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1Title:      Nineteen eighty-four
2Author:     George Orwell (pseudonym of Eric Blair) (1903-1950)
3
4
5PART ONE
6
7Chapter 1
8
9It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
10Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the
11vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions,
12though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering
13along with him.
14
15The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a
16coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall.
17It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a
18man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome
19features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even
20at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric
21current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive
22in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston,
23who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went
24slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the
25lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was
26one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about
27when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
28
29Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had
30something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an
31oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface
32of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank
33somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument
34(the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of
35shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail
36figure, the meagreness of his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls
37which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face
38naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor
39blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.
40
41Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in
42the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into
43spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there
44seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered
45everywhere. The black-moustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding
46corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER
47IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into
48Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner,
49flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the
50single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between
51the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again
52with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's
53windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police
54mattered.
55
56Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away
57about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The
58telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston
59made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it,
60moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal
61plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course
62no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How
63often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual
64wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all
65the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted
66to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the
67assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in
68darkness, every movement scrutinized.
69
70Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer; though, as he
71well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Ministry of
72Truth, his place of work, towered vast and white above the grimy landscape.
73This, he thought with a sort of vague distaste--this was London, chief
74city of Airstrip One, itself the third most populous of the provinces of
75Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him
76whether London had always been quite like this. Were there always these
77vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses, their sides shored up with
78baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs
79with corrugated iron, their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions?
80And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the
81willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the
82bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had sprung up sordid colonies
83of wooden dwellings like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could not
84remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit
85tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible.
86
87The Ministry of Truth--Minitrue, in Newspeak [Newspeak was the official
88language of Oceania. For an account of its structure and etymology see
89Appendix.]--was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It
90was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring
91up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Winston
92stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in
93elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
94
95
96  WAR IS PEACE
97  FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
98  IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
99
100
101The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above
102ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London
103there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So
104completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof
105of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. They
106were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus
107of government was divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself
108with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of
109Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which
110maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible
111for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv,
112and Miniplenty.
113
114The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows
115in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor
116within half a kilometre of it. It was a place impossible to enter except
117on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of
118barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even
119the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced
120guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.
121
122Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the
123expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing
124the telescreen. He crossed the room into the tiny kitchen. By leaving
125the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the
126canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except
127a hunk of dark-coloured bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow's
128breakfast. He took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid
129with a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a sickly, oily
130smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful,
131nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine.
132
133Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The
134stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the
135sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The
136next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world
137began to look more cheerful. He took a cigarette from a crumpled packet
138marked VICTORY CIGARETTES and incautiously held it upright, whereupon the
139tobacco fell out on to the floor. With the next he was more successful.
140He went back to the living-room and sat down at a small table that stood
141to the left of the telescreen. From the table drawer he took out a
142penholder, a bottle of ink, and a thick, quarto-sized blank book with a
143red back and a marbled cover.
144
145For some reason the telescreen in the living-room was in an unusual
146position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where
147it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the
148window. To one side of it there was a shallow alcove in which Winston
149was now sitting, and which, when the flats were built, had probably been
150intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well
151back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so
152far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed
153in his present position he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual
154geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing that he was now
155about to do.
156
157But it had also been suggested by the book that he had just taken out of
158the drawer. It was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its smooth creamy paper,
159a little yellowed by age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for
160at least forty years past. He could guess, however, that the book was much
161older than that. He had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy little
162junk-shop in a slummy quarter of the town (just what quarter he did not
163now remember) and had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire
164to possess it. Party members were supposed not to go into ordinary shops
165('dealing on the free market', it was called), but the rule was not
166strictly kept, because there were various things, such as shoelaces and
167razor blades, which it was impossible to get hold of in any other way. He
168had given a quick glance up and down the street and then had slipped inside
169and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he was not conscious
170of wanting it for any particular purpose. He had carried it guiltily home
171in his briefcase. Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromising
172possession.
173
174The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal
175(nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected
176it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least
177by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp. Winston fitted a nib into
178the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off. The pen was an archaic
179instrument, seldom used even for signatures, and he had procured one,
180furtively and with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the
181beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib instead
182of being scratched with an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to writing
183by hand. Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything
184into the speak-write which was of course impossible for his present
185purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a
186second. A tremor had gone through his bowels. To mark the paper was the
187decisive act. In small clumsy letters he wrote:
188
189
190   April 4th, 1984.
191
192
193He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To
194begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It
195must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was
196thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but
197it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two.
198
199For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary?
200For the future, for the unborn. His mind hovered for a moment round the
201doubtful date on the page, and then fetched up with a bump against the
202Newspeak word DOUBLETHINK. For the first time the magnitude of what he had
203undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It
204was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present,
205in which case it would not listen to him: or it would be different from it,
206and his predicament would be meaningless.
207
208For some time he sat gazing stupidly at the paper. The telescreen had
209changed over to strident military music. It was curious that he seemed
210not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself, but even to have
211forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say. For weeks
212past he had been making ready for this moment, and it had never crossed
213his mind that anything would be needed except courage. The actual writing
214would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable
215restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for
216years. At this moment, however, even the monologue had dried up. Moreover
217his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably. He dared not scratch it,
218because if he did so it always became inflamed. The seconds were ticking
219by. He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front
220of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music,
221and a slight booziness caused by the gin.
222
223Suddenly he began writing in sheer panic, only imperfectly aware of what
224he was setting down. His small but childish handwriting straggled up and
225down the page, shedding first its capital letters and finally even its
226full stops:
227
228
229   April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good
230one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean.
231Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim away
232with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowing along in the
233water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights,
234then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as
235suddenly as though the holes had let in the water, audience shouting with
236laughter when he sank. then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a
237helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been
238a jewess sitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in
239her arms. little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her
240breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and the woman putting
241her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright
242herself, all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought
243her arms could keep the bullets off him. then the helicopter planted a 20
244kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat went all to matchwood.
245then there was a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up up up right up
246into the air a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it
247up and there was a lot of applause from the party seats but a woman down in
248the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting
249they didnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt it aint
250right not in front of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her
251out i dont suppose anything happened to her nobody cares what the proles
252say typical prole reaction they never----
253
254
255Winston stopped writing, partly because he was suffering from cramp. He did
256not know what had made him pour out this stream of rubbish. But the curious
257thing was that while he was doing so a totally different memory had
258clarified itself in his mind, to the point where he almost felt equal to
259writing it down. It was, he now realized, because of this other incident
260that he had suddenly decided to come home and begin the diary today.
261
262It had happened that morning at the Ministry, if anything so nebulous could
263be said to happen.
264
265It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Winston
266worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them
267in the centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for
268the Two Minutes Hate. Winston was just taking his place in one of the
269middle rows when two people whom he knew by sight, but had never spoken
270to, came unexpectedly into the room. One of them was a girl whom he often
271passed in the corridors. He did not know her name, but he knew that she
272worked in the Fiction Department. Presumably--since he had sometimes seen
273her with oily hands and carrying a spanner--she had some mechanical job
274on one of the novel-writing machines. She was a bold-looking girl, of
275about twenty-seven, with thick hair, a freckled face, and swift, athletic
276movements. A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was
277wound several times round the waist of her overalls, just tightly enough to
278bring out the shapeliness of her hips. Winston had disliked her from the
279very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of the
280atmosphere of hockey-fields and cold baths and community hikes and general
281clean-mindedness which she managed to carry about with her. He disliked
282nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always
283the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted
284adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and
285nosers-out of unorthodoxy. But this particular girl gave him the impression
286of being more dangerous than most. Once when they passed in the corridor
287she gave him a quick sidelong glance which seemed to pierce right into
288him and for a moment had filled him with black terror. The idea had even
289crossed his mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That,
290it was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar
291uneasiness, which had fear mixed up in it as well as hostility, whenever
292she was anywhere near him.
293
294The other person was a man named O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party and
295holder of some post so important and remote that Winston had only a dim
296idea of its nature. A momentary hush passed over the group of people
297round the chairs as they saw the black overalls of an Inner Party member
298approaching. O'Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse,
299humorous, brutal face. In spite of his formidable appearance he had a
300certain charm of manner. He had a trick of resettling his spectacles on
301his nose which was curiously disarming--in some indefinable way, curiously
302civilized. It was a gesture which, if anyone had still thought in such
303terms, might have recalled an eighteenth-century nobleman offering his
304snuffbox. Winston had seen O'Brien perhaps a dozen times in almost as many
305years. He felt deeply drawn to him, and not solely because he was intrigued
306by the contrast between O'Brien's urbane manner and his prize-fighter's
307physique. Much more it was because of a secretly held belief--or perhaps
308not even a belief, merely a hope--that O'Brien's political orthodoxy was
309not perfect. Something in his face suggested it irresistibly. And again,
310perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written in his face, but
311simply intelligence. But at any rate he had the appearance of being a
312person that you could talk to if somehow you could cheat the telescreen and
313get him alone. Winston had never made the smallest effort to verify this
314guess: indeed, there was no way of doing so. At this moment O'Brien glanced
315at his wrist-watch, saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and evidently
316decided to stay in the Records Department until the Two Minutes Hate was
317over. He took a chair in the same row as Winston, a couple of places away.
318A small, sandy-haired woman who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was
319between them. The girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind.
320
321The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine
322running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room.
323It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the
324back of one's neck. The Hate had started.
325
326As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had
327flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the
328audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and
329disgust. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago
330(how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading
331figures of the Party, almost on a level with Big Brother himself, and
332then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned
333to death, and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programmes
334of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in
335which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor,
336the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against
337the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations,
338sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still
339alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea,
340under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even--so it was
341occasionally rumoured--in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.
342
343Winston's diaphragm was constricted. He could never see the face of
344Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face,
345with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard--a
346clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile
347silliness in the long thin nose, near the end of which a pair of spectacles
348was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a
349sheep-like quality. Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack
350upon the doctrines of the Party--an attack so exaggerated and perverse that
351a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible
352enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less
353level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing Big
354Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding
355the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom
356of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought,
357he was crying hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed--and all
358this in rapid polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of the
359habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak
360words: more Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would normally
361use in real life. And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to
362the reality which Goldstein's specious claptrap covered, behind his head on
363the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army--row
364after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam
365up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others
366exactly similar. The dull rhythmic tramp of the soldiers' boots formed the
367background to Goldstein's bleating voice.
368
369Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable
370exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room.
371The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power
372of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides,
373the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger
374automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia
375or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was
376generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although
377Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a
378thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers,
379in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the
380general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were--in spite of all this,
381his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes
382waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs
383acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police.
384He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of
385conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its
386name was supposed to be. There were also whispered stories of a terrible
387book, a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author
388and which circulated clandestinely here and there. It was a book without a
389title. People referred to it, if at all, simply as THE BOOK. But one knew
390of such things only through vague rumours. Neither the Brotherhood nor
391THE BOOK was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if
392there was a way of avoiding it.
393
394In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and
395down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort
396to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little
397sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and
398shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy face was flushed.
399He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and
400quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave. The
401dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out 'Swine! Swine! Swine!'
402and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the
403screen. It struck Goldstein's nose and bounced off; the voice continued
404inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the
405others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The
406horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to
407act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining
408in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous
409ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash
410faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of
411people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into
412a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an
413abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to
414another like the flame of a blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston's hatred
415was not turned against Goldstein at all, but, on the contrary, against
416Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at such moments his
417heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen, sole guardian
418of truth and sanity in a world of lies. And yet the very next instant he
419was at one with the people about him, and all that was said of Goldstein
420seemed to him to be true. At those moments his secret loathing of Big
421Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up, an
422invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the hordes
423of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation, his helplessness, and
424the doubt that hung about his very existence, seemed like some sinister
425enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the structure
426of civilization.
427
428It was even possible, at moments, to switch one's hatred this way or that
429by a voluntary act. Suddenly, by the sort of violent effort with which one
430wrenches one's head away from the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded
431in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark-haired
432girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind.
433He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked
434to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He would
435ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax. Better than before,
436moreover, he realized WHY it was that he hated her. He hated her because
437she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with
438her and would never do so, because round her sweet supple waist, which
439seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious
440scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.
441
442The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual
443sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep.
444Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed
445to be advancing, huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring, and
446seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the
447people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats. But
448in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the
449hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired,
450black-moustachio'd, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that
451it almost filled up the screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying.
452It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are
453uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but
454restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the face of Big
455Brother faded away again, and instead the three slogans of the Party stood
456out in bold capitals:
457
458
459  WAR IS PEACE
460  FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
461  IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
462
463
464But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the
465screen, as though the impact that it had made on everyone's eyeballs was
466too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired woman had flung
467herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a
468tremulous murmur that sounded like 'My Saviour!' she extended her arms
469towards the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent
470that she was uttering a prayer.
471
472At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow,
473rhythmical chant of 'B-B!...B-B!'--over and over again, very slowly, with a
474long pause between the first 'B' and the second--a heavy, murmurous sound,
475somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to hear the
476stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as
477thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in
478moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom
479and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis,
480a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.
481Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hate he could
482not help sharing in the general delirium, but this sub-human chanting of
483'B-B!...B-B!' always filled him with horror. Of course he chanted with the
484rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to
485control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive
486reaction. But there was a space of a couple of seconds during which the
487expression of his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him. And it was
488exactly at this moment that the significant thing happened--if, indeed,
489it did happen.
490
491Momentarily he caught O'Brien's eye. O'Brien had stood up. He had taken
492off his spectacles and was in the act of resettling them on his nose with
493his characteristic gesture. But there was a fraction of a second when
494their eyes met, and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew--yes, he
495KNEW!--that O'Brien was thinking the same thing as himself. An unmistakable
496message had passed. It was as though their two minds had opened and the
497thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes. 'I am
498with you,' O'Brien seemed to be saying to him. 'I know precisely what you
499are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust.
500But don't worry, I am on your side!' And then the flash of intelligence
501was gone, and O'Brien's face was as inscrutable as everybody else's.
502
503That was all, and he was already uncertain whether it had happened. Such
504incidents never had any sequel. All that they did was to keep alive in him
505the belief, or hope, that others besides himself were the enemies of the
506Party. Perhaps the rumours of vast underground conspiracies were true after
507all--perhaps the Brotherhood really existed! It was impossible, in spite
508of the endless arrests and confessions and executions, to be sure that the
509Brotherhood was not simply a myth. Some days he believed in it, some days
510not. There was no evidence, only fleeting glimpses that might mean anything
511or nothing: snatches of overheard conversation, faint scribbles on lavatory
512walls--once, even, when two strangers met, a small movement of the hand
513which had looked as though it might be a signal of recognition. It was all
514guesswork: very likely he had imagined everything. He had gone back to his
515cubicle without looking at O'Brien again. The idea of following up their
516momentary contact hardly crossed his mind. It would have been inconceivably
517dangerous even if he had known how to set about doing it. For a second, two
518seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of
519the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in
520which one had to live.
521
522Winston roused himself and sat up straighter. He let out a belch. The gin
523was rising from his stomach.
524
525His eyes re-focused on the page. He discovered that while he sat helplessly
526musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action. And it was
527no longer the same cramped, awkward handwriting as before. His pen had slid
528voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals--
529
530
531  DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
532  DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
533  DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
534  DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
535  DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
536
537
538over and over again, filling half a page.
539
540He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the
541writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial
542act of opening the diary, but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the
543spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.
544
545He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he
546wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made
547no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go
548on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the
549same. He had committed--would still have committed, even if he had never
550set pen to paper--the essential crime that contained all others in itself.
551Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be
552concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for
553years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.
554
555It was always at night--the arrests invariably happened at night. The
556sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights
557glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast
558majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People
559simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the
560registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your
561one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished,
562annihilated: VAPORIZED was the usual word.
563
564For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a
565hurried untidy scrawl:
566
567
568   theyll shoot me i don't care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i
569dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the
570neck i dont care down with big brother----
571
572
573He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down
574the pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at
575the door.
576
577Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was
578might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated.
579The worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a
580drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got
581up and moved heavily towards the door.
