the cage door had clicked shut and not open.</p>
10926 <h1><a name="23">XXIII</a></h1>
10927 <p class="no-indent">
10928 The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight
10929 slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It was the
10930 lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from the
10933 Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty
10934 glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed
10935 him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the
10936 caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and filled his glass up
10937 with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few drops from another
10938 bottle with a quill through the cork. It was saccharine
10939 flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the café.</p>
10941 Winston was listening to the telescreen. At present only
10942 music was coming out of it, but there was a possibility that at
10943 any moment there might be a special bulletin from the Ministry
10944 of Peace. The news from the African front was disquieting in
10945 the extreme. On and off he had been worrying about it all day.
10946 A Eurasian army (Oceania was at war with Eurasia: Oceania had
10947 always been at war with Eurasia) was moving southward at
10948 terrifying speed. The mid-day bulletin had not mentioned any
10949 definite area, but it was probable that already the mouth of
10950 the Congo was a battlefield. Brazzaville and Leopoldville were
10951 in danger. One did not have to look at the map to see what it
10952 meant. It was not merely a question of losing Central Africa:
10953 for the first time in the whole war, the territory of Oceania
10954 itself was menaced.</p>
10956 A violent emotion, not fear exactly but a sort of
10957 undifferentiated excitement, flared up in him, then faded
10958 again. He stopped thinking about the war. In these days he
10959 could never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few
10960 moments at a time. He picked up his glass and drained it at a
10961 gulp. As always, the gin made him shudder and even retch
10962 slightly. The stuff was horrible. The cloves and saccharine,
10963 themselves disgusting enough in their sickly way, could not
10964 disguise the flat oily smell; and what was worst of all was
10965 that the smell of gin, which dwelt with him night and day, was
10966 inextricably mixed up in his mind with the smell of those-</p>
10968 He never named them, even in his thoughts, and so far as
10969 it was possible he never visualized them. They were something
10970 that he was half-aware of, hovering close to his face, a smell
10971 that clung to his nostrils. As the gin rose in him he belched
10972 through purple lips. He had grown fatter since they released
10973 him, and had regained his old colour -- indeed, more than
10974 regained it. His features had thickened, the skin on nose and
10975 cheekbones was coarsely red, even the bald scalp was too deep a
10976 pink. A waiter, again unbidden, brought the chessboard and the
10977 current issue of The Times, with the page turned down at
10978 the chess problem. Then, seeing that Winston's glass was empty,
10979 he brought the gin bottle and filled it. There was no need to
10980 give orders. They knew his habits. The chessboard was always
10981 waiting for him, his corner table was always reserved; even
10982 when the place was full he had it to himself, since nobody
10983 cared to be seen sitting too close to him. He never even
10984 bothered to count his drinks. At irregular intervals they
10985 presented him with a dirty slip of paper which they said was
10986 the bill, but he had the impression that they always
10987 undercharged him. It would have made no difference if it had
10988 been the other way about. He had always plenty of money
10989 nowadays. He even had a job, a sinecure, more highly-paid than
10990 his old job had been.</p>
10992 The music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took
10993 over. Winston raised his head to listen. No bulletins from the
10994 front, however. It was merely a brief announcement from the
10995 Ministry of Plenty. In the preceding quarter, it appeared, the
10996 Tenth Three-Year Plan's quota for bootlaces had been
10997 overfulfilled by 98 per cent.</p>
10999 He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It
11000 was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to
11001 play and mate in two moves.' Winston looked up at the portrait
11002 of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of
11003 cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged.
11004 In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black
11005 ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph
11006 of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of
11007 calm power. White always mates.</p>
11009 The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a
11010 different and much graver tone: 'You are warned to stand by for
11011 an important announcement at fifteen-thirty. Fifteen-thirty!
11012 This is news of the highest importance. Take care not to miss
11013 it. Fifteen-thirty!' The tinking music struck up again.</p>
11015 Winston's heart stirred. That was the bulletin from the
11016 front; instinct told him that it was bad news that was coming.
11017 All day, with little spurts of excitement, the thought of a
11018 smashing defeat in Africa had been in and out of his mind. He
11019 seemed actually to see the Eurasian army swarming across the
11020 never-broken frontier and pouring down into the tip of Africa
11021 like a column of ants. Why had it not been possible to outflank
11022 them in some way? The outline of the West African coast stood
11023 out vividly in his mind. He picked up the white knight and
11024 moved it across the board. There was the proper spot.
