George Orwell - 1984 - Audiobook

Blackstone audio presents 1984 by George Orwell part one chapter one it was a bright cold day in April and The Clocks Were Striking 13. Winston Smith his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old ragnats at one end of it a colored poster too large for indoor display had been tapped to the wall it depicted simply an enormous face

more than a meter wide the face of a man of about 45 with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features Winston made for the stairs it was no use trying the lift even at the best of times it was seldom working and at present the electric current was cut off During daylight hours it was part of the economy drive in preparation for hate week the flat was seven flights up and Winston who was 39 and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle went slowly resting several times on the way on each Landing opposite

the lift shaft the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall it was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you About when you move big brother is watching you the caption beneath it ran inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig iron The Voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right hand wall Winston turned a switch and the voice Sank somewhat though the

words were still distinguishable the instrument the telescreen it was called could be dimmed but there was no way of shutting it off completely he moved over to the window the smallish frail figure the meaganess of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party his hair was very fair his face naturally sanguine his skin roughened by Coarse soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended outside even through the shut window pane the world looked cold down in the street little Eddies of wind

were whirling dust and torn paper into Spirals and though the Sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere the black mustachioed face gazed down From every commanding corner there was one on the house front immediately opposite Big Brother Is Watching You the caption said while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own down at street level another poster torn at one corner flapped fitfully In The Wind alternately covering and uncovering the single word insock in the far distance a helicopter

skimmed down between the roofs hovered for an Instant like a blue bottle and darted away again with a curving flight it was the police patrol snooping into people's windows the patrols did not matter however only the thought police mattered behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig iron and the over fulfillment of the ninth three-year plan the tele screen received and transmitted simultaneously Any sound that Winston made above the level of a very low whisper will be picked up by it moreover so long as he remained within the field

of vision which the metal plaque commanded he could be seen as well as heard there was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment how often or on what system the thought police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork it was even conceivable but they watched Everybody all the time but at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to you had to live did live from habit that became Instinct in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and except in darkness every

movement scrutinized Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen it was safer though as he well knew even a back can be revealing a kilometer away the ministry of Truth His place of work towered vast and white above the grimy landscape this he thought with some sort of vague distaste this was London Chief city of airstrip one itself the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania he tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether London had always been quite like this were there always these vistas of rotting 19th century houses

the side Shored up with bulks of Timber their Windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron their crazy Garden walls sagging in all directions and the bomb sites where the plaster dust Whirled in the air and The Willow herbs straggled over the heaps of rubble and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger path and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken houses but it was no use He could not remember nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright lit Tableau occurring against no background and mostly

unintelligible the ministry of Truth many true in Newspeak was certainly different from any other object in sight there was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete soaring up Terrace after Terrace 300 meters into the air from where Winston stood it was just Possible to read picked out on its white face in elegant lettering the three slogans of the party war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength the ministry of Truth contained it was said three thousand rooms above ground level and corresponding ramifications below scattered about London there were just three other buildings of

similar Appearance and size so completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously they were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided the ministry of Truth which concerned itself with news entertainment education and the Fine Arts the ministry of Peace which concerned itself with war The ministry of Love which maintained Law and Order and the ministry of Plenty which was responsible for economic affairs their names in Newspeak many true mini Pax mini love and Minnie

plenty the ministry of love was the really frightening one there were no windows in it at all Winston had never been inside the ministry of Love nor within half a kilometer of it it was a place Impossible to enter except on official business and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed wire entanglements steel doors and hidden machine gun nests even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by guerrilla-faced guards in black uniforms armed with jointed truncheons Winston turned round abruptly it set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which

it was advisable To wear when facing the telescreen he crossed the room into the tiny kitchen by leaving the ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark colored bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow's breakfast he took down from the Shelf a bottle of colorless liquid with a plain white label marked Victory gin It gave off a sickly oily smell as of Chinese rice spirit Winston poured out nearly a teacup full

nerved himself for a shock and gulped it down like a dose of Medicine instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes stuff was like nitric acid moreover in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club the next moment however the burning in His belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful he took a cigarette from a crumpled pack marked Victory cigarettes and in cautiously held it upright whereupon the tobacco fell out onto the floor but the next

he was more successful he went back to the living room and sat down at a small table that stood to the left of the telescreen from the table drawer he took out a pen holder a bottle of ink and a thick Quarter-sized blank book with a red back and a marbled cover for some reason the telescreen in the living room was in an unusual position instead of being placed as was normal in the end wall where it could command the whole room it was in the longer wall opposite the window the one side of it

there was a shallow Alcove in which Winston was now sitting and which when the flats were built had Probably been intended to hold bookshelves by sitting in the Alcove and keeping well back Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen so far as site went he could be heard of course but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen it was partly the unusual geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing that he was now about to do It had also been suggested by

the book that he had just taken out of the draw it was a peculiarly beautiful book it smooth creamy paper a little yellowed by age was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least 40 years past he could guess however that the book was much older than that he had seen it lying in the window of a frousy little junk shop in a slummy quarter of the town just what quarter he did not now remember And had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it party members were supposed not to

go into ordinary shops dealing on the free market it was called but the rule was not strictly kept because there were various things such as shoelaces and razor blades which it was impossible to get hold of in any other way he had given a quick glance up and down the street and then had slipped inside And bought the book for 2.50 at the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose he had carried it beautifully home in his briefcase even with nothing written in it it was a compromising possession the thing

that he was about to do was to open a diary this was not illegal nothing was illegal since there were no longer any laws but if detected it was reasonably Certain that it would be punished by death or at least by 25 years in a forced labor camp Winston fitted a nib into the pen holder and sucked it to get the grease off the pen was an archaic instrument seldom used even for signatures and he procured one plentifully and with some difficulty simply because of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written

on with a real nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil Actually he was not used to writing by hand apart from very short notes it was usual to dictate everything into the speak right which was of course impossible for his present purpose he dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second a Tremor had gone through his bowels to Mark the paper was the decisive Act in small clumsy letters he wrote April 4th 1984. he sat back a sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him to begin with he

did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. it must be around that date since he was fairly sure that his age was 39 and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945. but it was never possible nowadays to Pin down any date within a year or two for whom it suddenly occurred to him to wonder was he writing this diary the future for The Unborn his mind hovered for a moment around the doubtful date on the page and then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word double think for

the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him how could you communicate with the Future it was of its nature impossible either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him or it would be different from it and his predicament would be meaningless for some time he sat gazing stupidly at the paper the telescreen had changed over to strident military music it was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing Himself but even to have forgotten what it was that

he had originally intended to say for weeks passed he'd be making ready for this moment and had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage the actual writing would be easy all he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable Restless monologue that had been running inside his head literally for years At this moment however even the monologue had dried up moreover his varicose ulcer begun itching unbearably he dared not scratch it because if he did so it always became inflamed the seconds were ticking by he was conscious of nothing

except the blankness of the page in front of him the itching of the skin above his ankle the blaring of the music and a slight booziness caused by the Gin Suddenly he began writing in sheer Panic only imperfectly aware of what he was setting down his small but childish handwriting straggled up and down the page shedding first its capital letters and finally even its full stops April 4th 1984. last night to The Flicks all war films one very good one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean audience much amused by

shots of a great Huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise then you saw him through the helicopter's gun sights then he was full of holes and the Sea around him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had let in the water audience shouting with laughter when he sank then you saw a Lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it but there was a middle-aged woman might have Been a Jewish sitting up in the

bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting her arms around him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself all the time covering them up as much as possible as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo Bomb in among them terrific Flash and the boat went all to matchwood then there was a wonderful shot

of a child's arm going up up right up into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of Applause from the party seats but a woman down in the parole part of the House suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting that they didn't Auto showed it not in front of the kids they didn't it ain't right not in front of The kids it ain't until the police turned her turned her out I don't suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the pros

say typical Pro reaction they never Winston stopped writing partly because he was suffering from cramp he did not know what had made him pour out this stream of rubbish but the Curious Thing was that while he was doing so a totally different memory had clarified itself in his mind to the Point where he almost felt equal to writing it down it was he now realized because of this other incident that he had suddenly decided to come home and begin the diary today it had happened that morning at the ministry if anything so nebulous could be

said to happen it was nearly 1100 and in the records department where Winston worked they were dragging the chairs out of the Cubicles and grouping them in the center of the hall opposite the big telescreen in preparation for the two minutes hate Winston was just taking his place in one of the middle rows when two people whom he knew by sight but had never spoken to came unexpectedly into the room one of them was a girl whom he often passed in the corridors he did not know her name but he knew that she worked in

the fiction Department Presumably since he had sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying a spanner she had some mechanical job on one of the novel writing machines she was a bold looking girl of about 27 with thick dark hair a freckled face and Swift athletic movements a narrow Scarlet sash emblem of the Junior anti-sex League Was Won several times around the waist of her overalls just tightly enough to bring out the shapelanness of her hips Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her he knew the reason it was because of

the atmosphere of hockey fields and cold baths and Community hikes and general clean mindedness which he managed to carry about with her he disliked nearly all women and especially the young and pretty ones it was always the women and above all the young ones who were the most bigoted Adherents of the party the swallowers of slogans the amateur spies and noses out of unorthodoxy but this particular girl gave him the impression of being more dangerous than most once when they passed in the corridor she had given him a quick side long glance which seemed to

pierce right into him and for a moment I'd filled him with Black Terror the idea had even crossed his mind that She might be an agent of the thought police that it was true was very unlikely still he continued to feel a peculiar uneasiness which had fear mixed up in it as well as hostility whenever she was anywhere near him the other person was a man named O'Brien a member of the inner party and holder of some posts so important and remote that Winston had only a dim idea of its nature A momentary hush passed

over the group of people around the chairs as they saw the black overalls of an inner party member approaching O'Brien was a large Burly man with a thick neck and a coarse humorous brutal face in spite of his formidable appearance he had a certain charm of manner he had a trick of resettling his Spectacles on his nose which was curiously disarming in some indefinable Way curiously civilized there was a gesture which if anyone had still thought in such terms might have recalled an 18th century No Woman offering his snuff box Winston had seen O'Brien perhaps

a dozen times in almost as many years he felt deeply drawn to him and not solely because he was intrigued by the contrast between O'Brien's obeying Manor and his prize Fighters physique much more it was because of a secretly Held belief or perhaps not even a belief merely a hope that O'Brien's political Orthodoxy was not perfect something in his face suggested it irresistibly and again perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written in his face but simply intelligence but at any rate he had the appearance of being a person that you could talk to

if somehow you could cheat the telescreen and get him alone Winston had never made the smallest effort to verify this guess indeed there was no way of doing so at this moment O'Brien glanced at his wristwatch saw that it was nearly 1100 and evidently decided to stay in the records department until the two minutes hate was over he took a chair in the same road as Winston a couple of places away a small sandy-haired woman who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was between Them the girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind the

next moment a hideous grinding Screech as of some monstrous machine running without oil burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room it was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair on the back of one's neck the hate had started as usual the face of Emmanuel Goldstein The enemy of the people had flashed onto the screen there were hisses here and there among the audience the Little Sandy haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust Goldstein was the Renegade and backslider who once long ago how long

ago nobody quite remembered had been one of the leading figures of the party almost on a level with big brother himself and then had engaged in Counter-revolutionary activities had been condemned to death and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared the program of the two minutes hate varied from day to day but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure he was the Primal traitor the earliest defiler of the party's Purity all subsequent crimes against the party all treasuries acts of sabotage heresies deviations sprang directly out of his teaching Somewhere or other he was

still alive and hatching his conspiracies perhaps Somewhere Beyond the Sea Under the protection of his foreign paymasters perhaps even so it was occasionally rumored in some hiding place in Oceania itself Winston's diaphragm was constricted he could never see the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions it was a lean Jewish face with a great fuzzy Oriole of white hair and a small Goatee beard a clever face and yet somehow inherently despicable with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched it

resembled the face of a sheep and the voice too had a sheep-like quality Gold's time was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the party an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it and yet just Plausible enough to fill one with an unarmed feeling that other people less level-headed than oneself might be taken in by it he was abusing big brother he was denouncing the dictatorship of the party he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia he was advocating freedom of speech freedom

of the press freedom of assembly freedom of thought he was crying hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed and all this in Rapid polysyllabic speech which Was a sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators of the party and even contain new speak words more new speak words indeed than any party member would normally use in real life and all the while list one should be in any doubt as to the reality which goldstein's specious claptrap covered behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless Columns of the Eurasian Army row after

row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished to be replaced by others exactly similar the Dal rhythmic of the soldiers boots formed the background to goldstein's bleating voice before the hate had proceeded for 30 seconds uncontrollable exclamations of Rage were breaking out from half the people in the room the self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen and the terrifying power of the Eurasian Army Behind it were too much to be born besides the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically he

was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or East Asia since when Oceana was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other but what was strange was that although Gold's time was hated and despised by everybody although every day and a thousand times a day on platforms on the Tilly screen in newspapers and books his theories were refuted smashed ridiculed held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish they were in spite of all this his influence never seemed to grow less always there were fresh

dupes waiting to be seduced by him a day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the thought police he was the commander of a vast shadowy Army an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the state the Brotherhood its name was supposed to be there were also whispered stories of a terrible book a compendium of all the heresies of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there it was a book without a title people referred to it if at all simply as the

Book but one knew of such things only through vague rumors neither the Brotherhood nor the book was a subject that any ordinary party member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it in its second minute the hate Rose to a frenzy people were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen the little sandy-haired Woman had turned bright pink and her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish even O'Brien's heavy

face was flushed he was sitting very straight in his chair his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he was standing up to the assault of a wave the dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out swine swine swine and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen it struck goldstein's nose and bounced off The Voice continued inexorably in a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair the horrible thing about the two minutes hate was

not that one was obliged to act apart but that it was impossible to avoid joining in within 30 seconds any pretense was always unnecessary a hideous Ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness a desire to kill To torture to smash faces in with a sledgehammer seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current turning one even against one's will into a grimacing screaming lunatic and yet the rage that one felt was an abstract undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blow lamp thus at one

moment Winston's hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all but on the contrary against Big Brother the Party and the thought police and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely derided heretic on the screen Soul guardian of Truth and Sanity in a world of Lies and yet the very next instant he was at one with the people about him and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true at those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration and Big Brother seemed to Tower up an Invincible Fearless

protector standing like a rock against the hordes of Asia and Goldstein in spite of his isolation his helplessness and the doubt that hung about his very existence seemed like some Sinister enchanter capable by the mere power of His voice of wrecking the structure of civilization it was even possible at moments to switch one's hatred this way or that by a voluntary Act Suddenly by the sort of violent effort With which one wrenches one's head away from the pillow in a nightmare Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark-haired

girl behind him Vivid beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind he would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon he would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian he would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax Better than before moreover he realized why it was that he hated her he hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so because round her sweet Supple waist which seemed to ask you to

encircle it with your arm there was only the odious Scarlet sash aggressive symbol of Chastity the hate Rose to its climax the voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep's Bleat and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep then the Sheep face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing huge and terrible his submachine gun roaring and seeming to Spring out of the surface of the screen so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats and in the same moment

drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody the Hostile figure Melted into the face of Big Brother black-haired Black mustachioed full of power and mysterious calm and so vast that it almost filled up the screen nobody heard what big brother was saying it was merely a few words of encouragement the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken then the face of Big Brother faded away Again and instead the three slogans of the party stood out in bold capitals war is

peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength but the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen as though the impact that it had made on everyone's eyeballs were too Vivid to wear off immediately the Little Sandy head woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her with a tremulous Murmur that sounded like My Savior she extended her arms toward the screen then she buried her face in her hands it was apparent that she was uttering a prayer at this moment the entire group of people

broke into a deep slow rhythmical chant of B B over and over again very slowly with a long pause between the first B and the second a heavy murmurous sound somehow Curiously Savage in the background of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tomtoms perhaps as much as 30 seconds they kept it up it was a refrain that was often heard in the moments of overwhelming emotion partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and Majesty of Big Brother still more it was an act of self-hypnosis

a deliberate drowning of Consciousness by means of rhythmic noise Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold in the two minutes hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium but this sub-human chanting of b b b always filled him with horror of course he chanted with the rest it was impossible to do otherwise to dissemble your feelings to control your face to do what everyone else was doing was an instinctive reaction but there was a space of a couple of seconds during which the expression in His eyes might conceivably have betrayed him and it was

exactly at this moment but the significant thing happened if indeed it did happen momentarily he caught O'Brien's eye O'Brien had stood up he had taken off his spectacles and was in the act of resettling them on his nose with his characteristic gesture but there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew yes he knew that O'Brien was thinking the same thing as himself an unmistakable message had passed it was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one

into the other through their eyes I am with you O'Brien seemed to be saying I know precisely what you are feeling I know all about your contempt your hatred your disgust but don't worry I am on your side and then the flash of intelligence was gone and O'Brien's face was as inscrutable as everybody else's that was all and he was already uncertain whether it had happened such incidents never had any sequel all that they did was to keep alive in him the belief or hope that others beside himself were the enemies of the party Perhaps

the rumors of vast underground conspiracies were true after all perhaps the Brotherhood really existed it was impossible in spite of the Endless arrests and confessions and executions to be sure that the Brotherhood was not simply a myth some days he believed in it some days not there was no evidence only fleeting glimpses that might mean anything or nothing snatches of overheard Conversation faint scribbles on lavatory walls once even when two strangers met a small movement of the hands which had looked as though it might be a signal of recognition it was all guesswork very likely

he had imagined everything he had gone back to his cubicle without looking at O'Brien again the idea of following up their momentary contact hardly crossed his mind it would have been inconceivably Dangerous even if he had known how to set about doing it for a second two seconds they had exchanged an equivocal glance and that was the end of the story but even that was a memorable event in the locked loneliness in which one had to live Winston roused himself and sat up straighter he let out a Belch the Gin was rising from his stomach

His eyes refocused on the page he discovered that while he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing as though by automatic action it was no longer the same cramped awkward handwriting as before his pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper Printing in large neat capitals down with big brother down with big brother down with big brother down with big brother down with big brother Over and over again filling half a page could not help feeling a twinge of panic it was absurd since the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than

the initial Act of opening the diary but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the Enterprise altogether but he did not do so however because he knew that it was useless Whether he wrote down with big brother or whether he refrained from writing it made no difference whether he went on with the diary or whether he did not go on with it made no difference the thought police would get him just the same he had committed would still have committed even if he had not set pen to paper

the essential crime that contained all others in itself Thought crime they called it thought crime was not a thing that could be concealed forever you might Dodge successfully for a while even for years but sooner or later they were bound to get you it was always at night the arrests invariably happened at night the sudden jerk out of sleep the rough hand shaking your shoulder the lights glaring in your eyes the Ring of hard faces round the bed And the vast majority of cases there was no trial no report of the arrest people simply disappeared

always during the night your name was removed from the registers every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten you were abolished annihilated vaporized was the usual word for a moment he was seized by a kind of Hysteria he began writing in A hurried Untidy scroll they'll shoot me I don't care they'll shoot me in the back of the neck I don't care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck I don't care down with big brother he sat back

in his chair slightly ashamed of himself and laid down his pen the next moment he started violently there was a knocking at his door already He sat as still as a mouse in the food I'll hope that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt but no the knocking was repeated the worst thing of all would be to delay his heart was thumping like a drum but his face from long habit was probably expressionless he got up and moved heavily toward the door chapter 2. As he put his hand to the doorknob Winston

saw that he had left the diary open on the table down with big brother was written all over it in letters almost big enough to be legible across the room it was an inconceivably stupid thing to have done but he realized even in his Panic he had not wanted to smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book while the ink was wet he drew in his breath and opened the Door instantly a warm wave of relief flowed through him a colorless crushed looking woman with wispy hair and a lined face was standing outside I'll come

she began in a dreary whining sort of voice I thought I heard you come in do you think you could come across and have a look at our kitchen sink it's got blocked up and It was Mrs Parsons the wife of the neighbor on the same floor Mrs was a word somewhat discontinence by the party you were supposed to call everyone comrade but with some women one used it instinctively she was a woman of about 30 but looking much older one had the impression that there was dust in the creases of her face Winston followed

her down the passage these amateur repair jobs were an almost Daily irritation Victory Mansions were old Flats built in 1930 or thereabouts and were falling to pieces the Blaster flaked constantly from ceilings and walls the pipes burst in every hard Frost the roof leaked Whenever there was snow the heating system was usually running at half steam when it was not closed down altogether from motives of economy repairs except what you could do for Yourself had to be sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even The Mending of a window pane for two

years of course it's only because Tom isn't home said Mrs Parsons vaguely the Parsons flat was bigger than Winston's and dingy in a different way everything had a battered trembledon look as though the place had just been visited by some large violent animal games impedimenta hockey sticks boxing Gloves a burst football pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out lay all over the floor and on the table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise books on the walls were Scarlet banners of the youth league and the spies and a full-sized poster of Big

Brother there was a usual boiled cabbage smell common to the whole building but it was shot through by a sharper reek of sweat which one knew this at the first sniff Though it was hard to say Hal was the sweat of some person not present at the moment in another room someone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tuned with the military music which was still issuing from the telescreen it's the children said Mrs Parsons casting a half apprehensive glance at the door I haven't been out today and of

course she had a habit of breaking off her Sentences in the middle the kitchen sink was full merely to the brim with filthy greenish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage Winston knelt down and examined the angle joint of the pipe he hated using his hands and he hated bending down which was always liable to starting coughing Mrs Parsons looked on helplessly of course if Tom was home he put it right in a moment she said he loves Anything like that he's ever so good with his hands Tommy's Parsons was Winston's fellow employee at

the ministry of Truth he was a fetish but active man of paralyzing stupidity a mass of imbecile enthusiasms one of those completely unquestioning devoted judges on whom more even than on the thought police the stability of the party depended at 35 he'd just been unwillingly evicted from the youth league and before Graduating into the youth league he had managed to stay on in the spies for a year beyond the statutory age at the ministry he was employed in some subordinate post for which intelligence was not required but on the other hand he was a leading

figure on the Sports Committee and all the other committees engaged in organizing Community hikes spontaneous demonstrations saving campaigns and voluntary activities generally He would inform you with quiet Pride between whiffs of his pipe that he had put in an appearance at the community center every evening for the past four years an overpowering smell of sweat a sort of unconscious testimony to the strenuousness of his life followed him about wherever he went and even remained behind him after he had gone have you got a spanner said Winston fiddling with a nut on the ankle joint Spanner

said Mrs Parsons immediately becoming invertebrate I don't know I'm sure perhaps the children there was a trampling of boots and another blast on the comb as the children charged into the living room Mrs Parsons brought the spanner Winston let out the water and disgustedly removed the clot of human hair that had blocked up the pipe he cleaned his fingers as best he could in the cold water from the tap and went Back into the other room up with your hands yield a Savage voice a handsome tough looking boy of nine had popped up from behind

the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol while his small sister about two years younger made the same gesture with a fragment of wood both of them were dressed in the blue shorts gray shirts and red neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the spies Winston raised his hands above his head But with an uneasy feeling so vicious was the boy's demeanor that it was not all together again you're a traitor you're the boy you're a thought criminal you're an Eurasian spy I'll shoot you I'll vaporize you I'll send you to the salt

mines suddenly they were both leaping around him shouting traitor and thought criminal and the little girl imitating her brother in every movement it was somehow slightly frightening like The gambling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters there was a sort of calculating ferocity in the boy's eye a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston and the consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so it was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding Winston thought this is Parson's eyes flitted nervously from Winston to the children

and Back Again in the better light of the living room He noticed with interest that there actually was dust in the creases of her face they too get so noisy she said they're disappointed because they couldn't go to see the Hang that's what it is I'm too busy to take them and Tom won't be back from work in time why can't we go and see the hanging rod the boy in his huge voice on to see the hanging one to see the hanging chanted the little girls still capering round Some Eurasian prisoners guilty of war

crimes would be hanged in the park that evening Winston remembered this happened about once a month and was a popular spectacle children always clamored to be taken to see it he took his leave of Mrs Parsons and made for the door but he had not gone six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his neck an agonizingly painful blow it was as though a red hot wire had been Jammed into him he spun round just in time to see Mrs Parsons dragging her son back into the doorway while the boy pocketed a

catapult Goldstein Bell of the boy is the door closed on him but what most struck Winston was the look of helpless fright on the woman's grayish face back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the table again still rubbing his neck The music from the telescreen had stopped instead a clipped military voice was reading out with a sort of brutal relish a description of the armaments of the new floating Fortress which had just been anchored between Iceland and the Pharaoh Islands were those children he thought that wretched woman must

lead a life of Terror another year two years and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy Nearly all children nowadays were horrible what was the worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little Savages and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the party on the contrary they adored the party and everything connected with it the songs the processions the banners the hiking the Drilling with dummy rifles the yelling of slogans the worship

of Big Brother it was all a sort of Glorious game to them all their ferocity was turned outwards against the enemies of the State against foreigners traitors saboteurs fought criminals it was almost normal for people over 30 to be frightened of their own children and with good reason for hardly a week past in which the times did not carry a paragraph describing how some Eavesdropping little sneak child hero was the phrase generally used had overheard some compromising remark and denounced his parents to the thought police The Sting of the Catapult bullet had worn off he

picked up his pen half-heartedly wondering whether he could find something more to write in the diary suddenly he began thinking of O'Brien again Years ago how long was it seven years it must be he dreamed that he was walking through a pitch dark room and someone sitting to one side of him had said as he passed we shall needs in the place where there is no Darkness it was said very quietly almost casually a statement not a command he had walked on without pausing one was curious was that at the time in the dream the

words are not made much Impression on him it was only later and by degrees that they had seemed to take on significance he could not now remember whether it was before or after having the dream that he had seen O'Brien for the first time nor could he remember when he had first identified the voice as O'Brien's but at any rate the identification existed it was O'Brien who had spoken to him out of the dark Winston had never been able to feel sure Even after this morning's flash of the eyes it was impossible to be sure

whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy nor did it even seem to matter greatly there was a link of understanding between them more important than a fictional partisanship we shall meet in the place where there is no Darkness he had said Winston did not know what it meant only That in some way or another it would come true The Voice from the telescreen paused a trumpet call clear and beautiful floated into the stagnant air The Voice continued raspingly attention your attention please a news flash has this moment arrived from the Malabar front our forces

in South India have won a glorious Victory I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting May well bring the war within measurable Distance of its end here is the news flash bad news coming Lord Winston and sure enough following on a gory description of the annihilation of the Eurasian army with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners came the announcement that as from the next week the chocolate ration will be reduced from 30 grams to 20. Winston belched again the Gin was wearing off leaving a deflated feeling The tele screen perhaps to

celebrate the victory perhaps to drown the memory of the Lost chocolate crashed into Oceania tis for thee you were supposed to stand to attention however in his present position he was invisible Oceania tis for thee gave way to lighter music Winston walked over to the window keeping his back to the telescreen the day was still cold and clear Somewhere far away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull reverberating Roar about 20 or 30 of them a week were falling on London at present down in the street the wind flapped the torn poster to and fro

and the word ingsock fitfully appeared and vanished the sacred principles of ing sock Newspeak double think the mutability of the past he felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom last in a Monstrous world where he himself was the monster he was alone the past was dead the future was unimaginable what certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side and what way of knowing that the Dominion of the party would not endure forever like an answer the three slogans on the white face of The

ministry of Truth came back at him war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength he took a 25 cent piece out of his pocket there too in tiny clear lettering the same slogans were inscribed and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother even from the coin the eyes pursued you on coins on stamps on the covers of books on banners on posters and on the Wrapping of a cigarette packet everywhere always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you asleep for awake working or eating indoors or out of

doors in the bath or in bed no Escape nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull the son had shifted round and the Myriad Windows of the ministry of Truth with the light no longer shining on them looked Grim as the loopholes of a Fortress his heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal shape it was too strong it could not be stormed a thousand rocket bombs would not batter it down he wandered again for whom he was writing the diary for the future for the past for an age that might be imaginary

and in front of him they lay not death but annihilation the diary will be reduced to ashes and Himself to Vapor only the thought police would read what he had written before they wiped it out of existence and out of memory how could you make an appeal to the Future we're not at trace of you not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper could physically survive The telescreen Struck 14. he must leave in 10 minutes he had to be back at work by 1430. curiously the chiming of the hour seemed To have

put new heart into him he was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear but so long as he uttered it in some obscure way the continuity was not broken it was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage he went back to the table dipped his pen and wrote to the future or to the Past To a time when thought is free when men are different from one another and do not live alone to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot

be undone from the age of uniformity from the age of Solitude from the age of Big Brother from the age of doublethink greetings he was already dead he reflected it seemed to him that it was only now when he had begun to be able to Formulate his thoughts that he had taken the decisive step the consequences of Every Act are included in the act itself he wrote thought crime does not entail death thought crime is death now that he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible

two fingers of his right hand were instant it was exactly the kind of Detail that might betray him some nosing zealots in the ministry a woman probably someone like the little Sandy haired woman or the dark-haired girl from the fiction Department might start wondering why he'd been writing during the lunch interval why he had used an old-fashioned pen what had he been writing and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter he went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with the gritty Dark brown soap which rasped your skin like sandpaper and was

therefore well adapted for this purpose he put the diary away in the drawer it was quite useless to think of hiding it but he could at least make sure whether or not its existence had been discovered a hair laid across the page ends was too obvious but the tip of his finger he picked up an identifiable grain of whitish dust And deposited it on the corner of the color where it was bound to be shaken off if the book was moved chapter 3 Winston was dreaming of his mother he must he thought have been 10

or 11 years old when his mother had disappeared she was a tall statuesque rather silent woman with slow movements and magnificent Fair hair His father he remembered more vaguely as dark and thin dressed always in neat dark clothes Winston remembered especially the very thin Souls of his father's shoes and wearing spectacles the two of them must evidently have been swallowed up in one of the first great purges of the 50s at that moment his mother was sitting in some place deep down beneath him with his young sister in her arms He didn't remember his sister

at all except as a tiny feeble baby always silent with large watchful eyes both of them were looking up at him they were down in some Subterranean place the bottom of a well for instance what a very deep grave but it was a place which already far below him was itself moving downwards they were in the saloon of a sinking ship looking up at him through the darkening water There was still air in the saloon they could still see him and heed them but all the while they were sinking down down into the green waters

which in another moment must hide them from sight forever he was out in the light in the air while they were being sucked down to death and they were down there because he was up here he knew it and they knew it and he could see the knowledge in their faces There was no reproach either in their faces or in their hearts only the knowledge that they must die in order that he might remain alive and that this was part of the unavoidable Order of Things you could not remember what had happened but he knew

in his dream that in some way the lives of his mother and his sister have been sacrificed to his own it was one of those dreams which while retaining the characteristic dream Scenery are a continuation of one's intellectual life and in which one becomes aware of facts and ideas which still seem new and valuable after one is awake the thing that now suddenly struck Winston was that his mother's death nearly 30 years ago had been tragic and sorrowful in a way that was no longer possible tragedy he perceived belonged to the ancient time to a

time when there was Still privacy love and friendship and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason his mother's memory tore at his heart because she had died loving him when he was too young and selfish to love her in return and because somehow he did not remember how she had sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable Such things he saw could not happen today There Was Fear hatred and pain but no Dignity of emotion or deep or complex sorrows all this he

seemed to see in the large eyes of his mother and his sister looking up at him through the green water hundreds of fathoms down and still sinking Suddenly he was standing on short springy Turf on a summer evening when the slanting Rays of the sun gilded the ground the landscape that he was looking at recurred so often in his dreams that he was never fully certain whether or not he had seen it in the real world in his waking thoughts he called it the Golden Country it was an old rabbit bitten pasture with a foot

track wandering across it and a Mole hole here and there in the Ragged hedge on the opposite side of the field the bowels of the elm trees were swaying very faintly in the breeze the leaves just stirring in dense masses like women's hair somewhere near at hand though out of sight there was a clear slow-moving stream where Dace was swimming in the pools under the willow trees the girl the dark hair was coming toward him Across the field with what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them distinctly aside her body

was white and smooth but it aroused no desire in him indeed he barely looked at it what overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside with its Grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture a Whole system of thought as though big brother and the party and the thought police could all be swept into nothingness by a single Splendid movement of the arm that too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time Winston woke up with the word Shakespeare on his lips the telescreen

was giving forth an ear splitting whistle which continued on the same note for 30 seconds It was not 7 15. getting up time for office workers Winston wrenched his body out of bed naked for a member of the outer party received only 3 000 clothing coupons annually and a suit of pajamas was 600. and seized a dingy singlet and a pair of shorts that were lying across a chair the physical jerks will begin in three minutes the next moment he was doubled up by a van coughing fit which nearly always Attacked him soon after waking

up it emptied his lungs so completely that he could only begin breathing again by lying on his back and taking a series of Deep gasps his veins had swelled with the effort of a cough and the varicose ulcer had started itching 30 to 40 group yapped a piercing female voice 30 to 40 group take your places please thirties to 40s Winston sprang to attention in front of The telescreen upon which the image of a youngish woman scrawny but muscular dressed in tunic and gym shoes had already appeared arms bending and stretching she ramped out take

your time by me one two three four one two three four come on comrades put a bit of life into it one two three four one two three four the pain of a coughing fit had not quite driven out of Winston's mind the impression made by his dream and the Rhythmic movements of the exercise restored it somewhat as he mechanically shot his arms back and forth wearing on his face the look of grim enjoyment which was considered proper during the physical jerks he was struggling to think his way backward into the dim period of his

early childhood it was extraordinarily difficult beyond the late 50s everything faded when there were no external records that you could refer to even the outline of Your own life lost its sharpness you remembered huge events which had quite probably not happened you remember the details of incidents without being able to recapture their atmosphere and there were long blank periods to which you could assign nothing had been different then even the names of countries and their shapes on the map had been different airstrip 1 for instance had not been so cold in those days it had

been called England or Britain although London he felt fairly certain had always been called London Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at War but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of Peace during his childhood because one of his early memories was of an air raid which appeared to take Everyone by surprise perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester He did not remember the raid itself but he did remember his father's hand clutching his own as they hurried down

down down into some place deep in the earth round and round a spiral staircase which rang under his feet and which finally so wearied his legs that he began whimpering and had to stop and rest his mother in her slow dreamy way was following a long way behind them she was carrying his baby's sister Or perhaps it was only a bundle of blankets that she was carrying he was not certain whether his sister had been born then finally they had emerged into a noisy crowded place which he realized to be a tube station there were

people sitting all over the stone flagged floor and other people packed tightly together were sitting on metal bunks one above the other Winston and his mother and father found Themselves a place on the floor and near them an old man and an old woman was sitting side by side on a bunk the old man had on a decent dark suit and a black cloth cap pushed back from very white hair his face was scarlet and his eyes were blue and full of tears he reeked of Jinn it seemed to breathe out of his skin in

place of sweat a man could have answered that the others Welling from his eyes were pure gin but Those slightly drunk he was also suffering under some grief that was genuine and unbearable in his childish way Winston grasped that some terrible thing something that was beyond forgiveness and could never be remedied had just happened it also seemed to him that he knew what it was someone whom the old man loved a little granddaughter perhaps had been killed Every few minutes the old man kept repeating we didn't ought to have trusted him or said so more

didn't I that's what comes of trust in them I said so all along we dim the ought to have trusted the buggers but which buggers they didn't ought to have trusted Winston could not now remember since about that time War had been literally continuous though strictly Speaking it had not always been the same War for several months during his childhood there are being confused street fighting in London itself some of which he remembered vividly but to trace out the history of the whole period to say who was fighting whom at any given moment would have

been utterly impossible since no written record and no spoken word ever made mention of any other alignment than the Existing one at this moment for example in 1984 if it was 1984 Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in Alliance with East Asia in no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines actually as Winston well knew it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with East Asia and an alliance with Eurasia but that was merely a piece Of furtive

knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control officially the change of Partners had never happened Oceania was at war with Eurasia therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia the enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible The frightening thing he reflected for the ten thousandth time as he forced his shoulders painfully backward with hands on hips they were gyrating their bodies from the waist an exercise that was supposed to be good for the back muscles

the frightening thing was that it might all be true if the party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event it never happened that surely was more terrifying than Mere torture and death the party said that Oceania had never been an alliance with Eurasia he Winston Smith knew that Oceania had been an alliance with Eurasia a shorter time as four years ago but where did that knowledge exist only in his own Consciousness which in any case must soon be annihilated and if all others accepted the LIE which the party

imposed if all records told the same tale then the LIE passed into history And became truth who controls the past ran the party slogan controls the future who controls the present controls the past and yet the past though of its nature alterable never had been altered whatever was true now was true from Everlasting to Everlasting it was quite simple all that was needed was an unending series of Victories over your own memory Reality control they called it and you speak double think stand easy Mark the instructors a little more genially Winston sank his arms to

his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air his mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink to know and not to know to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies to hold simultaneously Two opinions which canceled out knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them to use logic against logic to repudiate morality while laying claim to it to believe that democracy was impossible and that the party was the guardian of democracy to forget whatever it was necessary to forget then to draw it back into memory again at

the moment when it was needed and then promptly to forget it again and above all to apply the same process to the Process itself that was the ultimate subtlety consciously to induce unconsciousness and then once again to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed even to understand the word double think involve the use of double think the instructors had called them to attention again and now let's see which of us can touch our toes she said enthusiastically right over from the Hips please comrades one two one two Winston love this exercise

which sent shooting pains all the way from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another coughing fit a half Pleasant quality went out of his meditations the past he reflected had not merely been altered it had been actually destroyed how could you establish even the most Obvious fact when there existed no record outside your own memory he tried to remember in what year he had first heard mention of Big Brother he thought it must have been at some time in the 60s but it was impossible to be certain in the party

histories of course Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days his exploits have been gradually pushed Backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the 40s and the 30s when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the Streets of London in great gleaming Motorcars or horse carriages with glass sides there was no knowing how much of this Legend was true and how much invented Winston could not even remember at what date the party itself had come into existence He did not

believe he had ever heard the word insock before 1960 but it was possible that in its old speak form English socialism that is to say it had been current earlier everything melted into mist sometimes indeed you could put your finger on a definite lie it was not true for example as was claimed in the party history books that the party had invented airplanes he remembered airplanes since his Earliest childhood but you could prove nothing there was never any evidence just once in his whole life he had held in his hands unmistakable documentary proof of the

falsification of a historical fact and on that occasion Smith Scream the surest voice from the telescreen 6079 Smith W yes you Ben lower please you can do better than that you're not trying lower please that's Better comrade now standard ease the whole Squad and watch me a sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body his face remained completely inscrutable never show dismay never show resentment a single flicker of the eyes could give you away he stood watching by the instructors raised her arms above her head and one could not say gracefully but with

remarkable neatness and efficiency bent Over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes there comrades that's how I want to see you doing it watch me again I'm 39 and I've had four children now look she bent over again you see my knees aren't bent you can all do it if you want to she added that she straightened herself anyone under 45 is perfectly capable of touching his toes we don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line But at least we can all keep fit remember our boys on the

Malabar front and the sailors in the floating fortresses just think what they have to put up with now try again that's better comrade that's much better she added encouragingly as Winston with a violent lunge succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent for the first time in several years chapter 4. With a deep unconscious sigh which not even The Nearness of the telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day's work started Winston pulled the speak right towards him blew the dust from its mouthpiece and put on his spectacles then he unrolled and clipped together

four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of the pneumatic tube on the right hand side of his desk in the walls of the cubicle there were Three orifices to the right of the speak right a small pneumatic tube for written messages to the left a larger one for newspapers and in the sidewall within easy reach of Winston's arm a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating this last was for the disposal of waste paper similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building not only in every room but

at Short intervals in every corridor For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes when one knew that any document was due for destruction or even when one saw a scrap of Waste Paper lying about it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in whereupon it will be Whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building Winston examined the four slips of paper Which he had unrolled each contained a message of only one or two

lines in the abbreviated jargon not actually Newspeak but consisting largely of new speak Words which was used in the ministry for internal purposes they ran times 17.3.84 BB speech Mal reported Africa rectify times 19.12.83 forecasts 3yp 4th quarter 83 Misprints verify current issue times 14.2.84 mini plenty malquoted chocolate rectify times 3.12.83 reporting BB day order double plus ungood refs unpersons rewrite full wise up sub anti-filing with a vain feeling of satisfaction Winston laid the fourth message aside it was an intricate and responsible job and had better be dealt with last the other Three were routine

matters though the second one would probably mean some tedious waiting through lists of figures Winston dialed back numbers on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of the times which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes delay the messages he had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter or as the official Phrase had it to rectify for example it appeared from the times of the 17th of March the big brother in his speech of the previous day had predicted

that the South Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa as it happened the Eurasian higher command had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone it was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech in Such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened for again the times of the 19th of December had published the official forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption Goods in the fourth quarter of 1983 which was also the sixth

quarter of the ninth three-year plan today's issue contained a statement of the actual output from which it appeared but the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones as the third message it referred to a very simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes a shorter time ago as February the ministry of Plenty had issued a promise a categorical pledge where the official words that there would be no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. actually as

Winston was aware the Chocolate ration was to be reduced from 30 grams to 20 at the end of the present week all that was needed was to substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April as soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages he clipped his speak written corrections to the appropriate copy of the times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube then with a movement Which was as nearly as possible unconscious he crumpled up the original message and then

he notes that he himself had made and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames what happened in the Unseen Labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes LED he did not know in detail but he did know in general terms as soon as all the corrections which happen to be necessary in any particular Number of the times have been assembled and collated that number will be reprinted the original copy destroyed and the corrected copy placed on the files in its Stead this process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers but

to books periodicals pamphlets posters leaflets films soundtracks cartoons photographs to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological Significance day by day an almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date in this way every prediction made by the party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct nor was any item of news or any expression of opinion which conflicted with the needs of the moment ever allowed to remain on record all history was a palim cyst scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often As was

necessary in no case would it have been possible once the deed was done to prove that any falsification had taken place the lounges section of the records department far larger than the one in which Winston worked consisted simply of persons whose Duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books newspapers and other documents which have been superseded and were due for Destruction A number of the times which might because of changes in political alignment or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother have been Rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing

its original date and no other copy existed to contradict it books also were recalled and Rewritten again and again and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made even the written instructions which Winston received and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed always the reference was to slips errors misprints or misquotations which was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy but actually he thought as he readjusted the ministry of clinty's

figures it was not even forgery it was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense For another most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie statistics or just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version a great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head For example the ministry of plant is forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at

145 million pairs the actual output was given as 62 Millions Winston however in rewriting the forecast marked the figure down to 57 Millions so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfilled in any case 62 Millions was no nearer of the truth than 57 Millions more than 145 Millions very likely no boots have been produced at all likelier still nobody Knew how many had been produced much less cared all one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper while perhaps half the population of Oceania went

barefoot and so it was with every class of recorded fact great or small everything faded away into a shadow World in which finally even the date of the year had become uncertain Winston glanced across the hall In the corresponding cubicle on the other side a small precise looking dark-chinned man named Tillotson was working steadily away with a folded newspaper on his knee and his mouth very close to the mouthpiece of the speak right he had the air of trying to keep what he was saying a secret between himself and the telescreen he looked up and

his spectacles darted a hostile Flash in Winston's Direction Winston hardly knew Tillerson and had no idea what work he was employed on people in the records department did not readily talk about their jobs in the long windowless Hall with its double row of cubicles and its endless rustle of papers and Humber voices murmuring into speak rights there were quite a dozen people whom Winston did not even know by name though he daily saw them hurrying to and from the corridors or gesticulating in the two Minutes hate he knew that in the cubicle next to him

the little woman with Sandy hair toiled day in day out Simply at tracking down and deleting from the press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed there was a certain Fitness in this since her own husband had been vaporized a couple of years earlier and a few cubicles away a mild Ineffectual dreamy creature named ampleforth with very hairy ears and a surprising talent for juggling with Rhymes and meters was engaged in producing garbled versions definitive texts they were called of poems which have become ideologically offensive but

which for one reason or another were to be retained in the anthologies and this Hall with its 50 workers or thereabouts was only one subsection a single cell as it were in the huge Complexity of the records department Beyond above below were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs there were the huge printing shops with their sub-editors their typography experts and their elaborately equipped Studios for the faking of photographs there was the teleprogram section with its Engineers its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices

There were the armies of reference clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall there were the vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed and somehow or other quite Anonymous there were the directing brains who coordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it Necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved that one falsified and the other rubbed out of existence and the records department after all was itself only

a single branch of the ministry of Truth whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers films textbooks telescreen programs plays novels with every conceivable kind of information instruction or entertainment from a Statue to a slogan from a lyric poem to a biological Treatise and from a child's spelling book to a Newspeak dictionary and the ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat chain of separate departments

dealing with proletarian literature music drama and entertainment generally here were produced rubbishi newspapers containing Almost nothing except sport crime and astrology Sensational five cent novelettes films oozing with sex and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of Kaleidoscope known as a versificator there was even a whole subsection pornosec as it was called in Newspeak engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography which was sent out in sealed packets and which no party member other than those who worked on it Was permitted to look at three messages that slid out

of the pneumatic tube while Winston was working but they were simple matters and he had disposed of them before the two minutes hate interrupted him when the hate was over he returned to his cubicle took the new speak dictionary from the Shelf pushed the speak right to one side cleaned his spectacles and settled down to his main job of the morning Winston's greatest pleasure in life was in his work most of it was a tedious routine but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as

in the depths of a mathematical problem delicate pieces of forgery in which you have nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of insarc and your estimate of what the party wanted you to say Winston was good at this kind of thing on occasion he had even been entrusted with the rectification of the times leading articles which were written entirely in Newspeak he unwrote the message that had been set aside earlier it ran times 3.12.83 reporting BB day order double plus ungood refs unpersons rewrite full wise up sub anti-filing in Old speaker Standard