582
583
584
585
586Chapter 2
587
588
589
590As he put his hand to the door-knob Winston saw that he had left the
591diary open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was written all over it,
592in letters almost big enough to be legible across the room. It was an
593inconceivably stupid thing to have done. But, he realized, even in his
594panic he had not wanted to smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book
595while the ink was wet.
596
597He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a warm wave of relief
598flowed through him. A colourless, crushed-looking woman, with wispy hair
599and a lined face, was standing outside.
600
601'Oh, comrade,' she began in a dreary, whining sort of voice, 'I thought I
602heard you come in. Do you think you could come across and have a look at
603our kitchen sink? It's got blocked up and----'
604
605It was Mrs Parsons, the wife of a neighbour on the same floor. ('Mrs' was
606a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party--you were supposed to call
607everyone 'comrade'--but with some women one used it instinctively.) She was
608a woman of about thirty, but looking much older. One had the impression
609that there was dust in the creases of her face. Winston followed her down
610the passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost daily irritation.
611Victory Mansions were old flats, built in 1930 or thereabouts, and were
612falling to pieces. The plaster flaked constantly from ceilings and walls,
613the pipes burst in every hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was
614snow, the heating system was usually running at half steam when it was not
615closed down altogether from motives of economy. Repairs, except what you
616could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by remote committees which
617were liable to hold up even the mending of a window-pane for two years.
618
619'Of course it's only because Tom isn't home,' said Mrs Parsons vaguely.
620
621The Parsons' flat was bigger than Winston's, and dingy in a different
622way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look, as though the
623place had just been visited by some large violent animal. Games
624impedimenta--hockey-sticks, boxing-gloves, a burst football, a pair of
625sweaty shorts turned inside out--lay all over the floor, and on the
626table there was a litter of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books.
627On the walls were scarlet banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and
628a full-sized poster of Big Brother. There was the usual boiled-cabbage
629smell, common to the whole building, but it was shot through by a sharper
630reek of sweat, which--one knew this at the first sniff, though it was
631hard to say how--was the sweat of some person not present at the moment.
632In another room someone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was
633trying to keep tune with the military music which was still issuing
634from the telescreen.
635
636'It's the children,' said Mrs Parsons, casting a half-apprehensive glance
637at the door. 'They haven't been out today. And of course----'
638
639She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the middle. The kitchen
640sink was full nearly to the brim with filthy greenish water which smelt
641worse than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt down and examined the angle-joint
642of the pipe. He hated using his hands, and he hated bending down, which was
643always liable to start him coughing. Mrs Parsons looked on helplessly.
644
645'Of course if Tom was home he'd put it right in a moment,' she said.
646'He loves anything like that. He's ever so good with his hands, Tom is.'
647
648Parsons was Winston's fellow-employee at the Ministry of Truth. He was
649a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile
650enthusiasms--one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on
651whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party
652depended. At thirty-five he had just been unwillingly evicted from the
653Youth League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had managed to
654stay on in the Spies for a year beyond the statutory age. At the Ministry
655he was employed in some subordinate post for which intelligence was not
656required, but on the other hand he was a leading figure on the Sports
657Committee and all the other committees engaged in organizing community
658hikes, spontaneous demonstrations, savings campaigns, and voluntary
659activities generally. He would inform you with quiet pride, between whiffs
660of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at the Community Centre every
661evening for the past four years. An overpowering smell of sweat, a sort of
662unconscious testimony to the strenuousness of his life, followed him about
663wherever he went, and even remained behind him after he had gone.
664
665'Have you got a spanner?' said Winston, fiddling with the nut on the
666angle-joint.
667
668'A spanner,' said Mrs Parsons, immediately becoming invertebrate. 'I don't
669know, I'm sure. Perhaps the children----'
670
671There was a trampling of boots and another blast on the comb as the
672children charged into the living-room. Mrs Parsons brought the spanner.
673Winston let out the water and disgustedly removed the clot of human hair
674that had blocked up the pipe. He cleaned his fingers as best he could in
675the cold water from the tap and went back into the other room.
676
677'Up with your hands!' yelled a savage voice.
678
679A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table
680and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister,
681about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood.
682Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red
683neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands
684above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy's
685demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.
686
687'You're a traitor!' yelled the boy. 'You're a thought-criminal! You're a
688Eurasian spy! I'll shoot you, I'll vaporize you, I'll send you to the salt
689mines!'
690
691Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting 'Traitor!' and
692'Thought-criminal!' the little girl imitating her brother in every
693movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of
694tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of
695calculating ferocity in the boy's eye, a quite evident desire to hit or
696kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so.
697It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.
698
699Mrs Parsons' eyes flitted nervously from Winston to the children, and back
700again. In the better light of the living-room he noticed with interest
701that there actually was dust in the creases of her face.
702
703'They do get so noisy,' she said. 'They're disappointed because they
704couldn't go to see the hanging, that's what it is. I'm too busy to take
705them. and Tom won't be back from work in time.'
706
707'Why can't we go and see the hanging?' roared the boy in his huge voice.
708
709'Want to see the hanging! Want to see the hanging!' chanted the little
710girl, still capering round.
711
712Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be hanged in the
713Park that evening, Winston remembered. This happened about once a month,
714and was a popular spectacle. Children always clamoured to be taken to see
715it. He took his leave of Mrs Parsons and made for the door. But he had not
716gone six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his neck an
717agonizingly painful blow. It was as though a red-hot wire had been jabbed
718into him. He spun round just in time to see Mrs Parsons dragging her son
719back into the doorway while the boy pocketed a catapult.
720
721'Goldstein!' bellowed the boy as the door closed on him. But what most
722struck Winston was the look of helpless fright on the woman's greyish face.
723
724Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen and sat down at the
725table again, still rubbing his neck. The music from the telescreen had
726stopped. Instead, a clipped military voice was reading out, with a sort of
727brutal relish, a description of the armaments of the new Floating Fortress
728which had just been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
729
730With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of
731terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night
732and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were
733horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as
734the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages,
735and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the
736discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and
737everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the
738hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship
739of Big Brother--it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their
740ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against
741foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal
742for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with
743good reason, for hardly a week passed in which 'The Times' did not carry
744a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak--'child hero'
745was the phrase generally used--had overheard some compromising remark
746and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.
747
748The sting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked up his pen
749half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find something more to write
750in the diary. Suddenly he began thinking of O'Brien again.
751
752Years ago--how long was it? Seven years it must be--he had dreamed that he
753was walking through a pitch-dark room. And someone sitting to one side of
754him had said as he passed: 'We shall meet in the place where there is no
755darkness.' It was said very quietly, almost casually--a statement, not a
756command. He had walked on without pausing. What was curious was that at the
757time, in the dream, the words had not made much impression on him. It was
758only later and by degrees that they had seemed to take on significance. He
759could not now remember whether it was before or after having the dream that
760he had seen O'Brien for the first time, nor could he remember when he had
761first identified the voice as O'Brien's. But at any rate the identification
762existed. It was O'Brien who had spoken to him out of the dark.
763
764Winston had never been able to feel sure--even after this morning's flash
765of the eyes it was still impossible to be sure whether O'Brien was a friend
766or an enemy. Nor did it even seem to matter greatly. There was a link of
767understanding between them, more important than affection or partisanship.
768'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,' he had said.
769Winston did not know what it meant, only that in some way or another it
770would come true.
771
772The voice from the telescreen paused. A trumpet call, clear and beautiful,
773floated into the stagnant air. The voice continued raspingly:
774
775'Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived
776from the Malabar front. Our forces in South India have won a glorious
777victory. I am authorized to say that the action we are now reporting may
778well bring the war within measurable distance of its end. Here is the
779newsflash----'
780
781Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory
782description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures
783of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week,
784the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty.
785
786Winston belched again. The gin was wearing off, leaving a deflated feeling.
787The telescreen--perhaps to celebrate the victory, perhaps to drown the
788memory of the lost chocolate--crashed into 'Oceania, 'tis for thee'. You
789were supposed to stand to attention. However, in his present position he
790was invisible.
791
792'Oceania, 'tis for thee' gave way to lighter music. Winston walked over to
793the window, keeping his back to the telescreen. The day was still cold and
794clear. Somewhere far away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating
795roar. About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London at
796present.
797
798Down in the street the wind flapped the torn poster to and fro, and the
799word INGSOC fitfully appeared and vanished. Ingsoc. The sacred principles
800of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past. He felt as
801though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a
802monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past
803was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single
804human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the
805dominion of the Party would not endure FOR EVER? Like an answer, the three
806slogans on the white face of the Ministry of Truth came back to him:
807
808
809  WAR IS PEACE
810  FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
811  IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
812
813
814He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket. There, too, in tiny
815clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of
816the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you.
817On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on
818the wrappings of a cigarette packet--everywhere. Always the eyes watching
819you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating,
820indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed--no escape. Nothing was your
821own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.
822
823The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the Ministry of Truth,
824with the light no longer shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a
825fortress. His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too
826strong, it could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombs would not batter
827it down. He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary. For the
828future, for the past--for an age that might be imaginary. And in front of
829him there lay not death but annihilation. The diary would be reduced to
830ashes and himself to vapour. Only the Thought Police would read what he had
831written, before they wiped it out of existence and out of memory. How could
832you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an
833anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?
834
835The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten minutes. He had to be
836back at work by fourteen-thirty.
837
838Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him.
839He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so
840long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken.
841It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on
842the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote:
843
844
845   To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men
846are different from one another and do not live alone--to a time when truth
847exists and what is done cannot be undone:
848   From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of
849Big Brother, from the age of doublethink--greetings!
850
851
852He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now,
853when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken
854the decisive step. The consequences of every act are included in the act
855itself. He wrote:
856
857
858   Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.
859
860
861Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay
862alive as long as possible. Two fingers of his right hand were inkstained.
863It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you. Some nosing zealot
864in the Ministry (a woman, probably: someone like the little sandy-haired
865woman or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start
866wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval, why he had
867used an old-fashioned pen, WHAT he had been writing--and then drop a hint
868in the appropriate quarter. He went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed
869the ink away with the gritty dark-brown soap which rasped your skin like
870sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose.
871
872He put the diary away in the drawer. It was quite useless to think of
873hiding it, but he could at least make sure whether or not its existence had
874been discovered. A hair laid across the page-ends was too obvious. With the
875tip of his finger he picked up an identifiable grain of whitish dust and
876deposited it on the corner of the cover, where it was bound to be shaken
877off if the book was moved.
878
879
880
881
882Chapter 3
883
884
885
886Winston was dreaming of his mother.
887
888He must, he thought, have been ten or eleven years old when his mother had
889disappeared. She was a tall, statuesque, rather silent woman with slow
890movements and magnificent fair hair. His father he remembered more vaguely
891as dark and thin, dressed always in neat dark clothes (Winston remembered
892especially the very thin soles of his father's shoes) and wearing
893spectacles. The two of them must evidently have been swallowed up in one
894of the first great purges of the fifties.
895
896At this moment his mother was sitting in some place deep down beneath him,
897with his young sister in her arms. He did not remember his sister at all,
898except as a tiny, feeble baby, always silent, with large, watchful eyes.
899Both of them were looking up at him. They were down in some subterranean
900place--the bottom of a well, for instance, or a very deep grave--but it
901was a place which, already far below him, was itself moving downwards.
902They were in the saloon of a sinking ship, looking up at him through the
903darkening water. There was still air in the saloon, they could still see
904him and he them, but all the while they were sinking down, down into the
905green waters which in another moment must hide them from sight for ever.
906He was out in the light and air while they were being sucked down to death,
907and they were down there because he was up here. He knew it and they knew
908it, and he could see the knowledge in their faces. There was no reproach
909either in their faces or in their hearts, only the knowledge that they
910must die in order that he might remain alive, and that this was part of
911the unavoidable order of things.
912
913He could not remember what had happened, but he knew in his dream that in
914some way the lives of his mother and his sister had been sacrificed to his
915own. It was one of those dreams which, while retaining the characteristic
916dream scenery, are a continuation of one's intellectual life, and in which
917one becomes aware of facts and ideas which still seem new and valuable
918after one is awake. The thing that now suddenly struck Winston was that his
919mother's death, nearly thirty years ago, had been tragic and sorrowful in
920a way that was no longer possible. Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the
921ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship,
922and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to
923know the reason. His mother's memory tore at his heart because she had died
924loving him, when he was too young and selfish to love her in return, and
925because somehow, he did not remember how, she had sacrificed herself to a
926conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable. Such things, he
927saw, could not happen today. Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but
928no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows. All this he seemed to
929see in the large eyes of his mother and his sister, looking up at him
930through the green water, hundreds of fathoms down and still sinking.
931
932Suddenly he was standing on short springy turf, on a summer evening when
933the slanting rays of the sun gilded the ground. The landscape that he was
934looking at recurred so often in his dreams that he was never fully certain
935whether or not he had seen it in the real world. In his waking thoughts he
936called it the Golden Country. It was an old, rabbit-bitten pasture, with a
937foot-track wandering across it and a molehill here and there. In the ragged
938hedge on the opposite side of the field the boughs of the elm trees were
939swaying very faintly in the breeze, their leaves just stirring in dense
940masses like women's hair. Somewhere near at hand, though out of sight,
941there was a clear, slow-moving stream where dace were swimming in the
942pools under the willow trees.
943
944The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With
945what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them
946disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire
947in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant
948was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside.
949With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture,
950a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the
951Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid
952movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time.
953Winston woke up with the word 'Shakespeare' on his lips.
954
955The telescreen was giving forth an ear-splitting whistle which continued on
956the same note for thirty seconds. It was nought seven fifteen, getting-up
957time for office workers. Winston wrenched his body out of bed--naked, for
958a member of the Outer Party received only 3,000 clothing coupons annually,
959and a suit of pyjamas was 600--and seized a dingy singlet and a pair of
960shorts that were lying across a chair. The Physical Jerks would begin in
961three minutes. The next moment he was doubled up by a violent coughing fit
962which nearly always attacked him soon after waking up. It emptied his lungs
963so completely that he could only begin breathing again by lying on his back
964and taking a series of deep gasps. His veins had swelled with the effort of
965the cough, and the varicose ulcer had started itching.
966
967'Thirty to forty group!' yapped a piercing female voice. 'Thirty to forty
968group! Take your places, please. Thirties to forties!'
969
970Winston sprang to attention in front of the telescreen, upon which the
971image of a youngish woman, scrawny but muscular, dressed in tunic and
972gym-shoes, had already appeared.
973
974'Arms bending and stretching!' she rapped out. 'Take your time by me. ONE,
975two, three, four! ONE, two, three, four! Come on, comrades, put a bit of
976life into it! ONE, two, three four! ONE two, three, four!...'
977
978The pain of the coughing fit had not quite driven out of Winston's mind the
979impression made by his dream, and the rhythmic movements of the exercise
980restored it somewhat. As he mechanically shot his arms back and forth,
981wearing on his face the look of grim enjoyment which was considered proper
982during the Physical Jerks, he was struggling to think his way backward into
983the dim period of his early childhood. It was extraordinarily difficult.
984Beyond the late fifties everything faded. When there were no external
985records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost
986its sharpness. You remembered huge events which had quite probably not
987happened, you remembered the detail of incidents without being able to
988recapture their atmosphere, and there were long blank periods to which you
989could assign nothing. Everything had been different then. Even the names of
990countries, and their shapes on the map, had been different. Airstrip One,
991for instance, had not been so called in those days: it had been called
992England or Britain, though London, he felt fairly certain, had always been
993called London.
994
995Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been
996at war, but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of
997peace during his childhood, because one of his early memories was of an air
998raid which appeared to take everyone by surprise. Perhaps it was the time
999when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester. He did not remember the raid
1000itself, but he did remember his father's hand clutching his own as they
1001hurried down, down, down into some place deep in the earth, round and round
1002a spiral staircase which rang under his feet and which finally so wearied
1003his legs that he began whimpering and they had to stop and rest. His
1004mother, in her slow, dreamy way, was following a long way behind them. She
1005was carrying his baby sister--or perhaps it was only a bundle of blankets
1006that she was carrying: he was not certain whether his sister had been born
1007then. Finally they had emerged into a noisy, crowded place which he had
1008realized to be a Tube station.