11025 Even while he saw the black horde racing southward he saw
11026 another force, mysteriously assembled, suddenly planted in
11027 their rear, cutting their comunications by land and sea. He
11028 felt that by willing it he was bringing that other force into
11029 existence. But it was necessary to act quickly. If they could
11030 get control of the whole of Africa, if they had airfields and
11031 submarine bases at the Cape, it would cut Oceania in two. It
11032 might mean anything: defeat, breakdown, the redivision of the
11033 world, the destruction of the Party! He drew a deep breath. An
11034 extraordinary medley of feeling-but it was not a medley,
11035 exactly; rather it was successive layers of feeling, in which
11036 one could not say which layer was undermost struggled inside
11039 The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in its
11040 place, but for the moment he could not settle down to serious
11041 study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered again. Almost
11042 unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the
11045 'They can't get inside you,' she had said. But they could
11046 get inside you. 'What happens to you here is for ever,'
11047 O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things, your
11048 own acts, from which you could never recover. Something was
11049 killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out.</p>
11051 He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. There was no
11052 danger in it. He knew as though instinctively that they now
11053 took almost no interest in his doings. He could have arranged
11054 to meet her a second time if either of them had wanted to.
11055 Actually it was by chance that they had met. It was in the
11056 Park, on a vile, biting day in March, when the earth was like
11057 iron and all the grass seemed dead and there was not a bud
11058 anywhere except a few crocuses which had pushed themselves up
11059 to be dismembered by the wind. He was hurrying along with
11060 frozen hands and watering eyes when he saw her not ten metres
11061 away from him. It struck him at once that she had changed in
11062 some ill-defined way. They almost passed one another without a
11063 sign, then he turned and followed her, not very eagerly. He
11064 knew that there was no danger, nobody would take any interest
11065 in him. She did not speak. She walked obliquely away across the
11066 grass as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed to resign
11067 herself to having him at her side. Presently they were in among
11068 a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for
11069 concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted. It was
11070 vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and fretted
11071 the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. He put his arm round
11074 There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden
11075 microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did not matter,
11076 nothing mattered. They could have lain down on the ground and
11077 done that if they had wanted to. His flesh froze with
11078 horror at the thought of it. She made no response whatever to
11079 the clasp of his arm ; she did not even try to disengage
11080 herself. He knew now what had changed in her. Her face was
11081 sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair,
11082 across her forehead and temple; but that was not the change. It
11083 was that her waist had grown thicker, and, in a surprising way,
11084 had stiffened. He remembered how once, after the explosion of a
11085 rocket bomb, he had helped to drag a corpse out of some ruins,
11086 and had been astonished not only by the incredible weight of
11087 the thing, but by its rigidity and awkwardness to handle, which
11088 made it seem more like stone than flesh. Her body felt like
11089 that. It occurred to him that the texture of her skin would be
11090 quite different from what it had once been.</p>
11092 He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. As
11093 they walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him
11094 for the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of
11095 contempt and dislike. He wondered whether it was a dislike that
11096 came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also by
11097 his bloated face and the water that the wind kept squeezing
11098 from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by side
11099 but not too close together. He saw that she was about to speak.
11100 She moved her clumsy shoe a few centimetres and deliberately
11101 crushed a twig. Her feet seemed to have grown broader, he
11104 'I betrayed you,' she said baldly.</p>
11106 'I betrayed you,' he said.</p>
11108 She gave him another quick look of dislike.</p>
11110 'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something
11111 something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And
11112 then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it
11113 to So-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that
11114 it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop
11115 and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time
11116 when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way
11117 of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself
11118 that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You
11119 don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is
11122 'All you care about is yourself,' he echoed.</p>
11124 'And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other
11125 person any longer.'</p>
11127 'No,' he said, 'you don't feel the same.'</p>
11129 There did not seem to be anything more to say. The wind
11130 plastered their thin overalls against their bodies. Almost at
11131 once it became embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides,
11132 it was too cold to keep still. She said something about
11133 catching her Tube and stood up to go.</p>
11135 'We must meet again,' he said.</p>
11137 'Yes,' she said, 'we must meet again. '</p>
11139 He followed irresolutely for a little distance, half a
11140 pace behind her. They did not speak again. She did not actually
11141 try to shake him off, but walked at just such a speed as to
11142 prevent his keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind
11143 that he would accompany her as far as the Tube station, but
11144 suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed
11145 pointless and unbearable. He was overwhelmed by a desire not so
11146 much to get away from Julia as to get back to the Chestnut Tree
11147 Café, which had never seemed so attractive as at this moment.
11148 He had a nostalgic vision of his corner table, with the
11149 newspaper and the chessboard and the ever-flowing gin. Above
11150 all, it would be warm in there. The next moment, not altogether
11151 by accident, he allowed himself to become separated from her by
11152 a small knot of people. He made a halfhearted attempt to catch
11153 up, then slowed down, turned, and made off in the opposite
11154 direction. When he had gone fifty metres he looked back. The
11155 street was not crowded, but already he could not distinguish
11156 her. Any one of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers.