English this might be rendered The reporting of Big Brother's order for the day in the times of December the 3rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes reference to non-existent persons rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing Winston read through the offending article Big Brother's order for the day it seemed had been chiefly devoted to praising the work of an organization known as ffcc which supplied cigarettes And other Comforts to the sailors in the floating fortresses a certain comrade Withers a prominent member of the inner party have been singled out

for special mention and awarded a decoration the order of conspicuous Merit second class three months later ffcc had suddenly been dissolved with no reasons given one could assume that Withers and his associates were now in disgrace but there had been no report of the matter In the press or on the telescreen and that was to be expected since it was unusual for political offenders to be put on trial or even publicly denounced the red purges involving thousands of people with public Trials of traitors and thought criminals who made abject confessions of their crimes and were

afterwards executed were special showpieces not occurring often than once in a couple of years more commonly people who had incurred The displeasure of the party simply disappeared and were never heard of again one never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them in some cases they might not even be dead perhaps 30 people personally known to Winston now counting his parents had disappeared at one time or another Winston stroked his nose gently with a paperclip in the cubicle across the way comrade Tillotson was still crouching secretively over his speak right he raised

his head for a moment again the Hostile spectacle Flash Winston wondered whether comrade Tillerson was engaged on the same job as himself it was perfectly possible so trickier piece of work would never be entrusted to a single person on the other hand to turn it over to a committee would be to admit openly that An act of fabrication was taking place very likely as many as a dozen people were now working away on Rival versions of what big brother had actually said and presently some master brain in the inner party would select this version or

that would re-edit it and set in motion the complex processes of cross-referencing that would be required then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth Winston did not know why Withers have Been disgraced perhaps it was for corruption or incompetence perhaps big brother was merely getting rid of a too popular subordinate perhaps Withers or someone close to him have been suspected of heretical Tendencies or perhaps what was likeliest of all the thing that simply happened because purges and vaporizations were a necessary part of the mechanics of government the only real clue

lay in the words refs unpersons which indicated that Withers Was already dead you cannot invariably assume this to be the case when people were arrested sometimes they were released and allowed to remain at liberty for as much as a year or two years before being executed very occasionally some persons whom you would believe dared long since would make a ghostly reappearance at some public trial where he would implicate hundreds of others by his testimony before Vanishing this time forever Withers however was already an unperson he did not exist he had never existed Winston decided that

it would not be enough simply to reverse the tendency of Big Brother's speech it was better to make it deal with something totally unconnected with its original subject he might turn the speech into the usual denunciation of traitors and thought criminals but that was a little too obvious while to invent a victory at the front Or some Triumph of overproduction in the ninth three-year plan might complicate the records too much what was needed was a piece of Pure Fantasy suddenly they sprang into his mind ready-made as it were the image of a certain comrade Ogilvy

who had recently died in battle in heroic circumstances there were occasions when Big Brother devoted his order for the day to commemorating some humble Rank and file Party member whose life and death he held up as an example worthy to be followed today he should commemorate comrade Ogilvy it was true that there was no such person as comrade Ogilvy but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence Winston thought for a moment then pulled the speak right toward him and began Dictating in Big Brother's familiar style

a style at once military and pedantic but because of a trick of asking questions and then promptly answering them what lessons do we learn from this fact comrades the lessons which is also one of the fundamental principles of inksock that etc etc easy to imitate at the age of three comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum a Submachine gun and a Model helicopter at six a year earlier by a special relaxation of the rules here joined the spies at nine he had been a troop leader at 11 he had denounced his uncle to

the thought police after overhearing a conversation which appeared to him to have criminal Tendencies at 17 he'd be in a district organizer of the Junior anti-sex League at 19 he had designed a hand grenade which had been adopted by the minister of peace and which at its First trial had killed 31 Eurasian prisoners in one burst at 23 he had perished in action pursued by enemy jet planes while flying over the Indian Ocean with important dispatches he had weighted his body with his machine gun and leapt out of the helicopter into deep water dispatches and

all and then said big brother which it was impossible to contemplate without feelings of envy Big Brother added a few remarks on the Purity and singled mindedness of comrade ogilvy's life he was a total abstainer and a non-smoker had no Recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium and had taken a vow of celibacy believing marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible with a 24 hours a day Devotion to duty he had no subjects of conversation except the principles of insock and no aim in life except the defeat of the Eurasian enemy

and the Hunting down of spies saboteurs thought criminals and traitors generally Winston debated with himself whether to award comrade Ogilvy the order of conspicuous Merit and in the end he decided against it because of the unnecessary cross-referencing that would entail once again he glanced at his rival in the opposite cubicle some things seemed to tell him with certainty the Tillotson was busy on the Same job as himself there was no way of knowing whose version would finally be adopted but he felt a profound conviction that it would be his own comrade ogavi unimagined an hour

ago was now a fact it struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones comrade Ogilvy who had never existed in the present now existed in the past and when Once the act of forgery was Forgotten he would exist just as authentically and upon the same evidence as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar chapter 5. in the low ceiling canteen deep underground the lunch Cube jerked slowly forward the room was already very full and definitely noisy from The Grill at the counter the steam of Stew came pouring forth with a sour metallic

smell which did not quite Overcome the fumes of Victory gin on the far side of the room there was a small bar a mere hole in the wall where gin could be bought at 10 cents the large nip just the man I was looking for said a voice at Winston's back he turned round it was his friend Sim who worked in the research Department perhaps friend was not exactly the right word you did not have friends nowadays You had comrades but there were some comrades whose Society was pleasanter than that of others Sim was a

philologist a specialist in Newspeak indeed he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the 11th edition of the Newspeak dictionary he was a tiny creature smaller than Winston with dark hair and large protuberant eyes at once mournful and Derisive which seemed to search your face closely while he was speaking to you I wanted to ask you whether you've got any eraser blades he said not one said Winston with a sort of guilty haste I've tried all over the place but they don't exist any longer everyone kept asking you for razor

blades actually he had two unused ones which he was hoarding up there have been a famine of them for Months past at any given moment there were some necessary article which the party shops were unable to supply sometimes it was buttons sometimes it was dining wool sometimes it was shoelaces at present it was razor blades you could only get hold of them if at all by scrounging more or less furtively on the free market I've been using the same blade for six weeks he added untruthfully The queue gave another joke forward as they halted he

turned and faced Sim again each of them took a greasy metal tray from a pile at the edge of the counter did you go and see the prisoners hang yesterday said Sim I was working said Winston indifferently I shall see it on the flicks I suppose a very inadequate substitute said Sim his mocking eyes roved over Winston's face I know you the eyes seem to say I see through you I know very well why you didn't go to see those prisoners hanged in an intellectual way Sim was venomously orthodox he would talk with a disagreeable

gloating satisfaction of helicopter raids on enemy Villages the trial and confessions of thought criminals the executions and the sellers of the ministry of love talking to him was largely a matter of Getting him away from such subjects and entangling him if possible in the technicalities of Newspeak on which he was authoritative and interesting Winston turned his head a little aside to avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes that was a good hanging said Sim reminiscently I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together I like to see them kicking and above all

at the end the tongue Sticking right out and blue a quite bright blue that's the detail that appeals to me next please yell the white opened Pro with the label Winston and Sim pushed their trays beneath the grill unto each was dumped swiftly the regulation lunch metal panicking of pinkish gray stew a hung of bread a cube of cheese a mug of milkless Victory coffee and one saccharin tablet There's a table over there under that telescreen said Sim let's pick up a gin on the way the gym was served out to them in handless China

mugs they threaded their way across the crowded room and unpacked their trays onto the metal top table on one corner of which someone had left a pool of Stew a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit Winston took up his mug of gin paused For an instant to collect his nerve and gulp the oily tasting stuff down when he had winked the tears out of his eyes he suddenly discovered that he was hungry he began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew which in among its General sloppiness had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was

probably a preparation of meat neither of them spoke again till they had emptied their panicons From the table at Winston's left a little behind his back someone was talking rapidly and continuously a harsh gabble almost like the cracking of a duck which pierced the general uproar of the room how's the dictionary getting on said Winston raising his voice to overcome the noise slowly said Sim I'm on the adjectives that's fascinating he had brightened up immediately At The Mention Of Newspeak he pushed his pannican aside took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and

his cheese in the other and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak without shouting the 11th Edition is the definitive edition he said we're getting the language into its final shape the shape is going to have when nobody speaks anything else when we finished with it people like you will have to learn it all over again You think I dare say that our chief job is inventing new words but not a bit of it we're destroying words scores of them hundreds of them every day we're putting the language down to the

bone the 11th Edition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050. he bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls then continued speaking with a sort of patent's passion His thin dark face had become animated his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy it's a beautiful thing the destruction of words of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well it isn't only the synonyms they're also the antonyms after all

what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other Words a word contains its opposite in itself take good for instance if you have a word like good what need is there for a word like bad ungood will do just as well better because it's an exact opposite which the other is not or again if you want a stronger version of good what sense is therein having a whole string of their useless words like excellent and Splendid and all the rest of them Plus good covers the meaning or double plus

good if you want something stronger still of course we use those forms already but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else in the end the whole notion of goodness and Badness will be covered by only six words in reality only one word don't just see the beauty of that Winston it was BB's idea originally of course He added as an afterthought a sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face At The Mention of Big Brother nevertheless Sim immediately detected a certain lack of enthusiasm you haven't a real appreciation of new speak Winston

he said almost sadly and when you write it you're still thinking in Old speak I've read some of those pieces that you write in the times occasionally were they good enough but They're translations in your heart you'd prefer to stick to Old speak with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning you don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year Winston didn't know that of course he smiled sympathetically he hoped not trusting himself to speak Sim

bit of another fragment of the dark Colored bread chewed it briefly and went on don't you see that the whole aim of new speak is to narrow the range of thought in the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible because there'll be no words in which to express it every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word when its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten already in the 11th Edition We're not far from that point process will still be continuing long after you and

I are dead every year fewer and fewer words and the range of Consciousness always a little smaller even though of course there's no reason or excuse for committing thought crime it's merely a question of self-discipline reality control but in the end there won't be any need even for that the revolution will be complete when the language is perfect Newspeak is insock and ing sock is Newspeak he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction has it ever occurred to you Winston the by the year 2050 at the very latest not a single human being would be

alive who could understand such a conversation as we're having now except began Winston doubtfully then stopped it had been on the tip of his tongue to say except the pros But he had checked himself not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in some way unorthodox Sim however had defined what he was about to say the proles are not human beings he said carelessly by 2050 earlier probably all real knowledge of old speak will have disappeared the whole literature of the past will have been destroyed sure sir Shakespeare Milton Baron they all exist only

in new speak versions not merely Changed into something different but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be even the literature of the party will change even the slogans will change how could you have a slogan like freedom is slavery when the concept of Freedom has been abolished the whole climate of thought will be different in fact there will be no thought as we understand it now Orthodoxy means not thinking not needing To think Orthodoxy is unconsciousness one of these days thought Winston the sudden deep conviction Sim will be vaporized he's too

intelligent he sees too clearly and speaks too plainly the party does not like such people one day he will disappear it is written in his face Winston had finished his bread and cheese he turned a little sideways in his chair to drink his mug of coffee At the table on his left the man with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away a young woman who was perhaps his secretary and was sitting with her back to Winston was listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with everything he said from time to time Winston

Court some such remarkers I think you're so right I do so agree with you uttered in a youthful and rather silly feminine voice But the other voice never stopped for an instant even when the girl was speaking Winston knew the man by sight though he knew no more about him than that he held some important Post in the fiction Department he was a man of about 30 with a muscular throat and a large mobile mouth his head was thrown back a little and because of the angle at which he was sitting his spectacles caught the

light and presented to Winston two blank discs Instead of eyes one was slightly horrible was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word just once Winston caught a phrase complete the final elimination of goldsteinism jerked out very rapidly and as it seemed all in one piece like a line of type cast solid for the rest it was just a noise a quack quack quacking and yet Though you could not actually hear what the man was saying you could not be in any doubt

about its General nature you might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding Sterner measures against thought criminals and saboteurs he might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian Army he might be praising big brother or the heroes on the Malabar front it made no difference whatever it was you could be certain that every word of it was pure Orthodoxy Pure insock as he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy it was not the man's

brain that was speaking it was his larynx the staff that was coming out of him consisted of words but it was not a speech in the true sense it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness like the quacking of a duck Sim had fallen silent for a moment and with the handle of his spoon was tracing patterns in the puddle of stew The Voice from the other table quacked rapidly on easily audible in spite of the surrounding bin there's a word in you speak said Sim I don't know whether you know it duck speak to quack

like a duck it's one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings applied to an opponent its abuse applied to someone You agree with it is praise unquestionably sin will be vaporized Winston thought again he thought it was a kind of sadness although while knowing that Sim despised him and slightly disliked him and was fully capable of denouncing him as a thought criminal if he saw any reason for doing so there was something subtly wrong with Sim there was something that he lacked discretion aloofness a sort of saving Stupidity you cannot say that he

was unorthodox he believed in the principles of insock he venerated big brother he rejoiced over victories he hated Heretics not merely with sincerity but with the sort of restless seal an up-to-dateness of information which the ordinary party member did not approach yet a faint heir of disreputability always clung to him he said things that would have been better unsaid he had Read too many books he frequented the Chestnut Tree Cafe haunt of painters and musicians there was no law not even an unwritten law against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe yet the place was somehow ill-opened

the old discredited leaders of the party have been used to gather there before they were finally purged Goldstein himself it was said had sometimes been seen there years and decades ago Sims fate was not difficult to foresee And yet it was a fact that if Sim grasped even for three seconds the nature of his Winston's secret opinions he would betray him instantly to the thought police so would anybody else for that matter it's in more than most Zeal was not enough Orthodoxy was unconsciousness Sim looked up Here Comes Parsons He said something in the tone

of his voice Seemed to add that bloody fool Parsons Winston's fellow tenant at Victory Mansions was in fact threading his way across the room a tubby middle-sized man with Fair hair and a frog-like face at 35 he was already putting on rolls of fat at neck and waistline but his movements were brisk and boyish his whole appearance was that of a little boy grown large so much so that although he was wearing the regulation Overalls it was almost impossible not to think of him as being dressed in the blue shorts gray shirt and rednecker chief

of the spies in visualizing him one saw always a picture of dimpled knees and sleeves rolled back from pudgy forearms Parsons did indeed invariably revert to shorts when a community hike or any other physical activity gave him an excuse for doing so he greeted them both with a cheery hello Hello and sat down at the table giving off an intense smell of sweat beads of moisture stood out all over his pink face his powers of sweating were extraordinary at the community center you could always tell when he'd been playing table tennis by the dampness of

the bat handle Sim had produced a strip of paper on which there was a long column of words and was studying it with an ink pencil between his fingers look at him working away in the lunch Hour said Parsons nudging Winston keenness hey what's that you've got there old boy something a bit too Brady for me I expect Smith old boy I'll tell you why I'm chasing you it's that Sam you forgot to give me which sub is that said Winston automatically feeling for money about a quarter of one salary had to be earmarked for

voluntary subscriptions which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep track of them oh for eight weeks you know the House to house fund I'm treasurer for our block and we are making an all-out effort going to put on a tremendous show I tell you it won't be my fault to evolve Victory Mansions doesn't have the biggest outfit Flags in the whole street two dollars you promised me Winston found and handed over to Kristen filthy notes which Parsons entered in a small notebook in the neat handwriting of the illiterate by the way out boy

he said I hear that little beggar of mine Lit fly at you with his catapult yesterday thought I gave him a good dressing down for it in fact I told him I'd take the Catapult away if he does it again I think he was a little upset at not going to the execution said Winston ah well what I mean to say shows the right Spirit doesn't it mischievous little Beggars they are both of them but talk about keenness all they think about is the spies and the wall of course You know what that little girl

of mine did last Saturday when her troop was on a hike out burgundy way she got two other girls to go with her slipped off from the hike and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man well they kept on his toe for two hours right through the woods and then when they got to amsham handed him over to the patrols what did they do that for said Winston some odd taken aback Parsons went on triumphantly my kid made sure he was Some kind of enemy agent might have been dropped by Parachute for instance but

here's the point oh boy what do you think put her on to him in the first place she spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes said she'd never seen anyone wearing shoes like that before so the chances were he was a foreigner pretty smart for a number of seven I what happened to the man said Winston oh that I couldn't say of course but I Wouldn't be all together surprised if Parsons made the motion of aiming a rifle and clicked his tongue for the explosion good said sim abstractly without looking up from his

strip of paper of course we can't afford to take chances agreed Winston dutifully what's I mean to say there is a war on said Parsons as though in confirmation of this a Trumpet call floated from the telescreen just above their heads however it was not the proclamation of a military Victory this time but merely an announcement from the ministry of plenty comrades cried and ego youthful voice attention comrades we have glorious news for you we have won the battle for production returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption Goods show that the

standard of living has risen by no less than 20 percent Over the past year all over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new happy life which is wise leadership has bestowed upon us here are some of the completed figures foodstuffs the phrase our new happy life recurred several times it had been a favorite of late with the Ministry of Plenty Parsons his attention caught by the trumpet call sat listening with a

sort of gaping solemnity a sort of edified boredom he could not follow the figures but he was aware that they were in some way a cause for satisfaction he had lugged out a huge and filthy pipe which was already half full of charred tobacco with the tobacco ration at 100 grams a week it was sold impossible to fill a pipe up to the top Winston was smoking a victory cigarette which he held carefully horizontally the new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left for the moment he had shut his

ears to the remote and noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen it appeared that there had even been a demonstration to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to 20 grams a week and only yesterday he reflected it had been announced that the Ration was to be reduced to 20 grams a week was it possible that they could swallow that after only 24 hours yes they swallowed it Parsons swallowed it easily with the stupidity of an animal the eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically passionately but

the Furious desire to track down the announce and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had Been 30 grams Sim 2 in some more complex way involving doublethink Sim swallowed it was he then alone in the possession of a memory The Fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen as compared with last year there was more food more clothes more houses more furniture more cooking pots more fuel more ships more helicopters more books more babies more of everything except disease crime and Insanity year by year and minute by minute everybody and

everything was whizzing rapidly upwards as soon as done earlier Winston had taken up his spoon and was dabbling in the pale colored gravy that dribbled across the table drawing a long streak of it out into a pattern he meditated resentfully on the physical texture of life and it always been like this had food always tasted like this He looked around the canteen a low ceiling crowded room its walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies batted metal tables and chairs placed so close together that you sat with elbows touching bent spoons dented trays coarse white

mugs all surfaces greasy Grime in every crack and a sourish composite smell of bad gin and bad coffee a metallic stew and dirty clothes always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest a feeling That you had been cheated of something that you had a right to it was true that he had no memories of anything greatly different in any time that he could accurately remember there had never been quite enough to eat when I never had socks or under clothes that were not full of holes Furniture had always been

battered and rickety rooms under heated tube trains crowded houses fall into pieces red dark colored tear Rarity coffee filthy tasting cigarettes Insufficient nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin and though of course it grew worse as one's body aged was it not a sign that this was not the natural order of things if one's heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity the interminable Winters the stickiness of one sucks the lifts that never worked the cold water the gritty soap the cigarettes that came to Pieces the food with its strange evil tastes Why should

one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different he looked around the canteen again nearly everyone was ugly and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than in the uniform blue overalls on the far side of the room sitting at a table alone a small curiously beetle-like man was drinking a cup of coffee his little eyes darting Suspicious glances from side to side how easy it was thought Winston if you did not look about you to believe that the physical type set up

by the party is an ideal tall muscular youths and deep buzz and maidens blonde-haired vital sunburnt Carefree existed and even predominated actually so far as he could judge the majority of people in airstrip one were small dark and ill-favored it was curious how that beetle-like type Proliferated in the Ministries Little dumpy men growing Stout very early in life with short legs Swift scuttling movements and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes it was the type that seemed to flourish best under the Dominion of the party the announcement from the ministry of Plenty ended on another

trumpet call and gave way to tinny music Parsons stirred to vague enthusiasm by the bombardment of figures took his pipe Out of his mouth the ministry of Plenty has certainly done a good job this year he said with a knowing Shake of his head by the way Smith old boy I suppose you haven't got any razor blades you can let me have a not one said Winston I've been using the same blade for six weeks myself oh well just just thought I'd ask old boy sorry said Winston The quacking voice from the next table temporarily

silenced during The Minister's announcement had started up again as loud as ever for some reason Winston suddenly found himself thinking of Mrs Parsons with her wispy hair and the dust in the creases of her face within two years those children will be denouncing her to the thought police Mrs Parsons would be vaporized Sim would be vaporized Winston would be vaporized O'Brien would be vaporized Parsons on the other hand would never be vaporized the eyeless creature with a quacking voice would never be vaporized there were little beetle-like men who scuttled so nimbly through the Labyrinth and

corridors of the Ministries they too would never be vaporized and the girl with dark hair the girl from the fiction Department she would never be vaporized either It seemed to him that he knew instinctively who would survive and who would perish though just what it was that made for survival it was not easy to say at this moment he was dragged out of his reverie with a violent jerk the girl at the next table had turned partly round and was looking at him it was the girl with dark hair she was looking at him in

a side long Way but with curious intensity the incident that she caught his eye she looked away again the sweat started out on Winston's backbone a horrible Pang of Terror went through him it was gone almost once but it left a sort of nagging uneasiness behind why was she watching him why did she keep following him about unfortunately he could not remember Whether she had already been at that table when he arrived or come there afterwards but yesterday at any rate during the two minutes hate she had sat immediately behind him when there was no

apparent need to do so quite likely her real object had been to listen to him and make sure whether he was shouting loudly enough his earlier thought returned to him probably she was not actually a member of the thought police but then it was Precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all he did not know how long she had been looking at him but perhaps for as much as five minutes and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control it was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wonder when

you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen the smallest thing could give you away a nervous tick an unconscious Look of anxiety a habit of muttering to yourself anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality of having something to hide in any case to wear an improper expression on your face to look incredulous when a victory was announced for example was itself a punishable offense there was even a word for it in Newspeak face crime it was called the girl had turned her back on him again Perhaps after all she

was not really following him about perhaps it was a coincidence that she had sat so close to him two days running his cigarette had gone out and he laid it carefully on the edge of the table he would finish smoking it after work if he could keep the tobacco in it quite likely the person at the next table was a spy of the thought police and quite likely he would be in the Cellars of the ministry of Love within three days but a cigarette end must not be wasted Simon folded up his strip of paper

and stowed it away in his pocket Parsons have begun talking again did I ever tell you old boy he said chuckling around the stem of his pipe about the time when those two Nippers of mine set fire to the Old Market woman's skirt because they saw her wrapping up sausages in a poster of BB sneaked up behind her and Set fire to it with a box of matches burned her quite badly I believe that's a first-rate training they give him in the spies nowadays better than in my day even what do you think's the latest

thing they've served them with ear trumpets for listening through keyholes my little girl brought one home the other night tried it out on our sitting room door and reckoned she could hear twice as much as with her ear to the old of course it's only a toy mind You still gives them the right idea eh at this moment the telescreen let out a piercing whistle it was the signal to return to work all three men sprang to their feet to join in the struggle around the lifts and the remaining tobacco fell out of Winston's cigarette

chapter 6. Winston was writing in his diary it was three years ago it was on a dark evening in a narrow Side Street near one of the big Railway stations she was standing near a doorway in the wall under a Street Lamp that hardly gave any light she had a young face painted very thick it was really the paint that appealed to me the whiteness of it like a mask and the bright red lips party women never paint their faces there was nobody else in the street and no telescreens She said two dollars I for

the moment it was too difficult to go on he shut his eyes and pressed his fingers against them trying to squeeze out the vision that kept reoccurring he had an almost overwhelming temptation to shout a string of filthy words at the top of his voice or to bang his head against the wall to kick over the table and hurl the ink pot through the window To do any violent or noisy or painful thing that might black out the memory that was tormenting him your worst enemy he reflected was your own nervous system at any moment

the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom he thought of a man whom he had passed in the street a few weeks back a quite ordinary looking man a party member aged 35 or 40 tallish and thin carrying a Briefcase they were a few meters apart when the left side of the man's face was suddenly contorted by a sort of spasm it happened again just as they were passing one another it was only a twitch a quiver rapid as the clicking of a camera shutter but obviously habitual he remembered thinking

at the time that poor devil is done for and what was frightening was that the action was quite possibly unconscious The most deadly danger of all was talking in your sleep there was no way of guarding against that sevirus he could see he drew in his breath and went on writing I went with her through the doorway and across a backyard into a basement kitchen there was a bed against the wall and a lamp on the table turned down very low sheep his teeth were set on edge He would have liked to spit simultaneously with

the woman in the basement kitchen he thought of Catherine his wife Winston was married had been married at any rate probably he still was married for so far as he knew his wife was not dead he seemed to Breathe Again the warm stuffy odor of the basement kitchen an Odor compounded of bugs and dirty clothes and villainous cheap scent but nevertheless alluring because no woman of the party ever used scent or Could Be Imagined as doing so only the pros used sent in his mind the smell of it was inextricably mixed up with fornication when

he had gone with that woman it had been his first lapse in two years or thereabouts consorting with prostitutes was Forbidden of course but it was one of those rules that you could occasionally nerve yourself to break it was dangerous but it was not a life and death matter to be caught with a prostitute might mean five years in a forced labor camp not more if you had committed no other offense and it was easy enough provided that you could avoid being caught in the act the poorer quarters swarmed with women Who were ready to

sell themselves some could even be purchased for a bottle of gin which the pros were not supposed to drink tacitly the party was even inclined to encourage prostitution as an outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed mere debauchery did not matter very much so long as it was furtive and joyless and only involved the women of a submerged and despised class The unforgivable crime was promiscuity between party members but though this was one of the crimes that the accused in the great purges invariably confessed to it was difficult to imagine any such thing

actually happening the aim of the party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control its real Undeclared purpose was to Remove all pleasure from the sexual act not love so much as eroticism was the Enemy Inside marriage as well as outside it all marriages between party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose and though the principal was never clearly stated permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another they only recognized

purpose of marriage Was to beget children for the service of the party sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation like having an enema this again was never put into plain words but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every party member from childhood onwards there were even organizations such as the Junior anti-sex League which advocated complete celibacy for both Sexes all children were to be begotten by artificial insemination artsem as it was called in Newspeak and brought up in public institutions this Winston was aware was not meant altogether

seriously but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the party the party was trying to kill the sex instinct or if it could not be killed then to distort it and dirty it He did not know why this was so but it seemed natural that it should be so and so far as women were concerned the party's efforts were largely successful he thought again of Catherine it must be 9 10 nearly 11 years since they'd parted it was curious how seldom he thought of her for days at a time he was capable of

forgetting that he'd ever been married they'd only been together for about 15 months the party did not permit divorce But it rather encourage separation in cases where there were no children Catherine was a tall fairhead girl very straight with Splendid movements she had a bold aqualine face a face that one might have called Noble until one discovered that there was nearly as possible nothing behind it very early in their married life he had decided though perhaps it was only that he knew her more intimately than he knew most people That she had without exception the

most stupid vulgar empty mind that he had ever encountered she had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan and there was not an imbecility absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the party handed it out to her the human soundtrack he nicknamed her in his own mind yet he could have endured living with her if it had not been for just one Thing sex as soon as he touched her she seemed to wince and stiffen to embrace her was like embracing a jointed wooden image and what was strange

was that even when she was clasping him against her he had the feeling that she was simultaneously pushing him away with all her strength the rigidity of her muscles managed to convey that impression she would lie there with shut eyes Neither resisting nor cooperating but submitting it was extraordinarily embarrassing and after a while horrible but even then he could have borne living with her if it had been agreed that they should remain celibate but curiously enough it was Catherine who refused this they must she said produce a child if they could so the performance continued

to happen Once a week quite regularly whenever it was not impossible she used to even to remind him of it in the morning for something which had to be done that evening and which must not be forgotten she had two names for it one was making a baby and the other was her duty to the party yes she had actually used that phrase quite soon he grew to have a feeling of Positive dread when the appointed day came around but luckily no child appeared and in the end she agreed to give up trying and soon

afterwards they parted Winston sighed inaudibly he picked up his pen again and wrote she threw herself down on the bed and at once without any kind of preliminary in the most coarse horrible way you can imagine pulled up her skirt I he saw himself standing there in the dim lamp light with the smell of bugs and cheap scent in his nostrils and in his heart a feeling of defeat and resentment which even at that moment was mixed up with the thought of Catherine's white body frozen Forever by the hypnotic power of the party why did

it always have to be like this why could he not have a woman of his own instead of these filthy scuffles at Intervals of years but a real love affair was an almost Unthinkable event the women of the party were all alike Chastity was as deeply ingrained in them as Party Loyalty my careful early conditioning my games and cold water by the rubbish that was dined into them at school and in the spies and the youth league by lectures parades songs slogans and martial music the natural feeling had been driven out Of them his reason

told him that there must be exceptions but his heart did not believe it they were all impregnable as the party intended that they should be and what he wanted more even than to be loved was to break down that wall of virtue even if it were only once in his whole life the sexual act successfully performed was Rebellion desire was thought crime Even to have awakened Catherine if he could have achieved it would have been like a seduction although she was his wife but the rest of the story had got to be written down he

wrote I turned up the lamp when I saw her in the light after the darkness the feeble light of the paraffin lamp had seemed very bright for the first time he could see the Woman properly he had taken a step toward her and then halted full of lust and Terror he was painfully conscious of the risk he had taken in coming here it was perfectly possible that the patrols would catch him on the way out for that matter they might be waiting outside the door at this moment away without even doing what he had come

to do it had got to be written down It had got to be confessed what he had suddenly seen in the Lamplight was that the woman was old paint was plastered so thick on her face that it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask there were streaks of white in her hair but the truly Dreadful detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open revealing nothing except a cavernous blackness She had no teeth at all he wrote hurriedly in scrabbling handwriting when I saw her in the light she was quite an

old woman 50 years old at least but I went ahead and did it just the same he pressed his fingers against his eyelids again he had written it down at last but it made no difference the therapy had not worked the urge to Shout filthy words at the top of his voice was as strong as ever chapter 7. if there is hope Road Winston it lies in the pros if there was hope it must lie in the pros because only there in those swarming disregarded masses 85 percent of the population of Oceania could the force

to destroy the party ever be generated The party could not be overthrown from within its enemies if it had any enemies had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another even if the legendary Brotherhood existed as just possibly it might it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes Rebellion meant a look in the eyes an inflection of the voice at the most an Occasional whispered word but the pros if only they could somehow become conscious of Their Own Strength would have no need to conspire

they needed only to rise up and Shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies if they chose they could blow the party to pieces tomorrow morning surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it and yet he remembered how once he'd been walking Down a crowded Street when a tremendous shout of hundreds of voices women's voices had burst from a side street a little way ahead it was a great formidable Cry of anger and despair a deep loud oh that went humming on like the reverberation of a bell his heart had leapt

it started he had thought a riot the pros are breaking loose at last when he had reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or three hundred women Crowding around the Stalls of a street market with faces as tragic as though they'd been the doomed passengers on a sinking ship but at this moment the general despair broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels it appeared that one of the Stalls had been selling tin saucepans they were wretched flimsy things but cooking pots of any kind were always difficult to get now the

supply had unexpectedly given Out the successful women bumped and jostled by the rest were trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of others clamored around the stall accusing the stall keeper of favoritism and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve there was a fresh Outburst of yells two bloated women one of them with her hair coming down a got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to tear it out of one another's hands for a moment they Were both tugging and then the handle came off Winston watched them disgustedly and yet just

for a moment what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats why was it then that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered until they become conscious they will never Rebel and until after they have rebelled they Cannot become conscious that he reflected might almost have been a transcription from one of the party textbooks the party claimed of course to have liberated the proles from bondage before the Revolution they'd been hideously oppressed by the capitalists they'd been starved and flogged women have been forced to work in

the coal mines women still did work in the coal mines as a matter of fact Children have been sold into the Factories at the age of six but simultaneously true to the principles of doublethink the party taught that the pros were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection like Animals by the application of a few Simple Rules in reality very little was known about the proles it was not necessary to know much so long as they continued to work and breed their other activities were without importance Left to themselves like cattle turned loose upon

the plains of Argentina they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them a sort of ancestral pattern they were born they grew up in the gutters they went to work at 12. they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire they married at 20 they were middle aged at 30 they died for the most part at 60. heavy physical work the care of home and children Petty quarrels with Neighbors films football beer and above all gambling filled up the Horizon of their minds to keep them in

control was not difficult a few agents of the thought police moved always among them spreading false rumors and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the party it was not desirable the pros should Have strong political feelings all that was required of them was A Primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations and even when they became discontented as they sometimes did their discontent LED

nowhere because being without General ideas they could only focus it on Petty's specific grievances the larger evils invariably Escape their Notice the great majority of prose did not even have telescreens in their homes even the Civil police interfered with them very little there was a vast amount of criminality in London a whole world within a world of Thieves Bandits prostitutes drug Peddlers and racketeers of every description but since it all happened among the proles themselves it was of no importance In all questions of morals they were allowed to follow their ancestral code the sexual puritanism

of the party was not imposed upon them promiscuity went unpunished divorce was permitted for that matter even religious worship would have been permitted if the pros had shown any sign of needing or wanting it they were beneath suspicion as the party's slogan put it pros and animals are free Winston reached down and cautiously Scratched his varicose ulcer it had begun itching again the thing you invariably came back to was the impossibility of knowing what life before the Revolution had really been like he took out of the drawer a copy of a children's history textbook which

he had borrowed from Mrs Parsons and began copying a passage into the diary in the old days it ran before the Glorious Revolution London was not the Beautiful city that we know today it was a dark dirty and miserable place where hardly anybody had enough to eat and where hundreds and thousands of poor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof to sleep under children no older than you are had to work 12 hours a day for cruel Masters who flogged them with whips if they worked too slowly and fed them

on nothing but stale bread crusts and water but in among all this terrible poverty There were just a few great big beautiful houses that were lived in by rich men who had as many as 30 servants to look after them these rich men were called capitalists they were fat ugly men with Wicked faces like the one in the picture on the opposite page you can see that he is dressed in a long black coat which was called a frock coat and a queer shiny hat shaped like a stovepipe which was called a top hat this

was the uniform of the capitalists And no one else was allowed to wear it the capitalists owned everything in the world and everyone else was their slave they owned all the land all the houses all the factories and all the money if anyone disobeyed them they could throw him into prison or they could take his job away and starve him to death when any ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he had to cringe and bow to him and take off his cap and address him as sir The chief of all the capitalists was called The

King and but he knew the rest of the catalog there would be mention of the Bishops in their lawn sleeves the judges in their irmine robes the pillory the stocks the treadmill the Kata Ninetales the Lord mayor's banquet and the practice of kissing the Pope's toe there was also something called The Juice Prime eye noctis which would Probably not be mentioned in a textbook for children it was the law by which every capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his factories how could you tell how much of it was

lies it might be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution the only evidence to the country was the mute protest in your own Bones the Instinctive feeling that conditions you lived in were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different that struck him that the truly characteristic thing about Modern Life was not its cruelty and insecurity but simply it's bareness it's dingeness it's listlessness life if you looked about you bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the

telescreens but even To the ideals that the party was trying to achieve great areas of it even for a party member were neutral and non-political a matter of slogging through dreary jobs fighting for a place on the tube darning a worn out suck cadging a saccharine tablet saving a cigarette end the idea was set up by the party was something huge terrible and glittering a world of Steel and concrete of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons a nation Of Warriors and Fanatics marching forward in perfect unity all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans

perpetually working fighting triumphing persecuting 300 million people all with the same face the reality was decaying dingy cities where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes and patched up 19th century houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad lavatories he seemed to see a vision of London vast And ruinous a city of a million dustbins and mixed up with it was a picture of Mrs Parsons a woman with lined face and wispy hair fiddling helplessly with a blocked waste pipe he reached down and scratched his ankle again day and night the telescreens bruised

your ears with Statistics proving that people today had more food more clothes better houses better Recreations that they lived longer worked shorter hours Were bigger healthier stronger happier more intelligent better educated than the people of 50 years ago not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved the party claimed for example that today 40 of adult Pros were literate before the Revolution it was said the number had only been 15 percent the party claimed that the infant mortality rate was now only a hundred and sixty per thousand whereas before The Revolution it had

been 300. and so it went on it was like a single equation with two unknowns it might very well be that literally every word in the history books even the things that weren't accepted without question was Pure Fantasy for all he knew there might never have been any such law as the Jews primary noctis or any such creature as a capitalist or any such garment as a top Hat everything faded into mist the past was erased the Erasure was forgotten the LIE became truth just once in his life he possessed after the event that was

what counted concrete unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification he had held it between his fingers for as long as 30 seconds in 1973 it must have been at any rate it was at about the time when he and Catherine had parted but the really relevant date was seven or eight years earlier the story really began in the middle 60s the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all by 1970 none of them was left except Big Brother himself all the rest had by

that time been exposed as traitors and counter-revolutionaries Goldstein had Fled and was hiding no one knew where and of the others a few had simply disappeared while the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials at which they made confession of their crimes among the last survivors were three men named Jones Aaronson and Rutherford it must have been in 1965 that these three had been arrested has often happened they advantaged for a year or more so that one did not know Whether they were alive or dead and then had suddenly been brought forth to incriminate

themselves in the usual way they had confessed to intelligence With the Enemy at that day too the enemy was Eurasia embezzlement of public funds the murder of various trusted party members intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother which had started long before the Revolution happened an acts of sabotage causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people After confessing to these things they had been pardoned reinstated in the party and given posts which were in fact cynicals but which sounded important all three had written long abject articles in the times analyzing the reasons for their

defection and promising to make amends sometime after their release Winston had actually seen all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe he remembered the sort of terrified Fascination with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye they were men far older than himself relics of the ancient world almost the last great figures left over from the heroic early days of the party the glamor of the underground struggle and the Civil War still faintly clunked them he had the feeling though already at that time facts and dates were growing blurry that

he had known their names Years earlier than he had known that of Big Brother but also they were Outlaws enemies Untouchables doomed with absolute certainty to Extinction within a year or two no one who had once fallen into the hands of the thought police ever escaped in the end they were corpses waiting to be sent back to the Grave there was no one at any of the tables nearest to them It was not wise even to be seen in the neighborhood of such people they were sitting in silence before glasses of the Gin flavored with

cloves which was the specialty of the cafe of the three it was Rutherford whose appearance had most impressed Winston Rutherford had once been a famous caricaturist whose brutal cartoons had helped to inflame popular opinion before and during the revolution even now at long intervals his cartoons were Appearing in the times they were simply an imitation of his earlier Manner and curiously lifeless and unconvincing always there were a rehashing of the ancient themes slum tenements Starving Children Street battles capitalists and top hats even on the barricades the capitalists still seemed to cling to their top hats

an endless hopeless effort to get back into the past he was a monstrous man with a Mane of greasy gray hair his face pouched and Seamed with protuberant lips at one time he must have been immensely strong now his great body was sagging sloping bulging falling away in every direction he seemed to be breaking up before one's eyes like a mountain crumbling it was the Lonely Hour of fifteen Winston could not now remember how he had come to be in the cafe at such a Time the place was almost empty the tinny music was trickling

from the Tele screens the three men sat in their corner almost motionless never speaking uncommanded the waiter brought fresh glasses of gin there was a chessboard on the table beside them with pieces set out but no game started and then for perhaps half a minute in all something happened to the telescreens the tune that they were playing changed And the tone of the music changed too they came into it but it was something hard to describe it was a peculiar cracked brain jeering note in his mind Winston called it a yellow note and then a

voice from the telescreen was singing under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me there lie they and here I we under the spreading chestnut tree the three men that are stirred But when Winston glanced again at Rutherford's ruinous face he saw that his eyes were full of tears and for the first time he noticed with a kind of inward shudder and yet not knowing at what he shuddered that both Aaronson and Rutherford had broken noses a little later all three were rearrested it appeared that they had engaged in fresh conspiracies from

the very moment of their release At their second trial they confessed to all their old crimes over again with a whole string of new ones they were executed and their fate was recorded in the party histories a warning to posterity about five years after this in 1973 Winston was unrolling a wad of documents which have just flopped out of the pneumatic tube onto his desk when he came on a fragment of paper which had evidently been slipped in Among the others and then forgotten the instant he had flattened it out he saw its significance it

was a half page torn out of the times of about 10 years earlier the top half of the page so that it included the date and it contained a photograph of the delegates at some party function in New York prominent in the middle of the group were Jones Aaronson and Rutherford There was no mistaking them in any case their names were in the caption at the bottom the point was that at both trials all three men had confessed that on that date they had been on Eurasian soil flown from a secret Airfield in Canada to

a rendezvous somewhere in Siberia and have conferred with members of the Eurasian general staff to whom they had betrayed important military secrets the date had stuck in Winston's memory Because a chance to be mid-summer day but the whole story must be on record in countless other places as well there was only one possible conclusion the confessions were lies of course this was not in itself a discovery even at that time Winston had not imagined that the people who were wiped out in the purges had actually committed the crimes that they were accused of but this

was concrete evidence it was a fragment of the Abolished past like a fossil bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory it was enough to blow the party to atoms if in some way it could have been published to the world and its significance made known he had gone straight on working as soon as he saw what the photograph was and what it meant he had covered it up with another sheet of paper luckily when he unrolled it it had been upside Down from the point of view of the telescreen

he took his scribbling pad on his knee and pushed back his chair so as to get as far away from the telescreen as possible to keep your face expressionless was not difficult and even your breathing could be controlled with an effort but you could not control the beating of your heart and the telescreen was quite delicate enough to pick it up He led what he judged to be 10 minutes go by tormented all the while by the fear that some accident a sudden draft blowing across his desk for instance would betray him then without uncovering

it again he dropped the photograph into the memory hole along with some other waste papers within another minute perhaps it would have crumbled into ashes that was 10 11 years ago today probably he would have kept that Photograph it was curious that the fact of having held it in his fingers seemed to him to make a difference even now when the photograph itself as well as the event it recorded was only memory was the party's hold upon the past less strong he wondered because a piece of evidence which existed no longer had once existed but

today supposing that it could be somehow resurrected from its ashes the Photograph might not even be evidence already at the time when he made his Discovery Oceania was no longer at war with Eurasia and it must have been to the Agents of Eurasia that the three dead men have betrayed their country since then there have been other changes two three he could not remember how many very likely the confessions had been Rewritten and Rewritten until the original facts and dates no longer had the smallest significance the past not Only changed but changed continuously what most