1009
1010There were people sitting all over the stone-flagged floor, and other
1011people, packed tightly together, were sitting on metal bunks, one above
1012the other. Winston and his mother and father found themselves a place on
1013the floor, and near them an old man and an old woman were sitting side by
1014side on a bunk. The old man had on a decent dark suit and a black cloth cap
1015pushed back from very white hair: his face was scarlet and his eyes were
1016blue and full of tears. He reeked of gin. It seemed to breathe out of his
1017skin in place of sweat, and one could have fancied that the tears welling
1018from his eyes were pure gin. But though slightly drunk he was also
1019suffering under some grief that was genuine and unbearable. In his childish
1020way Winston grasped that some terrible thing, something that was beyond
1021forgiveness and could never be remedied, had just happened. It also seemed
1022to him that he knew what it was. Someone whom the old man loved--a little
1023granddaughter, perhaps--had been killed. Every few minutes the old man kept
1024repeating:
1025
1026'We didn't ought to 'ave trusted 'em. I said so, Ma, didn't I? That's what
1027comes of trusting 'em. I said so all along. We didn't ought to 'ave trusted
1028the buggers.'
1029
1030But which buggers they didn't ought to have trusted Winston could not now
1031remember.
1032
1033Since about that time, war had been literally continuous, though strictly
1034speaking it had not always been the same war. For several months during his
1035childhood there had been confused street fighting in London itself, some
1036of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole
1037period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been
1038utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made
1039mention of any other alignment than the existing one. At this moment, for
1040example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and
1041in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever
1042admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different
1043lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania
1044had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was
1045merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because
1046his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of
1047partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore
1048Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always
1049represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future
1050agreement with him was impossible.
1051
1052The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time as he
1053forced his shoulders painfully backward (with hands on hips, they were
1054gyrating their bodies from the waist, an exercise that was supposed to be
1055good for the back muscles)--the frightening thing was that it might all be
1056true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or
1057that event, IT NEVER HAPPENED--that, surely, was more terrifying than mere
1058torture and death?
1059
1060The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He,
1061Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short
1062a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his
1063own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all
1064others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the
1065same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls
1066the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the
1067present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature
1068alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from
1069everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was
1070an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control',
1071they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.
1072
1073'Stand easy!' barked the instructress, a little more genially.
1074
1075Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air.
1076His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know
1077and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling
1078carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which
1079cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of
1080them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim
1081to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the
1082guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then
1083to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and
1084then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process
1085to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to
1086induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of
1087the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word
1088'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.
1089
1090The instructress had called them to attention again. 'And now let's see
1091which of us can touch our toes!' she said enthusiastically. 'Right over
1092from the hips, please, comrades. ONE-two! ONE-two!...'
1093
1094Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way from
1095his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another coughing
1096fit. The half-pleasant quality went out of his meditations. The past, he
1097reflected, had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For
1098how could you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no
1099record outside your own memory? He tried to remember in what year he had
1100first heard mention of Big Brother. He thought it must have been at some
1101time in the sixties, but it was impossible to be certain. In the Party
1102histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the
1103Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had been gradually
1104pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous
1105world of the forties and the thirties, when the capitalists in their
1106strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets of London in great
1107gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages with glass sides. There was no
1108knowing how much of this legend was true and how much invented. Winston
1109could not even remember at what date the Party itself had come into
1110existence. He did not believe he had ever heard the word Ingsoc before
11111960, but it was possible that in its Oldspeak form--'English Socialism',
1112that is to say--it had been current earlier. Everything melted into mist.
1113Sometimes, indeed, you could put your finger on a definite lie. It was not
1114true, for example, as was claimed in the Party history books, that the
1115Party had invented aeroplanes. He remembered aeroplanes since his earliest
1116childhood. But you could prove nothing. There was never any evidence. Just
1117once in his whole life he had held in his hands unmistakable documentary
1118proof of the falsification of an historical fact. And on that occasion----
1119
1120'Smith!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith W.!
1121Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not
1122trying. Lower, please! THAT'S better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the
1123whole squad, and watch me.'
1124
1125A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face
1126remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment!
1127A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while
1128the instructress raised her arms above her head and--one could not say
1129gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency--bent over and
1130tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.
1131
1132'THERE, comrades! THAT'S how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again.
1133I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look.' She bent over again.
1134'You see MY knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to,' she added
1135as she straightened herself up. 'Anyone under forty-five is perfectly
1136capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting
1137in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on
1138the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think
1139what THEY have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade,
1140that's MUCH better,' she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent
1141lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first
1142time in several years.
1143
1144
1145
1146
1147Chapter 4
1148
1149
1150
1151With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the
1152telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day's work started,
1153Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its
1154mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped
1155together four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of
1156the pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.
1157
1158In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the
1159speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a
1160larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of
1161Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last
1162was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or
1163tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at
1164short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed
1165memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or
1166even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic
1167action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in,
1168whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous
1169furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
1170
1171Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled. Each
1172contained a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated
1173jargon--not actually Newspeak, but consisting
1174largely of Newspeak words--which was used in the Ministry for internal
1175purposes. They ran:
1176
1177
1178times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify
1179
1180times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue
1181
1182times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify
1183
1184times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite
1185fullwise upsub antefiling
1186
1187
1188With a faint feeling of satisfaction Winston laid the fourth message aside.
1189It was an intricate and responsible job and had better be dealt with last.
1190The other three were routine matters, though the second one would probably
1191mean some tedious wading through lists of figures.
1192
1193Winston dialled 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the
1194appropriate issues of 'The Times', which slid out of the pneumatic tube
1195after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to
1196articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought
1197necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify. For
1198example, it appeared from 'The Times' of the seventeenth of March that Big
1199Brother, in his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the South
1200Indian front would remain quiet but that a Eurasian offensive would shortly
1201be launched in North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher Command
1202had launched its offensive in South India and left North Africa alone. It
1203was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech, in
1204such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened. Or
1205again, 'The Times' of the nineteenth of December had published the official
1206forecasts of the output of various classes of consumption goods in the
1207fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth quarter of the Ninth
1208Three-Year Plan. Today's issue contained a statement of the actual output,
1209from which it appeared that the forecasts were in every instance grossly
1210wrong. Winston's job was to rectify the original figures by making them
1211agree with the later ones. As for the third message, it referred to a very
1212simple error which could be set right in a couple of minutes. As short
1213a time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise
1214(a 'categorical pledge' were the official words) that there would be
1215no reduction of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually, as Winston
1216was aware, the chocolate ration was to be reduced from thirty grammes
1217to twenty at the end of the present week. All that was needed was to
1218substitute for the original promise a warning that it would probably be
1219necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.
1220
1221As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his
1222speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of 'The Times' and pushed
1223them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as
1224possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes
1225that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be
1226devoured by the flames.
1227
1228What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he
1229did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all
1230the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number
1231of 'The Times' had been assembled and collated, that number would be
1232reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on
1233the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied
1234not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters,
1235leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs--to every kind of
1236literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or
1237ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past
1238was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party
1239could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any
1240item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the
1241needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was
1242a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was
1243necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done,
1244to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of
1245the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked,
1246consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all
1247copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded
1248and were due for destruction. A number of 'The Times' which might, because
1249of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big
1250Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing
1251its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it. Books, also,
1252were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued
1253without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the written
1254instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of
1255as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of
1256forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors,
1257misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the
1258interests of accuracy.
1259
1260But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's
1261figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one
1262piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing
1263with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of
1264connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much
1265a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great
1266deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For
1267example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of
1268boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as
1269sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked
1270the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim
1271that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was
1272no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than 145 millions. Very
1273likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew
1274how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every
1275quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps
1276half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every
1277class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a
1278shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become
1279uncertain.
1280
1281Winston glanced across the hall. In the corresponding cubicle on the other
1282side a small, precise-looking, dark-chinned man named Tillotson was working
1283steadily away, with a folded newspaper on his knee and his mouth very close
1284to the mouthpiece of the speakwrite. He had the air of trying to keep what
1285he was saying a secret between himself and the telescreen. He looked up,
1286and his spectacles darted a hostile flash in Winston's direction.
1287
1288Winston hardly knew Tillotson, and had no idea what work he was employed
1289on. People in the Records Department did not readily talk about their jobs.
1290In the long, windowless hall, with its double row of cubicles and its
1291endless rustle of papers and hum of voices murmuring into speakwrites,
1292there were quite a dozen people whom Winston did not even know by name,
1293though he daily saw them hurrying to and fro in the corridors or
1294gesticulating in the Two Minutes Hate. He knew that in the cubicle next
1295to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at
1296tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been
1297vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. There was a
1298certain fitness in this, since her own husband had been vaporized a couple
1299of years earlier. And a few cubicles away a mild, ineffectual, dreamy
1300creature named Ampleforth, with very hairy ears and a surprising talent
1301for juggling with rhymes and metres, was engaged in producing garbled
1302versions--definitive texts, they were called--of poems which had become
1303ideologically offensive, but which for one reason or another were to be
1304retained in the anthologies. And this hall, with its fifty workers or
1305thereabouts, was only one sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the
1306huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other
1307swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs. There were
1308the huge printing-shops with their sub-editors, their typography experts,
1309and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There
1310was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers, and its
1311teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices. There
1312were the armies of reference clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists
1313of books and periodicals which were due for recall. There were the vast
1314repositories where the corrected documents were stored, and the hidden
1315furnaces where the original copies were destroyed. And somewhere or other,
1316quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole
1317effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this
1318fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other
1319rubbed out of existence.
1320
1321And the Records Department, after all, was itself only a single branch of
1322the Ministry of Truth, whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past
1323but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks,
1324telescreen programmes, plays, novels--with every conceivable kind of
1325information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan,
1326from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's
1327spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary. And the Ministry had not only to
1328supply the multifarious needs of the party, but also to repeat the whole
1329operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There
1330was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian
1331literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced
1332rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and
1333astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and
1334sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a
1335special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even
1336a whole sub-section--Pornosec, it was called in Newspeak--engaged in
1337producing the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed
1338packets and which no Party member, other than those who worked on it,
1339was permitted to look at.
1340
1341Three messages had slid out of the pneumatic tube while Winston was
1342working, but they were simple matters, and he had disposed of them before
1343the Two Minutes Hate interrupted him. When the Hate was over he returned
1344to his cubicle, took the Newspeak dictionary from the shelf, pushed the
1345speakwrite to one side, cleaned his spectacles, and settled down to his
1346main job of the morning.
1347
1348Winston's greatest pleasure in life was in his work. Most of it was a
1349tedious routine, but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and
1350intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a
1351mathematical problem--delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing
1352to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your
1353estimate of what the Party wanted you to say. Winston was good at this kind
1354of thing. On occasion he had even been entrusted with the rectification of
1355'The Times' leading articles, which were written entirely in Newspeak.
1356He unrolled the message that he had set aside earlier. It ran:
1357
1358
1359   times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons
1360rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling
1361
1362
1363In Oldspeak (or standard English) this might be rendered:
1364
1365
1366The reporting of Big Brother's Order for the Day in 'The Times' of December
13673rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to non-existent
1368persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority
1369before filing.
1370
1371
1372Winston read through the offending article. Big Brother's Order for the
1373Day, it seemed, had been chiefly devoted to praising the work of an
1374organization known as FFCC, which supplied cigarettes and other comforts
1375to the sailors in the Floating Fortresses. A certain Comrade Withers, a
1376prominent member of the Inner Party, had been singled out for special
1377mention and awarded a decoration, the Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second
1378Class.
1379
1380Three months later FFCC had suddenly been dissolved with no reasons given.
1381One could assume that Withers and his associates were now in disgrace, but
1382there had been no report of the matter in the Press or on the telescreen.
1383That was to be expected, since it was unusual for political offenders to
1384be put on trial or even publicly denounced. The great purges involving
1385thousands of people, with public trials of traitors and thought-criminals
1386who made abject confession of their crimes and were afterwards executed,
1387were special show-pieces not occurring oftener than once in a couple of
1388years. More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the
1389Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One never had the
1390smallest clue as to what had happened to them. In some cases they might
1391not even be dead. Perhaps thirty people personally known to Winston, not
1392counting his parents, had disappeared at one time or another.
1393
1394Winston stroked his nose gently with a paper-clip. In the cubicle
1395across the way Comrade Tillotson was still crouching secretively over
1396his speakwrite. He raised his head for a moment: again the hostile
1397spectacle-flash. Winston wondered whether Comrade Tillotson was engaged
1398on the same job as himself. It was perfectly possible. So tricky a piece
1399of work would never be entrusted to a single person: on the other hand,
1400to turn it over to a committee would be to admit openly that an act of
1401fabrication was taking place. Very likely as many as a dozen people were
1402now working away on rival versions of what Big Brother had actually said.
1403And presently some master brain in the Inner Party would select this
1404version or that, would re-edit it and set in motion the complex processes
1405of cross-referencing that would be required, and then the chosen lie
1406would pass into the permanent records and become truth.
1407
1408Winston did not know why Withers had been disgraced. Perhaps it was for
1409corruption or incompetence. Perhaps Big Brother was merely getting rid of
1410a too-popular subordinate. Perhaps Withers or someone close to him had
1411been suspected of heretical tendencies. Or perhaps--what was likeliest of
1412all--the thing had simply happened because purges and vaporizations were a
1413necessary part of the mechanics of government. The only real clue lay in
1414the words 'refs unpersons', which indicated that Withers was already dead.
1415You could not invariably assume this to be the case when people were
1416arrested. Sometimes they were released and allowed to remain at liberty
1417for as much as a year or two years before being executed. Very occasionally
1418some person whom you had believed dead long since would make a ghostly
1419reappearance at some public trial where he would implicate hundreds of
1420others by his testimony before vanishing, this time for ever. Withers,
1421however, was already an UNPERSON. He did not exist: he had never existed.
1422Winston decided that it would not be enough simply to reverse the tendency
1423of Big Brother's speech. It was better to make it deal with something
1424totally unconnected with its original subject.
1425
1426He might turn the speech into the usual denunciation of traitors and
1427thought-criminals, but that was a little too obvious, while to invent a
1428victory at the front, or some triumph of over-production in the Ninth
1429Three-Year Plan, might complicate the records too much. What was needed
1430was a piece of pure fantasy. Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready
1431made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently
1432died in battle, in heroic circumstances. There were occasions when Big
1433Brother devoted his Order for the Day to commemorating some humble,
1434rank-and-file Party member whose life and death he held up as an example
1435worthy to be followed. Today he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was
1436true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of
1437print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into
1438existence.
1439
1440Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite towards him and
1441began dictating in Big Brother's familiar style: a style at once military
1442and pedantic, and, because of a trick of asking questions and then
1443promptly answering them ('What lessons do we learn from this fact,
1444comrades? The lesson--which is also one of the fundamental principles
1445of Ingsoc--that,' etc., etc.), easy to imitate.
1446
1447At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum, a
1448sub-machine gun, and a model helicopter. At six--a year early, by a special
1449relaxation of the rules--he had joined the Spies, at nine he had been a
1450troop leader. At eleven he had denounced his uncle to the Thought Police
1451after overhearing a conversation which appeared to him to have criminal
1452tendencies. At seventeen he had been a district organizer of the Junior
1453Anti-Sex League. At nineteen he had designed a hand-grenade which had
1454been adopted by the Ministry of Peace and which, at its first trial, had
1455killed thirty-one Eurasian prisoners in one burst. At twenty-three he had
1456perished in action. Pursued by enemy jet planes while flying over the
1457Indian Ocean with important despatches, he had weighted his body with his
1458machine gun and leapt out of the helicopter into deep water, despatches
1459and all--an end, said Big Brother, which it was impossible to contemplate
1460without feelings of envy. Big Brother added a few remarks on the purity
1461and single-mindedness of Comrade Ogilvy's life. He was a total abstainer
1462and a nonsmoker, had no recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium,
1463and had taken a vow of celibacy, believing marriage and the care of a
1464family to be incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day devotion to duty.
1465He had no subjects of conversation except the principles of Ingsoc, and
1466no aim in life except the defeat of the Eurasian enemy and the hunting-down
1467of spies, saboteurs, thought-criminals, and traitors generally.
1468
1469Winston debated with himself whether to award Comrade Ogilvy the Order of
1470Conspicuous Merit: in the end he decided against it because of the
1471unnecessary cross-referencing that it would entail.