11157 Perhaps her thickened, stiffened body was no longer
11158 recognizable from behind.</p>
11160 'At the time when it happens,' she had said, 'you do mean
11161 it.' He had meant it. He had not merely said it, he had wished
11162 it. He had wished that she and not he should be delivered over
11165 Something changed in the music that trickled from the
11166 telescreen. A cracked and jeering note, a yellow note, came
11167 into it. And then -- perhaps it was not happening, perhaps it
11168 was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound -- a voice
11171 'Under the spreading chestnut tree<br>
11172 I sold you and you sold me '</p>
11175 The tears welled up in his eyes. A passing waiter noticed
11176 that his glass was empty and came back with the gin bottle.</p>
11178 He took up his glass and sniffed at it. The stuff grew not
11179 less but more horrible with every mouthful he drank. But it had
11180 become the element he swam in. It was his life, his death, and
11181 his resurrection. It was gin that sank him into stupor every
11182 night, and gin that revived him every morning. When he woke,
11183 seldom before eleven hundred, with gummed-up eyelids and fiery
11184 mouth and a back that seemed to be broken, it would have been
11185 impossible even to rise from the horizontal if it had not been
11186 for the bottle and teacup placed beside the bed overnight.
11187 Through the midday hours he sat with glazed face, the bottle
11188 handy, listening to the telescreen. From fifteen to
11189 closing-time he was a fixture in the Chestnut Tree. No one
11190 cared what he did any longer, no whistle woke him, no
11191 telescreen admonished him. Occasionally, perhaps twice a week,
11192 he went to a dusty, forgotten-looking office in the Ministry of
11193 Truth and did a little work, or what was called work. He had
11194 been appointed to a sub-committee of a sub-committee which had
11195 sprouted from one of the innumerable committees dealing with
11196 minor difficulties that arose in the compilation of the
11197 Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. They were engaged
11198 in producing something called an Interim Report, but what it
11199 was that they were reporting on he had never definitely found
11200 out. It was something to do with the question of whether commas
11201 should be placed inside brackets, or outside. There were four
11202 others on the committee, all of them persons similar to
11203 himself. There were days when they assembled and then promptly
11204 dispersed again, frankly admitting to one another that there
11205 was not really anything to be done. But there were other days
11206 when they settled down to their work almost eagerly, making a
11207 tremendous show of entering up their minutes and drafting long
11208 memoranda which were never finished -- when the argument as to
11209 what they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily
11210 involved and abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions,
11211 enormous digressions, quarrels threats, even, to appeal to
11212 higher authority. And then suddenly the life would go out of
11213 them and they would sit round the table looking at one another
11214 with extinct eyes, like ghosts fading at cock-crow.</p>
11216 The telescreen was silent for a moment. Winston raised his
11217 head again. The bulletin! But no, they were merely changing the
11218 music. He had the map of Africa behind his eyelids. The
11219 movement of the armies was a diagram: a black arrow tearing
11220 vertically southward, and a white arrow horizontally eastward,
11221 across the tail of the first. As though for reassurance he
11222 looked up at the imperturbable face in the portrait. Was it
11223 conceivable that the second arrow did not even exist?</p>
11225 His interest flagged again. He drank another mouthful of
11226 gin, picked up the white knight and made a tentative move.
11227 Check. But it was evidently not the right move, because</p>
11229 Uncalled, a memory floated into his mind. He saw a
11230 candle-lit room with a vast white-counterpaned bed, and
11231 himself, a boy of nine or ten, sitting on the floor, shaking a
11232 dice-box, and laughing excitedly. His mother was sitting
11233 opposite him and also laughing.</p>
11235 It must have been about a month before she disappeared. It
11236 was a moment of reconciliation, when the nagging hunger in his
11237 belly was forgotten and his earlier affection for her had
11238 temporarily revived. He remembered the day well, a pelting,
11239 drenching day when the water streamed down the window-pane and
11240 the light indoors was too dull to read by. The boredom of the
11241 two children in the dark, cramped bedroom became unbearable.
11242 Winston whined and grizzled, made futile demands for food,
11243 fretted about the room pulling everything out of place and
11244 kicking the wainscoting until the neighbours banged on the
11245 wall, while the younger child wailed intermittently. In the end
11246 his mother said, 'Now be good, and I'Il buy you a toy. A lovely
11247 toy -- you'll love it'; and then she had gone out in the rain,
11248 to a little general shop which was still sporadically open
11249 nearby, and came back with a cardboard box containing an outfit
11250 of Snakes and Ladders. He could still remember the smell of the
11251 damp cardboard. It was a miserable outfit. The board was
11252 cracked and the tiny wooden dice were so ill-cut that they
11253 would hardly lie on their sides. Winston looked at the thing
11254 sulkily and without interest. But then his mother lit a piece
11255 of candle and they sat down on the floor to play. Soon he was
11256 wildly excited and shouting with laughter as the tiddly-winks
11257 climbed hopefully up the ladders and then came slithering down
11258 the snakes again, almost to the starting- point. They played
11259 eight games, winning four each. His tiny sister, too young to
11260 understand what the game was about, had sat propped up against
11261 a bolster, laughing because the others were laughing. For a
11262 whole afternoon they had all been happy together, as in his
11263 earlier childhood.</p>
11265 He pushed the picture out of his mind. It was a false
11266 memory. He was troubled by false memories occasionally. They
11267 did not matter so long as one knew them for what they were.