Afflicted him with the sense of nightmare was that he had never clearly understood why the huge imposter was undertaken the immediate advantages of falsifying the past were obvious but the ultimate motive was mysterious he took up his pen again and wrote I understand how I do not understand why he wondered as he had many times wondered before whether he himself was a Lunatic perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority one at one time it had been the sign of Madness to believe that the earth goes round the sun today to believe that the past is

unalterable he might be alone in holding that belief and if alone then a lunatic but the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him the horror was that he might also be wrong he picked up the children's history book And looked at the portrait of Big Brother which formed its frontus piece the hypnotic eyes gazed into his own it was as though some huge force was pressing down upon you something that penetrated inside your skull battering against your brain frightening you out of your beliefs persuading you almost to deny the evidence of your

senses in the end the party would announce that two and two made five and you would have to believe it it was inevitable that They should make that claim sooner or later the logic of their position demanded it not merely the validity of experience but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy the heresy of heresies was common sense and what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise but that they might be right for after all how do we know that two And two makes four or

that the force of gravity works or that the past is unchangeable if both the past and the external world exist only in the mind and if the Mind itself is controllable then but now his courage seemed suddenly to stiffen of its own accord the face of O'Brien not called up by any obvious Association had floated into his Mind he knew with more certainty than before that O'Brien was on his side he was writing the diary for O'Brien to O'Brien it was like an interminable letter which no one would ever read but which was addressed to

a particular person and took its color from that fact the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears it was their final most essential command His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him the ease with which any party intellectual would overthrow him in a debate the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand much less answer and yet he was in the right they were wrong and he was right the obvious the silly and the true had got to be defended truisms are true hold

on to that the solid World exists its laws do not change stones are hard water is wet Objects unsupported fall toward the earth center with the feeling that he was speaking to O'Brien and also that he was setting forth an important Axiom he wrote freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four if that is granted all else follows chapter 8. from somewhere at the bottom of the passage the smell of roasting coffee Real coffee not Victory coffee came floating out into the street Winston paused involuntarily for perhaps two seconds he was

back in the half-forgotten world of his childhood then the door banged seeming to cut off the smell as abruptly as though it had been a sound he had walked several kilometers over Pavements and his varicose also was throbbing This was the second time in three weeks that he had missed an evening at the community center a rash act since you could be certain that the number of your attendances at the center were carefully checked in principle a party member had no spare time and was never alone except in bed it was assumed that when he

was not working eating or sleeping he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreations To do anything that suggested a taste for Solitude even to go for a walk by yourself was always slightly dangerous there was a word for it in Newspeak own life it was called meaning individualism and eccentricity but this evening as he came out of the ministry the barmanas of the April Heir had tempted him the sky was a warmer blue than he had seen in that year and suddenly the long noisy evening at the center the boring Exhausting games

the lectures the creaking camaraderie oiled by gin had seemed intolerable on impulse he had turned away from the bus stop and wandered off into the Labyrinth of London First South then East then North again losing himself along unknown streets and hardly bothering in which direction he was going if there is hope he had written in the diary it lies in the proles The words kept coming back to him statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity he was somewhere in the vague brown colored slums to the north and east of what had once been

some Pancras Station he was walking up a cobbled street of little two-story houses with battered doorways which gave straight onto the pavement and which was somehow curiously suggestive of rat holes there were puddles of filthy water here And there among the cobbles in and out of the dark doorways and down narrow Alleyways the branched off in either side people swarmed in astonishing numbers girls in full bloom with crudely lipsticked mouths and you also chase the girls and swollen waddling women who showed you what the girls would be like in 10 years time an old bent

creatures shuffling Along on splayed feet and ragged barefooted children who played in The puddles and then scattered at angry yells from their mothers perhaps a quarter of the windows in the street were broken and boarded up most of the people paid no attention to Winston few eyed him with a sort of guarded curiosity two monstrous women with brick red forearms folded across their aprons were talking outside a doorway Winston caught scraps of conversation as He approached yes I says to her that's all very well our says but if you've been in my place you'd have

done the same as what I'd done it's easy to criticize our sis but you ain't got the same problems as what I got well said the other that's just it that's just where it is the strident voices stopped abruptly the women studied him in hostile silence as he went past but it was not hostility exactly merely A kind of wariness a momentary is stiffening as of the passing of some unfamiliar animal the blue overalls of the party could not be a common sight in a street like this indeed it was unwise to be seen in

such places unless you had definite business there the patrols might stop you if you happen to run into them may I see your papers comrade what are you doing here what time did You leave work is this your usual way home and so on and so forth not that there was any rule against walking home by an unusual route but it was enough to draw attention to you if the thought police heard about it suddenly the whole street was in commotion there were yells of warning from all sides people were shooting into the doorways like

rabbits a young woman leapt out of the doorway a little ahead of Winston grabbed up a tiny child Playing in a puddle whipped her apron around it and let back again all in one movement at the same time a man and a concertina-like black suit who had emerged from a side alley ran towards Winston pointing excitedly to the sky stay stable yield look out Governor Bangor red lie down quick stima was a nickname which for some reason the proles applied to Rocket bombs Winston promptly flung himself on his face the pros were nearly always Right

when they gave you a warning of this kind they seemed to possess some kind of instinct which told them several seconds in advance when a rocket was coming although the Rockets supposedly traveled faster than sand Winston clasped his forearms about his head there was a roar that seemed to make the pavement heave a shower of light objects patted onto his back when he stood up he found that he was covered with fragments of glass from the nearest Window he walked on the bomb had demolished a group of houses 200 meters up the street a black

plume of smoke hung in the sky and below it a cloud of plaster dust in which a crowd was already forming around the ruins there was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him and in the middle of it he could see a bright red streak When he got up to it he saw that it was a human hand severed of the wrist apart from the bloody stump the hand was so completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast he kicked the thing into the gutter and then to avoid the crowd

turn down a side street to the right within three or four minutes he was out of the area which the bomb had affected and the sworded swarming life of the streets was going on as though nothing Had happened it was nearly 20 hours and the drinking shops which the pros frequented pubs they called them were choked with customers from their grimy swing doors endlessly opening and shutting they came forth the smell of urine sawdust and sour beer in an angle formed by projecting house front three men were standing very close together the middle one of

them holding a folded up newspaper which the other Two were studying over his shoulders even before he was near enough to make out the expression on their faces Winston could see absorption in every line of their bodies there was obviously some serious piece of news that they were reading he was a few Paces away from them when suddenly the group broke up and two of the men were in violent altercation for a moment they seemed almost on the point of blows Koiu bloody well listen to what I say I'll tell you a known number engine

in seven ain't one for over 14 months yes it is then no it is not got a whole lot of them for over two years wrote down on a piece of paper I take some damn regular as a clock and I'll tell you no number ending in seven years of seven as one or complete World near tell you the bleeding number uh 407 it ended in it were in February second week in February February your grandmother I got it all Done in black and white and I'll tell you now number ah perk it in said

the third man they were talking about the lottery Winston looked back when he had gone 30 meters they were still arguing with Vivid passionate faces the lottery with its weekly payout of enormous prizes was the one public event to which the pros paid serious attention it was probable that there were some millions of Pros For Whom the lottery Was the principle if not the only reason for remaining alive it was their Delight their Folly their Anodyne their intellectual stimulant where the lottery was concerned even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate

calculations and staggering Feats of memory there was a whole tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems forecasts and lucky amulets Winston had nothing to do with the Running of the lottery which was managed by the ministry of Plenty but he was aware indeed everyone in the party was aware that the prizes were largely imaginary only small sums were actually paid out the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons in the absence of any real intercommunication between one part of Oceania and another this was not difficult to arrange but if there

was hope it lay in the pros You had to cling on to that when you put it in words it sounded reasonable it was when you looked at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it became an Act of Faith the street into which he had turned ran downhill you had a feeling that he had been in this neighborhood before and that there was a main thoroughfare not far away from somewhere ahead there came a din of shouting voices the street took a sharp Turn and then ended in a flight of steps which

led down into a sunken alley where a few stall Keepers were selling tired looking vegetables at this moment Winston remembered where he was the alley LED out into the Main Street and down the next turning not five minutes away was the junk shop where he had bought the blank book which was now his diary and in a small station and Shop not far Away it bought his pen holder and his bottle of ink he paused for a moment at the top of the steps on the opposite side of the alley there was a dingy little

Pub whose Windows appeared to be frosted over but in reality were merely coated with dust A Very Old Man bent but active with white mustaches that bristled forward like those of a prawn pushed open the swing door and went in As Winston stood watching it occurred to him that the old man who must be 80 at the least had already been middle-aged when the revolution happened he and a few others like him were the last links that now existed with the vanished world of capitalism in the party itself there were not many people left whose

ideas had been formed before the Revolution the older generation had mostly been wiped out in the great purges of the 50s And 60s and the few who survived had long ago been terrified into complete intellectual surrender if there was anyone alive who could give you a truthful account of conditions in the early part of the century It could only be a pro suddenly the passage from the history book that he had copied into his diary came back into Winston's mind and a lunatic impulse took hold of him he would go into the pub he would

scrape Acquaintance with that old man and question him he would say to him tell me about your life when you were a boy what was it like in those days were things better than they are now or were they worse hurriedly lest he should have time to become frightened he descended the steps and crossed the Narrow Street it was Madness of course as usual there was no definite rule Against talking to prose and frequenting their pubs but it was far too unusual an action to pass unnoticed if the patrols appeared he might plead an attack

of thinkness but it was not likely that they would believe him he pushed open the door and a hideous cheesy smell of sour beer hit him in the face as he entered the dinner voices dropped to about half its volume Behind his back he could feel everyone eyeing his blue overalls a game of darts which was going on at the other end of the room interrupted itself for perhaps as much as 30 seconds the old man whom he had followed was standing at the bar having some kind of altercation with the barman a large Stout

hook-nosed young man with enormous forearms and not of others standing around with glasses in their hands were watching the Scene said the old man straightening his shoulders pugnaciously you telling me you ain't got a point mag in the old bleeding Boozer and what an L's name is a pint said the Barnum leading forward with the tips of his fingers on the counter calls himself a Barman and don't know what a pint is why appoints the half of a court and there's four quarts to the gallon have to teach you the ABC next Never heard of

him said the barman shortly later and a half later that's all we serve there's the glasses on the Shelf in front of you unlock a point persisted the old man you could have drawn me off a pawn easy enough didn't have these bleeding laters when I was a young man when you were a young man we were all living in the Treetops said the barman with a glance at the other customers there was a shout of laughter and the Uneasiness cause by Winston's entry seemed to disappear the old man's white stubbled face had flushed pink

he turned away muttering to himself and bumped into Winston Winston caught him gently by the arm may I offer you a drink he said are you all gent said the other straightening your shoulders again he appeared not to have noticed Winston's blue overalls point he said aggressively to the barman Point envelope the barman swish two half liters of dark brown beer into thick glasses which he had rinsed in a bucket under the counter beer was the only drink you could get in Pro pubs the pros were not supposed to drink gin though in practice they

could get hold of it easily enough the game of darts was in full swing again and the knot of men at the bar began talking about lottery tickets Winston's presence was forgotten for a Moment there was a deal table under the window where he and the old man could talk without fear of being overheard it was horribly dangerous at any rate there was no telescreen in the room a point he had made sure of as soon as he came in he could have drawn me off a point Grandma the old man as he settled down

behind his glass half later ain't enough he don't satisfy an holy does too much Starts more bladder running let alone the price you must have seen great changes since you were a young man said Winston tentatively the old man's pale blue eyes moved from the dance board to the bar and from the bar to the door of the gents as though it were in the bar room that he expected the changes to have occurred the beer was better he said finally and cheaper when I was a young man my old Beer wallet we used to

call it was Forbes a pint that was before the war of course which war was that said Winston well it all was said the old man vaguely he took up his glass and his shoulders straightened again here's wishing you their very best of health in his lean throat the sharp pointed Adam's Apple made a surprisingly rapid up and down movement and the beer Vanished Winston went to the bar and came back with two more half liters the old man appeared to have forgotten his prejudice against drinking a full liter you're very much older than I

am said Winston you must have been a grown man before I was born you can remember what it was like in the old days before the Revolution people of my age don't really know Anything about those times but we can only read about them in books and what it says in the books may not be true I should like your opinion on that the history books say that life before the Revolution was completely different from what it is now there was the most terrible oppression Injustice poverty worse than anything we can imagine here in London

the great mass of the people never had enough to eat from birth to death half of them hadn't even Boots on their feet they worked 12 hours a day they left school at nine they slept 10 in a room and at the same time there were a very few people only a few thousands the capitalists they were called who were rich and Powerful they owned everything that there was to own they lived in great gorgeous houses with 30 servants they wrote about in motor cars and four horse carriages they drank champagne they wore top hats

the old man bright and suddenly top hats he said Finally you should mention them the same thing coming to my head only yesterday I don't know why I was just thinking I ain't seen a top hat in years gone right out I have the last time I wore one was that my sister-in-law's funeral and that was well I couldn't give you the date but must have been 50 years ago of course it was only hard for the occasion you understand it isn't very important about the top Hats said Winston patiently the point is these capitalists

they and a few lawyers and Priests and so forth who lived on them who were the Lords of the earth everything existed for their benefit are you the The Ordinary People the workers were they are slaves they could do what they liked with you they could ship you off to Canada like cattle they could sleep with your daughters if they chose they could order you to be flogged with something called cater nine tails you Had to take your cap off when you pass them every kapless went about with a gang of lackies who the old

man brightened again lakis he said now there's a word I ain't heard since ever so long lekkies that regular takes me back that does I recollect oh donkeys years ago I used to sometimes going to where I park for Sunday afternoon to hear the blokes making speeches Salvation Army Roman Catholics Jews Indians all sorts there Was and there was one bloke well I couldn't give you his name but a real powerful speaker he was he didn't half give it to him lack is he says lackies of the bourgeoisie flank is of the ruling class parasites

that was a number of them and our enus all definitely called them hyenas of course he was referring to the labor party you understand Winston had the feeling that they were talking at Cross purposes What I really wanted to know was this he said do you feel that you have more freedom now than you had in those days are you treated more like a human being in the old days the rich people the people at the top they are so Lords put in the old man reminiscently the House of Lords if you like what I'm

asking is were these people able to treat you as an inferior simply because they were rich and you were poor is it a fact for instance that you had to call them sir And take your cap off when you passed them the old man appeared to think deeply he drank off about a quarter of his beer before answering yes he said thy large you detach your cap to him show respect like I didn't agree with it myself why done it often enough had to wish you might say and was it usual I'm only quoting what

I've read in history books was it usual for these people and their servants to Push you off the pavement into the gutter well one of them pushed me once said the old man oh we're collected as if it was yesterday it was boat race night terrible router they used to get on boat race now hello buns into a young bloke on shaftesbury Avenue quite the Gent he was dress shirt top hat black overcoat he was kind of zigzagging across the pavement and I bumps into him accidental like he says why can't you look where you're

going he says I says Do you think you've bought the bleeding pavement he says I'll twist your bloody head off if you get fish with me I says you'll drunk I'll give you in charge in half a minute I says and if you'll believe me he puts his hand on the chest and gives me a shove as pretty in here sent me under the wheels of a bus well I was young in them days and I was going to have fetched in one only a sense of helplessness took hold of Winston the old man's memory

was nothing But a rubber sheep of details one could question them all day without getting any real information party histories might still be true after a fashion there might even be completely true he made a last attempt perhaps I I've not made myself clear he said what I'm trying to say is this you have been alive a very long time you lived half your life before the Revolution in 1925 for instance you were already grown up would you say from what you can remember that life in 1925 was better than it is now or worse

if you could choose would you prefer to live then or now the old man looked meditatively at the darts board he finished up his beer more slowly than before when he spoke he was with a tolerant Philosophic Heir as though the beer had meld him I know what you expect me to say he said you expect me to say as I'd sooner be young again most people would say they'd sooner be young if you asked him you got your Elf and strength when you're young when you get to my time of life I never will

I'll suffer Something Wicked from our feet and my blood is just terrible six and seven times a night you asked me Out of bed on the other end there's great advantages in being an old man you ain't got the same worries no truck with women that's a great thing I had a woman for near on 30 years if you credit me nor won't it do what's more Winston sat back against the windowsill it was no use going on he was about to buy some more beer when the old man suddenly got up and shuffled rapidly

into the stinking urinal at the Side of the room the extra half liter was already working on him Winston sat for a minute or two gazing at his Empty Glass and hardly noticed when his feet carried him out into the street again within 20 years at the most he reflected the huge and simple question was life better before the Revolution than it is now would have ceased once and for all to be Answerable but in effect it was unanswerable even now since the few scattered survivors from the ancient world were incapable of comparing one age

with another they remembered a million useless things a quarrel with a workmate a hunt for a lost bicycle pump the expression on a long dead sister's face the swirls of dust on a windy morning 70 years ago but all the relevant facts were outside the range of their vision They were like the ant which can see small objects but not large ones and when memory failed and written records were falsified when that happened the claim of the party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted because there did not exist

and never again could exist any standard against which it could be tested at this moment his train of thoughts start abruptly He halted and looked up he was in a narrow street with a few dark little shops interspersed among the dwelling houses immediately above his head their hung three discolored metal balls which looked as if they had once been gilded he seemed to know the place of course he was standing outside the junk shop where he had bought the diary twinge of fear went through him It had been a sufficiently rash act to buy the

book in the beginning and he had sworn never to come near the place again and yet the instant that he allowed his thoughts to wander his feet had brought him back here of their own accord it was precisely against suicidal impulses of this kind that he had hoped to guard himself by opening the diary at the same time he noticed that although it was nearly 21 hours the shop was still open With the feeling that he would be less conspicuous inside than hanging about on the pavement he stepped through the doorway if questioned he could

plausibly say that he was trying to buy razor blades the proprietor had just lighted a hanging oil lamp which gave off an unclean but friendly smell he was a man of perhaps 60. frail and bowed with a long benevolent nose and Mild eyes distorted by thick spectacles His hair was almost white but his eyebrows were bushy and still black the spectacles his gentle fussy movements and the fact that he was wearing an aged jacket of black velvet gave him a vague air of intellectuality as though he had been some kind of literary man or perhaps

a musician his voice was soft as though faded and his accent less debased than that of the majority of proles I recognized you on the pavement He said immediately you all the gentleman that bought the young lady's Keepsake album that was a beautiful bit of paper that was cream laid it used to be called there's been no paper like that made for I dare say 50 years he appeared at Winston over the top of his spectacles is there anything special I can do for you or did you just want to look around I was passing

said Winston vaguely I just looked in I don't want anything in particular it's just as well said the other because I don't suppose I could have satisfied you he made an apologetic gesture with his soft palmed hand you'll see how it is an empty shop you might say between you and me the antique trades just about finished no demand any longer and no stock either Furniture glasses it's all been broken up by Degrees and of course the metal stuff's mostly been melted down I haven't seen a brass Candlestick in years the tiny interior of the

shop was in fact uncomfortably full but there was almost nothing in it of the slightest value the floor space was very restricted because all round the walls were stacked in numerable Dusty picture frames in the window there were trays of nuts and bolts worn out chisels Pen Knives With broken blades tarnished watches that did not even pretend to be in going order another miscellaneous rubbish only on a small table in the corner was there a litter of odds and ends lacquered snuff boxes I get brooches and the like which looked as though they might include

something interesting as Winston wandered toward the table his eyes were caught by a round smooth thing The Gleam softly in the Lamplight and he picked it up It was a heavy lump of glass curved on one side flat on the other making almost a hemisphere there was a peculiar softness as of rain water in both the color and the texture of the glass at the heart of it magnified by the curved surface there was a strange pink convoluted object that recalled arose or a sea anemone what is it said Winston fascinated that's Coral that is

Said the old man it must have come from the Indian Ocean these two kind of embed it in the glass that wasn't made less than a hundred years ago more by the look of it it's a beautiful thing said Winston it is a beautiful thing said the other appreciatively but there's not many that say so nowadays coughed now if it so happened that you Wanted to buy it that cost you four dollars I can remember when a thing like that would have fetched eight pounds and eight pounds was well I can't work it out but

it was a lot of money but who cares about genuine antiques nowadays even the few that's left Winston immediately paid over the four dollars and slid the coveted thing into his pocket what appealed to him about it was not so much its beauty as the air it seemed to Possess of belonging to an age quite different from the present one the soft rain watery glass was not like any glass that he had ever seen the thing was doubly attractive because of its apparent uselessness though he could guess that it must once have been intended as

a paperweight it was very heavy in his pocket but fortunately it did not make much of a bulge it was a queer thing even a compromising Thing for a party member to have in his possession anything old and for that matter anything beautiful was always vaguely suspect the old man had grown noticeably more cheerful after receiving the four dollars Winston realized that he would have accepted three or even two there's another room upstairs that you might care to take a look at he said there's not much in it just a few pieces Will do with

a light if we're going upstairs he lit another lamp and with bowed back LED the way slowly up the Steep and worn stairs and along a tiny passage into a room which did not give out onto the street but looked out on a cobbled yard and a forest of Chimney pots Winston noticed that the furniture was still arranged as though the room Were Meant To Be lived in there was a strip of carpet on the floor A picture or two on the walls and a deep slavenly armchair drawn up to the fireplace an old-fashioned glass

clock with a 12-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece under the window an occupying nearly a quarter of the room was an enormous bed with the mattress still on it we lived here till my wife died said the old man half apologetically I'm selling the furniture off by little and little now that's a beautiful mahogany bed or at least it would be if you could get the bugs out of it but I dare say you'd find it a little bit cumbersome he was holding the lamp high up so as to illumine the whole room

and in the warm dim light the place looked curiously inviting the thought flitted through Winston's mind That it would probably be quite easy to rent the room for a few dollars a week if he dared to take the risk it was a wild impossible notion to be abandoned as soon as thought of but the Run had awakened in him a sort of nostalgia a sort of ancestral memory it seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in a room like this in an armchair beside an open fire with your feet

in the fender and a kettle on the hob utterly alone utterly Secure with nobody watching you no voice pursuing you no sound except the singing of the kettle and the friendly ticking of the clock the snow telescreen he could not help murmuring ah said the old man I never had one of those things too expensive and I never seem to feel the need of it somehow now there's an ice skate leg table in the corner there of course you'd have to Put new hinges on it if you wanted to use the flaps there was also

a small bookcase in the other corner and Winston had already gravitated toward it it contained nothing but rubbish the hunting down and destruction of books have been done with the same thoroughness in the Pro quarters as everywhere else it was very unlikely that there existed anywhere in Oceania a copy of a book Printed earlier than 1960. the old man still carrying the lamp was standing in front of a picture in a Rosewood frame which hung on the other side of the fireplace opposite the bed now if you happen to be interested in Old prints at

all he began delicately Winston came across to examine the picture it was a steel engraving of an oval building with rectangular windows and a small Tower in front There was a railing running around the building and at the rear end there was what appeared to be a statue Winston gazed it for some moments it seemed Vaguely Familiar though he did not remember the statue the frames fixed to the wall said the old man but I could unscrew it for you I dare say I know that building said Winston finally It's a ruin now it's in

the middle of the street outside the Palace of Justice that's right outside the Law Courts it was bombed in many years ago it was a church at one time some Clements Dane its name was he smiled apologetically as though conscious of saying something slightly ridiculous and added oranges and lemons say the bells of Saint Clemens What's that said Winston oh oranges and lemons say the bells of some Clements that was a rhyme we had when I was a little boy how it goes on I don't remember but I do know it ended up here comes

a candle to light you to bed here comes a chopper to chop off your head it was kind of dance they held out their arms for you to pass under and when they came to here comes a chopper to chop off your head they brought their arms down and caught you There was just names of churches all the London churches were in it all the principal ones that is Winston wondered vaguely to what century the church belonged it was always difficult to determine the age of a London building anything large and impressive if it was

reasonably new in appearance was automatically claimed as having been built since the revolution while anything that was obviously of earlier Date was ascribed to some dim period called the Middle Ages the centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of any value one could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books statues inscriptions memorial stones the names of streets anything that might throw light upon the past have been systematically altered I never knew it had been a church he said well there's a lot of them left Really said

the old man although they've been put to other uses now how did that run go ah I've got it oranges and lemon say the bells of Saint Clements you owe me three farthings say the bells of Saint Martins and uh that's as far as I can get the Farthing that was a small copper coin looked something like a scent where was Saint Martin's said Winston it's in Martins well that's still Standing it's in Victory Square alongside the picture gallery a building with a kind of triangular porch and pillars in front and a big flight of

steps Winston knew the place well it was a museum used for propaganda displays of various kinds scale models of Rocket bombs and floating fortresses wax work Tableau illustrating enemy atrocities and the like Saint Martins in the fields used to be Called supplemented the old man though I don't recollect any Fields anywhere in those parts Winston did not buy the picture it would have been an even more incongruous possession than the glass paperweight and impossible to carry home unless it were taken out of its frame but he lingered for some minutes more talking to the old

man whose name he discovered was not weeks as one might have gathered from the inscription over The shop front but charrington Mr charrington it seemed was a widower age 63 and had inhabited the shop for 30 years throughout that time he'd been intending to alter the name over the window but had never quite got to the point of doing it all the while they were talking the half-remembered rhyme kept running through Winston's head oranges and lemon say the bells of Saint Clements you owe me three farthings say the bells of Saint Martins it was curious

but when you said it to yourself you had the illusion of actually hearing Bells the bells of a lost London that still existed somewhere or other disguised and forgotten from one ghostly steeple after another he seemed to hear them peeling forth yet so far as he could remember he had never in real life heard church bells ringing he got away from Mr cherrington and went Down the stairs alone so as not to let the old man see him recognizing the street before stepping out of the door he had already made up his mind that after

a suitable interval a month say he would take the risk of visiting the shop again it was perhaps not more dangerous than shirking an evening at the center the serious piece of folly had been to come back here in the first place after buying the diary and without knowing Whether the proprietor of the shop could be trusted however yes you thought again he would come back he would buy further scraps of beautiful rubbish he would buy the engraving of some Clement stain take it out of its frame and carry it home concealed under the jacket

of his overalls he would drag the rest of that poem out of Mr charrington's memory even the Lunatic project of renting the room upstairs flashed momentarily through his mind again for perhaps five seconds exultation made him careless and he stepped out onto the pavement without so much as a preliminary glance through the window he had even started humming to an improvised tune oranges and lemon say the bells of Saint Clemens you owe me three Farthing said suddenly his heart seemed to turn to ice And his bowels to water a figure in blue overalls was coming

down the pavement not 10 meters away it was the girl from the fiction Department the girl with dark hair the light was failing but there was no difficulty in recognizing her she looked him straight in the face then walked quickly on as though she had not seen him for a few seconds Winston was too paralyzed to move Then he turned to the right and walked heavily away not noticing for the moment that he was going in the wrong direction at any rate one question was settled there was no doubting any longer but the girl was

spying on him she must have followed him here because it was not credible that by pure chance she should have happened to be walking on the same evening up the same obscure Backstreet kilometers distant from any quarter where party members lived it was Too great a coincidence whether she really was an agent of the thought police or simply an amateur spy actuated by officiousness hardly mattered it was enough that she was watching him probably she had seen him go into the pub as well there was an effort to walk the lump of glass in his

pocket banged against his thigh at each step and he was half-minded to take it out and throw it Away the worst thing was the pain in his belly for a couple of minutes he had the feeling that he would die if he did not reach a lavatory soon but there will be no public lavatories in a quarter like this then the spasm passed leaving a dull ache behind the street was a blind alley Winston halted stood for several seconds Wondering vaguely what to do then turned round and began to retrace his steps as he turned

it occurred to him that the girl had only passed him three minutes ago and that by running he could probably catch up with her he could keep on her track till they were in some quiet place and then smash her skull in with a cobblestone the piece of glass in his pocket would be heavy enough for the job But he abandoned the idea immediately because even the thought of making any physical effort was unbearable he could not run he could not strike a blow besides she was young and Lusty and would defend herself he thought

also of hurrying to the community center and staying there till the place closed so as to establish a partial Alibi for the evening but that too was impossible A deadly lassitude had taken hold of him all he wanted was to get home quickly and then sit down and be quiet it was after 22 hours when he got back to the flat the lights would be switched off at the main at 23 30. he went into the kitchen and swallowed nearly a teacup full of Victory gin then he went to the table in the Alcove sat

down and took the diary out of the drawer But he did not open it at once from the telescreen a brassy female voice was squalling a patriotic song he sat staring at the marbled cover of the book trying without success to shut the voice out of his consciousness it was at night that they came for you always at night the proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you undoubtedly some people did so many of the disappearances were actually Suicides but it needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where Firearms or any

quick and certain poison were completely unprocurable he thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed he might have silenced the dark-haired Girl if only he had acted quickly enough but precisely because of the extremity of his Danger he had lost the power to act it struck him that in moments of Crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body even now in spite of

the Jinn the dull ache in his belly made consecutive thought impossible that is the same he perceived in all Seemingly heroic or tragic situations on the battlefield in the torture chamber on a sinking ship the issue is that you are fighting for are always forgotten because the body swells up until it fills the universe and even when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness against a sour stomach or an aching tooth he opened the diary It was important to write something down

the woman on the tele screen had started a new song her voice seemed to stick into his brain like Jagged splinters of glass he tried to think of O'Brien for whom or to whom the diary was written but instead he began thinking of the thing that would happen to him after the thought police took him away it would not matter if they killed you at once to be killed was what you Expected but before death nobody spoke of such things yet everybody knew of them there was the routine of confession that had to be gone

through the graveling on the floor and screaming for Mercy the crack of broken bones the smashed teeth and bloody clots of hair why did you have to endure it since the end was always the same why was it not possible to cut a few days or weeks out Of your life nobody ever escaped detection and nobody ever failed to confess when once you had succumbed to thought crime it was certain that by a given date you would be dead why then did that horror which altered nothing have to lie embedded in future time he tried

with a little more success than before to summon up the image of O'Brien we shall meet in the place where there Is no Darkness O'Brien had said to him he knew what it meant or thought he knew the place where there is no Darkness was the imagined future which one would never see but which by foreknowledge one could mystically share in but with the voice from the telescreen nagging at his ears he could not follow the train of thought further he put a cigarette in his mouth half the tobacco promptly fell out onto his Tongue

a bitter dust which was difficult to spit out again the face of Big Brother swam into his mind displacing that of O'Brien just as he had done a few days earlier he slid a coin out of his pocket and looked at it the face gazed up at him heavy calm protecting but what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache like a lead and L the words came back at Him war is peace freedom is slavery ignorance is strength part two chapter one it was the middle of the morning and Winston had left his

cubicle to go to the lavatory a solitary figure was coming toward him from the other end of the long brightly lit corridor it was the girl with dark hair four days have gone past since the Evening when he had run into her outside the junk shop as she came near her he saw that her right arm was in a sling not noticeable at the distance because it was of the same color as her overalls probably she had crushed her hand while swinging around one of the big kaleidoscopes on which the plots of novels were roughed

in it was a common accident in the fiction Department they were perhaps four meters apart when The girl stumbled and fell almost flat on her face a sharp Cry of pain was rung out of her she must have fallen right on the injured arm Winston stopped short the girl had risen to her knees her face had turned a Milky yellow color against which her mouth stood out redder than ever her eyes were fixed on his with an appealing expression that looked more like fear than pain A curious emotion stirred in Winston's heart in front of

him was an enemy who was trying to kill him in front of them also was a human creature in pain and perhaps with a broken bone already he had instinctively started forward to help her in the moment when he had seen her fall on the bandaged arm it had been as though he felt the pain in his own body you're hurt he said It's nothing my arm it'll be all right in a second she spoke as though her heart were fluttering she had certainly turned very pale you haven't broken anything no I'm all right it

hurt for a moment that's all she held out her free hand to him and he helped her up she had regained some of her color and appeared very much better It's nothing she repeated shortly I only gave my wrist a bit of a bang s comrade and with that she walked on in the direction in which she had been going as briskly as though it had really been nothing the whole incident could not have taken as much as half a minute not to let one's feelings appear in one's face was a habit that had acquired

the status of an instinct and in any Case they'd been standing straight in front of a telescreen when the thing happened nevertheless it had been very difficult not to betray a momentary surprise for in the two or three seconds while he was helping her up the girl had slipped something into his hand there was no question that she had done it intentionally It was something small and flat as he passed through the lavatory door he transferred it to his pocket and felt it with the tips of his fingers it was a scrap of paper folded

into a square while he stood at the urinal he managed with a little more fingering to get it unfolded obviously there must be a message of some kind written on it for a moment he was tempted to take it Into one of the water closets and read it at once but that would be shocking Folly as he well knew there was no place where you could be more certain that the telescreens were watched continuously he went back to his cubicle sat down threw the fragment of paper casually among the other papers on the desk put

on his spectacles and hitched the speed right toward him Five minutes he told himself five minutes at the very least his heart bumped in his breast with frightening loudness fortunately the piece of work he was engaged on was mere routine the rectification of a long list of figures not needing close attention whatever was written on the paper it must have some kind of political meaning so far as he could see there were two possibilities One much the more likely was that the girl was an agent of the thought police just as he had feared he

did not know why the thought police should choose to deliver their messages in such a fashion but perhaps they had their reasons the thing that was written on the paper might be a threat for summons an order to commit suicide a trap of some description but there was another Wilder possibility That kept raising its head though he tried vainly to suppress it this was that the message did not come from the thought police at all but from some kind of underground organization perhaps the Brotherhood existed after all perhaps the girl was part of it no

doubt the idea was absurd but it has sprung into his mind in the very instant of feeling the scrap of paper in his hand it was not until a couple of minutes Later but the other more probable explanation had occurred to him and even now though his intellect told him that the message probably meant death still that was not what he believed and the unreasonable hope persisted and his heart banged and it was with difficulty that he kept his voice from trembling as he murmured his figures into the speak right he rolled up the completed

bundle of Work and slid it into the pneumatic tube eight minutes had gone by he readjusted his Spectacles on his nose side and Drew the next batch of work toward him with the scrap of paper on top of it he flattened it out on it was written in large unformed handwriting I love you several seconds He was too stunned even to throw the incriminating thing into the memory hole when he did so although he knew very well the danger of showing too much interest he could not resist reading it once again just to make sure

that the words were really there for the rest of the morning it was very difficult to work what was even worse than having to focus His mind on a series of niggling jobs was the need to conceal his agitation from the telescreen he felt as though a fire were burning in his belly lunch in the hot crowded noise-filled canteen was torment he had hoped to be alone for a little while during the lunch hour but as bad luck would have it the imbecile Parsons flopped down beside him the Tang of his sweat almost defeating the

tinny smell of stew and kept up a stream of talk about the preparations for hate Week he was particularly enthusiastic about a papia mache model of Big Brother's head two meters wide which was being made for the occasion by his daughter's troop of spies the irritating thing was that in the racket of voices Winston could hardly hear what Parsons was saying and was constantly having to ask for some factuous remark to be repeated just once he caught a glimpse of the girl at the table with two other girls At the far end of the room

she appeared not to have seen him and he did not look in that direction again the afternoon was more bearable immediately after lunch there arrived a delicate difficult piece of work which would take him several hours and necessitated putting everything else aside it consisted in falsifying a series of production reports of two years ago in Such a way as to cast discredit on a prominent member of the inner party who was now under a cloud this was the kind of thing that Winston was good at and for more than two hours he succeeded in shutting

the girl out of his mind altogether then the memory of her face came back and with it a raging intolerable desire to be alone until he could be alone it was Impossible to think this new development out tonight was one of his nights at the community center he wolfed another tasteless meal in the canteen hurried off to the center took part in the solemn foory of a discussion group played two games of table tennis swallowed several glasses of gin and sat for half an hour through a lecture entitled in sock in relation to chess his

soul arrived with boredom But for once he had no impulse to shirk his evening at the center at the sight of the words I love you the desire to stay alive had welled up in him and The Taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid it was not till 23 hours when he was home and in bed in the darkness where you were safe even from the telescreen so long as you kept silent that he was able to think continuously It was a physical problem that had to be solved how to get in touch with a

girl and arrange a meeting he did not consider any longer the possibility that she might be laying some kind of trap for him he knew that it was not so because of her unmistakable agitation when she handed him the note obviously she had been frightened out of her wits as well she might be Nor did the idea of refusing her advances even cross his mind only five nights ago he had contemplated smashing her skull in with a cobblestone but that was of no importance he thought of her naked youthful body as he had seen it

in his dream he had imagined her a fool like all the rest of them her head stuffed with lies and hatred a belly full of ice a kind of fever seized him at the thought that he Might lose her the white youthful body might slip away from him what he feared more than anything else was that she would simply change her mind if he did not get in touch with her quickly the physical difficulty of meeting was enormous it was like trying to make a move at chess when you were already mated whichever way you

turned the telescreen faced you Actually all the possible ways of communicating with her had occurred to him within five minutes of reading the note but now with time to think he went over them one by one as though laying out a row of instruments on a table obviously the kind of encounter that had happened this morning could not be repeated if she had worked in the records department it might have been Comparatively simple but he had only a very dim idea whereabouts in the building the fiction Department lay and he had no pretext for going

there if he had known where she lived and at what time she left work he could have contrived to meet her somewhere on her way home but to try to follow her home was not safe because it would mean lightering about outside the ministry which was Bound to be noticed as for sending a letter through the mails it was out of the question by a routine that was not even secret all letters were opened in transit actually few people ever wrote letters for the message that it was occasionally necessary to send there were printed postcards

with long lists of phrases and you struck out the ones that were inapplicable in any case he did not know the girl's Name let alone her address finally he decided that the safest place was the canteen if he could get her at a table by herself somewhere in the middle of the room not too near the telescreens and with a sufficient Buzz of conversation all round if these conditions endured for say 30 seconds it might be possible to exchange a few words for a week after this life was like a Restless dream on the next

day she did not appear in the canteen until he was leaving it the whistle having already blown presumably she had been changed onto a later shift they passed each other without a glance on the day after that she was in The Canteen at the usual time but with three other girls an immediately under a telescreen then for three Dreadful days she did not appear at all His whole mind and body seemed to be afflicted with an unbearable sensitivity a sort of transparency which made every movement every sound every contact every word that he had to

speak or listen to at agony even in his sleep he could not altogether escape from her image he did not touch the diary during those days if there was any relief it was in his work in which he could sometimes forget himself for 10 minutes at a Stretch he had absolutely no clue as to what had happened to her there was no inquiry he could make she might have been vaporized she might have committed suicide she might have been transferred to the other end of Oceania worst and likeliest of all she might simply have changed

her mind and decided to avoid him the next day she reappeared Her arm was out of the sling she had a band of sticking plaster around her wrist the relief of seeing her was so great that he could not resist staring directly at her for several seconds on the following day he very nearly succeeded in speaking to her when he came into the canteen she was sitting at a table well out from the wall and was quite alone it was early and the place was not very Full the queue edged forward till Winston was almost

at the counter then was held up for two minutes because someone in front was complaining that he'd not received his tablet of saccharine but the girl was still alone when Winston secured his tray and began to make for her table he walked casually toward her his eyes searching for a place at some table Beyond her She was perhaps three meters away from him another two seconds would do it then a voice behind him called Smith he pretended not to hear Smith repeated The Voice more loudly it was no use he turned round a blonde-headed silly-faced

young man named wilshere whom he barely knew was inviting him with a smile to a vacant Place at his table it was not safe to refuse after having been recognized he could not go and sit at a table with an unattended girl it was too noticeable he sat down with a friendly smile the silly blonde face beamed into his Winston had a hallucination of himself smashing a pickaxe right into the middle of it the girls table Filled up a few minutes later but she must have seen him coming toward her and perhaps she would take

the hint next day he took care to arrive early sure enough she was at a table in about the same place and again alone the person immediately ahead of him in the queue was a small swiftly moving beetle-like man with a flat face and Tiny suspicious eyes as Winston turned away from the counter With his tray he saw that the little man was making straight for the girls table his hopes sank again there was a vacant place at a table further away but something in the little man's appearance suggested that he would be sufficiently attentive

to his own Comfort to choose the emptiest table with ice at his heart Winston followed it was no use unless he could get the Girl Alone at this moment There was a tremendous crash the little man was sprawling on all fours his tray had gone flying two streams of soup and coffee were flowing across the floor he started to his feet with a malignant glance at Winston whom he evidently suspected of having tripped him up but it was all right five seconds later with a thundering heart Winston was sitting at the girls table He did

not look at her he unpacked his tray and promptly began eating it was all important to speak at once before anyone else came but now a terrible fear had taken possession of him a week had gone by since she had first approached she would have changed her mind she must have changed her mind it was impossible that this affair should end successfully Such things did not happen in real life he might have flinched altogether from speaking if at this moment he had not seen ample forth the hairy eared poet wandering limply round the room with

a tray looking for a place to sit down in his vague way ampleforth was attached to Winston and would certainly sit down at his table if he caught sight of him there was perhaps a minute in which to act both Winston and the girl were eating Steadily the stuff they were eating was a thin stew actually a soup of haricot beans in a low murmur Winston began speaking neither of them looked up steadily they spoon the watery stuff into their mouths and between spoonfuls exchanged the necessary words in low expressionless voices what time do you

leave work 1830 where can we meet Victory Square near the monument it's full of telescreens it doesn't matter if there's a crowd any signal no don't come up to me until you see me among a lot of people and don't look at me just keep somewhere near me what time 19 hours all right ample forth failed to see Winston and sat down at another table The girl finished her lunch quickly and made off while Winston stayed to smoke a cigarette they did not speak again and so far as it was possible for two people sitting

on opposite sides of the same table they did not look at one another Winston was in Victory Square before the appointed time he wandered round the base of the Enormous fluted column at the top of which Big Brother statue gazed Southward toward the skies where he had vanquished the Eurasian airplanes the East Asian airplanes it had been a few years ago in the Battle of airstrip one in the street in front of it there was a statue of a man on Horseback which was supposed to represent Oliver Cromwell at five minutes past the hour the

girl had still not appeared again the terrible fear seized upon Winston she was not coming she had changed her mind he walked slowly up to the north side of the square and got a sort of pale colored pleasure from identifying Saint Martin's Church whose Bells when it had Bells had chimed you owe me three farthings then he saw the girl standing at the base of the monument reading or pretending to Read a poster which ran spirally up the column it was not safe to go near her until some more people had accumulated there were tele

screens all around the pediment but at this moment there was a din of shouting and a zoom of heavy vehicles from somewhere to the left suddenly everyone seemed to be running across the square the girl nipped nimbly around the lions At the base of the monument and joined in the rush Winston followed as he ran he gathered from some shouted remarks that a convoy of Eurasian prisoners was passing already a dense mass of people was blocking the south side of the square Winston at normal times the kind of person who gravitates to the outer edge

of any kind of scrimmage shoved butted squirmed his way forward Into the Heart of the crowd Soon he was within arm's length of the girl but the way it was blocked by an enormous Pro and an almost equally enormous woman presumably his wife who seemed to form an impenetrable Wall of Flesh Winston wriggled himself sideways and with a violent lunge managed to drive his shoulder between them for a moment it felt as though his entrails were being ground to pulp between the two muscular hips Then he had broken through sweating a little he was next

to the girl they were shoulder to shoulder both staring fixedly in front of them a long line of trucks with wooden-faced guards armed with submachine guns standing upright in each Corner was passing slowly down the street in the trucks little yellow men in shabby greenish uniforms were squatting jammed close together A sad Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides of the trucks utterly incurious occasionally when a truck jolted there was a Clank Clank of metal all the prisoners were wearing leg irons trunk load after truckload of the sad faces passed Winston knew they were there

but he saw them only intermittently the girl's shoulder and her arm right down to the Elbow were pressed against his Her cheek was almost near enough for him to feel its warmth she had immediately taken charge of the situation just as she had done in the canteen she began speaking in the same expression this voice as before with lips barely moving Amir murmur easily drowned by the dinner voices and the rumbling of the trucks can you hear me yes Can you get Sunday afternoon off yes then listen carefully you have to remember this go to

Paddington Station with a sort of military Precision that astonished him she outlined the route that he was to follow a half hour Railway Journey turn left outside the station two kilometers along the road a gate with the top bar missing a path across a field a grass-grown lane a track between bushes a dead tree with Moss on it it was as though she had a map inside her head can you remember all that she murmured finally yes you turn left then right then left again and the gates got no top bar yes what time about