1472
1473Once again he glanced at his rival in the opposite cubicle. Something
1474seemed to tell him with certainty that Tillotson was busy on the same job
1475as himself. There was no way of knowing whose job would finally be adopted,
1476but he felt a profound conviction that it would be his own. Comrade Ogilvy,
1477unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. It struck him as curious that you
1478could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never
1479existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of
1480forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the
1481same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.
1482
1483
1484
1485
1486Chapter 5
1487
1488
1489
1490In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep underground, the lunch queue jerked
1491slowly forward. The room was already very full and deafeningly noisy. From
1492the grille at the counter the steam of stew came pouring forth, with a sour
1493metallic smell which did not quite overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On
1494the far side of the room there was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall,
1495where gin could be bought at ten cents the large nip.
1496
1497'Just the man I was looking for,' said a voice at Winston's back.
1498
1499He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research
1500Department. Perhaps 'friend' was not exactly the right word. You did not
1501have friends nowadays, you had comrades: but there were some comrades whose
1502society was pleasanter than that of others. Syme was a philologist, a
1503specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts
1504now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary.
1505He was a tiny creature, smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large,
1506protuberant eyes, at once mournful and derisive, which seemed to search
1507your face closely while he was speaking to you.
1508
1509'I wanted to ask you whether you'd got any razor blades,' he said.
1510
1511'Not one!' said Winston with a sort of guilty haste. 'I've tried all over
1512the place. They don't exist any longer.'
1513
1514Everyone kept asking you for razor blades. Actually he had two unused ones
1515which he was hoarding up. There had been a famine of them for months past.
1516At any given moment there was some necessary article which the Party shops
1517were unable to supply. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was darning
1518wool, sometimes it was shoelaces; at present it was razor blades. You could
1519only get hold of them, if at all, by scrounging more or less furtively on
1520the 'free' market.
1521
1522'I've been using the same blade for six weeks,' he added untruthfully.
1523
1524The queue gave another jerk forward. As they halted he turned and faced
1525Syme again. Each of them took a greasy metal tray from a pile at the end
1526of the counter.
1527
1528'Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday?' said Syme.
1529
1530'I was working,' said Winston indifferently. 'I shall see it on the
1531flicks, I suppose.'
1532
1533'A very inadequate substitute,' said Syme.
1534
1535His mocking eyes roved over Winston's face. 'I know you,' the eyes seemed
1536to say, 'I see through you. I know very well why you didn't go to see
1537those prisoners hanged.' In an intellectual way, Syme was venomously
1538orthodox. He would talk with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction of
1539helicopter raids on enemy villages, and trials and confessions of
1540thought-criminals, the executions in the cellars of the Ministry of Love.
1541Talking to him was largely a matter of getting him away from such subjects
1542and entangling him, if possible, in the technicalities of Newspeak, on
1543which he was authoritative and interesting. Winston turned his head a
1544little aside to avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes.
1545
1546'It was a good hanging,' said Syme reminiscently. 'I think it spoils it
1547when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above
1548all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue--a quite bright
1549blue. That's the detail that appeals to me.'
1550
1551'Nex', please!' yelled the white-aproned prole with the ladle.
1552
1553Winston and Syme pushed their trays beneath the grille. On to each was
1554dumped swiftly the regulation lunch--a metal pannikin of pinkish-grey stew,
1555a hunk of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and
1556one saccharine tablet.
1557
1558'There's a table over there, under that telescreen,' said Syme. 'Let's pick
1559up a gin on the way.'
1560
1561The gin was served out to them in handleless china mugs. They threaded
1562their way across the crowded room and unpacked their trays on to the
1563metal-topped table, on one corner of which someone had left a pool of stew,
1564a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit. Winston took up his
1565mug of gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the
1566oily-tasting stuff down. When he had winked the tears out of his eyes he
1567suddenly discovered that he was hungry. He began swallowing spoonfuls of
1568the stew, which, in among its general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy
1569pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat. Neither of them
1570spoke again till they had emptied their pannikins. From the table at
1571Winston's left, a little behind his back, someone was talking rapidly and
1572continuously, a harsh gabble almost like the quacking of a duck, which
1573pierced the general uproar of the room.
1574
1575'How is the Dictionary getting on?' said Winston, raising his voice to
1576overcome the noise.
1577
1578'Slowly,' said Syme. 'I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating.'
1579
1580He had brightened up immediately at the mention of Newspeak. He pushed his
1581pannikin aside, took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand and his
1582cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so as to be able to speak
1583without shouting.
1584
1585'The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,' he said. 'We're getting
1586the language into its final shape--the shape it's going to have when nobody
1587speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will
1588have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job
1589is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying words--scores
1590of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to
1591the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word that will become
1592obsolete before the year 2050.'
1593
1594He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls, then
1595continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark face
1596had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and grown
1597almost dreamy.
1598
1599'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great
1600wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns
1601that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also
1602the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is
1603simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in
1604itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what
1605need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well--better,
1606because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you
1607want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole
1608string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the
1609rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning, or "doubleplusgood" if you
1610want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already. but
1611in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the
1612whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in
1613reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was
1614B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought.
1615
1616A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of
1617Big Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lack of
1618enthusiasm.
1619
1620'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost
1621sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read
1622some of those pieces that you write in "The Times" occasionally. They're
1623good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick
1624to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning.
1625You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that
1626Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller
1627every year?'
1628
1629Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not
1630trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the
1631dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:
1632
1633'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of
1634thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible,
1635because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that
1636can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning
1637rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
1638Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the
1639process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year
1640fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little
1641smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing
1642thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control.
1643But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will
1644be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc
1645is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever
1646occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a
1647single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation
1648as we are having now?'
1649
1650'Except----' began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped.
1651
1652It had been on the tip of his tongue to say 'Except the proles,' but he
1653checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this remark was not in
1654some way unorthodox. Syme, however, had divined what he was about to say.
1655
1656'The proles are not human beings,' he said carelessly. 'By 2050--earlier,
1657probably--all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole
1658literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare,
1659Milton, Byron--they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed
1660into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory
1661of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change.
1662Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is
1663slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate
1664of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we
1665understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think.
1666Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.'
1667
1668One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will
1669be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too
1670plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear.
1671It is written in his face.
1672
1673Winston had finished his bread and cheese. He turned a little sideways
1674in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his left the man
1675with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away. A young
1676woman who was perhaps his secretary, and who was sitting with her back
1677to Winston, was listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with
1678everything that he said. From time to time Winston caught some such remark
1679as 'I think you're so right, I do so agree with you', uttered in a youthful
1680and rather silly feminine voice. But the other voice never stopped for an
1681instant, even when the girl was speaking. Winston knew the man by sight,
1682though he knew no more about him than that he held some important post
1683in the Fiction Department. He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular
1684throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and
1685because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the
1686light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was
1687slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of
1688his mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word. Just
1689once Winston caught a phrase--'complete and final elimination of
1690Goldsteinism'--jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece,
1691like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a
1692quack-quack-quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the
1693man was saying, you could not be in any doubt about its general nature.
1694He might be denouncing Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against
1695thought-criminals and saboteurs, he might be fulminating against the
1696atrocities of the Eurasian army, he might be praising Big Brother or the
1697heroes on the Malabar front--it made no difference. Whatever it was, you
1698could be certain that every word of it was pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc.
1699As he watched the eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and down,
1700Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but
1701some kind of dummy. It was not the man's brain that was speaking, it was
1702his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but
1703it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in
1704unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.
1705
1706Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and with the handle of his spoon was
1707tracing patterns in the puddle of stew. The voice from the other table
1708quacked rapidly on, easily audible in spite of the surrounding din.
1709
1710'There is a word in Newspeak,' said Syme, 'I don't know whether you know
1711it: DUCKSPEAK, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words
1712that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse,
1713applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.'
1714
1715Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, Winston thought again. He thought
1716it with a kind of sadness, although well knowing that Syme despised him
1717and slightly disliked him, and was fully capable of denouncing him as a
1718thought-criminal if he saw any reason for doing so. There was something
1719subtly wrong with Syme. There was something that he lacked: discretion,
1720aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that he was
1721unorthodox. He believed in the principles of Ingsoc, he venerated Big
1722Brother, he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics, not merely with
1723sincerity but with a sort of restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of
1724information, which the ordinary Party member did not approach. Yet a faint
1725air of disreputability always clung to him. He said things that would have
1726been better unsaid, he had read too many books, he frequented the Chestnut
1727Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and musicians. There was no law, not even an
1728unwritten law, against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe, yet the place
1729was somehow ill-omened. The old, discredited leaders of the Party had been
1730used to gather there before they were finally purged. Goldstein himself,
1731it was said, had sometimes been seen there, years and decades ago. Syme's
1732fate was not difficult to foresee. And yet it was a fact that if Syme
1733grasped, even for three seconds, the nature of his, Winston's, secret
1734opinions, he would betray him instantly to the Thought Police. So would
1735anybody else, for that matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal was not
1736enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness.
1737
1738Syme looked up. 'Here comes Parsons,' he said.
1739
1740Something in the tone of his voice seemed to add, 'that bloody fool'.
1741Parsons, Winston's fellow-tenant at Victory Mansions, was in fact threading
1742his way across the room--a tubby, middle-sized man with fair hair and a
1743froglike face. At thirty-five he was already putting on rolls of fat at
1744neck and waistline, but his movements were brisk and boyish. His whole
1745appearance was that of a little boy grown large, so much so that although
1746he was wearing the regulation overalls, it was almost impossible not to
1747think of him as being dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirt, and red
1748neckerchief of the Spies. In visualizing him one saw always a picture of
1749dimpled knees and sleeves rolled back from pudgy forearms. Parsons did,
1750indeed, invariably revert to shorts when a community hike or any other
1751physical activity gave him an excuse for doing so. He greeted them both
1752with a cheery 'Hullo, hullo!' and sat down at the table, giving off an
1753intense smell of sweat. Beads of moisture stood out all over his pink face.
1754His powers of sweating were extraordinary. At the Community Centre you
1755could always tell when he had been playing table-tennis by the dampness of
1756the bat handle. Syme had produced a strip of paper on which there was a
1757long column of words, and was studying it with an ink-pencil between his
1758fingers.
1759
1760'Look at him working away in the lunch hour,' said Parsons, nudging
1761Winston. 'Keenness, eh? What's that you've got there, old boy? Something
1762a bit too brainy for me, I expect. Smith, old boy, I'll tell you why I'm
1763chasing you. It's that sub you forgot to give me.'
1764
1765'Which sub is that?' said Winston, automatically feeling for money. About
1766a quarter of one's salary had to be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions,
1767which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep track of them.
1768
1769'For Hate Week. You know--the house-by-house fund. I'm treasurer for our
1770block. We're making an all-out effort--going to put on a tremendous show.
1771I tell you, it won't be my fault if old Victory Mansions doesn't have the
1772biggest outfit of flags in the whole street. Two dollars you promised me.'
1773
1774Winston found and handed over two creased and filthy notes, which Parsons
1775entered in a small notebook, in the neat handwriting of the illiterate.
1776
1777'By the way, old boy,' he said. 'I hear that little beggar of mine let fly
1778at you with his catapult yesterday. I gave him a good dressing-down for it.
1779In fact I told him I'd take the catapult away if he does it again.'
1780
1781'I think he was a little upset at not going to the execution,' said
1782Winston.
1783
1784'Ah, well--what I mean to say, shows the right spirit, doesn't it?
1785Mischievous little beggars they are, both of them, but talk about keenness!
1786All they think about is the Spies, and the war, of course. D'you know what
1787that little girl of mine did last Saturday, when her troop was on a hike
1788out Berkhamsted way? She got two other girls to go with her, slipped off
1789from the hike, and spent the whole afternoon following a strange man. They
1790kept on his tail for two hours, right through the woods, and then, when
1791they got into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols.'
1792
1793'What did they do that for?' said Winston, somewhat taken aback. Parsons
1794went on triumphantly:
1795
1796'My kid made sure he was some kind of enemy agent--might have been dropped
1797by parachute, for instance. But here's the point, old boy. What do you
1798think put her on to him in the first place? She spotted he was wearing a
1799funny kind of shoes--said she'd never seen anyone wearing shoes like that
1800before. So the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart for a nipper
1801of seven, eh?'
1802
1803'What happened to the man?' said Winston.
1804
1805'Ah, that I couldn't say, of course. But I wouldn't be altogether surprised
1806if----' Parsons made the motion of aiming a rifle, and clicked his tongue
1807for the explosion.
1808
1809'Good,' said Syme abstractedly, without looking up from his strip of paper.
1810
1811'Of course we can't afford to take chances,' agreed Winston dutifully.
1812
1813'What I mean to say, there is a war on,' said Parsons.
1814
1815As though in confirmation of this, a trumpet call floated from the
1816telescreen just above their heads. However, it was not the proclamation of
1817a military victory this time, but merely an announcement from the Ministry
1818of Plenty.
1819
1820'Comrades!' cried an eager youthful voice. 'Attention, comrades! We have
1821glorious news for you. We have won the battle for production! Returns now
1822completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the
1823standard of living has risen by no less than 20 per cent over the past
1824year. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous
1825demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and
1826paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big
1827Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed
1828upon us. Here are some of the completed figures. Foodstuffs----'
1829
1830The phrase 'our new, happy life' recurred several times. It had been a
1831favourite of late with the Ministry of Plenty. Parsons, his attention
1832caught by the trumpet call, sat listening with a sort of gaping solemnity,
1833a sort of edified boredom. He could not follow the figures, but he was
1834aware that they were in some way a cause for satisfaction. He had lugged
1835out a huge and filthy pipe which was already half full of charred tobacco.
1836With the tobacco ration at 100 grammes a week it was seldom possible to
1837fill a pipe to the top. Winston was smoking a Victory Cigarette which he
1838held carefully horizontal. The new ration did not start till tomorrow and
1839he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment he had shut his ears to
1840the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the
1841telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank
1842Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And
1843only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was
1844to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could
1845swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons
1846swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature
1847at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious
1848desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that
1849last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too--in some more
1850complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, ALONE
1851in the possession of a memory?
1852
1853The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As
1854compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses,
1855more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters,
1856more books, more babies--more of everything except disease, crime, and
1857insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was
1858whizzing rapidly upwards. As Syme had done earlier Winston had taken up
1859his spoon and was dabbling in the pale-coloured gravy that dribbled across
1860the table, drawing a long streak of it out into a pattern. He meditated
1861resentfully on the physical texture of life. Had it always been like
1862this? Had food always tasted like this? He looked round the canteen.
1863A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls grimy from the contact of
1864innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close
1865together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays,
1866coarse white mugs; all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack; and a
1867sourish, composite smell of bad gin and bad coffee and metallic stew and
1868dirty clothes. Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort
1869of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had
1870a right to. It was true that he had no memories of anything greatly
1871different. In any time that he could accurately remember, there had never
1872been quite enough to eat, one had never had socks or underclothes that
1873were not full of holes, furniture had always been battered and rickety,
1874rooms underheated, tube trains crowded, houses falling to pieces,
1875bread dark-coloured, tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes
1876insufficient--nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin. And though,
1877of course, it grew worse as one's body aged, was it not a sign that this
1878was NOT the natural order of things, if one's heart sickened at the
1879discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness
1880of one's socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water, the gritty
1881soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its strange evil
1882tastes? Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind
1883of ancestral memory that things had once been different?
1884
1885He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone was ugly, and would
1886still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than in the uniform blue
1887overalls. On the far side of the room, sitting at a table alone, a small,
1888curiously beetle-like man was drinking a cup of coffee, his little eyes
1889darting suspicious glances from side to side. How easy it was, thought
1890Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the physical type
1891set up by the Party as an ideal--tall muscular youths and deep-bosomed
1892maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt, carefree--existed and even
1893predominated. Actually, so far as he could judge, the majority of people
1894in Airstrip One were small, dark, and ill-favoured. It was curious how that
1895beetle-like type proliferated in the Ministries: little dumpy men, growing
1896stout very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and
1897fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes. It was the type that seemed to
1898flourish best under the dominion of the Party.
1899
1900The announcement from the Ministry of Plenty ended on another trumpet call
1901and gave way to tinny music. Parsons, stirred to vague enthusiasm by the
1902bombardment of figures, took his pipe out of his mouth.