11268 Some things had happened, others had not happened. He turned
11269 back to the chessboard and picked up the white knight again.
11270 Almost in the same instant it dropped on to the board with a
11271 clatter. He had started as though a pin had run into him.</p>
11273 A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It was the
11274 bulletin! Victory! It always meant victory when a trumpet-call
11275 preceded the news. A sort of electric drill ran through the
11276 café. Even the waiters had started and pricked up their ears.</p>
11278 The trumpet-call had let loose an enormous volume of
11279 noise. Already an excited voice was gabbling from the
11280 telescreen, but even as it started it was almost drowned by a
11281 roar of cheering from outside. The news had run round the
11282 streets like magic. He could hear just enough of what was
11283 issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all
11284 happened, as he had foreseen; a vast seaborne armada had
11285 secretly assembled a sudden blow in the enemy's rear, the white
11286 arrow tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments of
11287 triumphant phrases pushed themselves through the din: 'Vast
11288 strategic manoeuvre -- perfect co-ordination -- utter rout --
11289 half a million prisoners -- complete demoralization -- control
11290 of the whole of Africa -- bring the war within measurable
11291 distance of its end victory -- greatest victory in human
11292 history -- victory, victory, victory!'</p>
11294 Under the table Winston's feet made convulsive movements.
11295 He had not stirred from his seat, but in his mind he was
11296 running, swiftly running, he was with the crowds outside,
11297 cheering himself deaf. He looked up again at the portrait of
11298 Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock
11299 against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! He
11300 thought how ten minutes ago-yes, only ten minutes -- there had
11301 still been equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether the
11302 news from the front would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was
11303 more than a Eurasian army that had perished! Much had changed
11304 in him since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the
11305 final, indispensable, healing change had never happened, until
11308 The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its
11309 tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting
11310 outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back
11311 to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle.
11312 Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his
11313 glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer.
11314 He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven,
11315 his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing
11316 everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the
11317 white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight,
11318 and an armed guard at his back. The longhoped-for bullet was
11319 entering his brain.</p>
11321 He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken
11322 him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark
11323 moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn,
11324 self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears
11325 trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right,
11326 everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won
11327 the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.</p>
11328 <h1><a name="appendix">APPENDIX:
11329 The Principles of Newspeak</a></h1>
11330 <p class="no-indent">
11331 Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been
11332 devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English
11333 Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who
11334 used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in
11335 speech or writing. The leading articles in The Times
11336 were written in it, but this was a tour de force which
11337 could only be carried out by a specialist. It was expected that
11338 Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard
11339 English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050.
11340 Meanwhile it gained ground steadily, all Party members tending
11341 to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and
11342 more in their everyday speech. The version in use in 1984, and
11343 embodied in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of the Newspeak
11344 Dictionary, was a provisional one, and contained many
11345 superfluous words and archaic formations which were due to be
11346 suppressed later. It is with the final, perfected version, as
11347 embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary, that we are
11348 concerned here.</p>
11350 The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium
11351 of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to
11352 the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought
11353 impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted
11354 once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought --
11355 that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc --
11356 should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is
11357 dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to
11358 give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning
11359 that a Party member could properly wish to express, while
11360 excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of
11361 arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by
11362 the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating
11363 undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of
11364 unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary
11365 meanings whatever. To give a single example. The word
11366 free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be
11367 used in such statements as 'This dog is free from lice' or
11368 'This field is free from weeds'. It could not be used in its
11369 old sense of ' politically free' or 'intellectually free' since
11370 political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as
11371 concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart
11372 from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction
11373 of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word
11374 that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak
11375 was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of
11376 thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting
11377 the choice of words down to a minimum.</p>
11379 Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now
11380 know it, though many Newspeak sentences, even when not
11381 containing newly-created words, would be barely intelligible to
11382 an English-speaker of our own day. Newspeak words were divided
11383 into three distinct classes, known as the A vocabulary, the B
11384 vocabulary (also called compound words), and the C vocabulary.
11385 It will be simpler to discuss each class separately, but the
11386 grammatical peculiarities of the language can be dealt with in
11387 the section devoted to the A vocabulary, since the same rules
11388 held good for all three categories.</p>
11391 <i>The A vocabulary.</i>
11392 The A vocabulary consisted of the
11393 words needed for the business of everyday life -- for such
11394 things as eating, drinking, working, putting on one's clothes,
11395 going up and down stairs, riding in vehicles, gardening,
11396 cooking, and the like. It was composed almost entirely of words
11397 that we already possess words like hit, run, dog, tree,
11398 sugar, house, field -- but in comparison with the
11399 present-day English vocabulary their number was extremely
11400 small, while their meanings were far more rigidly defined. All
11401 ambiguities and shades of meaning had been purged out of them.