15 you may have to wait I'll get there by another way are you sure you remember everything yes then get away from me as quick as You can she need not have told him that for the moment they could not extricate themselves from the crowd the trucks were still filing past the people still insatiably gaping at the start there have been a few booze and hisses but it came only from the party members among the crowd and had soon stopped a prevailing emotion was simply curiosity Foreigners whether from Eurasia or from East Asia were a

kind of strange animal one literally never saw them except in the guise of prisoners and even as prisoners one never got more than a momentary glimpse of them nor did one know what became of them apart from the few who were hanged as war criminals the others simply vanished presumably into forced labor camps the round Mongol faces a given way to faces of a more European type Dirty Bearded and exhausted from other scrubby cheekbones eyes looked into winstons sometimes with strange intensity and flashed away again the Convoy was drawing to an end in the last

truck he could see an aged man his face a mass of grizzled hair standing upright with wrists crossed in front of him as though he were used to having them bound together it was almost time for Winston and the girl to part But at the last moment while the crowds still hemmed them in her hand felt for his and gave it a fleeting squeeze it could not have been 10 seconds and yet it seemed a long time that their hands were clasped together he had time to learn every detail of her hand he explored the

long fingers shapely Nails the work hard and palm with its row of calluses smooth flash under the wrist Merely from feeling it he would have known it by sight in the same instant it occurred to him that he did not know what color the girl's eyes were they were probably brown but people with dark hair sometimes had blue eyes to turn his head and look at her would have been inconceivable folly with hands locked together invisible among the Press of bodies they stared steadily in front of them And instead of the eyes of the girl

the eyes of the Aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair chapter 2. Winston picked his way up the lane through dappled light and shade stepping out into pools of gold wherever the bows parted under the trees to the left of them the ground was Misty with bluebells the air seemed to kiss one's skin it was the second of May from somewhere Deeper in the heart of the wood came the droning of ring doves he was a bit early there have been no difficulties about the journey and the girl was so evidently

experienced that he was less frightened than he would normally have been presumably she could be trusted to find a safe place in general you cannot assume that you are much safer in the country than in London there were no teller screens of course but there was always the danger of concealed microphones by which your voice might be picked up and recognized besides it was not easy to make a journey by yourself without attracting attention the distance is of less than 100 kilometers it was not necessary to get your passport endorsed but sometimes there were patrols

hanging about the railway stations who examined the papers Of any party member they found there and asked awkward questions however no patrols had appeared and on the walk from the station he had made sure my cautious backward glances that he was not being followed the train was full of pearls in Holiday mood because of the summery weather the wooden seated carriage in which he traveled was filled to overflowing by a single enormous family ranging from a toothless great-grandmother to a month Old baby going out to spend an afternoon with in-laws in the country and as

they freely explained to Winston to get hold of a little black market butter the land widened and in a minute he came to the footpath she had told him of a mere cattle track which plunged between the bushes he had no watch but he could not be 15 yet the bluebells were so thick underfoot that it was impossible not to tread on Them he knelt down and began picking some partly to pass the time but also from a vague idea that he would like to have a bunch of flowers to offer to the girl when

they met you got to gather a big bunch and the smelling their faint sickly sent when assanded his back froze him the unmistakable crackle of a foot on twigs he went on picking bluebells it was the Best thing to do it might be the girl or he might have been followed after all to look around was to show guilt he picked another and another a hand fell lightly on his shoulder he looked up it was the girl she shook her head evidently as a warning that he must keep silent then parted the bushes and quickly

led the Way along the narrow track into the wood obviously she had been that way before for she dodged the boggy pits as though by habit Winston followed still clasping his bunch of flowers his first feeling was relief but as he watched the strong slender body moving in front of him with the Scarlet sash that was just tight enough to bring out the curve of her hips the sense of his own inferiority was Heavy upon him even now it seemed quite likely that When she turned round and looked at him she would draw back after

all the sweetness of the air and the greenness of the leaves daunted him already on the walk from the station the Maize Sunshine had made him feel dirty and etiolated a creature of indoors with the dust of London in the pores of his skin it occurred to him that till now she had probably never seen him in broad daylight in the open They came to the fallen tree that she had spoken of the girl hopped over and forced apart the bushes in which there did not seem to be an opening when Winston followed her he

found that they were in a natural clearing a tiny grassy knoll surrounded by tall saplings that shuttered in completely the girl stopped and turned here we are she said He was facing her at several Paces distance as yet he did not dare move nearer to her I didn't want to say anything in the lane she went on in case there's a mic in there I didn't Suppose there is but there could be there's always the chance one of those swine recognizing a voice we're all right here you still had not the courage to Approach her

we're all right here he repeated stupidly yes look at the trees there were small ashes which at some time had been cut down and had sprouted up again into a forest of poles none of them thicker than one's wrist there's nothing big enough to hide a mic in besides I've been here before they were only making conversation He had managed to move closer to her now she stood before him very upright with a smile on her face that looked faintly ironical as though she were wondering why he was so slow to act the bluebells had

cascaded onto the ground they seemed to have fallen of their own accord he took her hand would you believe he said That till this moment I didn't know what color your eyes were they were Brown he noted a rather light shade of brown with dark lashes now that you've seen what I'm really like can you still bear to look at me yes easily I'm 39 years old I've got a wife that I can't get rid of I've got varicose veins I've got five false teeth couldn't care less said the girl the next moment it was

hard to say by whose Act she was in his arms at the beginning he had no feeling except sheer incredulity the youthful body was strained against his own the mass of dark hair was against his face and yes actually she Had turned her face up and he was kissing the wide red mouth she had clasped her arms about his neck she was calling him darling precious one loved one he had pulled her down onto the ground she was utterly unresisting he could do what he liked with her but the truth was that he had no

physical sensation except that of mere contact all he felt was incredulity and pride He was glad that this was happening but he had no physical desire it was too soon her Youth and prettiness had frightened him he was too much used to living without women he did not know the reason the girl picked herself up and pulled a Bluebell out of her hair she sat against him putting her arm around his waist never mind dear there's no hurry We've got the whole afternoon isn't this a splendid hideout I found it when I got lost once

on a community hike if anyone was coming you could hear them a hundred meters away what is your name said Winston Julia I know yours it's Winston Winston Smith how did you find that out I expect I'm better at finding things out the new idea tell me what did you think of me before that day I gave you the net he did not feel any temptation to tell lies to her it was even a sort of Love offering to start off by telling the worst I hated the sight of you he said I wanted to

rape you and then murder you afterwards two weeks ago I thought seriously of Smashing your head in with A cobblestone if you really want to know I imagined that you had something to do with the thought police the girl laughed delightedly evidently taking this as a tribute to the Excellence of her disguise not the thought police you didn't honestly think that well perhaps not exactly that from your general appearance merely because you're young and fresh and Healthy you understand I thought that probably you thought that I was a good party member pure in word indeed

banners processions slogans games Community hikes all that stuff and you thought that if I had a quarter of a chance I'd denounce you as a thought criminal and get you killed off yes something of that kind a great many young girls are like that you know It's this bloody thing that does it she said ripping off the Scarlet sash of the Junior anti-sex League and flinging it onto a bow then as though touching her waist had reminded her of something she felt in the pocket of her overalls and produced a small slab of chocolate she

broke it in half and gave one of the pieces to Winston even before he had taken it he knew by the smell that it was very unusual Chocolate it was dark and shiny and was wrapped in silver paper chocolate normally was dull Brown crumbly stuff they tasted as nearly as one could describe it like the smoke of a rubbish fire that at some time or another he had tasted chocolate like the piece she had given him the first whiff of its scent had stirred up some memory which he could not pin down But which was

powerful and troubling where did you get this stuff he said Black Market she said indifferently actually I'm that sort of girl to look at I'm good at games I was a troop leader in the spies I do voluntary work three evenings a week for the Junior anti-sex League hours and hours I've spent pasting their bloody rot all over London I always carry one end of a banner in the processions I always look cheerful and I never shirk anything always yell with the crowd that's what I say it's the only way to be safe the first

fragment of chocolate had melted on Winston's tongue the taste was delightful there was still that memory moving around the edges of his Consciousness something strongly felt but not Reducible to definite shape like an object seen out of the corner of one's eye he pushed it away from him aware only that it was the memory of some action which he would have liked to undo but could not you're very young he said your 10 or 15 years younger than I am what could you say to attract you in a man like me it was something in

your face I thought I'd take a chance I'm good at spotting people who don't belong as soon as I saw you I knew you were against them it appeared meant the party and above all the inner party about whom she talked with an open jeering hatred which made Winston feel uneasy although he knew that they were safe here if they could be safe anywhere a thing that astonished him about her Was the coarseness of her language party members were supposed not to swear and Winston himself very seldom did swear allowed at any rate Julia however

seemed unable to mention the party and especially the inner party without using the kind of words that you saw chalked up in Dripping alleyways he did not dislike it it was merely One symptom of her revolt against the party and all its ways and somehow it seemed natural and healthy like the sneeze of a Horse that smells bad hay they had left the clearing and were wandering again through the checkered shade with their arms around each other's waists whenever it was wide enough to walk to a breast he noticed how much softer her waist seemed

to feel now that the sash was gone they did not speak above a whisper outside the clearing Julia said it was better to go quietly Presently they had reached the edge of the little wood she stopped him don't go out into the open there might be someone watching we're all right if we keep behind the bows they were standing in the shade of Hazel bushes the sunlight filtering through innumerable leaves was still hot on their faces Winston looked out into the field Beyond and underwent a curious slow shock of recognition he knew it by sight

an old close-bitten pasture with a footpath Wandering across it and a mole hill here and there in the Ragged hedge on the opposite side the bowels of the elm trees swayed just perceptibly in the breeze and their leaves stirred faintly in dense masses like women's hair Surely somewhere nearby but out of sight there must be a stream with green pools where days were swimming isn't there a stream somewhere near here he whispered that's right there is a stream it's at the edge of the next field actually they're a fish in it great big ones you

can watch them lying in the pools under the willow trees waving their tails it's the Golden Country almost He murmured the Golden Country it's nothing really a landscape I've seen sometimes in a dream look whisper Julia a thrush a delighted on a bow not five meters away almost at the level of their faces perhaps they'd have not seen them it was in the sun there in the shade spread out its wings fitted them Carefully into place again ducked its head for a moment as though making a sort of obeisance to the Sun and then began

to pour forth a tolerant of song in the afternoon hush the volume of sound was startling Winston and Julia clung together fascinated the music went on and on minute after minute with astonishing variations never once repeating itself almost as though the bird were deliberately showing off Its virtuosity sometimes it stopped for a few seconds spread out and resettled its wings then swelled its speckled breast and again burst into song Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence for whom for what was that bird singing no mate no rival was watching it what made it

sit at the edge of the Lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness He wondered whether after all there was a microphone hidden somewhere near he and Julia had only spoken in low Whispers And they would not pick up what they had said but it would pick up the thrush perhaps at the other end of the instrument some small beetle-like man was listening intently listening to that by degree is the flood of Music Drove Old speculations out of his mind it was as though a kind of liquid stuff that Poured all over him and got

mixed up with the sunlight that filtered through the leaves he stopped thinking and merely felt the girl's waist in the bend of his arm was soft and warm he pulled around so they were breast to breast her body seemed to melt into his wherever his hands moved it was all as yielding as water the mouths clung together It was quite different from the hard kisses they'd exchanged earlier when they moved their faces apart again both of them sighed deeply the bird took fright and fled with a clatter of wings Winston put his lips against her

ear now he whispered not here she whispered back come back to The Hideout it's safer quickly with an occasional crackle of Twigs they threaded their way back to the clearing when they were once inside the ring of saplings she turned and faced him they were both breathing fast but the smile had reappeared around the corners of her mouth she stood looking at him for an instant then felt at the zipper of her overalls and yes it was almost as in his dream almost as swiftly as he had imagined it she had Torn her clothes off

and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated her body gleamed white in the Sun but for a moment he did not look at her body his eyes were anchored by the freckled face with its faint bold smile he knelt down before her and took her hands in his have you done this before Of course hundreds of times well scores of times anyway with party members yes always with party members with members of the inner party not with those swine no but there's

plenty that would if they got half a chance they're not so holy as they make out his heart leapt scores of times she had done it he Wished it had been hundreds thousands anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope who knew perhaps the party was rotten under the surface its Cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity if he could have infected the whole lot of them with leprosy or syphilis how gladly he would have done so anything to rot to weakened undermine he pulled her down so they

were kneeling Face to face listen the more man you've had the more I love you do you understand that yes perfectly I hate Purity I hate goodness I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones I ought to suit you dear I'm corrupt to the burns you like doing this I don't mean simply me I mean the thing in itself I adore it that was above all what he wanted to hear not merely the love of one person but the animal Instinct the simple undifferentiated desire that was

the force that would tear the party to pieces he pressed her down upon the grass among the Fallen bluebells this time there was no difficulty presently the rising and falling of Their breasts slowed to normal speed and in a sort of pleasant helplessness they fell apart the sun seemed to have grown hotter they were both sleepy he reached out for the discarded overalls and pulled them partly over her almost immediately they fell asleep and slept for about half an hour Winston worked first he SATs and watched the freckled face Still peacefully asleep pillowed on the

palm of her hand except for her mouth you could not call her beautiful there was a line or two around the eyes if you looked closely the short dark hair was extraordinarily thick and soft it occurred to him that he still did not know her surname or where she lived the young strong body now helpless in sleep awoken him a pitying protecting Feeling but the Mindless tenderness that he had felt under the Hazel tree while the thrush was singing had not quite come back he pulled the overalls aside and studded her smooth white flank in

the old days he thought a man looked at a girl's body and saw that it was desirable and that was the end of the story but you could not have pure love or pure Lust nowadays no emotion was pure because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred their Embrace had been a battle the climax the victory it was a blow struck against the party it was a political Act chapter 3. we can come here once again said Julia it's generally safe to use any Hideout twice but not for another month or two of course

The sooner she woke up a demeanor had changed she became alert and business-like put her clothes on not at the Scarlet sash about her waist and began arranging the details of the journey home it seemed natural to leave this to her she obviously had a practical cunning which Winston lacked and she seemed also to have an exhaustive knowledge of the countryside around London stored away from innumerable Community hikes The route she gave him was quite different from the one by which he had come and brought him out at a different railway station never go home

the same way as you went out she said as though enunciating an important General principle she would leave first and Winston was to wait half an hour before following her she had named a place where they could meet after work four evenings hence it was a street in one of the poorer Quarters where there was an open market which was generally crowded and noisy she would be hanging about among the Stalls pretending to be in search of shoelaces or sewing thread if she judged that the coast was clear she would blow her nose when he

approached otherwise he was to walk past her without recognition but with luck in the middle of the crowd it would be safe to talk for a quarter of an hour and arrange another meeting Now I must go she said as soon as he had mastered his instructions and you back at 1930. I've got to put in two hours for the Junior anti-sex League handing out leaflets or something isn't it bloody give me a brush down would you have I got any Twigs in my hair are you sure then goodbye my love goodbye she flung herself

into his arms kissed Him almost violently and a moment later pushed our way through the saplings and disappeared into the wood with very little noise even now he had not found out his surname or her address however it made no difference for it was inconceivable that they could never meet indoors or exchange any kind of written communication as it happened they never went back to the clearing in The wood during the month of May there was only one further occasion on which they actually succeeded in making love that was in another Hiding Place known to

Julia The Belfry of the ruined Church in an almost deserted stretch of country where an atomic bomb had fallen 30 years earlier it was a good hiding place when once you got there but the getting there was very dangerous But the rest they could meet only in the streets in a different place every evening and never for more than half an hour at a time in the street it was usually possible to talk after a fashion as they drifted down the crowded Pavements not quite abreast and never looking at one another They carried on a

curious intermittent conversation which flicked on and off like the beams of a lighthouse suddenly nipped into Silence By the approach of a party uniform or the proximity of a telescreen then taken up again minutes later in the middle of a sentence then abruptly cut short as they parted at the agreed spot then continued almost without introduction on the following day Julia appeared to be quite used to this kind of conversation which he called talking by installments she was also surprisingly Adept at speaking without moving her lips Just once in almost a month of nightly meetings

they managed to exchange a kiss they were passing in silence down a side street Julia would never speak when they were away from the main streets when there was a deafening Roar the Earth heaved in the air darkened and Winston found himself lying on his side bruised and terrified a rocket bomb must have dropped quite near at hand suddenly he became aware of Julia's face A few centimeters from his own deathly white as white as chalk even her lips were white she was dead he clasped her against him and found that he was kissing a

live warm face but there was some powdery stuff that got in the way of his lips both of their faces were thickly coated with plaster there were evenings when they reached their Rendezvous and they had to walk past one another without a sign because A patrol had just come around the corner or a helicopter was hovering overhead even if it had been less dangerous it would still have been difficult to find time to me Winston's working week was 60 hours Julia's was even longer and their Frida is varied according to the pressure of work and

did not often coincide Julia in any case seldom had an evening completely free she spent an astonishing amount of time In attending lectures and demonstrations Distributing literature for the Junior anti-sex League preparing banners for hate week making collections for the savings campaign and such-like activities it paid she said it was camouflage if you kept the small rules you could break the big ones she even induced Winston to mortgage yet another of his evenings by enrolling himself for the part-time munition work Which was done voluntarily by zealous party members so one evening every week Winston spent

four hours of paralyzing boredom screwing together small bits of metal which were probably parts of bomb fuses in a drafty ill-lit Workshop where the knocking of hammers mingled drearily with the music of the telescreens when they met in the church Tower the gaps in their fragmentary conversation were filled up it was a blazing afternoon The air in the little square chamber above the bells was hot and stagnant and smelt overpoweringly of pigeon dung they sat talking for hours on the dusty twig-litted floor one or other of them getting up from time to time to cast

a glance through the narrow slits and make sure that no one was coming Julia was 26 years old she lived in a hostel with 30 other girls always in the stink of women how I Hate women she said parenthetically and she worked as he had guessed on the novel writing machines in the fiction Department she enjoyed her work which consisted chiefly in running and servicing a powerful but tricky electric motor she was not clever but was fond of using her hands and felt at home with machinery she could describe the whole process of composing a

novel from the general Directive issued by the planning committee down to the final touching up by the read write Squad but she was not interested in the finished product she didn't much care for reading she said books were just a commodity that had to be produced like jam or bootlesses she had no memories of anything before the early 60s and the only person she had ever known who talked frequently of The days before the Revolution was a grandfather who had disappeared when she was eight at school she had been captain of the hockey team and

had won the gymnastics trophy two years running she had been a troop leader in the spies and a Branch Secretary in the youth league before joining the Junior anti-sex League she had always born an excellent character she had even an infallible Mark of good reputation being Picked out to work in pornosec the subsection of the fiction Department which turned out cheap pornography for distribution among the pros it was nicknamed muck house by the people who worked in it she remarked there she had remained for a year helping to produce booklets and sealed packets with titles

like spanking stories or one night in a girl's school to be bought fertifully by proletarian youths who were under the impression that they were buying Something illegal what are these books like said Winston curiously oh ghastly rubbish they're boring Millie they only have six plots but they swap them around a bit of course I was only on the kaleidoscopes I was never in the rewrite Squad I'm not literally dear not even for that he learned with astonishment that all the work is in ponosec except the head of the department were girls The theory was that

men whose sex instincts were less controllable than those of women were in Greater danger of being corrupted by the filth they handled they don't even like having married women there she added girls are always supposed to be so pure here's one who isn't anyway she had had her first love affair when she was 16 with a party member of 60 who later committed suicide to avoid arrest And a good job too said Julia otherwise they'd have had my name out of him when he confessed since then there have been various others life as she saw

it was quite simple you wanted a good time they meaning the party wanted to stop you having it you broke the rules as best you could she seemed to think it just as natural that they should want to rob you of your pleasures as that you should want to Avoid being caught she hated the party and said so in the crudest words but she made no General criticism of it except grid touched upon her own life she had no interest in party Doctrine he noticed that she never used Newspeak words except the ones that are

passed into everyday use she had never heard of the Brotherhood and refused to believe in its existence any kind of organized revolt against the Party which was bound to be a failure strucker is stupid the clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same he wondered vaguely how many others like her there might be in the younger generation people who had grown up in the world of the Revolution knowing nothing else accepting the party as something unalterable like the sky not rebelling against its Authority but simply evading it as a rabbit

Dodges a Dog they did not discuss the possibility of getting married it was too remote to be worth thinking about no imaginable committee would ever sanction such a marriage even if Catherine Winston's wife could somehow have been got rid of it was hopeless even as a Daydream what was she like your wife said Julia She was do you know the Newspeak word good thinkful meaning naturally Orthodox incapable of thinking a bad thought no I didn't know the word but I know the kind of person right enough he began telling her the story of his married

life curiously enough she appeared to know the essential parts of it already she described to him almost as though she had seen or felted the stiffening of Catherine's body as soon as he touched Her the way in which she still seemed to be pushing him from her with all her strength even when her arms were clasped tightly around him with Julia he felt no difficulty in talking about such things Catherine in any case had long ceased to be a painful memory and become merely a distasteful one I could have stood it if it hadn't been

for one thing he said he told her about the frigid little Ceremony that Catherine had forced him to go through on the same night every week she hated it but nothing would make her stop doing it she used to call it but you'll never guess our duty to the party said Julia promptly how did you know that I've been at school too dear sex talks once a month for the over 16s And in the youth movement they rubbed into you for years I dare say it works in a lot of cases but of course you

can never tell people are such hypocrites she began to enlarge upon the subject with Julia everything came back to her own sexuality as soon as this was touched upon in any way she was capable of great acuteness unlike Winston she had grasped the inner meaning of the party's sexual puritanism it was not merely that the sex Instinct Created a world of its own which was outside the party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible what was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria which was desirable because it could be transformed into

war fever and leader worship the way she put it was when you make love you're using up energy and afterwards you feel happy and Don't give a damn for anything they can't bear you to feel like that they want you to be bursting with energy all the time all this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour if you're happy inside yourself why should you get excited about big brother and the three-year plans and the two minutes hate all the rest of their bloody rot that was very true he

thought There was a direct intimate connection between Chastity and political Orthodoxy for how could the fear the hatred and the lunatic credulity which the party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch except by bottling down some powerful Instinct and using it as a driving force the sex impulse was dangerous to the party and the party had turned it to a they played a similar trick with the Instinct of Parenthood the family could not actually be abolished and indeed people were encouraged to be fond of their children in an almost old-fashioned way the

children on the other hand were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and Report their deviations the family had become an effect an extension of the thought police it was a device by means of which Everyone could be surrounded night and day by informers who knew them intimately abruptly his mind went back to Catherine Catherine would unquestionably have denounced him to the thought police if she had not happened to be too stupid to detect the unorthodoxy of his opinions but what really recalled her to him at this moment was the stifling

heat of the afternoon which had brought the sweat out on his forehead He began telling Julia of something that had happened or rather had failed to happen on another sweltering Summer Afternoon 11 years ago it was three or four months after they were married they had lost their way on a community hike somewhere in Kent they'd only lagged behind the others for a couple of minutes but they took a wrong turning and presently found themselves pulled up short by The Urge of an old chalk Quarry It was a sheer drop of 10 or 20 meters

with Boulders at the bottom there was nobody of whom they could ask the way as soon as she realized that they were lost Catherine became very uneasy to be away from the noisy mob of hikers even for a moment gave her a feeling of wrongdoing she wanted to hurry back by the way they had come and started searching in the other direction but at this moment Winston noticed some Tufts of loose strife growing in the cracks of the cliff beneath them one Taft was of two colors magenta and brick red apparently growing on the same

route he'd never seen anything of the kind before and he called to Catherine to come and look at it love Catherine look at those flowers that clumped down near the bottom they're two different colors she had already turned to go but she did rather frightfully come back For a moment she even leaned out over the cliff face to see where he was pointing he was standing a little behind her and he put his hand on her waist to steady her at this moment it suddenly occurred to him how completely alone they were there was not

a human creature anywhere not a leaf stirring not even a bird awake In a place like this the danger that there would be a hidden microphone was very small and even if there was a microphone it would only pick up Sans it was the hottest sleepiest hour of the afternoon the sun blows down upon them the sweat tickled his face and the thought struck him why didn't you give her a good shove Said Julia I would have Yes dear you would have I would have if I'd been the same person then as I am now

or perhaps I would I'm not certain are you sorry you didn't yes on the whole I'm sorry I didn't they were sitting side by side on the dusty floor he pulled her closer against him Her head rested on his shoulder the pleasant smell of her hair Conquering the pigeon done she was very young he thought she still expected something from life she did not understand that to push An Inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing actually it would have made no difference he said then why are you sorry you didn't do it Only because I

prefer positive to a negative in this game that we're playing we can't win some kinds of failure are better than other kinds that's all he felt her shoulders give a wriggle of descent she always contradicted him when he said anything of this kind she would not accept it as a law of Nature that the individual is always defeated the way she realized that she herself was doomed the sooner or later the thought police would catch her and kill her but with another part of her mind she believed that it was somehow possible to construct a

secret world in which you could live as you chose all you needed was luck and cunning and boldness she did not understand that there was no Such thing as happiness that the only Victory lay in the far future long after you were dead that from the moment of declaring war on the party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse we are the Dead he said not dead yet said Julia prozacley not physically six months a year five years conceivably I'm afraid of death you're young so presumably you're more afraid of it than

I am obviously we shall put it off as long as we can it makes very little difference so long as human beings stay human death and life are the same thing rubbish which would you sooner sleep with me or a skeleton don't you enjoy being alive don't you like feeling this is me this is my hand this is my Leg I'm real I'm solid I'm alive don't you like this she Twisted herself around and pressed her bosom against him he could feel her breasts ripe yet firm through her overalls her body seemed to be pouring

some of its Youth and vigor into his I like that he said then stop talking about dying and now listen dear we've got to fix up about the next time we meet we may as well go back to the place in The wood we've given it a good long rest but you must get there by a different way this time I've got it all planned out you take the train but look I'll draw it out for you and in her practical way she scraped together a small square of dust and with a twig from a

pigeon's nest began drawing a map on the floor chapter 4. Winston looked around the shabby little Room above Mr charrington's shop beside the window the enormous bed was made up with ragged blankets and a coverless bolster the old-fashioned clock with a 12-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece in the corner on the gate leg table the glass paperweight which he had bought on his last visit gleamed softly out of the half Darkness and the fender was a battered tin oil stove a saucepan and two cups provided By Mr charrington Winston lit the burner and

set a pan of water to boil he had brought an envelope full of Victory coffee and some saccharine tablets the clock's hand said 7 20. it was 1920 really she was coming at 1930. Folly Folly his heart kept saying conscious gratuitous suicidal folly of all the crimes that a party member Could commit this one was the least possible to conceal actually the idea had first floated into his head in the form of a vision of the glass paperweight mirrored by the surface of the gate leg table as he had foreseen Mr charrington had made no

difficulty about letting the room he was obviously glad of the few dollars that it would bring him nor did he seem shocked or become offensive knowing when it was made clear that Winston wanted the Run for the purpose of a love affair instead he looked into the middle distance and spoke in generalities the so delicate an error as to give the impression that he had become partly invisible privacy he said was a very valuable thing everyone wanted a place where they could be alone occasionally and when they had such a place it was only common

courtesy in anyone else who knew of it To keep his knowledge to himself he even seeming almost a fade out of existence as he did so added that there were two entries to the house one of them through the backyard which gave onto an alley under the window somebody was singing Winston Peter secure in the protection of the Muslim curtain the June sun was still high in the sky and in the sun-filled court below a monstrous woman solid as a Norman pillar With brawny red forearms and a sacking apron strapped about her middle the stumping

to and fro between a wash tub and a clothesline pigging out a series of square white things which Winston recognized as babies diapers whenever her mouth was not corked with clothes pegs she was singing in a powerful contralto there was only an hopeless fans say it passed like the night Pro dye but a look and a word in the dreams I stirred they've stolen my Heart away the tune had been haunting London for weeks past it was one of the countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a subsection of the music

department the words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator the woman sang so tunfully as to turn the Dreadful rubbish into an almost Pleasant sound He could hear the woman singing and the scrape of her shoes on the flagstones and the cries of the children in the street and somewhere in the far distance a faint Roar of traffic and yet the room seemed curiously silent thanks to the absence of a telescreen Folly Folly Folly he thought again it was inconceivable that they could frequent this place

for more than a few weeks without being caught but the temptation of having a hiding Place that was truly their own indoors and near at hand have been too much for both of them for some time after their visit to the church Belfry it had been impossible to arrange meetings working hours have been drastically increased in anticipation of hate week it was more than a month distant but the enormous complex preparations that it entailed were throwing extra work onto everybody Finally both of them managed to secure a free afternoon on the same day they had

agreed to go back to the clearing in the wood on the evening beforehand they met briefly in the street as usual Winston hardly looked at Julia as they drifted toward one another in the crowd from the short glance he gave her it seemed to him that she was paler than usual It's all off she murmured as soon as she judged it safe to speak tomorrow I mean what tomorrow afternoon I can't come why not oh the usual reason it started early this time for a moment he was violently angry during the month that he had

known her the nature of his desire for her had changed at the beginning there had been little true sensuality in it the first Lovemaking had been simply an act of the will but after the second time it was different the smell of her hair the taste of her mouth the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him or into the air all around him she had become a physical necessity something that he not only wanted but felt that he had a right to when she said she could not come he had the feeling

that she was cheating him But just at this moment the crowd pressed them together and their hands accidentally met she gave the tips of his fingers a quick squeeze that seemed to invite not desire but affection it struck him that when one lived with a woman this particular disappointment must be a normal recurring event and a deep tenderness such as he had not felt with her before suddenly took hold of him He wished that they were a married couple of 10 years standing he wished that he were walking through the streets with her just as

they were doing now but openly and without fear talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends for the household he wished above all but they had some place where they could be alone together without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met it was not actually at that moment but At some time on the following day that the idea of renting Mr charrington's room had occurred to him when he suggested it to Julia she had agreed with unexpected readiness both of them knew that it was lunacy it was as though they were intentionally

stepping nearer to their graves as he sat waiting on the edge of the bed he thought again of the sellers of the ministry of love he was curious how that predestined Horror moved in and out of one's consciousness there it lay fixed in future time preceding death as surely as 99 precedes 100. they could not avoid it but one could perhaps postpone it and yet instead every now and again by conscious willful act one chose to shorten the interval before it happened at this moment there was a quick step on the stairs Julia burst into

the room She was carrying a tool bag of coarse Brown canvas such as he had sometimes seen her carrying to and fraud the ministry he started forward to take her into his arms but she disengaged herself rather horridly partly because she was still holding the tool bag half a second she said just let me show you what I brought did you bring some of that filthy Victory coffee I thought you would you can Chuck it away again because we shall Be needing it look here she fell on her knees threw open the bag and tumbled

out some spanners and a screwdriver that filled the top part of it underneath was a number of neat paper packets the first packet that she passed to Winston had a strange in yet Vaguely Familiar feeling it was filled with some kind of heavy sand like stuff which yielded wherever You touched it it isn't sugar he said real sugar not saccharin sugar and here's a loaf of bread proper white bread not a bloody stuff and a little pot of jam and here's a tin of milk but look this is the one I'm really proud of I

had to wrap a bit of sacking around it because she did not need to tell him why she had wrapped it up the smell was already Filling the room a rich hot smell which seemed like an emanation from his early childhood but which one did occasionally meet with even now blowing down a passageway before dorsland or defusing itself mysteriously in a crowded Street sniffed for an instant and then lost again it's coffee he murmured real coffee it's inner party coffee there's a whole kilo here she said how did you manage to get hold of all

These things it's all in a party stuff there's nothing those swine don't have nothing but of course waiters and servants and people pinch things and look I got a little packet of tea as well Winston had squatted down beside her he tore open a corner of the packet it's real tea not blackberry leaves there's been a lot of tea about lately they've captured India or something she said vaguely But listen dear I want you to turn your back on me for three minutes go and sit on the other side of the bed don't go too

near the window and don't turn around till I tell you Winston gazed abstractly through the muslin curtain down in the yard the red-armed woman was still marching to and fro between the wash tub and the Vine she took two more pegs out of her mouth and sang with deep feeling They say that time heals all things they say you can always forget but the smiles and the tears across the years they twist my art strings yet she knew the whole dribbling song by heart it seemed her voice floated upward with the sweet summer air very

tuneful charged with a sort of happy melancholy one had the feeling that she would have been perfectly content if the June evening had been endless and the supply of clothes inexhaustible to remain there For a thousand years pegging out diapers and singing rubbish it struck him as a curious fact that he had never heard a member of the party singing alone and spontaneously it would even have been slightly unorthodox a dangerous eccentricity like talking to oneself perhaps it was only when people were somewhere near the starvation level but they had anything to sing about you

can turn around now Said Julia he turned round and for a second almost failed to recognize her what he had actually expected was to see her naked but she was not naked the transformation that had happened was much more surprising than that she had painted her face she must have slipped into some shop in the proletarian quarters and bought Herself a complete set of makeup materials her lips were deeply reddened her cheeks rouged her nose powdered there was even a touch of something under the eyes to make them brighter it was not very skillfully done

but Winston's standards in such matters were not high he had never before seen or imagined a woman of the party with Cosmetics on her face The Improvement in her appearance was startling with just a few dabs of color are in the right places she had become not only very much prettier but above all far more feminine the short hair and boyish overalls merely added to the effect as he took her in his arms a wave of synthetic violets flooded his nostrils he remembered the half darkness of a basement kitchen And a woman's cavernous mouth it

was the very same scent that she had used but at the moment it did not seem to matter scent too he said Yes dear scent too and you know what I'm going to do next I'm going to get hold of a real woman's frock from somewhere and wear it instead of these bloody trousers I'll wear silk stockings and high-heeled shoes in this room I'm going to be a woman not a party comrade They flung their clothes off and climbed into the huge mahogany bed it was the first time that he had stripped himself naked in

her presence until now you've been too much ashamed of his pale and meager body with the varicose veins standing out on his calves and the discolored patch over his ankle there were no sheets but the blanket they lay on was threadbare and smooth and the size and springiness of the bed Astonished both of them sure to be full of bugs but who cares said Julia one never saw a double bed nowadays except in the homes of the proles Winston had occasionally slept in one in his Boyhood Julia had never been in one before so far

as she could remember presently they fell asleep for a little while when Winston woke up the hands of the Clock had crept round to nearly nine he did not stir because Julia was sleeping with her head in the crook of his arm most of her makeup had transferred itself to his own face or the bolster but a light stain of rouge still brought out the beauty of her cheekbone a yellow Ray from the sinking Sun fell across the foot of the bird and lighted up the fireplace where the water in the pan was boiling fast

Down in the yard the woman had stopped singing But The Faint shouts of children floated in from the street he wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this in the cool of a summer evening a man and a woman with no clothes on making love when they chose talking of what they chose not feeling any compulsion to get up simply lying there and listening to Peaceful sounds outside surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary Julia woke up rubbed her eyes

and raised herself on her elbow to look at the oil stove half that water spoiled away she said I'll get up and make some coffee in another moment we've got an hour what time do they cut the lights off at your Flats 23 30. it's 23 at the hostel but you had To get in earlier than that because hi get out you filthy Brute she suddenly Twisted herself over in the bed seized a shoe from the floor and sent it hurtling into the corner with a boyish jerk of her arm exactly as he'd seen her

fling the dictionary at Goldstein that morning during the two minutes hate what was it you said in Surprise a rat I saw him stick his beastly nose out of the wainscotting there's a hole Down there I gave him a good fright anyway rats remembered Winston in this room they're all over the place so Julia indifferently as she lay down again we've even got them in the kitchen at the hostel some parts of London are swarming with him did you know they attack children yes they do in some of these streets a woman don't leave a

baby alone for two minutes It's the great huge brown ones that do it and the nasty thing is that the brutes always don't go on said Winston with his eyes tightly shut terrorists you've gotten quite pale what's the matter do they make you feel sick of all the horrors in the world a rat she pressed herself against him and wound her limbs around him as though to reassure him with the warmth of her body He did not reopen his eyes immediately for several moments you've had the feeling of being back in a nightmare which had

recurred from time to time throughout his life it was always very much the same he was standing in front of a wall of darkness and on the other side of it there was something unendurable something too Dreadful to be faced in his dream his deepest feelings was always one of self-deception because he Did in fact know what was behind the wall of Darkness with a deadly effort like wrenching a piece out of his own brain he could even have dragged the thing into the open he always woke up without discovering what it was but somehow

it was connected with what Julia had been saying when he cut her short I'm sorry he said there's nothing I don't like rats that's all Don't worry dear I'm not going to have the filthy brutes in here I'll stuff the hole with a bit of sacking before we go and next time we come here I'll bring some plaster and bung it up properly already the black instant of panic was half forgotten feeling slightly ashamed of himself he sat up against the Bed Head Julia got out of bed pulled on her overalls and made the coffee

the smell that Rose from the saucepan Was so powerful and exciting that they shut the window lest anybody outside should notice and become inquisitive what was even better than the taste of the coffee was the silky texture given to it by the sugar a thing Winston had almost forgotten after years of saccharin with one hand in her pocket a piece of bread and jam in the other Julia wondered about the room glancing indifferently at the bookcase pointing Out the best way of repairing the gate leg cable Plumping herself down in the Ragged armchair to see

if it was comfortable and examining the Absurd 12-hour clock with a sort of tolerant amusement she brought the glass paperweight over to the bed to have a look at it in a better light he took it out of her hand fascinated as always by the soft rain watery appearance of the glass What is it do you think said Julia I don't think it's anything huh I mean I don't think it was ever put to any use that's what I like about it it's a little chunk of history that they've forgotten to alter it's a message

from a hundred years ago if one knew how to read it and that picture over there she nodded at the engraving on the opposite wall would that be a hundred years old more 200 I dare say one can't tell it's Impossible to discover the age of anything nowadays she went over to look at it here's where that brute stuck his nose out she said kicking the wainscotting immediately below the picture what is this place I've seen it before somewhere it's a church or at least it used to be Saint Clemens Dane its name was the

fragment of rhyme that Mr charrington had taught him came back Into his head and he added half nostalgically oranges and lemons say the bells of Saint Clemens to his astonishment she capped the line you owe me three farthings say the bells of Saint Martins when will you pay me say the bells of Old bayley I can't remember how it goes on after that but anyway I remember it ends up here comes a candle to light you to bed here comes a chopper to chop off your Head it was like the two halves of a counter

sign but there must be another line after the bells of Old bayley perhaps it could be dug out of Mr chanton's memory if he was suitably prompted who taught you that he said my grandfather he used to say it to me when I was a little girl he was vaporized when I was eight at any rate he disappeared I wonder what a lemon was she added Inconsequently I've seen oranges they were kind of round yellow fruit with a thick skin I can remember lemons said Winston they were quite common in the 50s they were so

sour that it set your teeth on edge him to smell them I bet that picture's Got Bugs behind it said Julia I'll take it down and give it a good cleaning someday I suppose it's almost time we were leaving I must start washing this paint off what a boar I'll get the lipstick off your face afterwards Winston did not get up for a few minutes more the room was darkening he turned over toward the light and they gazing into the glass paperweight the inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the fragment of coral but the interior of

the glass itself There was such a depth of it and yet it was almost as transparent as air it was as though the surface of the glass had been the arch of the sky enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere complete he had the feeling that he could get inside it and that in fact he was inside it along with the mahogany bird and the gate leg table and the clerk and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself The paperweight was the room he was in the coral was Julia's life and his own fixed in

a sort of Eternity at the heart of the crystal chapter 5. Sim had vanished the morning came and he was missing from work a few thoughtless people commented on his absence on the next day nobody mentioned him on the third day Winston went into the Vestibule of the records department to look at the notice board one of the notices carried a printed list of the members of the chess Committee of whom fim had been one it looked almost exactly as it had looked before nothing had been crossed out but it was one name shorter it

was enough Sim had ceased to exist he had never existed The weather was making hot in the Labyrinthian Ministry the windowless air-conditioned rooms kept their normal temperature but outside the pavement scorched one's feet and the stench of the tubes at the rush hours was a horror the preparations for hate week were in full swing and the staffs of all the Ministries were working overtime processions meetings military parades lectures wax work displays film shows Telescreen programs all had to be organized stands had to be erected effig is built slogans coined songs written rumors circulated photographs faked

Julia's unit in the fiction Department had been taken off the production of novels and was rushing out a series of atrocity pamphlets Winston in addition to his regular work spent long periods every day and going through backfiles of the times and altering and embellishing news items which were to be quoted in Speeches late at night when the crowds of Rowdy proles roamed the streets the town had a curiously febrile heir the rocket bombs crashed oftener than ever and sometimes in the far distance there were enormous explosions which no one could explain and about which there

were wild rumors the new tune which was to be the theme song of hate week the hate song as it was called had already been composed and was being endlessly plugged on the Telescreens it had a Savage barking Rhythm which could not exactly be called music but resembled the beating of a drum roared out by hundreds of voices to the of marching feet it was terrifying the pros had taken a fancy to it and in the midnight streets it competed with the still popular it was only a hopeless fancy the Parsons children played it at

all hours of the night and day unbearably on a comb and a piece of toilet paper Winston's evenings were Fuller than ever squads of volunteers organized by Parsons were preparing the street for hate week stitching banners painting posters erecting flagstaffs on the roofs and perilously slinging wires across the street for the reception of streamers Parsons boasted the victory Mansions alone would display 400 meters of bunting he was in his natural element and as happy as a lark the Heat and the manual work had even given him a pretext For reverting to shorts and an open

shirt in the evenings he was everywhere at once pushing pulling soaring hammering improvising jollying everyone along with comradley exhortations and giving out from every fold in his body what seemed an inexhaustible supply of acrid smelling sweat a new poster had suddenly appeared all over London it had no caption and represented simply the Monstrous figure of a Eurasian Soldier three or four Meters high striding forward with expressionless Mongolian face and enormous boots a submachine gun pointed from his hip from whatever angle you've looked at the poster the muzzle of the gun magnified by the foreshortening seemed

to be pointed straight at you the thing had been plastered on every blank space on every wall even outnumbering the portraits of Big Brother the pros normally apathetic about the war were being lashed into one of their Periodical friends of patriotism as though to harmonize with the general mood the rocket bombs have been killing larger numbers of people than usual one fell on a crowded film theater in Stepney bearing several hundred victims among the ruins the whole population of the neighborhood turned out for a long trailing funeral which went on for hours and was in

effect an indignation meeting another bomb fell on a piece of waste ground which was used as a playground And several dozen children were blown to Pieces there were further angry demonstrations Goldstein was burned in effigy hundreds of copies of the poster of the Eurasian Soldier were torn down and added to the flames and a number of shops were looted in the turmoil then a rumor flew around that spies were directing the rocket bombs by means of Wireless Waves and an old couple who were suspected of being a foreign extraction had their house set on fire

And perished of suffocation in the room over Mr cherrington shop when they could get there Julia and Winston lay side by side on a stripped bed under the open window naked for the sake of coolness the rat had never come back but the bugs had multiplied hideously in the heat it did not seem to matter dirty or clean the room was Paradise as soon as they arrived they would Sprinkle everything with pepper bought on the black market tear off their clothes and make love with sweating bodies then fall asleep and wait to find that the

bugs had rallied and were massing for the counter-attack four five six seven times they met during the month of June Winston had dropped his habit of drinking gin at all hours he seemed to have lost the need for it he had grown fatter his varicose ulcer had subsided leaving Only a brown stain on the skin above his ankle his pits of coughing in the early morning had stopped the process of Life had ceased to be intolerable he had no longer any impulse to make faces of the telescreel or sharp curses at the top of his

voice now that they had a secure Hiding Place almost a home it did not even seem a hardship that they could only meet infrequently and for a couple of hours at a time What mattered was that the room over the junk shop should exist to know that it was there in violate was almost the same as being in it the room was a world a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk Mr charrington thought Winston was another extinct animal he usually stopped to talk with Mr charrington for a few minutes on his way

upstairs the old man seemed seldom or never to go Outdoors and on the other hand to have Almost no customers he led a ghost-like existence between the tiny dark shop and an even tinier back kitchen where he prepared his meals and which contained among other things an unbelievably ancient gramophone with an enormous horn he seemed glad of the opportunity to talk wondering about among his worthless stock with his long nose and thick spectacles and his bowed shoulders in the Velvet jacket he had always vaguely The heir of being a collector rather than a Tradesman but

the sort of faded enthusiasm he would finger this scrap of rubbish or that a China bottle stopper the painted lid of a broken snuff box a pinchback block it containing a strand of some long dead baby's hair never asking that Winston should buy it merely that he should admire it to talk to him was like listening to the tinkling of a worn out musical box He dragged out from the corners of his memory some more fragments of Forgotten rhymes there was one about Four and Twenty Blackbirds and another about a cow with a crumpled horn

and another about the death of poor Robin it just occurred to me or might be interested he would say with a deprecating little laugh whenever he produced a new fragment but he could never recall more than a few lines of any one rhyme Both of them knew in a way it was never out of their minds the what was now happening could not last long there were times when the fact of impending death seemed as palpable as the bed they lay on and they would cling together with a sort of despairing sensuality like a damn

Soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five minutes of striking but there were also times when they had the illusion not only of safety but of Permanence so long as they were actually in this room they both felt no harm could come to them getting there was difficult and dangerous but the room itself was sanctuary it was as when Winston had gazed Into the Heart of the paperweight with the feeling that it would be possible to get inside that glassy world and that once inside it time could be arrested

Often they gave themselves up to Daydreams of Escape their luck would hold indefinitely and they would carry on their Intrigue just like this for the remainder of their natural lives or Catherine would die and by subtle maneuverings Winston and Julia would succeed in getting married or they would commit suicide together or they would disappear alter themselves out of recognition learn to speak with Proletarian accents get jobs in a factory and live out their lives undetected in a Backstreet it was all nonsense as they both knew in reality there was no Escape even the one plan

that was practicable suicide they had no intention of carrying out to hang on from day to day and from week to week spinning out a present that had no future seemed an uncomfortable Instinct just as one's lungs will always Draw the next breath so long as there is air available sometimes too they talked of engaging in active Rebellion against the party but with no notion of how to take the first step even if the fabulous Brotherhood was a reality there still remained the difficulty of finding one's way into it he told her of the strange

intimacy that existed or seemed to exist between himself and O'Brien and of the impulse he sometimes felt simply to walk into O'Brien's presence announced that he was the enemy of the party and demand his help curiously enough this did not strike her as an impossibly rash thing to do she was used to judging people by their faces and it seemed natural to her that Winston should believe O'Brien to be trustworthy on the strength of a single flash of the eyes moreover she took it for granted that everyone or nearly everyone secretly Hated the party and

would break the rules if he thought it was safe to do so but she refused to believe that widespread organized opposition existed or could exist the tales about Goldstein and his underground Army she said was simply a lot of rubbish which the party had invented for its own purposes and which you had to pretend to believe in times Beyond number at party rallies and spontaneous demonstrations she had Shouted at the top of her voice for the execution of people whose name she had never heard and in whose supposed crimes she had not the faintest belief

when public trials were happening she had taken her place in the detachments from the youth league who surrounded the courts from morning to night chanting at interval's death to the traitors during the two minutes hate she always excelled all others in shouting insults at Goldstein yet she had only the dimmest Idea of who Goldstein was and what doctrines he was supposed to represent she had grown up since the Revolution and was too young to remember the ideological battles of the 50s and 60s such a thing as an independent political movement was outside Her Imagination and

in any case the party was invincible it would always exist and it would always be the same you could only rebel against it by secret Disobedience or at most by Isolated acts of violence such as killing somebody or blowing something up in some ways she was far more acute than Winston and far less susceptible to party propaganda once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against Eurasia she started him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening the rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by

the government of Oceania itself Just to keep people frightened this was an idea that had literally never occurred to him she also stirred a sort of Envy in him by telling him that during the two minutes hate a great difficulty was to avoid bursting out laughing but she only questioned the teachings of the party when they in some way touched upon her own life often she was ready to accept the official mythology simply because the Difference between truth and falsehood did not seem important to her she believed for instance Having learned it at school that

the party had invented airplanes in his own school days Winston Remembered in the late 50s it was only the helicopter that the party claimed to have invented a dozen years later when Julia was at school he was already claiming the airplane one generation more and it would be claiming the steam engine And when he told her that airplanes had been in existence before he was born long before the Revolution the fact struck her as totally uninteresting after all what did it matter who had invented airplanes it was rather more of a shock to him when

he discovered from some chance remark that she did not remember that Oceania four years ago had been at war with East Asia and at peace with Eurasia it was true that she regarded the whole War as a sham but apparently she had not even noticed that the name of the enemy had changed I thought we'd always been at war with Eurasia she said vaguely it frightened him a little the invention of airplanes dated from long before her birth but the switchover in the war had happened only four years ago well after she was grown up

he argued with her about it for perhaps a quarter of an hour In the end he succeeded in forcing her memory back until she did dimly recall that at one time East Asia and not Eurasia had been the enemy but the issue still struck her as unimportant who cares she said impatiently it's always one bloody war after another and one knows the news is all lies anyway sometimes he talked to her of the records department and the impudent forgeries that he committed there such things did not appear to horrify Her she did not feel the

abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of Lies becoming truths he told her the story of Jones Aronson and Rutherford and the momentous slip of paper which he had once held between his fingers it did not make much impression on her at first indeed she failed to grasp the point of a story were they friends of yours she said No I never knew them they were inner party members besides they were far older men than I was they belonged to the old days before the Revolution I barely knew them by sight then what was

there to worry about people are killed off all the time aren't they he tried to make her understand this was an exceptional case it wasn't just a question of somebody being killed do you realize that the past starting From yesterday has been actually abolished if it survives anywhere it's in a few solid objects with no words attached to them like that lump of glass there already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution every record has been destroyed or falsified every book has been Rewritten every picture has been repainted

every statue and Street and building has been Renamed every date has been altered and that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute history has stopped exists except an end is present in which the party is always right I know of course that the past is falsified but it would never be possible for me to prove it even when I did the falsification myself after the thing is done no evidence ever Remains the only evidence is inside my own mind and I don't know with any Certainty that any other human being shares my

memories just in that one instance in my whole life I did possess actual concrete evidence after the event years after it and what good was that it was no good because I threw it away a few minutes later but the same thing happened today I should keep it well I wouldn't said Julia I'm quite Ready to take risks but only for something worthwhile not for bits of old newspaper what could you have done with it even if you'd kept it not much perhaps but it was evidence it might have planted a few doubts here and

there supposing that I dared to show it to anybody I don't imagine that we can alter anything in our own lifetime but one can imagine little nuts of resistance springing up here and there small groups Of people Banning themselves together and gradually growing and even leaving a few records behind so that the Next Generation can carry on where we leave off I'm not interested in the Next Generation dear I'm interested in us you're only a rebel from the waist downwards he told her she thought this brilliantly witty and flung our arms around him in Delight

in the ramifications of party Doctrine she had not the faintest interest Whenever he began to talk the principles of insok double think the mutability of the past and the denial of objective reality and to use news-speak words she became bored and confused and said that she never paid any attention to that kind of thing one knew that it was all rubbish so why let oneself be worried by it she knew when to cheer and went to boo and that was all one needed if he persisted in talking of such subjects she had a disconcerting habit

Of falling asleep she was one of those people who can go to sleep at any hour and in any position talking to her he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of Orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what Orthodoxy meant in a way the world view of the party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it they could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality because They never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them am I not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what

was happening by lack of understanding they remained sane they simply swallowed everything and what they swallowed did them no harm because it left no residue behind just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird chapter 6. it had happened at last the expected Message had come all his life it seemed to him he had been waiting for this to happen he was walking down the long Corridor at the ministry and he was almost at the spot where Julia had slipped the note into his hand when he became aware that

someone larger than himself was walking just behind him the person whoever it was gave a small cough evidently as a Prelude to speaking Winston stopped abruptly and turned It was O'Brien at last they were face to face and it seemed that his only impulse was to run away his heart bounded violently he would have been incapable of speaking O'Brien however had continued forward in the same movement laying a friendly hand for a moment on Winston's arm so that the two of them were walking side by side he began speaking with the peculiar grave courtesy that

differentiated him From the majority of inner party members I've been hoping for an opportunity of talking to you he said I was reading one of your Newspeak articles in the times the other day you take a scullery interest and you speak I believe Winston had recovered part of his self-possession hardly a scholarly he said I'm only an amateur it's not my subject I've never had anything to do with the actual Construction of the language but you write it very elegantly said O'Brien and that is not only my opinion I was talking recently to a friend

of yours who is certainly an expert his name has slit my memory for the moment again Winston's heart stirred painfully it was inconceivable that this was anything other than a reference to sin but Sim was not only dead he was abolished an unperson any identifiable reference to him would have been Mortally dangerous O'Brien's remark must obviously have been intended as a signal a code word by sharing a small Act of thought crime he had turned the two of them into accomplices they had continued to stroll slowly down the corridor but now O'Brien halted with the

Curious disarming friendliness that he always managed to put into the gesture he resettled his Spectacles on his nose Then he went on now what I'd really intended to say was that in your article I noticed you'd use two words which should have become obsolete but they've only become so very recently have you seen the 10th edition of the Newspeak dictionary no said Winston I didn't think it had been issued yet but we're still using the ninth in the records department the 10th edition is not due to appear For some months I believe but a few

Advanced copies have been circulated I have one myself it might interest you to look at it perhaps very much so said Winston immediately seeing where this tended some of the new developments are most ingenious the reduction in the number of verbs that's the point that will appeal to you I think let me see shall I send a messenger to you with the dictionary but I'm afraid I invariably forget anything of that kind perhaps you could pick it up at my flat at some time it suited you oh wait let me give you my address they

were standing in front of a telescreen somewhat absent-mindedly O'Brien felt two of his pockets and then produced a small leather covered notebook and a gold ink pencil immediately beneath the telescreen in such a position that anyone who was watching at the other end of the Instrument could read what he was writing he scribbled an address tore out the page and handed it to Winston I'm usually at home in the evenings he said if not my servant will give you the dictionary he was gone leaving Winston holding the scrap of paper which this time there was

no need to conceal nevertheless he carefully memorized what was written on it and some hours later Dropped it into the memory hole along with a mass of other papers they had been talking to one another for a couple of minutes at the most there was only one meaning that the episode could possibly have it had been contrived as a way of letting Winston know O'Brien's address this was necessary because except by direct inquiry it was never possible to discover where anyone lived there were no directories of any kind If you ever want to see me

this is where I can be found was what O'Brien had been saying to him perhaps there would even be a message concealed somewhere in the dictionary but at any rate one thing was certain the conspiracy that he had dreamed of did exist and he had reached the outer edges of it he knew that sooner or later he would obey O'Brien's Sons perhaps tomorrow perhaps after a long delay he was not Certain what was happening was only the working out of a process that had started years ago the first step had been a secret involuntary thought

the second had been the opening of The Diary he had moved from thoughts to words and now from words to actions the last step was something that would happen in the ministry of love he had accepted it the end was contained In the beginning but it was frightening or more exactly it was like a foretaste of death like being a little less alive even while he was speaking to O'Brien when the meaning of the words had sunk in a chilly shuddering feeling had taken possession of his body he had the sensation of stepping into the

dampness of a grave and it was not much better because he had always known that the grave was There and waiting for him chapter 7. Winston had woken up with his eyes Full of Tears Julia rolled sleepily against him murmuring something that might have been what's the matter I dreamed he began and stopped short it was too complex to put into words there was the rim itself and there was a memory connected with it that had swum into his mind in the few Seconds after waking he lay back with his eyes shut still sudden in

the atmosphere of the dream it was a vast luminous dream in which his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a landscape on a summer evening after rain it had all occurred inside the glass paperweight but the surface of the glass was the Dome of the sky and inside the Dome everything was flooded with clear soft light in which one could see into Interminable distances the dream had also been comprehended by indeed in some senses it consisted in a gesture of the arm made by his mother and made again 30 Years Later by

the Jewish woman he had seen on the news film trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets before the helicopters blew them both to pieces do you know he said that until this moment I believed I had murdered my mother Why did you murder her said Julia almost asleep I didn't murder her not physically in the dream he had remembered his last glimpse of his mother and within a few moments of waking the cluster of small events surrounding it had all come back it was a memory that he must have deliberately pushed out of

his Consciousness over many years he was not certain of the date but he could not have been less than 10 years Old possibly 12 when it had happened his father had disappeared sometime earlier how much earlier he could not remember he remembered better the rackety uneasy circumstances of the time the periodical panics about Air Raids and the Sheltering in tube stations the piles of rubble everywhere the unintelligible proclamations posted at street corners The Gangs of youths and shirts all the same color the enormous Cues outside the bakeries the intermittent machine gun fire in the distance

above all the fact that there was never enough to eat he remembered long afternoon spent with other boys and scrounging round dustbins and rubber sheeps picking out the ribs of cabbage leaves potato peelings sometimes even scraps of stale bread crust from which they carefully scraped away the Cinders and also in waiting for the passing of trucks which traveled Over a certain route and were known to carry cattle feed and which when they jolted over the bad patches in the road sometimes spilled a few fragments of oil cake when his father disappeared his mother did not

show any surprise or any violent grief but a sudden change came over her she seemed to have become completely spiritless it was evident even to Winston that she was waiting for something that she knew Must happen she did everything that was needed cooked washed mended made the bed swept the floor dusted the mantelpiece always very slowly and with a curious lack of Superfluous motion like an artist's lay figure moving of its own accord a large shapely body seemed to relapse naturally into Stillness for hours at a time she would sit almost immobile on the bed

nursing his young sister a tiny ailing very silent child Of two or three with a face made Simeon By thinness but occasionally she would take Winston in her arms and press him against her for a long time without saying anything he was aware in spite of his youthfulness and selfishness that this was somehow connected with the never mentioned thing that was about to happen he remembered the room where they lived a dark close smelling room that seemed half-filled by a bed with a white Counterpane there was a gas ring in the fender and a shelf

where food was kept and on the landing outside there was a brown earthenware sink common to several rooms he remembered his mother's statuesque body bending over the gas ring to stir at something in a saucepan above all he remembered his continuous hunger and the fierce sordid battles at meal times he would ask his mother naggingly over and over again why there Was not more food he would shout and storm at her he even remembered the tones of his voice which was beginning to break prematurely and sometimes boomed in a peculiar way or he would attempt

a sniveling note of Pathos in his efforts to get more than his share his mother was quite ready to give him more than his share she took it for granted that he the boy should have the biggest portion but however much she gave him he Invariably demanded more at every meal she would beseech him not to be selfish and to remember that his little sister was sick and also needed food but it was no use he would cry out with rage when she stopped ladling he would try to wrench the saucepan and the spoon out

of her hands he would grab bits from his sister's plate he knew that he was starving the other two Could not help it he even felt that he had a right to do it the clamorous hunger in his belly seemed to justify him between meals if his mother did not stand guard he was constantly pilfering at The Wretched store of food on the Shelf one day a chocolate ration was issued there had been no such issue for weeks or months past he remembered quite clearly that precious little morsel of Chocolate it was a two-ounce slab

they still talked about answers in those days between the three of them it was obvious that it ought to be divided into three equal parts suddenly as though he were listening to somebody else Winston heard himself demanding and a loud booming voice that he should be given the whole piece his mother told him not to be greedy there was a long nagging argument that Went round and round with shouts wines tears reminisces bargainings his tiny sister clinging to her mother with both hands exactly like a baby monkey sat looking over her shoulder at him with

large mournful eyes in the end his mother broke off three quarters of the chocolate and gave it to Winston giving the other quarter to his sister the little girl took hold of it and looked at it dully perhaps not knowing What it was Winston stood watching her for a moment then with a sudden Swift spring he had snatched the piece of chocolate out of his sister's hand and was fleeing for the door Winston Winston his mother called after him come back give your sister back her chocolate he stopped but he did not come back his

mother's anxious eyes were fixed on his face Even now she was thinking about the thing he did not know what it was that was on the point of happening his sister conscious of having been robbed of something had set up a feeble whale his mother Drew her arm around the child and pressed its face against her breast something in the gesture told him that his sister was dying he turned and fled down the stairs with the chocolate growing sticky in his hand He never saw his mother again after he had devoured the chocolate he felt

somewhat ashamed of himself a and hung about in the streets for several hours until hunger drove him home when he came back his mother had disappeared this was already becoming normal at that time nothing was gone from the room except his mother and his sister they had not taken any clothes not even his mother's Overcoat To this day he did not know with any certainty that his mother was dead it was perfectly possible that she had merely been sent to a forced labor camp as for his sister she might have been removed like Winston himself

to one of the colonies for homeless children Proclamation centers they were called which are grown up as a result of the Civil War or she might have been sent to the labor camp along with his mother Or simply left somewhere or other to die the dream was still Vivid in his mind especially the enveloping protecting gesture of the arm in which its whole meaning seemed to be contained his mind went back to another dream of two months ago exactly as his mother had sat on the dingy white quilted bed with the child clinging to her

so she had sat in the sunken ship far Underneath Him and drowning deeper every minute but still looking up at him through the Darkening water he told Julia the story of his mother's disappearance without opening her eyes she rolled over and settled herself into a more comfortable position I expect you were a beastly little swine in those days she said indistinctly all children are swine he asked the real point of the story from her breathing it was evident that she was going off to sleep again He would have liked to continue talking about his mother

he did not suppose from what he could remember of her that she had been an unusual woman still less an intelligent one and yet she had possessed a kind of nobility a kind of Purity simply because the standards that she obeyed were private ones the feelings were her own and could not be altered from outside It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless if you loved someone you loved him and when you had nothing else to give you still gave him love when the last of the chocolate

was gone his mother had clasped the child in her arms it was no use change nothing it did not produce more chocolate it did not avert the child's Death or her own but it seemed natural to her to do it the refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy with her arm which was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of paper the terrible thing that the party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses mere feelings or of no account same time robbing you of all the power over

the material world when once you were in the grip of the Party what you felt or did not feel what you did or refrained from doing made literally no difference whatever happened you vanished and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again you were lifted clean out of the stream of History and yet to the people of only two generations go this would not have seemed all important because they were not attempting to alter history they were governed by private loyalties Which they did not question What mattered were individual relationships and a completely

helpless gesture an embracer A Tear A word spoken to a dying man would have value in itself the pros it suddenly occurred to him had remained in this condition they were not loyal to a party or a country or an idea they were loyal to one another for the first time in his life He did not despise the pros or think of them merely as an inert Force which would one day spring to life and regenerate the world the pros stayed human they had not become hardened inside they had held onto the Primitive emotions which

he himself had to relearn by conscious effort and in thinking this he remembered without apparent relevance how a few weeks ago he'd seen a severed Hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gutter as though it had been a cabbage stalk the pros are human beings he said aloud we are not human why not sir Julia would woken up again he thought for a little while has it ever occurred to you he said that the best thing for us to do would be simply to walk out of here before it's too late

And never see each other again Yes dear it has occurred to me several times but I'm not going to do it all the same we've been lucky he said but it can't last much longer you're young you look normal and innocent if you keep clear of people like me you might stay alive for another 50 years no I've thought it all out What you do I'm going to do don't be too downhearted I'm rather good at Staying Alive we may be together for another six months a year there's no knowing at the end we're certain

to be a part do you realize how utterly alone we should be when once they get hold of us there will be nothing literally nothing that either of us can do for the other if I confess They'll shoot you and if I refuse to confess they'll shoot you just the same nothing that I can do or say or stop myself from saying will put off your death for as much as five minutes neither of us will even know whether the other is alive or dead we shall be utterly without power of any kind the one

thing that matters is that we shouldn't betray one another although even that can't make the slightest Difference if you mean confessing she said we shall do that right enough everybody always confesses you can't help it they torture you I don't mean confessing confession is not betrayal what you say or do doesn't matter only feelings matter if they could make me stop loving you that would be the real betrayal She thought it over they can't do that she said finally it's the one thing they can't do they can make you say anything anything but they can't

make you believe it they can't get inside you no he said a little more hopefully no that that's quite true they can't get inside you if you can feel that staying human is Worthwhile even when it can't have any result whatever you've beaten them he thought of the telescreen but it's never sleeping ear they could spy upon you night and day but if you kept your head you could still outwit them with all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking perhaps that was less true when

you were Actually in their hands one did not know what happened inside the ministry of love but it was possible to guess tortures drugs delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions gradual wearing down by sleeplessness and Solitude and persistent questioning facts at any rate could not be kept hidden they could be tracked down by inquiry they could be squeezed out of You by torture But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human what difference Did It ultimately make they cannot alter your feelings for that matter you could not alter yourself even

if you wanted to they could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought but the inner heart whose workings were mysterious even to yourself remained impregnable Chapter 8. they had done it they had done it at last the room they were standing in was long shaped and softly lit the telescreen was dimmed to a low murmur the richness of the dark blue carpet gave one the impression of treading on velvet at the far end of the room O'Brien was sitting at a table under a green shaded lamp with

a mass of papers on either side of him he had not bothered to look Up when the servant showed Julia and Winston in Winston's heart was thumping so hard that he doubted whether he would be able to speak he had done it they had done it at last was all he could think it had been a rash act to come here at all and sheer Folly to arrive together though it was true that they had come by different routes and only met on O'Brien's doorstep but merely to walk Into such a place needed an effort

of the nerve it was only on very rare occasions that one saw inside The Dwelling Places of the inner party or even penetrated into the quarter of the town where they lived the whole atmosphere of the huge block of flats the richness and spaciousness of everything the unfamiliar smells of good food and good tobacco the silent and Incredibly rapid lifts sliding up and down the white jacketed servants Hurrying to and fro everything was intimidating although he had a good pretext for coming here he was haunted at every step by the fear that a black uniformed

guard would suddenly appear from around the corner demand his papers and Order him to get out O'Brien's servant however had admitted the two of them without demure he was a small dark-haired man in a white jacket with a diamond-shaped Completely expressionless face which might have been that of a Chinese the passage down which he led them was softly carpeted with cream paved walls and white wainscotting all exquisitely clean that too was intimidating Winston could not remember ever to have seen a passageway whose walls were not grimy from the contact of human bodies O'Brien had a

slip of paper between his fingers and seemed to be studying it Intently his heavy face bent down so that one could see the line of the nose looked both formidable and intelligent for perhaps 20 seconds he sat without stirring then he pulled the speak right toward him and wrapped out a message in the hybrid jargon of the Ministries items one comma five comma seven approved fool wise stop suggestion contained item 6 double plus ridiculous Virgin crime think cancel stop unprecede construction wise anti-getting plus full estimates Machinery overheads stop and message he rose deliberately from his

chair and came toward them across the soundless carpet a little of the official atmosphere seemed to have fallen away from him with the new speak words but his expression was Grimmer than usual as though he were not pleased at being disturbed The terror that Winston already felt was suddenly Shot Through by a streak of ordinary embarrassment it seemed to him quite possible that he had simply made a stupid mistake for what evidence had he in reality that O'Brien was any kind of political conspirator nothing but a flash of the eyes and a single equivocal remark

beyond that only his own Secret imaginings founded on a dream He could not even fall back on the pretense that he had come to borrow the dictionary because in that case Julia's presence was impossible to explain as O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him he stopped turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall there was a sharp snap The Voice had stopped Julia uttered a tiny sound a sort of squeak of surprise Even in the midst of his Panic Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue

you can turn it off he said yes said O'Brien a week and turn it off we have that privilege he was opposite them now his solid form towered over the pair of them and the expression on his face was still indecipherable He was waiting somewhat sternly for Winston to speak buts about what even now it was quite conceivable that he was simply a busy man wandering irritably why he had been interrupted nobody spoke after the stopping of the telescreen the room seemed deadly silent the seconds marched past enormous with difficulty Winston continued to keep his

eyes fixed on O'Brien's Then suddenly the Grim face broke down into what might have been the beginnings of a smile with his characteristic gesture O'Brien resettled his Spectacles on his nerves shall I say it or will you he said I will say it said Winston promptly that thing is really turned off yes everything is turned off we are alone we've come here because he paused realizing For the First Time The vagueness of his own motives since he did not in fact know what kind of help he expected from O'Brien it was not easy to say

why he had come here he went on conscious that what he was saying must sound both feeble and pretentious we believe that there is some kind of conspiracy some kind of secret organization working against the party and that you are involved in it we want to join it and work for it we Are enemies of the party we disbelieve in the principles of insock we are thought criminals we are also adulterers I tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your mercy if you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other way we

are ready he stopped and glanced over his shoulder with the feeling that the door had opened Sure enough the little yellow-faced servant had come in without knocking Winston saw that he was carrying a tray with a decanter and glasses a Martin is one of us said O'Brien impassively bring the drinks over here Martin put them on the round table have we enough chairs then we may as well sit down and talk in Comfort bring a chair for yourself Martin This is business you can stop being a servant for the next 10 minutes a little man

sat down quite a disease and yet still with a servant like air the air of a valid enjoying a privilege Winston regarded him out of the corner of his eye it struck in that the man's whole life was playing a part and then he felt it to be dangerous to drop his assumed personality even for a moment O'Brien took the decanter by the neck And filled up the glasses with a dark red liquid it aroused in Winston dim memories of something seen long ago on a wall or a hoarding a vast bottle composed of electric

lights which seemed to move up and down and pour its contents into a glass seen from the top the stuff looked almost black but in the decanter it gleaned like a ruby it had a sour sweet smell He saw Julia pick up a glass and sniff at it with Frank curiosity it's called one said O'Brien with a faint smile you will have read about it in books no doubt not much of it gets to the outer party I'm afraid his face grew solemn again and he raised his glass I think it is fitting that we

should begin by drinking our health to our leader To a manual Goldstein Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness one was a thing he had read and dreamed about like the glass paperweight or Mr charrington's half-remembered Rhymes it belonged to the vanished romantic past the olden time as he liked to call it in his secret thoughts for some reason he'd always thought of wine as having an intensely sweet taste like that of blackberry jam and an Immediate intoxicating effect actually when he came to swallow it the stuff was distinctly disappointing the truth was

that after years of gin drinking he could barely taste it he sat down The Empty Glass then there is such a person as Goldstein he said yes there is such a person and he's alive where I do not know and the conspiracy the organization it is real it's not simply an invention Of the thought police no it is real the Brotherhood we call it you will never learn much more about the Brotherhood than that it exists and that you belong to it I'll come back to that presently he looked at his wristwatch it is unwise

even for members of the inner party to turn off the telescreen for more than half an hour you ought not to have come here together And you'll have to leave separately are you comrade he bowed his head to Julia we'll leave first we have about 20 minutes at our disposal you will understand that I must start by asking you certain questions in general terms what are you prepared to do anything that we're capable of said Winston O'Brien had turned himself a little in his chair so that he was facing Winston you almost ignored Julia seeming

to take It for granted that Winston could speak for her for a moment the lids flitted down over his eyes he began asking his questions in a low expressionless voice as though this were a routine a sort of catechism most of whose answers were known to him already you are prepared to give your lives yes you are prepared to commit murder yes to commit acts of sabotage which may Cause the death of hundreds of innocent people yes to portray your country to foreign powers yes you are prepared to cheat to forge the blackmail to corrupt

the minds of children to distribute habit-forming drugs to encourage prostitution to disseminate venereal diseases to do anything which is likely to cause Demoralization and weaken the power of the party yes and for example it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulfuric acid in a child's face are you prepared to do that yes you are prepared to lose your identity and live out the rest of your life as a waiter or dark worker yes you are prepared to commit suicide if and when we order you to do so Yes you are prepared the two of

you to separate and never see one another no broken Julia it appeared to Winston that a long time passed before he answered for a moment he seemed even to have been deprived of the power of speech his tongue worked soundlessly forming the opening syllables first of one word then of the other over and over until he had said it he did not know Which word he was going to say no he said finally you did well to tell me said O'Brien it is necessary for us to know everything he turned himself toward Julia and added

in a voice with somewhat more expression in it you do understand that even if he survives it maybe as a different person we may be obliged to give him a new identity his face his movements shape of His hands the color of his hair even his voice would be different and you yourself might have become a different person our surgeons can alter people beyond recognition sometimes it is necessary sometimes we even amputate a limb Winston could not help snatching another side long glance at Martin's Mongolian face there were no scars that he could see Julia

had turned a shade paler so that her freckles were showing but she faced O'Brien boldly she murmured something that seemed to be ascent GERD then that is settled there was a silver box of cigarettes on the table with a rather absent-minded Heir O'Brien pushed them toward the others took one himself then stood up and began to Pace Slowly to and fro as though he could think better standing they were very good cigarettes very thick and well packed with an unfamiliar silkness in the paper O'Brien looked at his wristwatch again I'd better go back to your

pantry Martin he said I shall switch on in a quarter of an hour take a good look at these comrades faces before you go you will be seeing them again I may not exactly as they are done at the front door the little man's dark eyes flickered over their faces there was not a trace of friendliness in its manner he was memorizing their appearance but he felt no interest in them or appeared to feel none it occurred to Winston that a synthetic face was perhaps incapable of changing its expression Without speaking or giving any kind

of salutation Martin went out closing the door silently behind him O'Brien was strolling up and down one hand in the pocket of his black overalls the other holding his cigarette you understand he said that you will be fighting in the dark you will always be in the dark you will receive orders and you will obey them without knowing why later I shall send you a book from which You will learn the true nature of the society we live in and the strategy by which we shall destroy it when you have read the book you will

be full members of the Brotherhood but between the general aims that we are fighting for and the immediate tasks of the moment you will never know anything I tell you that the Brotherhood exists but I cannot tell you whether it numbers 100 members or 10 million from your personal knowledge you will Never be able to say that it numbers even as many as a dozen you will have three or four contacts who will be renewed from time to time as they disappear as this was your first Contact it will be preserved when you receive orders

they will come from me if we find it necessary to communicate with you it will be through Martin when you are finally caught You will confess that is unavoidable but you will have very little to confess other than your own actions you will not be able to portray more than a handful of unimportant people probably you will not even betray me by that time I may be dead or I shall become a different person with a different face he continued to move to and fro over the soft carpet In spite of the balkaness of his

body there was a remarkable Grace in his movements it came out even in the gesture with which he thrust her hand into his pocket or manipulated a cigarette more even than of strength he gave an impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged by irony however much in Earnest he might be he had nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic when he spoke Of murder suicide venereal disease amputated Limbs and altered faces it was with a faint air of persiflage this is unavoidable his voice seemed to say this is what we've got to

do unflinchingly but this is not what we should be doing when life is worth living again a wave of admiration almost of worship flowed out from Winston toward O'Brien for the moment he had forgotten the Shadowy figure of Goldstein when you looked at O'Brien's powerful shoulders and his blunt featured face so ugly and yet so civilized it was impossible to believe that he could be defeated there was no stratagem that he was not equal to no danger that he could not foresee even Julia seemed to be impressed she had let her cigarette go out and

was listening intently O'Brien went on you all have heard rumors of the Existence of the Brotherhood no doubt you have formed your own picture of it you've imagined probably a huge underworld of conspirators meeting secretly in sellers scribbling messages on walls recognizing one another by code words or by special movements of the hand nothing of the kind exists the members of the Brotherhood have no way of recognizing one another and it is impossible for any one member to be Aware of the identity of more than the very few others Goldstein himself if he fell into

the hands of the thought police could not give them a complete list of members or any information that would lead them to a complete list no such list exists the Brotherhood cannot be wiped out because it is not an organization in the ordinary sense nothing holds it together except an idea which is indestructible You will never have anything to sustain you except the idea you will get no comradeship and no encouragement when finally you are caught you will get no help will you never help our members at most when it is absolutely necessary that someone

should be silenced we are occasionally able to smuggle a razor blade into a prisoner cell you will have to get used to living Without results and without hope you will work for a while you will be caught you will confess and then you will die those are the only results that you will ever see there is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime we are the Dead our only true life is in the future we shall take part in it as handfuls of Dust and splinters of bone but how far

away that future may be there is no knowing might be a thousand years at present nothing is possible except to extend the area of Sanity little by little we cannot act collectively we can only spread our knowledge outward from Individual to individual generation after generation in the face of the thought police there is no other way He halted and looked for the third time at his wristwatch it's almost time for you to leave comrade he said to Julia wait the decanter is still half full he filled the glasses and raised his own Glass by the

stem what shall it be this time he said still with the same faint suggestion of irony to the confusion of the thought police To the death of Big Brother through Humanity to the Future to the Past said Winston the past is more important agreed O'Brien Gravely they emptied their glasses and a moment later Julia stood up to go O'Brien took a small box from the top of the cabinet and handed her a flat white tablet which he told her to place on her tongue It was important he said not to go out smelling of wine

the lift attendants were very observant as soon as the door had shut behind her he appeared to forget her existence he took another peso to up and down then stopped there are details to be settled he said I assume that you have a hiding place of some kind Winston explained about the room of Mr chanton shop That will do for the moment later we will arrange something else for you it's important to change one's Hiding Place frequently meanwhile I shall send you a copy of the book even O'Brien Winston noticed seemed to pronounce the words

as though they were in italics goldstein's book you understand as soon as possible it may be some days before I can get Hold of one there are not many in existence as you can imagine the thought police hunts them down and destroys them almost as fast as we can produce them it makes very little difference the book is indestructible if the last copy were gone we could reproduce it almost word for word do you carry a briefcase to work with you heard it as a rule yes what is it like Very shabby with two straps

back two straps for the shabby good one day in The Fairly near future I cannot give a date one of the messages among your mornings work will contain a misprinted word and you will have to ask for a repeat on the following day you will go to work without your briefcase at some time during the day in the street a man will touch you on the arm and say I think you have dropped your briefcase The one he gives you will contain a copy of goldstein's book you will return it within 14 days they were

silent for a moment there are a couple of minutes before you need go said O'Brien we shall meet again if we do meet again Winston looked up at him in the place where there is no Darkness he said hesitantly O'Brien nodded without appearance of surprise In the place where there is no Darkness he said as though he had recognized the illusion and in the meantime is there anything that you wish to say before you leave any message any question Winston thought there did not seem to be any further question that he wanted to ask still

less did he feel any impulse to utter high-sounding generalities instead of anything directly connected With O'Brien or the Brotherhood they came into his mind a sort of composite picture of the dark bedroom where his mother had spent her last days and the little room over Mr chanton shop and the glass paperweight and the steel engraving in its Rosewood frame almost at random he said did you ever happen to hear an old rhyme that begins oranges and lemons say the bells of Saint Clemens again O'Brien nodded With a sort of grave courtesy he completed the stanza

oranges and lemons say the bells of Saint Clements you owe me three farthings say the bells of Saint Martins when will you pay me say the bells of Old Bailey When I Grow Rich say the bells of shoreditch you knew the last line said Winston yes I knew the last line and now I'm afraid it is time for you to Go but wait you'd better let me give you one of these tablets as Winston stood up O'Brien held out a hand his powerful grip crushed the bones of Winston's Palm at the door Winston looked back

but O'Brien seemed already to be in process of putting him out of mind he was waiting with his hand on the switch that controlled the telescreen Beyond him Winston could see the writing table with its green shaded lamp and the Speak right and the wire baskets deep Laden with papers the incident was closed within 30 seconds it occurred to him O'Brien will be back at his interrupted and important work on behalf of the party chapter 9 Winston was gelatinous with fatigue gelatinous was the right word it had come into his head spontaneously his body seemed

to have not only the Weakness of a jelly but its translucency he felt that if he held up his hand he would be able to see the light through it all the blood and lymph had been drained out of him by an enormous debauch of work leaving an air frail structure of nerves bones and skin all Sensations seem to be magnified his overalls shredded his shoulders the pavement tickled his feet even the opening and closing of a hand was an effort that made his joints creak He had worked more than 90 hours in five days

so at everyone else in the ministry now it was all over and he had literally nothing to do no party work of any description until tomorrow morning he could spend six hours in the hiding place and another nine in his own bed slowly and Mild afternoon sunshine he walked up a dingy Street in the direction of Mr charrington's shop keeping one eye open for the patrols but Irrationally convinced that this afternoon there was no danger of anyone interfering with him the heavy briefcase that he was carrying bumped against his knees at each step sending a

tingling sensation up and down the skin of his leg inside it was the book which he him now in his possession for six days and are not yet opened nor even looked at on the sixth day of hate week after the Processions speeches the shouting the singing the banners the posters the films the wax works the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets the of marching feet the grinding of the caterpillars of Tanks the Roar of Mast Plains the booming of guns after six days of this when the Great orgasm was quivering to its Climax

and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such a delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2000 Eurasian war criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia Oceania was at war with East Asia Eurasia was an ally there was of course no admission that any change had taken place merely it became known with extreme suddenness and Everywhere at

once that East Asia and not Eurasia was the enemy Winston was taking part in a demonstration in one of the central London squares at the moment when it happened it was night and the white faces and the Scarlet banners were luridly floodlit the square was packed with several thousand people including a block of about a thousand school children in the uniform of the spies on a Scarlet draped platform an orator of The inner party a small lean man with disproportionately long arms and a large bald skull over which a few lanked locks straggled was haranguing

the crowd a little Rumpelstiltskin figure contorted with hatred he gripped the neck of the microphone with one hand while the other enormous at the end of a bony arm clawed the air menacingly above his head his voice made metallic by the amplifiers boomed forth an endless catalog of atrocities massacres deportations Lootings rapings torture of prisoners bombings of civilians lying propaganda unjust aggressions broken treaties it was almost impossible to listen to him without being first convinced and then maddened and every few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and the voice of the speaker was

drowned by a wild beast-like roaring that Rose uncontrollably from thousands of throats the most Savage Hills of all came from the school children the speech had been Proceeding for perhaps 20 minutes when a messenger hurried onto the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker's hand he unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech nothing altered in his voice or manner or in the content of what he was saying but suddenly the names were different without words said a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd Oceania was at war with East

Asia the next moment there was a tremendous Commotion the banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong quite half of them had the wrong faces on them it was sabotage the Agents of Goldstein had been at work there was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot the spa eyes perform Prejudice of activity in clamoring over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys but within two or three minutes It was all over the orator still gripping the neck of

the microphone his shoulders hunched forward his freehand clawing at the air had gone straight on with his speech one minute more and the feral Roars of Rage were again bursting from the crowd the hate continued exactly as before except that the target had been changed the thing that impressed Winston in looking back was that the speaker had switched from one line to the other Actually in mid sentence not only without a pause but without even breaking the syntax but at the moment he had other things to preoccupy him it was during the moment of disorder

while the posters were being torn down that a man whose face he did not see had tapped him on the shoulder and said excuse me I think you've dropped your briefcase he took the briefcase abstractly without speaking He knew that it would be days before he had an opportunity to look inside it the instant that the demonstration was over he went straight to the ministry of truth though the time was now nearly 23 hours the entire staff of the ministry are done likewise the order is already issuing from the telescreens recalling them to their posts

were hardly necessary Oceania was at war with East Asia Oceania had always been at war with East Asia a large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete reports and records of all kinds newspapers books pamphlets films soundtracks photographs all had to be rectified at lightning speed although no directive was ever issued it was known that the chiefs of the department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia or the alliance with East Asia should Remain in existence anywhere the work was overwhelming all the more so because

the processes that it involved could not be called by their true names everyone in the records department worked 18 hours in the 24 with two three-hour snatches of sleep mattresses were brought up from the sellers and pitched all over the corridors meals consisted of sandwiches and victory coffee wheeled round on trolleys by attendance from the canteen Each time that Winston broke off for one of his spells of sleep he tried to leave his desk clear of work and each time that he crawled back sticky eyed and aching he was to find that another shower of

paper cylinders had covered the desk like a snow drift half-bearing the speak right and overflowing onto the floor so that the first job was always to stack them into a neat enough pile to give him room to work one was worst of all was that the work Was by no means purely mechanical often it was enough merely to substitute one name for another but any detailed reports of events demanded care and Imagination even the geographical knowledge that one needed in transferring the war from one part of the world to another was considerable by the third

day his eyes ached unbearably and his spectacles needed wiping every few minutes it was like struggling with some Crushing physical task something which one had the right to refuse and which one was nevertheless neurotically anxious to accomplish insofar as he had time to remember it he was not troubled by the fact that every word he murmured into the speak right every stroke of his ink pencil was a deliberate lie he was as anxious as anyone else in the department that the forgery should be perfect On the morning of the sixth day the dribble of cylinders

slowed down for as much as half an hour nothing came out of the tube then one more cylinder then nothing everywhere at about the same time the work was easing off a deep and as it were secret Psy went through the department a mighty deed which could never be mentioned had been achieved it was now impossible for any human being to prove By documentary evidence that the war with Eurasia had ever happened at 1200 it was unexpectedly announced that all workers in the ministry were free till tomorrow morning Winston still carrying the briefcase containing the

book which had remained between his feet while he worked and under his body while he slept went home shaved himself and almost fell asleep in his bath although the water was barely more than tepid With a sort of voluptuous creaking in his joints he climbed the stair above Mr charrington's shop he was tired but not sleepy any longer he opened the window lit the dirty little oil stove and put on a pan of water for coffee Julia would arrive presently meanwhile there was the book he sat down in the sluttish armchair and undid the straps

of the briefcase A heavy black volume amateurously bound with no name or title on the cover the print also looks slightly irregular the pages were worn at the edges and fell apart easily as though the book had passed through many hands the inscription on the title page ran the theory and practice of oligarchical collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein Winston began reading chapter one ignorance is strength Throughout recorded time and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age there have been three kinds of people in the world the high the middle and the low they have been

subdivided in many ways they have borne countless different names and their relative numbers as well as their attitude toward one another have varied from age to age but the essential structure of society has never altered even after enormous upheavals and Seemingly irrevocable changes the same pattern has always reasserted itself just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium however far it is pushed one way or the other the aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable Winston stopped reading chiefly in order to appreciate the fact that he was reading in comfort and safety he was

alone no telescreen no ear at the keyhole no nervous impulse to glance Over his shoulder or cover the page with his hand the Sweet Summer air played against his cheek from somewhere far away that floated the faint chants of children in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice of the clock he settled deeper into the armchair and put his feet up on the fender it was Bliss it was eternity Suddenly as one sometimes does with the book of which one knows that one will ultimately read and re-read every word he opened

it at a different place and found himself at the third chapter he went on reading chapter 3 war is peace the splitting up of the world into three great superstates was an event which could be and indeed was foreseen before the middle of the 20th century with the absorption of Europe by Russia And the British Empire by the United States two of the three existing Powers Eurasia and Oceania were already effectively in being the third East Asia Only emerged as a distinct unit after another decade of confused fighting the Frontiers between the three superstates are

in some places arbitrary and in others they fluctuate according to the fortunes of War but in general they follow geographical lines Eurasia comprises the whole of the Northern part of the European and Asiatic landness from Portugal to the Bering Strait Oceania comprises the Americas the Atlantic Islands including the British Isles australasia and the southern portion of Africa East Asia smaller than the others and with a less definite Western frontier comprises China and the countries to the south of it the Japanese islands and at large but fluctuating portion of Manchuria Mongolia and Tibet In one combination

or another these three superstates are permanently at War and have been so for the past 25 years War however is no longer the desperate annihilating struggle that it was in the early Decades of the 20th century it is a Warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference this is not to say that either the conduct of War or the prevailing attitude toward it has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous on the contrary War hysteria is continuous

and Universal in all countries and such acts as raping looting the slaughter of children the reduction of whole populations to slavery and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to Boiling and burying alive are looked upon as normal and when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy meritorious But in a physical sense War involves very small numbers of people mostly highly trained Specialists and causes comparatively few casualties the fighting when there is any takes place on the vague Frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at all around the floating

fortresses which guard strategic spots on the ceilings in the centers of civilization War means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods and the occasional Crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths War has in fact changed its character more exactly the reasons for which war is waged have changed in their order of importance motives which were already present to some small extent in the great Wars of the early 20th century have now become dominant and are consciously recognized and acted upon to understand the nature of the present War

for in spite of the regrouping which Occurs every few years it is always the same War one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive none of the three super States could be definitely conquered even by the other two in combination they are too evenly matched and in their natural defenses are too formidable Eurasia is protected by its vast land spaces Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific East Asia by the fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants Secondly there is no longer in a material sense

anything to fight about with the establishment of self-contained economies in which production and consumption are geared to one another the Scramble for markets which was a main cause of previous Wars has come to an end while the competition for raw materials is no longer a matter of life and death in any case each of the three super States is so vast that it can obtain Almost all of the materials that it needs within its own boundaries insofar as the war has a direct economic effect it is a war for labor power between the frontiers of

the super States and not permanently in the possession of any of them their lies are rough quadrilateral with its Corners at Tangier brazzaville Darwin and Hong Kong containing within it about a fifth of the population of the Earth it is for the possession of these Thickly populated regions and of the northern ice cap that the three powers are constantly struggling in practice no one power ever controls the whole of the disputed area portions of it are constantly changing hands and it is the chance of seizing this or that fragment by a sudden stroke of treachery

that dictates the endless changes of alignment all of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals and some of them yield Important vegetable products such as rubber which in colder climates it is necessary to synthesize by comparatively expensive methods but above all they contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labor whichever power controls equatorial Africa or the countries of the Middle East or Southern India or the Indonesian archipelago disposes of the bodies of scores of hundreds of millions of ill paid and hard-working coolies the inhabitants of these areas reduced More or less openly to the status of slaves

passed continually from conqueror to conqueror and are expended like so much coal or oil in the race to turn out more almonds to capture more territory to control more labor power to turn out more armaments to capture more territory and so on indefinitely it should be noted that the fighting never really moves beyond the edges of the disputed areas the frontiers of Eurasia flow back and Forth between the Basin of the Congo and the northern shore of the Mediterranean the islands of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific are constantly being captured and recaptured by Oceania

or by East Asia in Mongolia the dividing line between Eurasia and East Asia is never stable around the pole all three powers lay claims to enormous territories which in fact are largely uninhabited and unexplored but the balance of power always remains roughly even and the Territory which forms the heartland of each super State always remains inviolate moreover the labor of the exploited peoples around the equator is not really necessary to the world's economy they add nothing to the wealth of the world since whatever they produce is used for purposes of War and the object of

waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage Another War by their labor the slave populations allow the tempo of Continuous Warfare to be speeded up but if they did not exist the structure of world society and the process by which it maintains itself would not be essentially different the primary aim of modern warfare in accordance with the principles of doublethink this aims simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the inner party is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of

Living ever since the end of the 19th century the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption Goods has been latent in industrial society at present when few human beings even have enough to eat this problem is obviously not urgent and it might not have become so even if no artificial process of Destruction had been at work the world of today is it bare hungry dilapidated Place compared with a world That existed before 1914 and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward in

the early 20th century the vision of a future Society unbelievably Rich leisured orderly and efficient a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and Snow White concrete was part of the consciousness of nearly every illiterate person Science and Technology were developing At a prodigious speed and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing this failed to happen partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions partly because scientific and Technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought which could not survive in a strictly regimented Society as

a whole the world is more primitive Today than it was 50 years ago certain backward areas have advanced and various devices always in some way connected with Warfare and police Espionage have been developed but experiment and invention have largely stopped and the ravages of the atomic war of the 1950s have never been fully repaired nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there from the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all Thinking people that the need for human drudgery and therefore to a great extent for human inequality had

disappeared if the machine were used deliberately for that end Hunger overwork dirt literacy and disease could be eliminated within a few generations and in fact without being used for any such purpose but by a sort of automatic process by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute the machine did raise the living standards of the Average human being very greatly over a period of about 50 years at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries but it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction indeed

in some sense was the destruction of a hierarchical society in a world in which everyone works short hours had enough to eat lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator and possessed a motor car or even an Airplane the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared if it once became General wealth would confer no distinction it was possible no doubt to imagine a society in which wealth in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries should be evenly distributed while power remained in the hands of a small

privileged cast but in practice such a society could not long remain stable for if Leisure and Security were enjoyed by all alike the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves and when once they had done this they would soon or later realize that the privileged minority had no function and they would sweep it away in the long run a hierarchical society was only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance to return to the agricultural past as Some thinkers about the beginning

of the 20th century dreamed of doing was not a practical solution it conflicted with the tendency toward mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the whole world and moreover any country which remained industrially backward was helpless in a military sense and was bound to be dominated directly or indirectly by its more advanced rivals Norm was it a satisfactory solution to Keep the masses in poverty by restricting the output of goods this happened to a great extent during the Final Phase of capitalism roughly between 1920 and 1940. the economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate

land went out of cultivation Capital Equipment was not added to Great blanks of the population were prevented from working and kept half Alive by state charity but this too entailed military weakness and since the privations it Inflicted were obviously unnecessary it made opposition inevitable the problem was how to keep the wheels of Industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world Goods must be produced but they need not be distributed and in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous Warfare the essential Act of war is destruction not necessarily of human lives

but of the products of human labor War is a way of shattering to pieces or pouring into the stratosphere or sinking in the depths of the sea materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and hence in the long run too intelligent even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending Labor power without producing anything that can be consumed the floating Fortress for example has locked up in it The labor that would build several hundred cargo ships ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete

never having brought any material benefit to anybody and with further enormous labors another floating Fortress is built in principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population in practice the needs of the population are always underestimated with the Result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life but this is looked on as an advantage it is deliberate policy to keep even the favored groups somewhere near the brink of hardship because a general state of scarcity increases

the importance of small Privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another by the standards of the early 20th century even a member of the inner party Lives an austere laborious kind of Life nevertheless the few luxuries that he does enjoy is large well-appointed flat the better texture of his clothes the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco is two or three servants his private motor car or helicopter set him in a different world from a member of the outer party and the members of the outer party have a similar advantage

in comparison with a submerged masses whom he called the probes The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city where the possession of a lump of horse flesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty and at the same time the consciousness of being at War and therefore in danger makes the handing over of all power to a small caste seeing the natural unavoidable condition of survival War it will be seen not only accomplishes the necessary destruction but accomplishes it in a psychologically Acceptable way in principle it would be quite simple to waste the Surplus labor

of the World by building temples and Pyramids by digging holes and filling them up again or even producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them but this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society what is concerned here is not the morale of the masses whose attitude is Unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work but the morale of the party itself even the humbest party member is expected to be competent industrious and even intelligent within narrow limits but it is also necessary that he

should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear hatred adulation and all geostic Triumph in other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to A state of War it does not matter whether the war is actually happening and since no decisive Victory is possible it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly all that is needed is that a state of War should exist the splitting of the intelligence which the party requires of its members and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war

is now almost Universal but the higher up the rank one Goes the more marked it becomes it is precisely in the inner party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest in his capacity as an administrator it is often necessary for a member of the inner party to know that this or that item of War news is untruthful and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones But such knowledge is easily neutralized by the

technique of double think meanwhile no inner party member waivers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real and that it is bound to end victoriously with Oceania the Undisputed Master of the entire world all members of the inner party believe in this coming Conquest as an article of faith it is to be achieved either by gradually acquiring more and more Territory and so building up an overwhelming preponderance of power or by the discovery of some new and unanswerable weapon the search for new weapons continues unseatingly and it is one of the

very few remaining activities in which the inventive or speculative type of mind can find any Outlet in Oceania at the present day science in the old sense has almost ceased to exist in new speak there is no word for Science the empirical method of thought on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded is opposed to the most fundamental principles of insock and even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human Liberty in all the useful Arts the world is either standing still or

going backwards the fields are cultivated with horse plows while books are written by Machinery but in matters of vital importance meaning in effect war and police Espionage the empirical approach is still encouraged or at least tolerated the two aims of the party are to conquer the whole surface of the Earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought there are therefore two great problems which the party is concerned to solve one is how to discover against his will What another human being is thinking and the other is how to kill several

hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand insofar as scientific research still continues this is its subject matter the scientist of today is either a mixture of psychologist and Inquisitor studying with extraordinary minuteness the meaning of facial expression gestures and tones of voice and testing the truth-producing effects of drugs Shock therapy hypnosis and physical torture or he is a chemist physicist or biologist concerned only with such branches of his special subject as are relevant to the taking of life in the vast laborities of the ministry of peace and in the experimental stations

hidden in the Brazilian forests or in the Australian desert or on the Lost Islands of the Antarctic the teams of experts are indefatically at work some are concerned simply with planning The logistics of future Wars others devise larger and larger rocket bombs more and more powerful explosives and more and more impenetrable armor plating others search for new and deadlier gases or for soluble poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole continents or for breeds of disease germs immunized against all possible antibodies others strive to produce a vehicle that

shall bore its way under The soil like a submarine under the water or an airplane as independent of its base as a sailing ship others explore even remote possibilities such as focusing the sun's Rays through lenses suspended thousands of kilometers away in space all producing artificial earthquakes and tidal waves by tapping the heat of the Earth's center but none of these projects ever comes anywhere near realization and none of the three superstates ever gains a Significant lead on the others what is more remarkable is that all three powers already possess in the atomic bomb a

weapon far more powerful than any that their present researchers are likely to discover although the party according to its habit claims the invention for itself atomic bombs first appeared as early as the 1940s and were first used on a large scale about 10 years later at that time some hundreds of bombs were Dropped on Industrial centers chiefly in European Russia Western Europe and North America the effect was to convince the ruling groups of all countries that a few more atomic bombs would mean the end of organized society and hence of their own power thereafter although

no formal agreement was ever made or hinted at no more bombs were dropped all three powers merely continue to produce atomic bombs and store them up against the decisive Opportunity which they all believe will come sooner or later and meanwhile The Art of War has remained almost stationary for 30 or 40 years helicopters are more used than they were formally bombing planes have been largely superseded by self-propelled projectiles and the fragile movable Battleship has given way to the almost Unsinkable floating Fortress but otherwise there has been little Development the tank the submarine the torpedo the

machine gun even the rifle and the Hand Grenade are still in use and in spite of the Endless Slaughters reported in the press and on the tele screens the desperate battles of earlier Wars in which thousands or even millions of men were often killed in a few weeks have never been repeated none of the three superstates ever attempts any maneuver which involves the Risk of serious defeat when any large operation is undertaken it is usually a surprise attack against an ally the strategy that all three powers are following or pretend to themselves that they are

following is the same the plan is by a combination of fighting bargaining and well-timed strokes of trenchery to acquire a ring of bases completely encircling one or other of the Rival States and then to sign a pact of Friendship with that rival and remain On Peaceful terms for so many years as to allow suspicion to sleep during this time Rockets loaded with atomic bombs can be assembled at all the Strategic spots finally they will all be fired simultaneously with effects so devastating as to make retaliation impossible it will then be time to sign a pact

of Friendship with the remaining world power in preparation for another attack this scheme it is hardly necessary to Say is a mere Daydream impossible of realization moreover no fighting ever occurs except in the disputed areas around the equator and the pole no invasion of enemy territory is ever undertaken this explains the fact that in some places the Frontiers between the super states are arbitrary Eurasia for example could easily conquer the British Isles which are geographically part of Europe or on the other hand it would be Possible for Oceania to push its Frontiers to the Rhine

or even to the Vistula but this would violate the principle followed on all sides though never formulated of cultural integrity if Oceania were to conquer the areas that used once to be known as France and Germany it would be necessary either to exterminate the inhabitants a task of great physical difficulty or to assimilate a population of about a hundred million people who so far as Technical development goes are roughly on the oceanic level the problem is the same for all three super states it is absolutely necessary to their structure that there should be no contact

with foreigners except to a limited extent with war prisoners and colored slaves even the official Ally of the moment is always regarded with the darkest suspicion War prisoners apart the average citizen Of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or East Asia and he has forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages if he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what has been told about them is lies the sealed World in which he lives will be broken and the fear hatred and

self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate it is Therefore realized on all sides that however often Persia or Egypt or Java or Salon may change hands the main Frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs under this lies effect never mentioned aloud but tacitly understood and acted upon namely that the conditions of life in all three super states are very much the same in Oceania the prevailing philosophy is Called in Eurasia it is called neo-boneshavism and in East Asia it's called by a Chinese name usually translated as death worship but perhaps better rendered

as obliteration of the self the citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenants of the other two philosophies but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and Common Sense Actually the three philosophies are barely distinguishable and the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure the same worship of a semi-divine leader the same economy existing by and for continuous Warfare it follows that the three super States not only cannot conquer one another but would gain no Advantage by doing

so on the contrary so long as they remain in Conflict they prop one another up like three sheaves of corn and as usual the ruling groups of all three powers are simultaneously aware and unaware of what they are doing their lives are dedicated to World Conquest but they also know that it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and without victory meanwhile the fact that there is no danger of Conquest makes possible the denial of reality which is the special Feature of insok and its rival systems of thought here it is necessary to repeat

what has been said earlier that by becoming continuous War has fundamentally changed its character in past ages a war almost by definition was something that sooner or later came to an end usually in unmistakable Victory or defeat in the past also war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with Physical reality all rulers of all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency so long as defeat meant the

loss of Independence or some other result generally held to be undesirable the precautions against defeat had to be serious physical facts could not be ignored in Philosophy or religion or ethics or politics two and two might make five but when one was designing a gun or an airplane they had to make four inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later and the struggle for efficiency was inimicable to Illusions moreover to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the

past Newspapers and history books were of course always colored and biased but falsification of the kind that is practiced today would have been impossible war was a sure Safeguard of sanity and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards while Wars could be won or lost no ruling class could be completely irresponsible but when War becomes literally Continuous it also ceases to be dangerous when war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity technical progress can see and the most powerable facts can be denied

or disregarded as we have seen researchers that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of War but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming and their failure to show results is not important efficiency even military efficiency is No longer needed nothing is efficient in Oceania except the thought police since each of the three super States is unconquerable each is in effect a separate Universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practiced reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life the need to eat and drink to

get shelter and clothing to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top story windows and the like Between life and death and between physical pleasure and physical pain there is still a distinction but that is all cut off from contact with the outer world and with the past the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down the rulers of such a state are absolute as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be they're obliged to prevent their Followers from starving

to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient and they're obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals but once that minimum is achieved they can twist reality into whatever shape they choose the war therefore if we judge it by the standards of previous Wars is merely an imposture it's like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are Incapable of hurting one another though it is unreal it is not meaningless it eats up the surplus of consumable goods and it helps

to preserve a special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs War it will be seen is now a purely internal Affair in the past the ruling groups of all countries although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war did fight against one another and The Victor always plundered the vanquished in our own day they are not fighting against one another at all the war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory but to keep

the structure of society intact the very Word War therefore has become misleading it would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous War has ceased to exist The Peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic age and the early 20th century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different the effect would be much the same if the three superstates instead of fighting one another should agree to Live In Perpetual peace each inviolate within its own boundaries for in that case each would still be a self-contained Universe freed forever from

the sobering Influence of external Danger a piece that was truly permanent will be the same as a permanent War this although the vast majority of party members understand it only in a shallower sense is the inner meaning of the party slogan war is peace Winston stopped reading for a moment somewhere in the remote distance a rocket bomb thundered the Blissful feeling of being alone with the Forbidden book in a room with no Telescreen had not worn off Solitude and safety were physical Sensations mixed up somehow with the tiredness of his body the softness of the

chair the touch of the faint Breeze from the window that played upon his cheek the book fascinated him or more exactly it reassured him in a sense it told him nothing that was new but that was part of the attraction it said what he would have said if it Had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order it was the product of a mind similar to his own but enormously more powerful more systematic less fear-ridden the best books he perceived are those that tell you what you already know he had just returned

back to chapter one when he heard Julia's footstep on the stair and started out of his chair to meet her she dumped her Brown tool bag on the Floor and flung herself into his arms it was more than a week since they'd seen one another I've got the book he said as they disentangled themselves oh you've got it good she said without much interest and almost immediately knelt down beside the oil stove to make the coffee they did not return to the subject until they've been in bed for half an hour the evening was just

cool enough to make it Worthwhile to pull up the counterpane From Below came The Familiar sound of singing and the scrape of boots on the flagstones the brawny red-armed woman whom Winston had seen there on his first visit was almost a fixture in the yard there seemed to be no hour of daylight when she was not marching to and fro between the wash tub and line ultimately ganging herself with clothes pegs and breaking forth into Lusty song Julia had settled down on her side and seemed to be already on the point of falling asleep he

reached out for the book which was lying on the floor and sat up against the Bed Head we must read it he said you too all members of the Brotherhood have to read it you read it she said with her eyes shut read it aloud that's the best way then you can explain it to me as you go The clock's hands said six meaning eighteen they had three or four hours ahead of them he prompt the book against his knees and began reading chapter one ignorance is strength throughout recorded time and probably since the end

of the Neolithic Age there have been three kinds of people in the world the high the middle and the low They've been subdivided in many ways they have borne countless different names and their relative numbers as well as their attitude toward one another have varied from age to age but the essential structure of society has never altered even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes the same pattern has always reasserted itself just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium however far it is pushed one way or the Other Julia are you awake said Winston

yes my love I'm listening go on it's marvelous he continued reading the aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable the aim of the high is to remain where they are the aim of the middle is to change places with the high the aim of the low when they have a name for it is an abiding characteristic of the low but They are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal thus

throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again for long periods the high seems to be securely in power but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves Or their capacity to govern efficiently or both they are then overthrown by the middle who enlists the low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice as soon as they have reached their objective the middle thrusts the low back into the old position of servitude and

themselves become the high presently a new middle group splits off from one of the other groups or from Both of them and the struggle begins over again of the three groups only the low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims it would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind even today in a period of decline the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago but no advance in wealth no softening of manners no reform or Revolution has ever

brought human equality a millimeter nearer from the point of view of the low no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters by the late 19th century the recurrence of this pattern had become obvious to many Observers there then arose schools of thinkers who interpreted history as a cyclical process and claimed to show that Inequality was the unalterable law of human life this doctrine of course had always had its adherence but in the manner in which it was now put forward there was a significant change in the

past the need for a hierarchical form of society had been the doctrine specifically of the high it had been preached by Kings and Aristocrats and by the priests lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them and it had Generally been softened by Promises of compensation in an imaginary world beyond the grave the middle so long as it was struggling for power had always made use of such terms as freedom justice and fraternity now however the concept of human Brotherhood began to be assailed by people who were not yet in positions of command but merely

hope to be so before long in the past the middle had made Revolutions under the banner of equality and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown the new middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny beforehand socialism a theory which appeared in the early 19th century and was the last link in a Chain of Thought stretching back to the slave rebellions of antiquity was still deeply infected by the utopianism of past ages but in each variant of socialism that appeared from about 1900 Onwards the aim of establishing Liberty and

equality was more and more openly abandoned the new movements which appeared in the middle years of the century in Oceania Neil bolshevism in Eurasia death worship as it is commonly called in East Asia had the conscious aim of perpetuating unfreedom and inequality these new movements of course grew out of the old ones and tended to keep their names and pay lip service to their Ideology but the purpose of all of them was to arrest progress and freeze history at a chosen Moment The Familiar pendulum swing was to happen once more and then stop as usual

the high were to be turned out by the middle who would then become the high but this time by conscious strategy the high would be able to maintain their position permanently the new doctrines arose partly because of the accumulation of historical Knowledge and the growth of the historical sense which had hardly existed before the 19th century the cyclical movement of History was now intelligible or appeared to be so and if it was intelligible then it was alterable but the principle underlying cause was that as early as the beginning of the 20th century human equality had

become technically possible it was still true that men were not equal in their native talents and that Functions had to be specialized in ways that favored some individuals against others but there was no longer any real need for class distinctions or for large differences of wealth in earlier ages class distinctions had been not only inevitable but desirable inequality was the price of civilization with the development of machine production however the case was altered even if it was still necessary for human beings to do different kinds of work it Was no longer necessary for them to

live at different social or economic levels therefore from the point of view of the new groups who were on the point of seizing power human equality was no longer an ideal to be striven after but a danger to be averted in more primitive ages when a just and peaceful Society was in fact not possible it had been fairly easy to believe in it the idea of an Earthly Paradise in which men should live Together in a state of Brotherhood without laws and without brutal labor had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years and this

Vision had had a certain hold even on the groups who actually profited by each historic change The Heirs of the French English and American Revolutions had partly believed in their own phrases about the Rights of Man freedom of speech equality before the law and the like and had even Allowed their conduct to be influenced by them to some extent but by the fourth decade of the 20th century all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian the Earthly Paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when it became realizable every new political Theory by whatever

name it called itself LED back to hierarchy and regimentation and in the general hardening of Outlook that set in Around about 1930 practices which have been long abandoned in some cases for hundreds of years imprisonment without trial no use of War prisoners as slaves public executions torture to extract confessions the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations not only became common again but were tolerated and even defended by people who consider themselves enlightened and Progressive it was only after a decade of national Wars Civil Wars revolutions and counter-revolutions in all parts of the

world that inksak and its Rivals emerged as fully worked out political theories but they had been foreshadowed by the various systems generally called totalitarian which had appeared earlier in the century and the main outlines of the world which would emerge from the prevailing chaos had long been obvious what kind of people would control this world had been equally obvious the new Aristocracy was made up for the most part by bureaucrats scientists technicians Trade union organizers publicity experts sociologists teachers journalists and professional politicians these people whose Origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper

grades of the working class had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of Monopoly industry and centralized government as compared with their opposite numbers In past ages they were less avaricious less tempted by luxury hungrier for Pure power and above all more conscious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition this last difference was cardinal by comparison with that existing today all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient the ruling groups were always infected to some extent by liberal ideas and were content to leave Loose Ends everywhere To

regard only the overt act and to be uninterested in what their subjects were thinking even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was torrent by modern standards part of the reason for this was that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance the invention of print however made it easier to manipulate public opinion and the film and the radio carried the process further with The development of television and the technical Advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument private life came to an

end every citizen or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching could be kept for 24 hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda with all other channels of communication closed the possibility of enforcing not only Complete obedience to the will of the state but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects now existed for the first time after the revolutionary period of the 50s and 60s Society regrouped itself as always into high middle and low but the new High group unlike all its forerunners did not

act upon Instinct but knew what was needed to safeguard its position it had long been realized that the only Secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly the so-called abolition of private property which took place in the middle years of the century meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before but with this difference that the new owners were a group instead of a mass of individuals individually no member of The party owns anything except Petty personal belongings collectively the party owns

everything in Oceania because it controls everything and disposes of the products as it thinks fit in the Years following the revolution it was able to step into this commanding position almost unopposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization it had always been assumed that if the Capitalist class were expropriated socialism must follow and unquestionably the capitalists had been expropriated factories mines land houses transport everything had been taken away from them and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property insog which grew out of

the earlier socialist movement and inherited its phraseology has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with The result foreseen and intended beforehand that economic inequality has been made permanent but the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this there are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from Power either it is conquered from without or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt or it allows a strong and discontented middle group to come into being or it loses its own Self-confidence and willingness to

govern these causes do not operate singly and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree a ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself after the middle of the present Century the first danger had in reality Disappeared each of the three powers which now divide the world is in fact unconquerable and could only become conquerable through slow demographic changes which a government with wide powers can easily avert the second danger also is only

a theoretical one the masses never Revolt of their own accord and they never Revolt merely because they are oppressed indeed so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison they Never even become aware that they are oppressed the recurrent economic crises of Past Times were totally unnecessary and are not now permitted to happen but are there and equally large dislocations can and do happen without having political results because there is no way in which discontent can become articulate as for the problem of overproduction which has been latent in our society since the

development of machine Technique it is solved by the device of continuous Warfare see chapter 3. which is also useful in keying up public morale to the necessary pitch from the point of view of our present rule is therefore the only genuine dangers are the splitting off of a new group of able underemployed power-hungry people and the growth of liberalism and skepticism in their own ranks the problem that is to say is educational it is a problem of continuously molding The Consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below

it the consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way given this background one could infer if one did not know it already the general structure of oceanic Society at the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother big brother is infallible and all-powerful every success every Achievement every Victory every scientific discovery all knowledge all wisdom all happiness all virtue are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration nobody has ever seen Big Brother here's a face on the hoardings a voice on the telescreen we may be reasonably sure that he

will never die and there is already a considerable uncertainty as to when he was born big brother is the guys in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world His function is to act as a focusing point for love fear and reverence emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than toward an organization hello big brother comes the inner party its numbers limited to six millions or something less than two percent of the population of Oceania below the inner party comes the outer Party which if the inner party is described as the

brain of the state maybe justly likened to the hands below that come the dumb masses which we habitually refer to as the pros numbering perhaps 85 percent of the population in the terms of our earlier classification the pros are the low for the slave populations of the equatorial lands who pass constantly from conqueror to conqueror are not a permanent or Necessary part of the structure in principle membership in these three groups is not hereditary the child of inner party parents is in theory not born into the inner party admission to either branch of the party

is by examination taken at the age of 16. nor is there any racial discrimination or any marked domination of one Province by another Jews Negroes South Americans of pure Indian blood are to be found in the Highest ranks of the party and the administrators of any area are always drawn from the inhabitants of that area in no part of Oceania do the inhabitants have the feeling that they are a colonial population ruled From A Distant capital Oceania has no capital and its titular head is a person whose whereabouts nobody knows except that English is its

Chief lingua Franca and you speak its official Language it is not centralized in any way its rulers are not held together by Blood Ties but by adherence to a common Doctrine it is true that our society is stratified and very rigidly stratified on what at First Sight appears to be hereditary lines there is far less to and fro movement between the different groups and happened under capitalism or or even in the pre-industrial ages between the two branches of the party There is a certain amount of interchange but only so much as will ensure that weaklings

are excluded from the inner party and that ambitious members of the outer party are made harmless by allowing them to rise proletarians in practice are not allowed to graduate into the party the most gifted of them who might possibly become nuclei of discontent are simply marked down by the thought police and eliminated But this state of affairs is not necessarily permanent nor is it a matter of principle the party is not a class in the old sense of the word it does not aim at transmitting power to its own children as such and if there

were no other way of keeping the ableist people at the top it will be perfectly prepared to recruit an entire New Generation from the ranks of the proletariat in The crucial years the fact that the Party was not a hereditary body did a great deal to neutralize opposition the older kind of socialist who had been trained to fight against something called class privilege assume that what is not hereditary cannot be permanent he did not see that the continuity of an oligarchy needs not be physical nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary aristocracies have always

been short-lived whereas adoptive organizations such as the Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds or thousands of years the essence of oligarchical rule is not father to son inheritance but the Persistence of a certain worldview and a certain way of life imposed by the dead upon the living a ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominated successes the party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself who Will's power is Not important provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same all the beliefs habits tastes emotions mental attitudes

the characterize our time are really designed to sustain the Mystique of the party and prevent the true nature of present-day Society from being perceived physical Rebellion or any preliminary move toward Rebellion is at present not possible From the proletarians nothing is to be feared left of themselves they will continue from generation to generation and from Century to Century working breathing and dying not only without any impulse to Rebel but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is they could only become dangerous if the advance of industrial technique made it

necessary to educate them more highly but since Military and Commercial Rivalry are no longer important the level of popular education is actually declining what opinions the masses hold or do not hold is looked on as a matter of indifference they can be granted intellectual Liberty because they have no intellect in a party member on the other hand not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated a party member lives from birth to death Under the eye of the thought police even when he is alone he can never be sure

that he is alone whenever he may be asleep or awake working or resting in his bath all in bed he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected nothing that he does is indifferent his friendships his relaxations his behavior towards his wife and children the expression of his face when he is alone the words he matters in sleep even the Characteristic movements of his body are all jealously scrutinized not only any actual misdemeanor but any eccentricity however small any change of habits any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symptom

of an inner struggle is certain to be detected he has no freedom of choice in any direction whatever on the other hand his actions are not regulated by law or by any clearly formulated code of behavior in Oceania There is no law thoughts and actions which when detected mean certain death are not formally forbidden and the endless purges arrests tortures imprisonments and vaporizations are not inflicted as punishment for crimes which have actually been committed but are merely the wiping out of persons who might perhaps commit a crime at some time in the future a party

member is required to have not only the right opinions but the right Instincts many of the beliefs and attitudes demanded of him are never plainly stated and could not be stated without laying bare the contradictions inherent in ing if he is a person naturally Orthodox in Newspeak a good thinker he will in all circumstances know without taking thought what is the true belief or the desirable emotion but in any case an elaborate mental training undergone in childhood and grouping itself around the New speak words Crime Stop black white and double think makes him unwilling and

unable to think too deeply on any subject whatever a party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm he is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors Triumph of the victories and sofa basement before the power and wisdom of the party The discontents produced by his bare unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the two minutes hate and the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline

the first and simplest stage in the discipline which can be taught even to young children is called in Newspeak Crime Stop Crime Stop means the faculty of stopping short as though by Instinct at the threshold of any dangerous thought it includes the power of not grasping analogies or failing to perceive logical errors of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimicable to insock and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical Direction Crime Stop in short means protective stupidity But stupidity is not enough on the

contrary Orthodoxy in the full sense Demands a control over one's own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body Oceanic Society rests ultimately on the belief that big brother is omnipotent and that the party is infallible but since in reality big brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible there is need for an unwearing moment-to-moment flexibility In the treatment of facts the key word here is black white like so many Newspeak words this word has two mutually contradictory meanings applied to an opponent it means the habit of impudently claiming

that black is white in contradiction of the plain facts applied to a party member it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when party discipline demands this but it means also the ability to believe that black is white and more to know That black is white and to forget that one has ever believed the country this Demands a continuous alteration of the past made possible by the system of thought which really Embraces all the rest and which is known in new speak as double think the alteration of the past is necessary for

two reasons one of which is subsidiary and so to speak precautionary the subsidiary reason is that the party member like the proletarian tolerates Present-day conditions partly because he has no standards of comparison he must be cut off from the past just as he must be cut off from foreign countries because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material Comfort is constantly Rising but by far the more important reason for the Readjustment of the past is the need to safeguard the infallibility of

the Party it is not merely that speeches Statistics and Records of every kind must be constantly brought up to date in order to show that the predictions of the party were in all cases right it is also that no change of Doctrine or in political alignment can ever be admitted for to change one's mind or even one's policy is a confession of weakness if for example Eurasia or East Asia whichever it may be is the enemy today Then that country must always have been the enemy and if the facts say otherwise then the facts must

be altered thus history is continuously Rewritten this day-to-day falsification of the past carried out by the ministry of Truth it is necessary to the stability of the regime as the work of repression and Espionage carried out by the ministry of love the mutability of the past is the central tenet of ing Past events it is argued have no objective existence but survive only in written records and in human memories the past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon and since the party is in full control of all records and in equally full control

of the minds of its members it follows that the past is whatever the party chooses to make it it also follows that though the past is audible it never has been altered in any specific instance but when it has been Recreated in whatever shape is needed at the moment then this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed this holds Good even when this often happens the same event has to be altered out of recognition several times in the course of a year at all times the party is in possession

of absolute truth and clearly the absolute can never have been different from what it is now It will be seen that the control of the past depends above all on the training of memory to make sure that all written records agree with the Orthodoxy of the moment is merely a mechanical Act it is also necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner and if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or to tamper with written records then it is necessary to forget that one has done so the trick of doing this can be

learned Like any other mental technique it is learned by the majority of party members and certainly by all who are intelligent as well as orthodox in Old speak it is called quite frankly reality control in Newspeak it's called doublethink although doublethink comprises much else as well double think means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them The party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality but by the exercise of double thick he also satisfies himself

that reality is not violated the process has to be conscious or it would not be carried out with sufficient Precision but it also has to be unconscious or it will bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt Doublethink lies at the very heart of inksok since the essential part of the party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them to forget any fact that has become inconvenient and then when it becomes necessary again to draw it

back from Oblivion for just so long as it is needed to deny the existence of the objective reality and all the while To take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise double think for by using the word one admits that one is tempering with reality by a fresh Act of double think one erases this knowledge and so on indefinitely with the LIE always one Leap ahead of the truth ultimately it is by means of double think that the party has

been able and May for all we know continue to be able for thousands of years to arrest the course of history all past oligarchies have fallen from Power either because they ossified or because they grew soft either they became stupid and arrogant failed to adjust themselves to changing circumstances and were overthrown or they became liberal and cowardly made concessions when they should have used force and once again were overthrown They felt that is to say either through Consciousness or through unconsciousness it is the achievement of the party to have produced a system of thought in

which both conditions can exist simultaneously and upon no other intellectual basis could the Dominion of the party be made permanent if one is to rule and to continue ruling one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality for the secret of rulership is to Combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes it need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating in our society those who have the best knowledge of what

is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is in general the greater the understanding The greater the delusion the more intelligent the less sane one clear illustration of this is the fact that war hysteria increases in intensity as one rises in the social scale those whose attitude toward the war is more nearly irrational are the subject peoples of the disputed territories to these people the war is simply a continuous Calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like a tidal wave which side is winning is a Matter of

complete indifference to them they are aware that a change of overlordship means simply that they will be doing the same work as before for new Masters who treat them in the same manner as the old ones the slightly more favored workers whom we call the pros are only intermittently conscious of the war when it is necessary they can be prodded into forenses of fear and hatred but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods That the war is happening it is in the ranks of the party and above all of the

inner party that the true War enthusiasm is found World Conquest is believed in most firmly by those who know it to be impossible this peculiar linking together of opposites knowledge with ignorance cynicism with fanaticism is one of the chief distinguishing marks of oceanic Society the official ideology abounds with Contradictions even when there is no practical reason for them thus the party Rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood and it chooses to do this in the name of socialism it preaches a contempt for the working class unexampled for centuries past and

addresses its members in a uniform which was at one time peculiar to manual workers and was adopted for that reason it systematically undermines the Solidarity of the family and calls its Leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibits a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts the ministry of Peace concerns itself with war the ministry of Truth with lies the ministry of love with torture and the ministry of Plenty with starvation These contradictions

are not accidental nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy they are deliberate exercises in doublethink for it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely in no other way could the ancient cycle be broken if human equality is to be forever averted if the high as we have called them are to keep their places permanently then the prevailing mental Condition must be controlled insanity that's there is one question which until this moment we have almost ignored it is why should human equality be averted supposing that the mechanics of the process have been

rightly described what is the motive for this huge accurately planned effort to freeze history at a particular moment of time here we reach the central Secret as we have seen the Mystique of the Party and above all of the inner party depends upon doublethink but deeper than this lies the original motive the never question Instinct that first led to the seizure of power and brought doublethink the thought police continuous Warfare and all the other necessary paraphernalia into existence afterwards this motive really consists Winston became aware of silence as one becomes aware of a new sound

It seemed to him that Julia had been very still for some time past she was lying on her side naked from the waist upwards with her cheek pillowed on her hand and one dark lock tumbling across her eyes her breast Rose and fell slowly and regularly Julia no answer Julia are you awake no answer She was asleep he shot the book put it carefully on the floor lay down and pulled the coverlet of the both of them he had still he reflected not learn the ultimate Secret he understood how he did not understand why chapter

1 like chapter 3 have not actually told him anything that he did not know it had merely systematized the Knowledge that he possessed already but after reading it he knew better than before that he was not mad being in a minority even a minority of one did not make you mad there was truth and there was untruth and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world you were not mad a yellow being from the sinking Sun slanted in through the window and fell across the pillow He shut his eyes the sun on

his face and the girl's smooth body touching his own gave him a strong sleepy confident feeling he was safe everything was all right he fell asleep murmuring sanity is not statistical with the feeling that this remark contained in it a profound wisdom chapter 10. when he woke it was with the sensation of having slept for a long time At a glance at the old-fashioned clock told him that it was only 20 30. he lay dozing for a little while then the usual deep lungs singing struck up from the yard below there was only an hopeless

fancy a Paris like an April die but a look and a word in the dreams they stood they've stolen my heart away the dribbling song seemed to have kept its popularity you still heard it all over the place it had outlived the hate Song Julia woke up the sand stretched herself luxuriously and got out of bed I'm hungry she said let's make some more coffee damn the stove's gone out and the water's cold she picked up the stove and shook it there's no oil in it we can get some from old charrington I expect the

funny thing is I made sure it was Full I'm going to put my clothes on she added it seems to have got colder Winston also got up and dressed himself the indefatigable voice sang on they say that time heals all things they say you can always forget but the smiles and the tears across the years they twist my art strings yet as he fastened the belt of his overalls he strolled across to the window the sun must have gone down behind the Houses it was not shining into the yard any longer the flagstones were wet

as though they'd just been washed and he had the feeling the sky had been washed too so fresh and pale was the blue between the chimney pots tirelessly the woman marched to and fro corking and uncorking herself singing and falling silent and pegging out more diapers and more and yet more he wondered whether she took in washing For a living or was merely the slave of 20 or 30 grandchildren Julia had come across to his side together they gazed down with a sort of Fascination at the sturdy figure below as he looked at the woman

in her characteristic attitude her thick arms reaching up the line a powerful mare-like buttocks protruded it struck him for the first time that she was beautiful it had never before occurred to him that The body of a woman of 50 blown up to monstrous Dimensions by childbearing then hardened roughened by work till it was coarse in the grain like an overripe turnip could be beautiful but it was so after all he thought why not the solid continuous body like a block of granite and the rasping red skin bore the same relation to the body of

a girl as the rose hip to the Rose Why should the fruit be held inferior to the flower she's beautiful you murmured she's a meter across the hips easily said Julia that is her style of beauty said Winston he held Julia's supper waste easily encircled by his arm from the hip to the knee her flank was against his out of their bodies no child would ever Come that was the one thing they could never do Only By Word of Mouth from mind to mind could they pass on the secret the woman down there had no

mind she had only strong arms a warm heart and a fertile belly he wondered how many children she had given birth to it might easily be 15. she had had her momentary flowering a Year perhaps of Wild Rose Beauty and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse and then her life had been laundering scrubbing darning cooking sweeping polishing mending scrubbing laundering first for children then for grandchildren over 30 unbroken years at the end of it she was still singing the mystical reverence that he felt for her

Were Somehow mixed up with the aspects of the pale cloudless Sky Stretching away behind the chimney pots into interminable distances I was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody in Eurasia or East Asia as well as here and the people under the sky were also very much the same everywhere all over the world hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this people ignorant of one another's existence held apart by walls of hatred and lies and yet almost exactly the same People who had never learned to think but were storing

up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world if there was hope it lay in the proles without having read to the end of the book he knew that that must be goldstein's final message the future belonged to the pros and could he be sure that when their time came the world they constructed would not just be as alien to him Winston Smith as the world of the party yes because at least it would be a world of sanity where there is equality there can be sanity sooner

or later it would happen strength would change into Consciousness the pros were Immortal you could not doubt it when you looked at that Valiant figure in the yard in the end their Awakening would come and until that happened though it might Be a thousand years they would stay alive against all the odds like birds passing on from body to body the Vitality which the party did not share and could not kill do you remember he said the thrush that sang to us at first day at the edge of the wood he wasn't singing to us

said Julia he was singing to please himself not even that he was just singing the bird sang The pros sang the party did not sing All Around the World in London and in New York in Africa and Brazil and in the mysterious forbidden Lands Beyond the Frontiers in the streets of Paris and Berlin in The Villages of the Endless Russian plain in the bazaars of China and Japan everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure made monstrous by work and childbearing toiling from birth to death and still Singing out of those Mighty loins a race of

conscious beings must one day come you were the dead theirs was the future but you could share in that future if you kept alive the mind as they kept alive the body and passed on the secret Doctrine the two plus two make four we are the dead he said we are the dead Echo Julia dutifully you are the Dead said an iron voice behind them They sprang apart Winston's entrails seem to have turned into ice he could see the white all around the irises of Julia's eyes her face had turned a Milky yellow the smear

of Rouge that was still on each cheekbone stood out sharply almost as though unconnected with the skin beneath you are the Dead the iron voice it was behind the picture said The Voice remain exactly where you are make no Movement until you are ordered starting it was starting at last they could do nothing except stand gazing into one another's eyes to run for life to get out of the house before it was too late no such thought occurred to them Unthinkable to disobey the iron voice from the wall there was a snap as though a

catch had been turned back and a crash of breaking Glass the picture had fallen to the floor uncovering the Telly screen behind it now they can see us said Julia now we can see you said The Voice stand out in the middle of the room stand back to back clasp your hands behind your heads do not touch one another they were not touching but it seemed to him that he could feel Julia's body shaking or perhaps it was merely the Shaking of his own he could just stop his teeth from chattering but his knees were

Beyond his control there was a sound of trampling boots below inside the house and outside the yard seemed to be full of men something was being dragged across the stones the woman singing had stopped abruptly there was a long rolling clang as though the wash tub had been flung across the Yard and then a confusion of angry shouts which ended in a yell of pain the house is surrounded said Winston the house is surrounded said The Voice he heard Julia snap her teeth together I suppose we may as well say goodbye she said you may

as well say goodbye said The Voice and then another quite different voice a thin cultivated voice which Winston had the impression of having heard before Struck in and by the way while we're on the subject here comes a candle to light you to bed here comes a chopper to chop off your head something crashed onto the bed behind Winston's back the head of a ladder had been thrust through the window and a burst in the frame someone was climbing through a window there was a stampede of boots up the stairs the room was full of

solid Men In Black uniforms with iron-shot boots on their feet and truncheons in their hands Winston was not trembling any longer even his eyes he barely moved one thing alone mattered to keep still to keep still and not give them an excuse to hit you a man with a smooth prize fight as Jal in which the mouth was only a slit paused opposite him balancing his truncheon meditatively between thumb and Forefinger Winston met his eyes the feeling of nakedness with one's hands behind one's head and one's face and body all exposed was almost unbearable the

man protruded the tip of a white tongue licked the place where his lips should have been and then passed on there was another crash someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed It to pieces on the Hearthstone the fragment of coral a tiny crinkle of pink like a sugar Rose Bud from a cake rolled across the mat how small thought Winston how small it always was there was a gasp and a thump behind him and he received a violent kick in the ankle which nearly flung him off balance one of the

men had smashed his fist into Julia's solar plexus doubling her up like a pocket ruler she was thrashing About on the floor fighting for breath Winston dared not turn his head even by a millimeter but sometimes her livid gasping face came within the angle of his mission even in his Terror it was as though he could feel the pain in his own body the deadly pain which nevertheless was less urgent than the struggle to get back her breath he knew what it was like the terrible agonizing pain which was there all the While but could

not be suffered yet because before or else it was necessary to be able to breathe then two of the men hoisted her up by knees and shoulders and carried her out of the room like a sack Winston had a glimpse of her face upside down yellow and contorted with the eyes shut and still with a smear of Rouge on either cheek and that was the last he saw of her He stood dead still no one had hit him yet thoughts which came of their own accord but seemed totally uninteresting began to fit through his mind

he wondered whether they had got Mr chanton he wondered what they had done to the woman in the yard he noticed that he badly wanted to urinate and felt a faint surprise because he had done so only two or three hours ago He noticed that the clock on the mantelpiece said nine meaning 21. but the light seemed too strong would not the light be fading at 21 hours on an August evening he wondered whether after all he and Julia had mistaken the time that slept the clock round and thought it was 20 30 when really

it was not 8 30 on the following morning but he did not pursue the thought further It was not interesting there was another lighter step in the passage charrington came into the room the demeanor of the black uniformed men suddenly became more subdued something had also changed in Mr charrington's appearance his eye fell on the fragments of the glass paperweight pick up those pieces he said chocolate the man stooped to obey the Cockney Accent had disappeared Winston suddenly realized whose voice it was that he had heard a few moments ago on the telescreen Mr charrington

was still wearing his old velvet jacket but his hair which had been almost White had turned black also he was not wearing his spectacles he gave Winston a single sharp glance as though verifying his identity and then paid no more attention to him he was still recognizable but he was not The same person any longer his body had straightened and seemed to have grown bigger his face had undergone only tiny changes that nevertheless worked a complete transformation the black eyebrows were less bushy the wrinkles were gone the whole lines of the face seemed to have

altered even the nose seemed shorter it was the alert cold face of a man of about five and thirty it occurred to Winston That for the first time in his life he was looking with knowledge at a member of the thought police part three chapter one he did not know where he was presumably he was in the ministry of love but there was no way of making certain he was in a high ceiling windowless cell with walls of glittering white porcelain concealed lamps flooded it with cold light and there was a low steady humming Sound

which he supposed had something to do with the air supply a bench or shelf just wide enough to sit on ran round the wall broken only by the door and at the end opposite the door a lavatory pan with no wooden seat there were four telescreens one in each wall there was a dull aching in his belly it had been there ever since they had bundled him into the closed van and driven him away But he was also hungry with a gnawing and wholesome kind of hunger it might be 24 hours since he had eaten

it might be 36. he still did not know probably would never know whether it had been morning or evening when they arrested him since he was arrested he had not been fed besides as still as he could on the narrow bench with his hands crossed on his knee he had already learned to sit Still if you made unexpected movements they yelled at you from the telescreen the craving for food was growing upon him what he longed for above all was a piece of bread he had an idea that there were a few breadcrumbs in the

pocket of his overalls it was even possible he thought this because from time to time something seemed to tickle his leg that there Might be a sizable bit of crust there in the end the temptation to find out overcame his fear he slipped a hand into his pocket snaff the older voice from the telescreen 6079 Smith W hands out of pockets in the cells he sat still again his hands crossed on his knee before being brought here he'd been taken to another place which must have been an ordinary prison or temporary Lock-up used by the

patrols he did not know how long he'd been there some hours at any rate with no clocks and no daylight it was hard to gauge the time it was a noisy evil smelling place they put him into a cell similar to the one he was in now but filthily dirty and at all times crowded by 10 or 15 people the majority of them were common criminals but there were a few political prisoners among them He had sat silent against the wall jostled by Dirty bodies too preoccupied by fear and the pain in his belly to

take much interest in his surroundings but still noticing the astonishing difference in demeanor between the party prisoners and the others the party prisoners were always silent and terrified but the ordinary criminals seemed to care nothing for anybody they yelled insults at the guards fought back fiercely when their belongings were Impounded roads obscene words on the floor eight smuggled food which they produced from mysterious hiding places in their clothes and even shouted down the telescreen when it tried to restore order on the other hand some of them seem to be on good terms with the guards

called them by nicknames and tried to Weedle cigarettes through the Spy hole in the door the guards too treated the common Criminals with a certain forbearance even when they had to handle them roughly there was much talk about the forced labor camps to which most of the prisoners expected to be sent it was all right in the camps he gathered as long as you had good contacts and knew the ropes there were bribery favoritism and racketeering of every kind there were homosexuality and prostitution there was even illicit alcohol distilled from potatoes The positions of trust

were given only to the common criminals especially the gangsters and the murderers who formed a sort of aristocracy all the dirty jobs were done by the politicals there was a constant come and go of prisoners of every description rug Peddlers thieves Bandits black marketeers drunks prostitutes some of the drunks were so violent that the other prisoners had combined to suppress them An enormous wreck of a woman aged about 60 with great tumbling breasts and thick coils of white hair which had come down in her struggles was carried in kicking and shouting by four guards who

had hold of her one at Each corner they wrenched off the boots with which she had been trying to kick them and dumped her down across Winston's lap almost breaking his thigh burns the woman hoisted herself upright and followed the map with a yell of bastards then noticing that She was sitting on something uneven she slid off Winston's knees onto the bench big Garden dirty she said I wouldn't have sat on you I need a buggers put me there I don't know how to treat a lady do they she paused patted her breasts and belched

pardon she said I am myself quite she leaned forward and vomited copiously on the floor that's better she said leaning back with Closed eyes never creep it down that's what I say Get it up while it's fresh on your stomach like she revived turned to have another look at Winston and seemed immediately to take a fancy to him she put a vast arm around his shoulder and Drew him towards her breathing beer and vomit into his face what's your name Theory she said Smith said Winston Said the woman my name's Smith too why she added

sentimentally I might be your mother she might thought Winston be his mother she was about the right age and physique and it was probable that people changed somewhat after 20 years in a forced labor camp no one else had spoken to him to a surprising extent the ordinary criminals ignored the party prisoners the polits they called them with a sort of Uninterested contempt the party prisoners seemed terrified of speaking to anybody and above all of speaking to one another only once when two party members both women were pressed close together on the bench he overheard

amid the din of voices a few hurriedly whispered words and in particular a reference to something called Rome 101 which he did not understand it might be two or three hours ago that They had brought in here the dull pain in his belly never went away but sometimes it grew better and sometimes worse and his thoughts expanded or contracted accordingly when it grew worse he thought only of the pain itself and of his desire for food when it grew better Panic took hold of him there were moments when he foresaw the Things that would happen

to him with such actuality that his heart galloped and his breath stopped he felt the smash of truncheons on his elbows and the iron-shot boots on his shins he saw himself groveling on the floor screaming for Mercy through broken teeth he hardly thought of Julia he could not fix his mind on her he loved her and would not betray her but that was only a fact known as he knew the rules of arithmetic He felt no love for her and he hardly even wondered what had happened to her he thought of enough of O'Brien with

a flickering hope O'Brien must know that he'd been arrested the Brotherhood he had said never tried to save its members but there was the razor blade they would send the razor blade if they could there would be perhaps five seconds before the guards could rush into the cell the blade would bite into him with A sort of burning coldness and even the fingers that held it would be cut to the Bone everything came back to his sick body which shrank trembling from the smallest pain he was not certain that he would use the razor blade

even if he got the chance it was more natural to exist from moment to moment accepting another 10 minutes life even with the certainty that there was torture at the end of it Sometimes you try to calculate the number of porcelain bricks in the walls of the cell it should have been easy but he always lost count at some point or another more often he wondered where he was and what time of day it was at one moment he felt certain that it was broad daylight outside and at the next equally certain that it was

Pitch Darkness in this place he knew instinctively the Lights would never be turned out it's was the place with no Darkness he saw now why O'Brien had seen to recognize the illusion in the ministry of love there were no windows his cell might be at the heart of the building or against its outer wall it might be ten floors below ground or 30 above it he moved himself mentally from place to place and tried to determine by the Feeling of his body whether he was perched high in the air or buried deep underground there was

a sound of marching boots outside the steel door opened with a clang a young officer a trim black uniformed figure who seemed to glitter all over with polished leather and whose pale straight featured face was like a wax mask stepped smartly through the doorway emotion to the guards outside to bring In the prisoner they were leading the poet ample forth shambled into the cell the door clang shut again Amber fourth made one or two uncertain movements from side to side as though having some idea that there was another door to go out of and then

began to wander up and down the cell he had not yet noticed Winston's presence His troubled eyes were gazing at the wall about a meter above the level of Winston's head he was Shoeless large dirty toes were sticking out of the holes in his socks he was also several days away from a shave a scrubby beard covered his face to the cheekbones giving him an air of ruffianism that went oddly with his large weak frame and nervous movements Winston roused himself a little from his Lethargy he must speak to amberforth and risk the Yale from

the telescreen it was even conceivable the ample forth was the bearer of the razor blade ample forth he said there was no yell from the telescreen ampleforth paused mildly startled his eyes focused themselves slowly on Winston ah Smith he said you too What are you in for to tell you the truth he sat down awkwardly on the bench opposite Winston there is only one offense is there not he said and have you committed it apparently there I have he put a hand to his forehead and pressed his temples for a moment as though trying to

remember something these things happen He began vaguely I've been able to recall one instance a possible instance it was an indiscretion undoubtedly we were producing a definitive edition of the poems of Kipling I allowed the word God to remain at the end of the line I couldn't help it he added almost indignantly raising his face to look at Winston it was impossible to change the line the rhyme was rad Do you realize that there are only 12 Rhymes to ride in the entire language for days I had wrapped my brains there was no other rhyme

expression on his face changed the annoyance passed out of it and for a moment he looked almost pleased a sort of intellectual warmth the joy of the patent was found out some useless fact Shone through the dirt and scrubby hair has it ever occurred to you he said that the whole history of English poetry has Been determined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes MO that particular thought had never occurred to Winston nor in the circumstances Did It Strike him as very important or interesting do you know what time of day it is

he said ampleforth looks startled again I had hardly thought about it and they arrested me oh it could be two days ago perhaps three His eyes flitted round the walls as though he half expected to find a window somewhere there's no difference between night and day in this place I do not see how one can calculate the time they talked desotorally for some minutes then without apparent reason a yell from the telescreen bad them be silent Winston sat quietly his hands crossed bamboo forth too large to sit in Comfort on the narrow bench fidgeted from

side To side clasping his lank hands first round one knee then round the other the telescreen barked at him to keep still time passed 20 minutes an hour it was difficult to judge once more there was a sound of boots outside Winston's entrails contracted soon very soon perhaps in five minutes perhaps now the of boots would Mean that his own turn had come the door opened the cold-faced young officer stepped into the cell with a brief movement of the hand he indicated ample forth Room 101 he said ampleforth marched clumsily out between the guards his

face vaguely perturbed but uncomprehending what seemed like a long time passed the pain in Winston's belly had revived His mind sagged round and round on the same track like a ball falling again and again into the same series of slots he had only six thoughts the pain in his belly a piece of bread the blood and the screaming O'Brien Julia the razor blade there was another spasm in its entrails the heavy boots were approaching as the door opened the wave of air that it created brought in a powerful smell of Cold sweat Parsons walked into

the cell he was wearing khaki shorts and a sports shirt This Time Winston was startled into self-forgetfulness you here he said Parsons gave Winston a glance in which there was neither interest or surprise but only a misery he began walking jokely up and down evidently unable to keep still each time He straightened his pudgy knees it was apparent that they were trending his eyes had a wide open look staring look as though he could not prevent himself from gazing at something in the middle distance what are you in for said Winston thought crime said Parsons

almost blubbering the tone of his voice implied at once a complete admission of his guilt and a sort of incredulous horror that such a word could be applied to Himself he paused opposite Winston and began eagerly appealing to him you don't think they'll shoot me to you old Shep they don't shoot you if you haven't actually done anything only thoughts which you can't help I know they'll give you a fair hearing oh I trust them for that they'll know my record won't they you know what kind of a chap I was not a bad chap

in my way not brainy of course but but bikini I Tried to do my best for the party didn't I I'll get off with five years don't you think or even 10 years or chap like me can make himself pretty useful in a labor camp but they wouldn't shoot me for going off the rails just once are you guilty said Winston of course I'm guilty cried Parsons with a servile glance at the telescreen you don't think the party would arrest an innocent man do you His frog-like face grew calmer and even took on a slightly

sanctimonious expression thought crime is a Dreadful thing old man he said sententiously it's Insidious it can get hold of you without you even knowing it do you know how it got hold of me in my sleep yes that's a fact there I was working away trying to do my bit never knew I had any bad stuff in my mind at all and then I started talking In my sleep didn't know what they heard me saying he sang his voice like someone who's obliged for medical reasons to utter an obscenity down with big brother yes I

said that said it over and over again it seems between you and me old man I'm glad they got hold of me before I went any further you know what I'm going to say to them when I go up before the Tribunal Thank you I'm going to say thank you for saving me before it was too late who denounced you said Winston it was my little daughter said Parsons with a sort of doleful Pride she listened at the keyhole her but I was saying and nipped off to the patrols the very next day pretty smart

for a Nipper of 7A I don't bear any Grudge for it in fact I'm proud of her it shows I brought her up in the right Spirit anyway He made a few more jerky movements up and down several times casting a longing glance at the lavatory pan then he suddenly ripped down his shorts excuse me old man he said I can't help it it's the waiting he plumped his large posteriors onto the lavatory pan Winston covered his face with his hands Smith yelled The Voice from the telescreen 6079 Smith W uncover your face no faces

covered in the cells Winston uncovered his face Parsons used the lavatory loudly and abundantly it then turned out that the plug was defective and the cell stank abominably for hours afterwards Parsons was removed more prisoners came and went mysteriously one a woman was consigned to Room 101 and Winston noticed seemed to shrivel and turn a different color when she heard the words A Time came when if it had been mourning when it was brought here it would be afternoon or if it had been afternoon then it would be midnight there were six prisoners in the

cell men and women all sat very still opposite Winston they sat a man with a chinless toothy face exactly like that of some large harmless rodent his fat mottled cheeks were so pouched at the bottom that it was difficult not to Believe that he had little stores of food tucked away there his pale gray eyes flitted timorously from face to face and turned quickly away again when he caught anyone's eye the door opened and another prisoner was brought in whose appearance sent a momentary chill through Winston he was a commonplace mean looking man who might

have been an engineer or technician of some kind but what was starting was the emaciation Of his face it was like a skull because of its thinness the mouth and eyes looked disproportionately large and the eyes seemed filled with a murderous unappeasable hatred of somebody or something the man sat down on the bench at a little distance from Winston Winston did not look at him again but the tormented skull-like face was as Vivid in his mind as though it had been Straight in front of his eyes suddenly he realized what was the matter the man

was dying of starvation the same thought seemed to occur almost simultaneously to everyone in the cell there was a very faint stirring all the way around the bench the eyes of the Chinese man kept flitting toward the skull-faced man then turning guiltily away then being dragged back by an irresistible attraction Presently he began to fidget on his seat at last he stood up waddled clumsily across the cell dug down into the pocket of his overalls and with an abashed air held out a grimy piece of bread to the skull-faced man there was a furious deafening

Roar from the telescreen the gymless man jumped in his tracks the skull-faced man had quickly thrust his hands behind his back as though demonstrating to all the world that he refused the gift Bumstead rode the voice 2713 buns did Jay let fall that piece of bread the Chinese man dropped the piece of bread on the floor a man standing Where You Are face the door make no movement the Chinese man obeyed his large pouchy cheeks were quivering uncontrollably the door clanged open as the young officer entered and stepped aside there emerged from behind him a

Short Stumpy guard with enormous arms and shoulders he took his stand opposite the chinless man and then at a signal from the officer let free a frightful blow with all the weight of his body behind it full in the chinless man's mouth force of it seemed almost a knocking clear of the floor his body was flung across the cell and fetched up against the base of the lavatory seat for a moment he layers though stunned with Dark blood oozing from his mouth and nose a very faint whimpering or squeaking which seemed unconscious came out of

him then he rolled over and raised himself unsteadily on hands and knees amid a stream of blood and saliva the two halves of a dental plate fell out of his mouth prisoner sat very still her hands crossed on their knees the chinless man climbed back into his Place down one side of his face the flesh was darkening his mouth had swollen into a shapeless cherry-colored Mass with a black hole in the middle of it from time to time a little blood dripped onto the breast of his overalls his gray eyes still flitted from face to

face more guiltily than ever as though he were trying to discover how much the others despised him for his humiliation the door opened The small gesture the officer indicated the skull-faced man rum 101 he said there was a gasp and a flurry at Winston's side the man had actually flung himself on his knees on the floor with his hands clasped together comrade officer he cried you don't have to take me to that place even though I told you everything already what else is it you want to know there's nothing I wouldn't confess nothing just tell

me What it is and I'll confess it straight off write it down and I'll sign it if anything not Room 101 from 101 said the officer the man's face already very pale turned a color Winston would not have believed possible it was definitely unmistakably a shade of green do anything to me he yelled you've been starving me for weeks you don't even let me die shoot me hang Me sentence me to 25 years is there somebody else you want me to give away just say who it is and I'll tell you anything you want I

don't care who it is or what you do to them I've got a wife and three children the biggest of them isn't six years old you can take the whole lot of them and get my throats in front of my eyes and I'll stand by and watch it but not from 101. Room 101 to the officer the man looked frantically around at the Other prisoners as though with some idea that he could put another victim in his own place his eyes settled on the smashed face of the Chinese man he flung out a lean arm

that's the one you ought to be taking not me he shouted you didn't hear what he was saying after they bashed his face give me a chance and I'll tell you every word of it he's the one that's against the party not me the gods stepped forward the man's voice Rose to a shriek you didn't know he repeated something went wrong with the telescreen he's the one you won't take him not the two sturdy guards and stooped had taken by the arms but just at this moment he flung himself across the floor of the cell

and grabbed one of the iron legs that supported the bench he had set up a wordless howling like an animal the guards took hold of him to wrench him loose but he clung on with astonishing Strength for perhaps 20 seconds they were hauling at him the prisoners sat quiet their hands crossed on their knees looking straight in front of them the howling stopped the man had no breath left for anything except hanging on then there was a different kind of cry a kick from a God's boot had broken the fingers of one of his hands

they dragged him to his feet rum 101 said the officer The man was let out walking unsteadily with heads sunken nursing his crushed hand all the fight gone out of him a long time passed if it had been midnight when the skull-faced man was taken away it was morning if morning it was afternoon Winston was alone and had been alone for hours the pain of sitting on the narrow bench Was such that often he got up and walked about unreproved by the telescreen the piece of bread still lay where the chinless man had dropped it

at the beginning it needed a hard effort not to look at it but presently hunger gave way to thirst his mouth was sticky and evil tasting the humming sound and the unvarying white light induced a sort of faintness an empty feeling inside his head He would get up because the ache in his bones was no longer bearable and then would sit down again almost at once because he was too dizzy to make sure of staying on his feet whenever his physical Sensations were a little under control the terror returned sometimes with a fading hope he

thought of O'Brien and the razor blade it was thinkable that the razor blade might arrive concealed in his food if he were ever fed More dimly he thought of Julia summer or other she was suffering perhaps far worse than he she might be screaming with pain at this moment he thought if I could save Julia by doubling my own pain will I do it yes I would but that was Million intellectual decision taken because he knew that he ought to take it He did not feel it in this place you could not feel anything except

pain and the foreknowledge of pain besides was it possible when you were actually suffering it to wish for any reason whatever that your own pain should increase but that question was not answerable yet the boots were approaching again the door opened O'Brien came in Winston started to his feet the shark of the site had driven all caution out of him for the first time in many years he forgot the presence of the telescreen they've got chewed too he cried they're not me a long time ago said O'Brien with a mild almost regretful irony he stepped

aside from behind him there emerged a broad-chested guard with a long black Truncheon in his hand you knew this Winston said O'Brien then deceive yourself you did know it you have always known it yes you saw now that he had always known it but there was no time to think of that all he had eyes for was the trenchen in the God's hand it might fall anywhere on the crown on the tip of the ear on the upper arm on the elbow the elbow It slumped to his knees almost paralyzed clasping the stricken elbow with

his other hand everything had exploded into yellow light inconceivable inconceivable that one blow could cause such pain the light cleared and you could see the other two looking down at him the guard was laughing at his contortions one question at any rate was answered never for any reason on Earth could you wish for an increase of pain Of pain you could wish only one thing that it should stop nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain in the face of pain there are no Heroes no Heroes he thought over and over as he

arrived on the floor clutching uselessly at his disabled left arm chapter 2. he was lying on something that felt like a camp bed except that it was higher off the ground and that he was fixed down in Some way so that he could not move light that seemed stronger than usual was falling on his face O'Brien was standing at his side looking down at him intently at the other side of him stood a man in a white coat holding a hypodermic syringe even after his eyes were open he took in his surroundings only gradually he

had the impression of swimming up into this room from some quite different World a sort of underwater world far beneath it how long he been down there he did not know since the moment when they arrested him he had not seen Darkness all daylight besides his memories were not continuous there have been times when Consciousness even the sort of Consciousness that one has in sleep had stopped dead and started again after a blank interval Whether the intervals were of days or weeks or only seconds there was no way of knowing with that first blow on

the elbow the nightmare had started later he was to realize that all that then happened was merely a preliminary a routine interrogation to which nearly all prisoners were subjected there was a long range of crimes Espionage sabotage and the like to which Everyone had to confess as a matter of course the confession was a formality though the torture was real how many times he had been beaten how long the beatings had continued he could not remember always there were five or six men in black uniforms at him simultaneously sometimes it was fists sometimes it was

trunches sometimes it was steel rods sometimes it was boots There were times when he rolled about the floor as Shameless as an animal writhing his body this way and that in an endless hopeless effort to dodge the kicks and simply inviting more and yet more kicks in his ribs and his belly on his elbows on his shins and his groin in his testicles on the bone at the base of his spine there were times when it went on and on until the cruel Wicked unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the gods continue to beat

him but That he could not force himself into losing consciousness there were times when his nerves so forsook him that he began shouting for Mercy even before the beating began when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes there were other times when he started out with the resolve of confessing nothing But when every word had to be forced out of him between gasps of pain and there were times when he feebly tried to compromise when he said to

himself I will confess but not yet I must hold out to the pain becomes unbearable three more kicks two more kicks then I'll tell them what they want sometimes he was beaten till he could hardly stand then flung like a sack of potatoes onto the stone floor of a cell left to recuperate for a few hours then Taken out and beaten again there were also longer periods of recovery he remembered them dimly because they were spent chiefly in sleep or stupid he remembered a cell with the plank bed a sort of shelf sticking out from

the wall and a tin wash basin meals of hot soup and bread and sometimes coffee he remembered a surly Barber arriving to scrape his chin and crop his hair and business-like unsympathetic men in white Coats feeling his pulse tapping his reflexes turning up his eyelids running harsh fingers over him in search of broken bones and shooting needles into his arm to make him sleep the beatings grew less frequent and became mainly a threat a horror to which he could be sent back at any moment when his answers were unsatisfactory this question is now we're not

Ruffians in black uniforms but party Intellectuals little Rotan men with quick movements and flashing spectacles who worked on him in relays over periods which lasted he thought he could not be sure 10 or 12 hours at a stretch these are the questioners saw to it that he was in constant slight pain but it was not chiefly pain that they relied on they slapped his face rang his ears pulled his hair made him stand on one leg refused him leave to urinate Sean glaring lights in his face until his Eyes ran with water but the aim

of this was simply to humiliate him and Destroy his power of arguing and reasoning their real weapon was the merciless questioning that went on and on hour after hour tripping him up laying traps for him twisting everything that he said convicting him at every step of lies and self-contradiction until he began weeping as much from shame as from nervous fatigue Sometimes he would weep half a dozen times in a single session most of the time they screamed abuse at him and threatened at every hesitation to deliver him over to the guards again sometimes they would

suddenly change their tune call him comrade appeal to him in the name of ing Sark and big brother and ask him sorrowfully whether even now he had not enough loyalty to the party left to make him wish to undo The evil he'd done when his nerves were in rags after hours of questioning even this appeal could reduce him to sniveling tears in the end the nagging voices broken down more completely than the boots and fists of the guards he became simply a mouth that uttered a hand that signed whatever was demanded of him his sole

concern was to find out what They wanted him to confess and then confess it quickly before the bullying started anew he confessed to the assassination of eminent party members the distribution of seditious pamphlets embezzlement of public funds sale of military Secrets sabotage of every kind he confessed that he had been a spy in the pay of the East Asian government as far back as 1968. he confessed that he was a religious Believer an admirer of capitalism and a sexual pervert he confessed that he had murdered his wife although he knew and his questioners must have

known that his wife was still alive he confessed that for years he'd be an impersonal touch with Goldstein and have been a member of an underground organization which had included almost every human being he had ever known it was easier to confess everything and Implicate everybody besides in a sense it was all true it was true that he had been an enemy of the party and in the eyes of the party there was no distinction between the thought and the deed there were also memories of another kind they stood out in his mind disconnectedly like

pictures with Blackness or run them he was in a Cell which might have been either dark or light because he could See nothing except a pair of eyes near at hand some kind of instrument was ticking slowly and regularly the eyes grew larger and more luminous suddenly he floated out of his seat dived into the eyes and was swallowed up he was strapped into a chair surrounded by dials under dazzling lights a man in a white coat was reading the dials there was a of heavy boots outside the door clanged open the wax and faced

Officer marched in followed by two guards rum 101 officer the man in the white coat did not turn round he did not look at Winston either he was looking only at the dials he was rolling down a mighty Corridor a kilometer wide full of Glorious Golden Light roaring with laughter and shouting out confessions at the top of his voice He was confessing everything even the things he had succeeded in holding back under the torture he was relating the entire history of his life to an audience who knew it already with him were the guards the

other questioners the men in white coats O'Brien Julia Mr charrington all rolling down the corridor together and shouting with laughter some Dreadful thing which had Lane embedded in the future had somehow been Skipped over and had not happened everything was all right there was no more pain the last detail of his life was laid bare understood given he was starting up from the plank bed in the half certainty that he had heard O'Brien's voice all through his interrogation although he had never seen him he had had the feeling that O'Brien was at his elbow just

out of sight It was O'Brien who was directing everything it was he who set the guards onto Winston and who prevented them from killing him it was he who decided when Winston should scream with pain when he should have a respite when he should be fed when he should sleep when the drug should be pumped into his arm it was he who asked the questions and suggested the answers he was the Tormentor he was the Protector he was The Inquisitor he was the friend and once Winston could not remember whether it was in drug sleep

or in normal sleep or even in a moment of wakefulness a voice murmured in his ear and Warrior Winston you're in my keeping for seven years I've watched over you now the Turning Point has come I shall save you I shall make you perfect He was not sure whether it was O'Brien's voice but it was the same voice that had said to him we shall meet in the place where there is no Darkness in that other dream seven years ago he did not remember any ending to his interrogation there was a period of Blackness and

then the cell or room in which he now was had gradually materialized random He was almost flat on his back and unable to move his body was held down at every essential Point even the back of his head was gripped in some manner O'Brien was looking down at him Gravely and rather sadly his face seen from below looked coarse and worn with pouches under the eyes and tired lines from nose to Chin he was older than Winston had thought him he was perhaps 48 or 50. Under his hand there was a dial with a lever

on top and figures running around the face I told you said O'Brien that if we met again it would be here yes said Winston without any warning except a slight movement of O'Brien's hand a wave of pain flooded his body it was a frightening pain because he could not see what was happening and he Had the feeling that some Mortal injury was being done to him he did not know whether the thing was really happening or whether the effect was electrically produced but his body was being wrenched out of shape the joints were being slowly

torn apart although the pain brought the sweat out on his forehead the worst of all was the fear that his backbone was about to snap he said his teeth and breathed hard through his nose trying to keep silent As long as possible you are afraid said O'Brien watching his face that in another moment something is going to break you're a special fear is that it will be your backbone you have a vivid mental picture of the vertebrae snapping apart and the spinal fluid dripping out of them that is what you're thinking is it not Winston

Winston did not answer O'Brien Drew back the lever on the dial the wave of pain receded almost as quickly as it had come that was 40. said O'Brien you can see that the numbers on this dial run up to a hundred will you please remember throughout our conversation that I have it in my power to inflict pain on you at any moment and to whatever degree I choose if you tell me any lies or attempt to Prevaricate in any way or even fall below your usual level of intelligence it will cry out with pain instantly

do you understand that yes said Winston O'Brien's Manor became less severe he resettled his spectacles thoughtfully and took a peso to up and down when he spoke his voice was gentle and patient he had the heir of a doctor a teacher Even a priest anxious to explain and persuade rather than to punish I'm taking trouble with you Winston he said because you're worth trouble you know perfectly well what is the matter with you you've known it for years though you've fought against the knowledge you are mentally deranged you suffer from a defective memory you're unable

to remember real events and you persuade yourself that you remember other events Which never happened fortunately it is curable you've never cured yourself of it because you did not choose to there was a small effort of the will that you were not ready to make but even now I'm well aware you're clinging to your disease under the impression that it is a virtue now take an example at this moment which power is Oceania at War with when I was arrested Oceania was at war with East Asia with East Asia good and Oceana has always been

at war with East Asia has it not Winston Drew in his breath he opened his mouth to speak and then did not speak he could not take his eyes away from the dial The truth please Winston your truth tell me what you think you remember I remember that until only a week before I was arrested we were not at war with East Asia at all we were in Alliance with them the war was against Eurasia that had lasted for four years before that O'Brien stopped him with the movement of the hand Another example he said

some years ago you had a very serious delusion indeed you believed that three men three one-time party members named Jones allenson and Rutherford men who were executed for treachery and sabotage after making the fullest possible confession were not guilty of the crimes they were charged with you believed that you'd seen Unmistakable documentary evidence proving that their confessions were false there was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination you believed that you had actually held it in your hands it was a photograph something like this an oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O'Brien's

fingers or perhaps five seconds it was within The angle of Winston's vision it was a photograph and there was no question of its identity it was the photograph there was another copy of the photograph of Jones Aaronson and Rutherford at the party function in New York which he had chanced upon 11 years ago and promptly destroyed for only an instant it was before his eyes then it was out of sight again He had seen it unquestionably he had seen it he made a desperate agonizing effort to wrench the top off of his body free it

was impossible to move so much as a centimeter in any direction for the moment he had even forgotten the dial all he wanted was to hold the photograph and his fingers again or at least to see it exists he cried Now said O'Brien he stepped across the room there was a memory hole in the opposite wall O'Brien lifted the grating unseen the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air it was Vanishing in a flash of flame O'Brien turned away from the wall ashes he said not even identifiable lashes Dust

it does not exist it never existed it did exist it does exist it exists in memory I I remember it you remember it I do not remember it said O'Brien Winston's heart sank that was double think he had a feeling of deadly helplessness if he could have been certain that O'Brien was lying it would not have seemed to matter but it was perfectly possible that O'Brien had really forgotten the photograph and if so then already he would have forgotten his denial of remembering it and forgotten the act of forgetting how could one be sure that

it was simple trickery perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen that was the thought that defeated him Orion was looking down at him speculatively more than ever he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a Wayward but promising child there is a partish slogan dealing with the control of the past he said repeat it if you please who controls the past controls the future who controls the present controls the past repeated Winston immediately who controls the present controls the past said O'Brien nodding his head with slow approval Is it your

opinion Winston but the past has real existence again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston his eyes flitted toward the dial he not only did not know whether yes or no was the answer that would save him from pain he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one O'Brien smiled thinkly you are no metaphysician Winston he said until this moment you had never Considered what is meant by existence I will put it more precisely does the past exist concretely in space is there somewhere or other a place a world of

solid objects where the past is still happening no then where does the past exist if at all in records it is written down in records and in the mind in human memories In memory very well then we the party control all records and we control all memories then we control the past do we not how can you stop people remembering things cried Winston again momentarily for getting the dial it is involuntary it's outside oneself how can you control memory you've not controlled mine O'Brien's Manor grew Stern again he laid His hand on the dial on

the country he said you have not controlled it that is what has brought you here you are here because you have failed in humility in self-discipline you would not make the act of submission which is the price of Sanity you'll prefer to be a lunatic a minority of one only the disciplined mind can see reality Winston you believe that reality is something objective external existing in its own right you also believe that The nature of reality is self-evident when you delude yourself into thinking that you see something you assume that everyone else sees the same

thing as you but I tell you Winston that reality is not external reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else not in the individual mind which can make mistakes and in any case soon perishes only in the mind of the party which is collective and immortal Whatever the party holds to be truth is truth it is impossible to see reality except by Looking Through The Eyes Of The Party that is the fact that you have got to relearn Winston it needs an act of self-destruction an effort of the will you must humble yourself before

you can become sane he paused for a few moments as though to allow what he'd been saying to sink in Do you remember he went on writing in your diary freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four yes said Winston O'Brien held up his left hand it's back toward Winston with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended how many fingers am I holding up Winston four and if the party says that it is not for but five then how many Four the word ended in a gasp of pen the needle

of the dial had shot up to 55. sweat that sprung out all over Winston's body the air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop O'Brien watched him the four fingers still extended he drew back the lever this time the pain was only slightly eased How many fingers Winston four the needle went up to 60. how many fingers Winston oh oh what else can I say four the needle must have risen again but he did not look at it the heavy Stern face and

the four fingers filled his vision the fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars enormous blurry and seeming to vibrate but unmisticably four how many fingers Winston four stop it stop it how can you go on four four how many Fingers Winston oh five five now Winston that is no use you are lying you still think there are four how many fingers please four five four anything you like honey stop it stop the pain abruptly he was sitting up with O'Brien's arm around his shoulders he had perhaps lost Consciousness for a few seconds the bonds

that held his body down were loosened he felt very cold he was shaking uncontrollably his teeth were chattering the tears were rolling down his cheeks for a moment he clung to O'Brien like a baby curiously comforted by the heavy arm around his shoulders He had the feeling that O'Brien was his protector that the pain was something that came from outside from some other source and that it was O'Brien who would save him from it you're a slow learner Winston said O'Brien gently what can I help it he blubbard how can I help seeing what is

in front of my eyes two and two are four sometimes Winston sometimes they're five Sometimes they're three sometimes they are all of them at once you must try harder it's not easy to become sane he laid Winston down on the bed the grip on his limbs tightened again but the pain had ebbed away and the trembling had stopped leaving him merely weak and cold O'Brien motioned with his head to the man in the white coat who had stood immobile throughout the proceedings The man in the white coat bent down and looked closely into Winston's eyes

felt his pulse laid an ear against his chest tapped here and there he nodded to O'Brien again said O'Brien the pain flowed into Winston's body the needle must be at 70. 75. it shut his eyes this time he knew that the fingers were still there and still four all that mattered was somehow to Stay alive until the spasm was over he had ceased to notice whether he was crying out or not the pain lessened again he opened his eyes O'Brien had drawn back the lever how many fingers Winston four I suppose that R4 I would

see five if I could I'm trying to see five which do you wish to persuade me that you see five Or to really see them really to see them again said O'Brien perhaps the needle was a deity 90. Winston could only intermittently remember why the pain was happening behind his screwed up eyelids a forest of fingers seemed to be moving in a sort of dance weaving in and out disappearing behind one another and reappearing again he was trying to count them he could not remember why he knew only that it was Impossible to count them

and that this was somehow due to the mysterious identity between five and four the pain died down again when he opened his eyes it was to find that he was still seeing the same thing innumerable fingers like moving trees were still streaming past in either direction Crossing and re-crossing he shot his eyes again how many fingers am I holding up Winston I don't know I don't know you'll kill me If you do that again four five six in all honesty I don't know better said O'Brien the needle slid into Winston's arm almost in the same

instant a blissful healing warmth spread all through his body the pain was already half forgotten he opened his eyes and looked up gratefully at O'Brien at sight of the heavy lined face so Ugly and so intelligent his heart seemed to turn over if he could have moved he would have stretched out a hand and laid it under Brian's arm he had never loved him so deeply as at this moment not merely because he'd stopped the pain the old feeling that at bottom it did not matter whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy who'd come

back O'Brien was a person who could be talked To perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood O'Brien had tortured him to the edge of lunacy and in a little while it was certain he would send him to his death it made no difference in some sense that went deeper than friendship they were Intimates somewhere or other although the actual words might never be spoken there was a place where they could meet and talk O'Brien was looking down at him with an expression which suggested that the same thought might

be in his own mind when he spoke it was in an easy conversational term do you know where you are Winston he said I don't know I can guess in the ministry of love do you know how long you've been here I don't know days weeks months I think it is months And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place to make them confess oh that's not the reason try again to punish them no exclaimed O'Brien his voice had changed extraordinarily and his face had suddenly become both Stern and animated no no

not merely to extract your confession or to punish you shall I tell you why we've brought you here To cure you to make you sane will you understand Winston that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured we're not interested in those stupid crimes that you've committed the party is not interested in the overt act the thought is all we care about we do not merely destroy our enemies we change them do you understand what I mean by that he was bending over Winston his face Looked enormous because of its

nearness and hideously ugly because it was seen from below moreover it was filled with a sort of exaltation a lunatic intensity again Winston's heart shrank it would have been possible he would have colored deeper into the bed he felt certain that O'Brien was about to twist the dial out of sheer wantedness at this moment however O'Brien turned away he took a pace or two up and down then He continued less vehemently the first thing for you to understand is that in this place there are no martyrdoms you've read of the religious persecutions of the past

in the Middle Ages there was the Inquisition it was a failure it set out to eradicate heresy and ended by perpetuating it for every heretic burned at the stake thousands of others rose up why was that because the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open and Killed them while they were still unrepentant in fact it killed them because they were unrepentant men were dying because they would not abandon their true beliefs naturally all the glory belonged to the victim and all ashamed to The Inquisitor who burned him later in the 20th century there were totalitarians

as they were called there were the German Nazis and the Russian Communists the Russians persecuted heresy more cruelly than the Inquisition Had done and they imagine that they had learned from the mistakes of the past they knew at any rate that one must not make Martyrs before they exposed their victims to public trial they deliberately set themselves to destroy their dignity they wore them down by torture and Solitude until they were despicable cringing wretches confessing whatever was put into their mouths covering themselves with abuse accusing and Sheltering behind one another Whimpering for mercy and yet

after only a few years the same thing had happened over again the dead men have become Martyrs and their degradation was forgotten once again why was it in the first place because the confessions that they made were obviously extorted and untrue we do not make mistakes of that kind all the confessions that are uttered here are true we make them true and above all we do not allow the dead To rise up against us you must stop Imagining the posterity will vindicate you Winston posterity will never hear of you you will be lifted clean out

from the stream of History we shall turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere nothing will remain of you not a name in a register not a memory in a living brain you will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future you will never have existed Then why bother to touch me thought Winston with a momentary bitterness O'Brien checked his step as though Winston had uttered thought aloud his large ugly face came nearer with the eyes a little narrowed they are thinking he said that since we intend to destroy you

utterly so that nothing that you say or do can make the smallest difference in that case why do we go to the trouble of interrogating you first That is what you were thinking was it not yes said Winston O'Brien smiled slightly you are a floor in the pattern Winston you're a stain that must be wiped out did I not tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors of the past we're not content with negative obedience nor even with the most abject submission when finally you surrender to us it must Be of your

own free will we do not destroy the heretic because he resists us so long as he resists us we never destroy him we convert him we capture his inner mind we reshape him we burn all evil and all illusion out of him we bring him over to our side not in appearance but genuinely heart and soul we make him one of ourselves before we kill him it is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere In the world however secret and Powerless it may be even in the instant of death we cannot permit

any deviation in the old days the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic proclaiming his heresy exalting in it even the victim of the Russian purges could carry Rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet could we make the brain perfect before we blow it out The command of the old despotisms was Thou shalt not the command of the totalitarians was Thou shalt our Command is Thou Art no one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us everyone is washed clean even those three

miserable traitors and whose innocence you once believed Jones Aaronson and Rutherford in the end we broke them down I took part in their interrogation myself I saw them gradually worn down whimpering groveling weeping and in the end it was not with pain or fear only with penitence by the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of men there was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they had done and love of Big Brother it was touching to see how they loved Him They begged to be shot quickly so that they

could die while their minds were still clean his voice had grown almost dreamy the exhortation The Lunatic enthusiasm was still in his face it's not pretending thought Winston he's not a hypocrite he believes every word he says what most oppressed him was the consciousness of his own intellectual inferiority he watched the heavy yet Graceful form strolling to and fro in and out of the range of his vision O'Brien was a being in all ways larger than himself there was no idea that he had ever had or could have that O'Brien had not long ago known

examined and rejected his mind contained Winston's mind but in that case how could it be true that O'Brien was mad It must be he Winston who was mad O'Brien halted and looked down at him his voice had grown Stern again do not imagine that you'll save yourself Winston however completely you surrender to us no one who has once gone astray is ever spared and even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life still you would never escape from us what happens to you here is forever understand that in advance

we shall Crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back things will happen to you from which you could not recover if you lived a thousand years never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling everything will be dead inside you never again will you be capable of love or friendship or joy of living or laughter or curiosity or courage or integrity you will be Hollow we shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with Ourselves he paused and signed to the man in the white coat Winston was

aware of some heavy piece of apparatus being pushed into place behind his head O'Brien had sat down beside the bed so that his face was almost on a level with Winston's three thousand he said speaking of a Winston's head to the man in the white coat Two soft paths which felt slightly moist clamped themselves against Winston's temples he quailed there was pain coming a new kind of pain O'Brien laid a hand reassuringly almost kindly on his time it will not hurt he said keep your eyes fixed on mine at this moment there was a devastating

explosion or what seemed like an explosion though it Was not certain whether there was any noise there was undoubtedly a blinding flash of light Winston was not hurt only prostrated although he had already been lying on his back when the thing happened he had a curious feeling that he had been knocked into that position a terrific penis blow had flattened him out also something had happened inside his Head as his eyes regain their focus he remembered who he was and where he was and recognized the face that was gazing into his own but somewhere or

other there was a large patch of emptiness as though a piece had been taken out of his brain it will not last said O'Brien look me in the eyes what country is Oceania at war with Winston thought He knew what was meant by Oceania and that he himself was a citizen of Oceania he also remembered Eurasia and East Asia but who was at war with whom he did not know in fact he'd not been aware that there was any War I don't remember Oceania is at war with East Asia do you remember that now yes

Oceania has always been at war with East Asia since the beginning of your life since the beginning of the party since the beginning of History the war has continued without a break always the same War do you remember that yes 11 years ago you created a legend about three men who have been condemned to death for treachery you pretended that you had seen a piece of paper which proved them innocent No such piece of paper ever existed you invented it and later you grew to believe in it you remember now the very moment at which

you first invented it do you remember that yes now I held up the fingers of my hand to you you saw five fingers do you remember that yes O'Brien held up the fingers of his left Hand with the thumb concealed there are five fingers there do you see five fingers yes and he did see them for a fleeting instant before the scenery of his mind changed he saw five fingers and there was no deformity then everything was normal again and the old fear the hatred and the bewilderment came crowding back again but there had been

a moment he did not Know how long 30 seconds perhaps of luminous certainty when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth and when two and two could have been three as easily as five if that were what was needed it had faded out before O'Brien had dropped his hand but though he could not recapture it he could remember it as one remembers a vivid experience at some remote period of one's life when one is In effect a different person you see now said O'Brien that it is

at any rate possible yes said Winston O'Brien stood up with a satisfied heir over to his left Winston saw the man in the white coat break an ample and draw back the plunger on a syringe O'Brien turned to Winston with a smile in almost the old manner he resettled his Spectacles on his nose I didn't remember arriving in your diary he said that it did not matter whether I was a friend or an enemy since I was at least a person who understood you and could be talked to well you were right I enjoy talking

to you your mind appeals to me it resembles my own mind except that you happened to be insane before we bring the session to an end you can ask me a few questions if you Choose any question I like anything he saw that Winston's eyes were upon the dial it's is Switched Off what is your first question what have you done with Julia said Winston O'Brien smiled again she betrayed you Winston immediately unreservedly I've seldom seen anyone Come over to a silk promptly he would hardly recognize her if you saw her all her rebelliousness her

deceit her Folly her dirty-mindedness everything has been burned out of her there was a perfect conversion a textbook case you tortured her O'Brien left this unanswered next question he said Does Big Brother exist of course he exists the party exists big brother is the embodiment of the party does he exist in the same way as I exist you do not exist said O'Brien once again the sense of helplessness assailed him he knew or he could imagine the arguments which proved his own non-existence but they were nonsense they were only a play on words they're not

the statement you do not exist Contain a logical absurdity what use was it to say so his mind shriveled as he thought of the unanswerable Mad arguments with which O'Brien would demolish him I think I exist he said wearily I am conscious of my own identity I was born and I shall die I have arms and legs I occupy a particular point in space no other solid object can occupy the same point simultaneously In that sense does Big Brother exist it is of no importance he exists will big brother ever die of course not how

could he die next question does the Brotherhood exist that Winston you will never know if we choose to set you free when we finished with you and if you live to be 90 years old still you will never learn whether the answer to that question is yes or no as long as you live it will be an unsolved riddle in your mind Winston they silent his breast Rose and fell a little faster he still had not asked the question that had come into his mind the first he had got to ask it and yet it

was as though his tongue Would not utter it there was a trace of amusement in O'Brien's face even his spectacles seemed to wear an ironical gleam he knows thought Winston suddenly he knows what I'm going to ask at the thought the words burst out of him what is in room 101 the expression on O'Brien's face did not change He answered dryly you know what is in ROM 101 Winston everyone knows what is in room 101. he raised a finger to the man in the white coat evidently the session was at an end a needle jerked

into Winston's arm he sank almost instantly into deep sleep chapter 3. there are three stages in your Wii integration said O'Brien there is learning there is understanding And there is acceptance it's time for you to enter upon the second stage as always Winston was lying flat on his back but of late his Bonds were looser they still held him to the bed but he could move his knees a little and could turn his head from side to side and raise his arms from the elbow the dial also had grown to be less of a terror

He could evade its pangs if he was quick-witted enough it was chiefly when he showed stupidity that O'Brien pulled the lever sometimes they got through a whole session without use of the dial he could not remember how many sessions there had been the whole process seemed to stretch out over a long indefinite time weeks possibly and the intervals between the sessions might sometimes have been days Sometimes only an hour or two there's you lie there said O'Brien you've often wondered you've even asked me why the ministry of love should expend so much time and trouble

on you and when you were free you were puzzled by what was essentially the same question you could grasp the mechanics of the society you lived in but not its underlying motives and you remember writing in your diary I Understand how I do not understand why it was when you thought about why that you doubted your own sanity you've read the book goldstein's book or parts of it at least did it tell you anything that you did not know already you have read it said Winston I wrote it that is to say I collaborated in

writing it no book is produced individually as you know Is it true what it says as description yes the program it sets forth is nonsense the secret accumulation of knowledge a gradual spread of Enlightenment ultimately a proletarian Rebellion the overthrow of the party you foresaw yourself that that was what it would say it's all nonsense the proletarians will never Revolt not in a thousand years or a million they cannot I do not have to tell you the reason you Know it already if you have ever cherished any dreams of violent Insurrection you must abandon them

there is no way in which the party can be overthrown the rule of the party is forever make that the starting point of your thoughts he came closer to the bed forever he repeated and now let us get back to the question Of how and why you understand well enough how the party maintains itself in power now tell me why we cling to power what is our motive why should we want Power go on speak he added as Winston remains silent nevertheless Winston did not speak for another moment or two a feeling of weariness had

overwhelmed him the faint mad gleam of enthusiasm had Come back into a Brian's face he knew in advance what O'Brien would say that the party did not see Power for its own ends but only for the good of the majority then it sought power because men in the mass were frail cowardly creatures who could not endure Liberty or face the truth and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves the choice for mankind lay between Freedom and happiness and that for the great bulk of mankind happiness was better that

the party was the Eternal guardian of the week a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come sacrificing its own happiness to that of others the terrible thing thought Winston the terrible thing was that when O'Brien said this he would believe it you could see it in his face O'Brien knew everything A thousand times better than Winston he knew what the world was really like in what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what lies and barbarities the party kept them there he had understood it all weighed it all and it made no

difference all was justified by the ultimate purpose what can you do thought Winston against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his Lunacy you are ruling over us for our own good he said feebly you believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves and therefore he started and almost cried out a Pang of pain had shot through his body O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial up to 35. that was stupid Winston stupid he said you should know better than

to say a thing like that he pulled the lever back and continued Now I will tell you the answer to my question it is this the party seeks power entirely for its own sake we are not interested in the good of others we're interested solely in power not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness only Power pure power what pure power means you will understand presently we're different from all the oligarchies Of the past in that we know what we're doing all the others even those who resembled ourselves were cowards and hypocrites the German

Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives they pretended perhaps they even believed that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time that just around the corner their lay a paradise where human beings would be Free and equal we are not like that we know that no one ever sees his power with the intention of relinquishing it power is not a means it is an end one does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution one

makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship the object of persecution is persecution the object of torture is torture the object of power is power Now do you begin to understand me Winston was struck has he been struck before by the tiredness of O'Brien's face they were strong and fleshy and brutal it was full of intelligence and a sort of controlled passion before which he felt himself helpless but it was tired there were pouches under the eyes the skin sagged from the cheekbones O'Brien leaned over him deliberately Bringing the worn face nearer we are

thinking he said that my face is old and tired you're thinking that I talk of power and yet I'm not even able to prevent the decay of my own body can you not understand Winston that the individual is only a cell the weariness of the cell is the Vigor of the organism do you die when you cut your fingernails he turned away from the bird and began strolling up and down again one hand in his pocket We are the priests of power he said God Is Power but at present power is only a word so

far as you were concerned it's time for you to gather some idea of what power means the first thing you must realize is that power is collective the individual only has power in so far that he ceases to be an individual you know the party slogan freedom is slavery has it ever occurred to you that That is reversible slavery is freedom alone free the human being is always defeated it must be so because every human being is doomed to die which is the greatest of all failures but if he can make complete utter submission if

he can escape from his identity if he can merge himself in the party so that he is the party then he is all-powerful and immortal the second thing for you to realize is That power is power over human beings over the body but above all over the mind Power Over Matter external reality as you would call it is not important already our control over matter is absolute for a moment Winston ignored the dial he made a violent effort to raise himself into a sitting position Emily succeeded in wrenching his body painfully but how can you

control Mata he burst Out you don't even control the climate or the law of gravity and there are disease pain death O'Brien silenced him with a movement of his hand we control matter because we control the mind reality is inside the skull you will learn by degrees Winston there is nothing that we could not do invisibility levitation anything I could float off this floor like a soap bubble If I wish to I do not wish to because the party does not wish it you must get rid of those 19th century ideas about the laws of

nature we make the laws of nature but you do not you aren't even masters of this planet what about Eurasia in East Asia you've not conquered them yet unimportant they shall conquer them when it suits us and if we did not what difference would it make we can shut them out of existence Oceania is the World the world itself is only a speck of dust and man is Tiny helpless how long has he been in existence for millions of years the earth was uninhabited nonsense the Earth is as old as we are no older how

could it be older nothing exists except through human consciousness but the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of have you Ever seen those bones Winston of course not 19th century biologists invented them before man there was nothing after man if he could come to an end there would be nothing outside man there is nothing but the whole universe is outside us look at the stars some of them a million light years away they're out of our reach forever

what are the stars said O'Brien indifferently they're bits of fire a few Kilometers away we could reach them if we wanted to or we could block them out the Earth is the center of the universe the sun and the stars go around it Winston made another convulsive movement this time he did not say anything O'Brien continued as though answering the spoken objection there are certain purposes of course that is not true and when we navigate the ocean or when we predict an eclipse we often find it convenient to assume That the earth goes around the

Sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometers away but what of it if you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy the Stars can be near or distant according as we need them do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that have you forgotten double think Winston shrank back up on the bed whatever he said the Swift answer Crushed him like a button and yet he knew he knew that he was in the right the belief that nothing exists outside your own mind surely there must be some

way of demonstrating that it was false had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy there was even a name for it which he had forgotten a feigned smile twitched the corners of O'Brien's mouth as he looked down at him I told you Winston he said that metaphysics is not your strong point The word you're trying to think of is solipsism but you're mistaken this is not solipsism Collective solipsism if you like but that is a different thing in fact the opposite thing all this is a digression he added in a different term a

real power the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but over men he paused and for a moment assumed again his heir of a Schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil How does one man assert his power over another Winston Winston thought by making him suffer he said exactly by making him suffer obedience is not enough unless he is suffering how can he be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own power is in inflicting pain and humiliation power is in tearing human Minds to pieces and putting

them together again in new shapes of your own Choosing you'll begin to see them what kind of world we are creating it is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined a world of fear and treachery and torment a world of trampling and being trampled upon a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself progress in our world will be progress towards more pain The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or Justice ours is founded upon hatred in our world there would be

no emotions except fear rage Triumph and self-abasement everything else we shall destroy everything already we are breaking down the habits of thought which has survived from before the Revolution we'll cut the links between child and parent and between man and man and between man and woman no one dares trust a wife or a child or A friend any longer but in the future there will be no wives and no friends children will be taken from their mothers at Birth as one takes eggs from a hen the sex Instinct will be eradicated procreation will be an

annual formality like the renewal of a ration card we shall abolish the orgasm our neurologists are at work upon it now there will be no loyalty except loyalty toward the party there will be no love Except the love of Big Brother there will be no laughter except the love of triumph over a defeated enemy there will be no heart no literature no science when we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science there will be no distinction between Beauty and ugliness there will be no curiosity no enjoyment of the process of Life all

competing Pleasures will be destroyed but always do not forget this Winston always there will be the intoxication of power Constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler always at every moment there will be the thrill of victory the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless if you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever he paused as though he expected Winston to speak Winston had tried to shrink back into the surface of the bed again You cannot say anything his heart seemed to be frozen O'Brien went on and

remember that it is forever the vase will always be there to be stamped upon the heretic the enemy of society will always be there so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again everything that you have undergone since you've been in our hands all that will continue and worse the Espionage the Betrayals the arrests the tortures the executions the disappearances will never cease it will be a world of Terror as much as a world of Triumph the more the party is powerful the less it will be tolerant the weaker the opposition the tighter the

despotism Goldstein and his heresies will live forever every day at every moment they will be defeated discredited ridiculed spat upon and yet they will always survive this drama that I have played out for You during seven years will be played out over and over again generation after generation always in subtler forms always we shall have the heretic here at our Mercy screaming with pain broken up contemptible and in the end utterly penitent saved from himself crawling to our feet of his own accord that is the world that we are preparing Winston a world of Victory

after Victory Triumph after Triumph after Triumph an Endless pressing pressing pressing up on the nerve of power you are beginning I can see you to realize what that world will be like but in the end you will do more than understand it you will accept it welcome it become part of it Winston had recovered himself sufficiently to speak You can't you said weekly what do you mean by that remark Vincent you could not create such a world as you have just described it is a dream it is impossible why it's impossible to found a civilization

on fear and hatred and cruelty it would never endure why not It would have no Vitality it would disintegrate it will commit suicide nonsense you're under the impression that hatred is more exhausting Than Love why should it be and if it were what difference would that make suppose that we chose to wear ourselves out faster suppose that we Quicken the tempo of human life to men are senile at 30. still what difference would it make can you not understand that the death of The individual is not death the party is immortal as usual The Voice

had battered Winston into helplessness moreover he was enrad that if he persisted in his disagreement O'Brien would twist the dial again and yet he could not keep silent feebly without arguments with nothing to support him except his inarticulate horror of what O'Brien had said he returned to the attack I don't know I don't care somehow you will fail something will defeat you life will defeat you we control life Winston at all its levels you're imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us but

we create human nature men are infinitely malleable or perhaps you've returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the slaves will arise And overthrow us put it out of your mind they are helpless like the animals humanity is the party the others are outside irrelevant I don't care in the end they will beat you sooner or later they will see you for what you are and then they would tear you to pieces do you see any evidence that that is happening or any reason why it should no I believe it I know that you

will fail There is something in the universe I don't know some spirits and principle that you will never overcome you believe in God Winston no then what is it this principle The Bull defeat us I don't know the spirit of man and do you consider yourself a man yes if you are a man Winston You are the last man your kind is extinct we are the inheritors do you understand that you are alone you are outside history you are non-existent his manner changed and he said more harshly and you consider yourself morally Superior to us

with our lies and our cruelty yes I consider myself Superior O'Brien did not speak two other voices were speaking After a moment Winston recognized one of them as his own it was a soundtrack of the conversation he had had with O'Brien on the night when he had enrolled himself in the Brotherhood he heard himself promising to lie to steal to forge to murder to encourage drug taking and prostitution to disseminate venereal diseases throw vitriol in a child's face O'Brien made a small impatient gesture As though to say that the demonstration was hardly worth making then

he turned to switch and the voices stopped get up from that bed he said the bonds had loosened themselves Winston lowered himself to the floor and stood up unsteadily you are the last man said O'Brien you are the guardian of the human spirit you shall see yourself as you are Take off your clothes Winston undid the bit of string that held his overalls together the zip Fastener had long since been wrenched out of them he could not remember whether at any time since his arrest he'd taken off all his clothes at one time beneath the

overalls his body was looped with filthy yellowish Rags just recognizable as the remnants of under clothes As he slid them to the ground he saw that there was a three-sided mirror at the far end of the room he approached it then stopped short an involuntary cry had broken out of him go on said O'Brien stand between the wings of the mirror you shall see the side view as well he had stopped because he was frightened a bowed Gray colored skeleton-like thing was coming toward him Its actual appearance was frightening and not merely the fact that

he knew it to be himself he moved closer to the glass creature's face seemed to be protruded because of its bent carriage a forlorn jail Bird's face with a knobby forehead running back into a bald scalp a crooked nose and battered looking cheekbones above which the eyes were Fierce and watchful the cheeks were seamed the mouth had a Drawn in look certainly it was his own face but it seemed to him that it had changed more than he had changed inside the emotions it registered will be different from the ones he felt you're gone partially

bald for the first moments he thought that he'd gone gray as well but it was only the scalp that was Gray except for his hands and the circle of his face his body was gray all over with Ancient ingrained dirt here and there under the dirt there were red scars of wounds and near the ankle the varicose ulcer was an inflamed Mass with flicks of skin peeling off it but the truly frightening thing was the emaciation of his body the barrel of the ribs was as narrow as that of a skeleton the legs had shrunk

so the knees were thicker than the thighs he saw now what O'Brien had meant about Seeing the side view the curvature of the spine was astonishing the thin shoulders were hunched forward so as to make a cavity of the chest the Scraggy neck seemed to be bending double under the weight of the skull at a guess he would have said that it was the body of a man of sixty suffering from some malignant disease you have thought sometimes said O'Brien that my face the face of a member of the Inner party looks old and worn

what do you think of your own face he seized Winston's shoulder and spun him round so that he was facing him look at the condition you're in he said look at this filthy Grime all over your body look at the dirt between your toes look at that disgusting running sore on your leg do you know that you stink like a goat probably you have ceased to notice it look at your emaciation you see I can Make my thumb and forefinger meet round your bicep I could snap your neck like a carrot you know that you

have lost 25 kilograms since you've been in our hands even your hair is coming out in handfuls look you plugged at Winston's head and brought away a tuft of hair open your mouth nine ten eleven teeth left how many had you when you came to us and the few you have are dropping out of your head look Here he seized one of Winston's remaining front teeth between his powerful thumb and forefinger a twinge of pain shot through Winston's jaw O'Brien had wrenched the loose tooth out by the roots he tossed it across the cell you

are rotting away he said you are falling to pieces what are you a bag of Filth now turn around and look into that Mirror again you see that thing facing you that is the last man if you are human that is humanity now I'll put your clothes on again Winston began to dress himself with slow stiff movements until now you'd not seem to notice how thin and weak he was only one thought stirred in his mind but he must have been in this place Longer than he'd imagined then suddenly as he fixed the miserable Rags

around himself a feeling of pity for his ruined body overcame him before he knew what he was doing he had collapsed onto a small stool that Stood Beside the bed and burst into tears he was aware of his ugliness his gracelessness a bundle of Bones and filthy under clothes sitting weeping in the harsh white light But he could not stop himself O'Brien laid a hand on his shoulder almost kindly and will not last forever he said you're gonna escape from it whenever you choose everything depends on yourself you did it subwinston your reduced me into

this state oh Winston you'll reduce yourself to it this is what you accepted when you set Yourself up against the party it was all contained in that First Act nothing has happened that you did not foresee he paused and then went on we have beaten you Winston we have broken you up you've seen what your body is like your mind is in the same state I do not think there can be much pride left in you you've been kicked and flogged and insulted you've screamed with pain you've rolled on the floor in Your own blood

and vomit you've whimpered for Mercy you've betrayed everybody and everything can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you Winston had stopped weeping though the tears were still oozing out of his eyes he looked up at O'Brien I have not betrayed Julia he said O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully no he said No that is perfectly true you have not betrayed Julia The Peculiar reverence for O'Brien which nothing seemed able to destroy flooded Winston's heart again how intelligent he thought how intelligent never did O'Brien fail to understand what was said to

him anyone else on Earth would have answered promptly that he had betrayed Julia for what was there That they had not screwed out of him under the torture he had told them everything he knew about her her habits her character her past life he had confessed in the most trivial detail everything that had happened at their meetings all that he had said to her and she to him their black market meals adulterous their vague plottings against the party everything and yet in the sense in which he intended the word He had not betrayed her he

had not stopped loving her his feeling toward her had remained the same O'Brien had seen what he meant without the need for explanation tell me he said how soon will they shoot me that's might be a long time said O'Brien you are a difficult case but don't give up hope everyone is cured sooner or later In the end we shall shoot you chapter 4. he was much better he was growing fatter and stronger every day if it was proper to speak of days the white light and the humming sound were the same as ever but

the cell was a little more comfortable than the others he'd been in there were a pillow and a mattress on the plank bed and a stool to sit on They'd given him a bath and they allowed him to wash himself fairly frequently in a tin basin they even gave him warm water to wash with they had given him new under clothes and a clean suit of overalls they addressed his varicose ulcer with soothing ointment they had pulled out the remnants of his teeth and given him a new set of dentures weeks or months must have

passed It would have been possible now to keep count of the passage of time if he had felt any interest in doing so since he was being fed at what appeared to be regular intervals he was getting he judged three meals in the 24 hours sometimes he wondered dimly whether he was getting them by night or by day the food was surprisingly good with meat at every third meal once there was even a packet of Cigarettes he had no matches but the never speaking guard who brought his food would give him a light the first

time he tried to smoke it made him sick but he persevered and spun the packet out for a long time smoking half a cigarette after each meal they had given him a white slate with the stump of pencil tied to the corner at first he made no use of it even when he was awake he was completely Topid often he would lie from one meal to the next almost without stirring sometimes asleep sometimes waking into vague reveries in which was too much trouble to open his eyes he had long grown used to sleeping with a

strong light on his face it seemed to make no difference except that one's dreams were more coherent he Dreamed a great deal all through this time and they were always happy dreams He was in the Golden Country or he was sitting among enormous glorious sunlit ruins with his mother with Julia with O'Brien not doing anything merely sitting in the sun talking of peaceful things such thoughts as he had when he was awake were mostly about his dreams he seemed to have lost the power of intellectual effort now that the stimulus of pain had been removed

he was not bored he had no desire for Conversation or distraction merely to be alone not to be beaten or questioned to have enough to eat and to be clean all over was completely satisfying by degrees he came to spend less time in sleep but he still felt no impulse to get off the bed all he cared for was to lie quiet and feel the strength gathering in his body he would finger himself here and there trying to make sure that it was not an Illusion that his muscles were growing rounder and his skin taught

her finally it was established Beyond a doubt that he was growing fatter his thighs were now definitely thicker than his knees after that reluctantly at first he began exercising himself regularly in a little while he could walk three kilometers measured by pacing the cell and his bowed shoulders were growing straighter He attempted more elaborate exercises and was astonished and humiliated to find what things he could not do he could not move out of a walk he could not hold his stool out at arm's length he could not stand on one leg without falling over he

squatted down on his heels and found that with agonizing pains in thigh and calf he could just lift himself to a standing position he lay flat on his belly and tried to Lift his weight by his hands it was hopeless he could not raise himself a centimeter but after a few more days a few more meal times even that feat was accomplished a Time came when he could do it six times running he began to grow actually proud of his body and to cherish an intermittent belief that his face also was growing back to normal

Only when he chanced to put his hand on his bald scalp did he remember the seamed ruined face that had looked back at him out of the mirror his mind grew more active he sat down on the blank bed he's back against the wall and the Slate on his knees and set to work deliberately at the task of re-educating himself he had capitulated that was agreed in reality as he saw now he'd been ready To capitulate long before he had taken the decision from the moment when he was inside the ministry of love and yes

even during those minutes when he and Julia had stood helpless while the iron voice from the telescreen told them what to do he had grasped the frivolity the shallowness of his attempt to set himself up against the power of the party he knew now than for seven years the Thought police had watched him like a beetle under a magnifying glass there was no physical act no words spoken aloud that they had not noticed no train of thought they'd not been able to infer even the speck of whitish dust on the cover of his diary they

had carefully replaced they had played soundtracks to him shown in photographs some of them were photographs of Julia and himself Yes even he could not fight against the party any longer besides the party was in the right it must be so how could The Immortal Collective brain be mistaken by what external standard could you check its judgments sanity was statistical it was merely a question of learning to think as they Thought only the pencil felt thick and awkward in his fingers he began to write down the thoughts that came into his head he wrote first

in large clumsy capitals freedom is slavery then almost went out of pause he wrote beneath it two and two make five but then there came a sort of check his mind as though shying away from Something seemed unable to concentrate he knew that he knew what came next but for the moment he could not recall it when he did recall it it was only about consciously reasoning out what it must be it did not come of its own accord he wrote God Is Power he accepted everything the past was alterable the past never had been

altered Oceania was at war with East Asia Oceania had always been at war with East Asia Jones Aaronson and Rutherford were guilty of the crimes they were charged with he had never seen the photograph that disproved their guilt it had never existed he had invented it he remembered remembering contrary things but those were false memories products of self-deception how easy it all was Only surrender and everything else followed it was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled and then suddenly deciding to turn around and go with the current instead

of opposing it nothing had changed except your own attitude the predestined thing happened in any case he hardly knew why he had ever rebelled Everything was easy except anything could be true the so-called laws of nature were nonsense the law of gravity was nonsense if I wished O'Brien had said I could float off this floor like a soap bubble Winston worked it out if he thinks he floats off the floor and if I simultaneously think I see him do it then the thing happens Suddenly like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water

the thought burst into his mind it doesn't really happen we imagine it it is hallucination he pushed the thought under instantly the fallacy was obvious it presupposed that somewhere or other outside oneself there was a real world where real things happened but how could there be such a world what knowledge have we of anything saved Through our own minds all happenings are in the mind whatever happens in all Minds truly happens he had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy and he was in no danger of succumbing to it he realized nevertheless that it ought

never to have occurred to him the Mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself the process should be automatic Instinctive Crime Stop they called it a Newspeak he sent to work to exercise himself in crime stop he presented himself with propositions the party says the Earth is flat the party says that ice is heavier than water and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them it was not easy He needed great powers of reasoning and improvisation the arithmetical problems raised for instance by such a statement is

two and two make five were Beyond his intellectual grasp it needed also a sort of athleticism of Mind an ability at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of The crudest Logical errors stupidity was as necessary as Intelligence and is difficult to attain all the while with one part of his mind he wondered how soon they would shoot him everything depends on yourself well Brian had said but he knew that there was no conscious act by which he could bring it nearer might be 10 minutes

hence or 10 years they might keep him for years in solitary confinement they might Send him to a labor camp they might release him for a while as they sometimes did it was perfectly possible that before he was shot the whole drama of his arrest and interrogation will be enacted all over again one certain thing was the death never came at an expected moment the tradition the unspoken tradition somehow you knew it though you never Heard it said was that they shot you from behind always in the back of the head without warning as you

walk down a corridor from cell to cell one day but one day was not the right expression just as probably it was in the middle of the night once he fell into a strange Blissful reverie he was walking down the corridor waiting for the bullet He knew that it was coming in another moment everything was settled smoothed out reconciled there were no more doubts no more arguments no more pain no more fear his body was healthy and strong he walked easily with a joy of movement and with a feeling of walking in sunlight he was

not any longer in the narrow white corridors of the ministry of love he was in the enormous sunlit passage a Kilometer wide down which he seemed to walk in the delirium induced by drugs he was in the Golden Country following the foot track across the old rabbit crop pasture he could feel the short springy Turf under his feet and the gentle sunshine on his face at the edge of the field were the elm trees faintly stirring and somewhere beyond that was the stream where the Dave slay in the green pools under the Willows Suddenly he

started up with a shock of horror the sweat broke out on his backbone he had heard himself cry aloud Julia Julia Julia my love Julia for a moment he had had an overwhelming hallucination of her presence she had seemed to be not merely with him but inside him it was as though she had got into the texture of his skin in that moment he had loved her far more than he had Ever done when they were together and free also he knew that somewhere or other she was still alive and needed his help he lay

back on the bed and tried to compose himself what had he done how many years had he added to his servitude by that moment of weakness in another moment he would hear the of boots outside they could not let such an outburst go Unpunished they would know now if they had not known before that he was breaking the agreement he had made with them he obeyed the party but he still hated the part the part in the old days he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of conformity now he had retreated a step

further in the mind he had surrendered but he had hoped to keep the inner heart In violet he knew that he was in the wrong but he preferred to be in the wrong they would understand that O'Brien would understand it it was all confessed in that single foolish cry he would have to start all over again it might take years he ran a hand over his face trying to familiarize himself with the new shape the word deep follows in the cheeks the Cheekbones felt sharp the nose flattened besides since last seeing himself in the glass

he had been given a complete new set of teeth it was not easy to preserve inscrutability when you didn't know what your face looked like in any case mere control of the features was not enough for the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself You must know all the while that it is there but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your Consciousness in any shape that could be given a name from now onwards you must not only think right

he must feel right dream right and all the while he must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of Mata which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him A kind of cyst one day they would decide to shoot him you could not tell when it would happen but a few seconds beforehand it should be possible to guess it was always from behind walking down a corridor 10 seconds would be enough in that time the world inside him could turn over and then suddenly Without A word uttered without

a check in his step without the changing of a line in his Face suddenly the camouflage would be down and bang would go the batteries of his hatred hatred would fill in like an enormous roaring flame and almost in the same instant bang would go the bullet too late or too early they would have blown his brains to Pieces before they could reclaim it a heretical thought would be unpunished unrepented out of their reach forever they would have blown a hole in their own Perfection to die hating them that Was freedom he shut his eyes

it was more difficult than accepting an intellectual discipline it was a question of degrading himself mutilating himself you got to plunge into the filthiest of Filth what was the most horrible sickening thing of all he thought of Big Brother the enormous face because of constantly seeing it on Posters he always thought of it as being a meter wide with its heavy black mustache and the eyes that followed you to and fro seemed to float into his mind of its own accord what were his true feelings toward Big Brother there was a heavy of boots in

the passage the steel door swung open with a clang O'Brien walked into the cell behind him where the wax and faced Officer and the black uniform guards get up said O'Brien come here Winston stood opposite him O'Brien took Winston's shoulders between his strong hands and looked at him closely he'll have had thoughts of deceiving me he said that was stupid stand up straighter look me in the face he paused and went on in a gentler term You are improving intellectually there's very little wrong with you it is only emotionally that you failed to make progress

tell me Winston and remember no lies you know that I'm always able to detect a lie tell me what are your true feelings toward Big Brother I hate him we all hate him Good then the time has come for you to take the last step you must love big brother it is not enough to obey him you must love him he released Winston with a little push toward the guards Rome 101 he said chapter 5. at each stage of his imprisonment he had Known or seemed to know whereabouts he was in the windowless building possibly

there were slight differences in the air pressure the souls were the guards had beaten him were below ground the room where he'd been interrogated by O'Brien was high up near the roof this place was many meters underground as deep down as it was possible to go it was bigger than most of the cells he had been in but he hardly noticed its Surroundings all he noticed was that there were two small tables straight in front of him each covered with Green Bays one was only a meter or two from him the other was further away

near the door he was strapped upright in a chair so tightly that he could move nothing not even his head a sort of pad gripped his head from behind forcing him to look straight in front of him for a moment he was alone Then the door opened and O'Brien came in you asked me once said O'Brien what was in Room 101 I told you that you knew the answer already everyone knows it the thing that is in room 101 is the worst thing in the world the door opened again a guard came in carrying something

made of wire a box or basket of some kind he set it down on the further table Because of the position in which O'Brien was standing Winston could not see what the thing was the worst thing in the world said O'Brien there is from Individual to individual it may be burial alive or death by fire or by drowning or by impalement or 50 other deaths there are cases where it is some quite trivial thing not even fatal he had moved a little to one side so that Winston had a better view of the Thing on

the table it was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top for carrying it by fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask with the concave side outwards although it was three or four meters away from him he could see that the cage was divided lengthwise into two compartments and that there was some kind of creature in each There were rats in your case said O'Brien the worst thing in the world happens to be rats a sort of premonitory tremor a fear of he was not certain what had

passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage but at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into him his bowels seem to turn to water Can't do that he cried out in a high-cracked voice you couldn't you couldn't it's impossible do you remember said O'Brien the moment of panic that used to occur in your dreams there was a wall of Blackness in front of you and a roaring sound in your ears there was something terrible on the other side of the wall you

knew that you knew what it was but you dared not drag it into the open it was the rats that were on the other Side of the wall Brian said Winston making an effort to control his voice you know this is not necessary what is it you want me to do O'Brien made no direct answer when he spoke it was in the school masterish manner that he sometimes affected he looked thoughtfully into the distance as though he were addressing an audience somewhere behind Winston's back my itself he said Pain is not always enough there are

occasions when a human being will stand out against pain even to the point of death but for everyone there is something unendurable something that cannot be contemplated courage and cow diss are not involved if you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch the Rope if you have come up from Deep Water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air it is merely an instinct which Cannot be disobeyed it is the same with the rats for you they are unendurable they are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand even

if you wish to you will do what is required of you but what is it what is it how can I do it if I don't know what it is O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the nearer table he set it down carefully on the base cloth Winston could hear the blood Singing in his ears he had the feeling of sitting in utter loneliness he was in the middle of a great empty plane a flat desert drenched with sunlight across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances if the

cage with the rats was not two meters away from him they were enormous rats they were at the age when a rat's muzzle grows blunt and Fierce and his fur Brown instead of gray the rat said O'Brien still addressing His invisible audience although a rodent is carnivorous you are aware of that you will have heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters of this town in some streets a woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house even for five minutes the rats are certain to attack it within quite a small time

they will strip it to the bones they also attack sick or dying people they show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being Is helpless there was an outburst of squeals from the cage he seemed to reach Winston from far away the rats were fighting they were trying to get at each other through the partition he heard also a deep groan of despair that too seemed to come from outside himself O'Brien picked up the cage and as he did so pressed something in it There was a sharp click Winston made a frantic effort to tear

himself loose from the chair it was hopeless every part of him even his head was held immovably O'Brien moved the cage near her it was less than a meter from Winston's face I have pressed the first lever said O'Brien you understand the construction of this cage The Mask will fit over your head leaving no exit When I pressed the other lever the door of the cage will slide up these starving brutes will shoot out of it like bullets have you ever seen a rat leap through the air they will leap onto your face and bore

straight into it sometimes they attack the eyes first Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue the cage was nearer it was closing in Winston heard a succession of shrill Cries which appeared to be occurring in the air above his head he fought furiously against his Panic to think to think even with a split second left to think was the only hope suddenly the fowl musty odor of the brutes struck his nostrils there was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him and the almost lost Consciousness everything had gone black for an instant he

was insane a screaming animal yet he came out of the Blackness clutching an Idea there was one and only one way to save himself he must interpose another human being the body of another human being between himself and the Rats the circle of the Mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of anything else the wire door was a couple of hand spans from his face the rats knew what was coming now one of them was leaping up and down the other an old scaly grandfather of the sewers Stood up with his pink

hands against the bars and fiercely snuffed the air Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth again the black Panic took hold of him he was blind helpless mindless it was a common punishment in Imperial China said O'Brien as deductively as ever the mask was closing on his face the wire brushed his cheek and then no it was not relief Only Hope a tiny fragment Of Hope too late perhaps too late but he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person whom he could transfer his punishment one body that

he could thrust between himself and the rats and he was shouting frantically over and over to it to Julia to it to Julia not me Julia I don't Terror face of stripper to the bones not me Julia not me he was falling backwards into enormous depths away from the rats he was still Strapped in the chair but he had fallen through the floor through the walls of the building through the Earth through the oceans through the atmosphere into outer space into the Gulfs between the Stars always away away from the rats he was light years

distant but O'Brien was still standing at his side there was still the cold Touch of a wire against his cheek but through the darkness that enveloped Him he heard another metallic click and knew that the Caged door had clicked shut and not open chapter 6. the chestnut tree was almost empty a ray of sunlight slanting through a window fell yellow and Dusty tabletops it was the Lonely Hour of fifteen the Timmy music trickled from the Telescreens Winston Saturn as usual Corner gazing into an empty glass now and again he glanced up at a vast face

which eyed him from the opposite wall big brother is watching you the caption said unbidden a waiter came and filled his glass up with Victory gin shaking into it a few drops from another bottle with A quill through the cork it was saccharine flavored with cloves a specialty of the cafe Winston was listening to the telescream at present only music was coming out of it but there was a possibility that at any moment there might be a special bulletin from the ministry of peace the news from the African front was disquieting in the extreme on

and off he'd been worrying about it all day a Eurasian Army Oceania was at war with Eurasia Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia was moving Southward at terrifying speed the midday bulletin had not mentioned any definite area but it was probable that already the mouth of the Congo was a battlefield brazzerville and leopoldville were in danger one did not have to look at the map to see what it meant it was not merely a question of losing central Africa for the first time in the whole War the whole territory of Oceania itself was

menaced A violent emotion not fear exactly the sort of undifferentiated excitement flared up in him then faded again he stopped thinking about the war in these days he could never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few moments at a time he picked up his glass and drained it to the gulp as always it made him shudder and even wretch slightly the stuff was horrible the cloves and saccharin themselves disgusting enough in their Sickly way could not disguise the flat oily smell and what was worst of all was that the smell

of gin which drilled with him night and day was inextricably mixed up in his mind with the smell of those he never named them even in his thoughts and so far as it was possible he never visualized them they were something that he was half aware of hovering close to his face smell that clung to his nostrils As the Gin Rose in him he belched through purple lips he'd ground fatter since they released him and regained his old color indeed more than regained it his features thickened the skin on nose and cheekbones was coarsely red

even the bald scalp was too deep a pink a waiter again unbidden brought the chessboard and the current issue of the times with the page turned down at the chess problems Then seeing that Winston's glass was empty he brought the Gin bottle and filled it there was no need to give orders they knew his habits the chessboard was always waiting for him his corner table was always reserved even when the place was full he had it to himself since nobody cared to be seen sitting too close to him he never even bothered to count his

drinks at irregular intervals they Presented him with a dirty slip of paper which they said was the bill but he had the impression that they always undercharged him it would have made no difference if it had been the other way about he had always plenty of money nowadays he even had a job a cynical more highly paid than his old job had been the music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took over Winston raised his head to listen No bulletin from the front however it was merely a brief announcement from the ministry of Plenty

in the preceding quarter it appeared the 10th three-year plans quote of the bootlesses have been overfilled by 98 percent he examined the chest problem and set out the pieces it was a tricky ending involving a couple of nights white to play and mate in two moves Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother white always mates he thought with the sort of Cloudy mysticism always without exception it is so arranged in no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won they did not symbolize the Eternal unvarying Triumph of good over

evil the huge face gazed back at him full of calm power white always mates The Voice from the telescreen paused and added in a different and much Graver tone you are warned to stand by for an important announcement at 15 30 15 30. this is news of the highest importance take care not to miss it 15 30. the tinkling music struck up again Winston's heart stirred that was the bulletin from the front instinct told him that it was bad news that was coming all day with the little spurts of Excitement the thought of a smashing

defeat in Africa had been in and out of his mind he seemed actually to see the Eurasian Army swarming across the never broken Frontier and pouring down into the tip of Africa like a column of ants why had it not been possible to outflank them in some way the outline of the West African Coast stood out vividly in his mind he picked up the White Knight and moved it across the board There was the proper spot even while he saw the black horde racing Southward he saw another Force mysteriously assembled suddenly planted in their rear

cutting their Communications by land and sea he felt that by willing it he was bringing that other Force into existence but it was necessary to act quickly if they could get control of the whole of Africa if they had airfields and submarine bases of the cape it will cut Oceania in two Might mean anything defeat breakdown the redovision of the world action of the party he drew a deep breath an extraordinary medley of feelings but it was not a medley exactly rather it was successive layers of feeling in which one could not say which layer

was under most struggled inside him the spasm passed he put the White Knight back in its place But for the moment he could not settle down to Serious study of the chess problem his thoughts wondered again almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in the dust on the table two plus two equals five they can't get inside you she had said they could get inside you Whatever happens to you here is forever O'Brien had said that was a true word there were things your own acts from which you could not recover something was killed in

your breast burned out cauterized out he had seen her he'd even spoken to her there was no danger in it he knew as though instinctively that they now took almost no interest in his Doings he could have arranged a meter a second time if either of them had wanted to actually it was by chance that they'd met it was in the park on a vile biting day in March when the Earth was like iron and all the grass seemed dead and there was not a bird anywhere except a few crocuses which had pushed themselves up

to be dismembered by the wind He was hurrying along with Frozen hands and watering eyes when he saw her not 10 meters away from him it struck him at once that she had changed in some ill-defined way they almost passed one another without a sign then he turned and followed her not very eagerly he knew that there was no danger nobody would take any interest in them She did not speak she walked a bleakly away across the grass as though trying to get rid of him then seemed to resign herself to having him at his

side presently they were in among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind they halted it was violent cold the wind whistled through the twigs and fretted the Occasional dirty looking crocuses he put his arm around her waist there was no telescreen but there must be hidden microphones besides they could be seen it did not matter nothing mattered they could have laid down on the ground and done that if they'd wanted to his flesh froze with the horror of the thought of it she made no response whatever

to the Clasp of his arm she did not even try to disengage herself he knew now what had changed in her her face was shallower and there was a long scar partly hidden by the hair across her forehead and Temple but that was not the change it was that her waist had grown thicker and in a surprising way it stiffened he remembered her once after the Explosion of a rocket bomb he'd helped to drag a corpse out of some ruins and had been astonished not only by the incredible weight of the thing but by its

rigidity and awkwardness to handle which made it seem more like Stone than flesh her body felt like that it occurred to him that the texture of her skin would be quite different from what it had once been he did not attempt to kiss her Nor did they speak as they walked back across the gate she looked directly at him for the first time it was only a momentary glance full of contempt and dislike he wondered whether it was a dislike that came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also by his bloated

face and the water that the wind kept squeezing from his eyes they sat down on two iron chairs side by Side but not too close together he saw that she was about to speak she moved her clumsy shoe a few centimeters and deliberately crushed a twig her feet seemed to have grown broader he noticed I betrayed you she said boldly I betrayed you he said she gave him another quick look of Dislike sometimes she said they threatened you with something you can't stand up to can't even think about and then you say don't do it

to me do it to somebody else do it to so and so and perhaps you might pretend afterwards that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it but that isn't true At the time when it happens you do mean it you think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way you want it to happen to the other person you don't give a damn what they suffer all you care about is yourself all you care about is

yourself yeah code and after that you don't feel the same toward the other Person any longer no he said you don't feel the same there did not seem to be anything more to say the wind plastered the thin overalls against their bodies almost at once it became embarrassing to sit there in silence besides it was too cold to keep still she said something about catching her tube and stood up to go We must meet again he said yes she said we must meet again he followed resolutely for a little distance half a pace behind her

they did not speak again she did not actually try to shake him off but walked just such a speed as to prevent his keeping abreast of her he had made up his mind that he would accompany her as far as the tube station But suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed pointless and unbearable he was overwhelmed by a desire not so much to get away from Julia as to get back to the Chestnut Creek Cafe which had never seemed so attractive as at this moment he had a nostalgic vision of his corner

table with the newspaper and the chessboard and the ever-flowing gin above all it would be warm in there The next moment not all together by accident he allowed himself to become separated from her by a small knot of people he made a half-hearted attempt to catch up then slowed down turned and made off in the opposite direction when he had gone 50 meters he looked back the street was not crowded But already he could not distinguish her any one of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers perhaps her thickened stiffened body was no longer

recognizable from behind a time when it happens she had said you do mean it he that meant it he had not merely said it he had wished it He'd wished that she and not he should be delivered over to thee something changed in the music that trickled from the telescreen cracked and jeering note a yellow note came into it and then perhaps it was not happening perhaps it was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound a voice was singing under the spreading chestnut tree I sowed you and you sowed me tears welled up

in his eyes A passing waiter noticed that his glass was empty and came back with the Gin bottle he took up his glass and sniffed at it the staff grew not less but more horrible with every mouthful he drank but it had become the element he swam in it was his life his death and his resurrection it was Gin that sank him into a stupor every night and Jin that revived him every morning When he woke seldom before 1100 with gummed up eyelids and fiery mouth and a back that seemed to be broken it would

have been impossible even to rise from the horizontal if it had not been for the bottle and teacup placed beside the bed overnight through the midday hours he sat with glazed face the bottle handy listening to the telescreen from 15 to closing time he was a fixture in the chestnut tree No one cared what he did any longer no whistle woke him no telescreen admonished him occasionally perhaps twice a week he went to a Dusty forgotten looking office in the ministry of Truth and did a little work but what was called work he'd been appointed

to a subcommittee of a subcommittee which had sprouted from one of the innumerable committees dealing with minor difficulties that arose in the compilation of the 11th Edition of the new speak dictionary they were engaged in producing something called an interim report but what it was that they were reporting on he had never definitely found out it was something to do with the question of whether Commerce should be placed inside brackets or outside there were four others on the committee all of them persons similar to himself there were days when they assembled and then promptly dispersed

again frankly Admitting to one another that there was not really anything to be done but there were other days when they settled down for their work almost equally making a tremendous show of entering up their minutes and drafting long memoranda which were never finished when the argument as to what they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily involved in abstruse with subtle haglings over definitions enormous digressions quarrels threats Even to appeal to higher authority and then suddenly the life would go out of them and they would sit around the table looking at each other with extinct

eyes like ghosts fading a cockro the telescreen was silent for a moment Winston raised his head again a bulletin but now they were merely changing the music he had the map of Africa behind his eyelids the movement of the armies was a Diagram a Black Arrow tearing vertically Southward and a white Arrow tearing horizontally Eastward across the tail of the first a Zoe for reassurance he looked up at the imperturbable face in the portrait was it conceivable that the second Arrow did not even exist his interest flagged again he drank another mouthful of gin picked

up the White Knight and made a tentative move Check but it was evidently not the right move because uncalled a memory floated into his mind he saw a candlelit room with a vast white counterpane bed and himself a boy of nine or ten sitting on the floor shaking a dice box and laughing excitedly his mother was sitting opposite him and also laughing it must have been about a month before She disappeared it was a moment of reconciliation when the nagging hunger in his belly was forgotten and his earlier affection for her had temporarily revived he

remembered the day well a pelting drenching day when the water streamed down the window pane and the light indoors was too dull to read by the boredom of the two children in the dark cramped bedroom became unbearable Winston whined and grizzled made futile Demands for food fretted about the room pulling everything out of place and kicking the wainscotting until the neighbors banged on the wall while the younger child wailed intermittently in the end his mother had said now be good and I'll buy you a toy a lovely toy you'll love it and then she had

gone out in the rain to a little general shop which was still sporadically open nearby and come back with a cardboard box containing an Outfit of Snakes and Ladders he could still remember the smell of The Damp cardboard it was a miserable outfit the board was cracked and the tiny wooden dice was so ill-cut that they would hardly lie on their sides Winston looked at the thing silkily and without interest but then his mother lit a piece of candle they sat down on the floor to play Soon he was wildly excited and shouting with laughter

as the tiddlywinks climbed hopefully up the ladders and then came slivering down the snakes again almost back to the starting point they played eight games winning four each his tiny sister too young to understand what the game was about it sat propped against a bolster laughing because the others were laughing for a whole afternoon they'd all been happy together As in his earlier childhood he pushed the picture out of his mind it was a false memory he was troubled by false memories occasionally they did not matter so long as one knew them for what they

were some things had happened others had not happened he turned back to the chessboard and picked up the White Knight again almost in the same instant it dropped Onto the board of the clatter he had started as though a pin had run into him a shrill trumpet call had pierced the air it was the bulletin victory it always meant Victory when a trumpet call proceeded the news a sort of electric thrill ran through the cafe even the waiters had started and pricked up their ears the trumpet call had let loose an enormous volume of noise

already an Excited voice was gabbling from the telescreen but even as it started it was almost drowned out by a roar of cheering from outside the news had run down the streets like magic he could hear just enough of what was issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all happened as he had foreseen a vast Seaborn Amada secretly assembled a sudden blow in the enemy's rear the white Arrow tearing across the tail of the black fragments of triumphant Phrases push themselves through the din while strategic maneuver perfect coordination at our route half a

million prisoners complete demoralization control of the whole of Africa bring the war within measurable distance at its end Victory greatest victory in human history victory victory victory under the table Winston's feet made convulsive movements he had not stirred from his seat but in his mind he was running swiftly running He was with the crowds outside cheering himself deaf you looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother The Colossus that bestowed the world The Rock Against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain he thought how 10 minutes ago yes only 10 minutes there

had still been equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front would be a victory or defeat ah it was more than a Eurasian Army that Had better much had changed in him since the first day in the ministry of love but the final indispensable healing change had never happened until this moment I'm always from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and Slaughter but the shouting outside had died down a little the waiters were turning back to their work one of them approached with the Gin

Bottle Winston sitting in a blissful dream paid no attention as his glass was filled up he was not running or cheering any longer he was back in the ministry of love with everything forgiven his soul white as snow he was in the public dock confessing everything implicating everybody he was walking down the white tiled Corridor with the feeling of walking in Sunlight and an armed guard at his back the long hoped for bullet was entering his brain he gazed up at the enormous face 40 years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile

was hidden beneath the dark mustache oh cruel needless misunderstanding oh stubborn self-willed Exile from the loving breast two Gins ended tears trickled down the Sides of his nose but it was all right everything was all right struggle was finished he had won the victory over himself he loved Big Brother appendix the principles of Newspeak Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of inksak or English socialism In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication either in speech

or writing the leading articles in the times were written in it but this was a tour de force which could only be carried out by a specialist it was expected that Newspeak would finally supersede old speak or Standard English as we should call it by about the year 2050. meanwhile it gained Grand steadily all party members tending to Use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech the version in use in 1984 and embodied in the 9th and 10th editions of the Newspeak dictionary was a provisional one and contained many Superfluous

words and archaic formations which were due to be suppressed later it is with the final perfected version as embodied in the 11th edition of the dictionary that we are concerned here The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world view and mental habits proper to the devotees of insock but to make all other modes of thought impossible it was intended that when you speak had been adopted once and for all an old speak forgotten a heretical thought that is a thought diverging from the principles of insock should be

literally Unthinkable at least so far as thought is dependent on words It's vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a party member could properly wish to express while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods this was done partly by the invention of new words but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and so far as possible of all secondary Meanings whatever to give a single example the word free still existed

in Newspeak but it could only be used in such statements as this dog is free from lice or this field is free from Weeds it cannot be used in its own sense of politically free or intellectually free since political and intellectual Freedom no longer existed even as Concepts and were therefore of necessity nameless quite apart from the suppression of Definitely heretical words reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought

and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum Newspeak was founded on the English language as we now know it though many new speak sentences even when not Containing newly created words would be barely intelligible to an English speaker of our own day Newspeak words were divided into three distinct classes known as the a vocabulary the B vocabulary also called compound words and the C vocabulary it would be simpler to discuss each class separately but the grammatical peculiarities of the language can be dealt with in the section devoted

to the a vocabulary since the same rules held Good for all three categories the a vocabulary the a vocabulary consisted of words needed for the business of everyday life for such things as eating drinking working putting on one's clothes going up and down stairs riding in vehicles gardening cooking and the like it was composed almost entirely of words that we already possess words like hit Run Dog tree Sugar House Field but in comparison with the present-day English vocabulary their number was extremely small while their meanings were far more rigidly defined all ambiguities and shades of

meaning have been purged out of them so far as it could be achieved a new speak word of this class was simply a staccato sound expressing one clearly understood concept it would have been quite impossible to use the a vocabulary for literary purposes or for political or philosophical discussion It was intended only to express simple purposive thoughts usually involving concrete objects or physical actions the grammar of Newspeak has two outstanding peculiarities the first of these was an almost complete interchangeability between different parts of speech any word in the language in principle this applied even to

very abstract words such as if or when could be used either as verb noun adjective or adverb between the verb and the noun Form when they were of the same root there was never any variation this rule of itself involving the destruction of many archaic forms the word thought for example did not exist in Newspeak its place was taken by think which did Duty for both noun and verb no etymological principle was involved here in some cases it was the original noun that was chosen for attention in other cases the verb even where a noun

and verb of Kindred meaning were not etymologically Connected one or the other of them was frequently suppressed there was for example no such word as cut its meaning being sufficiently covered by the noun verb knife adjectives were formed by adding the suffix full to the noun verb and adverbs by adding y's thus for example speedful meant rapid and speed wise meant quickly certain of our present-day adjectives such as good strong big black soft were retained but their total number was very Small there was little need for them since almost any adjectival meaning could be arrived

at by adding full to a noun verb none of the now existing adverbs was retained except for a very few already ending in Wise the wise termination was invariable the word well for example was replaced by goodwise in addition any word this again applied in principle to every word in the language could be negative by adding the affix on or it could be strengthened by The affix Plus or for still greater emphasis double Plus thus for example uncold meant warm while plus cold and double Plus Cold meant respectfully very cold and superlatively cold it was

also possible as in present-day English to modify the meaning of almost any word by prepositional affixes such as anti post up down Etc by such methods it was found possible to Bring about an enormous diminution of vocabulary given for instance the word good there was no need for such a word as bad since the required meaning was equally well indeed better expressed by ungood or that was necessary in any case where two words formed a natural pair of opposites was to decide which of them to suppress dark for example could be replaced by unlight or

light by undark according to preference The second distinguishing Mark of Newspeak grammar was its regularity subject to a few exceptions which are mentioned here all inflections followed the same rules thus in all verbs the printerit and the past participle were the same and ended in Ed the predator of Steel was steeled the preterite of think was thinked and so on throughout the language all such forms as swam gave brought spoke taken Etc being abolished all plurals were made by adding s or s's As the case might be the plurals of man Ox life were mans

oxes lives comparison of adjectives was invariably made by adding ER EST good gooder goodest irregular forms and the more most formation being suppressed the only classes of words that were still allowed to inflect irregularity were the pronouns the relatives the demonstrative adjectives and the auxiliary verbs all of these followed their ancient usage except that whom Have been scrapped as unnecessary and the shall should tenses have been dropped all their uses being covered by Will and wood there were also certain irregularities in word formation arising out of the need for rapid and easy speech a word

which was difficult to utter or was liable to be incorrectly heard was held to be ipso facto a bad word occasionally therefore for the sake of euphemy extra letters were inserted into A word or an archaic formation was retained but this need made itself felt chiefly in connection with the B vocabulary why so great and importance was attached to ease of pronunciation will be made clear later in this essay the B vocabulary the B vocabulary consisted of Words which have been deliberately constructed for political purposes words that is to say which not only had in

every case a political implication but were intended To impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them without a full understanding of the principles of insock it was difficult to use these words correctly in some cases they could be translated into Old speak or even into words taken from the a vocabulary but this usually demanded a long paraphrase and always involved the loss of certain overtones the B words were a sort of verbal shorthand often packing whole ranges of Ideas into a few syllables and at the same time more accurate and forcible than ordinary

language the B words were in all cases compound words compound words such as speak right were of course to be found in the a vocabulary but these were merely convenient abbreviations and had no special ideological color they consisted of two or more words or portions of words welded together in an easily pronounceable form The resulting amalgam was always a noun verb and inflected according to the ordinary rules to take a single example the word good thing meaning very roughly Orthodoxy or if one chose to regard it as a verb to think in an orthodox manner

this inflected as follows noun verb good think past tense and past participle good think present participle good thinking adjective good thinkful adverb good think wise verbal noun good thinker the B words were not constructed on any Etymological plan the words of which they were made up could be any parts of speech and could be placed in any order and mutilated in any way which made them easier to pronounce while indicating their derivation in the word crime think thought crime for instance the think came second whereas in think Paul thought police it came first and in

the latter word police had lost its second syllable because of the greater difficulty in Securing euphony irregular formations were commoner in the B vocabulary than in the a vocabulary for example the adjectival forms of mini true mini packs and mini love were respectively many truthful many peaceful and many lovely simply because truthful and loveful were slightly awkward to pronounce in principle however all B words could inflect an all inflected in exactly the same way some of the B words had highly Subtletized meanings barely intelligible to anyone would not master the language as a whole consider

for example such a typical sentence from a times-leading article as old thinkers unbelief feelingsok the shortest rendering that one could make of this an oddspeak would be those whose ideas were formed before the Revolution cannot have a full emotional understanding of the principles of English socialism But this is not an adequate translation to begin with in order to grasp the full meaning of the new speak sentence quoted above one would have to have a clear idea of what is meant by Ing and in addition only a person thoroughly grounded in insock would appreciate the full

force of the word belly feel which implied a blind enthusiastic acceptance difficult to imagine today or of the word old think which was inextricably mixed up with the idea of wickedness and Decadence but the special function of certain Newspeak words of which old think was one was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them these words necessarily few in number had had their meanings extended until they contained within themselves hold batteries of Words which as they were sufficiently covered by a single comprehensive term could now be scrapped and forgotten the greatest difficulty facing

the Compilers of the new speak dictionary was not to invent new words but having invented them to make sure what they meant to make sure that is to say what ranges of words they canceled by their existence as we've already seen in the case of the word free Words which have once born a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them countless other words Such as honor Justice morality internationalism democracy science and religion had simply ceased to exist a few blanket words covered them

and in covering them abolished them all words grouping themselves around the concepts of Liberty and equality for instance were contained in the single word crime think while all words grouping themselves around the concepts of objectivity and rationalism were contained in the single word old think Greater Precision would have been dangerous what was required in a party member was an Outlook similar to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew without knowing much else that all nations other than his own worshiped false gods he did not need to know that these guards were called Baal Osiris Malik

ashtaroth and the like probably the less he knew about them the better for his Orthodoxy he knew Jehovah And the Commandments of Jehovah he knew therefore that all gods with other names or other attributes were false gods in somewhat the same way the party member knew what constituted right conduct and an exceedingly vague generalized terms he knew what kinds of departure from it were possible his sexual life for example was entirely regulated by the two news-speak words sex crime sexual immorality and good sex chastity Sex crime covered all sexual misdeeds whatever it covered fornication adultery

homosexuality and other perversions and in addition normal intercourse practiced for its own sake there was no need to enumerate them separately since they were all equally culpable and in principle all punishable by Death in the sea vocabulary which consisted of scientific and Technical words it might be necessary to give specialized names To certain sexual aberrations but the ordinary citizen had no need of them he knew what was meant by good sex that is to say normal intercourse between man and wife for the sole purpose of begetting children and without physical pleasure on the part of

the woman all else was sex crime in you speak it was seldom possible to follow heretical thought further than the perception that it was heretical beyond that point the necessary words Were non-existent no word in the B vocabulary was ideologically neutral and read many were euphemisms such words for instance as Joy Camp forced labor camp or mini Pax Ministry of Peace I.E Ministry of War meant almost the exact opposite of what they appeared to mean some words on the other hand displayed a Frank and contemptuous understanding of the real nature of oceanic Society an example

was Pro feed meaning the rubbishi Entertainment and spurious news which the party handed out to the masses in other words again were ambivalent having the connotation good when applied to the party and bad when applied to its enemies but in addition there were great numbers of Words which at First Sight appear to be mere abbreviations and Which derived their ideological color not from their meaning but from their structure so far as it could be contrived Everything that had or might have political significance of any kind was fitted into the B vocabulary the name of every

organization or body of people or doctrine or country or institution or public building was invariably cut down into the familiar shape that is a single easily pronounced word with the smallest number of syllables that would preserve the original derivation in the ministry of Truth for example the records department in which Winston Smith worked was called ret Depp the fiction Department was called ficted the teleprograms department was known as teledep and so on this was not done solely with the object of Saving Time even in the early Decades of the 20th century telescoped words and phrases

have been one of the characteristic features of political language and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in Totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations examples were such words as Nazi gestapo common turn imprakore agit prop in the beginning the practice had been adopted as it were instinctively but in Newspeak it was used with a conscious purpose it was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning by cutting out most of the associations that would Otherwise cling to it the words communist International

for instance call up a composite picture of universal human Brotherhood red flags barricades Karl Marx and the Paris commune the word commenter on the other hand suggests merely a tightly knit organization and a well-defined body of Doctrine it refers to something almost as easily recognized and as Limited in purpose as a chair or a table come in turn is a word that can be Uttered almost without taking thought whereas communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily in the same way the associations called up by the word like

mini true are fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry of Truth this accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily pronounceable And you speak euphony outweighed any consideration other than exactitude of meaning regularity of grammar was always sacrificed to it when it seemed necessary and rightly so since what was required above all for political purposes were short clipped words of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum echoes in the speaker's mind

the words of the be vocabulary even Gained in force from the fact that nearly all of them were very much alike almost invariably these words good think mini packs Pro feed sex crime Joy Camp ing sock belly feel thinkpoll and countless others were words of two or three syllables with the stress distributed equally between the first syllable and the last the use of them encouraged a gambling style of speech at once staccato and monotonous and this was exactly what was aimed at the Intention was to make speech and especially speech on any subject not ideologically

neutral as nearly as possible independent of consciousness for the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary or sometimes necessary to reflect before speaking but a party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgment she'll be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying forth bullets his training Fitted him to do this the language gave him an almost foolproof instrument and the texture of the words with a harsh sound and a certain willful ugliness which was in accord with the spirit of insock assisted the process still

further so did the fact of having very few words to choose from relative to our own the Newspeak vocabulary was Tiny and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised Newspeak indeed differed from almost all other languages in that its vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger each year each reduction was again since the smaller the area of choice the smaller the temptation to take thought ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centers at all this aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duck speak

meaning to quack like a duck Like various other words in the B vocabulary duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning provided that the opinions which were quacked out were Orthodox ones it implied nothing but praise and when the times referred to one of the orators of the party as a double plus good duck speaker it was paying warm and valued compliment the C vocabulary the C vocabulary was supplementary to the others and consisted entirely of Scientific and Technical terms these resembled the scientific terms in use today and were constructed from the same Roots but the usual care

was taken to Define them rigidly and strip them of undesirable meanings they followed the same grammatical rules as the words in the other two vocabularies very few of the C words had any currency either in everyday speech or in political speech any scientific worker OR technician could find all the Words he needed in the list devoted to his own specialty the seldom had more than a smattering of the words occurring in the other lists only a very few words were common to all lists and there was no vocabulary expressing the function of science as a

habit of mind or a method of thought irrespective of its particular branches there was indeed no word for science any meaning that it could possibly bear being already sufficiently covered by The word insock from the foregoing account it will be seen that in Newspeak the expression of unorthodox opinions above a very low level was well nigh impossible it was of course possible to utter heresies of a very crude kind a species of blasphemy it would have been possible for example to say big brother is ungood but this statement which to an orthodox ear merely conveyed

a self-evident absurdity Could not have been sustained by reasoned argument because the necessary words were not available untruth I.E that all men are of equal size weight or strength the concept of political equality no longer existed and this secondary meaning had accordingly been purged out of the word equal in 1984 when old speak was still the normal means of communication the danger theoretically existed that in using new Speak words one might remember their original meanings in practice it was not difficult for any person well grounded in doublethink to avoid doing this but within a couple

of generations even the possibility of such a lapse would have vanished a person growing up with Newspeak as his soul language would no more know that equal had once had the second remaining of politically equal or that free had once meant intellectually free than for instance a person who had Never heard of Chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attached to Queen and Rook there will be many crimes and errors which it would be Beyond his power to commit simply because they were nameless and therefore unimaginable and it was to be foreseen that with

the passage of time the distinguishing characteristics of Newspeak would become more and more pronounced its words growing fewer and fewer their meanings more and more rigid And the chance of putting them to improper uses always diminishing when old speak had been once and for all superseded the last link with the past would have been severed history had already been Rewritten but fragments of the literature of the past survived here and there imperfectly censored and so long as one retained one's knowledge of old speak it was possible to read them in the future such fragments even

if they chanced to survive would be Unintelligible and untranslatable it was impossible to translate any passage of old speak into Newspeak unless it either referred to some technical process or some very simple everyday action or was already Orthodox Good thinkful will be the new speak expression in tendency in practice this meant that no book written before approximately 1960 could be translated as a whole pre-revolutionary literature could only Be subjected to ideological translation that is alteration incense as well as language take for example the well-known passage from the Declaration of Independence we hold these truths to

be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men Deriving their powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to Institute new government it would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original the nearest one could

come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crime think A full translation could only be an ideological translation whereby Jefferson's words would be changed into a panageric on absolute government a good deal of the literature of the past was indeed already being transformed in this way considerations of prestige made it desirable to preserve the memory of certain historical figures while at the same time bringing their achievements into line with the philosophy of insock Various writers such as Shakespeare Milton Swift Byron Dickens and some others were therefore in

process of translation when the task had been completed their original writings with all else that survived of the literature of the past would be destroyed these translations were a slow and difficult business and it was not expected that they will be finished before the first or second decade of the 21st century there were also large Quantities of merely utilitarian literature indispensable technical manuals and the like that had to be treated in the same way it was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adoption of Newspeak had been

fixed for so later date as 2050. this concludes the reading of 1984 by George Orwell copyright Harcourt Brazen company 1949 copyright renewed Sonia brownwell Orwell 1977 recorded by Arrangement with a.m Heath and Company this book was read by Simon prebble the Summer Bridge recording was published by arrangement with Harcourt Brazen company and was produced in 2007 by Blackstone audio Incorporated which holds the copyright neither this recording nor any portion of it may be reproduced or used for any purpose without prior written authorization from Blackstone audio Incorporated if you would like to obtain a complete Catalog

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