1903
1904'The Ministry of Plenty's certainly done a good job this year,' he said
1905with a knowing shake of his head. 'By the way, Smith old boy, I suppose
1906you haven't got any razor blades you can let me have?'
1907
1908'Not one,' said Winston. 'I've been using the same blade for six weeks
1909myself.'
1910
1911'Ah, well--just thought I'd ask you, old boy.'
1912
1913'Sorry,' said Winston.
1914
1915The quacking voice from the next table, temporarily silenced during the
1916Ministry's announcement, had started up again, as loud as ever. For some
1917reason Winston suddenly found himself thinking of Mrs Parsons, with her
1918wispy hair and the dust in the creases of her face. Within two years those
1919children would be denouncing her to the Thought Police. Mrs Parsons would
1920be vaporized. Syme would be vaporized. Winston would be vaporized. O'Brien
1921would be vaporized. Parsons, on the other hand, would never be vaporized.
1922The eyeless creature with the quacking voice would never be vaporized.
1923The little beetle-like men who scuttle so nimbly through the labyrinthine
1924corridors of Ministries they, too, would never be vaporized. And the girl
1925with dark hair, the girl from the Fiction Department--she would never be
1926vaporized either. It seemed to him that he knew instinctively who would
1927survive and who would perish: though just what it was that made for
1928survival, it was not easy to say.
1929
1930At this moment he was dragged out of his reverie with a violent jerk. The
1931girl at the next table had turned partly round and was looking at him. It
1932was the girl with dark hair. She was looking at him in a sidelong way, but
1933with curious intensity. The instant she caught his eye she looked away
1934again.
1935
1936The sweat started out on Winston's backbone. A horrible pang of terror
1937went through him. It was gone almost at once, but it left a sort of nagging
1938uneasiness behind. Why was she watching him? Why did she keep following him
1939about? Unfortunately he could not remember whether she had already been at
1940the table when he arrived, or had come there afterwards. But yesterday, at
1941any rate, during the Two Minutes Hate, she had sat immediately behind him
1942when there was no apparent need to do so. Quite likely her real object had
1943been to listen to him and make sure whether he was shouting loudly enough.
1944
1945His earlier thought returned to him: probably she was not actually a member
1946of the Thought Police, but then it was precisely the amateur spy who was
1947the greatest danger of all. He did not know how long she had been looking
1948at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible
1949that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly
1950dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place
1951or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away.
1952A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to
1953yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of
1954having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on
1955your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example)
1956was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak:
1957FACECRIME, it was called.
1958
1959The girl had turned her back on him again. Perhaps after all she was not
1960really following him about, perhaps it was coincidence that she had sat so
1961close to him two days running. His cigarette had gone out, and he laid it
1962carefully on the edge of the table. He would finish smoking it after work,
1963if he could keep the tobacco in it. Quite likely the person at the next
1964table was a spy of the Thought Police, and quite likely he would be in the
1965cellars of the Ministry of Love within three days, but a cigarette end
1966must not be wasted. Syme had folded up his strip of paper and stowed it
1967away in his pocket. Parsons had begun talking again.
1968
1969'Did I ever tell you, old boy,' he said, chuckling round the stem of his
1970pipe, 'about the time when those two nippers of mine set fire to the old
1971market-woman's skirt because they saw her wrapping up sausages in a poster
1972of B.B.? Sneaked up behind her and set fire to it with a box of matches.
1973Burned her quite badly, I believe. Little beggars, eh? But keen as mustard!
1974That's a first-rate training they give them in the Spies nowadays--better
1975than in my day, even. What d'you think's the latest thing they've served
1976them out with? Ear trumpets for listening through keyholes! My little
1977girl brought one home the other night--tried it out on our sitting-room
1978door, and reckoned she could hear twice as much as with her ear to the
1979hole. Of course it's only a toy, mind you. Still, gives 'em the right
1980idea, eh?'
1981
1982At this moment the telescreen let out a piercing whistle. It was the
1983signal to return to work. All three men sprang to their feet to join in
1984the struggle round the lifts, and the remaining tobacco fell out of
1985Winston's cigarette.
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990Chapter 6
1991
1992
1993
1994Winston was writing in his diary:
1995
1996
1997   It was three years ago. It was on a dark evening, in a narrow
1998side-street near one of the big railway stations. She was standing near a
1999doorway in the wall, under a street lamp that hardly gave any light. She
2000had a young face, painted very thick. It was really the paint that appealed
2001to me, the whiteness of it, like a mask, and the bright red lips. Party
2002women never paint their faces. There was nobody else in the street, and no
2003telescreens. She said two dollars. I----
2004
2005
2006For the moment it was too difficult to go on. He shut his eyes and pressed
2007his fingers against them, trying to squeeze out the vision that kept
2008recurring. He had an almost overwhelming temptation to shout a string of
2009filthy words at the top of his voice. Or to bang his head against the wall,
2010to kick over the table, and hurl the inkpot through the window--to do any
2011violent or noisy or painful thing that might black out the memory that was
2012tormenting him.
2013
2014Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment
2015the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible
2016symptom. He thought of a man whom he had passed in the street a few weeks
2017back; a quite ordinary-looking man, a Party member, aged thirty-five to
2018forty, tallish and thin, carrying a brief-case. They were a few metres
2019apart when the left side of the man's face was suddenly contorted by a sort
2020of spasm. It happened again just as they were passing one another: it was
2021only a twitch, a quiver, rapid as the clicking of a camera shutter, but
2022obviously habitual. He remembered thinking at the time: That poor devil is
2023done for. And what was frightening was that the action was quite possibly
2024unconscious. The most deadly danger of all was talking in your sleep. There
2025was no way of guarding against that, so far as he could see.
2026
2027He drew his breath and went on writing:
2028
2029
2030   I went with her through the doorway and across a backyard into a
2031basement kitchen. There was a bed against the wall, and a lamp on the
2032table, turned down very low. She----
2033
2034
2035His teeth were set on edge. He would have liked to spit. Simultaneously
2036with the woman in the basement kitchen he thought of Katharine, his wife.
2037Winston was married--had been married, at any rate: probably he still was
2038married, so far as he knew his wife was not dead. He seemed to breathe
2039again the warm stuffy odour of the basement kitchen, an odour compounded
2040of bugs and dirty clothes and villainous cheap scent, but nevertheless
2041alluring, because no woman of the Party ever used scent, or could be
2042imagined as doing so. Only the proles used scent. In his mind the smell
2043of it was inextricably mixed up with fornication.
2044
2045When he had gone with that woman it had been his first lapse in two years
2046or thereabouts. Consorting with prostitutes was forbidden, of course, but
2047it was one of those rules that you could occasionally nerve yourself to
2048break. It was dangerous, but it was not a life-and-death matter. To be
2049caught with a prostitute might mean five years in a forced-labour camp:
2050not more, if you had committed no other offence. And it was easy enough,
2051provided that you could avoid being caught in the act. The poorer quarters
2052swarmed with women who were ready to sell themselves. Some could even be
2053purchased for a bottle of gin, which the proles were not supposed to drink.
2054Tacitly the Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as an outlet
2055for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed. Mere debauchery
2056did not matter very much, so long as it was furtive and joyless and only
2057involved the women of a submerged and despised class. The unforgivable
2058crime was promiscuity between Party members. But--though this was one
2059of the crimes that the accused in the great purges invariably confessed
2060to--it was difficult to imagine any such thing actually happening.
2061
2062The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming
2063loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared
2064purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much
2065as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All
2066marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee
2067appointed for the purpose, and--though the principle was never clearly
2068stated--permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave
2069the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only
2070recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of
2071the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting
2072minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain
2073words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from
2074childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior
2075Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All
2076children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (ARTSEM, it was
2077called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston
2078was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in
2079with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the
2080sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty
2081it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should
2082be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party's efforts were
2083largely successful.
2084
2085He thought again of Katharine. It must be nine, ten--nearly eleven years
2086since they had parted. It was curious how seldom he thought of her. For
2087days at a time he was capable of forgetting that he had ever been married.
2088They had only been together for about fifteen months. The Party did not
2089permit divorce, but it rather encouraged separation in cases where there
2090were no children.
2091
2092Katharine was a tall, fair-haired girl, very straight, with splendid
2093movements. She had a bold, aquiline face, a face that one might have called
2094noble until one discovered that there was as nearly as possible nothing
2095behind it. Very early in her married life he had decided--though perhaps
2096it was only that he knew her more intimately than he knew most people--that
2097she had without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had
2098ever encountered. She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan,
2099and there was no imbecility, absolutely none that she was not capable of
2100swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. 'The human sound-track' he
2101nicknamed her in his own mind. Yet he could have endured living with her
2102if it had not been for just one thing--sex.
2103
2104As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince and stiffen. To embrace her
2105was like embracing a jointed wooden image. And what was strange was that
2106even when she was clasping him against her he had the feeling that she
2107was simultaneously pushing him away with all her strength. The rigidity
2108of her muscles managed to convey that impression. She would lie there
2109with shut eyes, neither resisting nor co-operating but SUBMITTING. It was
2110extraordinarily embarrassing, and, after a while, horrible. But even then
2111he could have borne living with her if it had been agreed that they should
2112remain celibate. But curiously enough it was Katharine who refused this.
2113They must, she said, produce a child if they could. So the performance
2114continued to happen, once a week quite regularly, whenever it was not
2115impossible. She even used to remind him of it in the morning, as something
2116which had to be done that evening and which must not be forgotten. She had
2117two names for it. One was 'making a baby', and the other was 'our duty to
2118the Party' (yes, she had actually used that phrase). Quite soon he grew to
2119have a feeling of positive dread when the appointed day came round. But
2120luckily no child appeared, and in the end she agreed to give up trying,
2121and soon afterwards they parted.
2122
2123Winston sighed inaudibly. He picked up his pen again and
2124wrote:
2125
2126
2127   She threw herself down on the bed, and at once, without any kind of
2128preliminary in the most coarse, horrible way you can imagine, pulled up
2129her skirt. I----
2130
2131
2132He saw himself standing there in the dim lamplight, with the smell of bugs
2133and cheap scent in his nostrils, and in his heart a feeling of defeat and
2134resentment which even at that moment was mixed up with the thought of
2135Katharine's white body, frozen for ever by the hypnotic power of the Party.
2136Why did it always have to be like this? Why could he not have a woman of
2137his own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals of years? But a real
2138love affair was an almost unthinkable event. The women of the Party were
2139all alike. Chastity was as deep ingrained in them as Party loyalty. By
2140careful early conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that
2141was dinned into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth League, by
2142lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial music, the natural feeling
2143had been driven out of them. His reason told him that there must be
2144exceptions, but his heart did not believe it. They were all impregnable,
2145as the Party intended that they should be. And what he wanted, more even
2146than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were
2147only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was
2148rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime. Even to have awakened Katharine, if he
2149could have achieved it, would have been like a seduction, although she was
2150his wife.
2151
2152But the rest of the story had got to be written down. He wrote:
2153
2154
2155   I turned up the lamp. When I saw her in the light----
2156
2157
2158After the darkness the feeble light of the paraffin lamp had seemed very
2159bright. For the first time he could see the woman properly. He had taken a
2160step towards her and then halted, full of lust and terror. He was painfully
2161conscious of the risk he had taken in coming here. It was perfectly
2162possible that the patrols would catch him on the way out: for that matter
2163they might be waiting outside the door at this moment. If he went away
2164without even doing what he had come here to do----!
2165
2166It had got to be written down, it had got to be confessed. What he had
2167suddenly seen in the lamplight was that the woman was OLD. The paint was
2168plastered so thick on her face that it looked as though it might crack
2169like a cardboard mask. There were streaks of white in her hair; but the
2170truly dreadful detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open,
2171revealing nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all.
2172
2173He wrote hurriedly, in scrabbling handwriting:
2174
2175
2176   When I saw her in the light she was quite an old woman, fifty years old
2177at least. But I went ahead and did it just the same.
2178
2179
2180He pressed his fingers against his eyelids again. He had written it down
2181at last, but it made no difference. The therapy had not worked. The urge
2182to shout filthy words at the top of his voice was as strong as ever.
2183
2184
2185
2186
2187Chapter 7
2188
2189
2190
2191'If there is hope,' wrote Winston, 'it lies in the proles.'
2192
2193If there was hope, it MUST lie in the proles, because only there in those
2194swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania,
2195could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could
2196not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had
2197no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if
2198the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was
2199inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than
2200twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflexion of the
2201voice, at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only
2202they could somehow become conscious of their own strength. would have no
2203need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like
2204a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to
2205pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to
2206do it? And yet----!
2207
2208He remembered how once he had been walking down a crowded street when a
2209tremendous shout of hundreds of voices women's voices--had burst from a
2210side-street a little way ahead. It was a great formidable cry of anger
2211and despair, a deep, loud 'Oh-o-o-o-oh!' that went humming on like the
2212reverberation of a bell. His heart had leapt. It's started! he had thought.
2213A riot! The proles are breaking loose at last! When he had reached the spot
2214it was to see a mob of two or three hundred women crowding round the stalls
2215of a street market, with faces as tragic as though they had been the doomed
2216passengers on a sinking ship. But at this moment the general despair broke
2217down into a multitude of individual quarrels. It appeared that one of the
2218stalls had been selling tin saucepans. They were wretched, flimsy things,
2219but cooking-pots of any kind were always difficult to get. Now the supply
2220had unexpectedly given out. The successful women, bumped and jostled by
2221the rest, were trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of
2222others clamoured round the stall, accusing the stall-keeper of favouritism
2223and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve. There was a fresh
2224outburst of yells. Two bloated women, one of them with her hair coming
2225down, had got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to tear it out of
2226one another's hands. For a moment they were both tugging, and then the
2227handle came off. Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet, just for a
2228moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only
2229a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that
2230about anything that mattered?
2231
2232He wrote:
2233
2234
2235   Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they
2236have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
2237
2238
2239That, he reflected, might almost have been a transcription from one of the
2240Party textbooks. The Party claimed, of course, to have liberated the proles
2241from bondage. Before the Revolution they had been hideously oppressed by
2242the capitalists, they had been starved and flogged, women had been forced
2243to work in the coal mines (women still did work in the coal mines, as a
2244matter of fact), children had been sold into the factories at the age
2245of six. But simultaneously, true to the Principles of doublethink, the
2246Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in
2247subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules. In
2248reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to
2249know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other
2250activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned
2251loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life
2252that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were
2253born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed
2254through a brief blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire, they married
2255at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part,
2256at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty
2257quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling,
2258filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not
2259difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them,
2260spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few
2261individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt
2262was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not
2263desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that
2264was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to
2265whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or
2266shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes
2267did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas,
2268they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils
2269invariably escaped their notice. The great majority of proles did not even
2270have telescreens in their homes. Even the civil police interfered with them
2271very little. There was a vast amount of criminality in London, a whole
2272world-within-a-world of thieves, bandits, prostitutes, drug-peddlers, and
2273racketeers of every description; but since it all happened among the proles
2274themselves, it was of no importance. In all questions of morals they were
2275allowed to follow their ancestral code. The sexual puritanism of the
2276Party was not imposed upon them. Promiscuity went unpunished, divorce
2277was permitted. For that matter, even religious worship would have been
2278permitted if the proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting it.
2279They were beneath suspicion. As the Party slogan put it: 'Proles and
2280animals are free.'
2281
2282Winston reached down and cautiously scratched his varicose ulcer. It
2283had begun itching again. The thing you invariably came back to was the
2284impossibility of knowing what life before the Revolution had really been
2285like. He took out of the drawer a copy of a children's history textbook
2286which he had borrowed from Mrs Parsons, and began copying a passage into
2287the diary:
2288
2289
2290   In the old days (it ran), before the glorious Revolution, London was
2291not the beautiful city that we know today. It was a dark, dirty, miserable
2292place where hardly anybody had enough to eat and where hundreds and
2293thousands of poor people had no boots on their feet and not even a roof to
2294sleep under. Children no older than you had to work twelve hours a day for
2295cruel masters who flogged them with whips if they worked too slowly and
2296fed them on nothing but stale breadcrusts and water. But in among all
2297this terrible poverty there were just a few great big beautiful houses
2298that were lived in by rich men who had as many as thirty servants to look
2299after them. These rich men were called capitalists. They were fat, ugly
2300men with wicked faces, like the one in the picture on the opposite page.