11402 So far as it could be achieved, a Newspeak word of this class
11403 was simply a staccato sound expressing one clearly
11404 understood concept. It would have been quite impossible to use
11405 the A vocabulary for literary purposes or for political or
11406 philosophical discussion. It was intended only to express
11407 simple, purposive thoughts, usually involving concrete objects
11408 or physical actions.</p>
11410 The grammar of Newspeak had two outstanding peculiarities.
11411 The first of these was an almost complete interchangeability
11412 between different parts of speech. Any word in the language (in
11413 principle this applied even to very abstract words such as
11414 if or when) could be used either as verb, noun,
11415 adjective, or adverb. Between the verb and the noun form, when
11416 they were of the same root, there was never any variation, this
11417 rule of itself involving the destruction of many archaic forms.
11418 The word thought, for example, did not exist in
11419 Newspeak. Its place was taken by think, which did duty
11420 for both noun and verb. No etymological principle was followed
11421 here: in some cases it was the original noun that was chosen
11422 for retention, in other cases the verb. Even where a noun and
11423 verb of kindred meaning were not etymologically connected, one
11424 or other of them was frequently suppressed. There was, for
11425 example, no such word as cut, its meaning being
11426 sufficiently covered by the noun-verb knife. Adjectives
11427 were formed by adding the suffix-ful to the noun-verb,
11428 and adverbs by adding -wise. Thus for example,
11429 speedful meant 'rapid' and speedwise meant
11430 'quickly'. Certain of our present-day adjectives, such as
11431 good, strong, big, black, soft, were retained,
11432 but their total number was very small. There was little need
11433 for them, since almost any adjectival meaning could be arrived
11434 at by adding-ful to a noun-verb. None of the
11435 now-existing adverbs was retained, except for a very few
11436 already ending in-wise: the -wise termination was
11437 invariable. The word well, for example, was replaced by
11440 In addition, any word -- this again applied in principle
11441 to every word in the language -- could be negatived by adding
11442 the affix un- or could be strengthened by the affix
11443 plus-, or, for still greater emphasis,
11444 doubleplus-. Thus, for example, uncold meant
11445 'warm', while pluscold and doublepluscold meant,
11446 respectively, 'very cold' and 'superlatively cold'. It was also
11447 possible, as in present-day English, to modify the meaning of
11448 almost any word by prepositional affixes such as ante-,
11449 post-, up-, down-, etc. By such methods it
11450 was found possible to bring about an enormous diminution of
11451 vocabulary. Given, for instance, the word good, there
11452 was no need for such a word as bad, since the required
11453 meaning was equally well -- indeed, better -- expressed by
11454 ungood. All that was necessary, in any case where two
11455 words formed a natural pair of opposites, was to decide which
11456 of them to suppress. Dark, for example, could be
11457 replaced by unlight, or light by undark,
11458 according to preference.</p>
11460 The second distinguishing mark of Newspeak grammar was its
11461 regularity. Subject to a few exceptions which are mentioned
11462 below all inflexions followed the same rules. Thus, in all
11463 verbs the preterite and the past participle were the same and
11464 ended in-ed. The preterite of steal was
11465 stealed, the preterite of think was
11466 thinked, and so on throughout the language, all such
11467 forms as swam, gave, brought, spoke,
11468 taken, etc., being abolished. All plurals were made by
11469 adding-s or-es as the case might be. The plurals of man, ox,
11470 life, were mans, oxes, lifes. Comparison of
11471 adjectives was invariably made by adding-er,-est (good,
11472 gooder, goodest), irregular forms and the more, most
11473 formation being suppressed.</p>
11475 The only classes of words that were still allowed to
11476 inflect irregularly were the pronouns, the relatives, the
11477 demonstrative adjectives, and the auxiliary verbs. All of these
11478 followed their ancient usage, except that whom had been
11479 scrapped as unnecessary, and the shall, should tenses
11480 had been dropped, all their uses being covered by will
11481 and would. There were also certain irregularities in
11482 word-formation arising out of the need for rapid and easy
11483 speech. A word which was difficult to utter, or was liable to
11484 be incorrectly heard, was held to be ipso facto a bad
11485 word: occasionally therefore, for the sake of euphony, extra
11486 letters were inserted into a word or an archaic formation was
11487 retained. But this need made itself felt chiefly in connexion
11488 with the B vocabulary. Why so great an importance was
11489 attached to ease of pronunciation will be made clear later in
11493 <i>The B vocabulary.</i>
11494 The B vocabulary consisted of
11495 words which had been deliberately constructed for political
11496 purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every
11497 case a political implication, but were intended to impose a
11498 desirable mental attitude upon the person using them. Without a
11499 full understanding of the principles of Ingsoc it was difficult
11500 to use these words correctly. In some cases they couId be
11501 translated into Oldspeak, or even into words taken from the A
11502 vocabulary, but this usually demanded a long paraphrase and
11503 always involved the loss of certain overtones. The B words were
11504 a sort of verbal shorthand, often packing whole ranges of ideas
11505 into a few syllables, and at the same time more accurate and
11506 forcible than ordinary language.</p>
11508 The B words were in all cases compound words.</p>
11510 They consisted of two or more words,
11511 or portions of words, welded together in an easily
11512 pronounceable form. The resulting amalgam was always a
11513 noun-verb, and inflected according to the ordinary rules. To
11514 take a single example: the word goodthink, meaning, very
11515 roughly, 'orthodoxy', or, if one chose to regard it as a verb,
11516 'to think in an orthodox manner'. This inflected as follows:
11517 noun-verb, goodthink; past tense and past participle,
11518 goodthinked; present participle, good-
11519 thinking; adjective, goodthinkful; adverb,
11520 goodthinkwise; verbal noun, goodthinker.</p>
11522 The B words were not constructed on any etymological plan.
11523 The words of which they were made up could be any parts of
11524 speech, and could be placed in any order and mutilated in any
11525 way which made them easy to pronounce while indicating their
11526 derivation. In the word crimethink (thoughtcrime), for
11527 instance, the think came second, whereas in
11528 thinkpol Thought Police) it came first, and in the
11529 latter word police had lost its second syllable. Because
11530 of the great difficuIty in securing euphony, irregular
11531 formations were commoner in the B vocabulary than in the A
11532 vocabulary. For example, the adjective forms of Minitrue,
11533 Minipax, and Miniluv were, respectively,
11534 Minitruthful, Minipeaceful, and Minilovely,
11535 simply because- trueful,-paxful, and-loveful were
11536 slightly awkward to pronounce. In principle, however, all B
11537 words could inflect, and all inflected in exactly the same way.</p>
11539 Some of the B words had highly subtilized meanings, barely
11540 intelligible to anyone who had not mastered the language as a
11541 whole. Consider, for example, such a typical sentence from a
11542 Times leading article as Oldthinkers unbellyfeel
11543 Ingsoc. The shortest rendering that one could make of this
11544 in Oldspeak would be: 'Those whose ideas were formed before the
11545 Revolution cannot have a full emotional understanding of the
11546 principles of English Socialism.' But this is not an adequate
11547 translation. To begin with, in order to</p>
11550 Compound words such as speakwrite,
11551 were of course to be found in the A vocabulary, but these were
11552 merely convenient abbreviations and had no special ideologcal
11555 grasp the full meaning of the Newspeak sentence quoted
11556 above, one would have to have a clear idea of what is meant by
11557 Ingsoc. And in addition, only a person thoroughly
11558 grounded in Ingsoc could appreciate the full force of the word
11559 bellyfeel, which implied a blind, enthusiastic
11560 acceptance difficult to imagine today; or of the word
11561 oldthink, which was inextricably mixed up with the idea
11562 of wickedness and decadence. But the special function of
11563 certain Newspeak words, of which oldthink was one, was
11564 not so much to express meanings as to destroy them. These
11565 words, necessarily few in number, had had their meanings
11566 extended until they contained within themselves whole batteries
11567 of words which, as they were sufficiently covered by a single
11568 comprehensive term, could now be scrapped and forgotten. The
11569 greatest difficulty facing the compilers of the Newspeak
11570 Dictionary was not to invent new words, but, having invented
11571 them, to make sure what they meant: to make sure, that is to
11572 say, what ranges of words they cancelled by their existence.</p>
11574 As we have already seen in the case of the word free,
11575 words which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes
11576 retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the
11577 undesirable meanings purged out of them. Countless other words
11578 such as honour, justice, morality, internationalism,
11579 democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased
11580 to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and, in covering
11581 them, abolished them. All words grouping themselves round the
11582 concepts of liberty and equality, for instance, were contained
11583 in the single word crimethink, while all words grouping
11584 themselves round the concepts of objectivity and rationalism
11585 were contained in the single word oldthink. Greater
11586 precision would have been dangerous. What was required in a
11587 Party member was an outlook similar to that of the ancient
11588 Hebrew who knew, without knowing much else, that all nations
11589 other than his own worshipped 'false gods'. He did not need to
11590 know that these gods were called Baal, Osiris, Moloch,
11591 Ashtaroth, and the like: probably the less he knew about them
11592 the better for his orthodoxy. He knew Jehovah and the
11593 commandments of Jehovah: he knew, therefore, that all gods with
11594 other names or other attributes were false gods. In somewhat
11595 the same way, the party member knew what constituted right
11596 conduct, and in exceedingly vague, generalized terms he knew
11597 what kinds of departure from it were possible. His sexual life,
11598 for example, was entirely regulated by the two Newspeak words
11599 sexcrime (sexual immorality) and goodsex (chastity).
11600 Sexcrime covered all sexual misdeeds whatever. It
11601 covered fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other
11602 perversions, and, in addition, normal intercourse practised for
11603 its own sake. There was no need to enumerate them separately,
11604 since they were all equally culpable, and, in principle, all
11605 punishable by death. In the C vocabulary, which consisted of
11606 scientific and technical words, it might be necessary to give
11607 specialized names to certain sexual aberrations, but the
11608 ordinary citizen had no need of them. He knew what was meant by
11609 goodsex -- that is to say, normal intercourse between
11610 man and wife, for the sole purpose of begetting children, and
11611 without physical pleasure on the part of the woman: all else
11612 was sexcrime. In Newspeak it was seldom possible to
11613 follow a heretical thought further than the perception that it
11614 was heretical: beyond that point the necessary words were
11617 No word in the B vocabulary was ideologically neutral. A
11618 great many were euphemisms. Such words, for instance, as
11619 joycamp (forced-labour camp) or Minipax Ministry
11620 of Peace, i. e. Ministry of War) meant almost the exact
11621 opposite of what they appeared to mean. Some words, on the
11622 other hand, displayed a frank and contemptuous understanding of
11623 the real nature of Oceanic society. An example was
11624 prolefeed, meaning the rubbishy entertainment and
11625 spurious news which the Party handed out to the masses. Other
11626 words, again, were ambivalent, having the connotation 'good'
11627 when applied to the Party and 'bad' when applied to its
11628 enemies. But in addition there were great numbers of words
11629 which at first sight appeared to be mere abbreviations and
11630 which derived their ideological colour not from their meaning,
11631 but from their structure.</p>
11633 So far as it could be contrived, everything that had or
11634 might have political significance of any kind was fitted into
11635 the B vocabulary. The name of every organization, or body of
11636 people, or doctrine, or country, or institution, or public
11637 building, was invariably cut down into the familiar shape; that
11638 is, a single easily pronounced word with the smallest number of
11639 syllables that would preserve the original derivation. In the
11640 Ministry of Truth, for example, the Records Department, in
11641 which Winston Smith worked, was called Recdep, the
11642 Fiction Department was called Ficdep, the Teleprogrammes
11643 Department was called Teledep, and so on. This was not
11644 done solely with the object of saving time. Even in the early
11645 decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases
11646 had been one of the characteristic features of political
11647 language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use
11648 abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian
11649 countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such
11650 words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comin- tern, Inprecorr,
11651 Agitprop. In the beginning the practice had been adopted as
11652 it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a
11653 conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a
11654 name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting
11655 out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it.
11656 The words Communist International, for instance, call up
11657 a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags,
11658 barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word
11659 Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a
11660 tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine.
11661 It refers to something almost as easily recognized, and as
11662 limited in purpose, as a chair or a table. Comintern is
11663 a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought,
11664 whereas Communist International is a phrase over which
11665 one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way,
11666 the associations called up by a word like Minitrue are
11667 fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry
11668 of Truth. This accounted not only for the habit of
11669 abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost
11670 exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily
11673 In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other
11674 than exactitude of meaning. Regularity of grammar was always
11675 sacrificed to it when it seemed necessary. And rightly so,
11676 since what was required, above all for political purposes, was
11677 short clipped words of unmistakable meaning which could be
11678 uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum of echoes in the
11679 speaker's mind. The words of the B vocabulary even gained in
11680 force from the fact that nearly all of them were very much
11681 alike. Almost invariably these words -- goodthink, Minipax,
11682 prolefeed, sexcrime, joycamp, Ingsoc, bellyfeel,
11683 thinkpol, and countless others -- were words of two or
11684 three syllables, with the stress distributed equally between
11685 the first syllable and the last. The use of them encouraged a
11686 gabbling style of speech, at once staccato and monotonous. And
11687 this was exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to make
11688 speech, and especially speech on any subject not ideologically
11689 neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness.
11690 For the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or
11691 sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party
11692 member called upon to make a political or ethical judgement
11693 should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as
11694 automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets. His
11695 training fitted him to do this, the language gave him an almost
11696 foolproof instrument, and the texture of the words, with their
11697 harsh sound and a certain wilful ugliness which was in accord
11698 with the spirit of Ingsoc, assisted the process still further.</p>
11700 So did the fact of having very few words to choose from.
11701 Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new
11702 ways of reducing it were constantly being devised. Newspeak,
11703 indeed, differed from most all other languages in that its
11704 vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every year. Each
11705 reduction was a gain, since the smaller the area of choice, the
11706 smaller the temptation to take thought. Ultimately it was hoped
11707 to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without
11708 involving the higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly
11709 admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning ' to
11710 quack like a duck'. Like various other words in the B
11711 vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning.
11712 Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox
11713 ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when The Times
11714 referred to one of the orators of the Party as a
11715 doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and
11716 valued compliment.</p>
11719 <i>The C vocabulary.</i>
11720 The C vocabulary was supplementary
11721 to the others and consisted entirely of scientific and
11722 technical terms. These resembled the scientific terms in use
11723 today, and were constructed from the same roots, but the usual
11724 care was taken to define them rigidly and strip them of
11725 undesirable meanings. They followed the same grammatical rules
11726 as the words in the other two vocabularies. Very few of the C
11727 words had any currency either in everyday speech or in
11728 political speech. Any scientific worker or technician could
11729 find all the words he needed in the list devoted to his own
11730 speciality, but he seldom had more than a smattering of the
11731 words occurring in the other lists. Only a very few words were
11732 common to all lists, and there was no vocabulary expressing the
11733 function of Science as a habit of mind, or a method of thought,
11734 irrespective of its particular branches. There was, indeed, no
11735 word for 'Science', any meaning that it could possibly bear
11736 being already sufficiently covered by the word Ingsoc.</p>
11738 From the foregoing account it will be seen that in
11739 Newspeak the expression of unorthodox opinions, above a very
11740 low level, was well-nigh impossible. It was of course possible
11741 to utter heresies of a very crude kind, a species of blasphemy.
11742 It would have been possible, for example, to say Big Brother
11743 is ungood. But this statement, which to an orthodox ear
11744 merely conveyed a self-evident absurdity, could not have been
11745 sustained by reasoned argument, because the necessary words
11746 were not available. Ideas inimical to Ingsoc could only be
11747 entertained in a vague wordless form, and could only be named
11748 in very broad terms which lumped together and condemned whole
11749 groups of heresies without defining them in doing so. One
11750 could, in fact, only use Newspeak for unorthodox purposes by
11751 illegitimately translating some of the words back into
11752 Oldspeak. For example, All mans are equal was a possible
11753 Newspeak sentence, but only in the same sense in which All
11754 men are redhaired is a possible Oldspeak sentence.
11755 It did not contain a grammatical error, but it expressed a
11756 palpable untruth-i.e. that all men are of equal size, weight,
11757 or strength. The concept of political equality no longer
11758 existed, and this secondary meaning had accordingly been purged
11759 out of the word equal. In 1984, when Oldspeak was still
11760 the normal means of communication, the danger theoretically
11761 existed that in using Newspeak words one might remember their
11762 original meanings. In practice it was not difficult for any
11763 person well grounded in doublethink to avoid doing this,
11764 but within a couple of generations even the possibility of such
11765 a lapse would have vaished. A person growing up with Newspeak
11766 as his sole language would no more know that equal had
11767 once had the secondary meaning of 'politically equal', or that
11768 free had once meant 'intellectually free', than for
11769 instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware
11770 of the secondary meanings attaching to queen and
11771 rook. There would be many crimes and errors which it
11772 would be beyond his power to commit, simply because they were
11773 nameless and therefore unimaginable. And it was to be foreseen
11774 that with the passage of time the distinguishing
11775 characteristics of Newspeak would become more and more
11776 pronounced -- its words growing fewer and fewer, their meanings
11777 more and more rigid, and the chance of putting them to improper
11778 uses always diminishing.</p>
11780 When Oldspeak had been once and for all superseded, the
11781 last link with the past would have been severed. History had
11782 already been rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the
11783 past survived here and there, imperfectly censored, and so long
11784 as one retained one's knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to
11785 read them. In the future such fragments, even if they chanced
11786 to survive, would be unintelligible and untranslatable. It was
11787 impossible to translate any passage of Oldspeak into Newspeak
11788 unless it either referred to some technical process or some
11789 very simple everyday action, or was already orthodox
11790 (goodthinkful would be the NewsPeak expression) in
11791 tendency. In practice this meant that no book written before
11792 approximately 1960 could be translated as a whole.
11793 Pre-revolutionary literature could only be subjected to
11794 ideological translation -- that is, alteration in sense as well
11795 as language. Take for example the well-known passage from the
11796 Declaration of Independence:</p>
11797 <p class="quote"><i>
11798 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
11799 are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with
11800 certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty,
11801 and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights,
11802 Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers
11803 from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of
11804 Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right
11805 of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new
11806 Government...</i></p>
11808 It would have been quite impossible to render this into
11809 Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The
11810 nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the
11811 whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full
11812 translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby
11813 Jefferson's words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute
11816 A good deal of the literature of the past was, indeed,
11817 already being transformed in this way. Considerations of
11818 prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain
11819 historical figures, while at the same time bringing their
11820 achievements into line with the philosophy of Ingsoc. Various
11821 writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens,
11822 and some others were therefore in process of translation: when
11823 the task had been completed, their original writings, with all
11824 else that survived of the literature of the past, would be
11825 destroyed. These translations were a slow and difficult
11826 business, and it was not expected that they would be finished
11827 before the first or second decade of the twenty-first century.
11828 There were also large quantities of merely utilitarian
11829 literature -- indispensable technical manuals, and the like --
11830 that had to be treated in the same way. It was chiefly in order
11831 to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the
11832 final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as
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