2301You can see that he is dressed in a long black coat which was called a
2302frock coat, and a queer, shiny hat shaped like a stovepipe, which was
2303called a top hat. This was the uniform of the capitalists, and no one else
2304was allowed to wear it. The capitalists owned everything in the world, and
2305everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses,
2306all the factories, and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they could
2307throw them into prison, or they could take his job away and starve him to
2308death. When any ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he had to cringe and
2309bow to him, and take off his cap and address him as 'Sir'. The chief of
2310all the capitalists was called the King, and----
2311
2312
2313But he knew the rest of the catalogue. There would be mention of the
2314bishops in their lawn sleeves, the judges in their ermine robes, the
2315pillory, the stocks, the treadmill, the cat-o'-nine tails, the Lord Mayor's
2316Banquet, and the practice of kissing the Pope's toe. There was also
2317something called the JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS, which would probably not be
2318mentioned in a textbook for children. It was the law by which every
2319capitalist had the right to sleep with any woman working in one of his
2320factories.
2321
2322How could you tell how much of it was lies? It MIGHT be true that the
2323average human being was better off now than he had been before the
2324Revolution. The only evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your
2325own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were
2326intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different. It
2327struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not
2328its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its
2329listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only
2330to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals
2331that the Party was trying to achieve. Great areas of it, even for a Party
2332member, were neutral and non-political, a matter of slogging through dreary
2333jobs, fighting for a place on the Tube, darning a worn-out sock, cadging
2334a saccharine tablet, saving a cigarette end. The ideal set up by the
2335Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering--a world of steel
2336and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons--a nation of
2337warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the
2338same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting,
2339triumphing, persecuting--three hundred million people all with the same
2340face. The reality was decaying, dingy cities where underfed people shuffled
2341to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century houses that
2342smelt always of cabbage and bad lavatories. He seemed to see a vision of
2343London, vast and ruinous, city of a million dustbins, and mixed up with it
2344was a picture of Mrs Parsons, a woman with lined face and wispy hair,
2345fiddling helplessly with a blocked waste-pipe.
2346
2347He reached down and scratched his ankle again. Day and night the
2348telescreens bruised your ears with statistics proving that people today
2349had more food, more clothes, better houses, better recreations--that they
2350lived longer, worked shorter hours, were bigger, healthier, stronger,
2351happier, more intelligent, better educated, than the people of fifty years
2352ago. Not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved. The Party claimed,
2353for example, that today 40 per cent of adult proles were literate: before
2354the Revolution, it was said, the number had only been 15 per cent. The
2355Party claimed that the infant mortality rate was now only 160 per
2356thousand, whereas before the Revolution it had been 300--and so it went
2357on. It was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very well be
2358that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one
2359accepted without question, was pure fantasy. For all he knew there might
2360never have been any such law as the JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS, or any such creature
2361as a capitalist, or any such garment as a top hat.
2362
2363Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten,
2364the lie became truth. Just once in his life he had possessed--AFTER the
2365event: that was what counted--concrete, unmistakable evidence of an act of
2366falsification. He had held it between his fingers for as long as thirty
2367seconds. In 1973, it must have been--at any rate, it was at about the time
2368when he and Katharine had parted. But the really relevant date was seven
2369or eight years earlier.
2370
2371The story really began in the middle sixties, the period of the great
2372purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out
2373once and for all. By 1970 none of them was left, except Big Brother
2374himself. All the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and
2375counter-revolutionaries. Goldstein had fled and was hiding no one knew
2376where, and of the others, a few had simply disappeared, while the majority
2377had been executed after spectacular public trials at which they made
2378confession of their crimes. Among the last survivors were three men named
2379Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. It must have been in 1965 that these three
2380had been arrested. As often happened, they had vanished for a year or more,
2381so that one did not know whether they were alive or dead, and then had
2382suddenly been brought forth to incriminate themselves in the usual way.
2383They had confessed to intelligence with the enemy (at that date, too, the
2384enemy was Eurasia), embezzlement of public funds, the murder of various
2385trusted Party members, intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother
2386which had started long before the Revolution happened, and acts of sabotage
2387causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people. After confessing to
2388these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given
2389posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important. All three
2390had written long, abject articles in 'The Times', analysing the reasons
2391for their defection and promising to make amends.
2392
2393Some time after their release Winston had actually seen all three of them
2394in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He remembered the sort of terrified fascination
2395with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were men
2396far older than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost the last great
2397figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The glamour of the
2398underground struggle and the civil war still faintly clung to them. He had
2399the feeling, though already at that time facts and dates were growing
2400blurry, that he had known their names years earlier than he had known that
2401of Big Brother. But also they were outlaws, enemies, untouchables, doomed
2402with absolute certainty to extinction within a year or two. No one who had
2403once fallen into the hands of the Thought Police ever escaped in the end.
2404They were corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave.
2405
2406There was no one at any of the tables nearest to them. It was not wise
2407even to be seen in the neighbourhood of such people. They were sitting
2408in silence before glasses of the gin flavoured with cloves which was the
2409speciality of the cafe. Of the three, it was Rutherford whose appearance
2410had most impressed Winston. Rutherford had once been a famous caricaturist,
2411whose brutal cartoons had helped to inflame popular opinion before and
2412during the Revolution. Even now, at long intervals, his cartoons were
2413appearing in The Times. They were simply an imitation of his earlier
2414manner, and curiously lifeless and unconvincing. Always they were a
2415rehashing of the ancient themes--slum tenements, starving children, street
2416battles, capitalists in top hats--even on the barricades the capitalists
2417still seemed to cling to their top hats an endless, hopeless effort to
2418get back into the past. He was a monstrous man, with a mane of greasy
2419grey hair, his face pouched and seamed, with thick negroid lips. At one
2420time he must have been immensely strong; now his great body was sagging,
2421sloping, bulging, falling away in every direction. He seemed to be breaking
2422up before one's eyes, like a mountain crumbling.
2423
2424It was the lonely hour of fifteen. Winston could not now remember how he
2425had come to be in the cafe at such a time. The place was almost empty. A
2426tinny music was trickling from the telescreens. The three men sat in their
2427corner almost motionless, never speaking. Uncommanded, the waiter brought
2428fresh glasses of gin. There was a chessboard on the table beside them, with
2429the pieces set out but no game started. And then, for perhaps half a minute
2430in all, something happened to the telescreens. The tune that they were
2431playing changed, and the tone of the music changed too. There came into
2432it--but it was something hard to describe. It was a peculiar, cracked,
2433braying, jeering note: in his mind Winston called it a yellow note. And
2434then a voice from the telescreen was singing:
2435
2436
2437  Under the spreading chestnut tree
2438  I sold you and you sold me:
2439  There lie they, and here lie we
2440  Under the spreading chestnut tree.
2441
2442
2443The three men never stirred. But when Winston glanced again at Rutherford's
2444ruinous face, he saw that his eyes were full of tears. And for the first
2445time he noticed, with a kind of inward shudder, and yet not knowing
2446AT WHAT he shuddered, that both Aaronson and Rutherford had broken noses.
2447
2448A little later all three were re-arrested. It appeared that they had
2449engaged in fresh conspiracies from the very moment of their release. At
2450their second trial they confessed to all their old crimes over again, with
2451a whole string of new ones. They were executed, and their fate was recorded
2452in the Party histories, a warning to posterity. About five years after
2453this, in 1973, Winston was unrolling a wad of documents which had just
2454flopped out of the pneumatic tube on to his desk when he came on a fragment
2455of paper which had evidently been slipped in among the others and then
2456forgotten. The instant he had flattened it out he saw its significance.
2457It was a half-page torn out of 'The Times' of about ten years earlier--the
2458top half of the page, so that it included the date--and it contained a
2459photograph of the delegates at some Party function in New York. Prominent
2460in the middle of the group were Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. There was
2461no mistaking them, in any case their names were in the caption at the
2462bottom.
2463
2464The point was that at both trials all three men had confessed that on that
2465date they had been on Eurasian soil. They had flown from a secret airfield
2466in Canada to a rendezvous somewhere in Siberia, and had conferred with
2467members of the Eurasian General Staff, to whom they had betrayed important
2468military secrets. The date had stuck in Winston's memory because it chanced
2469to be midsummer day; but the whole story must be on record in countless
2470other places as well. There was only one possible conclusion: the
2471confessions were lies.
2472
2473Of course, this was not in itself a discovery. Even at that time Winston
2474had not imagined that the people who were wiped out in the purges had
2475actually committed the crimes that they were accused of. But this was
2476concrete evidence; it was a fragment of the abolished past, like a fossil
2477bone which turns up in the wrong stratum and destroys a geological theory.
2478It was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have
2479been published to the world and its significance made known.
2480
2481He had gone straight on working. As soon as he saw what the photograph
2482was, and what it meant, he had covered it up with another sheet of paper.
2483Luckily, when he unrolled it, it had been upside-down from the point of
2484view of the telescreen.
2485
2486He took his scribbling pad on his knee and pushed back his chair so as
2487to get as far away from the telescreen as possible. To keep your face
2488expressionless was not difficult, and even your breathing could be
2489controlled, with an effort: but you could not control the beating of your
2490heart, and the telescreen was quite delicate enough to pick it up. He let
2491what he judged to be ten minutes go by, tormented all the while by the
2492fear that some accident--a sudden draught blowing across his desk, for
2493instance--would betray him. Then, without uncovering it again, he dropped
2494the photograph into the memory hole, along with some other waste papers.
2495Within another minute, perhaps, it would have crumbled into ashes.
2496
2497That was ten--eleven years ago. Today, probably, he would have kept that
2498photograph. It was curious that the fact of having held it in his fingers
2499seemed to him to make a difference even now, when the photograph itself,
2500as well as the event it recorded, was only memory. Was the Party's hold
2501upon the past less strong, he wondered, because a piece of evidence which
2502existed no longer HAD ONCE existed?
2503
2504But today, supposing that it could be somehow resurrected from its ashes,
2505the photograph might not even be evidence. Already, at the time when he
2506made his discovery, Oceania was no longer at war with Eurasia, and it must
2507have been to the agents of Eastasia that the three dead men had betrayed
2508their country. Since then there had been other changes--two, three,
2509he could not remember how many. Very likely the confessions had been
2510rewritten and rewritten until the original facts and dates no longer
2511had the smallest significance. The past not only changed, but changed
2512continuously. What most afflicted him with the sense of nightmare was that
2513he had never clearly understood why the huge imposture was undertaken.
2514The immediate advantages of falsifying the past were obvious, but the
2515ultimate motive was mysterious. He took up his pen again and wrote:
2516
2517
2518   I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY.
2519
2520
2521He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was
2522a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it
2523had been a sign of madness to believe that the earth goes round the sun;
2524today, to believe that the past is unalterable. He might be ALONE in
2525holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being
2526a lunatic did not greatly trouble him: the horror was that he might also
2527be wrong.
2528
2529He picked up the children's history book and looked at the portrait of
2530Big Brother which formed its frontispiece. The hypnotic eyes gazed into
2531his own. It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon
2532you--something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your
2533brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to
2534deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that
2535two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable
2536that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their
2537position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very
2538existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The
2539heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that
2540they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.
2541For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the
2542force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past
2543and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is
2544controllable what then?
2545
2546But no! His courage seemed suddenly to stiffen of its own accord. The face
2547of O'Brien, not called up by any obvious association, had floated into his
2548mind. He knew, with more certainty than before, that O'Brien was on his
2549side. He was writing the diary for O'Brien--TO O'Brien: it was like an
2550interminable letter which no one would ever read, but which was addressed
2551to a particular person and took its colour from that fact.
2552
2553The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was
2554their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of
2555the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party
2556intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he
2557would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the
2558right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the
2559true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid
2560world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet,
2561objects unsupported fall towards the earth's centre. With the feeling that
2562he was speaking to O'Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important
2563axiom, he wrote:
2564
2565
2566   Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is
2567granted, all else follows.
2568
2569
2570
2571
2572Chapter 8
2573
2574
2575
2576From somewhere at the bottom of a passage the smell of roasting
2577coffee--real coffee, not Victory Coffee--came floating out into the street.
2578Winston paused involuntarily. For perhaps two seconds he was back in the
2579half-forgotten world of his childhood. Then a door banged, seeming to cut
2580off the smell as abruptly as though it had been a sound.
2581
2582He had walked several kilometres over pavements, and his varicose ulcer
2583was throbbing. This was the second time in three weeks that he had missed
2584an evening at the Community Centre: a rash act, since you could be certain
2585that the number of your attendances at the Centre was carefully checked.
2586In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except
2587in bed. It was assumed that when he was not working, eating, or sleeping
2588he would be taking part in some kind of communal recreation: to do anything
2589that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself,
2590was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak:
2591OWNLIFE, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity. But this
2592evening as he came out of the Ministry the balminess of the April air had
2593tempted him. The sky was a warmer blue than he had seen it that year, and
2594suddenly the long, noisy evening at the Centre, the boring, exhausting
2595games, the lectures, the creaking camaraderie oiled by gin, had seemed
2596intolerable. On impulse he had turned away from the bus-stop and wandered
2597off into the labyrinth of London, first south, then east, then north again,
2598losing himself among unknown streets and hardly bothering in which
2599direction he was going.
2600
2601'If there is hope,' he had written in the diary, 'it lies in the proles.'
2602The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a
2603palpable absurdity. He was somewhere in the vague, brown-coloured slums
2604to the north and east of what had once been Saint Pancras Station. He was
2605walking up a cobbled street of little two-storey houses with battered
2606doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were somehow
2607curiously suggestive of ratholes. There were puddles of filthy water here
2608and there among the cobbles. In and out of the dark doorways, and down
2609narrow alley-ways that branched off on either side, people swarmed in
2610astonishing numbers--girls in full bloom, with crudely lipsticked mouths,
2611and youths who chased the girls, and swollen waddling women who showed you
2612what the girls would be like in ten years' time, and old bent creatures
2613shuffling along on splayed feet, and ragged barefooted children who played
2614in the puddles and then scattered at angry yells from their mothers.
2615Perhaps a quarter of the windows in the street were broken and boarded up.
2616Most of the people paid no attention to Winston; a few eyed him with a
2617sort of guarded curiosity. Two monstrous women with brick-red forearms
2618folded across their aprons were talking outside a doorway. Winston caught
2619scraps of conversation as he approached.
2620
2621'"Yes," I says to 'er, "that's all very well," I says. "But if you'd of
2622been in my place you'd of done the same as what I done. It's easy to
2623criticize," I says, "but you ain't got the same problems as what I got."'
2624
2625'Ah,' said the other, 'that's jest it. That's jest where it is.'
2626
2627The strident voices stopped abruptly. The women studied him in hostile
2628silence as he went past. But it was not hostility, exactly; merely a kind
2629of wariness, a momentary stiffening, as at the passing of some unfamiliar
2630animal. The blue overalls of the Party could not be a common sight in a
2631street like this. Indeed, it was unwise to be seen in such places, unless
2632you had definite business there. The patrols might stop you if you happened
2633to run into them. 'May I see your papers, comrade? What are you doing here?
2634What time did you leave work? Is this your usual way home?'--and so on and
2635so forth. Not that there was any rule against walking home by an unusual
2636route: but it was enough to draw attention to you if the Thought Police
2637heard about it.
2638
2639Suddenly the whole street was in commotion. There were yells of warning
2640from all sides. People were shooting into the doorways like rabbits. A
2641young woman leapt out of a doorway a little ahead of Winston, grabbed up a
2642tiny child playing in a puddle, whipped her apron round it, and leapt back
2643again, all in one movement. At the same instant a man in a concertina-like
2644black suit, who had emerged from a side alley, ran towards Winston,
2645pointing excitedly to the sky.
2646
2647'Steamer!' he yelled. 'Look out, guv'nor! Bang over'ead! Lay down quick!'
2648
2649'Steamer' was a nickname which, for some reason, the proles applied to
2650rocket bombs. Winston promptly flung himself on his face. The proles were
2651nearly always right when they gave you a warning of this kind. They seemed
2652to possess some kind of instinct which told them several seconds in advance
2653when a rocket was coming, although the rockets supposedly travelled faster
2654than sound. Winston clasped his forearms above his head. There was a roar
2655that seemed to make the pavement heave; a shower of light objects pattered
2656on to his back. When he stood up he found that he was covered with
2657fragments of glass from the nearest window.
2658
2659He walked on. The bomb had demolished a group of houses 200 metres up the
2660street. A black plume of smoke hung in the sky, and below it a cloud of
2661plaster dust in which a crowd was already forming around the ruins. There
2662was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in
2663the middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he
2664saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist. Apart from the bloody
2665stump, the hand was so completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast.
2666
2667He kicked the thing into the gutter, and then, to avoid the crowd, turned
2668down a side-street to the right. Within three or four minutes he was out
2669of the area which the bomb had affected, and the sordid swarming life of
2670the streets was going on as though nothing had happened. It was nearly
2671twenty hours, and the drinking-shops which the proles frequented ('pubs',
2672they called them) were choked with customers. From their grimy swing doors,
2673endlessly opening and shutting, there came forth a smell of urine, sawdust,
2674and sour beer. In an angle formed by a projecting house-front three men
2675were standing very close together, the middle one of them holding a
2676folded-up newspaper which the other two were studying over his shoulder.
2677Even before he was near enough to make out the expression on their faces,
2678Winston could see absorption in every line of their bodies. It was
2679obviously some serious piece of news that they were reading. He was a few
2680paces away from them when suddenly the group broke up and two of the men
2681were in violent altercation. For a moment they seemed almost on the point
2682of blows.
2683
2684'Can't you bleeding well listen to what I say? I tell you no number ending
2685in seven ain't won for over fourteen months!'
2686
2687'Yes, it 'as, then!'
2688
2689'No, it 'as not! Back 'ome I got the 'ole lot of 'em for over two years
2690wrote down on a piece of paper. I takes 'em down reg'lar as the clock. An'
2691I tell you, no number ending in seven----'
2692
2693'Yes, a seven 'AS won! I could pretty near tell you the bleeding number.
2694Four oh seven, it ended in. It were in February--second week in February.'
2695
2696'February your grandmother! I got it all down in black and white. An' I
2697tell you, no number----'
2698
2699'Oh, pack it in!' said the third man.
2700
2701They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone
2702thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces.
2703The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public
2704event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that
2705there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal
2706if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their
2707folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was
2708concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of
2709intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole
2710tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and
2711lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the running of the Lottery,
2712which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed
2713everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary.
2714Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being
2715non-existent persons. In the absence of any real intercommunication between
2716one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange.
2717
2718But if there was hope, it lay in the proles. You had to cling on to that.
2719When you put it in words it sounded reasonable: it was when you looked at
2720the human beings passing you on the pavement that it became an act of
2721faith. The street into which he had turned ran downhill. He had a feeling
2722that he had been in this neighbourhood before, and that there was a main
2723thoroughfare not far away. From somewhere ahead there came a din of
2724shouting voices. The street took a sharp turn and then ended in a flight
2725of steps which led down into a sunken alley where a few stall-keepers
2726were selling tired-looking vegetables. At this moment Winston remembered
2727where he was. The alley led out into the main street, and down the next
2728turning, not five minutes away, was the junk-shop where he had bought the
2729blank book which was now his diary. And in a small stationer's shop not
2730far away he had bought his penholder and his bottle of ink.
2731
2732He paused for a moment at the top of the steps. On the opposite side of
2733the alley there was a dingy little pub whose windows appeared to be frosted
2734over but in reality were merely coated with dust. A very old man, bent but
2735active, with white moustaches that bristled forward like those of a prawn,
2736pushed open the swing door and went in. As Winston stood watching, it
2737occurred to him that the old man, who must be eighty at the least, had
2738already been middle-aged when the Revolution happened. He and a few others
2739like him were the last links that now existed with the vanished world of
2740capitalism. In the Party itself there were not many people left whose ideas
2741had been formed before the Revolution. The older generation had mostly
2742been wiped out in the great purges of the fifties and sixties, and the few
2743who survived had long ago been terrified into complete intellectual
2744surrender. If there was any one still alive who could give you a truthful
2745account of conditions in the early part of the century, it could only be a
2746prole. Suddenly the passage from the history book that he had copied into
2747his diary came back into Winston's mind, and a lunatic impulse took hold
2748of him. He would go into the pub, he would scrape acquaintance with that
2749old man and question him. He would say to him: 'Tell me about your life
2750when you were a boy. What was it like in those days? Were things better
2751than they are now, or were they worse?'
2752
2753Hurriedly, lest he should have time to become frightened, he descended the
2754steps and crossed the narrow street. It was madness of course. As usual,
2755there was no definite rule against talking to proles and frequenting their
2756pubs, but it was far too unusual an action to pass unnoticed. If the
2757patrols appeared he might plead an attack of faintness, but it was not
2758likely that they would believe him. He pushed open the door, and a hideous
2759cheesy smell of sour beer hit him in the face. As he entered the din of
2760voices dropped to about half its volume. Behind his back he could feel
2761everyone eyeing his blue overalls. A game of darts which was going on at
2762the other end of the room interrupted itself for perhaps as much as thirty
2763seconds. The old man whom he had followed was standing at the bar, having
2764some kind of altercation with the barman, a large, stout, hook-nosed young
2765man with enormous forearms. A knot of others, standing round with glasses
2766in their hands, were watching the scene.
2767
2768'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man, straightening his
2769shoulders pugnaciously. 'You telling me you ain't got a pint mug in the
2770'ole bleeding boozer?'
2771
2772'And what in hell's name IS a pint?' said the barman, leaning forward with
2773the tips of his fingers on the counter.
2774
2775''Ark at 'im! Calls 'isself a barman and don't know what a pint is! Why,
2776a pint's the 'alf of a quart, and there's four quarts to the gallon.
2777'Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.'
2778
2779'Never heard of 'em,' said the barman shortly. 'Litre and half
2780litre--that's all we serve. There's the glasses on the shelf in front
2781of you.'
2782
2783'I likes a pint,' persisted the old man. 'You could 'a drawed me off a pint
2784easy enough. We didn't 'ave these bleeding litres when I was a young man.'
2785
2786'When you were a young man we were all living in the treetops,' said the
2787barman, with a glance at the other customers.
2788
2789There was a shout of laughter, and the uneasiness caused by Winston's entry
2790seemed to disappear. The old man's white-stubbled face had flushed pink. He
2791turned away, muttering to himself, and bumped into Winston. Winston caught
2792him gently by the arm.
2793
2794'May I offer you a drink?' he said.
2795
2796'You're a gent,' said the other, straightening his shoulders again. He
2797appeared not to have noticed Winston's blue overalls. 'Pint!' he added
2798aggressively to the barman. 'Pint of wallop.'
2799
2800The barman swished two half-litres of dark-brown beer into thick glasses
2801which he had rinsed in a bucket under the counter. Beer was the only drink
2802you could get in prole pubs. The proles were supposed not to drink gin,
2803though in practice they could get hold of it easily enough. The game of
2804darts was in full swing again, and the knot of men at the bar had begun
2805talking about lottery tickets. Winston's presence was forgotten for a
2806moment. There was a deal table under the window where he and the old man
2807could talk without fear of being overheard. It was horribly dangerous, but
2808at any rate there was no telescreen in the room, a point he had made sure
2809of as soon as he came in.
2810
2811''E could 'a drawed me off a pint,' grumbled the old man as he settled down
2812behind a glass. 'A 'alf litre ain't enough. It don't satisfy. And a 'ole
2813litre's too much. It starts my bladder running. Let alone the price.'
2814
2815'You must have seen great changes since you were a young man,' said
2816Winston tentatively.
2817
2818The old man's pale blue eyes moved from the darts board to the bar, and
2819from the bar to the door of the Gents, as though it were in the bar-room
2820that he expected the changes to have occurred.
2821
2822'The beer was better,' he said finally. 'And cheaper! When I was a young
2823man, mild beer--wallop we used to call it--was fourpence a pint. That was
2824before the war, of course.'
2825
2826'Which war was that?' said Winston.
2827
2828'It's all wars,' said the old man vaguely. He took up his glass, and his
2829shoulders straightened again. ''Ere's wishing you the very best of 'ealth!'
2830
2831In his lean throat the sharp-pointed Adam's apple made a surprisingly rapid
2832up-and-down movement, and the beer vanished. Winston went to the bar and
2833came back with two more half-litres. The old man appeared to have forgotten
2834his prejudice against drinking a full litre.
2835
2836'You are very much older than I am,' said Winston. 'You must have been a
2837grown man before I was born. You can remember what it was like in the old
2838days, before the Revolution. People of my age don't really know anything
2839about those times. We can only read about them in books, and what it says
2840in the books may not be true. I should like your opinion on that. The
2841history books say that life before the Revolution was completely different
2842from what it is now. There was the most terrible oppression, injustice,
2843poverty worse than anything we can imagine. Here in London, the great mass
2844of the people never had enough to eat from birth to death. Half of them
2845hadn't even boots on their feet. They worked twelve hours a day, they left
2846school at nine, they slept ten in a room. And at the same time there were
2847a very few people, only a few thousands--the capitalists, they were
2848called--who were rich and powerful. They owned everything that there was
2849to own. They lived in great gorgeous houses with thirty servants, they
2850rode about in motor-cars and four-horse carriages, they drank champagne,
2851they wore top hats----'
2852
2853The old man brightened suddenly.
2854
2855'Top 'ats!' he said. 'Funny you should mention 'em. The same thing come
2856into my 'ead only yesterday, I dono why. I was jest thinking, I ain't seen
2857a top 'at in years. Gorn right out, they 'ave. The last time I wore one
2858was at my sister-in-law's funeral. And that was--well, I couldn't give you
2859the date, but it must'a been fifty years ago. Of course it was only 'ired
2860for the occasion, you understand.'
2861
2862'It isn't very important about the top hats,' said Winston patiently.
2863'The point is, these capitalists--they and a few lawyers and priests and
2864so forth who lived on them--were the lords of the earth. Everything existed
2865for their benefit. You--the ordinary people, the workers--were their
2866slaves. They could do what they liked with you. They could ship you off to
2867Canada like cattle. They could sleep with your daughters if they chose.
2868They could order you to be flogged with something called a cat-o'-nine
2869tails. You had to take your cap off when you passed them. Every capitalist
2870went about with a gang of lackeys who----'
2871
2872The old man brightened again.
2873
2874'Lackeys!' he said. 'Now there's a word I ain't 'eard since ever so long.
2875Lackeys! That reg'lar takes me back, that does. I recollect--oh, donkey's
2876years ago--I used to sometimes go to 'Yde Park of a Sunday afternoon to
2877'ear the blokes making speeches. Salvation Army, Roman Catholics, Jews,
2878Indians--all sorts there was. And there was one bloke--well, I couldn't
2879give you 'is name, but a real powerful speaker 'e was. 'E didn't 'alf
2880give it 'em! "Lackeys!" 'e says, "lackeys of the bourgeoisie! Flunkies of
2881the ruling class!" Parasites--that was another of them. And 'yenas--'e
2882definitely called 'em 'yenas. Of course 'e was referring to the Labour
2883Party, you understand.'
2884
2885Winston had the feeling that they were talking at cross-purposes.
2886
2887'What I really wanted to know was this,' he said. 'Do you feel that you
2888have more freedom now than you had in those days? Are you treated more
2889like a human being? In the old days, the rich people, the people at the
2890top----'
2891
2892'The 'Ouse of Lords,' put in the old man reminiscently.
2893
2894'The House of Lords, if you like. What I am asking is, were these people
2895able to treat you as an inferior, simply because they were rich and you
2896were poor? Is it a fact, for instance, that you had to call them "Sir" and
2897take off your cap when you passed them?'
2898
2899The old man appeared to think deeply. He drank off about a quarter of his
2900beer before answering.
2901
2902'Yes,' he said. 'They liked you to touch your cap to 'em. It showed
2903respect, like. I didn't agree with it, myself, but I done it often enough.
2904Had to, as you might say.'
2905
2906'And was it usual--I'm only quoting what I've read in history books--was
2907it usual for these people and their servants to push you off the pavement
2908into the gutter?'
2909
2910'One of 'em pushed me once,' said the old man. 'I recollect it as if it
2911was yesterday. It was Boat Race night--terribly rowdy they used to get on
2912Boat Race night--and I bumps into a young bloke on Shaftesbury Avenue.
2913Quite a gent, 'e was--dress shirt, top 'at, black overcoat. 'E was kind
2914of zig-zagging across the pavement, and I bumps into 'im accidental-like.
2915'E says, "Why can't you look where you're going?" 'e says. I say, "Ju think
2916you've bought the bleeding pavement?" 'E says, "I'll twist your bloody 'ead
2917off if you get fresh with me." I says, "You're drunk. I'll give you in
2918charge in 'alf a minute," I says. An' if you'll believe me, 'e puts 'is
2919'and on my chest and gives me a shove as pretty near sent me under the
2920wheels of a bus. Well, I was young in them days, and I was going to 'ave
2921fetched 'im one, only----'
2922
2923A sense of helplessness took hold of Winston. The old man's memory was
2924nothing but a rubbish-heap of details. One could question him all day
2925without getting any real information. The party histories might still be
2926true, after a fashion: they might even be completely true. He made a last
2927attempt.
2928
2929'Perhaps I have not made myself clear,' he said. 'What I'm trying to say
2930is this. You have been alive a very long time; you lived half your life
2931before the Revolution. In 1925, for instance, you were already grown up.
2932Would you say from what you can remember, that life in 1925 was better
2933than it is now, or worse? If you could choose, would you prefer to live
2934then or now?'
2935
2936The old man looked meditatively at the darts board. He finished up his
2937beer, more slowly than before. When he spoke it was with a tolerant
2938philosophical air, as though the beer had mellowed him.
2939
2940'I know what you expect me to say,' he said. 'You expect me to say as I'd
2941sooner be young again. Most people'd say they'd sooner be young, if you
2942arst 'em. You got your 'ealth and strength when you're young. When you
2943get to my time of life you ain't never well. I suffer something wicked
2944from my feet, and my bladder's jest terrible. Six and seven times a night
2945it 'as me out of bed. On the other 'and, there's great advantages in being
2946a old man. You ain't got the same worries. No truck with women, and that's
2947a great thing. I ain't 'ad a woman for near on thirty year, if you'd
2948credit it. Nor wanted to, what's more.'
2949
2950Winston sat back against the window-sill. It was no use going on. He was
2951about to buy some more beer when the old man suddenly got up and shuffled
2952rapidly into the stinking urinal at the side of the room. The extra
2953half-litre was already working on him. Winston sat for a minute or two
2954gazing at his empty glass, and hardly noticed when his feet carried him out
2955into the street again. Within twenty years at the most, he reflected, the
2956huge and simple question, 'Was life better before the Revolution than it
2957is now?' would have ceased once and for all to be answerable. But in effect
2958it was unanswerable even now, since the few scattered survivors from the
2959ancient world were incapable of comparing one age with another. They
2960remembered a million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for
2961a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister's face, the
2962swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago: but all the relevant
2963facts were outside the range of their vision. They were like the ant,
2964which can see small objects but not large ones. And when memory failed and
2965written records were falsified--when that happened, the claim of the Party
2966to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted,
2967because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard
2968against which it could be tested.
2969
2970At this moment his train of thought stopped abruptly. He halted and looked
2971up. He was in a narrow street, with a few dark little shops, interspersed
2972among dwelling-houses. Immediately above his head there hung three
2973discoloured metal balls which looked as if they had once been gilded. He
2974seemed to know the place. Of course! He was standing outside the junk-shop
2975where he had bought the diary.
2976
2977A twinge of fear went through him. It had been a sufficiently rash act to
2978buy the book in the beginning, and he had sworn never to come near the
2979place again. And yet the instant that he allowed his thoughts to wander,
2980his feet had brought him back here of their own accord. It was precisely
2981against suicidal impulses of this kind that he had hoped to guard himself
2982by opening the diary. At the same time he noticed that although it was
2983nearly twenty-one hours the shop was still open. With the feeling that he
2984would be less conspicuous inside than hanging about on the pavement, he
2985stepped through the doorway. If questioned, he could plausibly say that
2986he was trying to buy razor blades.
2987
2988The proprietor had just lighted a hanging oil lamp which gave off an
2989unclean but friendly smell. He was a man of perhaps sixty, frail and
2990bowed, with a long, benevolent nose, and mild eyes distorted by thick
2991spectacles. His hair was almost white, but his eyebrows were bushy and
2992still black. His spectacles, his gentle, fussy movements, and the fact
2993that he was wearing an aged jacket of black velvet, gave him a vague air
2994of intellectuality, as though he had been some kind of literary man, or
2995perhaps a musician. His voice was soft, as though faded, and his accent
2996less debased than that of the majority of proles.
2997
2998'I recognized you on the pavement,' he said immediately. 'You're the
2999gentleman that bought the young lady's keepsake album. That was a beautiful
3000bit of paper, that was. Cream-laid, it used to be called. There's been no
3001paper like that made for--oh, I dare say fifty years.' He peered at Winston
3002over the top of his spectacles. 'Is there anything special I can do for
3003you? Or did you just want to look round?'
3004
3005'I was passing,' said Winston vaguely. 'I just looked in. I don't want
3006anything in particular.'
3007
3008'It's just as well,' said the other, 'because I don't suppose I could have
3009satisfied you.' He made an apologetic gesture with his softpalmed hand.
3010'You see how it is; an empty shop, you might say. Between you and me, the
3011antique trade's just about finished. No demand any longer, and no stock
3012either. Furniture, china, glass it's all been broken up by degrees. And
3013of course the metal stuff's mostly been melted down. I haven't seen a brass
3014candlestick in years.'
3015
3016The tiny interior of the shop was in fact uncomfortably full, but there
3017was almost nothing in it of the slightest value. The floorspace was very
3018restricted, because all round the walls were stacked innumerable dusty
3019picture-frames. In the window there were trays of nuts and bolts, worn-out
3020chisels, penknives with broken blades, tarnished watches that did not even
3021pretend to be in going order, and other miscellaneous rubbish. Only on a
3022small table in the corner was there a litter of odds and ends--lacquered
3023snuffboxes, agate brooches, and the like--which looked as though they might
3024include something interesting. As Winston wandered towards the table his
3025eye was caught by a round, smooth thing that gleamed softly in the
3026lamplight, and he picked it up.
3027
3028It was a heavy lump of glass, curved on one side, flat on the other, making
3029almost a hemisphere. There was a peculiar softness, as of rainwater, in
3030both the colour and the texture of the glass. At the heart of it, magnified
3031by the curved surface, there was a strange, pink, convoluted object that
3032recalled a rose or a sea anemone.
3033
3034'What is it?' said Winston, fascinated.
3035
3036'That's coral, that is,' said the old man. 'It must have come from the
3037Indian Ocean. They used to kind of embed it in the glass. That wasn't made
3038less than a hundred years ago. More, by the look of it.'
3039
3040'It's a beautiful thing,' said Winston.
3041
3042'It is a beautiful thing,' said the other appreciatively. 'But there's not
3043many that'd say so nowadays.' He coughed. 'Now, if it so happened that you
3044wanted to buy it, that'd cost you four dollars. I can remember when a thing
3045like that would have fetched eight pounds, and eight pounds was--well, I
3046can't work it out, but it was a lot of money. But who cares about genuine
3047antiques nowadays--even the few that's left?'
3048
3049Winston immediately paid over the four dollars and slid the coveted thing
3050into his pocket. What appealed to him about it was not so much its beauty
3051as the air it seemed to possess of belonging to an age quite different
3052from the present one. The soft, rainwatery glass was not like any glass
3053that he had ever seen. The thing was doubly attractive because of its
3054apparent uselessness, though he could guess that it must once have been
3055intended as a paperweight. It was very heavy in his pocket, but fortunately
3056it did not make much of a bulge. It was a queer thing, even a compromising
3057thing, for a Party member to have in his possession. Anything old, and for
3058that matter anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect. The old man had
3059grown noticeably more cheerful after receiving the four dollars. Winston
3060realized that he would have accepted three or even two.
3061
3062'There's another room upstairs that you might care to take a look at,' he
3063said. 'There's not much in it. Just a few pieces. We'll do with a light if
3064we're going upstairs.'
3065
3066He lit another lamp, and, with bowed back, led the way slowly up the
3067steep and worn stairs and along a tiny passage, into a room which did
3068not give on the street but looked out on a cobbled yard and a forest of
3069chimney-pots. Winston noticed that the furniture was still arranged as
3070though the room were meant to be lived in. There was a strip of carpet on
3071the floor, a picture or two on the walls, and a deep, slatternly arm-chair
3072drawn up to the fireplace. An old-fashioned glass clock with a twelve-hour
3073face was ticking away on the mantelpiece. Under the window, and occupying
3074nearly a quarter of the room, was an enormous bed with the mattress still
3075on it.
3076
3077'We lived here till my wife died,' said the old man half apologetically.
3078'I'm selling the furniture off by little and little. Now that's a beautiful
3079mahogany bed, or at least it would be if you could get the bugs out of it.
3080But I dare say you'd find it a little bit cumbersome.'
3081
3082He was holding the lamp high up, so as to illuminate the whole room, and
3083in the warm dim light the place looked curiously inviting. The thought
3084flitted through Winston's mind that it would probably be quite easy to
3085rent the room for a few dollars a week, if he dared to take the risk. It
3086was a wild, impossible notion, to be abandoned as soon as thought of; but
3087the room had awakened in him a sort of nostalgia, a sort of ancestral
3088memory. It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in
3089a room like this, in an arm-chair beside an open fire with your feet in
3090the fender and a kettle on the hob; utterly alone, utterly secure, with
3091nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you, no sound except the singing
3092of the kettle and the friendly ticking of the clock.
3093
3094'There's no telescreen!' he could not help murmuring.
3095
3096'Ah,' said the old man, 'I never had one of those things. Too expensive.
3097And I never seemed to feel the need of it, somehow. Now that's a nice
3098gateleg table in the corner there. Though of course you'd have to put new
3099hinges on it if you wanted to use the flaps.'
3100
3101There was a small bookcase in the other corner, and Winston had already
3102gravitated towards it. It contained nothing but rubbish. The hunting-down
3103and destruction of books had been done with the same thoroughness in the
3104prole quarters as everywhere else. It was very unlikely that there existed
3105anywhere in Oceania a copy of a book printed earlier than 1960. The old
3106man, still carrying the lamp, was standing in front of a picture in a
3107rosewood frame which hung on the other side of the fireplace, opposite
3108the bed.
3109
3110'Now, if you happen to be interested in old prints at all----' he began
3111delicately.
3112
3113Winston came across to examine the picture. It was a steel engraving of an
3114oval building with rectangular windows, and a small tower in front. There
3115was a railing running round the building, and at the rear end there was
3116what appeared to be a statue. Winston gazed at it for some moments. It
3117seemed vaguely familiar, though he did not remember the statue.
3118
3119'The frame's fixed to the wall,' said the old man, 'but I could unscrew it
3120for you, I dare say.'
3121
3122'I know that building,' said Winston finally. 'It's a ruin now. It's in
3123the middle of the street outside the Palace of Justice.'
3124
3125'That's right. Outside the Law Courts. It was bombed in--oh, many years
3126ago. It was a church at one time, St Clement Danes, its name was.' He
3127smiled apologetically, as though conscious of saying something slightly
3128ridiculous, and added: 'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's!'
3129
3130'What's that?' said Winston.
3131
3132'Oh--"Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's." That was a rhyme
3133we had when I was a little boy. How it goes on I don't remember, but I do
3134know it ended up, "Here comes a candle to light you to bed, Here comes a
3135chopper to chop off your head." It was a kind of a dance. They held out
3136their arms for you to pass under, and when they came to "Here comes a
3137chopper to chop off your head" they brought their arms down and caught you.
3138It was just names of churches. All the London churches were in it--all the
3139principal ones, that is.'
3140
3141Winston wondered vaguely to what century the church belonged. It was always
3142difficult to determine the age of a London building. Anything large and
3143impressive, if it was reasonably new in appearance, was automatically
3144claimed as having been built since the Revolution, while anything that was
3145obviously of earlier date was ascribed to some dim period called the Middle
3146Ages. The centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of any
3147value. One could not learn history from architecture any more than one
3148could learn it from books. Statues, inscriptions, memorial stones, the
3149names of streets--anything that might throw light upon the past had been
3150systematically altered.
3151
3152'I never knew it had been a church,' he said.
3153
3154'There's a lot of them left, really,' said the old man, 'though they've
3155been put to other uses. Now, how did that rhyme go? Ah! I've got it!
3156
3157
3158  "Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,
3159  You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's----"
3160
3161
3162there, now, that's as far as I can get. A farthing, that was a small copper
3163coin, looked something like a cent.'
3164
3165'Where was St Martin's?' said Winston.
3166
3167'St Martin's? That's still standing. It's in Victory Square, alongside the
3168picture gallery. A building with a kind of a triangular porch and pillars
3169in front, and a big flight of steps.'
3170
3171Winston knew the place well. It was a museum used for propaganda displays
3172of various kinds--scale models of rocket bombs and Floating Fortresses,
3173waxwork tableaux illustrating enemy atrocities, and the like.
3174
3175'St Martin's-in-the-Fields it used to be called,' supplemented the old man,
3176'though I don't recollect any fields anywhere in those parts.'
3177
3178Winston did not buy the picture. It would have been an even more
3179incongruous possession than the glass paperweight, and impossible to carry
3180home, unless it were taken out of its frame. But he lingered for some
3181minutes more, talking to the old man, whose name, he discovered, was not
3182Weeks--as one might have gathered from the inscription over the
3183shop-front--but Charrington. Mr Charrington, it seemed, was a widower aged
3184sixty-three and had inhabited this shop for thirty years. Throughout that
3185time he had been intending to alter the name over the window, but had never
3186quite got to the point of doing it. All the while that they were talking
3187the half-remembered rhyme kept running through Winston's head. Oranges and
3188lemons say the bells of St Clement's, You owe me three farthings, say
3189the bells of St Martin's! It was curious, but when you said it to yourself
3190you had the illusion of actually hearing bells, the bells of a lost London
3191that still existed somewhere or other, disguised and forgotten. From one
3192ghostly steeple after another he seemed to hear them pealing forth. Yet so
3193far as he could remember he had never in real life heard church bells
3194ringing.
3195
3196He got away from Mr Charrington and went down the stairs alone, so as not
3197to let the old man see him reconnoitring the street before stepping out of
3198the door. He had already made up his mind that after a suitable
3199interval--a month, say--he would take the risk of visiting the shop again.
3200It was perhaps not more dangerous than shirking an evening at the Centre.
3201The serious piece of folly had been to come back here in the first place,
3202after buying the diary and without knowing whether the proprietor of the
3203shop could be trusted. However----!
3204
3205Yes, he thought again, he would come back. He would buy further scraps of
3206beautiful rubbish. He would buy the engraving of St Clement Danes, take
3207it out of its frame, and carry it home concealed under the jacket of his
3208overalls. He would drag the rest of that poem out of Mr Charrington's
3209memory. Even the lunatic project of renting the room upstairs flashed
3210momentarily through his mind again. For perhaps five seconds exaltation
3211made him careless, and he stepped out on to the pavement without so much
3212as a preliminary glance through the window. He had even started humming
3213to an improvised tune
3214
3215
3216  Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,
3217  You owe me three farthings, say the----
3218
3219
3220Suddenly his heart seemed to turn to ice and his bowels to water. A figure
3221in blue overalls was coming down the pavement, not ten metres away. It was
3222the girl from the Fiction Department, the girl with dark hair. The light
3223was failing, but there was no difficulty in recognizing her. She looked
3224him straight in the face, then walked quickly on as though she had not
3225seen him.
3226
3227For a few seconds Winston was too paralysed to move. Then he turned to the
3228right and walked heavily away, not noticing for the moment that he was
3229going in the wrong direction. At any rate, one question was settled. There
3230was no doubting any longer that the girl was spying on him. She must have
3231followed him here, because it was not credible that by pure chance she
3232should have happened to be walking on the same evening up the same obscure
3233backstreet, kilometres distant from any quarter where Party members lived.
3234It was too great a coincidence. Whether she was really an agent of the
3235Thought Police, or simply an amateur spy actuated by officiousness, hardly
3236mattered. It was enough that she was watching him. Probably she had seen
3237him go into the pub as well.
3238
3239It was an effort to walk. The lump of glass in his pocket banged against
3240his thigh at each step, and he was half minded to take it out and throw it
3241away. The worst thing was the pain in his belly. For a couple of minutes
3242he had the feeling that he would die if he did not reach a lavatory soon.
3243But there would be no public lavatories in a quarter like this. Then the
3244spasm passed, leaving a dull ache behind.
3245
3246The street was a blind alley. Winston halted, stood for several seconds
3247wondering vaguely what to do, then turned round and began to retrace his
3248steps. As he turned it occurred to him that the girl had only passed him
3249three minutes ago and that by running he could probably catch up with her.
3250He could keep on her track till they were in some quiet place, and then
3251smash her skull in with a cobblestone. The piece of glass in his pocket
3252would be heavy enough for the job. But he abandoned the idea immediately,
3253because even the thought of making any physical effort was unbearable. He
3254could not run, he could not strike a blow. Besides, she was young and lusty
3255and would defend herself. He thought also of hurrying to the Community
3256Centre and staying there till the place closed, so as to establish a
3257partial alibi for the evening. But that too was impossible. A deadly
3258lassitude had taken hold of him. All he wanted was to get home quickly and
3259then sit down and be quiet.
3260
3261It was after twenty-two hours when he got back to the flat. The lights
3262would be switched off at the main at twenty-three thirty. He went into the
3263kitchen and swallowed nearly a teacupful of Victory Gin. Then he went to
3264the table in the alcove, sat down, and took the diary out of the drawer.
3265But he did not open it at once. From the telescreen a brassy female voice
3266was squalling a patriotic song. He sat staring at the marbled cover of the
3267book, trying without success to shut the voice out of his consciousness.
3268
3269It was at night that they came for you, always at night. The proper thing
3270was to kill yourself before they got you. Undoubtedly some people did so.
3271Many of the disappearances were actually suicides. But it needed desperate
3272courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and
3273certain poison, were completely unprocurable. He thought with a kind of
3274astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery
3275of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment
3276when a special effort is needed. He might have silenced the dark-haired
3277girl if only he had acted quickly enough: but precisely because of the
3278extremity of his danger he had lost the power to act. It struck him that
3279in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but
3280always against one's own body. Even now, in spite of the gin, the dull
3281ache in his belly made consecutive thought impossible. And it is the same,
3282he perceived, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situations. On the
3283battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that
3284you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until
3285it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or
3286screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or
3287cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.
3288
3289He opened the diary. It was important to write something down. The woman
3290on the telescreen had started a new song. Her voice seemed to stick into
3291his brain like jagged splinters of glass. He tried to think of O'Brien,
3292for whom, or to whom, the diary was written, but instead he began thinking
3293of the things that would happen to him after the Thought Police took him
3294away. It would not matter if they killed you at once. To be killed was
3295what you expected. But before death (nobody spoke of such things, yet
3296everybody knew of them) there was the routine of confession that had to
3297be gone through: the grovelling on the floor and screaming for mercy, the
3298crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth and bloody clots of hair.
3299
3300Why did you have to endure it, since the end was always the same? Why was
3301it not possible to cut a few days or weeks out of your life? Nobody ever
3302escaped detection, and nobody ever failed to confess. When once you had
3303succumbed to thoughtcrime it was certain that by a given date you would be
3304dead. Why then did that horror, which altered nothing, have to lie embedded
3305in future time?
3306
3307He tried with a little more success than before to summon up the image of
3308O'Brien. 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,' O'Brien
3309had said to him. He knew what it meant, or thought he knew. The place where
3310there is no darkness was the imagined future, which one would never see,
3311but which, by foreknowledge, one could mystically share in. But with the
3312voice from the telescreen nagging at his ears he could not follow the train
3313of thought further. He put a cigarette in his mouth. Half the tobacco
3314promptly fell out on to his tongue, a bitter dust which was difficult to
3315spit out again. The face of Big Brother swam into his mind, displacing that
3316of O'Brien. Just as he had done a few days earlier, he slid a coin out of
3317his pocket and looked at it. The face gazed up at him, heavy, calm,
3318protecting: but what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache?
3319Like a leaden knell the words came back at him:
3320
3321
3322  WAR IS PEACE
3323  FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
3324  IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH