Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell | 1984 | Full Audiobook

Gates of Imagination presents:   “Nineteen eighty-four” by George  Orwell. Read by Arthur Lane.  Part One. Chapter 1. It was a bright cold day in April, and the  clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith,   his chin nuzzled into his breast in  an effort to escape the vile wind,  

Slipped quickly through the  glass doors of Victory Mansions,   though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl  of gritty dust from entering along with him. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old  rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster,  

Too large for indoor display, had been tacked to  the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face,   more than a metre wide: the face of a man of  about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache   and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for  the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at  

The best of times it was seldom working, and at  present the electric current was cut off during   daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive  in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven   flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and  had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went  

Slowly, resting several times on the way. On each  landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with   the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one  of those pictures which are so contrived that the   eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER  IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading  out a list of figures which had something to   do with the production of pig-iron. The  voice came from an oblong metal plaque   like a dulled mirror which formed part  of the surface of the right-hand wall.  

Winston turned a switch and the voice  sank somewhat, though the words were   still distinguishable. The instrument (the  telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed,   but there was no way of shutting it off  completely. He moved over to the window:  

A smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of  his body merely emphasized by the blue overalls   which were the uniform of the party. His hair was  very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin   roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades  and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

Outside, even through the shut window-pane,  the world looked cold. Down in the street   little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn  paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining   and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no  colour in anything, except the posters that were  

Plastered everywhere. The black-moustachio’d face  gazed down from every commanding corner. There was   one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG  BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while   the dark eyes looked deep into Winston’s own.  Down at street level another poster, torn at one  

Corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately  covering and uncovering the single word: “Ingsoc”.   In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down  between the roofs, hovered for an instant like   a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving  flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into  

People’s windows. The patrols did not matter,  however. Only the Thought Police mattered. Behind Winston’s back the voice from the  telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron   and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year  Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted  

Simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made,  above the level of a very low whisper, would be   picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained  within the field of vision which the metal plaque   commanded, he could be seen as well as heard.  There was of course no way of knowing whether you  

Were being watched at any given moment. How often,  or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in   on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even  conceivable that they watched everybody all the   time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire  whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live,  

From habit that became instinct—in the assumption  that every sound you made was overheard, and,   except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen.   It was safer; though, as he well knew, even  a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the  

Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered  vast and white above the grimy landscape. This,   he thought with a sort of vague distaste—this  was London, chief city of Airstrip One,   itself the third most populous of the provinces  of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood  

Memory that should tell him whether London had  always been quite like this. Were there always   these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses,  their sides shored up with baulks of timber,   their windows patched with cardboard and their  roofs with corrugated iron, their crazy garden  

Walls sagging in all directions? And the  bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled   in the air and the willow-herb straggled over  the heaps of rubble; and the places where the   bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had  sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings  

Like chicken-houses? But it was no use, he could  not remember: nothing remained of his childhood   except a series of bright-lit tableaux occurring  against no background and mostly unintelligible.  The Ministry of Truth — Minitrue, in Newspeak  (Newspeak was the official language of Oceania.  

For an account of its structure and etymology  see Appendix.) — was startlingly different from   any other object in sight. It was an enormous  pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete,   soaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres  into the air. From where Winston stood it was just  

Possible to read, picked out on its white face in  elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: “War Is Peace.  Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength” The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said,  three thousand rooms above ground level,   and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered  about London there were just three other buildings  

Of similar appearance and size. So completely  did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that   from the roof of Victory Mansions you could  see all four of them simultaneously. They   were the homes of the four Ministries between  which the entire apparatus of government was  

Divided. The Ministry of Truth, which concerned  itself with news, entertainment, education,   and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which  concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love,   which maintained law and order. And the  Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible   for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak:  Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.

The Ministry of Love was the really  frightening one. There were no windows   in it at all. Winston had never  been inside the Ministry of Love,   nor within half a kilometre of it. It was a place  impossible to enter except on official business,   and then only by penetrating through  a maze of barbed-wire entanglements,  

Steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests.  Even the streets leading up to its outer   barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in  black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons. Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his  features into the expression of quiet optimism  

Which it was advisable to wear when facing the  telescreen. He crossed the room into the tiny   kitchen. By leaving the Ministry at this time of  day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen,   and he was aware that there was no food in  the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured  

Bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow’s  breakfast. He took down from the shelf a bottle   of colourless liquid with a plain white label  marked “Victory Gin”. It gave off a sickly,   oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit.  Winston poured out nearly a teacupful,  

Nerved himself for a shock, and gulped  it down like a dose of medicine. Instantly his face turned scarlet and the  water ran out of his eyes. The stuff was   like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it  one had the sensation of being hit on the back  

Of the head with a rubber club. The next moment,  however, the burning in his belly died down and   the world began to look more cheerful. He took a  cigarette from a crumpled packet marked “Victory   Cigarettes” and incautiously held it upright,  whereupon the tobacco fell out on to the floor.  

With the next he was more successful. He went  back to the living-room and sat down at a small   table that stood to the left of the telescreen.  From the table drawer he took out a penholder,   a bottle of ink, and a thick, quarto-sized  blank book with a red back and a marbled cover. 

For some reason the telescreen in the  living-room was in an unusual position.   Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the  end wall, where it could command the whole room,   it was in the longer wall, opposite the window.  To one side of it there was a shallow alcove  

In which Winston was now sitting, and which,  when the flats were built, had probably been   intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the  alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able   to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so  far as sight went. He could be heard, of course,  

But so long as he stayed in his present position  he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual   geography of the room that had suggested to  him the thing that he was now about to do.  But it had also been suggested by the  book that he had just taken out of the  

Drawer. It was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its  smooth creamy paper, a little yellowed by age,   was of a kind that had not been manufactured  for at least forty years past. He could guess,   however, that the book was much older than that.  He had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy  

Little junk-shop in a slummy quarter of the town  (just what quarter he did not now remember) and   had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming  desire to possess it. Party members were supposed   not to go into ordinary shops (‘dealing on the  free market’, it was called), but the rule was  

Not strictly kept, because there were various  things, such as shoelaces and razor blades,   which it was impossible to get hold of in any  other way. He had given a quick glance up and   down the street and then had slipped inside  and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At  

The time he was not conscious of wanting it  for any particular purpose. He had carried it   guiltily home in his briefcase. Even with nothing  written in it, it was a compromising possession. The thing that he was about to do was to open a  diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal,  

Since there were no longer any laws), but if  detected it was reasonably certain that it would   be punished by death, or at least by twenty-five  years in a forced-labour camp. Winston fitted a   nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the  grease off. The pen was an archaic instrument,  

Seldom used even for signatures, and he had  procured one, furtively and with some difficulty,   simply because of a feeling that the beautiful  creamy paper deserved to be written on with a   real nib instead of being scratched with  an ink-pencil. Actually he was not used to  

Writing by hand. Apart from very short notes,  it was usual to dictate everything into the   speak-write which was of course impossible  for his present purpose. He dipped the pen   into the ink and then faltered for just  a second. A tremor had gone through his  

Bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive  act. In small clumsy letters he wrote: April 4th, 1984. He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness  had descended upon him. To begin with,   he did not know with any certainty that this was  1984. It must be round about that date, since he  

Was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and  he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945;   but it was never possible nowadays to  pin down any date within a year or two. For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder,  was he writing this diary? For the future,  

For the unborn. His mind hovered for a moment  round the doubtful date on the page, and then   fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word  DOUBLETHINK. For the first time the magnitude of   what he had undertaken came home to him. How  could you communicate with the future? It was  

Of its nature impossible. Either the future would  resemble the present, in which case it would not   listen to him: or it would be different from  it, and his predicament would be meaningless. For some time he sat gazing stupidly at the  paper. The telescreen had changed over to strident  

Military music. It was curious that he seemed  not merely to have lost the power of expressing   himself, but even to have forgotten what it was  that he had originally intended to say. For weeks   past he had been making ready for this moment, and  it had never crossed his mind that anything would  

Be needed except courage. The actual writing would  be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper   the interminable restless monologue that had been  running inside his head, literally for years. At   this moment, however, even the monologue had dried  up. Moreover his varicose ulcer had begun itching  

Unbearably. He dared not scratch it, because if he  did so it always became inflamed. The seconds were   ticking by. He was conscious of nothing except the  blankness of the page in front of him, the itching  

Of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the  music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.  Suddenly he began writing in sheer panic, only  imperfectly aware of what he was setting down.   His small but childish handwriting straggled up  and down the page, shedding first its capital  

Letters and finally even its full stops: April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks.   All war films. One very good one of a ship  full of refugees being bombed somewhere in   the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by  shots of a great huge fat man trying to swim  

Away with a helicopter after him, first you saw  him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise,   then you saw him through the helicopters  gunsights, then he was full of holes and   the sea round him turned pink and he sank as  suddenly as though the holes had let in the water,  

Audience shouting with laughter when he sank.  then you saw a lifeboat full of children   with a helicopter hovering over it. There was a  middle-aged woman might have been a jewess sitting   up in the bow with a little boy about three years  old in her arms. little boy screaming with fright  

And hiding his head between her breasts as if he  was trying to burrow right into her and the woman   putting her arms round him and comforting him  although she was blue with fright herself, all  

The time covering him up as much as possible as  if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off   him. Then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in  among them terrific flash and the boat went all to  

Matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a  child’s arm going up up up right up into the air   a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have  followed it up and there was a lot of applause  

From the party seats but a woman down in the prole  part of the house suddenly started kicking up a   fuss and shouting they didn’t oughter of showed  it not in front of kids they didn’t it ain’t  

Right not in front of kids it ain’t until the  police turned her turned her out i don’t suppose   anything happened to her nobody cares what the  proles say typical prole reaction they never… Winston stopped writing, partly because  he was suffering from cramp. He did not  

Know what had made him pour out this stream  of rubbish. But the curious thing was that   while he was doing so a totally different  memory had clarified itself in his mind,   to the point where he almost felt equal to writing  it down. It was, he now realized, because of this  

Other incident that he had suddenly decided  to come home and begin the diary today. It had happened that morning at the Ministry,  if anything so nebulous could be said to happen. It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the  Records Department, where Winston worked,  

They were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles  and grouping them in the centre of the hall   opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for  the Two Minutes Hate. Winston was just taking his   place in one of the middle rows when two people  whom he knew by sight, but had never spoken to,  

Came unexpectedly into the room. One of them was  a girl whom he often passed in the corridors. He   did not know her name, but he knew that she worked  in the Fiction Department. Presumably—since he had   sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying a  spanner—she had some mechanical job on one of the  

Novel-writing machines. She was a bold-looking  girl, of about twenty-seven, with thick hair,   a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements. A  narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex   League, was wound several times round the waist of  her overalls, just tightly enough to bring out the  

Shapeliness of her hips. Winston had disliked her  from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew   the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of  hockey-fields and cold baths and community hikes   and general clean-mindedness which she managed  to carry about with her. He disliked nearly all  

Women, and especially the young and pretty ones.  It was always the women, and above all the young   ones, who were the most bigoted adherents  of the Party, the swallowers of slogans,   the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.  But this particular girl gave him the impression  

Of being more dangerous than most. Once when  they passed in the corridor she gave him a quick   sidelong glance which seemed to pierce right into  him and for a moment had filled him with black   terror. The idea had even crossed his mind that  she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That,  

It was true, was very unlikely. Still, he  continued to feel a peculiar uneasiness,   which had fear mixed up in it as well as  hostility, whenever she was anywhere near him.  The other person was a man named O’Brien, a  member of the Inner Party and holder of some  

Post so important and remote that Winston had  only a dim idea of its nature. A momentary hush   passed over the group of people round the chairs  as they saw the black overalls of an Inner Party   member approaching. O’Brien was a large, burly  man with a thick neck and a coarse, humorous,  

Brutal face. In spite of his formidable appearance  he had a certain charm of manner. He had a trick   of resettling his spectacles on his nose which  was curiously disarming—in some indefinable way,   curiously civilized. It was a gesture which,  if anyone had still thought in such terms,  

Might have recalled an eighteenth-century nobleman  offering his snuffbox. Winston had seen O’Brien   perhaps a dozen times in almost as many years. He  felt deeply drawn to him, and not solely because   he was intrigued by the contrast between O’Brien’s  urbane manner and his prize-fighter’s physique.  

Much more it was because of a secretly  held belief—or perhaps not even a belief,   merely a hope—that O’Brien’s political orthodoxy  was not perfect. Something in his face suggested   it irresistibly. And again, perhaps it was not  even unorthodoxy that was written in his face,  

But simply intelligence. But at any rate he had  the appearance of being a person that you could   talk to if somehow you could cheat the telescreen  and get him alone. Winston had never made the   smallest effort to verify this guess: indeed,  there was no way of doing so. At this moment  

O’Brien glanced at his wrist-watch, saw that it  was nearly eleven hundred, and evidently decided   to stay in the Records Department until the Two  Minutes Hate was over. He took a chair in the   same row as Winston, a couple of places away. A  small, sandy-haired woman who worked in the next  

Cubicle to Winston was between them. The girl  with dark hair was sitting immediately behind.  The next moment a hideous, grinding screech, as  of some monstrous machine running without oil,   burst from the big telescreen at the end  of the room. It was a noise that set one’s  

Teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the  back of one’s neck. The Hate had started. As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein,  the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to   the screen. There were hisses here and there among  the audience. The little sandy-haired woman gave a  

Squeak of mingled fear and disgust. Goldstein  was the renegade and backslider who once,   long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered),  had been one of the leading figures of the Party,   almost on a level with Big Brother himself,  and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary  

Activities, had been condemned to death, and  had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The   programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day  to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was   not the principal figure. He was the primal  traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s  

Purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party,  all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies,   deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching.  Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching   his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond  the sea, under the protection of his foreign   paymasters, perhaps even—so it was occasionally  rumoured—in some hiding-place in Oceania itself. 

Winston’s diaphragm was constricted. He could  never see the face of Goldstein without a painful   mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish  face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white   hair and a small goatee beard—a clever face, and  yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of  

Senile silliness in the long thin nose, near the  end of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It   resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice,  too, had a sheep-like quality. Goldstein was   delivering his usual venomous attack upon the  doctrines of the Party—an attack so exaggerated  

And perverse that a child should have been able  to see through it, and yet just plausible enough   to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other  people, less level-headed than oneself, might   be taken in by it. He was abusing Big Brother,  he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party,  

He was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace  with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech,   freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom  of thought, he was crying hysterically that the   revolution had been betrayed—and all this in rapid  polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of  

The habitual style of the orators of the Party,  and even contained Newspeak words: more Newspeak   words, indeed, than any Party member would  normally use in real life. And all the while,   lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality  which Goldstein’s specious claptrap covered,  

Behind his head on the telescreen there  marched the endless columns of the Eurasian   army—row after row of solid-looking men with  expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to   the surface of the screen and vanished, to be  replaced by others exactly similar. The dull  

Rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots formed  the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice.  Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds,  uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking   out from half the people in the room. The  self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen,  

And the terrifying power of the Eurasian army  behind it, were too much to be borne: besides,   the sight or even the thought of Goldstein  produced fear and anger automatically. He was an   object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia  or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with  

One of these Powers it was generally at peace with  the other. But what was strange was that although   Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody,  although every day and a thousand times a day,   on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers,  in books, his theories were refuted, smashed,  

Ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the  pitiful rubbish that they were—in spite of all   this, his influence never seemed to grow  less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting   to be seduced by him. A day never passed when  spies and saboteurs acting under his directions  

Were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He  was the commander of a vast shadowy army,   an underground network of conspirators dedicated  to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood,   its name was supposed to be. There were also  whispered stories of a terrible book, a compendium  

Of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was  the author and which circulated clandestinely   here and there. It was a book without a title.  People referred to it, if at all, simply as THE   BOOK. But one knew of such things only through  vague rumours. Neither the Brotherhood nor The  

Book was a subject that any ordinary Party member  would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.  In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy.  People were leaping up and down in their places   and shouting at the tops of their voices in  an effort to drown the maddening bleating  

Voice that came from the screen. The little  sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink,   and her mouth was opening and shutting like  that of a landed fish. Even O’Brien’s heavy   face was flushed. He was sitting very straight  in his chair, his powerful chest swelling and  

Quivering as though he were standing up to the  assault of a wave. The dark-haired girl behind   Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine! Swine!  Swine!’ and suddenly she picked up a heavy   Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen.  It struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off;  

The voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment  Winston found that he was shouting with the others   and kicking his heel violently against the rung  of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two   Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a  part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible  

To avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any  pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy   of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to  torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer,   seemed to flow through the whole group of people  like an electric current, turning one even against  

One’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.  And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract,   undirected emotion which could be switched  from one object to another like the flame of a   blowlamp. Thus, at one moment Winston’s hatred  was not turned against Goldstein at all, but,  

On the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party,  and the Thought Police; and at such moments his   heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on  the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity in  

A world of lies. And yet the very next instant he  was at one with the people about him, and all that   was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true. At  those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother   changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed  to tower up, an invincible, fearless protector,  

Standing like a rock against the hordes of  Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation,   his helplessness, and the doubt that hung about  his very existence, seemed like some sinister   enchanter, capable by the mere power of his  voice of wrecking the structure of civilization. 

It was even possible, at moments, to switch  one’s hatred this way or that by a voluntary   act. Suddenly, by the sort of violent effort  with which one wrenches one’s head away from   the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded  in transferring his hatred from the face on  

The screen to the dark-haired girl behind him.  Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through   his mind. He would flog her to death with a  rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to   a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint  Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat  

At the moment of climax. Better than before,  moreover, he realized WHY it was that he hated   her. He hated her because she was young and pretty  and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with  

Her and would never do so, because round her sweet  supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle   it with your arm, there was only the odious  scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity. The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of  Goldstein had become an actual sheep’s bleat,  

And for an instant the face changed into that of a  sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into the figure   of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing,  huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring,   and seeming to spring out of the surface of  the screen, so that some of the people in the  

Front row actually flinched backwards in their  seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep   sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure  melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired,   black-moustachio’d, full of power and mysterious  calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the  

Screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying.  It was merely a few words of encouragement,   the sort of words that are uttered in the din  of battle, not distinguishable individually but   restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken.  Then the face of Big Brother faded away again,  

And instead the three slogans of the  Party stood out in bold capitals: “War Is Peace.  Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength” But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist  for several seconds on the screen, as though  

The impact that it had made on everyone’s eyeballs  was too vivid to wear off immediately. The little   sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward  over the back of the chair in front of her.   With a tremulous murmur that sounded like ‘My  Saviour!’ she extended her arms towards the  

Screen. Then she buried her face in her hands.  It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer.  At this moment the entire group of people  broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant   of ‘B-B!…B-B!’—over and over again, very  slowly, with a long pause between the first  

‘B’ and the second—a heavy, murmurous sound,  somehow curiously savage, in the background   of which one seemed to hear the stamp of naked  feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps   as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It  was a refrain that was often heard in moments  

Of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of  hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother,   but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis,  a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means   of rhythmic noise. Winston’s entrails seemed to  grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hate he could not  

Help sharing in the general delirium, but this  sub-human chanting of ‘B-B!… B-B!’ always   filled him with horror. Of course he chanted with  the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To   dissemble your feelings, to control your face,  to do what everyone else was doing, was an  

Instinctive reaction. But there was a space of a  couple of seconds during which the expression of   his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him. And  it was exactly at this moment that the significant   thing happened—if, indeed, it did happen. Momentarily he caught O’Brien’s eye. O’Brien  

Had stood up. He had taken off his spectacles  and was in the act of resettling them on his   nose with his characteristic gesture. But there  was a fraction of a second when their eyes met,   and for as long as it took to happen Winston  knew—yes, he KNEW!—that O’Brien was thinking  

The same thing as himself. An unmistakable message  had passed. It was as though their two minds had   opened and the thoughts were flowing from one  into the other through their eyes. ‘I am with   you,’ O’Brien seemed to be saying to him. ‘I know  precisely what you are feeling. I know all about  

Your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. But  don’t worry, I am on your side!’ And then the   flash of intelligence was gone, and O’Brien’s  face was as inscrutable as everybody else’s. That was all, and he was already uncertain  whether it had happened. Such incidents  

Never had any sequel. All that they did was  to keep alive in him the belief, or hope,   that others besides himself were the enemies of  the Party. Perhaps the rumours of vast underground   conspiracies were true after all—perhaps the  Brotherhood really existed! It was impossible,  

In spite of the endless arrests and confessions  and executions, to be sure that the Brotherhood   was not simply a myth. Some days he believed  in it, some days not. There was no evidence,   only fleeting glimpses that might mean anything  or nothing: snatches of overheard conversation,  

Faint scribbles on lavatory walls—once, even,  when two strangers met, a small movement of   the hand which had looked as though it might be  a signal of recognition. It was all guesswork:   very likely he had imagined everything. He had  gone back to his cubicle without looking at  

O’Brien again. The idea of following up their  momentary contact hardly crossed his mind. It   would have been inconceivably dangerous even if he  had known how to set about doing it. For a second,   two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal  glance, and that was the end of the story.  

But even that was a memorable event, in the  locked loneliness in which one had to live. Winston roused himself and  sat up straighter. He let   out a belch. The gin was rising from his stomach. His eyes re-focused on the page. He discovered  that while he sat helplessly musing he had  

Also been writing, as though by automatic  action. And it was no longer the same cramped,   awkward handwriting as before. His pen had  slid voluptuously over the smooth paper,   printing in large neat capitals— Down With Big Brother!  Down With Big Brother! Down With Big Brother!  Down With Big Brother! Down With Big Brother!

Over and over again, filling half a page. He could not help feeling a twinge of panic.  It was absurd, since the writing of those   particular words was not more dangerous than  the initial act of opening the diary, but for  

A moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled  pages and abandon the enterprise altogether. He did not do so, however, because he knew  that it was useless. Whether he wrote “down   with big brother”, or whether he refrained from  writing it, made no difference. Whether he went  

On with the diary, or whether he did not go  on with it, made no difference. The Thought   Police would get him just the same. He had  committed—would still have committed, even if   he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime  that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime,  

They called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing  that could be concealed for ever. You might   dodge successfully for a while, even for years,  but sooner or later they were bound to get you.  It was always at night—the arrests invariably  happened at night. The sudden jerk out of sleep,  

The rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights  glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round   the bed. In the vast majority of cases there  was no trial, no report of the arrest. People   simply disappeared, always during the night.  Your name was removed from the registers,  

Every record of everything you had ever done  was wiped out, your one-time existence was   denied and then forgotten. You were abolished,  annihilated: “vaporized” was the usual word.  For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria.  He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl:

They’ll shoot me i don’t care. They’ll shoot me  in the back of the neck i don’t care. Down with   big brother they always shoot you in the back  of the neck. I don’t care. Down with big brother He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed  of himself, and laid down the pen. The  

Next moment he started violently.  There was a knocking at the door. Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile  hope that whoever it was might go away after a   single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated.  The worst thing of all would be to delay. His  

Heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from  long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up   and moved heavily towards the door. Chapter 2. As he put his hand to the door-knob Winston saw  that he had left the diary open on the table.  

“Down With Big Brother!” was written all over  it, in letters almost big enough to be legible   across the room. It was an inconceivably stupid  thing to have done. But, he realized, even in   his panic he had not wanted to smudge the creamy  paper by shutting the book while the ink was wet.

He drew in his breath and opened the door.  Instantly a warm wave of relief flowed through   him. A colourless, crushed-looking woman, with  wispy hair and a lined face, was standing outside. ‘Oh, comrade,’ she began in a dreary, whining sort  of voice, ‘I thought I heard you come in. Do you  

Think you could come across and have a look  at our kitchen sink? It’s got blocked up and’ It was Mrs Parsons, the wife of a neighbour  on the same floor. (‘Mrs’ was a word somewhat   discountenanced by the Party — you were supposed  to call everyone ‘comrade’ — but with some women  

One used it instinctively.) She was a woman of  about thirty, but looking much older. One had the   impression that there was dust in the creases of  her face. Winston followed her down the passage.   These amateur repair jobs were an almost daily  irritation. Victory Mansions were old flats,  

Built in nineteen thirty or thereabouts, and were  falling to pieces. The plaster flaked constantly   from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in every  hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was   snow, the heating system was usually running at  half steam when it was not closed down altogether  

From motives of economy. Repairs, except what  you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned   by remote committees which were liable to hold up  even the mending of a window-pane for two years. ‘Of course it’s only because Tom  isn’t home,’ said Mrs Parsons vaguely.

‘The Parsons’ flat was bigger than Winston’s,  and dingy in a different way. Everything had a   battered, trampled-on look, as though the  place had just been visited by some large   violent animal. Games impedimenta—hockey-sticks,  boxing-gloves, a burst football, a pair of sweaty  

Shorts turned inside out—lay all over the  floor, and on the table there was a litter   of dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books. On  the walls were scarlet banners of the Youth League   and the Spies, and a full-sized poster of Big  Brother. There was the usual boiled-cabbage smell,  

Common to the whole building, but it was  shot through by a sharper reek of sweat,   which—one knew this at the first sniff, though  it was hard to say how—was the sweat of some   person not present at the moment. In another room  someone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper  

Was trying to keep tune with the military music  which was still issuing from the telescreen. ‘It’s the children,’ said Mrs Parsons,   casting a half-apprehensive glance at the door.  ‘They haven’t been out today. And of course…’ She had a habit of breaking off her sentences  in the middle. The kitchen sink was full nearly  

To the brim with filthy greenish water which  smelt worse than ever of cabbage. Winston knelt   down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. He  hated using his hands, and he hated bending down,   which was always liable to start him  coughing. Mrs Parsons looked on helplessly.

‘Of course if Tom was home he’d put  it right in a moment,’ she said. ‘He   loves anything like that. He’s ever  so good with his hands, Tom is.’ Parsons was Winston’s fellow-employee at the  Ministry of Truth. He was a fattish but active  

Man of paralysing stupidity, a mass of imbecile  enthusiasms—one of those completely unquestioning,   devoted drudges on whom, more even than  on the Thought Police, the stability of   the Party depended. At thirty-five he had just  been unwillingly evicted from the Youth League,  

And before graduating into the Youth League he had  managed to stay on in the Spies for a year beyond   the statutory age. At the Ministry he was employed  in some subordinate post for which intelligence  

Was not required, but on the other hand he was a  leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the   other committees engaged in organizing community  hikes, spontaneous demonstrations, savings   campaigns, and voluntary activities generally. He  would inform you with quiet pride, between whiffs  

Of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at  the Community Centre every evening for the past   four years. An overpowering smell of sweat, a sort  of unconscious testimony to the strenuousness of   his life, followed him about wherever he went,  and even remained behind him after he had gone.

‘Have you got a spanner?’ said Winston,  fiddling with the nut on the angle-joint. ‘A spanner,’ said Mrs Parsons, immediately  becoming invertebrate. ‘I don’t know,   I’m sure. Perhaps the children…’ There was a trampling of boots and   another blast on the comb as the children  charged into the living-room. Mrs Parsons  

Brought the spanner. Winston let out the water  and disgustedly removed the clot of human hair   that had blocked up the pipe. He cleaned his  fingers as best he could in the cold water   from the tap and went back into the other room. ‘Up with your hands!’ yelled a savage voice.

A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped  up from behind the table and was menacing him   with a toy automatic pistol, while his small  sister, about two years younger, made the same   gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were  dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red  

Neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies.  Winston raised his hands above his head, but with   an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy’s  demeanour, that it was not altogether a game. ‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy. ‘You’re  a thought-criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy!  

I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you,  I’ll send you to the salt mines!’ Suddenly they were both leaping round him,  shouting ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Thought-criminal!’   the little girl imitating her brother in every  movement. It was somehow slightly frightening,   like the gambolling of tiger  cubs which will soon grow up  

Into man-eaters. There was a sort of  calculating ferocity in the boy’s eye,   a quite evident desire to hit or kick Winston  and a consciousness of being very nearly big   enough to do so. It was a good job it was not  a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.

Mrs Parsons’ eyes flitted nervously  from Winston to the children,   and back again. In the better light  of the living-room he noticed with   interest that there actually was  dust in the creases of her face. ‘They do get so noisy,’ she said. ‘They’re  disappointed because they couldn’t go to see the  

Hanging, that’s what it is. I’m too busy to take  them. and Tom won’t be back from work in time.’ ‘Why can’t we go and see the hanging?’  roared the boy in his huge voice. ‘Want to see the hanging! Want to see  the hanging!’ chanted the little girl,   still capering round.

Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war  crimes, were to be hanged in the Park   that evening, Winston remembered.  This happened about once a month,   and was a popular spectacle. Children  always clamoured to be taken to see it.  

He took his leave of Mrs Parsons and made  for the door. But he had not gone six steps   down the passage when something hit the back  of his neck an agonizingly painful blow. It   was as though a red-hot wire had been jabbed  into him. He spun round just in time to see  

Mrs Parsons dragging her son back into the  doorway while the boy pocketed a catapult. ‘Goldstein!’ bellowed the boy as the  door closed on him. But what most   struck Winston was the look of helpless  fright on the woman’s greyish face.

Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the  telescreen and sat down at the table again,   still rubbing his neck. The music from the  telescreen had stopped. Instead, a clipped   military voice was reading out, with a sort of  brutal relish, a description of the armaments  

Of the new Floating Fortress which had just been  anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands. With those children, he thought, that wretched  woman must lead a life of terror. Another year,   two years, and they would be watching her night  and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all  

Children nowadays were horrible. What was worst  of all was that by means of such organizations   as the Spies they were systematically turned into  ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced   in them no tendency whatever to rebel against  the discipline of the Party. On the contrary,  

They adored the Party and everything connected  with it. The songs, the processions, the banners,   the hiking, the drilling with dummy  rifles, the yelling of slogans,   the worship of Big Brother—it was all a sort  of glorious game to them. All their ferocity  

Was turned outwards, against the enemies of the  State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs,   thought-criminals. It was almost normal for  people over thirty to be frightened of their   own children. And with good reason, for hardly  a week passed in which ‘The Times’ did not carry  

A paragraph describing how some eavesdropping  little sneak—’child hero’ was the phrase generally   used—had overheard some compromising remark and  denounced its parents to the Thought Police. The sting of the catapult bullet had worn  off. He picked up his pen half-heartedly,   wondering whether he could find  something more to write in the diary.  

Suddenly he began thinking of O’Brien again. Years ago—how long was it? Seven years it must   be—he had dreamed that he was walking through a  pitch-dark room. And someone sitting to one side   of him had said as he passed: ‘We shall meet in  the place where there is no darkness.’ It was said  

Very quietly, almost casually—a statement, not a  command. He had walked on without pausing. What   was curious was that at the time, in the dream,  the words had not made much impression on him.   It was only later and by degrees that they had  seemed to take on significance. He could not now  

Remember whether it was before or after having the  dream that he had seen O’Brien for the first time,   nor could he remember when he had first  identified the voice as O’Brien’s. But   at any rate the identification existed. It was  O’Brien who had spoken to him out of the dark. 

Winston had never been able to feel sure—even  after this morning’s flash of the eyes it was   still impossible to be sure whether O’Brien  was a friend or an enemy. Nor did it even   seem to matter greatly. There was a link of  understanding between them, more important  

Than affection or partisanship. ‘We shall meet  in the place where there is no darkness,’ he had   said. Winston did not know what it meant, only  that in some way or another it would come true. The voice from the telescreen paused.  A trumpet call, clear and beautiful,  

Floated into the stagnant air.  The voice continued raspingly: ‘Attention! Your attention, please! A  newsflash has this moment arrived from   the Malabar front. Our forces in South  India have won a glorious victory. I am   authorized to say that the action we  are now reporting may well bring the  

War within measurable distance of  its end. Here is the newsflas…’ Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough,   following on a gory description of  the annihilation of a Eurasian army,   with stupendous figures of killed and  prisoners, came the announcement that,  

As from next week, the chocolate ration would  be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty. Winston belched again. The gin was wearing off,   leaving a deflated feeling. The telescreen—perhaps  to celebrate the victory, perhaps to drown the   memory of the lost chocolate—crashed  into ‘Oceania, ’tis for thee’. You were  

Supposed to stand to attention. However,  in his present position he was invisible. ‘Oceania, ’tis for thee’ gave way to lighter  music. Winston walked over to the window,   keeping his back to the telescreen.  The day was still cold and clear.   Somewhere far away a rocket  bomb exploded with a dull,  

Reverberating roar. About twenty or thirty of  them a week were falling on London at present. Down in the street the wind flapped the torn  poster to and fro, and the word “Ingsoc” fitfully   appeared and vanished. Ingsoc. The sacred  principles of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink,  

The mutability of the past. He felt as though he  were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom,   lost in a monstrous world where he himself was  the monster. He was alone. The past was dead,   the future was unimaginable. What certainty  had he that a single human creature now living  

Was on his side? And what way of knowing that the  dominion of the Party would not endure “For Ever”?   Like an answer, the three slogans on the white  face of the Ministry of Truth came back to him: War Is Peace.  Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.

He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his  pocket. There, too, in tiny clear lettering, the   same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face  of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the  

Coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on  the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and   on the wrappings of a cigarette packet—everywhere.  Always the eyes watching you and the voice   enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or  eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath  

Or in bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except  the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows  of the Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer   shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes  of a fortress. His heart quailed before the  

Enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it  could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombs   would not batter it down. He wondered again for  whom he was writing the diary. For the future,   for the past—for an age that might be  imaginary. And in front of him there lay  

Not death but annihilation. The diary would  be reduced to ashes and himself to vapour.   Only the Thought Police would read what he  had written, before they wiped it out of   existence and out of memory. How could you make  appeal to the future when not a trace of you,  

Not even an anonymous word scribbled on a  piece of paper, could physically survive? The telescreen struck fourteen. He  must leave in ten minutes. He had to   be back at work by fourteen-thirty. Curiously, the chiming of the hour  

Seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a  lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would   ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some  obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was  

Not by making yourself heard but by staying sane  that you carried on the human heritage. He went   back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote: To the future or to the past, to a time when  

Thought is free, when men are different from one  another and do not live alone—to a time when truth   exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of   solitude, from the age of Big Brother,  from the age of doublethink—greetings!

He was already dead, he reflected. It  seemed to him that it was only now,   when he had begun to be able to formulate  his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive   step. The consequences of every act are  included in the act itself. He wrote: Thoughtcrime does not entail  death: thoughtcrime is death.

Now he had recognized himself as a dead man  it became important to stay alive as long as   possible. Two fingers of his right hand  were inkstained. It was exactly the kind   of detail that might betray you. Some nosing  zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably:  

Someone like the little sandy-haired woman  or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction   Department) might start wondering why he had  been writing during the lunch interval, why he   had used an old-fashioned pen, WHAT he had been  writing—and then drop a hint in the appropriate  

Quarter. He went to the bathroom and carefully  scrubbed the ink away with the gritty dark-brown   soap which rasped your skin like sandpaper and  was therefore well adapted for this purpose. He put the diary away in the drawer. It  was quite useless to think of hiding it,  

But he could at least make sure whether or not  its existence had been discovered. A hair laid   across the page-ends was too obvious. With the tip  of his finger he picked up an identifiable grain  

Of whitish dust and deposited it on the corner of  the cover, where it was bound to be shaken off if   the book was moved. Chapter 3. Winston was dreaming of his mother. He must, he thought, have been ten or eleven years  old when his mother had disappeared. She was a  

Tall, statuesque, rather silent woman with slow  movements and magnificent fair hair. His father   he remembered more vaguely as dark and thin,  dressed always in neat dark clothes (Winston   remembered especially the very thin soles of his  father’s shoes) and wearing spectacles. The two of  

Them must evidently have been swallowed up in  one of the first great purges of the fifties. At this moment his mother was sitting  in some place deep down beneath him,   with his young sister in her arms. He did not  remember his sister at all, except as a tiny,  

Feeble baby, always silent, with large, watchful  eyes. Both of them were looking up at him. They   were down in some subterranean place—the bottom of  a well, for instance, or a very deep grave—but it   was a place which, already far below him,  was itself moving downwards. They were in  

The saloon of a sinking ship, looking up at him  through the darkening water. There was still air   in the saloon, they could still see him and he  them, but all the while they were sinking down,  

Down into the green waters which in another moment  must hide them from sight for ever. He was out in   the light and air while they were being sucked  down to death, and they were down there because  

He was up here. He knew it and they knew it,  and he could see the knowledge in their faces.   There was no reproach either in their faces or in  their hearts, only the knowledge that they must  

Die in order that he might remain alive, and that  this was part of the unavoidable order of things. He could not remember what had happened, but he  knew in his dream that in some way the lives of  

His mother and his sister had been sacrificed  to his own. It was one of those dreams which,   while retaining the characteristic dream scenery,  are a continuation of one’s intellectual life,   and in which one becomes aware of facts and  ideas which still seem new and valuable after  

One is awake. The thing that now suddenly struck  Winston was that his mother’s death, nearly thirty   years ago, had been tragic and sorrowful in  a way that was no longer possible. Tragedy,   he perceived, belonged to the ancient time,  to a time when there was still privacy, love,  

And friendship, and when the members of a family  stood by one another without needing to know the   reason. His mother’s memory tore at his heart  because she had died loving him, when he was   too young and selfish to love her in return, and  because somehow, he did not remember how, she had  

Sacrificed herself to a conception of loyalty that  was private and unalterable. Such things, he saw,   could not happen today. Today there were fear,  hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no   deep or complex sorrows. All this he seemed to see  in the large eyes of his mother and his sister,  

Looking up at him through the green water,  hundreds of fathoms down and still sinking. Suddenly he was standing on short springy turf,  on a summer evening when the slanting rays of the   sun gilded the ground. The landscape that he was  looking at recurred so often in his dreams that  

He was never fully certain whether or not he  had seen it in the real world. In his waking   thoughts he called it the Golden Country. It was  an old, rabbit-bitten pasture, with a foot-track   wandering across it and a molehill here and  there. In the ragged hedge on the opposite  

Side of the field the boughs of the elm trees  were swaying very faintly in the breeze, their   leaves just stirring in dense masses like women’s  hair. Somewhere near at hand, though out of sight,   there was a clear, slow-moving stream where dace  were swimming in the pools under the willow trees.

The girl with dark hair was coming towards them  across the field. With what seemed a single   movement she tore off her clothes and flung them  disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth,   but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he  barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in  

That instant was admiration for the gesture with  which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its   grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate  a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as   though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought  Police could all be swept into nothingness by a  

Single splendid movement of the arm. That too was  a gesture belonging to the ancient time. Winston   woke up with the word ‘Shakespeare’ on his lips. The telescreen was giving forth an ear-splitting   whistle which continued on the same  note for thirty seconds. It was nought  

Seven fifteen, getting-up time for office workers.  Winston wrenched his body out of bed—naked,   for a member of the Outer Party received  only 3,000 clothing coupons annually,   and a suit of pyjamas was 600—and seized a  dingy singlet and a pair of shorts that were  

Lying across a chair. The Physical Jerks would  begin in three minutes. The next moment he was   doubled up by a violent coughing fit which  nearly always attacked him soon after waking   up. It emptied his lungs so completely that he  could only begin breathing again by lying on  

His back and taking a series of deep gasps. His  veins had swelled with the effort of the cough,   and the varicose ulcer had started itching. ‘Thirty to forty group!’ yapped a piercing   female voice. ‘Thirty to forty group! Take  your places, please. Thirties to forties!’

Winston sprang to attention in front of  the telescreen, upon which the image of a   youngish woman, scrawny but muscular, dressed  in tunic and gym-shoes, had already appeared. ‘Arms bending and stretching!’ she rapped  out. ‘Take your time by me. One, two, three,   four! One, two, three, four! Come on, comrades,  

Put a bit of life into it! One, two,  three four! One two, three, four!…’ The pain of the coughing fit had not quite driven  out of Winston’s mind the impression made by his   dream, and the rhythmic movements of the exercise  restored it somewhat. As he mechanically shot his  

Arms back and forth, wearing on his face the look  of grim enjoyment which was considered proper   during the Physical Jerks, he was struggling  to think his way backward into the dim period   of his early childhood. It was extraordinarily  difficult. Beyond the late fifties everything  

Faded. When there were no external records that  you could refer to, even the outline of your own   life lost its sharpness. You remembered huge  events which had quite probably not happened,   you remembered the detail of incidents without  being able to recapture their atmosphere,  

And there were long blank periods to which  you could assign nothing. Everything had   been different then. Even the names of  countries, and their shapes on the map,   had been different. Airstrip One, for instance,  had not been so called in those days: it had been  

Called England or Britain, though London, he felt  fairly certain, had always been called London. Winston could not definitely remember a  time when his country had not been at war,   but it was evident that there had been a fairly  long interval of peace during his childhood,  

Because one of his early memories was of an air  raid which appeared to take everyone by surprise.   Perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had  fallen on Colchester. He did not remember the   raid itself, but he did remember his father’s  hand clutching his own as they hurried down,  

Down, down into some place deep in the earth,  round and round a spiral staircase which rang   under his feet and which finally so wearied his  legs that he began whimpering and they had to   stop and rest. His mother, in her slow, dreamy  way, was following a long way behind them. She  

Was carrying his baby sister—or perhaps it was  only a bundle of blankets that she was carrying:   he was not certain whether his sister had  been born then. Finally they had emerged   into a noisy, crowded place which he  had realized to be a Tube station.

There were people sitting all over the  stone-flagged floor, and other people,   packed tightly together, were sitting on metal  bunks, one above the other. Winston and his   mother and father found themselves a place on  the floor, and near them an old man and an old  

Woman were sitting side by side on a bunk. The old  man had on a decent dark suit and a black cloth   cap pushed back from very white hair: his face  was scarlet and his eyes were blue and full of  

Tears. He reeked of gin. It seemed to breathe out  of his skin in place of sweat, and one could have   fancied that the tears welling from his eyes were  pure gin. But though slightly drunk he was also   suffering under some grief that was genuine and  unbearable. In his childish way Winston grasped  

That some terrible thing, something that was  beyond forgiveness and could never be remedied,   had just happened. It also seemed to him that he  knew what it was. Someone whom the old man loved—a   little granddaughter, perhaps—had been killed.  Every few minutes the old man kept repeating:

‘We didn’t ought to ‘ave trusted ’em. I  said so, Ma, didn’t I? That’s what comes   of trusting ’em. I said so all along. We  didn’t ought to ‘ave trusted the buggers.’ But which buggers they didn’t ought to have  trusted Winston could not now remember. 

Since about that time, war had been literally  continuous, though strictly speaking it had not   always been the same war. For several months  during his childhood there had been confused   street fighting in London itself, some of  which he remembered vividly. But to trace  

Out the history of the whole period, to say  who was fighting whom at any given moment,   would have been utterly impossible, since  no written record, and no spoken word,   ever made mention of any other alignment than the  existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984  

(if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia  and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or   private utterance was it ever admitted that the  three powers had at any time been grouped along   different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew,  it was only four years since Oceania had been at  

War with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia.  But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge   which he happened to possess because his memory  was not satisfactorily under control. Officially   the change of partners had never happened.  Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore  

Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.  The enemy of the moment always represented   absolute evil, and it followed that any past  or future agreement with him was impossible.  The frightening thing, he reflected for the  ten thousandth time as he forced his shoulders  

Painfully backward (with hands on hips, they  were gyrating their bodies from the waist,   an exercise that was supposed to be good for the  back muscles)—the frightening thing was that it   might all be true. If the Party could thrust its  hand into the past and say of this or that event,  

IT NEVER HAPPENED—that, surely, was more  terrifying than mere torture and death? The Party said that Oceania had never been  in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith,   knew that Oceania had been in alliance with  Eurasia as short a time as four years ago.  

But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his  own consciousness, which in any case must soon be   annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie  which the Party imposed—if all records told the   same tale—then the lie passed into history and  became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the  

Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls  the present controls the past.’ And yet the past,   though of its nature alterable, never had been  altered. Whatever was true now was true from   everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple.  All that was needed was an unending series of  

Victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’,  they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’. ‘Stand easy!’ barked the  instructress, a little more genially. Winston sank his arms to his sides and  slowly refilled his lungs with air. His   mind slid away into the labyrinthine world  of doublethink. To know and not to know,  

To be conscious of complete truthfulness while  telling carefully constructed lies, to hold   simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out,  knowing them to be contradictory and believing in   both of them, to use logic against logic, to  repudiate morality while laying claim to it,  

To believe that democracy was impossible and  that the Party was the guardian of democracy,   to forget whatever it was necessary to  forget, then to draw it back into memory   again at the moment when it was needed, and  then promptly to forget it again: and above all,  

To apply the same process to the process itself.  That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to   induce unconsciousness, and then, once again,  to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you   had just performed. Even to understand the word  ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.

The instructress had called them to  attention again. ‘And now let’s see   which of us can touch our toes!’ she said  enthusiastically. ‘Right over from the hips,   please, comrades. One-two! One-two!…’ Winston loathed this exercise, which sent   shooting pains all the way from his heels to his  buttocks and often ended by bringing on another  

Coughing fit. The half-pleasant quality went  out of his meditations. The past, he reflected,   had not merely been altered, it had been actually  destroyed. For how could you establish even the   most obvious fact when there existed no record  outside your own memory? He tried to remember  

In what year he had first heard mention of Big  Brother. He thought it must have been at some   time in the sixties, but it was impossible to  be certain. In the Party histories, of course,   Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of  the Revolution since its very earliest days. His  

Exploits had been gradually pushed backwards  in time until already they extended into the   fabulous world of the forties and the thirties,  when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical   hats still rode through the streets of London  in great gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages  

With glass sides. There was no knowing how much  of this legend was true and how much invented.   Winston could not even remember at what date the  Party itself had come into existence. He did not   believe he had ever heard the word Ingsoc before  1960, but it was possible that in its Oldspeak  

Form—’English Socialism’, that is to say—it had  been current earlier. Everything melted into   mist. Sometimes, indeed, you could put your  finger on a definite lie. It was not true,   for example, as was claimed in the Party  history books, that the Party had invented  

Aeroplanes. He remembered aeroplanes since his  earliest childhood. But you could prove nothing.   There was never any evidence. Just once in his  whole life he had held in his hands unmistakable   documentary proof of the falsification of  an historical fact. And on that occasion… 

‘Smith!’ screamed the shrewish voice from  the telescreen. ‘6-0-7-9 Smith W.! Yes,   You! Bend lower, please! You can do better  than that. You’re not trying. Lower,   please! That’s better, comrade. Now stand  at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.’ A sudden hot sweat had broken out all  over Winston’s body. His face remained  

Completely inscrutable. Never show dismay!  Never show resentment! A single flicker of   the eyes could give you away. He stood  watching while the instructress raised   her arms above her head and—one could  not say gracefully, but with remarkable   neatness and efficiency—bent over and tucked  the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

‘There, comrades! That’s how I want to see you  doing it. Watch me again. I’m thirty-nine and I’ve   had four children. Now look.’ She bent over again.  ‘You see my knees aren’t bent. You can all do it   if you want to,’ she added as she straightened  herself up. ‘Anyone under forty-five is perfectly  

Capable of touching his toes. We don’t all have  the privilege of fighting in the front line,   but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our  boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the   Floating Fortresses! Just think what They have  to put up with. Now try again. That’s better,  

Comrade, that’s MUCH better,’ she  added encouragingly as Winston,   with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his  toes with knees unbent, for the first time in   several years. Chapter 4. With the deep, unconscious sigh  which not even the nearness of   the telescreen could prevent him from  uttering when his day’s work started,  

Winston pulled the speakwrite towards  him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece,   and put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled  and clipped together four small cylinders   of paper which had already flopped out of the  pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three  orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small   pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left,  a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall,   within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large  oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This  

Last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar  slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands   throughout the building, not only in every room  but at short intervals in every corridor. For some   reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one  knew that any document was due for destruction,  

Or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying  about, it was an automatic action to lift the   flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in,  whereupon it would be whirled away on a current  

Of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were  hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building. Winston examined the four slips of paper which  he had unrolled. Each contained a message of   only one or two lines, in the abbreviated  jargon—not actually Newspeak, but consisting  

Largely of Newspeak words—which was used in  the Ministry for internal purposes. They ran: Times 17th of March 84. BB speech  malreported africa rectify. Times 19th of December, 83. Forecasts 3 YP. 4th  quarter, 83. Misprints verify current issue. Times 14th of February, 84. Miniplenty  malquoted chocolate rectify.

Times 3rd of December, 83. Reporting BB dayorder   doubleplusungood refs unpersons  rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling. With a faint feeling of satisfaction Winston laid  the fourth message aside. It was an intricate and   responsible job and had better be dealt with  last. The other three were routine matters,  

Though the second one would probably mean  some tedious wading through lists of figures. Winston dialled ‘back numbers’ on the telescreen  and called for the appropriate issues of ‘The   Times’, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after  only a few minutes’ delay. The messages he had  

Received referred to articles or news items which  for one reason or another it was thought necessary   to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to  rectify. For example, it appeared from ‘The Times’   of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in  his speech of the previous day, had predicted that  

The South Indian front would remain quiet but that  a Eurasian offensive would shortly be launched in   North Africa. As it happened, the Eurasian Higher  Command had launched its offensive in South India   and left North Africa alone. It was therefore  necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s  

Speech, in such a way as to make him predict  the thing that had actually happened. Or again,   ‘The Times’ of the nineteenth of December had  published the official forecasts of the output   of various classes of consumption goods in the  fourth quarter of 1983, which was also the sixth  

Quarter of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. Today’s  issue contained a statement of the actual output,   from which it appeared that the forecasts were in  every instance grossly wrong. Winston’s job was to   rectify the original figures by making them agree  with the later ones. As for the third message,  

It referred to a very simple error which could  be set right in a couple of minutes. As short a   time ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had  issued a promise (a ‘categorical pledge’ were the   official words) that there would be no reduction  of the chocolate ration during 1984. Actually,  

As Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to  be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty at the   end of the present week. All that was needed  was to substitute for the original promise a   warning that it would probably be necessary  to reduce the ration at some time in April.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the  messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections   to the appropriate copy of ‘The Times’ and  pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then,   with a movement which was as  nearly as possible unconscious,   he crumpled up the original message  and any notes that he himself had made,  

And dropped them into the memory  hole to be devoured by the flames.  What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the  pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail,   but he did know in general terms. As soon as all  the corrections which happened to be necessary in  

Any particular number of ‘The Times’ had been  assembled and collated, that number would be   reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the  corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.   This process of continuous alteration was applied  not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals,  

Pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks,  cartoons, photographs—to every kind of literature   or documentation which might conceivably hold any  political or ideological significance. Day by day   and almost minute by minute the past was brought  up to date. In this way every prediction made by  

The Party could be shown by documentary evidence  to have been correct, nor was any item of news,   or any expression of opinion, which conflicted  with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to   remain on record. All history was a palimpsest,  scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often  

As was necessary. In no case would it have been  possible, once the deed was done, to prove that   any falsification had taken place. The largest  section of the Records Department, far larger   than the one on which Winston worked, consisted  simply of persons whose duty it was to track down  

And collect all copies of books, newspapers, and  other documents which had been superseded and were   due for destruction. A number of ‘The Times’ which  might, because of changes in political alignment,   or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother,  have been rewritten a dozen times still stood  

On the files bearing its original date, and no  other copy existed to contradict it. Books, also,   were recalled and rewritten again and again, and  were invariably reissued without any admission   that any alteration had been made. Even the  written instructions which Winston received,  

And which he invariably got rid of as soon as he  had dealt with them, never stated or implied that   an act of forgery was to be committed: always  the reference was to slips, errors, misprints,   or misquotations which it was necessary  to put right in the interests of accuracy. 

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the  Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even   forgery. It was merely the substitution of  one piece of nonsense for another. Most of   the material that you were dealing with had  no connexion with anything in the real world,  

Not even the kind of connexion that is contained  in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a   fantasy in their original version as in their  rectified version. A great deal of the time   you were expected to make them up out of your  head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty’s  

Forecast had estimated the output of boots  for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The   actual output was given as sixty-two millions.  Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast,   marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions,  so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota  

Had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two  millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven   millions, or than 145 millions. Very likely no  boots had been produced at all. Likelier still,   nobody knew how many had been produced, much  less cared. All one knew was that every quarter  

Astronomical numbers of boots were produced  on paper, while perhaps half the population   of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every  class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything   faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally,  even the date of the year had become uncertain.

Winston glanced across the hall. In the  corresponding cubicle on the other side   a small, precise-looking, dark-chinned man  named Tillotson was working steadily away,   with a folded newspaper on his knee and  his mouth very close to the mouthpiece of  

The speakwrite. He had the air of trying to keep  what he was saying a secret between himself and   the telescreen. He looked up, and his spectacles  darted a hostile flash in Winston’s direction.  Winston hardly knew Tillotson, and had no  idea what work he was employed on. People  

In the Records Department did not readily talk  about their jobs. In the long, windowless hall,   with its double row of cubicles and its endless  rustle of papers and hum of voices murmuring   into speakwrites, there were quite a dozen  people whom Winston did not even know by name,  

Though he daily saw them hurrying to and fro  in the corridors or gesticulating in the Two   Minutes Hate. He knew that in the cubicle next to  him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day   in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting  from the Press the names of people who had been  

Vaporized and were therefore considered never to  have existed. There was a certain fitness in this,   since her own husband had been vaporized a couple  of years earlier. And a few cubicles away a mild,   ineffectual, dreamy creature named Ampleforth,  with very hairy ears and a surprising talent  

For juggling with rhymes and metres, was engaged  in producing garbled versions—definitive texts,   they were called—of poems which  had become ideologically offensive,   but which for one reason or another were to  be retained in the anthologies. And this hall,   with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only  one sub-section, a single cell, as it were,  

In the huge complexity of the Records Department.  Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers   engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs.  There were the huge printing-shops with their   sub-editors, their typography experts, and their  elaborately equipped studios for the faking of   photographs. There was the tele-programmes  section with its engineers, its producers,  

And its teams of actors specially chosen for their  skill in imitating voices. There were the armies   of reference clerks whose job was simply to draw  up lists of books and periodicals which were due   for recall. There were the vast repositories  where the corrected documents were stored,  

And the hidden furnaces where the original  copies were destroyed. And somewhere or other,   quite anonymous, there were the directing  brains who co-ordinated the whole effort   and laid down the lines of policy which made  it necessary that this fragment of the past  

Should be preserved, that one falsified,  and the other rubbed out of existence.  And the Records Department, after all, was itself  only a single branch of the Ministry of Truth,   whose primary job was not to reconstruct  the past but to supply the citizens of   Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks,  telescreen programmes, plays, novels—with every  

Conceivable kind of information, instruction,  or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan,   from a lyric poem to a biological treatise,  and from a child’s spelling-book to a Newspeak   dictionary. And the Ministry had not only to  supply the multifarious needs of the party,  

But also to repeat the whole operation at a  lower level for the benefit of the proletariat.   There was a whole chain of separate departments  dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama,   and entertainment generally. Here were produced  rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing   except sport, crime and astrology, sensational  five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex,  

And sentimental songs which were composed  entirely by mechanical means on a special kind   of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There  was even a whole sub-section—Pornosec, it was   called in Newspeak—engaged in producing the lowest  kind of pornography, which was sent out in sealed  

Packets and which no Party member, other than  those who worked on it, was permitted to look at. Three messages had slid out of the pneumatic tube  while Winston was working, but they were simple   matters, and he had disposed of them before the  Two Minutes Hate interrupted him. When the Hate  

Was over he returned to his cubicle, took the  Newspeak dictionary from the shelf, pushed the   speakwrite to one side, cleaned his spectacles,  and settled down to his main job of the morning. Winston’s greatest pleasure in life was in his  work. Most of it was a tedious routine, but  

Included in it there were also jobs so difficult  and intricate that you could lose yourself   in them as in the depths of a mathematical  problem—delicate pieces of forgery in which   you had nothing to guide you except your knowledge  of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of  

What the Party wanted you to say. Winston was  good at this kind of thing. On occasion he had   even been entrusted with the rectification  of ‘The Times’ leading articles, which were   written entirely in Newspeak. He unrolled the  message that he had set aside earlier. It ran:

Times 3rd of December, 83. Reporting BB dayorder   doubleplusungood refs unpersons  rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling. In Oldspeak (or standard  English) this might be rendered:  The reporting of Big Brother’s Order  for the Day in ‘The Times’ of December   3rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory  and makes references to non-existent  

Persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your  draft to higher authority before filing.  Winston read through the offending article.  Big Brother’s Order for the Day, it seemed,   had been chiefly devoted to praising the  work of an organization known as FFCC,  

Which supplied cigarettes and other comforts  to the sailors in the Floating Fortresses. A   certain Comrade Withers, a prominent member  of the Inner Party, had been singled out   for special mention and awarded a decoration,  the Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second Class.

Three months later FFCC had suddenly been  dissolved with no reasons given. One could   assume that Withers and his associates were now  in disgrace, but there had been no report of the   matter in the Press or on the telescreen. That was  to be expected, since it was unusual for political  

Offenders to be put on trial or even publicly  denounced. The great purges involving thousands   of people, with public trials of traitors and  thought-criminals who made abject confession   of their crimes and were afterwards executed,  were special show-pieces not occurring oftener  

Than once in a couple of years. More commonly,  people who had incurred the displeasure of the   Party simply disappeared and were never heard  of again. One never had the smallest clue as to   what had happened to them. In some cases they  might not even be dead. Perhaps thirty people  

Personally known to Winston, not counting his  parents, had disappeared at one time or another. Winston stroked his nose gently with a paper-clip.  In the cubicle across the way Comrade Tillotson   was still crouching secretively over his  speakwrite. He raised his head for a moment:  

Again the hostile spectacle-flash. Winston  wondered whether Comrade Tillotson was engaged   on the same job as himself. It was perfectly  possible. So tricky a piece of work would never   be entrusted to a single person: on the other  hand, to turn it over to a committee would be  

To admit openly that an act of fabrication  was taking place. Very likely as many as a   dozen people were now working away on rival  versions of what Big Brother had actually   said. And presently some master brain in the  Inner Party would select this version or that,  

Would re-edit it and set in motion the complex  processes of cross-referencing that would be   required, and then the chosen lie would pass  into the permanent records and become truth. Winston did not know why Withers had been  disgraced. Perhaps it was for corruption or  

Incompetence. Perhaps Big Brother was merely  getting rid of a too-popular subordinate.   Perhaps Withers or someone close to him had been  suspected of heretical tendencies. Or perhaps—what   was likeliest of all—the thing had simply happened  because purges and vaporizations were a necessary  

Part of the mechanics of government. The only  real clue lay in the words ‘refs unpersons’,   which indicated that Withers was already dead.  You could not invariably assume this to be the   case when people were arrested. Sometimes they  were released and allowed to remain at liberty  

For as much as a year or two years before being  executed. Very occasionally some person whom you   had believed dead long since would make a ghostly  reappearance at some public trial where he would   implicate hundreds of others by his testimony  before vanishing, this time for ever. Withers,  

However, was already an unperson. He did  not exist: he had never existed. Winston   decided that it would not be enough simply to  reverse the tendency of Big Brother’s speech.   It was better to make it deal with something  totally unconnected with its original subject.

He might turn the speech into the usual  denunciation of traitors and thought-criminals,   but that was a little too obvious, while  to invent a victory at the front, or some   triumph of over-production in the Ninth Three-Year  Plan, might complicate the records too much. What  

Was needed was a piece of pure fantasy. Suddenly  there sprang into his mind, ready made as it were,   the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had  recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances.   There were occasions when Big Brother devoted his  Order for the Day to commemorating some humble,  

Rank-and-file Party member whose life and death he  held up as an example worthy to be followed. Today   he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true  that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy,   but a few lines of print and a couple of faked  photographs would soon bring him into existence.

Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the  speakwrite towards him and began dictating in   Big Brother’s familiar style: a style at once  military and pedantic, and, because of a trick   of asking questions and then promptly answering  them (‘What lessons do we learn from this fact,  

Comrades? The lesson—which is also  one of the fundamental principles   of Ingsoc—that,’ etc., etc.), easy to imitate. At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused   all toys except a drum, a sub-machine gun,  and a model helicopter. At six—a year early,  

By a special relaxation of the rules—he had joined  the Spies, at nine he had been a troop leader. At   eleven he had denounced his uncle to the Thought  Police after overhearing a conversation which   appeared to him to have criminal tendencies. At  seventeen he had been a district organizer of  

The Junior Anti-Sex League. At nineteen he had  designed a hand-grenade which had been adopted   by the Ministry of Peace and which, at its first  trial, had killed thirty-one Eurasian prisoners   in one burst. At twenty-three he had perished in  action. Pursued by enemy jet planes while flying  

Over the Indian Ocean with important despatches,  he had weighted his body with his machine gun and   leapt out of the helicopter into deep water,  despatches and all—an end, said Big Brother,   which it was impossible to contemplate without  feelings of envy. Big Brother added a few remarks  

On the purity and single-mindedness of Comrade  Ogilvy’s life. He was a total abstainer and a   nonsmoker, had no recreations except a daily hour  in the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy,   believing marriage and the care of a family to  be incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day  

Devotion to duty. He had no subjects of  conversation except the principles of Ingsoc, and   no aim in life except the defeat of the Eurasian  enemy and the hunting-down of spies, saboteurs,   thought-criminals, and traitors generally. Winston debated with himself whether   to award Comrade Ogilvy the Order of  Conspicuous Merit: in the end he decided  

Against it because of the unnecessary  cross-referencing that it would entail. Once again he glanced at his rival in the  opposite cubicle. Something seemed to tell   him with certainty that Tillotson was busy on the  same job as himself. There was no way of knowing  

Whose job would finally be adopted, but he felt  a profound conviction that it would be his own.   Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now  a fact. It struck him as curious that you could   create dead men but not living ones. Comrade  Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present,  

Now existed in the past, and when  once the act of forgery was forgotten,   he would exist just as authentically, and  upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or   Julius Caesar. Chapter 5. In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep underground,  the lunch queue jerked slowly forward. The room  

Was already very full and deafeningly  noisy. From the grille at the counter   the steam of stew came pouring forth, with  a sour metallic smell which did not quite   overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On the  far side of the room there was a small bar,  

A mere hole in the wall, where gin could  be bought at ten cents the large nip. ‘Just the man I was looking for,’  said a voice at Winston’s back. He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who  worked in the Research Department. Perhaps  

‘friend’ was not exactly the right word. You  did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades:   but there were some comrades whose society  was pleasanter than that of others. Syme was   a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed,  he was one of the enormous team of experts now  

Engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of  the Newspeak Dictionary. He was a tiny creature,   smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large,  protuberant eyes, at once mournful and derisive,   which seemed to search your face  closely while he was speaking to you.

‘I wanted to ask you whether you’d  got any razor blades,’ he said. ‘Not one!’ said Winston with a  sort of guilty haste. ‘I’ve tried   all over the place. They don’t exist any longer.’ Everyone kept asking you for razor  blades. Actually he had two unused  

Ones which he was hoarding up. There  had been a famine of them for months   past. At any given moment there was some  necessary article which the Party shops   were unable to supply. Sometimes it was  buttons, sometimes it was darning wool,  

Sometimes it was shoelaces; at present it was  razor blades. You could only get hold of them,   if at all, by scrounging more or  less furtively on the ‘free’ market. ‘I’ve been using the same blade for  six weeks,’ he added untruthfully. The queue gave another jerk forward.  As they halted he turned and faced  

Syme again. Each of them took a greasy metal  tray from a pile at the end of the counter. ‘Did you go and see the prisoners  hanged yesterday?’ said Syme. ‘I was working,’ said Winston indifferently.  ‘I shall see it on the flicks, I suppose.’ ‘A very inadequate substitute,’ said Syme.

His mocking eyes roved over Winston’s face. ‘I  know you,’ the eyes seemed to say, ‘I see through   you. I know very well why you didn’t go to see  those prisoners hanged.’ In an intellectual way,   Syme was venomously orthodox. He would talk  with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction  

Of helicopter raids on enemy villages, and  trials and confessions of thought-criminals,   the executions in the cellars of the  Ministry of Love. Talking to him was   largely a matter of getting him away  from such subjects and entangling him,   if possible, in the technicalities of Newspeak,  on which he was authoritative and interesting.  

Winston turned his head a little aside to  avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes. ‘It was a good hanging,’ said Syme reminiscently.  ‘I think it spoils it when they tie their feet   together. I like to see them kicking. And above  all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out,  

And blue—a quite bright blue. That’s  the detail that appeals to me.’ ‘Nex’, please!’ yelled the  white-aproned prole with the ladle. Winston and Syme pushed their trays beneath  the grille. On to each was dumped swiftly   the regulation lunch—a metal pannikin  of pinkish-grey stew, a hunk of bread,  

A cube of cheese, a mug of milkless  Victory Coffee, and one saccharine tablet. ‘There’s a table over there,   under that telescreen,’ said Syme.  ‘Let’s pick up a gin on the way.’ The gin was served out to them in handleless  china mugs. They threaded their way across  

The crowded room and unpacked their  trays on to the metal-topped table,   on one corner of which someone had left a pool  of stew, a filthy liquid mess that had the   appearance of vomit. Winston took up his mug of  gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve,  

And gulped the oily-tasting stuff down. When he  had winked the tears out of his eyes he suddenly   discovered that he was hungry. He began  swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which,   in among its general sloppiness, had cubes  of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a  

Preparation of meat. Neither of them spoke again  till they had emptied their pannikins. From the   table at Winston’s left, a little behind his back,  someone was talking rapidly and continuously,   a harsh gabble almost like the quacking of a duck,  which pierced the general uproar of the room.

‘How is the Dictionary getting on?’ said  Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise. ‘Slowly,’ said Syme. ‘I’m on the  adjectives. It’s fascinating.’ He had brightened up immediately at the mention  of Newspeak. He pushed his pannikin aside,  

Took up his hunk of bread in one delicate hand  and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the   table so as to be able to speak without shouting. ‘The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,’   he said. ‘We’re getting the language into its  final shape—the shape it’s going to have when  

Nobody speaks anything else. When we’ve finished  with it, people like you will have to learn it   all over again. You think, I dare say, that our  chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit   of it! We’re destroying words—scores of them,  hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting  

The language down to the bone. The Eleventh  Edition won’t contain a single word that will   become obsolete before the year twenty fifty.’ He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a   couple of mouthfuls, then continued speaking, with  a sort of pedant’s passion. His thin dark face  

Had become animated, his eyes had lost their  mocking expression and grown almost dreamy. ‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction  of words. Of course the great wastage is   in the verbs and adjectives, but there  are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid  

Of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms;  there are also the antonyms. After all,   what justification is there for a word which is  simply the opposite of some other word? A word   contains its opposite in itself. Take “good”,  for instance. If you have a word like “good”,  

What need is there for a word like “bad”? “Ungood”  will do just as well—better, because it’s an exact   opposite, which the other is not. Or again,  if you want a stronger version of “good”,   what sense is there in having a whole string  of vague useless words like “excellent” and  

“splendid” and all the rest of them? “Plusgood”  covers the meaning, or “doubleplusgood” if you   want something stronger still. Of course we use  those forms already. but in the final version of   Newspeak there’ll be nothing else. In the end  the whole notion of goodness and badness will  

Be covered by only six words—in reality, only  one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that,   Winston? It was B.B.’s idea originally,  of course,’ he added as an afterthought. A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across  Winston’s face at the mention of Big   Brother. Nevertheless Syme immediately  detected a certain lack of enthusiasm.

‘You haven’t a real appreciation of Newspeak,  Winston,’ he said almost sadly. ‘Even when you   write it you’re still thinking in Oldspeak.  I’ve read some of those pieces that you write   in “The Times” occasionally. They’re good  enough, but they’re translations. In your  

Heart you’d prefer to stick to Oldspeak,  with all its vagueness and its useless   shades of meaning. You don’t grasp the beauty  of the destruction of words. Do you know that   Newspeak is the only language in the world  whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?’

Winston did know that, of course.  He smiled, sympathetically he hoped,   not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off  another fragment of the dark-coloured bread,   chewed it briefly, and went on: ‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak  is to narrow the range of thought? In the end  

We shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible,  because there will be no words in which to express   it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will  be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning   rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings  rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh  

Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the  process will still be continuing long after you   and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words,  and the range of consciousness always a little   smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or  excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a  

Question of self-discipline, reality-control.  But in the end there won’t be any need even   for that. The Revolution will be complete when the  language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc   is Newspeak,’ he added with a sort of mystical  satisfaction. ‘Has it ever occurred to you,  

Winston, that by the year 2050, at the  very latest, not a single human being   will be alive who could understand such  a conversation as we are having now?’ ‘Except…’ began Winston  doubtfully, and he stopped. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say  ‘Except the proles,’ but he checked himself,  

Not feeling fully certain that this remark  was not in some way unorthodox. Syme, however,   had divined what he was about to say. ‘The proles are not human beings,’ he   said carelessly. ‘By twenty fifty — earlier,  probably —all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have  

Disappeared. The whole literature of the past will  have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton,   Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions,  not merely changed into something different,   but actually changed into something contradictory  of what they used to be. Even the literature of  

The Party will change. Even the slogans  will change. How could you have a slogan   like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of  freedom has been abolished? The whole climate   of thought will be different. In fact there  will be no thought, as we understand it now.  

Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing  to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’  One of these days, thought Winston  with sudden deep conviction,   Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent.  He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The   Party does not like such people. One day he  will disappear. It is written in his face.

Winston had finished his bread and cheese.  He turned a little sideways in his chair to   drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his  left the man with the strident voice was still   talking remorselessly away. A young woman who was  perhaps his secretary, and who was sitting with  

Her back to Winston, was listening to him and  seemed to be eagerly agreeing with everything   that he said. From time to time Winston caught  some such remark as ‘I think you’re so right,   I do so agree with you’, uttered in a youthful  and rather silly feminine voice. But the other  

Voice never stopped for an instant, even when the  girl was speaking. Winston knew the man by sight,   though he knew no more about him than that he held  some important post in the Fiction Department. He  

Was a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat  and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown   back a little, and because of the angle at which  he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light   and presented to Winston two blank discs instead  of eyes. What was slightly horrible, was that from  

The stream of sound that poured out of his mouth  it was almost impossible to distinguish a single   word. Just once Winston caught a phrase—’complete  and final elimination of Goldsteinism’—jerked out   very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece,  like a line of type cast solid. For the rest it  

Was just a noise, a quack-quack-quacking. And  yet, though you could not actually hear what   the man was saying, you could not be in any doubt  about its general nature. He might be denouncing   Goldstein and demanding sterner measures  against thought-criminals and saboteurs,  

He might be fulminating against the atrocities  of the Eurasian army, he might be praising   Big Brother or the heroes on the Malabar  front—it made no difference. Whatever it was,   you could be certain that every word of it was  pure orthodoxy, pure Ingsoc. As he watched the  

Eyeless face with the jaw moving rapidly up and  down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was   not a real human being but some kind of dummy.  It was not the man’s brain that was speaking,  

It was his larynx. The stuff that was coming  out of him consisted of words, but it was not   speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered  in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck. Syme had fallen silent for a moment, and  with the handle of his spoon was tracing  

Patterns in the puddle of stew. The voice  from the other table quacked rapidly on,   easily audible in spite of the surrounding din. ‘There is a word in Newspeak,’ said Syme, ‘I  don’t know whether you know it: duckspeak,   to quack like a duck. It is one of those  interesting words that have two contradictory  

Meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse,  applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.’  Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized,  Winston thought again. He thought it with   a kind of sadness, although well knowing that  Syme despised him and slightly disliked him,  

And was fully capable of denouncing him as a  thought-criminal if he saw any reason for doing   so. There was something subtly wrong with Syme.  There was something that he lacked: discretion,   aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity. You could  not say that he was unorthodox. He believed in the  

Principles of Ingsoc, he venerated Big Brother,  he rejoiced over victories, he hated heretics,   not merely with sincerity but with a sort of  restless zeal, an up-to-dateness of information,   which the ordinary Party member did not approach.  Yet a faint air of disreputability always clung  

To him. He said things that would have been better  unsaid, he had read too many books, he frequented   the Chestnut Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and  musicians. There was no law, not even an unwritten   law, against frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe,  yet the place was somehow ill-omened. The old,  

Discredited leaders of the Party had been used  to gather there before they were finally purged.   Goldstein himself, it was said, had sometimes been  seen there, years and decades ago. Syme’s fate was   not difficult to foresee. And yet it was a fact  that if Syme grasped, even for three seconds,  

The nature of his, Winston’s, secret opinions,  he would betray him instantly to the Thought   Police. So would anybody else, for that  matter: but Syme more than most. Zeal   was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness. Syme looked up. ‘Here comes Parsons,’ he said.

Something in the tone of his voice seemed  to add, ‘that bloody fool’. Parsons,   Winston’s fellow-tenant at Victory Mansions, was  in fact threading his way across the room—a tubby,   middle-sized man with fair hair and a froglike  face. At thirty-five he was already putting on  

Rolls of fat at neck and waistline, but  his movements were brisk and boyish. His   whole appearance was that of a little boy grown  large, so much so that although he was wearing   the regulation overalls, it was almost impossible  not to think of him as being dressed in the blue  

Shorts, grey shirt, and red neckerchief  of the Spies. In visualizing him one saw   always a picture of dimpled knees and sleeves  rolled back from pudgy forearms. Parsons did,   indeed, invariably revert to shorts when  a community hike or any other physical  

Activity gave him an excuse for doing so.  He greeted them both with a cheery ‘Hullo,   hullo!’ and sat down at the table, giving  off an intense smell of sweat. Beads of   moisture stood out all over his pink face.  His powers of sweating were extraordinary.  

At the Community Centre you could always  tell when he had been playing table-tennis   by the dampness of the bat handle. Syme had  produced a strip of paper on which there was   a long column of words, and was studying  it with an ink-pencil between his fingers.

‘Look at him working away in the lunch hour,’  said Parsons, nudging Winston. ‘Keenness,   eh? What’s that you’ve got there, old  boy? Something a bit too brainy for me,   I expect. Smith, old boy, I’ll tell you why I’m  chasing you. It’s that sub you forgot to give me.’

‘Which sub is that?’ said Winston,  automatically feeling for money.   About a quarter of one’s salary had to  be earmarked for voluntary subscriptions,   which were so numerous that it was  difficult to keep track of them. ‘For Hate Week. You know—the house-by-house fund.  I’m treasurer for our block. We’re making an  

All-out effort—going to put on a tremendous show.  I tell you, it won’t be my fault if old Victory   Mansions doesn’t have the biggest outfit of flags  in the whole street. Two dollars you promised me.’ Winston found and handed over  two creased and filthy notes,  

Which Parsons entered in a small notebook,  in the neat handwriting of the illiterate. ‘By the way, old boy,’ he said. ‘I hear  that little beggar of mine let fly at   you with his catapult yesterday. I  gave him a good dressing-down for  

It. In fact I told him I’d take the  catapult away if he does it again.’ ‘I think he was a little upset at not  going to the execution,’ said Winston. ‘Ah, well—what I mean to say, shows the right  spirit, doesn’t it? Mischievous little beggars  

They are, both of them, but talk about keenness!  All they think about is the Spies, and the war,   of course. D’you know what that little girl  of mine did last Saturday, when her troop was  

On a hike out Berkhamsted way? She got two other  girls to go with her, slipped off from the hike,   and spent the whole afternoon following a  strange man. They kept on his tail for two hours,   right through the woods, and then, when they got  into Amersham, handed him over to the patrols.’

‘What did they do that for?’ said Winston,   somewhat taken aback.  Parsons went on triumphantly:  ‘My kid made sure he was some kind of enemy  agent—might have been dropped by parachute,   for instance. But here’s the point, old boy.  What do you think put her on to him in the  

First place? She spotted he was wearing a  funny kind of shoes—said she’d never seen   anyone wearing shoes like that before.  So the chances were he was a foreigner.   Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?’ ‘What happened to the man?’ said Winston.

‘Ah, that I couldn’t say, of course. But  I wouldn’t be altogether surprised if…’   Parsons made the motion of aiming a rifle,  and clicked his tongue for the explosion. ‘Good,’ said Syme abstractedly, without  looking up from his strip of paper. ‘Of course we can’t afford to take  chances,’ agreed Winston dutifully.

‘What I mean to say, there  is a war on,’ said Parsons. As though in confirmation of this, a  trumpet call floated from the telescreen   just above their heads. However, it was not the  proclamation of a military victory this time,   but merely an announcement  from the Ministry of Plenty.

‘Comrades!’ cried an eager youthful voice.  ‘Attention, comrades! We have glorious   news for you. We have won the battle for  production! Returns now completed of the   output of all classes of consumption goods show  that the standard of living has risen by no less  

Than 20 per cent over the past year. All over  Oceania this morning there were irrepressible   spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched  out of factories and offices and paraded through   the streets with banners voicing their gratitude  to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his  

Wise leadership has bestowed upon us. Here are  some of the completed figures. Foodstuffs…’ The phrase ‘our new, happy life’ recurred  several times. It had been a favourite of   late with the Ministry of Plenty. Parsons,  his attention caught by the trumpet call,  

Sat listening with a sort of gaping solemnity, a  sort of edified boredom. He could not follow the   figures, but he was aware that they were in some  way a cause for satisfaction. He had lugged out a   huge and filthy pipe which was already half full  of charred tobacco. With the tobacco ration at  

100 grammes a week it was seldom possible to fill  a pipe to the top. Winston was smoking a Victory   Cigarette which he held carefully horizontal.  The new ration did not start till tomorrow and   he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment  he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and  

Was listening to the stuff that streamed out of  the telescreen. It appeared that there had even   been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for  raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes   a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had  been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED  

To twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that  they could swallow that, after only twenty-four   hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed  it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The   eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it  fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire  

To track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who  should suggest that last week the ration had been   thirty grammes. Syme, too—in some more complex  way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was   he, then, alone in the possession of a memory? The fabulous statistics continued to pour out  

Of the telescreen. As compared with last year  there was more food, more clothes, more houses,   more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel,  more ships, more helicopters, more books, more   babies—more of everything except disease, crime,  and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute,  

Everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly  upwards. As Syme had done earlier Winston had   taken up his spoon and was dabbling in the  pale-coloured gravy that dribbled across   the table, drawing a long streak of it out into a  pattern. He meditated resentfully on the physical  

Texture of life. Had it always been like this? Had  food always tasted like this? He looked round the   canteen. A low-ceilinged, crowded room, its walls  grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies;   battered metal tables and chairs, placed so  close together that you sat with elbows touching;  

Bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs;  all surfaces greasy, grime in every crack;   and a sourish, composite smell of bad gin  and bad coffee and metallic stew and dirty   clothes. Always in your stomach and in  your skin there was a sort of protest,  

A feeling that you had been cheated of something  that you had a right to. It was true that he had   no memories of anything greatly different. In  any time that he could accurately remember,   there had never been quite enough to eat, one had  never had socks or underclothes that were not full  

Of holes, furniture had always been battered and  rickety, rooms underheated, tube trains crowded,   houses falling to pieces, bread dark-coloured,  tea a rarity, coffee filthy-tasting, cigarettes   insufficient—nothing cheap and plentiful except  synthetic gin. And though, of course, it grew  

Worse as one’s body aged, was it not a sign  that this was not the natural order of things,   if one’s heart sickened at the discomfort and  dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters,   the stickiness of one’s socks, the lifts that  never worked, the cold water, the gritty soap, the  

Cigarettes that came to pieces, the food with its  strange evil tastes? Why should one feel it to be   intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral  memory that things had once been different?  He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone  was ugly, and would still have been ugly even if  

Dressed otherwise than in the uniform blue  overalls. On the far side of the room,   sitting at a table alone, a small, curiously  beetle-like man was drinking a cup of coffee,   his little eyes darting suspicious glances from  side to side. How easy it was, thought Winston,  

If you did not look about you, to believe  that the physical type set up by the   Party as an ideal—tall muscular youths and  deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital,   sunburnt, carefree—existed and even predominated.  Actually, so far as he could judge, the majority  

Of people in Airstrip One were small, dark, and  ill-favoured. It was curious how that beetle-like   type proliferated in the Ministries: little  dumpy men, growing stout very early in life,   with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and  fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes. It  

Was the type that seemed to flourish  best under the dominion of the Party. The announcement from the Ministry of Plenty   ended on another trumpet call and  gave way to tinny music. Parsons,   stirred to vague enthusiasm by the bombardment  of figures, took his pipe out of his mouth.

‘The Ministry of Plenty’s certainly  done a good job this year,’ he said   with a knowing shake of his head. ‘By the way,   Smith old boy, I suppose you haven’t got  any razor blades you can let me have?’ ‘Not one,’ said Winston. ‘I’ve been using  the same blade for six weeks myself.’

‘Ah, well—just thought I’d ask you, old boy.’ ‘Sorry,’ said Winston. The quacking voice from the next table,  temporarily silenced during the Ministry’s   announcement, had started up again, as loud  as ever. For some reason Winston suddenly   found himself thinking of Mrs Parsons, with  her wispy hair and the dust in the creases  

Of her face. Within two years those children  would be denouncing her to the Thought Police.   Mrs Parsons would be vaporized. Syme would  be vaporized. Winston would be vaporized.   O’Brien would be vaporized. Parsons, on  the other hand, would never be vaporized.   The eyeless creature with the quacking  voice would never be vaporized. The little  

Beetle-like men who scuttle so nimbly through the  labyrinthine corridors of Ministries they, too,   would never be vaporized. And the girl with dark  hair, the girl from the Fiction Department—she   would never be vaporized either. It seemed to  him that he knew instinctively who would survive  

And who would perish: though just what it was  that made for survival, it was not easy to say.  At this moment he was dragged out of his  reverie with a violent jerk. The girl at   the next table had turned partly round and  was looking at him. It was the girl with dark  

Hair. She was looking at him in a sidelong  way, but with curious intensity. The instant   she caught his eye she looked away again. The sweat started out on Winston’s backbone.   A horrible pang of terror went through him. It  was gone almost at once, but it left a sort of  

Nagging uneasiness behind. Why was she watching  him? Why did she keep following him about?   Unfortunately he could not remember whether she  had already been at the table when he arrived,   or had come there afterwards. But yesterday,  at any rate, during the Two Minutes Hate,  

She had sat immediately behind him when there  was no apparent need to do so. Quite likely   her real object had been to listen to him and  make sure whether he was shouting loudly enough. His earlier thought returned to him: probably she  was not actually a member of the Thought Police,  

But then it was precisely the amateur spy  who was the greatest danger of all. He   did not know how long she had been looking at  him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes,   and it was possible that his features had not been  perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous  

To let your thoughts wander when you were in any  public place or within range of a telescreen.   The smallest thing could give you away. A  nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety,   a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that  carried with it the suggestion of abnormality,  

Of having something to hide. In any case, to  wear an improper expression on your face (to   look incredulous when a victory was  announced, for example) was itself   a punishable offence. There was even a word  for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

The girl had turned her back on him again. Perhaps  after all she was not really following him about,   perhaps it was coincidence that she had sat so  close to him two days running. His cigarette had  

Gone out, and he laid it carefully on the edge of  the table. He would finish smoking it after work,   if he could keep the tobacco in it. Quite  likely the person at the next table was a  

Spy of the Thought Police, and quite likely  he would be in the cellars of the Ministry of   Love within three days, but a cigarette end  must not be wasted. Syme had folded up his   strip of paper and stowed it away in his  pocket. Parsons had begun talking again.

‘Did I ever tell you, old boy,’ he said,  chuckling round the stem of his pipe,   ‘about the time when those two nippers of mine  set fire to the old market-woman’s skirt because   they saw her wrapping up sausages in a poster of  B.B.? Sneaked up behind her and set fire to it  

With a box of matches. Burned her quite badly, I  believe. Little beggars, eh? But keen as mustard!   That’s a first-rate training they give them  in the Spies nowadays—better than in my day,   even. What d’you think’s the latest thing  they’ve served them out with? Ear trumpets  

For listening through keyholes! My little girl  brought one home the other night—tried it out   on our sitting-room door, and reckoned she  could hear twice as much as with her ear to   the hole. Of course it’s only a toy, mind  you. Still, gives ’em the right idea, eh?’

At this moment the telescreen let out a piercing  whistle. It was the signal to return to work. All   three men sprang to their feet to join in the  struggle round the lifts, and the remaining   tobacco fell out of Winston’s cigarette. Chapter 6. Winston was writing in his diary:

It was three years ago. It was on a dark  evening, in a narrow side-street near one   of the big railway stations. She was standing  near a doorway in the wall, under a street lamp   that hardly gave any light. She had a young face,  painted very thick. It was really the paint that  

Appealed to me, the whiteness of it, like a mask,  and the bright red lips. Party women never paint   their faces. There was nobody else in the street,  and no telescreens. She said two dollars. I… For the moment it was too difficult to go on.  He shut his eyes and pressed his fingers against  

Them, trying to squeeze out the vision that  kept recurring. He had an almost overwhelming   temptation to shout a string of filthy words  at the top of his voice. Or to bang his head   against the wall, to kick over the table, and  hurl the inkpot through the window—to do any  

Violent or noisy or painful thing that might  black out the memory that was tormenting him. Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own  nervous system. At any moment the tension   inside you was liable to translate itself into  some visible symptom. He thought of a man whom  

He had passed in the street a few weeks back; a  quite ordinary-looking man, a Party member, aged   thirty-five to forty, tallish and thin, carrying a  brief-case. They were a few metres apart when the   left side of the man’s face was suddenly contorted  by a sort of spasm. It happened again just as they  

Were passing one another: it was only a twitch, a  quiver, rapid as the clicking of a camera shutter,   but obviously habitual. He remembered thinking at  the time: That poor devil is done for. And what   was frightening was that the action was quite  possibly unconscious. The most deadly danger of  

All was talking in your sleep. There was no way  of guarding against that, so far as he could see. He drew his breath and went on writing: I went with her through the doorway and across  a backyard into a basement kitchen. There was  

A bed against the wall, and a lamp on  the table, turned down very low. She… His teeth were set on edge. He would have liked  to spit. Simultaneously with the woman in the   basement kitchen he thought of Katharine, his  wife. Winston was married—had been married,  

At any rate: probably he still was  married, so far as he knew his wife   was not dead. He seemed to breathe again the  warm stuffy odour of the basement kitchen,   an odour compounded of bugs and dirty clothes and  villainous cheap scent, but nevertheless alluring,  

Because no woman of the Party ever used  scent, or could be imagined as doing so.   Only the proles used scent. In his mind the smell  of it was inextricably mixed up with fornication. When he had gone with that woman it had been  his first lapse in two years or thereabouts.  

Consorting with prostitutes was forbidden, of  course, but it was one of those rules that you   could occasionally nerve yourself to break. It  was dangerous, but it was not a life-and-death   matter. To be caught with a prostitute might mean  five years in a forced-labour camp: not more,  

If you had committed no other offence. And it was  easy enough, provided that you could avoid being   caught in the act. The poorer quarters swarmed  with women who were ready to sell themselves.   Some could even be purchased for a bottle  of gin, which the proles were not supposed  

To drink. Tacitly the Party was even inclined to  encourage prostitution, as an outlet for instincts   which could not be altogether suppressed.  Mere debauchery did not matter very much,   so long as it was furtive and joyless and only  involved the women of a submerged and despised  

Class. The unforgivable crime was promiscuity  between Party members. But—though this was   one of the crimes that the accused in the great  purges invariably confessed to—it was difficult   to imagine any such thing actually happening. The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent  

Men and women from forming loyalties which  it might not be able to control. Its real,   undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from  the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was   the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside  it. All marriages between Party members had to  

Be approved by a committee appointed for the  purpose, and—though the principle was never   clearly stated—permission was always refused  if the couple concerned gave the impression   of being physically attracted to one another. The  only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget  

Children for the service of the Party. Sexual  intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly   disgusting minor operation, like having an  enema. This again was never put into plain words,   but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every  Party member from childhood onwards. There  

Were even organizations such as the Junior  Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete   celibacy for both sexes. All children were to  be begotten by artificial insemination (Artsem,   it was called in newspeak) and brought up in  public institutions. This, Winston was aware,  

Was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it  fitted in with the general ideology of the Party.   The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct,  or, if it could not be killed, then to distort  

It and dirty it. He did not know why this was  so, but it seemed natural that it should be   so. And as far as the women were concerned,  the Party’s efforts were largely successful.  He thought again of Katharine. It must be nine,  ten—nearly eleven years since they had parted.  

It was curious how seldom he thought of her. For  days at a time he was capable of forgetting that   he had ever been married. They had only been  together for about fifteen months. The Party   did not permit divorce, but it rather encouraged  separation in cases where there were no children.

Katharine was a tall, fair-haired girl, very  straight, with splendid movements. She had a bold,   aquiline face, a face that one might have  called noble until one discovered that   there was as nearly as possible nothing  behind it. Very early in her married life  

He had decided—though perhaps it was only  that he knew her more intimately than he   knew most people—that she had without  exception the most stupid, vulgar,   empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had  not a thought in her head that was not a slogan,  

And there was no imbecility, absolutely  none that she was not capable of swallowing   if the Party handed it out to her. ‘The human  sound-track’ he nicknamed her in his own mind.   Yet he could have endured living with her  if it had not been for just one thing—sex.

As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince  and stiffen. To embrace her was like embracing   a jointed wooden image. And what was strange was  that even when she was clasping him against her he   had the feeling that she was simultaneously  pushing him away with all her strength. The  

Rigidity of her muscles managed to convey that  impression. She would lie there with shut eyes,   neither resisting nor co-operating but submitting.  It was extraordinarily embarrassing, and, after a   while, horrible. But even then he could have borne  living with her if it had been agreed that they  

Should remain celibate. But curiously enough  it was Katharine who refused this. They must,   she said, produce a child if they could. So the  performance continued to happen, once a week   quite regularly, whenever it was not impossible.  She even used to remind him of it in the morning,  

As something which had to be done that evening  and which must not be forgotten. She had two   names for it. One was ‘making a baby’, and  the other was ‘our duty to the Party’ (yes,   she had actually used that phrase).  Quite soon he grew to have a feeling  

Of positive dread when the appointed day  came round. But luckily no child appeared,   and in the end she agreed to give up  trying, and soon afterwards they parted. Winston sighed inaudibly. He  picked up his pen again and wrote: She threw herself down on the bed, and  at once, without any kind of preliminary  

In the most coarse, horrible way you  can imagine, pulled up her skirt. I…  He saw himself standing there in the dim  lamplight, with the smell of bugs and cheap   scent in his nostrils, and in his heart a feeling  of defeat and resentment which even at that moment  

Was mixed up with the thought of Katharine’s  white body, frozen for ever by the hypnotic   power of the Party. Why did it always have to be  like this? Why could he not have a woman of his  

Own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals  of years? But a real love affair was an almost   unthinkable event. The women of the Party were  all alike. Chastity was as deep ingrained in them   as Party loyalty. By careful early conditioning,  by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was  

Dinned into them at school and in the Spies and  the Youth League, by lectures, parades, songs,   slogans, and martial music, the natural feeling  had been driven out of them. His reason told him   that there must be exceptions, but his heart  did not believe it. They were all impregnable,  

As the Party intended that they should be. And  what he wanted, more even than to be loved,   was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it  were only once in his whole life. The sexual act,   successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was  thoughtcrime. Even to have awakened Katharine,  

If he could have achieved it, would have been  like a seduction, although she was his wife.  But the rest of the story had  got to be written down. He wrote: I turned up the lamp. When  I saw her in the light…

After the darkness the feeble light of the  paraffin lamp had seemed very bright. For the   first time he could see the woman properly. He had  taken a step towards her and then halted, full of   lust and terror. He was painfully conscious of the  risk he had taken in coming here. It was perfectly  

Possible that the patrols would catch him on the  way out: for that matter they might be waiting   outside the door at this moment. If he went away  without even doing what he had come here to do…!

It had got to be written down, it had got  to be confessed. What he had suddenly seen   in the lamplight was that the woman was old. The  paint was plastered so thick on her face that it  

Looked as though it might crack like a cardboard  mask. There were streaks of white in her hair;   but the truly dreadful detail was that  her mouth had fallen a little open,   revealing nothing except a cavernous  blackness. She had no teeth at all. He wrote hurriedly, in scrabbling handwriting:

When I saw her in the light  she was quite an old woman,   fifty years old at least. But I  went ahead and did it just the same. He pressed his fingers against his eyelids again.  He had written it down at last, but it made no  

Difference. The therapy had not worked. The urge  to shout filthy words at the top of his voice was   as strong as ever. Chapter 7. ‘If there is hope,’ wrote  Winston, ‘it lies in the proles.’ If there was hope, it MUST lie in the proles,  because only there, in those swarming disregarded  

Masses, 85 percent of the population of Oceania,  could the force to destroy the Party ever be   generated. The Party could not be overthrown  from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies,   had no way of coming together or even of  identifying one another. Even if the legendary  

Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might,  it was inconceivable that its members could ever   assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes.  Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflexion   of the voice, at the most, an occasional whispered  word. But the proles, if only they could somehow  

Become conscious of their own strength. would  have no need to conspire. They needed only to   rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking  off flies. If they chose they could blow the   Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or  later it must occur to them to do it? And yet…!

He remembered how once he had been walking  down a crowded street when a tremendous shout   of hundreds of voices women’s voices—had burst  from a side-street a little way ahead. It was   a great formidable cry of anger and despair, a  deep, loud ‘Oh-o-o-o-oh!’ that went humming on  

Like the reverberation of a bell. His heart had  leapt. It’s started! he had thought. A riot! The   proles are breaking loose at last! When he had  reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or  

Three hundred women crowding round the stalls of  a street market, with faces as tragic as though   they had been the doomed passengers on a sinking  ship. But at this moment the general despair broke   down into a multitude of individual quarrels. It  appeared that one of the stalls had been selling  

Tin saucepans. They were wretched, flimsy things,  but cooking-pots of any kind were always difficult   to get. Now the supply had unexpectedly given out.  The successful women, bumped and jostled by the   rest, were trying to make off with their saucepans  while dozens of others clamoured round the stall,  

Accusing the stall-keeper of favouritism and  of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve.   There was a fresh outburst of yells. Two bloated  women, one of them with her hair coming down, had   got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to  tear it out of one another’s hands. For a moment  

They were both tugging, and then the handle came  off. Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet,   just for a moment, what almost frightening power  had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred   throats! Why was it that they could never  shout like that about anything that mattered? He wrote:

Until they become conscious they will  never rebel, and until after they   have rebelled they cannot become conscious. That, he reflected, might almost have been a   transcription from one of the Party textbooks. The  Party claimed, of course, to have liberated the  

Proles from bondage. Before the Revolution they  had been hideously oppressed by the capitalists,   they had been starved and flogged, women had  been forced to work in the coal mines (women   still did work in the coal mines, as a matter of  fact), children had been sold into the factories  

At the age of six. But simultaneously, true to the  Principles of doublethink, the Party taught that   the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept  in subjection, like animals, by the application of   a few simple rules. In reality very little was  known about the proles. It was not necessary  

To know much. So long as they continued to work  and breed, their other activities were without   importance. Left to themselves, like cattle  turned loose upon the plains of Argentina,   they had reverted to a style of life that  appeared to be natural to them, a sort of  

Ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew  up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve,   they passed through a brief blossoming-period of  beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty,   they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for  the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work,  

The care of home and children, petty quarrels with  neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all,   gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds.  To keep them in control was not difficult. A few   agents of the Thought Police moved always among  them, spreading false rumours and marking down and  

Eliminating the few individuals who were judged  capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was   made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the  Party. It was not desirable that the proles should   have strong political feelings. All that was  required of them was a primitive patriotism which  

Could be appealed to whenever it was necessary  to make them accept longer working-hours or   shorter rations. And even when they became  discontented, as they sometimes did, their   discontent led nowhere, because being without  general ideas, they could only focus it on petty  

Specific grievances. The larger evils invariably  escaped their notice. The great majority of proles   did not even have telescreens in their homes.  Even the civil police interfered with them very   little. There was a vast amount of criminality in  London, a whole world-within-a-world of thieves,   bandits, prostitutes, drug-peddlers, and  racketeers of every description; but since  

It all happened among the proles themselves,  it was of no importance. In all questions of   morals they were allowed to follow their ancestral  code. The sexual puritanism of the Party was not   imposed upon them. Promiscuity went unpunished,  divorce was permitted. For that matter, even  

Religious worship would have been permitted if the  proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting   it. They were beneath suspicion. As the Party  slogan put it: ‘Proles and animals are free.’  Winston reached down and cautiously scratched  his varicose ulcer. It had begun itching again.  

The thing you invariably came back to was the  impossibility of knowing what life before the   Revolution had really been like. He took out  of the drawer a copy of a children’s history   textbook which he had borrowed from Mrs Parsons,  and began copying a passage into the diary:

In the old days (it ran), before the glorious  Revolution, London was not the beautiful city that   we know today. It was a dark, dirty, miserable  place where hardly anybody had enough to eat and   where hundreds and thousands of poor people had no  boots on their feet and not even a roof to sleep  

Under. Children no older than you had to work  twelve hours a day for cruel masters who flogged   them with whips if they worked too slowly and fed  them on nothing but stale breadcrusts and water.   But in among all this terrible poverty there were  just a few great big beautiful houses that were  

Lived in by rich men who had as many as thirty  servants to look after them. These rich men were   called capitalists. They were fat, ugly men with  wicked faces, like the one in the picture on the  

Opposite page. You can see that he is dressed in a  long black coat which was called a frock coat, and   a queer, shiny hat shaped like a stovepipe, which  was called a top hat. This was the uniform of the  

Capitalists, and no one else was allowed to wear  it. The capitalists owned everything in the world,   and everyone else was their slave. They owned  all the land, all the houses, all the factories,   and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they  could throw them into prison, or they could take  

His job away and starve him to death. When  any ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he   had to cringe and bow to him, and take off his  cap and address him as ‘Sir’. The chief of all   the capitalists was called the King, and… But he knew the rest of the catalogue. There  

Would be mention of the bishops in their lawn  sleeves, the judges in their ermine robes,   the pillory, the stocks, the treadmill, the  cat-o’-nine tails, the Lord Mayor’s Banquet,   and the practice of kissing the Pope’s toe. There  was also something called the jus primae noctis,  

Which would probably not be mentioned in  a textbook for children. It was the law   by which every capitalist had the right to sleep  with any woman working in one of his factories.  How could you tell how much of it was lies?  It MIGHT be true that the average human being  

Was better off now than he had been before the  Revolution. The only evidence to the contrary   was the mute protest in your own bones, the  instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived   in were intolerable and that at some other time  they must have been different. It struck him that  

The truly characteristic thing about modern life  was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply   its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness.  Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance   not only to the lies that streamed out of the  telescreens, but even to the ideals that the Party  

Was trying to achieve. Great areas of it, even for  a Party member, were neutral and non-political,   a matter of slogging through dreary jobs, fighting  for a place on the Tube, darning a worn-out sock,   cadging a saccharine tablet, saving a cigarette  end. The ideal set up by the Party was something  

Huge, terrible, and glittering—a world of steel  and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying   weapons—a nation of warriors and fanatics,  marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking   the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans,  perpetually working, fighting, triumphing,   persecuting—three hundred million people all with  the same face. The reality was decaying, dingy  

Cities where underfed people shuffled to and fro  in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century   houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad  lavatories. He seemed to see a vision of London,   vast and ruinous, city of a million dustbins, and  mixed up with it was a picture of Mrs Parsons,  

A woman with lined face and wispy hair,  fiddling helplessly with a blocked waste-pipe. He reached down and scratched his ankle again.  Day and night the telescreens bruised your ears   with statistics proving that people today had  more food, more clothes, better houses, better  

Recreations—that they lived longer, worked shorter  hours, were bigger, healthier, stronger, happier,   more intelligent, better educated, than the people  of fifty years ago. Not a word of it could ever   be proved or disproved. The Party claimed, for  example, that today 40 percent of adult proles  

Were literate: before the Revolution, it was  said, the number had only been 15 percent. The   Party claimed that the infant mortality rate was  now only 160 per thousand, whereas before the   Revolution it had been 300 — and so it went on.  It was like a single equation with two unknowns.  

It might very well be that literally every word  in the history books, even the things that one   accepted without question, was pure fantasy. For  all he knew there might never have been any such  

Law as the Jus Primae Noctis, or any such creature  as a capitalist, or any such garment as a top hat. Everything faded into mist. The past was erased,  the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.   Just once in his life he had possessed — AFTER  the event: that was what counted—concrete,  

Unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification.  He had held it between his fingers for as long as   thirty seconds. In 1973, it must have been  — at any rate, it was at about the time   when he and Katharine had parted. But the really  relevant date was seven or eight years earlier. 

The story really began in the middle sixties, the  period of the great purges in which the original   leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once  and for all. By nineteen seventy none of them was   left, except Big Brother himself. All the rest  had by that time been exposed as traitors and  

Counter-revolutionaries. Goldstein had fled and  was hiding no one knew where, and of the others,   a few had simply disappeared, while the majority  had been executed after spectacular public trials   at which they made confession of their crimes.  Among the last survivors were three men named  

Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. It must have  been in 1965 that these three had been arrested.   As often happened, they had vanished for a year or  more, so that one did not know whether they were   alive or dead, and then had suddenly been brought  forth to incriminate themselves in the usual  

Way. They had confessed to intelligence with the  enemy (at that date, too, the enemy was Eurasia),   embezzlement of public funds, the murder  of various trusted Party members, intrigues   against the leadership of Big Brother which had  started long before the Revolution happened,  

And acts of sabotage causing the death of hundreds  of thousands of people. After confessing to these   things they had been pardoned, reinstated  in the Party, and given posts which were in   fact sinecures but which sounded important. All  three had written long, abject articles in ‘The  

Times’, analysing the reasons for their  defection and promising to make amends.  Some time after their release Winston had actually  seen all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe.   He remembered the sort of terrified fascination  with which he had watched them out of the corner  

Of his eye. They were men far older than himself,  relics of the ancient world, almost the last great   figures left over from the heroic days of  the Party. The glamour of the underground   struggle and the civil war still faintly clung  to them. He had the feeling, though already at  

That time facts and dates were growing blurry,  that he had known their names years earlier than   he had known that of Big Brother. But also they  were outlaws, enemies, untouchables, doomed with   absolute certainty to extinction within a year or  two. No one who had once fallen into the hands of  

The Thought Police ever escaped in the end. They  were corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave. There was no one at any of the tables nearest  to them. It was not wise even to be seen in the  

Neighbourhood of such people. They were sitting  in silence before glasses of the gin flavoured   with cloves which was the speciality of the  cafe. Of the three, it was Rutherford whose   appearance had most impressed Winston. Rutherford  had once been a famous caricaturist, whose brutal  

Cartoons had helped to inflame popular opinion  before and during the Revolution. Even now,   at long intervals, his cartoons were appearing  in The Times. They were simply an imitation of   his earlier manner, and curiously lifeless and  unconvincing. Always they were a rehashing of   the ancient themes—slum tenements, starving  children, street battles, capitalists in top  

Hats—even on the barricades the capitalists still  seemed to cling to their top hats an endless,   hopeless effort to get back into the past. He was  a monstrous man, with a mane of greasy grey hair,   his face pouched and seamed, with thick  negroid lips. At one time he must have  

Been immensely strong; now his great body  was sagging, sloping, bulging, falling away   in every direction. He seemed to be breaking up  before one’s eyes, like a mountain crumbling. It was the lonely hour of fifteen. Winston could  not now remember how he had come to be in the  

Cafe at such a time. The place was almost  empty. A tinny music was trickling from the   telescreens. The three men sat in their corner  almost motionless, never speaking. Uncommanded,   the waiter brought fresh glasses of gin. There  was a chessboard on the table beside them,  

With the pieces set out but no game started.  And then, for perhaps half a minute in all,   something happened to the telescreens.  The tune that they were playing changed,   and the tone of the music changed  too. There came into it—but it  

Was something hard to describe. It was a  peculiar, cracked, braying, jeering note:   in his mind Winston called it a yellow note. And  then a voice from the telescreen was singing: Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me:  There lie they, and here lie we Under the spreading chestnut tree.

The three men never stirred. But when Winston  glanced again at Rutherford’s ruinous face,   he saw that his eyes were full of tears.  And for the first time he noticed,   with a kind of inward shudder, and yet not  knowing AT WHAT he shuddered, that both  

Aaronson and Rutherford had broken noses. A little later all three were re-arrested.   It appeared that they had engaged in  fresh conspiracies from the very moment   of their release. At their second trial they  confessed to all their old crimes over again,  

With a whole string of new ones. They were  executed, and their fate was recorded in the   Party histories, a warning to posterity.  About five years after this, in 1973,   Winston was unrolling a wad of documents which  had just flopped out of the pneumatic tube on  

To his desk when he came on a fragment of paper  which had evidently been slipped in among the   others and then forgotten. The instant he had  flattened it out he saw its significance. It was   a half-page torn out of ‘The Times’ of about  ten years earlier—the top half of the page,  

So that it included the date—and it contained  a photograph of the delegates at some Party   function in New York. Prominent in the middle of  the group were Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford.   There was no mistaking them, in any case  their names were in the caption at the bottom. 

The point was that at both trials all three  men had confessed that on that date they had   been on Eurasian soil. They had flown from  a secret airfield in Canada to a rendezvous   somewhere in Siberia, and had conferred  with members of the Eurasian General Staff,  

To whom they had betrayed important military  secrets. The date had stuck in Winston’s memory   because it chanced to be midsummer day;  but the whole story must be on record in   countless other places as well. There was only one  possible conclusion: the confessions were lies.

Of course, this was not in itself a  discovery. Even at that time Winston   had not imagined that the people  who were wiped out in the purges had   actually committed the crimes that they were  accused of. But this was concrete evidence;  

It was a fragment of the abolished past, like  a fossil bone which turns up in the wrong   stratum and destroys a geological theory.  It was enough to blow the Party to atoms,   if in some way it could have been published  to the world and its significance made known.

He had gone straight on working. As soon as he  saw what the photograph was, and what it meant,   he had covered it up with another sheet  of paper. Luckily, when he unrolled it,   it had been upside-down from the  point of view of the telescreen.

He took his scribbling pad on his knee and  pushed back his chair so as to get as far   away from the telescreen as possible. To keep  your face expressionless was not difficult,   and even your breathing could be controlled,  with an effort: but you could not control the  

Beating of your heart, and the telescreen  was quite delicate enough to pick it up.   He let what he judged to be ten minutes go  by, tormented all the while by the fear that   some accident—a sudden draught blowing across  his desk, for instance—would betray him. Then,  

Without uncovering it again, he dropped the  photograph into the memory hole, along with   some other waste papers. Within another minute,  perhaps, it would have crumbled into ashes. That was ten—eleven years ago. Today, probably,  he would have kept that photograph. It was curious  

That the fact of having held it in his fingers  seemed to him to make a difference even now,   when the photograph itself, as  well as the event it recorded,   was only memory. Was the Party’s  hold upon the past less strong,  

He wondered, because a piece of evidence  which existed no longer HAD ONCE existed? But today, supposing that it could be  somehow resurrected from its ashes,   the photograph might not even be evidence.  Already, at the time when he made his discovery,  

Oceania was no longer at war with Eurasia, and it  must have been to the agents of Eastasia that the   three dead men had betrayed their country. Since  then there had been other changes—two, three,   he could not remember how many. Very likely the  confessions had been rewritten and rewritten until  

The original facts and dates no longer had the  smallest significance. The past not only changed,   but changed continuously. What most afflicted him  with the sense of nightmare was that he had never   clearly understood why the huge imposture was  undertaken. The immediate advantages of falsifying  

The past were obvious, but the ultimate motive was  mysterious. He took up his pen again and wrote: I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY. He wondered, as he had many times wondered  before, whether he himself was a lunatic.  

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of  one. At one time it had been a sign of madness   to believe that the earth goes round the sun;  today, to believe that the past is unalterable.   He might be ALONE in holding that belief, and  if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of  

Being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him:  the horror was that he might also be wrong.  He picked up the children’s history book and  looked at the portrait of Big Brother which formed   its frontispiece. The hypnotic eyes gazed into  his own. It was as though some huge force were  

Pressing down upon you—something that penetrated  inside your skull, battering against your brain,   frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading  you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses.   In the end the Party would announce that two and  two made five, and you would have to believe it.  

It was inevitable that they should make that  claim sooner or later: the logic of their   position demanded it. Not merely the validity of  experience, but the very existence of external   reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.  The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what  

Was terrifying was not that they would kill you  for thinking otherwise, but that they might be   right. For, after all, how do we know that two and  two make four? Or that the force of gravity works?  

Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past  and the external world exist only in the mind,   and if the mind itself is controllable what then? But no! His courage seemed suddenly to stiffen of   its own accord. The face of O’Brien, not called up  by any obvious association, had floated into his  

Mind. He knew, with more certainty than before,  that O’Brien was on his side. He was writing   the diary for O’Brien—TO O’Brien: it was like an  interminable letter which no one would ever read,   but which was addressed to a particular  person and took its colour from that fact.

The Party told you to reject the evidence  of your eyes and ears. It was their final,   most essential command. His heart sank as he  thought of the enormous power arrayed against him,   the ease with which any Party intellectual would  overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments  

Which he would not be able to understand, much  less answer. And yet he was in the right! They   were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the  silly, and the true had got to be defended.  

Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world  exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard,   water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards  the earth’s centre. With the feeling that he   was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was  setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two  plus two make four. If that is granted,   all else follows. Chapter 8. From somewhere at the bottom of a passage  the smell of roasting coffee — real coffee,   not Victory Coffee — came floating out into  the street. Winston paused involuntarily.  

For perhaps two seconds he was back in the  half-forgotten world of his childhood. Then   a door banged, seeming to cut off the smell  as abruptly as though it had been a sound. He had walked several kilometres over pavements,  and his varicose ulcer was throbbing. This was  

The second time in three weeks that he had missed  an evening at the Community Centre: a rash act,   since you could be certain that the number of your  attendances at the Centre was carefully checked.   In principle a Party member had no spare time,  and was never alone except in bed. It was assumed  

That when he was not working, eating, or sleeping  he would be taking part in some kind of communal   recreation: to do anything that suggested a taste  for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself,   was always slightly dangerous. There was a word  for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called,  

Meaning individualism and eccentricity. But  this evening as he came out of the Ministry   the balminess of the April air had tempted  him. The sky was a warmer blue than he had   seen it that year, and suddenly the long,  noisy evening at the Centre, the boring,  

Exhausting games, the lectures, the  creaking camaraderie oiled by gin,   had seemed intolerable. On impulse he  had turned away from the bus-stop and   wandered off into the labyrinth of London,  first south, then east, then north again,   losing himself among unknown streets and hardly  bothering in which direction he was going.

‘If there is hope,’ he had written in the diary,  ‘it lies in the proles.’ The words kept coming   back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a  palpable absurdity. He was somewhere in the vague,   brown-coloured slums to the north and east  of what had once been Saint Pancras Station.  

He was walking up a cobbled street of little  two-storey houses with battered doorways which   gave straight on the pavement and which were  somehow curiously suggestive of ratholes. There   were puddles of filthy water here and there among  the cobbles. In and out of the dark doorways, and  

Down narrow alley-ways that branched off on either  side, people swarmed in astonishing numbers—girls   in full bloom, with crudely lipsticked mouths,  and youths who chased the girls, and swollen   waddling women who showed you what the girls would  be like in ten years’ time, and old bent creatures  

Shuffling along on splayed feet, and ragged  barefooted children who played in the puddles and   then scattered at angry yells from their mothers.  Perhaps a quarter of the windows in the street   were broken and boarded up. Most of the people  paid no attention to Winston; a few eyed him  

With a sort of guarded curiosity. Two monstrous  women with brick-red forearms folded across their   aprons were talking outside a doorway. Winston  caught scraps of conversation as he approached. ‘”Yes,” I says to ‘er, “that’s all very  well,” I says. “But if you’d of been in  

My place you’d of done the same as what  I done. It’s easy to criticize,” I says,   “but you ain’t got the same  problems as what I got.”‘ ‘Ah,’ said the other, ‘that’s  jest it. That’s jest where it is.’

The strident voices stopped abruptly. The women  studied him in hostile silence as he went past.   But it was not hostility, exactly; merely  a kind of wariness, a momentary stiffening,   as at the passing of some unfamiliar animal. The  blue overalls of the Party could not be a common  

Sight in a street like this. Indeed, it was unwise  to be seen in such places, unless you had definite   business there. The patrols might stop you if you  happened to run into them. ‘May I see your papers,  

Comrade? What are you doing here? What time  did you leave work? Is this your usual way   home?’—and so on and so forth. Not that there was  any rule against walking home by an unusual route:   but it was enough to draw attention to  you if the Thought Police heard about it.

Suddenly the whole street was in commotion.  There were yells of warning from all sides.   People were shooting into the doorways like  rabbits. A young woman leapt out of a doorway   a little ahead of Winston, grabbed up a tiny child  playing in a puddle, whipped her apron round it,  

And leapt back again, all in one movement. At  the same instant a man in a concertina-like   black suit, who had emerged from a side alley, ran  towards Winston, pointing excitedly to the sky. ‘Steamer!’ he yelled. ‘Look out,  guv’nor! Bang over’ead! Lay down quick!’ 

‘Steamer’ was a nickname which, for some reason,  the proles applied to rocket bombs. Winston   promptly flung himself on his face. The proles  were nearly always right when they gave you a   warning of this kind. They seemed to possess some  kind of instinct which told them several seconds  

In advance when a rocket was coming, although the  rockets supposedly travelled faster than sound.   Winston clasped his forearms above his head. There  was a roar that seemed to make the pavement heave;   a shower of light objects pattered on to his back.  When he stood up he found that he was covered with  

Fragments of glass from the nearest window. He walked on. The bomb had demolished a group   of houses 200 metres up the street. A  black plume of smoke hung in the sky,   and below it a cloud of plaster dust in which a  crowd was already forming around the ruins. There  

Was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement  ahead of him, and in the middle of it he could see   a bright red streak. When he got up to it he saw  that it was a human hand severed at the wrist.  

Apart from the bloody stump, the hand was so  completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast. He kicked the thing into the gutter, and then,  to avoid the crowd, turned down a side-street to   the right. Within three or four minutes he was  out of the area which the bomb had affected,  

And the sordid swarming life of the streets was  going on as though nothing had happened. It was   nearly twenty hours, and the drinking-shops which  the proles frequented (‘pubs’, they called them)   were choked with customers. From their grimy  swing doors, endlessly opening and shutting,  

There came forth a smell of urine, sawdust, and  sour beer. In an angle formed by a projecting   house-front three men were standing very close  together, the middle one of them holding a   folded-up newspaper which the other two were  studying over his shoulder. Even before he  

Was near enough to make out the expression on  their faces, Winston could see absorption in   every line of their bodies. It was obviously  some serious piece of news that they were   reading. He was a few paces away from them when  suddenly the group broke up and two of the men  

Were in violent altercation. For a moment  they seemed almost on the point of blows. ‘Can’t you bleeding well listen to what I say?   I tell you no number ending in seven  ain’t won for over fourteen months!’ ‘Yes, it ‘as, then!’

‘No, it ‘as not! Back ‘ome I got the ‘ole lot of  ’em for over two years wrote down on a piece of   paper. I takes ’em down reg’lar as the clock.  An’ I tell you, no number ending in seven…’ ‘Yes, a seven ‘AS won! I could pretty  near tell you the bleeding number.  

Four oh seven, it ended in. It were  in February—second week in February.’ ‘February your grandmother! I got it all down in  black and white. An’ I tell you, no number…’ ‘Oh, pack it in!’ said the third man. They were talking about the Lottery.  Winston looked back when he had gone  

Thirty metres. They were still arguing,  with vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery,   with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes,  was the one public event to which the proles   paid serious attention. It was probable that  there were some millions of proles for whom  

The Lottery was the principal if not the only  reason for remaining alive. It was their delight,   their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual  stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned,   even people who could barely read and write seemed  capable of intricate calculations and staggering  

Feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men  who made a living simply by selling systems,   forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had  nothing to do with the running of the Lottery,   which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty,  but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party  

Was aware) that the prizes were largely  imaginary. Only small sums were actually   paid out, the winners of the big prizes being  non-existent persons. In the absence of any real   intercommunication between one part of Oceania  and another, this was not difficult to arrange.

But if there was hope, it lay in the proles. You  had to cling on to that. When you put it in words   it sounded reasonable: it was when you looked at  the human beings passing you on the pavement that  

It became an act of faith. The street into which  he had turned ran downhill. He had a feeling that   he had been in this neighbourhood before, and that  there was a main thoroughfare not far away. From   somewhere ahead there came a din of shouting  voices. The street took a sharp turn and then  

Ended in a flight of steps which led down into  a sunken alley where a few stall-keepers were   selling tired-looking vegetables. At this moment  Winston remembered where he was. The alley led out   into the main street, and down the next turning,  not five minutes away, was the junk-shop where he  

Had bought the blank book which was now his diary.  And in a small stationer’s shop not far away he   had bought his penholder and his bottle of ink. He paused for a moment at the top of the steps.  

On the opposite side of the alley there was a  dingy little pub whose windows appeared to be   frosted over but in reality were merely coated  with dust. A very old man, bent but active,   with white moustaches that bristled forward like  those of a prawn, pushed open the swing door and  

Went in. As Winston stood watching, it occurred  to him that the old man, who must be eighty at   the least, had already been middle-aged when the  Revolution happened. He and a few others like   him were the last links that now existed with  the vanished world of capitalism. In the Party  

Itself there were not many people left whose ideas  had been formed before the Revolution. The older   generation had mostly been wiped out in the great  purges of the fifties and sixties, and the few who   survived had long ago been terrified into complete  intellectual surrender. If there was any one still  

Alive who could give you a truthful account of  conditions in the early part of the century,   it could only be a prole. Suddenly the passage  from the history book that he had copied into   his diary came back into Winston’s mind, and a  lunatic impulse took hold of him. He would go into  

The pub, he would scrape acquaintance with that  old man and question him. He would say to him:   ‘Tell me about your life when you were a boy.  What was it like in those days? Were things   better than they are now, or were they worse?’ Hurriedly, lest he should have time to become  

Frightened, he descended the steps and crossed the  narrow street. It was madness of course. As usual,   there was no definite rule against talking to  proles and frequenting their pubs, but it was   far too unusual an action to pass unnoticed. If  the patrols appeared he might plead an attack  

Of faintness, but it was not likely that they  would believe him. He pushed open the door,   and a hideous cheesy smell of sour beer hit  him in the face. As he entered the din of   voices dropped to about half its volume. Behind  his back he could feel everyone eyeing his blue  

Overalls. A game of darts which was going on at  the other end of the room interrupted itself for   perhaps as much as thirty seconds. The old man  whom he had followed was standing at the bar,   having some kind of altercation with the barman,  a large, stout, hook-nosed young man with enormous  

Forearms. A knot of others, standing round with  glasses in their hands, were watching the scene. ‘I arst you civil enough, didn’t I?’ said  the old man, straightening his shoulders   pugnaciously. ‘You telling me you ain’t got  a pint mug in the ‘ole bleeding boozer?’

‘And what in hell’s name IS  a pint?’ said the barman,   leaning forward with the tips  of his fingers on the counter. ”Ark at ‘im! Calls ‘isself a barman and  don’t know what a pint is! Why, a pint’s  

The ‘alf of a quart, and there’s four quarts to  the gallon. ‘Ave to teach you the A, B, C next.’ ‘Never heard of ’em,’ said the  barman shortly. ‘Litre and half   litre—that’s all we serve. There’s the  glasses on the shelf in front of you.’

‘I likes a pint,’ persisted the old  man. ‘You could ‘a drawed me off a   pint easy enough. We didn’t ‘ave these  bleeding litres when I was a young man.’ ‘When you were a young man we were all  living in the treetops,’ said the barman,   with a glance at the other customers.

There was a shout of laughter, and the uneasiness  caused by Winston’s entry seemed to disappear.   The old man’s white-stubbled face had flushed  pink. He turned away, muttering to himself,   and bumped into Winston. Winston  caught him gently by the arm. ‘May I offer you a drink?’ he said.

‘You’re a gent,’ said the other, straightening  his shoulders again. He appeared not to have   noticed Winston’s blue overalls. ‘Pint!’ he added  aggressively to the barman. ‘Pint of wallop.’ The barman swished two half-litres of dark-brown  beer into thick glasses which he had rinsed in  

A bucket under the counter. Beer was the only  drink you could get in prole pubs. The proles   were supposed not to drink gin, though in practice  they could get hold of it easily enough. The game  

Of darts was in full swing again, and the knot  of men at the bar had begun talking about lottery   tickets. Winston’s presence was forgotten for a  moment. There was a deal table under the window   where he and the old man could talk without fear  of being overheard. It was horribly dangerous, but  

At any rate there was no telescreen in the room,  a point he had made sure of as soon as he came in. ”E could ‘a drawed me off a pint,’  grumbled the old man as he settled   down behind a glass. ‘A ‘alf litre  ain’t enough. It don’t satisfy. And  

A ‘ole litre’s too much. It starts my  bladder running. Let alone the price.’ ‘You must have seen great changes since you  were a young man,’ said Winston tentatively. The old man’s pale blue eyes moved from the darts  board to the bar, and from the bar to the door of  

The Gents, as though it were in the bar-room  that he expected the changes to have occurred.  ‘The beer was better,’ he said finally.  ‘And cheaper! When I was a young man,   mild beer—wallop we used to  call it—was fourpence a pint.   That was before the war, of course.’ ‘Which war was that?’ said Winston.

‘It’s all wars,’ said the old man  vaguely. He took up his glass,   and his shoulders straightened again.  ”Ere’s wishing you the very best of ‘ealth!’ In his lean throat the sharp-pointed Adam’s apple  made a surprisingly rapid up-and-down movement,  

And the beer vanished. Winston went to the  bar and came back with two more half-litres.   The old man appeared to have forgotten his  prejudice against drinking a full litre. ‘You are very much older than I am,’ said Winston.  ‘You must have been a grown man before I was born.  

You can remember what it was like in the old  days, before the Revolution. People of my age   don’t really know anything about those times.  We can only read about them in books, and what   it says in the books may not be true. I should  like your opinion on that. The history books  

Say that life before the Revolution was completely  different from what it is now. There was the most   terrible oppression, injustice, poverty worse  than anything we can imagine. Here in London,   the great mass of the people never had enough to  eat from birth to death. Half of them hadn’t even  

Boots on their feet. They worked twelve  hours a day, they left school at nine,   they slept ten in a room. And at the  same time there were a very few people,   only a few thousands—the capitalists, they were  called—who were rich and powerful. They owned  

Everything that there was to own. They lived in  great gorgeous houses with thirty servants, they   rode about in motor-cars and four-horse carriages,  they drank champagne, they wore top hats…’ The old man brightened suddenly. ‘Top ‘ats!’ he said. ‘Funny you  should mention ’em. The same thing  

Come into my ‘ead only yesterday,  I dono why. I was jest thinking,   I ain’t seen a top ‘at in years. Gorn right  out, they ‘ave. The last time I wore one was   at my sister-in-law’s funeral. And that  was—well, I couldn’t give you the date,  

But it must’a been fifty years ago. Of course it  was only ‘ired for the occasion, you understand.’ ‘It isn’t very important about the top  hats,’ said Winston patiently. ‘The point is,   these capitalists—they and a few lawyers and  priests and so forth who lived on them—were  

The lords of the earth. Everything existed  for their benefit. You—the ordinary people,   the workers—were their slaves. They could do  what they liked with you. They could ship you   off to Canada like cattle. They could sleep  with your daughters if they chose. They could  

Order you to be flogged with something called  a cat-o’-nine tails. You had to take your cap   off when you passed them. Every capitalist  went about with a gang of lackeys who…’ The old man brightened again. ‘Lackeys!’ he said. ‘Now there’s a word I ain’t  ‘eard since ever so long. Lackeys! That reg’lar  

Takes me back, that does. I recollect—oh, donkey’s  years ago—I used to sometimes go to ‘Yde Park of   a Sunday afternoon to ‘ear the blokes making  speeches. Salvation Army, Roman Catholics,   Jews, Indians—all sorts there was. And there was  one bloke—well, I couldn’t give you ‘is name,  

But a real powerful speaker ‘e was. ‘E didn’t  ‘alf give it ’em! “Lackeys!” ‘e says, “lackeys   of the bourgeoisie! Flunkies of the ruling class!”  Parasites—that was another of them. And ‘yenas—’e   definitely called ’em ‘yenas. Of course ‘e was  referring to the Labour Party, you understand.’

Winston had the feeling that they  were talking at cross-purposes. ‘What I really wanted to know was  this,’ he said. ‘Do you feel that   you have more freedom now than you  had in those days? Are you treated   more like a human being? In the old days,  the rich people, the people at the top…’

‘The ‘Ouse of Lords,’ put in  the old man reminiscently. ‘The House of Lords, if you like. What I  am asking is, were these people able to   treat you as an inferior, simply because they  were rich and you were poor? Is it a fact,  

For instance, that you had to call them “Sir”  and take off your cap when you passed them?’ The old man appeared to think deeply. He drank  off about a quarter of his beer before answering. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They liked you to touch  your cap to ’em. It showed respect,  

Like. I didn’t agree with it, myself, but I  done it often enough. Had to, as you might say.’ ‘And was it usual—I’m only quoting what  I’ve read in history books—was it usual for   these people and their servants to push  you off the pavement into the gutter?’ 

‘One of ’em pushed me once,’ said the old man.  ‘I recollect it as if it was yesterday. It was   Boat Race night—terribly rowdy they used to  get on Boat Race night—and I bumps into a   young bloke on Shaftesbury Avenue. Quite a gent,  ‘e was—dress shirt, top ‘at, black overcoat. ‘E  

Was kind of zig-zagging across the pavement,  and I bumps into ‘im accidental-like. ‘E says,   “Why can’t you look where you’re going?”  ‘e says. I say, “Ju think you’ve bought   the bleeding pavement?” ‘E says, “I’ll twist your  bloody ‘ead off if you get fresh with me.” I says,  

“You’re drunk. I’ll give you in charge in ‘alf  a minute,” I says. An’ if you’ll believe me,   ‘e puts ‘is ‘and on my chest and gives me a  shove as pretty near sent me under the wheels  

Of a bus. Well, I was young in them days, and  I was going to ‘ave fetched ‘im one, only…’  A sense of helplessness took hold of Winston. The  old man’s memory was nothing but a rubbish-heap   of details. One could question him all day without  getting any real information. The party histories  

Might still be true, after a fashion: they might  even be completely true. He made a last attempt. ‘Perhaps I have not made myself clear,’ he said.  ‘What I’m trying to say is this. You have been   alive a very long time; you lived half your life  before the Revolution. In 1925, for instance,  

You were already grown up. Would you say from  what you can remember, that life in 1925 was   better than it is now, or worse? If you could  choose, would you prefer to live then or now?’ The old man looked meditatively at the  darts board. He finished up his beer,  

More slowly than before. When he spoke  it was with a tolerant philosophical air,   as though the beer had mellowed him. ‘I know what you expect me to say,’ he said.  ‘You expect me to say as I’d sooner be young  

Again. Most people’d say they’d sooner be  young, if you arst ’em. You got your ‘ealth   and strength when you’re young. When you get  to my time of life you ain’t never well. I   suffer something wicked from my feet, and my  bladder’s jest terrible. Six and seven times  

A night it ‘as me out of bed. On the other  ‘and, there’s great advantages in being a   old man. You ain’t got the same worries. No  truck with women, and that’s a great thing. I   ain’t ‘ad a woman for near on thirty year, if  you’d credit it. Nor wanted to, what’s more.’

Winston sat back against the window-sill. It was  no use going on. He was about to buy some more   beer when the old man suddenly got up and shuffled  rapidly into the stinking urinal at the side of  

The room. The extra half-litre was already working  on him. Winston sat for a minute or two gazing at   his empty glass, and hardly noticed when his  feet carried him out into the street again.   Within twenty years at the most, he reflected,  the huge and simple question, ‘Was life better  

Before the Revolution than it is now?’ would have  ceased once and for all to be answerable. But in   effect it was unanswerable even now, since the few  scattered survivors from the ancient world were   incapable of comparing one age with another.  They remembered a million useless things, a  

Quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle  pump, the expression on a long-dead sister’s face,   the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy  years ago: but all the relevant facts were   outside the range of their vision. They were like  the ant, which can see small objects but not large  

Ones. And when memory failed and written records  were falsified—when that happened, the claim of   the Party to have improved the conditions of  human life had got to be accepted, because   there did not exist, and never again could exist,  any standard against which it could be tested.

At this moment his train of thought  stopped abruptly. He halted and looked   up. He was in a narrow street,  with a few dark little shops,   interspersed among dwelling-houses.  Immediately above his head there hung   three discoloured metal balls which looked as  if they had once been gilded. He seemed to know  

The place. Of course! He was standing outside  the junk-shop where he had bought the diary. A twinge of fear went through him. It had been  a sufficiently rash act to buy the book in the   beginning, and he had sworn never to come  near the place again. And yet the instant  

That he allowed his thoughts to wander, his feet  had brought him back here of their own accord.   It was precisely against suicidal impulses of  this kind that he had hoped to guard himself   by opening the diary. At the same time he noticed  that although it was nearly twenty-one hours the  

Shop was still open. With the feeling that he  would be less conspicuous inside than hanging   about on the pavement, he stepped through the  doorway. If questioned, he could plausibly   say that he was trying to buy razor blades. The proprietor had just lighted a hanging oil  

Lamp which gave off an unclean but friendly smell.  He was a man of perhaps sixty, frail and bowed,   with a long, benevolent nose, and mild eyes  distorted by thick spectacles. His hair was   almost white, but his eyebrows were bushy  and still black. His spectacles, his gentle,  

Fussy movements, and the fact that he was wearing  an aged jacket of black velvet, gave him a vague   air of intellectuality, as though he had been some  kind of literary man, or perhaps a musician. His   voice was soft, as though faded, and his accent  less debased than that of the majority of proles. 

‘I recognized you on the pavement,’ he  said immediately. ‘You’re the gentleman   that bought the young lady’s keepsake  album. That was a beautiful bit of paper,   that was. Cream-laid, it used to be called.  There’s been no paper like that made for—oh,  

I dare say fifty years.’ He peered at  Winston over the top of his spectacles.   ‘Is there anything special I can do for  you? Or did you just want to look round?’ ‘I was passing,’ said Winston vaguely. ‘I just  looked in. I don’t want anything in particular.’

‘It’s just as well,’ said the other, ‘because I  don’t suppose I could have satisfied you.’ He made   an apologetic gesture with his softpalmed  hand. ‘You see how it is; an empty shop,   you might say. Between you and me, the antique  trade’s just about finished. No demand any longer,  

And no stock either. Furniture, china, glass  it’s all been broken up by degrees. And of   course the metal stuff’s mostly been melted down.  I haven’t seen a brass candlestick in years.’ The tiny interior of the shop was in fact  uncomfortably full, but there was almost nothing  

In it of the slightest value. The floorspace was  very restricted, because all round the walls were   stacked innumerable dusty picture-frames. In  the window there were trays of nuts and bolts,   worn-out chisels, penknives with broken blades,  tarnished watches that did not even pretend to be  

In going order, and other miscellaneous rubbish.  Only on a small table in the corner was there a   litter of odds and ends—lacquered snuffboxes,  agate brooches, and the like—which looked as   though they might include something interesting.  As Winston wandered towards the table his eye was  

Caught by a round, smooth thing that gleamed  softly in the lamplight, and he picked it up. It was a heavy lump of glass, curved  on one side, flat on the other,   making almost a hemisphere. There was  a peculiar softness, as of rainwater,  

In both the colour and the texture of the glass.  At the heart of it, magnified by the curved   surface, there was a strange, pink, convoluted  object that recalled a rose or a sea anemone. ‘What is it?’ said Winston, fascinated. ‘That’s coral, that is,’ said the  old man. ‘It must have come from  

The Indian Ocean. They used to  kind of embed it in the glass.   That wasn’t made less than a hundred  years ago. More, by the look of it.’ ‘It’s a beautiful thing,’ said Winston. ‘It is a beautiful thing,’ said the other  appreciatively. ‘But there’s not many that’d  

Say so nowadays.’ He coughed. ‘Now, if  it so happened that you wanted to buy it,   that’d cost you four dollars. I can  remember when a thing like that would   have fetched eight pounds, and eight pounds  was—well, I can’t work it out, but it was  

A lot of money. But who cares about genuine  antiques nowadays—even the few that’s left?’ Winston immediately paid over the four  dollars and slid the coveted thing into   his pocket. What appealed to him about it was  not so much its beauty as the air it seemed  

To possess of belonging to an age quite  different from the present one. The soft,   rainwatery glass was not like any  glass that he had ever seen. The   thing was doubly attractive because of its  apparent uselessness, though he could guess  

That it must once have been intended as a  paperweight. It was very heavy in his pocket,   but fortunately it did not make much of a bulge.  It was a queer thing, even a compromising thing,   for a Party member to have in his possession.  Anything old, and for that matter anything  

Beautiful, was always vaguely suspect. The old  man had grown noticeably more cheerful after   receiving the four dollars. Winston realized  that he would have accepted three or even two. ‘There’s another room upstairs that you might  care to take a look at,’ he said. ‘There’s not  

Much in it. Just a few pieces. We’ll do  with a light if we’re going upstairs.’  He lit another lamp, and, with bowed back, led the  way slowly up the steep and worn stairs and along  

A tiny passage, into a room which did not give  on the street but looked out on a cobbled yard   and a forest of chimney-pots. Winston noticed  that the furniture was still arranged as though   the room were meant to be lived in. There was  a strip of carpet on the floor, a picture or  

Two on the walls, and a deep, slatternly arm-chair  drawn up to the fireplace. An old-fashioned glass   clock with a twelve-hour face was ticking  away on the mantelpiece. Under the window,   and occupying nearly a quarter of the room, was  an enormous bed with the mattress still on it. 

‘We lived here till my wife died,’ said the  old man half apologetically. ‘I’m selling the   furniture off by little and little. Now that’s  a beautiful mahogany bed, or at least it would   be if you could get the bugs out of it. But I  dare say you’d find it a little bit cumbersome.’

He was holding the lamp high up,  so as to illuminate the whole room,   and in the warm dim light the place looked  curiously inviting. The thought flitted through   Winston’s mind that it would probably be quite  easy to rent the room for a few dollars a week,  

If he dared to take the risk. It was a wild,  impossible notion, to be abandoned as soon   as thought of; but the room had awakened in  him a sort of nostalgia, a sort of ancestral  

Memory. It seemed to him that he knew exactly  what it felt like to sit in a room like this,   in an arm-chair beside an open fire with your  feet in the fender and a kettle on the hob;   utterly alone, utterly secure, with nobody  watching you, no voice pursuing you,  

No sound except the singing of the kettle  and the friendly ticking of the clock. ‘There’s no telescreen!’ he  could not help murmuring. ‘Ah,’ said the old man, ‘I never had one  of those things. Too expensive. And I  

Never seemed to feel the need of it, somehow.  Now that’s a nice gateleg table in the corner   there. Though of course you’d have to put new  hinges on it if you wanted to use the flaps.’ There was a small bookcase in the other corner,  and Winston had already gravitated towards it. It  

Contained nothing but rubbish. The hunting-down  and destruction of books had been done with the   same thoroughness in the prole quarters as  everywhere else. It was very unlikely that   there existed anywhere in Oceania a copy of a  book printed earlier than 1960. The old man,  

Still carrying the lamp, was standing  in front of a picture in a rosewood   frame which hung on the other side  of the fireplace, opposite the bed. ‘Now, if you happen to be interested in  old prints at all…’ he began delicately.

Winston came across to examine the picture. It  was a steel engraving of an oval building with   rectangular windows, and a small tower in front.  There was a railing running round the building,   and at the rear end there was what appeared  to be a statue. Winston gazed at it for some  

Moments. It seemed vaguely familiar,  though he did not remember the statue. ‘The frame’s fixed to the wall,’ said the old  man, ‘but I could unscrew it for you, I dare say.’ ‘I know that building,’ said Winston finally.   ‘It’s a ruin now. It’s in the middle of  the street outside the Palace of Justice.’

‘That’s right. Outside the Law Courts. It  was bombed in—oh, many years ago. It was a   church at one time, Saint Clement Danes,  its name was.’ He smiled apologetically,   as though conscious of saying  something slightly ridiculous,   and added: ‘Oranges and lemons,  say the bells of Saint Clement’s!’ ‘What’s that?’ said Winston.

‘Oh—”Oranges and lemons, say the bells of  Saint Clement’s.” That was a rhyme we had   when I was a little boy. How it goes on I  don’t remember, but I do know it ended up,   “Here comes a candle to light you to bed, Here  comes a chopper to chop off your head.” It was  

A kind of a dance. They held out their arms  for you to pass under, and when they came to   “Here comes a chopper to chop off your head” they  brought their arms down and caught you. It was   just names of churches. All the London churches  were in it—all the principal ones, that is.’

Winston wondered vaguely to what century the  church belonged. It was always difficult to   determine the age of a London building. Anything  large and impressive, if it was reasonably new   in appearance, was automatically claimed  as having been built since the Revolution,  

While anything that was obviously of earlier date  was ascribed to some dim period called the Middle   Ages. The centuries of capitalism were held to  have produced nothing of any value. One could   not learn history from architecture any more  than one could learn it from books. Statues,  

Inscriptions, memorial stones, the  names of streets—anything that might   throw light upon the past had  been systematically altered. ‘I never knew it had been a church,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of them left, really,’ said the old  man, ‘though they’ve been put to other uses. Now,  

How did that rhyme go? Ah! I’ve got it! “Oranges and lemons, say the bells of Saint   Clement’s,You owe me three farthings,  say the bells of Saint Martin’s…” there, now, that’s as far  as I can get. A farthing,   that was a small copper coin,  looked something like a cent.’

‘Where was Saint Martin’s?’ said Winston. ‘Saint Martin’s? That’s still standing. It’s in  Victory Square, alongside the picture gallery. A   building with a kind of a triangular porch and  pillars in front, and a big flight of steps.’ Winston knew the place well. It  was a museum used for propaganda  

Displays of various kinds—scale models  of rocket bombs and Floating Fortresses,   waxwork tableaux illustrating  enemy atrocities, and the like. ‘Saint Martin’s-in-the-Fields it used  to be called,’ supplemented the old man,   ‘though I don’t recollect any  fields anywhere in those parts.’

Winston did not buy the picture. It would have  been an even more incongruous possession than the   glass paperweight, and impossible to carry home,  unless it were taken out of its frame. But he   lingered for some minutes more, talking to the old  man, whose name, he discovered, was not Weeks—as  

One might have gathered from the inscription over  the shop-front—but Charrington. Mr Charrington,   it seemed, was a widower aged sixty-three and had  inhabited this shop for thirty years. Throughout   that time he had been intending to alter the name  over the window, but had never quite got to the  

Point of doing it. All the while that they were  talking the half-remembered rhyme kept running   through Winston’s head. Oranges and lemons say  the bells of Saint Clement’s, You owe me three   farthings, say the bells of Saint Martin’s! It was  curious, but when you said it to yourself you had  

The illusion of actually hearing bells, the bells  of a lost London that still existed somewhere or   other, disguised and forgotten. From one ghostly  steeple after another he seemed to hear them   pealing forth. Yet so far as he could remember he  had never in real life heard church bells ringing.

He got away from Mr Charrington  and went down the stairs alone,   so as not to let the old man see him reconnoitring  the street before stepping out of the door. He had   already made up his mind that after a suitable  interval—a month, say—he would take the risk  

Of visiting the shop again. It was perhaps not  more dangerous than shirking an evening at the   Centre. The serious piece of folly had been  to come back here in the first place, after   buying the diary and without knowing whether the  proprietor of the shop could be trusted. However!

Yes, he thought again, he would come  back. He would buy further scraps of   beautiful rubbish. He would buy the engraving of  Saint Clement Danes, take it out of its frame,   and carry it home concealed under the jacket  of his overalls. He would drag the rest of  

That poem out of Mr Charrington’s memory.  Even the lunatic project of renting the   room upstairs flashed momentarily through  his mind again. For perhaps five seconds   exaltation made him careless, and he stepped  out on to the pavement without so much as a  

Preliminary glance through the window. He had  even started humming to an improvised tune Oranges and lemons, say the  bells of Saint Clement’s.  You owe me three farthings, say the… Suddenly his heart seemed to turn to ice and his  bowels to water. A figure in blue overalls was  

Coming down the pavement, not ten metres away.  It was the girl from the Fiction Department,   the girl with dark hair. The light was failing,  but there was no difficulty in recognizing her.   She looked him straight in the face, then walked  quickly on as though she had not seen him.

For a few seconds Winston was too paralysed to  move. Then he turned to the right and walked   heavily away, not noticing for the moment that  he was going in the wrong direction. At any rate,   one question was settled. There was no doubting  any longer that the girl was spying on him. She  

Must have followed him here, because it was not  credible that by pure chance she should have   happened to be walking on the same evening up  the same obscure backstreet, kilometres distant   from any quarter where Party members lived. It  was too great a coincidence. Whether she was  

Really an agent of the Thought Police, or simply  an amateur spy actuated by officiousness, hardly   mattered. It was enough that she was watching him.  Probably she had seen him go into the pub as well.

It was an effort to walk. The lump of glass in  his pocket banged against his thigh at each step,   and he was half minded to take it out and  throw it away. The worst thing was the pain  

In his belly. For a couple of minutes he had  the feeling that he would die if he did not   reach a lavatory soon. But there would be no  public lavatories in a quarter like this. Then   the spasm passed, leaving a dull ache behind. The street was a blind alley. Winston halted,  

Stood for several seconds wondering vaguely what  to do, then turned round and began to retrace   his steps. As he turned it occurred to him that  the girl had only passed him three minutes ago   and that by running he could probably catch  up with her. He could keep on her track till  

They were in some quiet place, and then smash  her skull in with a cobblestone. The piece of   glass in his pocket would be heavy enough for  the job. But he abandoned the idea immediately,   because even the thought of making any physical  effort was unbearable. He could not run,  

He could not strike a blow. Besides, she was  young and lusty and would defend herself. He   thought also of hurrying to the Community Centre  and staying there till the place closed, so as to   establish a partial alibi for the evening. But  that too was impossible. A deadly lassitude had  

Taken hold of him. All he wanted was to get  home quickly and then sit down and be quiet.  It was after twenty-two hours when he  got back to the flat. The lights would   be switched off at the main at twenty-three  thirty. He went into the kitchen and swallowed  

Nearly a teacupful of Victory Gin. Then he  went to the table in the alcove, sat down,   and took the diary out of the drawer. But he did  not open it at once. From the telescreen a brassy   female voice was squalling a patriotic song. He  sat staring at the marbled cover of the book,  

Trying without success to shut the  voice out of his consciousness. It was at night that they came for you, always  at night. The proper thing was to kill yourself   before they got you. Undoubtedly some people  did so. Many of the disappearances were actually  

Suicides. But it needed desperate courage  to kill yourself in a world where firearms,   or any quick and certain poison, were  completely unprocurable. He thought with a   kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness  of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body  

Which always freezes into inertia at exactly the  moment when a special effort is needed. He might   have silenced the dark-haired girl if only he had  acted quickly enough: but precisely because of the   extremity of his danger he had lost the power to  act. It struck him that in moments of crisis one  

Is never fighting against an external enemy,  but always against one’s own body. Even now,   in spite of the gin, the dull ache in his  belly made consecutive thought impossible.   And it is the same, he perceived, in all seemingly  heroic or tragic situations. On the battlefield,  

In the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the  issues that you are fighting for are always   forgotten, because the body swells up until  it fills the universe, and even when you are   not paralysed by fright or screaming with  pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle  

Against hunger or cold or sleeplessness,  against a sour stomach or an aching tooth. He opened the diary. It was important to write  something down. The woman on the telescreen   had started a new song. Her voice seemed to  stick into his brain like jagged splinters of  

Glass. He tried to think of O’Brien, for  whom, or to whom, the diary was written,   but instead he began thinking of the things  that would happen to him after the Thought   Police took him away. It would not matter if  they killed you at once. To be killed was what  

You expected. But before death (nobody spoke  of such things, yet everybody knew of them)   there was the routine of confession that had to  be gone through: the grovelling on the floor and   screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones,  the smashed teeth and bloody clots of hair.

Why did you have to endure it, since the  end was always the same? Why was it not   possible to cut a few days or weeks out of  your life? Nobody ever escaped detection,   and nobody ever failed to confess. When  once you had succumbed to thoughtcrime  

It was certain that by a given date you  would be dead. Why then did that horror,   which altered nothing, have to  lie embedded in future time? He tried with a little more success than before  to summon up the image of O’Brien. ‘We shall  

Meet in the place where there is no darkness,’  O’Brien had said to him. He knew what it meant,   or thought he knew. The place where there  is no darkness was the imagined future,   which one would never see, but which, by  foreknowledge, one could mystically share in.  

But with the voice from the telescreen nagging at  his ears he could not follow the train of thought   further. He put a cigarette in his mouth. Half  the tobacco promptly fell out on to his tongue,  

A bitter dust which was difficult to spit out  again. The face of Big Brother swam into his mind,   displacing that of O’Brien. Just as he had done  a few days earlier, he slid a coin out of his  

Pocket and looked at it. The face gazed up at  him, heavy, calm, protecting: but what kind   of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache?  Like a leaden knell the words came back at him: “War Is Peace.  Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength”  Part Two. Chapter 1.

It was the middle of the morning, and Winston  had left the cubicle to go to the lavatory. A solitary figure was coming towards him from the  other end of the long, brightly-lit corridor. It   was the girl with dark hair. Four days had gone  past since the evening when he had run into her  

Outside the junk-shop. As she came nearer  he saw that her right arm was in a sling,   not noticeable at a distance because it was of  the same colour as her overalls. Probably she   had crushed her hand while swinging round  one of the big kaleidoscopes on which the  

Plots of novels were ‘roughed in’. It was a  common accident in the Fiction Department. They were perhaps four metres apart when  the girl stumbled and fell almost flat on   her face. A sharp cry of pain was wrung out of  her. She must have fallen right on the injured  

Arm. Winston stopped short. The girl had  risen to her knees. Her face had turned a   milky yellow colour against which her mouth stood  out redder than ever. Her eyes were fixed on his,   with an appealing expression that  looked more like fear than pain.

A curious emotion stirred in Winston’s heart.  In front of him was an enemy who was trying to   kill him: in front of him, also, was a human  creature, in pain and perhaps with a broken   bone. Already he had instinctively started  forward to help her. In the moment when he  

Had seen her fall on the bandaged arm, it had  been as though he felt the pain in his own body. ‘You’re hurt?’ he said. ‘It’s nothing. My arm. It’ll  be all right in a second.’ She spoke as though her heart were fluttering.  She had certainly turned very pale. ‘You haven’t broken anything?’

‘No, I’m all right. It hurt  for a moment, that’s all.’ She held out her free hand to him,   and he helped her up. She had regained some  of her colour, and appeared very much better. ‘It’s nothing,’ she repeated shortly. ‘I only  gave my wrist a bit of a bang. Thanks, comrade!’

And with that she walked on in the direction in  which she had been going, as briskly as though   it had really been nothing. The whole incident  could not have taken as much as half a minute. Not  

To let one’s feelings appear in one’s face was a  habit that had acquired the status of an instinct,   and in any case they had been standing  straight in front of a telescreen when the   thing happened. Nevertheless it had been very  difficult not to betray a momentary surprise,  

For in the two or three seconds while he was  helping her up the girl had slipped something   into his hand. There was no question that she had  done it intentionally. It was something small and   flat. As he passed through the lavatory  door he transferred it to his pocket and  

Felt it with the tips of his fingers. It  was a scrap of paper folded into a square. While he stood at the urinal he  managed, with a little more fingering,   to get it unfolded. Obviously there must  be a message of some kind written on it.  

For a moment he was tempted to take it  into one of the water-closets and read   it at once. But that would be shocking  folly, as he well knew. There was no   place where you could be more certain that  the telescreens were watched continuously.

He went back to his cubicle, sat down, threw the  fragment of paper casually among the other papers   on the desk, put on his spectacles and hitched  the speakwrite towards him. ‘Five minutes,’   he told himself, ‘five minutes at the very  least!’ His heart bumped in his breast with  

Frightening loudness. Fortunately the piece  of work he was engaged on was mere routine,   the rectification of a long list of  figures, not needing close attention. Whatever was written on the paper, it must have  some kind of political meaning. So far as he  

Could see there were two possibilities. One,  much the more likely, was that the girl was   an agent of the Thought Police, just as he had  feared. He did not know why the Thought Police   should choose to deliver their messages in such  a fashion, but perhaps they had their reasons.  

The thing that was written on the paper might be  a threat, a summons, an order to commit suicide,   a trap of some description. But there was another,  wilder possibility that kept raising its head,   though he tried vainly to suppress it. This was,  that the message did not come from the Thought  

Police at all, but from some kind of underground  organization. Perhaps the Brotherhood existed   after all! Perhaps the girl was part of it! No  doubt the idea was absurd, but it had sprung into   his mind in the very instant of feeling the scrap  of paper in his hand. It was not till a couple  

Of minutes later that the other, more probable  explanation had occurred to him. And even now,   though his intellect told him that the message  probably meant death—still, that was not what   he believed, and the unreasonable hope persisted,  and his heart banged, and it was with difficulty  

That he kept his voice from trembling as he  murmured his figures into the speakwrite.  He rolled up the completed bundle of work and  slid it into the pneumatic tube. Eight minutes   had gone by. He re-adjusted his spectacles on  his nose, sighed, and drew the next batch of  

Work towards him, with the scrap of paper on top  of it. He flattened it out. On it was written,   in a large unformed handwriting: I Love You! For several seconds he was too stunned even to  throw the incriminating thing into the memory  

Hole. When he did so, although he knew very  well the danger of showing too much interest,   he could not resist reading it once again, just  to make sure that the words were really there. For the rest of the morning it was very difficult  to work. What was even worse than having to focus  

His mind on a series of niggling jobs  was the need to conceal his agitation   from the telescreen. He felt as though a fire were  burning in his belly. Lunch in the hot, crowded,   noise-filled canteen was torment. He had hoped to  be alone for a little while during the lunch hour,  

But as bad luck would have it the imbecile Parsons  flopped down beside him, the tang of his sweat   almost defeating the tinny smell of stew, and  kept up a stream of talk about the preparations   for Hate Week. He was particularly enthusiastic  about a papier-mache model of Big Brother’s head,  

Two metres wide, which was being made for the  occasion by his daughter’s troop of Spies. The   irritating thing was that in the racket of voices  Winston could hardly hear what Parsons was saying,   and was constantly having to ask for some  fatuous remark to be repeated. Just once he  

Caught a glimpse of the girl, at a table  with two other girls at the far end of   the room. She appeared not to have seen him,  and he did not look in that direction again. The afternoon was more bearable. Immediately  after lunch there arrived a delicate,  

Difficult piece of work which would take several  hours and necessitated putting everything else   aside. It consisted in falsifying a series  of production reports of two years ago,   in such a way as to cast discredit on  a prominent member of the Inner Party,  

Who was now under a cloud. This was the  kind of thing that Winston was good at,   and for more than two hours he succeeded in  shutting the girl out of his mind altogether.   Then the memory of her face came back, and  with it a raging, intolerable desire to be  

Alone. Until he could be alone it was impossible  to think this new development out. Tonight was   one of his nights at the Community Centre. He  wolfed another tasteless meal in the canteen,   hurried off to the Centre, took part in  the solemn foolery of a ‘discussion group’,  

Played two games of table tennis, swallowed  several glasses of gin, and sat for half an hour   through a lecture entitled ‘Ingsoc in relation  to chess’. His soul writhed with boredom, but for   once he had had no impulse to shirk his evening at  the Centre. At the sight of the words I LOVE YOU  

The desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and  the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid.   It was not till twenty-three hours, when he was  home and in bed—in the darkness, where you were   safe even from the telescreen so long as you kept  silent—that he was able to think continuously.

It was a physical problem that had to be solved:  how to get in touch with the girl and arrange   a meeting. He did not consider any longer the  possibility that she might be laying some kind of  

Trap for him. He knew that it was not so, because  of her unmistakable agitation when she handed him   the note. Obviously she had been frightened out  of her wits, as well she might be. Nor did the   idea of refusing her advances even cross his  mind. Only five nights ago he had contemplated  

Smashing her skull in with a cobblestone, but that  was of no importance. He thought of her naked,   youthful body, as he had seen it in his dream. He  had imagined her a fool like all the rest of them,  

Her head stuffed with lies and hatred, her  belly full of ice. A kind of fever seized   him at the thought that he might lose her, the  white youthful body might slip away from him!   What he feared more than anything else was  that she would simply change her mind if he  

Did not get in touch with her quickly. But the  physical difficulty of meeting was enormous.   It was like trying to make a move at chess when  you were already mated. Whichever way you turned,   the telescreen faced you. Actually, all  the possible ways of communicating with  

Her had occurred to him within five minutes of  reading the note; but now, with time to think,   he went over them one by one, as though  laying out a row of instruments on a table.  Obviously the kind of encounter that had happened  this morning could not be repeated. If she had  

Worked in the Records Department it might have  been comparatively simple, but he had only a very   dim idea whereabouts in the building the Fiction  Department lay, and he had no pretext for going   there. If he had known where she lived, and at  what time she left work, he could have contrived  

To meet her somewhere on her way home; but to  try to follow her home was not safe, because it   would mean loitering about outside the Ministry,  which was bound to be noticed. As for sending   a letter through the mails, it was out of the  question. By a routine that was not even secret,  

All letters were opened in transit. Actually, few  people ever wrote letters. For the messages that   it was occasionally necessary to send, there were  printed postcards with long lists of phrases, and   you struck out the ones that were inapplicable.  In any case he did not know the girl’s name,  

Let alone her address. Finally he decided that the  safest place was the canteen. If he could get her   at a table by herself, somewhere in the middle of  the room, not too near the telescreens, and with   a sufficient buzz of conversation all round—if  these conditions endured for, say, thirty seconds,  

It might be possible to exchange a few words. For a week after this, life was like a restless   dream. On the next day she did not appear  in the canteen until he was leaving it,   the whistle having already blown. Presumably she  had been changed on to a later shift. They passed  

Each other without a glance. On the day after  that she was in the canteen at the usual time,   but with three other girls and immediately under  a telescreen. Then for three dreadful days she did   not appear at all. His whole mind and body seemed  to be afflicted with an unbearable sensitivity,  

A sort of transparency, which made every movement,  every sound, every contact, every word that he had   to speak or listen to, an agony. Even in sleep  he could not altogether escape from her image.   He did not touch the diary during those days.  If there was any relief, it was in his work,  

In which he could sometimes forget himself for ten  minutes at a stretch. He had absolutely no clue as   to what had happened to her. There was no enquiry  he could make. She might have been vaporized,   she might have committed suicide, she might have  been transferred to the other end of Oceania:  

Worst and likeliest of all, she might simply  have changed her mind and decided to avoid him. The next day she reappeared. Her arm was out of  the sling and she had a band of sticking-plaster   round her wrist. The relief of seeing her was so  great that he could not resist staring directly  

At her for several seconds. On the following  day he very nearly succeeded in speaking to   her. When he came into the canteen she was  sitting at a table well out from the wall,   and was quite alone. It was early, and the place  was not very full. The queue edged forward till  

Winston was almost at the counter, then was  held up for two minutes because someone in   front was complaining that he had not received his  tablet of saccharine. But the girl was still alone   when Winston secured his tray and began to make  for her table. He walked casually towards her,  

His eyes searching for a place at some table  beyond her. She was perhaps three metres away   from him. Another two seconds would do it. Then a  voice behind him called, ‘Smith!’ He pretended not   to hear. ‘Smith!’ repeated the voice, more loudly.  It was no use. He turned round. A blond-headed,  

Silly-faced young man named Wilsher, whom he  barely knew, was inviting him with a smile to   a vacant place at his table. It was not safe to  refuse. After having been recognized, he could   not go and sit at a table with an unattended  girl. It was too noticeable. He sat down with  

A friendly smile. The silly blond face beamed  into his. Winston had a hallucination of himself   smashing a pick-axe right into the middle of it.  The girl’s table filled up a few minutes later.  But she must have seen him coming towards her, and  perhaps she would take the hint. Next day he took  

Care to arrive early. Surely enough, she was at  a table in about the same place, and again alone.   The person immediately ahead of him in the queue  was a small, swiftly-moving, beetle-like man with   a flat face and tiny, suspicious eyes. As Winston  turned away from the counter with his tray,  

He saw that the little man was making straight  for the girl’s table. His hopes sank again. There   was a vacant place at a table further away, but  something in the little man’s appearance suggested   that he would be sufficiently attentive to his  own comfort to choose the emptiest table. With  

Ice at his heart Winston followed. It was no use  unless he could get the girl alone. At this moment   there was a tremendous crash. The little man was  sprawling on all fours, his tray had gone flying,   two streams of soup and coffee were flowing  across the floor. He started to his feet with  

A malignant glance at Winston, whom he evidently  suspected of having tripped him up. But it was   all right. Five seconds later, with a thundering  heart, Winston was sitting at the girl’s table.  He did not look at her. He unpacked his tray  and promptly began eating. It was all-important  

To speak at once, before anyone else came,  but now a terrible fear had taken possession   of him. A week had gone by since she had first  approached him. She would have changed her mind,   she must have changed her mind! It was impossible  that this affair should end successfully;  

Such things did not happen in real life. He might  have flinched altogether from speaking if at this   moment he had not seen Ampleforth, the hairy-eared  poet, wandering limply round the room with a tray,   looking for a place to sit down. In his  vague way Ampleforth was attached to Winston,  

And would certainly sit down at his table if  he caught sight of him. There was perhaps a   minute in which to act. Both Winston and the  girl were eating steadily. The stuff they were   eating was a thin stew, actually a soup, of  haricot beans. In a low murmur Winston began  

Speaking. Neither of them looked up; steadily  they spooned the watery stuff into their mouths,   and between spoonfuls exchanged the few  necessary words in low expressionless voices. ‘What time do you leave work?’ ‘Eighteen-thirty.’ ‘Where can we meet?’ ‘Victory Square, near the monument.’ ‘It’s full of telescreens.’ ‘It doesn’t matter if there’s a crowd.’

‘Any signal?’ ‘No. Don’t come up to me until you see me among   a lot of people. And don’t look at  me. Just keep somewhere near me.’ ‘What time?’ ‘Nineteen hours.’ ‘All right.’ Ampleforth failed to see Winston and sat down  at another table. They did not speak again,  

And, so far as it was possible for two people  sitting on opposite sides of the same table,   they did not look at one another. The girl  finished her lunch quickly and made off,   while Winston stayed to smoke a cigarette.

Winston was in Victory Square before the appointed  time. He wandered round the base of the enormous   fluted column, at the top of which Big Brother’s  statue gazed southward towards the skies where   he had vanquished the Eurasian aeroplanes  (the Eastasian aeroplanes, it had been,  

A few years ago) in the Battle of Airstrip One. In  the street in front of it there was a statue of a   man on horseback which was supposed to represent  Oliver Cromwell. At five minutes past the hour the  

Girl had still not appeared. Again the terrible  fear seized upon Winston. She was not coming,   she had changed her mind! He walked slowly up  to the north side of the square and got a sort   of pale-coloured pleasure from identifying St  Martin’s Church, whose bells, when it had bells,  

Had chimed ‘You owe me three farthings.’ Then he  saw the girl standing at the base of the monument,   reading or pretending to read a poster which ran  spirally up the column. It was not safe to go   near her until some more people had accumulated.  There were telescreens all round the pediment. But  

At this moment there was a din of shouting and  a zoom of heavy vehicles from somewhere to the   left. Suddenly everyone seemed to be running  across the square. The girl nipped nimbly   round the lions at the base of the monument and  joined in the rush. Winston followed. As he ran,  

He gathered from some shouted remarks that  a convoy of Eurasian prisoners was passing.  Already a dense mass of people was blocking the  south side of the square. Winston, at normal times   the kind of person who gravitates to the outer  edge of any kind of scrimmage, shoved, butted,  

Squirmed his way forward into the heart of the  crowd. Soon he was within arm’s length of the   girl, but the way was blocked by an enormous  prole and an almost equally enormous woman,   presumably his wife, who seemed to form an  impenetrable wall of flesh. Winston wriggled  

Himself sideways, and with a violent lunge managed  to drive his shoulder between them. For a moment   it felt as though his entrails were being ground  to pulp between the two muscular hips, then he had   broken through, sweating a little. He was next  to the girl. They were shoulder to shoulder,  

Both staring fixedly in front of them. A long line of trucks, with   wooden-faced guards armed with sub-machine  guns standing upright in each corner,   was passing slowly down the street. In the trucks  little yellow men in shabby greenish uniforms were   squatting, jammed close together. Their sad,  Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides of  

The trucks utterly incurious. Occasionally when  a truck jolted there was a clank-clank of metal:   all the prisoners were wearing leg-irons.  Truck-load after truck-load of the sad faces   passed. Winston knew they were there but he saw  them only intermittently. The girl’s shoulder,  

And her arm right down to the elbow, were pressed  against his. Her cheek was almost near enough for   him to feel its warmth. She had immediately  taken charge of the situation, just as she had   done in the canteen. She began speaking in the  same expressionless voice as before, with lips  

Barely moving, a mere murmur easily drowned by  the din of voices and the rumbling of the trucks. ‘Can you hear me?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Can you get Sunday afternoon off?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Then listen carefully. You’ll have to  remember this. Go to Paddington Station——’ With a sort of military precision that  astonished him, she outlined the route  

That he was to follow. A half-hour railway  journey; turn left outside the station;   two kilometres along the road; a gate with  the top bar missing; a path across a field;   a grass-grown lane; a track between bushes;  a dead tree with moss on it. It was as though  

She had a map inside her head. ‘Can you  remember all that?’ she murmured finally. ‘Yes.’ ‘You turn left, then right, then left  again. And the gate’s got no top bar.’ ‘Yes. What time?’ ‘About fifteen. You may have to wait. I’ll get   there by another way. Are you  sure you remember everything?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Then get away from me as quick as you can.’ She need not have told him that. But for the  moment they could not extricate themselves from   the crowd. The trucks were still filing past, the  people still insatiably gaping. At the start there  

Had been a few boos and hisses, but it came  only from the Party members among the crowd,   and had soon stopped. The prevailing emotion was  simply curiosity. Foreigners, whether from Eurasia   or from Eastasia, were a kind of strange animal.  One literally never saw them except in the guise  

Of prisoners, and even as prisoners one never  got more than a momentary glimpse of them. Nor   did one know what became of them, apart from the  few who were hanged as war-criminals: the others   simply vanished, presumably into forced-labour  camps. The round Mogol faces had given way to  

Faces of a more European type, dirty, bearded  and exhausted. From over scrubby cheekbones eyes   looked into Winston’s, sometimes with strange  intensity, and flashed away again. The convoy   was drawing to an end. In the last truck he could  see an aged man, his face a mass of grizzled hair,  

Standing upright with wrists crossed in front  of him, as though he were used to having them   bound together. It was almost time for Winston  and the girl to part. But at the last moment,   while the crowd still hemmed them in, her hand  felt for his and gave it a fleeting squeeze.

It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it  seemed a long time that their hands were clasped   together. He had time to learn every detail  of her hand. He explored the long fingers,   the shapely nails, the work-hardened palm  with its row of callouses, the smooth flesh  

Under the wrist. Merely from feeling it he would  have known it by sight. In the same instant it   occurred to him that he did not know what colour  the girl’s eyes were. They were probably brown,  

But people with dark hair sometimes had blue eyes.  To turn his head and look at her would have been   inconceivable folly. With hands locked together,  invisible among the press of bodies, they stared   steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes  of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed  

Mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair. Chapter 2. Winston picked his way up the lane  through dappled light and shade,   stepping out into pools of gold wherever the  boughs parted. Under the trees to the left  

Of him the ground was misty with bluebells. The  air seemed to kiss one’s skin. It was the second   of May. From somewhere deeper in the heart  of the wood came the droning of ring-doves. He was a bit early. There had been no difficulties  about the journey, and the girl was so evidently  

Experienced that he was less frightened than he  would normally have been. Presumably she could   be trusted to find a safe place. In general  you could not assume that you were much safer   in the country than in London. There were no  telescreens, of course, but there was always  

The danger of concealed microphones by which your  voice might be picked up and recognized; besides,   it was not easy to make a journey by yourself  without attracting attention. For distances of   less than 100 kilometres it was not necessary to  get your passport endorsed, but sometimes there  

Were patrols hanging about the railway stations,  who examined the papers of any Party member they   found there and asked awkward questions. However,  no patrols had appeared, and on the walk from the   station he had made sure by cautious backward  glances that he was not being followed. The  

Train was full of proles, in holiday mood because  of the summery weather. The wooden-seated carriage   in which he travelled was filled to overflowing by  a single enormous family, ranging from a toothless   great-grandmother to a month-old baby, going  out to spend an afternoon with ‘in-laws’ in the  

Country, and, as they freely explained to Winston,  to get hold of a little black-market butter. The lane widened, and in a minute he  came to the footpath she had told him of,   a mere cattle-track which plunged  between the bushes. He had no watch,  

But it could not be fifteen yet. The bluebells  were so thick underfoot that it was impossible   not to tread on them. He knelt down and began  picking some partly to pass the time away,  

But also from a vague idea that he would like to  have a bunch of flowers to offer to the girl when   they met. He had got together a big bunch and was  smelling their faint sickly scent when a sound at  

His back froze him, the unmistakable crackle of  a foot on twigs. He went on picking bluebells.   It was the best thing to do. It might be the girl,  or he might have been followed after all. To look  

Round was to show guilt. He picked another and  another. A hand fell lightly on his shoulder. He looked up. It was the girl. She shook her head,  evidently as a warning that he must keep silent,   then parted the bushes and quickly led the way  along the narrow track into the wood. Obviously  

She had been that way before, for she dodged the  boggy bits as though by habit. Winston followed,   still clasping his bunch of flowers. His first  feeling was relief, but as he watched the strong   slender body moving in front of him, with  the scarlet sash that was just tight enough  

To bring out the curve of her hips, the sense of  his own inferiority was heavy upon him. Even now   it seemed quite likely that when she turned round  and looked at him she would draw back after all.  

The sweetness of the air and the greenness of  the leaves daunted him. Already on the walk   from the station the May sunshine had made him  feel dirty and etiolated, a creature of indoors,   with the sooty dust of London in the pores of his  skin. It occurred to him that till now she had  

Probably never seen him in broad daylight in the  open. They came to the fallen tree that she had   spoken of. The girl hopped over and forced apart  the bushes, in which there did not seem to be an   opening. When Winston followed her, he found  that they were in a natural clearing, a tiny  

Grassy knoll surrounded by tall saplings that shut  it in completely. The girl stopped and turned. ‘Here we are,’ she said. He was facing her at several paces’ distance.  As yet he did not dare move nearer to her. ‘I didn’t want to say anything  in the lane,’ she went on,  

‘in case there’s a mike hidden there. I  don’t suppose there is, but there could be.   There’s always the chance of one of those swine  recognizing your voice. We’re all right here.’ He still had not the courage to approach her.  ‘We’re all right here?’ he repeated stupidly.

‘Yes. Look at the trees.’ They were small  ashes, which at some time had been cut down   and had sprouted up again into a forest  of poles, none of them thicker than one’s   wrist. ‘There’s nothing big enough to hide  a mike in. Besides, I’ve been here before.’

They were only making conversation. He had  managed to move closer to her now. She stood   before him very upright, with a smile on her face  that looked faintly ironical, as though she were   wondering why he was so slow to act. The bluebells  had cascaded on to the ground. They seemed to have  

Fallen of their own accord. He took her hand. ‘Would you believe,’ he said, ‘that till this   moment I didn’t know what colour your  eyes were?’ They were brown, he noted,   a rather light shade of brown, with dark lashes.  ‘Now that you’ve seen what I’m really like,  

Can you still bear to look at me?’ ‘Yes, easily.’ ‘I’m thirty-nine years old. I’ve got a wife that I   can’t get rid of. I’ve got varicose  veins. I’ve got five false teeth.’ ‘I couldn’t care less,’ said the girl.

The next moment, it was hard to say by whose  act, she was in his arms. At the beginning   he had no feeling except sheer incredulity. The  youthful body was strained against his own, the   mass of dark hair was against his face, and yes!  actually she had turned her face up and he was  

Kissing the wide red mouth. She had clasped her  arms about his neck, she was calling him darling,   precious one, loved one. He had pulled her down  on to the ground, she was utterly unresisting,   he could do what he liked with her. But the truth  was that he had no physical sensation, except that  

Of mere contact. All he felt was incredulity  and pride. He was glad that this was happening,   but he had no physical desire. It was too soon,  her youth and prettiness had frightened him,   he was too much used to living without women—he  did not know the reason. The girl picked herself  

Up and pulled a bluebell out of her hair. She  sat against him, putting her arm round his waist. ‘Never mind, dear. There’s no hurry.  We’ve got the whole afternoon. Isn’t   this a splendid hide-out? I found it  when I got lost once on a community  

Hike. If anyone was coming you could  hear them a hundred metres away.’ ‘What is your name?’ said Winston. ‘Julia. I know yours. It’s Winston—Winston Smith.’ ‘How did you find that out?’ ‘I expect I’m better at finding things  out than you are, dear. Tell me,  

What did you think of me before  that day I gave you the note?’ He did not feel any temptation  to tell lies to her. It was   even a sort of love-offering to  start off by telling the worst.

‘I hated the sight of you,’ he said. ‘I wanted to  rape you and then murder you afterwards. Two weeks   ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in  with a cobblestone. If you really want to know,   I imagined that you had something  to do with the Thought Police.’ The girl laughed delightedly,  

Evidently taking this as a tribute  to the excellence of her disguise. ‘Not the Thought Police! You  didn’t honestly think that?’ ‘Well, perhaps not exactly that. But  from your general appearance—merely   because you’re young and fresh and healthy,  you understand—I thought that probably——’

‘You thought I was a good Party member.  Pure in word and deed. Banners, processions,   slogans, games, community hikes all that  stuff. And you thought that if I had a   quarter of a chance I’d denounce you as a  thought-criminal and get you killed off?’

‘Yes, something of that kind. A great  many young girls are like that, you know.’ ‘It’s this bloody thing that does it,’ she  said, ripping off the scarlet sash of the   Junior Anti-Sex League and flinging it on to  a bough. Then, as though touching her waist  

Had reminded her of something, she felt in the  pocket of her overalls and produced a small slab   of chocolate. She broke it in half and gave  one of the pieces to Winston. Even before he   had taken it he knew by the smell that it was  very unusual chocolate. It was dark and shiny,  

And was wrapped in silver paper. Chocolate  normally was dull-brown crumbly stuff that tasted,   as nearly as one could describe it, like the  smoke of a rubbish fire. But at some time or   another he had tasted chocolate like the piece  she had given him. The first whiff of its scent  

Had stirred up some memory which he could not  pin down, but which was powerful and troubling. ‘Where did you get this stuff?’ he said. ‘Black market,’ she said indifferently. ‘Actually  I am that sort of girl, to look at. I’m good at  

Games. I was a troop-leader in the Spies. I  do voluntary work three evenings a week for   the Junior Anti-Sex League. Hours and hours  I’ve spent pasting their bloody rot all over   London. I always carry one end of a banner in  the processions. I always look cheerful and I  

Never shirk anything. Always yell with the crowd,  that’s what I say. It’s the only way to be safe.’ The first fragment of chocolate had melted on  Winston’s tongue. The taste was delightful.   But there was still that memory moving  round the edges of his consciousness,   something strongly felt but not  reducible to definite shape,  

Like an object seen out of the corner of  one’s eye. He pushed it away from him,   aware only that it was the memory of some action  which he would have liked to undo but could not. ‘You are very young,’ he said. ‘You  are ten or fifteen years younger  

Than I am. What could you see to  attract you in a man like me?’ ‘It was something in your face. I thought  I’d take a chance. I’m good at spotting   people who don’t belong. As soon as I  saw you I knew you were against THEM.’ 

THEM, it appeared, meant the Party, and above  all the Inner Party, about whom she talked with   an open jeering hatred which made Winston feel  uneasy, although he knew that they were safe   here if they could be safe anywhere. A thing that  astonished him about her was the coarseness of  

Her language. Party members were supposed not to  swear, and Winston himself very seldom did swear,   aloud, at any rate. Julia, however,  seemed unable to mention the Party,   and especially the Inner Party, without using the  kind of words that you saw chalked up in dripping  

Alley-ways. He did not dislike it. It was merely  one symptom of her revolt against the Party and   all its ways, and somehow it seemed natural and  healthy, like the sneeze of a horse that smells   bad hay. They had left the clearing and were  wandering again through the chequered shade,  

With their arms round each other’s waists whenever  it was wide enough to walk two abreast. He noticed   how much softer her waist seemed to feel now that  the sash was gone. They did not speak above a   whisper. Outside the clearing, Julia said, it was  better to go quietly. Presently they had reached  

The edge of the little wood. She stopped him. ‘Don’t go out into the open. There might be   someone watching. We’re all right  if we keep behind the boughs.’ They were standing in the shade of hazel bushes.  The sunlight, filtering through innumerable  

Leaves, was still hot on their faces. Winston  looked out into the field beyond, and underwent   a curious, slow shock of recognition. He knew  it by sight. An old, close-bitten pasture,   with a footpath wandering across it and a  molehill here and there. In the ragged hedge  

On the opposite side the boughs of the elm  trees swayed just perceptibly in the breeze,   and their leaves stirred faintly in dense masses  like women’s hair. Surely somewhere nearby,   but out of sight, there must be a stream  with green pools where dace were swimming? ‘Isn’t there a stream somewhere  near here?’ he whispered.

‘That’s right, there is a stream. It’s at the edge  of the next field, actually. There are fish in it,   great big ones. You can watch them lying in the  pools under the willow trees, waving their tails.’ ‘It’s the Golden Country—almost,’ he murmured. ‘The Golden Country?’

‘It’s nothing, really. A landscape  I’ve seen sometimes in a dream.’ ‘Look!’ whispered Julia. A thrush had alighted on a bough not five  metres away, almost at the level of their   faces. Perhaps it had not seen them. It was in the  sun, they in the shade. It spread out its wings,  

Fitted them carefully into place  again, ducked its head for a moment,   as though making a sort of obeisance to the sun,  and then began to pour forth a torrent of song.   In the afternoon hush the volume of sound was  startling. Winston and Julia clung together,  

Fascinated. The music went on and on, minute  after minute, with astonishing variations,   never once repeating itself, almost as though the  bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity.   Sometimes it stopped for a few seconds, spread out  and resettled its wings, then swelled its speckled  

Breast and again burst into song. Winston watched  it with a sort of vague reverence. For whom,   for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no  rival was watching it. What made it sit at   the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music  into nothingness? He wondered whether after all  

There was a microphone hidden somewhere near.  He and Julia had spoken only in low whispers,   and it would not pick up what they had said, but  it would pick up the thrush. Perhaps at the other   end of the instrument some small, beetle-like man  was listening intently—listening to that. But by  

Degrees the flood of music drove all speculations  out of his mind. It was as though it were a kind   of liquid stuff that poured all over him and  got mixed up with the sunlight that filtered  

Through the leaves. He stopped thinking and merely  felt. The girl’s waist in the bend of his arm was   soft and warm. He pulled her round so that they  were breast to breast; her body seemed to melt   into his. Wherever his hands moved it was all as  yielding as water. Their mouths clung together;  

It was quite different from the hard kisses they  had exchanged earlier. When they moved their faces   apart again both of them sighed deeply. The bird  took fright and fled with a clatter of wings. Winston put his lips against  her ear. ‘NOW,’ he whispered.

‘Not here,’ she whispered back. ‘Come  back to the hide-out. It’s safer.’  Quickly, with an occasional crackle of twigs, they  threaded their way back to the clearing. When they   were once inside the ring of saplings she turned  and faced him. They were both breathing fast, but  

The smile had reappeared round the corners of her  mouth. She stood looking at him for an instant,   then felt at the zipper of her overalls.  And, yes! it was almost as in his dream.   Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she  had torn her clothes off, and when she flung  

Them aside it was with that same magnificent  gesture by which a whole civilization seemed   to be annihilated. Her body gleamed white in the  sun. But for a moment he did not look at her body;   his eyes were anchored by the freckled face  with its faint, bold smile. He knelt down before  

Her and took her hands in his. ‘Have you done this before?’ ‘Of course. Hundreds of times—well,  scores of times, anyway.’ ‘With Party members?’ ‘Yes, always with Party members.’ ‘With members of the Inner Party?’ ‘Not with those swine, no. But  there’s plenty that WOULD if  

They got half a chance. They’re  not so holy as they make out.’ His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done  it: he wished it had been hundreds—thousands.   Anything that hinted at corruption always  filled him with a wild hope. Who knew,  

Perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface,  its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply   a sham concealing iniquity. If he could  have infected the whole lot of them with   leprosy or syphilis, how gladly he would  have done so! Anything to rot, to weaken,  

To undermine! He pulled her down so  that they were kneeling face to face. ‘Listen. The more men you’ve had, the  more I love you. Do you understand that?’ ‘Yes, perfectly.’ ‘I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want   any virtue to exist anywhere. I want  everyone to be corrupt to the bones.’

‘Well then, I ought to suit you,  dear. I’m corrupt to the bones.’ ‘You like doing this? I don’t mean  simply me: I mean the thing in itself?’ ‘I adore it.’ That was above all what he wanted to hear.  Not merely the love of one person but the  

Animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated  desire: that was the force that would tear the   Party to pieces. He pressed her down upon the  grass, among the fallen bluebells. This time   there was no difficulty. Presently the rising and  falling of their breasts slowed to normal speed,  

And in a sort of pleasant helplessness they  fell apart. The sun seemed to have grown   hotter. They were both sleepy. He reached  out for the discarded overalls and pulled   them partly over her. Almost immediately they  fell asleep and slept for about half an hour.

Winston woke first. He sat up and watched  the freckled face, still peacefully asleep,   pillowed on the palm of her hand. Except for her  mouth, you could not call her beautiful. There   was a line or two round the eyes, if you looked  closely. The short dark hair was extraordinarily  

Thick and soft. It occurred to him that he still  did not know her surname or where she lived. The young, strong body, now helpless in sleep,  awoke in him a pitying, protecting feeling. But   the mindless tenderness that he had felt under  the hazel tree, while the thrush was singing,  

Had not quite come back. He pulled the overalls  aside and studied her smooth white flank. In the   old days, he thought, a man looked at a girl’s  body and saw that it was desirable, and that was  

The end of the story. But you could not have pure  love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure,   because everything was mixed up with fear  and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle,   the climax a victory. It was a blow struck  against the Party. It was a political act.  Chapter 3.

‘We can come here once again,’ said  Julia. ‘It’s generally safe to use   any hide-out twice. But not for  another month or two, of course.’ As soon as she woke up her demeanour had  changed. She became alert and business-like,  

Put her clothes on, knotted the scarlet sash about  her waist, and began arranging the details of the   journey home. It seemed natural to leave this to  her. She obviously had a practical cunning which   Winston lacked, and she seemed also to have an  exhaustive knowledge of the countryside round  

London, stored away from innumerable community  hikes. The route she gave him was quite different   from the one by which he had come, and brought  him out at a different railway station. ‘Never go   home the same way as you went out,’ she said,  as though enunciating an important general  

Principle. She would leave first, and Winston  was to wait half an hour before following her. She had named a place where they could meet after  work, four evenings hence. It was a street in one   of the poorer quarters, where there was an open  market which was generally crowded and noisy.  

She would be hanging about among the stalls,  pretending to be in search of shoelaces or   sewing-thread. If she judged that the coast was  clear she would blow her nose when he approached;   otherwise he was to walk past her without  recognition. But with luck, in the middle  

Of the crowd, it would be safe to talk for a  quarter of an hour and arrange another meeting. ‘And now I must go,’ she said as soon as  he had mastered his instructions. ‘I’m   due back at nineteen-thirty. I’ve got to put  in two hours for the Junior Anti-Sex League,  

Handing out leaflets, or something.  Isn’t it bloody? Give me a brush-down,   would you? Have I got any twigs in my hair? Are  you sure? Then good-bye, my love, good-bye!’ She flung herself into his arms, kissed him  almost violently, and a moment later pushed  

Her way through the saplings and disappeared into  the wood with very little noise. Even now he had   not found out her surname or her address.  However, it made no difference, for it was   inconceivable that they could ever meet indoors  or exchange any kind of written communication.

As it happened, they never went back to the  clearing in the wood. During the month of May   there was only one further occasion on which  they actually succeeded in making love. That   was in another hiding-place known to Julia, the  belfry of a ruinous church in an almost-deserted  

Stretch of country where an atomic bomb had fallen  thirty years earlier. It was a good hiding-place   when once you got there, but the getting there  was very dangerous. For the rest they could meet   only in the streets, in a different place every  evening and never for more than half an hour at  

A time. In the street it was usually possible  to talk, after a fashion. As they drifted down   the crowded pavements, not quite abreast and never  looking at one another, they carried on a curious,   intermittent conversation which flicked  on and off like the beams of a lighthouse,  

Suddenly nipped into silence by the approach of  a Party uniform or the proximity of a telescreen,   then taken up again minutes later in the middle of  a sentence, then abruptly cut short as they parted   at the agreed spot, then continued almost without  introduction on the following day. Julia appeared  

To be quite used to this kind of conversation,  which she called ‘talking by instalments’. She   was also surprisingly adept at speaking without  moving her lips. Just once in almost a month of   nightly meetings they managed to exchange a kiss.  They were passing in silence down a side-street  

(Julia would never speak when they were away from  the main streets) when there was a deafening roar,   the earth heaved, and the air darkened, and  Winston found himself lying on his side,   bruised and terrified. A rocket bomb must have  dropped quite near at hand. Suddenly he became  

Aware of Julia’s face a few centimetres from  his own, deathly white, as white as chalk. Even   her lips were white. She was dead! He clasped  her against him and found that he was kissing   a live warm face. But there was some powdery  stuff that got in the way of his lips. Both of  

Their faces were thickly coated with plaster. There were evenings when they reached their   rendezvous and then had to walk past one another  without a sign, because a patrol had just come   round the corner or a helicopter was hovering  overhead. Even if it had been less dangerous,  

It would still have been difficult to find time  to meet. Winston’s working week was sixty hours,   Julia’s was even longer, and their free days  varied according to the pressure of work and   did not often coincide. Julia, in any case,  seldom had an evening completely free. She  

Spent an astonishing amount of time in  attending lectures and demonstrations,   distributing literature for the junior Anti-Sex  League, preparing banners for Hate Week,   making collections for the savings campaign,  and such-like activities. It paid, she said,   it was camouflage. If you kept the small rules,  you could break the big ones. She even induced  

Winston to mortgage yet another of his evenings  by enrolling himself for the part-time munition   work which was done voluntarily by zealous Party  members. So, one evening every week, Winston   spent four hours of paralysing boredom, screwing  together small bits of metal which were probably  

Parts of bomb fuses, in a draughty, ill-lit  workshop where the knocking of hammers mingled   drearily with the music of the telescreens. When they met in the church tower the gaps in   their fragmentary conversation were filled  up. It was a blazing afternoon. The air in  

The little square chamber above the bells was hot  and stagnant, and smelt overpoweringly of pigeon   dung. They sat talking for hours on the dusty,  twig-littered floor, one or other of them getting   up from time to time to cast a glance through the  arrowslits and make sure that no one was coming.

Julia was twenty-six years old. She lived in a  hostel with thirty other girls (‘Always in the   stink of women! How I hate women!’ she  said parenthetically), and she worked,   as he had guessed, on the novel-writing machines  in the Fiction Department. She enjoyed her work,  

Which consisted chiefly in running  and servicing a powerful but tricky   electric motor. She was ‘not clever’, but  was fond of using her hands and felt at   home with machinery. She could describe  the whole process of composing a novel,  

From the general directive issued by the Planning  Committee down to the final touching-up by the   Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in  the finished product. She ‘didn’t much care for   reading,’ she said. Books were just a commodity  that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.

She had no memories of anything before the  early sixties and the only person she had   ever known who talked frequently of the days  before the Revolution was a grandfather who   had disappeared when she was eight. At school  she had been captain of the hockey team and had  

Won the gymnastics trophy two years running. She  had been a troop-leader in the Spies and a branch   secretary in the Youth League before joining the  Junior Anti-Sex League. She had always borne an   excellent character. She had even (an infallible  mark of good reputation) been picked out to  

Work in Pornosec, the sub-section of the Fiction  Department which turned out cheap pornography for   distribution among the proles. It was nicknamed  Muck House by the people who worked in it,   she remarked. There she had remained for a year,  helping to produce booklets in sealed packets with  

Titles like ‘Spanking Stories’ or ‘One Night  in a Girls’ School’, to be bought furtively by   proletarian youths who were under the impression  that they were buying something illegal. ‘What are these books like?’  said Winston curiously. ‘Oh, ghastly rubbish. They’re boring,  really. They only have six plots,  

But they swap them round a bit. Of  course I was only on the kaleidoscopes.   I was never in the Rewrite Squad. I’m not  literary, dear—not even enough for that.’ He learned with astonishment that all the workers  in Pornosec, except the heads of the departments,  

Were girls. The theory was that men, whose  sex instincts were less controllable than   those of women, were in greater danger of  being corrupted by the filth they handled. ‘They don’t even like having married women  there,’ she added. Girls are always supposed  

To be so pure. Here’s one who isn’t, anyway. She had had her first love-affair when she was   sixteen, with a Party member of sixty who later  committed suicide to avoid arrest. ‘And a good   job too,’ said Julia, ‘otherwise they’d have had  my name out of him when he confessed.’ Since then  

There had been various others. Life as she saw it  was quite simple. You wanted a good time; ‘they’,   meaning the Party, wanted to stop you having it;  you broke the rules as best you could. She seemed  

To think it just as natural that ‘they’ should  want to rob you of your pleasures as that you   should want to avoid being caught. She hated  the Party, and said so in the crudest words,   but she made no general criticism of it. Except  where it touched upon her own life she had no  

Interest in Party doctrine. He noticed that she  never used Newspeak words except the ones that   had passed into everyday use. She had never heard  of the Brotherhood, and refused to believe in its   existence. Any kind of organized revolt against  the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck  

Her as stupid. The clever thing was to break the  rules and stay alive all the same. He wondered   vaguely how many others like her there might be in  the younger generation people who had grown up in   the world of the Revolution, knowing nothing else,  accepting the Party as something unalterable,  

Like the sky, not rebelling against its authority  but simply evading it, as a rabbit dodges a dog.  They did not discuss the possibility of getting  married. It was too remote to be worth thinking   about. No imaginable committee would ever  sanction such a marriage even if Katharine,  

Winston’s wife, could somehow have been got  rid of. It was hopeless even as a daydream. ‘What was she like, your wife?’ said Julia. ‘She was—do you know the Newspeak word  goodthinkful? Meaning naturally orthodox,   incapable of thinking a bad thought?’

‘No, I didn’t know the word, but I  know the kind of person, right enough.’ He began telling her the story of his married  life, but curiously enough she appeared to know   the essential parts of it already. She described  to him, almost as though she had seen or felt it,  

The stiffening of Katharine’s body as soon as he  touched her, the way in which she still seemed to   be pushing him from her with all her strength,  even when her arms were clasped tightly round   him. With Julia he felt no difficulty  in talking about such things: Katharine,  

In any case, had long ceased to be a painful  memory and became merely a distasteful one. ‘I could have stood it if it hadn’t been for one  thing,’ he said. He told her about the frigid   little ceremony that Katharine had forced him  to go through on the same night every week. ‘She  

Hated it, but nothing would make her stop doing  it. She used to call it—but you’ll never guess.’ ‘Our duty to the Party,’ said Julia promptly. ‘How did you know that?’ ‘I’ve been at school too, dear. Sex talks  once a month for the over-sixteens. And in  

The Youth Movement. They rub it into  you for years. I dare say it works   in a lot of cases. But of course you can  never tell; people are such hypocrites.’ She began to enlarge upon the subject. With Julia,  everything came back to her own sexuality. As soon  

As this was touched upon in any way she was  capable of great acuteness. Unlike Winston,   she had grasped the inner meaning of  the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was   not merely that the sex instinct created  a world of its own which was outside the  

Party’s control and which therefore had  to be destroyed if possible. What was more   important was that sexual privation induced  hysteria, which was desirable because it   could be transformed into war-fever and  leader-worship. The way she put it was:

‘When you make love you’re using up energy; and  afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn   for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like  that. They want you to be bursting with energy   all the time. All this marching up and down  and cheering and waving flags is simply sex  

Gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself,  why should you get excited about Big Brother   and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes  Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?’  That was very true, he thought. There was a  direct intimate connexion between chastity  

And political orthodoxy. For how could the  fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity   which the Party needed in its members be kept  at the right pitch, except by bottling down   some powerful instinct and using it as a driving  force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party,  

And the Party had turned it to account.  They had played a similar trick with the   instinct of parenthood. The family could not  actually be abolished, and, indeed, people   were encouraged to be fond of their children,  in almost the old-fashioned way. The children,  

On the other hand, were systematically  turned against their parents and taught   to spy on them and report their deviations.  The family had become in effect an extension   of the Thought Police. It was a device by means  of which everyone could be surrounded night and  

Day by informers who knew him intimately. Abruptly his mind went back to Katharine.   Katharine would unquestionably have denounced him  to the Thought Police if she had not happened to   be too stupid to detect the unorthodoxy of  his opinions. But what really recalled her  

To him at this moment was the stifling heat  of the afternoon, which had brought the sweat   out on his forehead. He began telling  Julia of something that had happened,   or rather had failed to happen, on another  sweltering summer afternoon, eleven years ago.

It was three or four months after they were  married. They had lost their way on a community   hike somewhere in Kent. They had only lagged  behind the others for a couple of minutes,   but they took a wrong turning, and  presently found themselves pulled  

Up short by the edge of an old chalk quarry.  It was a sheer drop of ten or twenty metres,   with boulders at the bottom. There was nobody  of whom they could ask the way. As soon as she  

Realized that they were lost Katharine became  very uneasy. To be away from the noisy mob of   hikers even for a moment gave her a feeling of  wrong-doing. She wanted to hurry back by the   way they had come and start searching in the other  direction. But at this moment Winston noticed some  

Tufts of loosestrife growing in the cracks of the  cliff beneath them. One tuft was of two colours,   magenta and brick-red, apparently growing on  the same root. He had never seen anything of   the kind before, and he called to  Katharine to come and look at it.

‘Look, Katharine! Look at those  flowers. That clump down near the   bottom. Do you see they’re two different colours?’ She had already turned to go, but she did rather  fretfully come back for a moment. She even leaned  

Out over the cliff face to see where he was  pointing. He was standing a little behind her,   and he put his hand on her waist to steady  her. At this moment it suddenly occurred   to him how completely alone they were.  There was not a human creature anywhere,  

Not a leaf stirring, not even a bird awake.  In a place like this the danger that there   would be a hidden microphone was very small,  and even if there was a microphone it would   only pick up sounds. It was the hottest  sleepiest hour of the afternoon. The sun  

Blazed down upon them, the sweat tickled  his face. And the thought struck him… ‘Why didn’t you give her a good  shove?’ said Julia. ‘I would have.’ ‘Yes, dear, you would have. I would,   if I’d been the same person then as I am  now. Or perhaps I would—I’m not certain.’

‘Are you sorry you didn’t?’ ‘Yes. On the whole I’m sorry I didn’t.’ They were sitting side by side on the dusty  floor. He pulled her closer against him. Her   head rested on his shoulder, the pleasant  smell of her hair conquering the pigeon  

Dung. She was very young, he thought,  she still expected something from life,   she did not understand that to push an  inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing. ‘Actually it would have made  no difference,’ he said. ‘Then why are you sorry you didn’t do it?’

‘Only because I prefer a positive to a  negative. In this game that we’re playing,   we can’t win. Some kinds of failure are  better than other kinds, that’s all.’ He felt her shoulders give a wriggle of dissent.  She always contradicted him when he said anything  

Of this kind. She would not accept it as a law of  nature that the individual is always defeated. In   a way she realized that she herself was doomed,  that sooner or later the Thought Police would  

Catch her and kill her, but with another part of  her mind she believed that it was somehow possible   to construct a secret world in which you could  live as you chose. All you needed was luck and   cunning and boldness. She did not understand  that there was no such thing as happiness,  

That the only victory lay in the far  future, long after you were dead,   that from the moment of declaring war on the Party  it was better to think of yourself as a corpse. ‘We are the dead,’ he said. ‘We’re not dead yet,’ said Julia prosaically. ‘Not physically. Six months, a year—five years,  

Conceivably. I am afraid of death. You are  young, so presumably you’re more afraid of   it than I am. Obviously we shall put it off  as long as we can. But it makes very little   difference. So long as human beings stay  human, death and life are the same thing.’ 

‘Oh, rubbish! Which would you sooner sleep with,   me or a skeleton? Don’t you enjoy being  alive? Don’t you like feeling: This is me,   this is my hand, this is my leg, I’m real,  I’m solid, I’m alive! Don’t you like THIS?’

She twisted herself round and pressed her bosom  against him. He could feel her breasts, ripe yet   firm, through her overalls. Her body seemed to  be pouring some of its youth and vigour into his. ‘Yes, I like that,’ he said.

‘Then stop talking about dying. And now  listen, dear, we’ve got to fix up about   the next time we meet. We may as well  go back to the place in the wood. We’ve   given it a good long rest. But you must  get there by a different way this time.  

I’ve got it all planned out. You take the  train—but look, I’ll draw it out for you.’ And in her practical way she scraped together  a small square of dust, and with a twig from a   pigeon’s nest began drawing a map on the floor. Chapter 4. Winston looked round the shabby little room above  

Mr Charrington’s shop. Beside the  window the enormous bed was made up,   with ragged blankets and a coverless bolster.  The old-fashioned clock with the twelve-hour   face was ticking away on the mantelpiece. In  the corner, on the gateleg table, the glass  

Paperweight which he had bought on his last  visit gleamed softly out of the half-darkness. In the fender was a battered tin  oilstove, a saucepan, and two cups,   provided by Mr Charrington. Winston lit the  burner and set a pan of water to boil. He  

Had brought an envelope full of Victory Coffee  and some saccharine tablets. The clock’s hands   said seventeen-twenty: it was nineteen-twenty  really. She was coming at nineteen-thirty. Folly, folly, his heart kept saying: conscious,  gratuitous, suicidal folly. Of all the crimes  

That a Party member could commit, this one was  the least possible to conceal. Actually the idea   had first floated into his head in the form of a  vision, of the glass paperweight mirrored by the   surface of the gateleg table. As he had foreseen,  Mr Charrington had made no difficulty about  

Letting the room. He was obviously glad of the few  dollars that it would bring him. Nor did he seem   shocked or become offensively knowing when it was  made clear that Winston wanted the room for the   purpose of a love-affair. Instead he looked into  the middle distance and spoke in generalities,  

With so delicate an air as to give the impression  that he had become partly invisible. Privacy, he   said, was a very valuable thing. Everyone wanted a  place where they could be alone occasionally. And   when they had such a place, it was only common  courtesy in anyone else who knew of it to keep  

His knowledge to himself. He even, seeming almost  to fade out of existence as he did so, added that   there were two entries to the house, one of them  through the back yard, which gave on an alley. Under the window somebody was singing. Winston  peeped out, secure in the protection of the  

Muslin curtain. The June sun was still high  in the sky, and in the sun-filled court below,   a monstrous woman, solid as a Norman pillar,  with brawny red forearms and a sacking apron   strapped about her middle, was stumping to  and fro between a washtub and a clothes line,  

Pegging out a series of square white things  which Winston recognized as babies’ diapers.   Whenever her mouth was not corked with clothes  pegs she was singing in a powerful contralto: It was only an ‘opeless fancy. It passed like an Ipril dye, 

But a look an’ a word an’ the dreams they stirred! They ‘ave stolen my ‘eart awye! The tune had been haunting London for weeks  past. It was one of countless similar songs   published for the benefit of the proles by a  sub-section of the Music Department. The words  

Of these songs were composed without any human  intervention whatever on an instrument known as   a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully  as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost   pleasant sound. He could hear the woman singing  and the scrape of her shoes on the flagstones,  

And the cries of the children in the street,  and somewhere in the far distance a faint roar   of traffic, and yet the room seemed curiously  silent, thanks to the absence of a telescreen. Folly, folly, folly! he thought again. It was  inconceivable that they could frequent this place  

For more than a few weeks without being caught.  But the temptation of having a hiding-place that   was truly their own, indoors and near at hand,  had been too much for both of them. For some   time after their visit to the church belfry it had  been impossible to arrange meetings. Working hours  

Had been drastically increased in anticipation  of Hate Week. It was more than a month distant,   but the enormous, complex preparations that it  entailed were throwing extra work on to everybody.   Finally both of them managed to secure a free  afternoon on the same day. They had agreed to  

Go back to the clearing in the wood. On the  evening beforehand they met briefly in the   street. As usual, Winston hardly looked at Julia  as they drifted towards one another in the crowd,   but from the short glance he gave her it  seemed to him that she was paler than usual.

‘It’s all off,’ she murmured as soon as she  judged it safe to speak. ‘Tomorrow, I mean.’ ‘What?’ ‘Tomorrow afternoon. I can’t come.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Oh, the usual reason. It’s  started early this time.’  For a moment he was violently angry. During  the month that he had known her the nature of  

His desire for her had changed. At the beginning  there had been little true sensuality in it. Their   first love-making had been simply an act of the  will. But after the second time it was different.  

The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the  feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him,   or into the air all round him. She had become  a physical necessity, something that he not  

Only wanted but felt that he had a right  to. When she said that she could not come,   he had the feeling that she was cheating him.  But just at this moment the crowd pressed them   together and their hands accidentally met. She  gave the tips of his fingers a quick squeeze  

That seemed to invite not desire but affection.  It struck him that when one lived with a woman   this particular disappointment must be a normal,  recurring event; and a deep tenderness, such as   he had not felt for her before, suddenly took  hold of him. He wished that they were a married  

Couple of ten years’ standing. He wished that he  were walking through the streets with her just as   they were doing now but openly and without fear,  talking of trivialities and buying odds and ends   for the household. He wished above all that they  had some place where they could be alone together  

Without feeling the obligation to make love every  time they met. It was not actually at that moment,   but at some time on the following day, that  the idea of renting Mr Charrington’s room had   occurred to him. When he suggested it to Julia  she had agreed with unexpected readiness. Both  

Of them knew that it was lunacy. It was as though  they were intentionally stepping nearer to their   graves. As he sat waiting on the edge of the bed  he thought again of the cellars of the Ministry of   Love. It was curious how that predestined horror  moved in and out of one’s consciousness. There  

It lay, fixed in future times, preceding death as  surely as 99 precedes 100. One could not avoid it,   but one could perhaps postpone it:  and yet instead, every now and again,   by a conscious, wilful act, one chose to  shorten the interval before it happened. 

At this moment there was a quick step on  the stairs. Julia burst into the room. She   was carrying a tool-bag of coarse brown  canvas, such as he had sometimes seen her   carrying to and fro at the Ministry. He  started forward to take her in his arms,  

But she disengaged herself rather hurriedly,  partly because she was still holding the tool-bag. ‘Half a second,’ she said. ‘Just let me show  you what I’ve brought. Did you bring some of   that filthy Victory Coffee? I thought  you would. You can chuck it away again,   because we shan’t be needing it. Look here.’

She fell on her knees, threw open the bag, and  tumbled out some spanners and a screwdriver   that filled the top part of it. Underneath  were a number of neat paper packets. The   first packet that she passed to Winston had a  strange and yet vaguely familiar feeling. It  

Was filled with some kind of heavy, sand-like  stuff which yielded wherever you touched it. ‘It isn’t sugar?’ he said. ‘Real sugar. Not saccharine, sugar. And  here’s a loaf of bread—proper white bread,   not our bloody stuff—and a little pot of  jam. And here’s a tin of milk—but look!  

This is the one I’m really proud of. I had  to wrap a bit of sacking round it, because——’ But she did not need to tell him why she had  wrapped it up. The smell was already filling  

The room, a rich hot smell which seemed like an  emanation from his early childhood, but which one   did occasionally meet with even now, blowing down  a passage-way before a door slammed, or diffusing   itself mysteriously in a crowded street,  sniffed for an instant and then lost again. ‘It’s coffee,’ he murmured, ‘real coffee.’

‘It’s Inner Party coffee. There’s  a whole kilo here,’ she said. ‘How did you manage to get  hold of all these things?’ ‘It’s all Inner Party stuff. There’s nothing  those swine don’t have, nothing. But of course   waiters and servants and people pinch things,  and—look, I got a little packet of tea as well.’

Winston had squatted down beside her.  He tore open a corner of the packet. ‘It’s real tea. Not blackberry leaves.’ ‘There’s been a lot of tea about lately. They’ve  captured India, or something,’ she said vaguely.   ‘But listen, dear. I want you to turn your  back on me for three minutes. Go and sit on  

The other side of the bed. Don’t go too near the  window. And don’t turn round till I tell you.’ Winston gazed abstractedly through  the muslin curtain. Down in the yard   the red-armed woman was still marching  to and fro between the washtub and the  

Line. She took two more pegs out of  her mouth and sang with deep feeling: They sye that time ‘eals all things, They sye you can always forget;  But the smiles an’ the tears acrorss the years They twist my ‘eart-strings yet! 

She knew the whole drivelling song by heart, it  seemed. Her voice floated upward with the sweet   summer air, very tuneful, charged with a sort  of happy melancholy. One had the feeling that   she would have been perfectly content, if the  June evening had been endless and the supply  

Of clothes inexhaustible, to remain there for a  thousand years, pegging out diapers and singing   rubbish. It struck him as a curious fact that  he had never heard a member of the Party singing   alone and spontaneously. It would even have seemed  slightly unorthodox, a dangerous eccentricity,  

Like talking to oneself. Perhaps it was only when  people were somewhere near the starvation level   that they had anything to sing about. ‘You can turn round now,’ said Julia. He turned round, and for a second almost  failed to recognize her. What he had  

Actually expected was to see her naked. But  she was not naked. The transformation that   had happened was much more surprising  than that. She had painted her face. She must have slipped into some shop in the  proletarian quarters and bought herself a complete  

Set of make-up materials. Her lips were deeply  reddened, her cheeks rouged, her nose powdered;   there was even a touch of something under the eyes  to make them brighter. It was not very skilfully   done, but Winston’s standards in such matters were  not high. He had never before seen or imagined a  

Woman of the Party with cosmetics on her face. The  improvement in her appearance was startling. With   just a few dabs of colour in the right places  she had become not only very much prettier,   but, above all, far more feminine. Her short  hair and boyish overalls merely added to the  

Effect. As he took her in his arms a wave of  synthetic violets flooded his nostrils. He   remembered the half-darkness of a basement  kitchen, and a woman’s cavernous mouth. It   was the very same scent that she had used;  but at the moment it did not seem to matter. ‘Scent too!’ he said.

‘Yes, dear, scent too. And do you know what  I’m going to do next? I’m going to get hold   of a real woman’s frock from somewhere and wear it  instead of these bloody trousers. I’ll wear silk   stockings and high-heeled shoes! In this room  I’m going to be a woman, not a Party comrade.’

They flung their clothes off and climbed into the  huge mahogany bed. It was the first time that he   had stripped himself naked in her presence. Until  now he had been too much ashamed of his pale and   meagre body, with the varicose veins standing  out on his calves and the discoloured patch  

Over his ankle. There were no sheets, but the  blanket they lay on was threadbare and smooth,   and the size and springiness of the bed astonished  both of them. ‘It’s sure to be full of bugs,   but who cares?’ said Julia. One  never saw a double bed nowadays,  

Except in the homes of the proles. Winston  had occasionally slept in one in his boyhood:   Julia had never been in one before,  so far as she could remember. Presently they fell asleep for a little while.  When Winston woke up the hands of the clock had  

Crept round to nearly nine. He did not stir,  because Julia was sleeping with her head in   the crook of his arm. Most of her make-up had  transferred itself to his own face or the bolster,   but a light stain of rouge still brought out  the beauty of her cheekbone. A yellow ray from  

The sinking sun fell across the foot of the bed  and lighted up the fireplace, where the water   in the pan was boiling fast. Down in the yard  the woman had stopped singing, but the faint   shouts of children floated in from the street.  He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished  

Past it had been a normal experience to lie in  bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening,   a man and a woman with no clothes on, making  love when they chose, talking of what they chose,   not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply  lying there and listening to peaceful sounds  

Outside. Surely there could never have been a  time when that seemed ordinary? Julia woke up,   rubbed her eyes, and raised herself  on her elbow to look at the oilstove. ‘Half that water’s boiled away,’ she said.  ‘I’ll get up and make some coffee in another  

Moment. We’ve got an hour. What time do  they cut the lights off at your flats?’ ‘Twenty-three thirty.’ ‘It’s twenty-three at the hostel. But  you have to get in earlier than that,   because—Hi! Get out, you filthy brute!’ She suddenly twisted herself over in  the bed, seized a shoe from the floor,  

And sent it hurtling into the corner with  a boyish jerk of her arm, exactly as he had   seen her fling the dictionary at Goldstein,  that morning during the Two Minutes Hate. ‘What was it?’ he said in surprise. ‘A rat. I saw him stick his beastly  nose out of the wainscoting. There’s  

A hole down there. I gave  him a good fright, anyway.’ ‘Rats!’ murmured Winston. ‘In this room!’ ‘They’re all over the place,’ said Julia   indifferently as she lay down again. ‘We’ve  even got them in the kitchen at the hostel.   Some parts of London are swarming with them.  Did you know they attack children? Yes,  

They do. In some of these streets a woman  daren’t leave a baby alone for two minutes.   It’s the great huge brown ones that do it. And  the nasty thing is that the brutes always——’  ‘DON’T GO ON!’ said Winston,  with his eyes tightly shut.

‘Dearest! You’ve gone quite pale. What’s  the matter? Do they make you feel sick?’ ‘Of all horrors in the world—a rat!’ She pressed herself against him and wound her  limbs round him, as though to reassure him with   the warmth of her body. He did not reopen his  eyes immediately. For several moments he had  

Had the feeling of being back in a nightmare  which had recurred from time to time throughout   his life. It was always very much the same. He  was standing in front of a wall of darkness,   and on the other side of it there was something  unendurable, something too dreadful to be faced.  

In the dream his deepest feeling was always one of  self-deception, because he did in fact know what   was behind the wall of darkness. With a deadly  effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own   brain, he could even have dragged the thing into  the open. He always woke up without discovering  

What it was: but somehow it was connected with  what Julia had been saying when he cut her short. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s nothing.  I don’t like rats, that’s all.’ ‘Don’t worry, dear, we’re not  going to have the filthy brutes  

In here. I’ll stuff the hole with a  bit of sacking before we go. And next   time we come here I’ll bring some  plaster and bung it up properly.’ Already the black instant of panic was  half-forgotten. Feeling slightly ashamed  

Of himself, he sat up against the bedhead.  Julia got out of bed, pulled on her overalls,   and made the coffee. The smell that rose from the  saucepan was so powerful and exciting that they   shut the window lest anybody outside should notice  it and become inquisitive. What was even better  

Than the taste of the coffee was the silky texture  given to it by the sugar, a thing Winston had   almost forgotten after years of saccharine. With  one hand in her pocket and a piece of bread and   jam in the other, Julia wandered about the room,  glancing indifferently at the bookcase, pointing  

Out the best way of repairing the gateleg table,  plumping herself down in the ragged arm-chair   to see if it was comfortable, and examining the  absurd twelve-hour clock with a sort of tolerant   amusement. She brought the glass paperweight over  to the bed to have a look at it in a better light.  

He took it out of her hand, fascinated, as always,  by the soft, rainwatery appearance of the glass. ‘What is it, do you think?’ said Julia. ‘I don’t think it’s anything—I mean, I  don’t think it was ever put to any use.  

That’s what I like about it. It’s a little  chunk of history that they’ve forgotten   to alter. It’s a message from a hundred  years ago, if one knew how to read it.’ ‘And that picture over there’—she  nodded at the engraving on the   opposite wall—’would that be a hundred years old?’

‘More. Two hundred, I dare say.  One can’t tell. It’s impossible   to discover the age of anything nowadays.’ She went over to look at it. ‘Here’s where that  brute stuck his nose out,’ she said, kicking the   wainscoting immediately below the picture. ‘What  is this place? I’ve seen it before somewhere.’

‘It’s a church, or at least it used to  be. St Clement Danes its name was.’ The   fragment of rhyme that Mr Charrington  had taught him came back into his head,   and he added half-nostalgically: “Oranges  and lemons, say the bells of St Clement’s!” To his astonishment she capped the line:

‘You owe me three farthings,  say the bells of St Martin’s,  When will you pay me? say  the bells of Old Bailey——’ ‘I can’t remember how it goes on after  that. But anyway I remember it ends up,  

“Here comes a candle to light you to bed,  here comes a chopper to chop off your head!”‘ It was like the two halves of  a countersign. But there must   be another line after ‘the bells of  Old Bailey’. Perhaps it could be dug   out of Mr Charrington’s memory,  if he were suitably prompted.

‘Who taught you that?’ he said. ‘My grandfather. He used to say it to me when  I was a little girl. He was vaporized when I   was eight—at any rate, he disappeared.  I wonder what a lemon was,’ she added   inconsequently. ‘I’ve seen oranges. They’re a  kind of round yellow fruit with a thick skin.’

‘I can remember lemons,’ said Winston.  ‘They were quite common in the fifties.   They were so sour that it set your  teeth on edge even to smell them.’ ‘I bet that picture’s got bugs behind it,’  said Julia. ‘I’ll take it down and give it  

A good clean some day. I suppose it’s almost  time we were leaving. I must start washing   this paint off. What a bore! I’ll get  the lipstick off your face afterwards.’  Winston did not get up for a few minutes more.  The room was darkening. He turned over towards the  

Light and lay gazing into the glass paperweight.  The inexhaustibly interesting thing was not the   fragment of coral but the interior of the glass  itself. There was such a depth of it, and yet it  

Was almost as transparent as air. It was as though  the surface of the glass had been the arch of the   sky, enclosing a tiny world with its atmosphere  complete. He had the feeling that he could get  

Inside it, and that in fact he was inside it,  along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table,   and the clock and the steel engraving and the  paperweight itself. The paperweight was the   room he was in, and the coral was Julia’s life  and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the  

Heart of the crystal. Chapter 5. Syme had vanished. A morning came, and he  was missing from work: a few thoughtless   people commented on his absence. On the next  day nobody mentioned him. On the third day   Winston went into the vestibule of the Records  Department to look at the notice-board. One of  

The notices carried a printed list of the  members of the Chess Committee, of whom   Syme had been one. It looked almost exactly as  it had looked before—nothing had been crossed   out—but it was one name shorter. It was enough.  Syme had ceased to exist: he had never existed.

The weather was baking hot. In the labyrinthine  Ministry the windowless, air-conditioned rooms   kept their normal temperature, but outside the  pavements scorched one’s feet and the stench of   the Tubes at the rush hours was a horror. The  preparations for Hate Week were in full swing,  

And the staffs of all the Ministries were working  overtime. Processions, meetings, military parades,   lectures, waxworks, displays, film shows,  telescreen programmes all had to be organized;   stands had to be erected, effigies  built, slogans coined, songs written,   rumours circulated, photographs faked. Julia’s  unit in the Fiction Department had been taken  

Off the production of novels and was rushing  out a series of atrocity pamphlets. Winston,   in addition to his regular work, spent long  periods every day in going through back files   of ‘The Times’ and altering and embellishing  news items which were to be quoted in speeches.  

Late at night, when crowds of rowdy proles  roamed the streets, the town had a curiously   febrile air. The rocket bombs crashed oftener  than ever, and sometimes in the far distance   there were enormous explosions which no one could  explain and about which there were wild rumours.

The new tune which was to be the theme-song of  Hate Week (the Hate Song, it was called) had   already been composed and was being endlessly  plugged on the telescreens. It had a savage,   barking rhythm which could not exactly be called  music, but resembled the beating of a drum.  

Roared out by hundreds of voices to the tramp of  marching feet, it was terrifying. The proles had   taken a fancy to it, and in the midnight streets  it competed with the still-popular ‘It was only a   hopeless fancy’. The Parsons children played it  at all hours of the night and day, unbearably,  

On a comb and a piece of toilet paper.  Winston’s evenings were fuller than ever.   Squads of volunteers, organized by Parsons,  were preparing the street for Hate Week,   stitching banners, painting posters,  erecting flagstaffs on the roofs,   and perilously slinging wires across the street  for the reception of streamers. Parsons boasted  

That Victory Mansions alone would display four  hundred metres of bunting. He was in his native   element and as happy as a lark. The heat and  the manual work had even given him a pretext   for reverting to shorts and an open shirt in the  evenings. He was everywhere at once, pushing,  

Pulling, sawing, hammering, improvising, jollying  everyone along with comradely exhortations and   giving out from every fold of his body what seemed  an inexhaustible supply of acrid-smelling sweat. A new poster had suddenly appeared  all over London. It had no caption,   and represented simply the monstrous figure of  a Eurasian soldier, three or four metres high,  

Striding forward with expressionless Mongolian  face and enormous boots, a submachine gun pointed   from his hip. From whatever angle you looked at  the poster, the muzzle of the gun, magnified by   the foreshortening, seemed to be pointed straight  at you. The thing had been plastered on every  

Blank space on every wall, even outnumbering the  portraits of Big Brother. The proles, normally   apathetic about the war, were being lashed into  one of their periodical frenzies of patriotism.   As though to harmonize with the general mood, the  rocket bombs had been killing larger numbers of  

People than usual. One fell on a crowded film  theatre in Stepney, burying several hundred   victims among the ruins. The whole population  of the neighbourhood turned out for a long,   trailing funeral which went on for hours and  was in effect an indignation meeting. Another  

Bomb fell on a piece of waste ground which was  used as a playground and several dozen children   were blown to pieces. There were further angry  demonstrations, Goldstein was burned in effigy,   hundreds of copies of the poster of the Eurasian  soldier were torn down and added to the flames,  

And a number of shops were looted in the  turmoil; then a rumour flew round that   spies were directing the rocket bombs by means  of wireless waves, and an old couple who were   suspected of being of foreign extraction had their  house set on fire and perished of suffocation. 

In the room over Mr Charrington’s shop, when  they could get there, Julia and Winston lay   side by side on a stripped bed under the open  window, naked for the sake of coolness. The rat   had never come back, but the bugs had multiplied  hideously in the heat. It did not seem to matter.  

Dirty or clean, the room was paradise. As soon as  they arrived they would sprinkle everything with   pepper bought on the black market, tear off their  clothes, and make love with sweating bodies, then   fall asleep and wake to find that the bugs had  rallied and were massing for the counter-attack. 

Four, five, six—seven times they met during the  month of June. Winston had dropped his habit of   drinking gin at all hours. He seemed to have lost  the need for it. He had grown fatter, his varicose  

Ulcer had subsided, leaving only a brown stain on  the skin above his ankle, his fits of coughing in   the early morning had stopped. The process of  life had ceased to be intolerable, he had no  

Longer any impulse to make faces at the telescreen  or shout curses at the top of his voice. Now that   they had a secure hiding-place, almost a home,  it did not even seem a hardship that they could  

Only meet infrequently and for a couple of hours  at a time. What mattered was that the room over   the junk-shop should exist. To know that it was  there, inviolate, was almost the same as being   in it. The room was a world, a pocket of the past  where extinct animals could walk. Mr Charrington,  

Thought Winston, was another extinct animal.  He usually stopped to talk with Mr Charrington   for a few minutes on his way upstairs. The old  man seemed seldom or never to go out of doors,   and on the other hand to have almost no customers.  He led a ghostlike existence between the tiny,  

Dark shop, and an even tinier back kitchen  where he prepared his meals and which contained,   among other things, an unbelievably  ancient gramophone with an enormous horn.   He seemed glad of the opportunity to talk.  Wandering about among his worthless stock,  

With his long nose and thick spectacles and  his bowed shoulders in the velvet jacket,   he had always vaguely the air of being a collector  rather than a tradesman. With a sort of faded   enthusiasm he would finger this scrap of rubbish  or that—a china bottle-stopper, the painted lid of  

A broken snuffbox, a pinchbeck locket containing a  strand of some long-dead baby’s hair—never asking   that Winston should buy it, merely that he should  admire it. To talk to him was like listening to   the tinkling of a worn-out musical-box. He had  dragged out from the corners of his memory some  

More fragments of forgotten rhymes. There  was one about four and twenty blackbirds,   and another about a cow with a crumpled horn, and  another about the death of poor Cock Robin. ‘It   just occurred to me you might be interested,’ he  would say with a deprecating little laugh whenever  

He produced a new fragment. But he could never  recall more than a few lines of any one rhyme. Both of them knew—in a way, it was never out of  their minds that what was now happening could   not last long. There were times when the  fact of impending death seemed as palpable  

As the bed they lay on, and they would cling  together with a sort of despairing sensuality,   like a damned soul grasping at his last morsel of  pleasure when the clock is within five minutes of   striking. But there were also times when they had  the illusion not only of safety but of permanence.  

So long as they were actually in this room, they  both felt, no harm could come to them. Getting   there was difficult and dangerous, but the room  itself was sanctuary. It was as when Winston had   gazed into the heart of the paperweight, with the  feeling that it would be possible to get inside  

That glassy world, and that once inside it time  could be arrested. Often they gave themselves up   to daydreams of escape. Their luck would hold  indefinitely, and they would carry on their   intrigue, just like this, for the remainder of  their natural lives. Or Katharine would die,  

And by subtle manoeuvrings Winston and Julia would  succeed in getting married. Or they would commit   suicide together. Or they would disappear, alter  themselves out of recognition, learn to speak with   proletarian accents, get jobs in a factory and  live out their lives undetected in a back-street.  

It was all nonsense, as they both knew. In reality  there was no escape. Even the one plan that was   practicable, suicide, they had no intention of  carrying out. To hang on from day to day and   from week to week, spinning out a present that  had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct,  

Just as one’s lungs will always draw the next  breath so long as there is air available.  Sometimes, too, they talked of engaging in active  rebellion against the Party, but with no notion of   how to take the first step. Even if the fabulous  Brotherhood was a reality, there still remained  

The difficulty of finding one’s way into it. He  told her of the strange intimacy that existed,   or seemed to exist, between himself and  O’Brien, and of the impulse he sometimes felt,   simply to walk into O’Brien’s presence,  announce that he was the enemy of the Party,  

And demand his help. Curiously enough, this  did not strike her as an impossibly rash thing   to do. She was used to judging people by their  faces, and it seemed natural to her that Winston   should believe O’Brien to be trustworthy on  the strength of a single flash of the eyes.  

Moreover she took it for granted that everyone,  or nearly everyone, secretly hated the Party and   would break the rules if he thought it safe to do  so. But she refused to believe that widespread,   organized opposition existed or could exist. The  tales about Goldstein and his underground army,  

She said, were simply a lot of rubbish which  the Party had invented for its own purposes   and which you had to pretend to believe in. Times  beyond number, at Party rallies and spontaneous   demonstrations, she had shouted at the top of her  voice for the execution of people whose names she  

Had never heard and in whose supposed crimes she  had not the faintest belief. When public trials   were happening she had taken her place in the  detachments from the Youth League who surrounded   the courts from morning to night, chanting at  intervals ‘Death to the traitors!’ During the  

Two Minutes Hate she always excelled all others  in shouting insults at Goldstein. Yet she had only   the dimmest idea of who Goldstein was and what  doctrines he was supposed to represent. She had   grown up since the Revolution and was too young  to remember the ideological battles of the fifties  

And sixties. Such a thing as an independent  political movement was outside her imagination:   and in any case the Party was invincible. It would  always exist, and it would always be the same. You   could only rebel against it by secret disobedience  or, at most, by isolated acts of violence such  

As killing somebody or blowing something up. In some ways she was far more acute than Winston,   and far less susceptible to Party propaganda.  Once when he happened in some connexion to   mention the war against Eurasia, she startled  him by saying casually that in her opinion the  

War was not happening. The rocket bombs which  fell daily on London were probably fired by the   Government of Oceania itself, ‘just to keep people  frightened’. This was an idea that had literally   never occurred to him. She also stirred a sort  of envy in him by telling him that during the Two  

Minutes Hate her great difficulty was to avoid  bursting out laughing. But she only questioned   the teachings of the Party when they in some way  touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to   accept the official mythology, simply because  the difference between truth and falsehood did  

Not seem important to her. She believed,  for instance, having learnt it at school,   that the Party had invented aeroplanes. (In his  own schooldays, Winston remembered, in the late   fifties, it was only the helicopter that the Party  claimed to have invented; a dozen years later,  

When Julia was at school, it was already claiming  the aeroplane; one generation more, and it would   be claiming the steam engine.) And when he told  her that aeroplanes had been in existence before   he was born and long before the Revolution,  the fact struck her as totally uninteresting.  

After all, what did it matter who had invented  aeroplanes? It was rather more of a shock to him   when he discovered from some chance remark that  she did not remember that Oceania, four years ago,   had been at war with Eastasia and at peace with  Eurasia. It was true that she regarded the whole  

War as a sham: but apparently she had not even  noticed that the name of the enemy had changed.   ‘I thought we’d always been at war with Eurasia,’  she said vaguely. It frightened him a little. The   invention of aeroplanes dated from long before her  birth, but the switchover in the war had happened  

Only four years ago, well after she was grown up.  He argued with her about it for perhaps a quarter   of an hour. In the end he succeeded in forcing  her memory back until she did dimly recall that  

At one time Eastasia and not Eurasia had been  the enemy. But the issue still struck her as   unimportant. ‘Who cares?’ she said impatiently.  ‘It’s always one bloody war after another,   and one knows the news is all lies anyway.’ Sometimes he talked to her of the Records  

Department and the impudent forgeries that he  committed there. Such things did not appear to   horrify her. She did not feel the abyss opening  beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming   truths. He told her the story of Jones, Aaronson,  and Rutherford and the momentous slip of paper  

Which he had once held between his fingers. It did  not make much impression on her. At first, indeed,   she failed to grasp the point of the story. ‘Were they friends of yours?’ she said. ‘No, I never knew them. They were Inner Party  members. Besides, they were far older men than  

I was. They belonged to the old days, before  the Revolution. I barely knew them by sight.’ ‘Then what was there to worry about? People are  being killed off all the time, aren’t they?’ He tried to make her understand. ‘This was an  exceptional case. It wasn’t just a question of  

Somebody being killed. Do you realize that the  past, starting from yesterday, has been actually   abolished? If it survives anywhere, it’s in a  few solid objects with no words attached to them,   like that lump of glass there. Already we  know almost literally nothing about the  

Revolution and the years before the Revolution.  Every record has been destroyed or falsified,   every book has been rewritten, every picture  has been repainted, every statue and street   and building has been renamed, every date has  been altered. And that process is continuing  

Day by day and minute by minute. History has  stopped. Nothing exists except an endless   present in which the Party is always right. I  know, of course, that the past is falsified,   but it would never be possible for me to  prove it, even when I did the falsification  

Myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever  remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind,   and I don’t know with any certainty that any other  human being shares my memories. Just in that one   instance, in my whole life, I did possess actual  concrete evidence after the event—years after it.’

‘And what good was that?’ ‘It was no good, because I threw  it away a few minutes later. But   if the same thing happened  today, I should keep it.’ ‘Well, I wouldn’t!’ said Julia. ‘I’m quite ready  to take risks, but only for something worth while,  

Not for bits of old newspaper. What could you  have done with it even if you had kept it?’ ‘Not much, perhaps. But it was evidence. It  might have planted a few doubts here and there,   supposing that I’d dared to show it to  anybody. I don’t imagine that we can  

Alter anything in our own lifetime. But one can  imagine little knots of resistance springing up   here and there—small groups of people banding  themselves together, and gradually growing,   and even leaving a few records behind, so that the  next generations can carry on where we leave off.’

‘I’m not interested in the next  generation, dear. I’m interested in us.’ ‘You’re only a rebel from the  waist downwards,’ he told her. She thought this brilliantly witty and  flung her arms round him in delight. In the ramifications of party doctrine she  had not the faintest interest. Whenever he  

Began to talk of the principles of Ingsoc,  doublethink, the mutability of the past,   and the denial of objective reality, and to use  Newspeak words, she became bored and confused and   said that she never paid any attention to that  kind of thing. One knew that it was all rubbish,  

So why let oneself be worried by it? She knew  when to cheer and when to boo, and that was   all one needed. If he persisted in talking of such  subjects, she had a disconcerting habit of falling  

Asleep. She was one of those people who can go to  sleep at any hour and in any position. Talking to   her, he realized how easy it was to present  an appearance of orthodoxy while having no   grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way,  the world-view of the Party imposed itself most  

Successfully on people incapable of understanding  it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant   violations of reality, because they never fully  grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them,   and were not sufficiently interested in public  events to notice what was happening. By lack  

Of understanding they remained sane. They simply  swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did   them no harm, because it left no residue behind,  just as a grain of corn will pass undigested   through the body of a bird. Chapter 6. It had happened at last. The expected  message had come. All his life,  

It seemed to him, he had been  waiting for this to happen. He was walking down the long corridor at the  Ministry and he was almost at the spot where   Julia had slipped the note into his hand  when he became aware that someone larger  

Than himself was walking just behind him. The  person, whoever it was, gave a small cough,   evidently as a prelude to speaking. Winston  stopped abruptly and turned. It was O’Brien. At last they were face to face, and it seemed  that his only impulse was to run away. His  

Heart bounded violently. He would have been  incapable of speaking. O’Brien, however,   had continued forward in the same movement, laying  a friendly hand for a moment on Winston’s arm,   so that the two of them were walking  side by side. He began speaking with  

The peculiar grave courtesy that differentiated  him from the majority of Inner Party members. ‘I had been hoping for an opportunity of  talking to you,’ he said. ‘I was reading   one of your Newspeak articles in ‘The Times’ the   other day. You take a scholarly  interest in Newspeak, I believe?’

Winston had recovered part of his self-possession.  ‘Hardly scholarly,’ he said. ‘I’m only an amateur.   It’s not my subject. I have never had anything to  do with the actual construction of the language.’ ‘But you write it very elegantly,’ said O’Brien.  

‘That is not only my own opinion. I was  talking recently to a friend of yours   who is certainly an expert. His name  has slipped my memory for the moment.’ Again Winston’s heart stirred painfully. It was  inconceivable that this was anything other than  

A reference to Syme. But Syme was not only dead,  he was abolished, an unperson. Any identifiable   reference to him would have been mortally  dangerous. O’Brien’s remark must obviously   have been intended as a signal, a codeword.  By sharing a small act of thoughtcrime he  

Had turned the two of them into accomplices. They  had continued to stroll slowly down the corridor,   but now O’Brien halted. With the curious,  disarming friendliness that he always managed   to put in to the gesture he resettled his  spectacles on his nose. Then he went on:

‘What I had really intended to say  was that in your article I noticed   you had used two words which have become  obsolete. But they have only become so   very recently. Have you seen the tenth  edition of the Newspeak Dictionary?’ ‘No,’ said Winston. ‘I didn’t think it had been  

Issued yet. We are still using the  ninth in the Records Department.’ ‘The tenth edition is not due to appear for  some months, I believe. But a few advance   copies have been circulated. I have one myself.  It might interest you to look at it, perhaps?’

‘Very much so,’ said Winston,  immediately seeing where this tended. ‘Some of the new developments are most ingenious.  The reduction in the number of verbs—that is the   point that will appeal to you, I think. Let me  see, shall I send a messenger to you with the  

Dictionary? But I am afraid I invariably  forget anything of that kind. Perhaps you   could pick it up at my flat at some time that  suited you? Wait. Let me give you my address.’ They were standing in front of a telescreen.  Somewhat absent-mindedly O’Brien felt two  

Of his pockets and then produced a  small leather-covered notebook and   a gold ink-pencil. Immediately beneath the  telescreen, in such a position that anyone   who was watching at the other end of the  instrument could read what he was writing,   he scribbled an address, tore out  the page and handed it to Winston.

‘I am usually at home in the evenings,’ he said.  ‘If not, my servant will give you the dictionary.’ He was gone, leaving Winston holding  the scrap of paper, which this time   there was no need to conceal. Nevertheless he  carefully memorized what was written on it,  

And some hours later dropped it into the  memory hole along with a mass of other papers. They had been talking to one another for a couple  of minutes at the most. There was only one meaning   that the episode could possibly have. It had  been contrived as a way of letting Winston know  

O’Brien’s address. This was necessary, because  except by direct enquiry it was never possible   to discover where anyone lived. There were no  directories of any kind. ‘If you ever want to   see me, this is where I can be found,’ was what  O’Brien had been saying to him. Perhaps there  

Would even be a message concealed somewhere in  the dictionary. But at any rate, one thing was   certain. The conspiracy that he had dreamed of did  exist, and he had reached the outer edges of it.  He knew that sooner or later he would  obey O’Brien’s summons. Perhaps tomorrow,  

Perhaps after a long delay—he was not certain.  What was happening was only the working-out of   a process that had started years ago. The first  step had been a secret, involuntary thought,   the second had been the opening of the  diary. He had moved from thoughts to words,  

And now from words to actions. The last step was  something that would happen in the Ministry of   Love. He had accepted it. The end was contained  in the beginning. But it was frightening: or,   more exactly, it was like a foretaste of death,  like being a little less alive. Even while he was  

Speaking to O’Brien, when the meaning of the words  had sunk in, a chilly shuddering feeling had taken   possession of his body. He had the sensation  of stepping into the dampness of a grave,   and it was not much better because he had  always known that the grave was there and  

Waiting for him. Chapter 7. Winston had woken up with his eyes full of  tears. Julia rolled sleepily against him,   murmuring something that might  have been ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I dreamt—’ he began, and stopped short.  It was too complex to be put into words.  

There was the dream itself, and  there was a memory connected with   it that had swum into his mind  in the few seconds after waking. He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden  in the atmosphere of the dream. It was a vast,  

Luminous dream in which his whole life seemed  to stretch out before him like a landscape on   a summer evening after rain. It had all occurred  inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of   the glass was the dome of the sky, and inside  the dome everything was flooded with clear soft  

Light in which one could see into interminable  distances. The dream had also been comprehended   by—indeed, in some sense it had consisted  in—a gesture of the arm made by his mother,   and made again thirty years later by the  Jewish woman he had seen on the news film,  

Trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets,  before the helicopter blew them both to pieces. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that until this  moment I believed I had murdered my mother?’ ‘Why did you murder her?’  said Julia, almost asleep. ‘I didn’t murder her. Not physically.’

In the dream he had remembered his last glimpse  of his mother, and within a few moments of waking   the cluster of small events surrounding it had  all come back. It was a memory that he must   have deliberately pushed out of his consciousness  over many years. He was not certain of the date,  

But he could not have been less than ten years  old, possibly twelve, when it had happened. His father had disappeared some time earlier, how  much earlier he could not remember. He remembered   better the rackety, uneasy circumstances of the  time: the periodical panics about air-raids and  

The sheltering in Tube stations, the piles  of rubble everywhere, the unintelligible   proclamations posted at street corners, the  gangs of youths in shirts all the same colour,   the enormous queues outside the bakeries,  the intermittent machine-gun fire in the   distance—above all, the fact that there  was never enough to eat. He remembered  

Long afternoons spent with other boys in  scrounging round dustbins and rubbish heaps,   picking out the ribs of cabbage leaves, potato  peelings, sometimes even scraps of stale   breadcrust from which they carefully scraped away  the cinders; and also in waiting for the passing  

Of trucks which travelled over a certain route  and were known to carry cattle feed, and which,   when they jolted over the bad patches in the  road, sometimes spilt a few fragments of oil-cake. When his father disappeared, his mother did  not show any surprise or any violent grief,  

But a sudden change came over her. She seemed  to have become completely spiritless. It was   evident even to Winston that she was waiting  for something that she knew must happen.   She did everything that was needed—cooked,  washed, mended, made the bed, swept the floor,  

Dusted the mantelpiece—always very slowly and  with a curious lack of superfluous motion,   like an artist’s lay-figure moving of its own  accord. Her large shapely body seemed to relapse   naturally into stillness. For hours at a time she  would sit almost immobile on the bed, nursing his  

Young sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of  two or three, with a face made simian by thinness.   Very occasionally she would take Winston in  her arms and press him against her for a long   time without saying anything. He was aware,  in spite of his youthfulness and selfishness,  

That this was somehow connected with the  never-mentioned thing that was about to happen.  He remembered the room where they lived, a  dark, close-smelling room that seemed half   filled by a bed with a white counterpane.  There was a gas ring in the fender, and a  

Shelf where food was kept, and on the landing  outside there was a brown earthenware sink,   common to several rooms. He remembered his  mother’s statuesque body bending over the gas   ring to stir at something in a saucepan. Above  all he remembered his continuous hunger, and the  

Fierce sordid battles at mealtimes. He would ask  his mother naggingly, over and over again, why   there was not more food, he would shout and storm  at her (he even remembered the tones of his voice,   which was beginning to break prematurely  and sometimes boomed in a peculiar way),  

Or he would attempt a snivelling note of pathos  in his efforts to get more than his share. His   mother was quite ready to give him more than his  share. She took it for granted that he, ‘the boy’,  

Should have the biggest portion; but however much  she gave him he invariably demanded more. At every   meal she would beseech him not to be selfish and  to remember that his little sister was sick and   also needed food, but it was no use. He would  cry out with rage when she stopped ladling,  

He would try to wrench the saucepan and spoon  out of her hands, he would grab bits from his   sister’s plate. He knew that he was starving  the other two, but he could not help it;   he even felt that he had a right to do it.  The clamorous hunger in his belly seemed to  

Justify him. Between meals, if his mother did  not stand guard, he was constantly pilfering   at the wretched store of food on the shelf. One day a chocolate ration was issued. There   had been no such issue for weeks or months past.  He remembered quite clearly that precious little  

Morsel of chocolate. It was a two-ounce slab (they  still talked about ounces in those days) between   the three of them. It was obvious that it ought  to be divided into three equal parts. Suddenly,   as though he were listening to somebody  else, Winston heard himself demanding in  

A loud booming voice that he should be given  the whole piece. His mother told him not to   be greedy. There was a long, nagging argument  that went round and round, with shouts, whines,   tears, remonstrances, bargainings. His tiny  sister, clinging to her mother with both hands,  

Exactly like a baby monkey, sat looking over  her shoulder at him with large, mournful eyes.   In the end his mother broke off three-quarters  of the chocolate and gave it to Winston, giving   the other quarter to his sister. The little girl  took hold of it and looked at it dully, perhaps  

Not knowing what it was. Winston stood watching  her for a moment. Then with a sudden swift spring   he had snatched the piece of chocolate out of  his sister’s hand and was fleeing for the door. ‘Winston, Winston!’ his mother called after him.  ‘Come back! Give your sister back her chocolate!’

He stopped, but did not come back. His  mother’s anxious eyes were fixed on his   face. Even now he was thinking about the  thing, he did not know what it was that   was on the point of happening. His sister,  conscious of having been robbed of something,  

Had set up a feeble wail. His mother drew  her arm round the child and pressed its   face against her breast. Something in the  gesture told him that his sister was dying.   He turned and fled down the stairs, with  the chocolate growing sticky in his hand.

He never saw his mother again. After  he had devoured the chocolate he felt   somewhat ashamed of himself and hung  about in the streets for several hours,   until hunger drove him home. When he came  back his mother had disappeared. This was  

Already becoming normal at that time. Nothing  was gone from the room except his mother and   his sister. They had not taken any clothes, not  even his mother’s overcoat. To this day he did   not know with any certainty that his mother  was dead. It was perfectly possible that she  

Had merely been sent to a forced-labour camp.  As for his sister, she might have been removed,   like Winston himself, to one of the colonies  for homeless children (Reclamation Centres,   they were called) which had grown up as a result  of the civil war, or she might have been sent  

To the labour camp along with his mother,  or simply left somewhere or other to die. The dream was still vivid in his mind,  especially the enveloping protecting   gesture of the arm in which its whole meaning  seemed to be contained. His mind went back to  

Another dream of two months ago. Exactly as his  mother had sat on the dingy white-quilted bed,   with the child clinging to her, so she had  sat in the sunken ship, far underneath him,   and drowning deeper every minute, but still  looking up at him through the darkening water.

He told Julia the story of his mother’s  disappearance. Without opening her eyes   she rolled over and settled herself  into a more comfortable position. ‘I expect you were a beastly  little swine in those days,’   she said indistinctly. ‘All children are swine.’

‘Yes. But the real point of the story——’ From her breathing it was evident that   she was going off to sleep again. He would have  liked to continue talking about his mother. He   did not suppose, from what he could remember  of her, that she had been an unusual woman,  

Still less an intelligent one; and yet she had  possessed a kind of nobility, a kind of purity,   simply because the standards that she obeyed  were private ones. Her feelings were her own,   and could not be altered from outside. It would  not have occurred to her that an action which  

Is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If  you loved someone, you loved him, and when you   had nothing else to give, you still gave him  love. When the last of the chocolate was gone,   his mother had clasped the child in her  arms. It was no use, it changed nothing,  

It did not produce more chocolate, it did not  avert the child’s death or her own; but it seemed   natural to her to do it. The refugee woman in the  boat had also covered the little boy with her arm,  

Which was no more use against the bullets than  a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the   Party had done was to persuade you that mere  impulses, mere feelings, were of no account,   while at the same time robbing you of all power  over the material world. When once you were in the  

Grip of the Party, what you felt or did not  feel, what you did or refrained from doing,   made literally no difference. Whatever happened  you vanished, and neither you nor your actions   were ever heard of again. You were lifted clean  out of the stream of history. And yet to the  

People of only two generations ago this would not  have seemed all-important, because they were not   attempting to alter history. They were governed  by private loyalties which they did not question.   What mattered were individual relationships, and  a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear,  

A word spoken to a dying man, could have value in  itself. The proles, it suddenly occurred to him,   had remained in this condition. They were  not loyal to a party or a country or an idea,  

They were loyal to one another. For the first  time in his life he did not despise the proles   or think of them merely as an inert force which  would one day spring to life and regenerate the   world. The proles had stayed human. They had  not become hardened inside. They had held on  

To the primitive emotions which he himself had  to re-learn by conscious effort. And in thinking   this he remembered, without apparent relevance,  how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed hand   lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the  gutter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk. 

‘The proles are human beings,’ he  said aloud. ‘We are not human.’ ‘Why not?’ said Julia, who had woken up again. He thought for a little while. ‘Has  it ever occurred to you,’ he said,   ‘that the best thing for us  to do would be simply to walk  

Out of here before it’s too late,  and never see each other again?’ ‘Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several  times. But I’m not going to do it, all the same.’ ‘We’ve been lucky,’ he said ‘but it can’t last  much longer. You’re young. You look normal and  

Innocent. If you keep clear of people like me,  you might stay alive for another fifty years.’ ‘No. I’ve thought it all out. What you  do, I’m going to do. And don’t be too   downhearted. I’m rather good at staying alive.’

‘We may be together for another six months—a  year—there’s no knowing. At the end we’re   certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly  alone we shall be? When once they get hold of us   there will be nothing, literally nothing, that  either of us can do for the other. If I confess,  

They’ll shoot you, and if I refuse to  confess, they’ll shoot you just the   same. Nothing that I can do or say, or stop  myself from saying, will put off your death   for as much as five minutes. Neither of us  will even know whether the other is alive  

Or dead. We shall be utterly without power  of any kind. The one thing that matters is   that we shouldn’t betray one another, although  even that can’t make the slightest difference.’ ‘If you mean confessing,’  she said, ‘we shall do that,   right enough. Everybody always confesses.  You can’t help it. They torture you.’

‘I don’t mean confessing. Confession is not  betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter:   only feelings matter. If they could make me stop  loving you—that would be the real betrayal.’ She thought it over. ‘They can’t  do that,’ she said finally. ‘It’s   the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say  

Anything—ANYTHING—but they can’t make you  believe it. They can’t get inside you.’ ‘No,’ he said a little more hopefully,  ‘no; that’s quite true. They can’t get   inside you. If you can FEEL that staying human  is worth while, even when it can’t have any  

Result whatever, you’ve beaten them.’ He thought of the telescreen with its   never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night  and day, but if you kept your head you could still   outwit them. With all their cleverness they had  never mastered the secret of finding out what  

Another human being was thinking. Perhaps that  was less true when you were actually in their   hands. One did not know what happened inside the  Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess:   tortures, drugs, delicate instruments  that registered your nervous reactions,  

Gradual wearing-down by sleeplessness and solitude  and persistent questioning. Facts, at any rate,   could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked  down by enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you   by torture. But if the object was not to stay  alive but to stay human, what difference did  

It ultimately make? They could not alter your  feelings: for that matter you could not alter   them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could  lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you   had done or said or thought; but the inner heart,  whose workings were mysterious even to yourself,   remained impregnable. Chapter 8.

They had done it, they had done it at last! The room they were standing in was long-shaped  and softly lit. The telescreen was dimmed to a low   murmur; the richness of the dark-blue carpet gave  one the impression of treading on velvet. At the  

Far end of the room O’Brien was sitting at a table  under a green-shaded lamp, with a mass of papers   on either side of him. He had not bothered to look  up when the servant showed Julia and Winston in.

Winston’s heart was thumping so hard that he  doubted whether he would be able to speak. They   had done it, they had done it at last, was all he  could think. It had been a rash act to come here  

At all, and sheer folly to arrive together; though  it was true that they had come by different routes   and only met on O’Brien’s doorstep. But merely  to walk into such a place needed an effort of the  

Nerve. It was only on very rare occasions that one  saw inside the dwelling-places of the Inner Party,   or even penetrated into the quarter of the town  where they lived. The whole atmosphere of the huge   block of flats, the richness and spaciousness of  everything, the unfamiliar smells of good food and  

Good tobacco, the silent and incredibly rapid  lifts sliding up and down, the white-jacketed   servants hurrying to and fro—everything was  intimidating. Although he had a good pretext for   coming here, he was haunted at every step by the  fear that a black-uniformed guard would suddenly  

Appear from round the corner, demand his papers,  and order him to get out. O’Brien’s servant,   however, had admitted the two of them without  demur. He was a small, dark-haired man in a   white jacket, with a diamond-shaped, completely  expressionless face which might have been that  

Of a Chinese. The passage down which he led them  was softly carpeted, with cream-papered walls and   white wainscoting, all exquisitely clean. That too  was intimidating. Winston could not remember ever   to have seen a passageway whose walls were  not grimy from the contact of human bodies.

O’Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers  and seemed to be studying it intently. His heavy   face, bent down so that one could see the  line of the nose, looked both formidable and   intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds  he sat without stirring. Then he pulled  

The speakwrite towards him and rapped out a  message in the hybrid jargon of the Ministries: ‘Items one comma five comma  seven approved fullwise stop   suggestion contained item six doubleplus  ridiculous verging crimethink cancel stop   unproceed constructionwise antegetting plusfull  estimates machinery overheads stop end message.’

He rose deliberately from his chair and came  towards them across the soundless carpet. A   little of the official atmosphere seemed to have  fallen away from him with the Newspeak words,   but his expression was grimmer than usual, as  though he were not pleased at being disturbed.  

The terror that Winston already felt was  suddenly shot through by a streak of ordinary   embarrassment. It seemed to him quite possible  that he had simply made a stupid mistake. For   what evidence had he in reality that O’Brien was  any kind of political conspirator? Nothing but a  

Flash of the eyes and a single equivocal remark:  beyond that, only his own secret imaginings,   founded on a dream. He could not even  fall back on the pretence that he had   come to borrow the dictionary, because in  that case Julia’s presence was impossible  

To explain. As O’Brien passed the telescreen  a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped,   turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall.  There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped. Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak  of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic,  

Winston was too much taken aback  to be able to hold his tongue. ‘You can turn it off!’ he said. ‘Yes,’ said O’Brien, ‘we can turn  it off. We have that privilege.’ He was opposite them now. His solid  form towered over the pair of them,  

And the expression on his face was  still indecipherable. He was waiting,   somewhat sternly, for Winston to speak, but about  what? Even now it was quite conceivable that he   was simply a busy man wondering irritably  why he had been interrupted. Nobody spoke.  

After the stopping of the telescreen the room  seemed deadly silent. The seconds marched past,   enormous. With difficulty Winston continued  to keep his eyes fixed on O’Brien’s. Then   suddenly the grim face broke down into what  might have been the beginnings of a smile.   With his characteristic gesture O’Brien  resettled his spectacles on his nose.

‘Shall I say it, or will you?’ he said. ‘I will say it,’ said Winston promptly.  ‘That thing is really turned off?’ ‘Yes, everything is turned off. We are alone.’ ‘We have come here because——’ He paused, realizing for the first time the  vagueness of his own motives. Since he did not  

In fact know what kind of help he expected from  O’Brien, it was not easy to say why he had come   here. He went on, conscious that what he was  saying must sound both feeble and pretentious:  ‘We believe that there is some kind  of conspiracy, some kind of secret  

Organization working against the Party, and  that you are involved in it. We want to join   it and work for it. We are enemies of the  Party. We disbelieve in the principles of   Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals.  We are also adulterers. I tell you  

This because we want to put ourselves at  your mercy. If you want us to incriminate   ourselves in any other way, we are ready.’ He stopped and glanced over his shoulder,   with the feeling that the door had opened. Sure  enough, the little yellow-faced servant had come  

In without knocking. Winston saw that he was  carrying a tray with a decanter and glasses. ‘Martin is one of us,’ said O’Brien  impassively. ‘Bring the drinks over here,   Martin. Put them on the round  table. Have we enough chairs?  

Then we may as well sit down and talk  in comfort. Bring a chair for yourself,   Martin. This is business. You can stop  being a servant for the next ten minutes.’ The little man sat down, quite at his ease,  and yet still with a servant-like air,  

The air of a valet enjoying a privilege.  Winston regarded him out of the corner   of his eye. It struck him that the  man’s whole life was playing a part,   and that he felt it to be dangerous to drop his  assumed personality even for a moment. O’Brien  

Took the decanter by the neck and filled up the  glasses with a dark-red liquid. It aroused in   Winston dim memories of something seen long ago  on a wall or a hoarding—a vast bottle composed   of electric lights which seemed to move up and  down and pour its contents into a glass. Seen  

From the top the stuff looked almost black,  but in the decanter it gleamed like a ruby.   It had a sour-sweet smell. He saw Julia pick up  her glass and sniff at it with frank curiosity. ‘It is called wine,’ said O’Brien with a faint  smile. ‘You will have read about it in books,  

No doubt. Not much of it gets to the Outer Party,   I am afraid.’ His face grew solemn again,  and he raised his glass: ‘I think it is   fitting that we should begin by drinking a  health. To our Leader: To Emmanuel Goldstein.’

Winston took up his glass with a certain  eagerness. Wine was a thing he had read   and dreamed about. Like the glass paperweight  or Mr Charrington’s half-remembered rhymes,   it belonged to the vanished, romantic past, the  olden time as he liked to call it in his secret  

Thoughts. For some reason he had always thought  of wine as having an intensely sweet taste,   like that of blackberry jam and an  immediate intoxicating effect. Actually,   when he came to swallow it, the stuff  was distinctly disappointing. The truth  

Was that after years of gin-drinking he could  barely taste it. He set down the empty glass. ‘Then there is such a person  as Goldstein?’ he said. ‘Yes, there is such a person, and  he is alive. Where, I do not know.’ ‘And the conspiracy—the organization?  

Is it real? It is not simply an  invention of the Thought Police?’ ‘No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call  it. You will never learn much more about   the Brotherhood than that it exists and that  you belong to it. I will come back to that  

Presently.’ He looked at his wrist-watch. ‘It  is unwise even for members of the Inner Party   to turn off the telescreen for more than half an  hour. You ought not to have come here together,   and you will have to leave separately. You,  comrade’—he bowed his head to Julia—’will  

Leave first. We have about twenty minutes  at our disposal. You will understand that   I must start by asking you certain questions.  In general terms, what are you prepared to do?’ ‘Anything that we are capable of,’ said Winston.

O’Brien had turned himself a little in his chair  so that he was facing Winston. He almost ignored   Julia, seeming to take it for granted that  Winston could speak for her. For a moment the   lids flitted down over his eyes. He began asking  his questions in a low, expressionless voice, as  

Though this were a routine, a sort of catechism,  most of whose answers were known to him already. ‘You are prepared to give your lives?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You are prepared to commit murder?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘To commit acts of sabotage which may cause  the death of hundreds of innocent people?’ ‘Yes.’

‘To betray your country to foreign powers?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You are prepared to cheat, to forge,  to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of   children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to  encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal   diseases—to do anything which is likely to cause  demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?’ ‘Yes.’

‘If, for example, it would  somehow serve our interests   to throw sulphuric acid in a child’s  face—are you prepared to do that?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You are prepared to lose your identity and live   out the rest of your life as  a waiter or a dock-worker?’ ‘Yes.’

‘You are prepared to commit suicide,  if and when we order you to do so?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You are prepared, the two of you, to  separate and never see one another again?’ ‘No!’ broke in Julia. It appeared to Winston   that a long time passed before he  answered. For a moment he seemed  

Even to have been deprived of the power  of speech. His tongue worked soundlessly,   forming the opening syllables first of one word,  then of the other, over and over again. Until he   had said it, he did not know which word he  was going to say. ‘No,’ he said finally. 

‘You did well to tell me,’ said O’Brien.  ‘It is necessary for us to know everything.’ He turned himself toward Julia and added in  a voice with somewhat more expression in it: ‘Do you understand that even if he survives,  

It may be as a different person? We may be  obliged to give him a new identity. His face,   his movements, the shape of his hands, the  colour of his hair—even his voice would be   different. And you yourself might have  become a different person. Our surgeons  

Can alter people beyond recognition. Sometimes it  is necessary. Sometimes we even amputate a limb.’ Winston could not help snatching another sidelong  glance at Martin’s Mongolian face. There were   no scars that he could see. Julia had turned a  shade paler, so that her freckles were showing,  

But she faced O’Brien boldly. She murmured  something that seemed to be assent. ‘Good. Then that is settled.’ There was a silver box of cigarettes on the table.  With a rather absent-minded air O’Brien pushed   them towards the others, took one himself, then  stood up and began to pace slowly to and fro, as  

Though he could think better standing. They were  very good cigarettes, very thick and well-packed,   with an unfamiliar silkiness in the paper.  O’Brien looked at his wrist-watch again. ‘You had better go back to your Pantry,   Martin,’ he said. ‘I shall switch on  in a quarter of an hour. Take a good  

Look at these comrades’ faces before you go.  You will be seeing them again. I may not.’ Exactly as they had done at the front door,  the little man’s dark eyes flickered over their   faces. There was not a trace of friendliness in  his manner. He was memorizing their appearance,  

But he felt no interest in them, or appeared  to feel none. It occurred to Winston that a   synthetic face was perhaps incapable of changing  its expression. Without speaking or giving any   kind of salutation, Martin went out, closing the  door silently behind him. O’Brien was strolling up  

And down, one hand in the pocket of his black  overalls, the other holding his cigarette. ‘You understand,’ he said, ‘that you will be  fighting in the dark. You will always be in the   dark. You will receive orders and you will obey  them, without knowing why. Later I shall send you  

A book from which you will learn the true nature  of the society we live in, and the strategy by   which we shall destroy it. When you have read the  book, you will be full members of the Brotherhood.  

But between the general aims that we are fighting  for and the immediate tasks of the moment,   you will never know anything. I tell you that the  Brotherhood exists, but I cannot tell you whether   it numbers a hundred members, or ten million. From  your personal knowledge you will never be able to  

Say that it numbers even as many as a dozen.  You will have three or four contacts, who will   be renewed from time to time as they disappear. As  this was your first contact, it will be preserved.  

When you receive orders, they will come from me.  If we find it necessary to communicate with you,   it will be through Martin. When you are finally  caught, you will confess. That is unavoidable.   But you will have very little to confess, other  than your own actions. You will not be able to  

Betray more than a handful of unimportant  people. Probably you will not even betray   me. By that time I may be dead, or I shall have  become a different person, with a different face.’ He continued to move to and fro over the soft  carpet. In spite of the bulkiness of his body  

There was a remarkable grace in his movements.  It came out even in the gesture with which he   thrust a hand into his pocket, or manipulated  a cigarette. More even than of strength,   he gave an impression of confidence and of an  understanding tinged by irony. However much  

In earnest he might be, he had nothing of the  single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic.   When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal  disease, amputated limbs, and altered faces,   it was with a faint air of persiflage. ‘This  is unavoidable,’ his voice seemed to say;  

‘this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly.  But this is not what we shall be doing when   life is worth living again.’ A wave  of admiration, almost of worship,   flowed out from Winston towards O’Brien.  For the moment he had forgotten the shadowy  

Figure of Goldstein. When you looked at O’Brien’s  powerful shoulders and his blunt-featured face,   so ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible  to believe that he could be defeated. There was   no stratagem that he was not equal to, no danger  that he could not foresee. Even Julia seemed to  

Be impressed. She had let her cigarette go out  and was listening intently. O’Brien went on:  ‘You will have heard rumours of the existence  of the Brotherhood. No doubt you have formed   your own picture of it. You have imagined,  probably, a huge underworld of conspirators,  

Meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling messages  on walls, recognizing one another by codewords   or by special movements of the hand. Nothing of  the kind exists. The members of the Brotherhood   have no way of recognizing one another, and it  is impossible for any one member to be aware of  

The identity of more than a few others. Goldstein  himself, if he fell into the hands of the Thought   Police, could not give them a complete list  of members, or any information that would lead   them to a complete list. No such list exists.  The Brotherhood cannot be wiped out because it  

Is not an organization in the ordinary sense.  Nothing holds it together except an idea which   is indestructible. You will never have anything  to sustain you, except the idea. You will get no   comradeship and no encouragement. When finally you  are caught, you will get no help. We never help  

Our members. At most, when it is absolutely  necessary that someone should be silenced,   we are occasionally able to smuggle a razor blade  into a prisoner’s cell. You will have to get used   to living without results and without hope.  You will work for a while, you will be caught,  

You will confess, and then you will die. Those are  the only results that you will ever see. There is   no possibility that any perceptible change will  happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead.  

Our only true life is in the future. We shall  take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters   of bone. But how far away that future may be,  there is no knowing. It might be a thousand  

Years. At present nothing is possible except to  extend the area of sanity little by little. We   cannot act collectively. We can only spread our  knowledge outwards from individual to individual,   generation after generation. In the face of  the Thought Police there is no other way.’ 

He halted and looked for the  third time at his wrist-watch. ‘It is almost time for you to leave,   comrade,’ he said to Julia. ‘Wait.  The decanter is still half full.’ He filled the glasses and raised  his own glass by the stem.

‘What shall it be this time?’ he said, still  with the same faint suggestion of irony. ‘To the   confusion of the Thought Police? To the death  of Big Brother? To humanity? To the future?’ ‘To the past,’ said Winston. ‘The past is more important,’  agreed O’Brien gravely.

They emptied their glasses, and a moment later  Julia stood up to go. O’Brien took a small box   from the top of a cabinet and handed her  a flat white tablet which he told her to   place on her tongue. It was important,  he said, not to go out smelling of wine:  

The lift attendants were very observant.  As soon as the door had shut behind her   he appeared to forget her existence. He took  another pace or two up and down, then stopped. ‘There are details to be settled,’ he said. ‘I  assume that you have a hiding-place of some kind?’

Winston explained about the  room over Mr Charrington’s shop. ‘That will do for the moment. Later we will  arrange something else for you. It is important   to change one’s hiding-place frequently. Meanwhile  I shall send you a copy of THE BOOK’—even O’Brien,  

Winston noticed, seemed to pronounce the words  as though they were in italics—’Goldstein’s book,   you understand, as soon as possible. It  may be some days before I can get hold of   one. There are not many in existence, as  you can imagine. The Thought Police hunt  

Them down and destroy them almost  as fast as we can produce them. It   makes very little difference. The book is  indestructible. If the last copy were gone,   we could reproduce it almost word for word. Do you  carry a brief-case to work with you?’ he added. ‘As a rule, yes.’ ‘What is it like?’

‘Black, very shabby. With two straps.’ ‘Black, two straps, very shabby—good. One day in  the fairly near future—I cannot give a date—one   of the messages among your morning’s  work will contain a misprinted word,   and you will have to ask for a repeat.  On the following day you will go to  

Work without your brief-case. At some  time during the day, in the street,   a man will touch you on the arm and say “I think  you have dropped your brief-case.” The one he   gives you will contain a copy of Goldstein’s  book. You will return it within fourteen days.’ They were silent for a moment.

‘There are a couple of minutes before you   need go,’ said O’Brien. ‘We shall  meet again—if we do meet again——’ Winston looked up at him. ‘In the place where  there is no darkness?’ he said hesitantly. O’Brien nodded without appearance of surprise. ‘In  the place where there is no darkness,’ he said,  

As though he had recognized the  allusion. ‘And in the meantime,   is there anything that you wish to say before  you leave? Any message? Any question?.’  Winston thought. There did not seem to be  any further question that he wanted to ask:   still less did he feel any impulse  to utter high-sounding generalities.  

Instead of anything directly connected with  O’Brien or the Brotherhood, there came into   his mind a sort of composite picture of the dark  bedroom where his mother had spent her last days,   and the little room over Mr Charrington’s shop,  and the glass paperweight, and the steel engraving  

In its rosewood frame. Almost at random he said: ‘Did you ever happen to hear an old rhyme   that begins “Oranges and lemons,  say the bells of St Clement’s”?’ Again O’Brien nodded. With a sort of  grave courtesy he completed the stanza: ‘Oranges and lemons, say  the bells of St Clement’s, 

You owe me three farthings,  say the bells of St Martin’s,  When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey, When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch.’ ‘You knew the last line!’ said Winston. ‘Yes, I knew the last line. And now, I am afraid,  

It is time for you to go. But wait. You had  better let me give you one of these tablets.’ As Winston stood up O’Brien held out a hand. His  powerful grip crushed the bones of Winston’s palm.   At the door Winston looked back, but O’Brien  seemed already to be in process of putting  

Him out of mind. He was waiting with his hand  on the switch that controlled the telescreen.   Beyond him Winston could see the writing-table  with its green-shaded lamp and the speakwrite   and the wire baskets deep-laden with papers.  The incident was closed. Within thirty seconds,  

It occurred to him, O’Brien would be back at  his interrupted and important work on behalf   of the Party. Chapter 9. Winston was gelatinous with fatigue.  Gelatinous was the right word. It   had come into his head spontaneously. His body  seemed to have not only the weakness of a jelly,  

But its translucency. He felt that if he held up  his hand he would be able to see the light through   it. All the blood and lymph had been drained  out of him by an enormous debauch of work,   leaving only a frail structure of nerves,  bones, and skin. All sensations seemed  

To be magnified. His overalls fretted his  shoulders, the pavement tickled his feet,   even the opening and closing of a hand  was an effort that made his joints creak. He had worked more than ninety hours  in five days. So had everyone else in  

The Ministry. Now it was all over,  and he had literally nothing to do,   no Party work of any description, until  tomorrow morning. He could spend six hours   in the hiding-place and another nine in his  own bed. Slowly, in mild afternoon sunshine,  

He walked up a dingy street in the direction of  Mr Charrington’s shop, keeping one eye open for   the patrols, but irrationally convinced that  this afternoon there was no danger of anyone   interfering with him. The heavy brief-case that he  was carrying bumped against his knee at each step,  

Sending a tingling sensation up and down  the skin of his leg. Inside it was the book,   which he had now had in his possession for six  days and had not yet opened, nor even looked at. On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the  processions, the speeches, the shouting,  

The singing, the banners, the posters, the  films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums   and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching  feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks,   the roar of massed planes, the booming of  guns—after six days of this, when the great  

Orgasm was quivering to its climax and the  general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into   such delirium that if the crowd could have got  their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals   who were to be publicly hanged on the last day  of the proceedings, they would unquestionably  

Have torn them to pieces—at just this moment  it had been announced that Oceania was not   after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was  at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally. There was, of course, no admission that any  change had taken place. Merely it became known,  

With extreme suddenness and everywhere at once,  that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy.   Winston was taking part in a demonstration in one  of the central London squares at the moment when   it happened. It was night, and the white faces  and the scarlet banners were luridly floodlit.  

The square was packed with several thousand  people, including a block of about a thousand   schoolchildren in the uniform of the Spies. On  a scarlet-draped platform an orator of the Inner   Party, a small lean man with disproportionately  long arms and a large bald skull over which  

A few lank locks straggled, was haranguing  the crowd. A little Rumpelstiltskin figure,   contorted with hatred, he gripped the neck of  the microphone with one hand while the other,   enormous at the end of a bony arm, clawed  the air menacingly above his head. His voice,  

Made metallic by the amplifiers, boomed forth  an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres,   deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of  prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda,   unjust aggressions, broken treaties. It was  almost impossible to listen to him without   being first convinced and then maddened. At every  few moments the fury of the crowd boiled over and  

The voice of the speaker was drowned by a wild  beast-like roaring that rose uncontrollably from   thousands of throats. The most savage yells of  all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had   been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a  messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap  

Of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand.  He unrolled and read it without pausing in his   speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or  in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly   the names were different. Without words said, a  wave of understanding rippled through the crowd.  

Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next  moment there was a tremendous commotion. The   banners and posters with which the square was  decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them   had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The  agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a  

Riotous interlude while posters were ripped from  the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled   underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of  activity in clambering over the rooftops and   cutting the streamers that fluttered from the  chimneys. But within two or three minutes it  

Was all over. The orator, still gripping the neck  of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward,   his free hand clawing at the air, had gone  straight on with his speech. One minute more,   and the feral roars of rage were again bursting  from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as  

Before, except that the target had been changed. The thing that impressed Winston in looking back   was that the speaker had switched from one  line to the other actually in midsentence,   not only without a pause, but without even  breaking the syntax. But at the moment he had  

Other things to preoccupy him. It was during the  moment of disorder while the posters were being   torn down that a man whose face he did not see had  tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me,   I think you’ve dropped your brief-case.’ He took  the brief-case abstractedly, without speaking.  

He knew that it would be days before he had an  opportunity to look inside it. The instant that   the demonstration was over he went straight to  the Ministry of Truth, though the time was now   nearly twenty-three hours. The entire staff  of the Ministry had done likewise. The orders  

Already issuing from the telescreen, recalling  them to their posts, were hardly necessary.  Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had  always been at war with Eastasia. A large part   of the political literature of five years was  now completely obsolete. Reports and records   of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets,  films, sound-tracks, photographs—all had to  

Be rectified at lightning speed. Although no  directive was ever issued, it was known that   the chiefs of the Department intended that within  one week no reference to the war with Eurasia,   or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in  existence anywhere. The work was overwhelming,  

All the more so because the processes that it  involved could not be called by their true names.   Everyone in the Records Department worked eighteen  hours in the twenty-four, with two three-hour   snatches of sleep. Mattresses were brought up from  the cellars and pitched all over the corridors:  

Meals consisted of sandwiches and Victory Coffee  wheeled round on trolleys by attendants from the   canteen. Each time that Winston broke off for  one of his spells of sleep he tried to leave   his desk clear of work, and each time that he  crawled back sticky-eyed and aching, it was to  

Find that another shower of paper cylinders had  covered the desk like a snowdrift, half-burying   the speakwrite and overflowing on to the floor,  so that the first job was always to stack them   into a neat enough pile to give him room to  work. What was worst of all was that the work  

Was by no means purely mechanical. Often it was  enough merely to substitute one name for another,   but any detailed report of events demanded care  and imagination. Even the geographical knowledge   that one needed in transferring the war from one  part of the world to another was considerable.

By the third day his eyes ached unbearably and  his spectacles needed wiping every few minutes.   It was like struggling with some crushing physical  task, something which one had the right to refuse   and which one was nevertheless neurotically  anxious to accomplish. In so far as he had time  

To remember it, he was not troubled by the fact  that every word he murmured into the speakwrite,   every stroke of his ink-pencil, was a  deliberate lie. He was as anxious as   anyone else in the Department that the forgery  should be perfect. On the morning of the sixth  

Day the dribble of cylinders slowed down. For as  much as half an hour nothing came out of the tube;   then one more cylinder, then nothing. Everywhere  at about the same time the work was easing off.   A deep and as it were secret sigh went  through the Department. A mighty deed,  

Which could never be mentioned, had been achieved.  It was now impossible for any human being to   prove by documentary evidence that the war with  Eurasia had ever happened. At twelve hundred it   was unexpectedly announced that all workers in the  Ministry were free till tomorrow morning. Winston,  

Still carrying the brief-case containing  the book, which had remained between his   feet while he worked and under his body  while he slept, went home, shaved himself,   and almost fell asleep in his bath, although  the water was barely more than tepid.

With a sort of voluptuous creaking in  his joints he climbed the stair above Mr   Charrington’s shop. He was tired, but not sleepy  any longer. He opened the window, lit the dirty   little oilstove and put on a pan of water for  coffee. Julia would arrive presently: meanwhile  

There was the book. He sat down in the sluttish  armchair and undid the straps of the brief-case. A heavy black volume, amateurishly bound, with  no name or title on the cover. The print also   looked slightly irregular. The pages were  worn at the edges, and fell apart, easily,  

As though the book had passed through many  hands. The inscription on the title-page ran: The Theory And Practice of Oligarchical  Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein. Winston began reading: Chapter 1. Ignorance is Strength. Throughout recorded time, and probably  

Since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have  been three kinds of people in the world, the High,   the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided  in many ways, they have borne countless different   names, and their relative numbers, as well as  their attitude towards one another, have varied  

From age to age: but the essential structure of  society has never altered. Even after enormous   upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the  same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as   a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium,  however far it is pushed one way or the other.  The aims of these groups are  entirely irreconcilable…

Winston stopped reading, chiefly in order  to appreciate the fact that he was reading,   in comfort and safety. He was alone:  no telescreen, no ear at the keyhole,   no nervous impulse to glance over his shoulder  or cover the page with his hand. The sweet summer  

Air played against his cheek. From somewhere far  away there floated the faint shouts of children:   in the room itself there was no sound except the  insect voice of the clock. He settled deeper into   the arm-chair and put his feet up on the fender.  It was bliss, it was eternity. Suddenly, as one  

Sometimes does with a book of which one knows that  one will ultimately read and re-read every word,   he opened it at a different place and found  himself at Chapter 3. He went on reading: Chapter 3. War is Peace.

The splitting up of the world into three great  super-states was an event which could be and   indeed was foreseen before the middle of the  twentieth century. With the absorption of   Europe by Russia and of the British Empire by the  United States, two of the three existing powers,  

Eurasia and Oceania, were already effectively  in being. The third, Eastasia, only emerged   as a distinct unit after another decade of  confused fighting. The frontiers between the   three super-states are in some places arbitrary,  and in others they fluctuate according to the   fortunes of war, but in general they follow  geographical lines. Eurasia comprises the  

Whole of the northern part of the European and  Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering   Strait. Oceania comprises the Americas, the  Atlantic islands including the British Isles,   Australasia, and the southern portion of Africa.  Eastasia, smaller than the others and with a  

Less definite western frontier, comprises  China and the countries to the south of it,   the Japanese islands and a large but fluctuating  portion of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet. In one combination or another, these  three super-states are permanently at war,  

And have been so for the past twenty-five  years. War, however, is no longer the desperate,   annihilating struggle that it was in the early  decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare   of limited aims between combatants who are unable  to destroy one another, have no material cause for  

Fighting and are not divided by any genuine  ideological difference. This is not to say   that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing  attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty   or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria  is continuous and universal in all countries,  

And such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter  of children, the reduction of whole populations   to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners  which extend even to boiling and burying alive,   are looked upon as normal, and, when they are  committed by one’s own side and not by the enemy,  

Meritorious. But in a physical sense war  involves very small numbers of people,   mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes  comparatively few casualties. The fighting,   when there is any, takes place on the vague  frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can   only guess at, or round the Floating Fortresses  which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes.  

In the centres of civilization war means no more  than a continuous shortage of consumption goods,   and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which  may cause a few scores of deaths. War has in fact   changed its character. More exactly, the reasons  for which war is waged have changed in their order  

Of importance. Motives which were already present  to some small extent in the great wars of the   early twentieth century have now become dominant  and are consciously recognized and acted upon.  To understand the nature of the present war—for  in spite of the regrouping which occurs every few  

Years, it is always the same war—one must realize  in the first place that it is impossible for it to   be decisive. None of the three super-states could  be definitively conquered even by the other two   in combination. They are too evenly matched, and  their natural defences are too formidable. Eurasia  

Is protected by its vast land spaces, Oceania  by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific,   Eastasia by the fecundity and industriousness of  its inhabitants. Secondly, there is no longer,   in a material sense, anything to fight about. With  the establishment of self-contained economies, in  

Which production and consumption are geared to one  another, the scramble for markets which was a main   cause of previous wars has come to an end, while  the competition for raw materials is no longer a  

Matter of life and death. In any case each of the  three super-states is so vast that it can obtain   almost all the materials that it needs within  its own boundaries. In so far as the war has   a direct economic purpose, it is a war for labour  power. Between the frontiers of the super-states,  

And not permanently in the possession of any of  them, there lies a rough quadrilateral with its   corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and  Hong Kong, containing within it about a fifth   of the population of the earth. It is for the  possession of these thickly-populated regions,  

And of the northern ice-cap, that the three powers  are constantly struggling. In practice no one   power ever controls the whole of the disputed  area. Portions of it are constantly changing   hands, and it is the chance of seizing this or  that fragment by a sudden stroke of treachery  

That dictates the endless changes of alignment. All of the disputed territories contain valuable   minerals, and some of them yield important  vegetable products such as rubber which in   colder climates it is necessary to synthesize by  comparatively expensive methods. But above all  

They contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour.  Whichever power controls equatorial Africa, or the   countries of the Middle East, or Southern India,  or the Indonesian Archipelago, disposes also of   the bodies of scores or hundreds of millions of  ill-paid and hard-working coolies. The inhabitants  

Of these areas, reduced more or less openly to the  status of slaves, pass continually from conqueror   to conqueror, and are expended like so much coal  or oil in the race to turn out more armaments,   to capture more territory, to control more  labour power, to turn out more armaments,  

To capture more territory, and so on indefinitely.  It should be noted that the fighting never really   moves beyond the edges of the disputed areas.  The frontiers of Eurasia flow back and forth   between the basin of the Congo and the northern  shore of the Mediterranean; the islands of the  

Indian Ocean and the Pacific are constantly being  captured and recaptured by Oceania or by Eastasia;   in Mongolia the dividing line between Eurasia and  Eastasia is never stable; round the Pole all three   powers lay claim to enormous territories which  in fact are largely uninhabited and unexplored:  

But the balance of power always remains roughly  even, and the territory which forms the heartland   of each super-state always remains inviolate.  Moreover, the labour of the exploited peoples   round the Equator is not really necessary  to the world’s economy. They add nothing  

To the wealth of the world, since whatever  they produce is used for purposes of war,   and the object of waging a war is always to be in  a better position in which to wage another war.   By their labour the slave populations allow the  tempo of continuous warfare to be speeded up. But  

If they did not exist, the structure of world  society, and the process by which it maintains   itself, would not be essentially different. The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance   with the principles of doublethink, this aim is  simultaneously recognized and not recognized by  

The directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use  up the products of the machine without raising the   general standard of living. Ever since the end of  the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do   with the surplus of consumption goods has been  latent in industrial society. At present, when  

Few human beings even have enough to eat, this  problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not   have become so, even if no artificial processes of  destruction had been at work. The world of today   is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with  the world that existed before 1914, and still more  

So if compared with the imaginary future to which  the people of that period looked forward. In the   early twentieth century, the vision of a future  society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly, and   efficient—a glittering antiseptic world of glass  and steel and snow-white concrete—was part of the  

Consciousness of nearly every literate person.  Science and technology were developing at a   prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume  that they would go on developing. This failed   to happen, partly because of the impoverishment  caused by a long series of wars and revolutions,  

Partly because scientific and technical progress  depended on the empirical habit of thought,   which could not survive in a strictly regimented  society. As a whole the world is more primitive   today than it was fifty years ago. Certain  backward areas have advanced, and various devices,  

Always in some way connected with warfare  and police espionage, have been developed,   but experiment and invention have largely  stopped, and the ravages of the atomic war of the   nineteen-fifties have never been fully repaired.  Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine  

Are still there. From the moment when the machine  first made its appearance it was clear to all   thinking people that the need for human drudgery,  and therefore to a great extent for human   inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were  used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork,  

Dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated  within a few generations. And in fact, without   being used for any such purpose, but by a sort  of automatic process—by producing wealth which it   was sometimes impossible not to distribute—the  machine did raise the living standards of the  

Average human being very greatly over a period  of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth   and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. But it was also clear that an all-round increase   in wealth threatened the destruction—indeed, in  some sense was the destruction—of a hierarchical  

Society. In a world in which everyone worked short  hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with   a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a  motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious   and perhaps the most important form of inequality  would already have disappeared. If it once became  

General, wealth would confer no distinction. It  was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in   which WEALTH, in the sense of personal possessions  and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while   POWER remained in the hands of a small privileged  caste. But in practice such a society could not  

Long remain stable. For if leisure and security  were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of   human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty  would become literate and would learn to think for   themselves; and when once they had done this, they  would sooner or later realize that the privileged  

Minority had no function, and they would sweep  it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society   was only possible on a basis of poverty and  ignorance. To return to the agricultural past,   as some thinkers about the beginning of the  twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not  

A practicable solution. It conflicted with the  tendency towards mechanization which had become   quasi-instinctive throughout almost the whole  world, and moreover, any country which remained   industrially backward was helpless in a military  sense and was bound to be dominated, directly or   indirectly, by its more advanced rivals. Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep  

The masses in poverty by restricting the output  of goods. This happened to a great extent during   the final phase of capitalism, roughly between  1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was   allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation,  capital equipment was not added to, great blocks  

Of the population were prevented from working  and kept half alive by State charity. But this,   too, entailed military weakness, and since  the privations it inflicted were obviously   unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The  problem was how to keep the wheels of industry  

Turning without increasing the real wealth of the  world. Goods must be produced, but they must not   be distributed. And in practice the only way  of achieving this was by continuous warfare.  The essential act of war is destruction, not  necessarily of human lives, but of the products  

Of human labour. War is a way of shattering  to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere,   or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials  which might otherwise be used to make the masses   too comfortable, and hence, in the long run,  too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are  

Not actually destroyed, their manufacture is  still a convenient way of expending labour   power without producing anything that can be  consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example,   has locked up in it the labour that would build  several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is  

Scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any  material benefit to anybody, and with further   enormous labours another Floating Fortress is  built. In principle the war effort is always so   planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist  after meeting the bare needs of the population. In  

Practice the needs of the population are always  underestimated, with the result that there is   a chronic shortage of half the necessities of  life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It   is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured  groups somewhere near the brink of hardship,  

Because a general state of scarcity increases the  importance of small privileges and thus magnifies   the distinction between one group and another.  By the standards of the early twentieth century,   even a member of the Inner Party lives an  austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless,  

The few luxuries that he does enjoy his large,  well-appointed flat, the better texture of his   clothes, the better quality of his food and  drink and tobacco, his two or three servants,   his private motor-car or helicopter—set him in a  different world from a member of the Outer Party,  

And the members of the Outer Party have a  similar advantage in comparison with the   submerged masses whom we call ‘the proles’. The  social atmosphere is that of a besieged city,   where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes  the difference between wealth and poverty. And  

At the same time the consciousness of being  at war, and therefore in danger, makes the   handing-over of all power to a small caste seem  the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.  War, it will be seen, accomplishes the  necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in  

A psychologically acceptable way. In principle it  would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour   of the world by building temples and pyramids,  by digging holes and filling them up again,   or even by producing vast quantities of goods and  then setting fire to them. But this would provide  

Only the economic and not the emotional basis for  a hierarchical society. What is concerned here   is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is  unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at   work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the  humblest Party member is expected to be competent,  

Industrious, and even intelligent within narrow  limits, but it is also necessary that he should   be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose  prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation,   and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is  necessary that he should have the mentality  

Appropriate to a state of war. It does not  matter whether the war is actually happening,   and, since no decisive victory is possible, it  does not matter whether the war is going well or   badly. All that is needed is that a state of war  should exist. The splitting of the intelligence  

Which the Party requires of its members, and which  is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war,   is now almost universal, but the higher up the  ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is   precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and  hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity  

As an administrator, it is often necessary for  a member of the Inner Party to know that this   or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may  often be aware that the entire war is spurious and   is either not happening or is being waged for  purposes quite other than the declared ones:  

But such knowledge is easily neutralized  by the technique of doublethink. Meanwhile   no Inner Party member wavers for an instant  in his mystical belief that the war is real,   and that it is bound to end victoriously, with  Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world. 

All members of the Inner Party believe in this  coming conquest as an article of faith. It is to   be achieved either by gradually acquiring more and  more territory and so building up an overwhelming   preponderance of power, or by the discovery of  some new and unanswerable weapon. The search for  

New weapons continues unceasingly, and is one  of the very few remaining activities in which   the inventive or speculative type of mind can  find any outlet. In Oceania at the present day,   Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to  exist. In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science’.  

The empirical method of thought, on which all the  scientific achievements of the past were founded,   is opposed to the most fundamental principles  of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only   happens when its products can in some way be  used for the diminution of human liberty. In  

All the useful arts the world is either  standing still or going backwards. The   fields are cultivated with horse-ploughs while  books are written by machinery. But in matters   of vital importance—meaning, in effect, war and  police espionage—the empirical approach is still  

Encouraged, or at least tolerated. The two aims  of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of   the earth and to extinguish once and for all  the possibility of independent thought. There   are therefore two great problems which the Party  is concerned to solve. One is how to discover,  

Against his will, what another human being  is thinking, and the other is how to kill   several hundred million people in a few seconds  without giving warning beforehand. In so far as   scientific research still continues, this is its  subject matter. The scientist of today is either a  

Mixture of psychologist and inquisitor, studying  with real ordinary minuteness the meaning of   facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice,  and testing the truth-producing effects of drugs,   shock therapy, hypnosis, and physical torture; or  he is chemist, physicist, or biologist concerned  

Only with such branches of his special subject  as are relevant to the taking of life. In the   vast laboratories of the Ministry of Peace, and in  the experimental stations hidden in the Brazilian   forests, or in the Australian desert, or on lost  islands of the Antarctic, the teams of experts  

Are indefatigably at work. Some are concerned  simply with planning the logistics of future wars;   others devise larger and larger rocket bombs, more  and more powerful explosives, and more and more   impenetrable armour-plating; others search for  new and deadlier gases, or for soluble poisons  

Capable of being produced in such quantities as  to destroy the vegetation of whole continents,   or for breeds of disease germs immunized against  all possible antibodies; others strive to produce   a vehicle that shall bore its way under the soil  like a submarine under the water, or an aeroplane  

As independent of its base as a sailing-ship;  others explore even remoter possibilities   such as focusing the sun’s rays through lenses  suspended thousands of kilometres away in space,   or producing artificial earthquakes and tidal  waves by tapping the heat at the earth’s centre. 

But none of these projects ever comes anywhere  near realization, and none of the three   super-states ever gains a significant lead on the  others. What is more remarkable is that all three   powers already possess, in the atomic bomb, a  weapon far more powerful than any that their  

Present researches are likely to discover.  Although the Party, according to its habit,   claims the invention for itself, atomic bombs  first appeared as early as the nineteen-forties,   and were first used on a large scale about  ten years later. At that time some hundreds  

Of bombs were dropped on industrial centres,  chiefly in European Russia, Western Europe,   and North America. The effect was to convince  the ruling groups of all countries that a few   more atomic bombs would mean the end of organized  society, and hence of their own power. Thereafter,  

Although no formal agreement was ever made  or hinted at, no more bombs were dropped. All   three powers merely continue to produce atomic  bombs and store them up against the decisive   opportunity which they all believe will come  sooner or later. And meanwhile the art of war  

Has remained almost stationary for thirty  or forty years. Helicopters are more used   than they were formerly, bombing planes have been  largely superseded by self-propelled projectiles,   and the fragile movable battleship has given  way to the almost unsinkable Floating Fortress;   but otherwise there has been little  development. The tank, the submarine,  

The torpedo, the machine gun, even the rifle  and the hand grenade are still in use. And   in spite of the endless slaughters reported in  the Press and on the telescreens, the desperate   battles of earlier wars, in which hundreds of  thousands or even millions of men were often  

Killed in a few weeks, have never been repeated. None of the three super-states ever attempts any   manoeuvre which involves the risk of serious  defeat. When any large operation is undertaken,   it is usually a surprise attack against an ally.  The strategy that all three powers are following,  

Or pretend to themselves that they are  following, is the same. The plan is,   by a combination of fighting, bargaining, and  well-timed strokes of treachery, to acquire a   ring of bases completely encircling one or other  of the rival states, and then to sign a pact of  

Friendship with that rival and remain on peaceful  terms for so many years as to lull suspicion to   sleep. During this time rockets loaded with atomic  bombs can be assembled at all the strategic spots;   finally they will all be fired simultaneously,  with effects so devastating as to make retaliation  

Impossible. It will then be time to sign a pact  of friendship with the remaining world-power,   in preparation for another attack. This scheme,  it is hardly necessary to say, is a mere daydream,   impossible of realization. Moreover, no fighting  ever occurs except in the disputed areas round  

The Equator and the Pole: no invasion of enemy  territory is ever undertaken. This explains the   fact that in some places the frontiers between the  super-states are arbitrary. Eurasia, for example,   could easily conquer the British Isles, which  are geographically part of Europe, or on the  

Other hand it would be possible for Oceania to  push its frontiers to the Rhine or even to the   Vistula. But this would violate the principle,  followed on all sides though never formulated,   of cultural integrity. If Oceania were to  conquer the areas that used once to be known  

As France and Germany, it would be necessary  either to exterminate the inhabitants, a task   of great physical difficulty, or to assimilate a  population of about a hundred million people, who,   so far as technical development goes, are roughly  on the Oceanic level. The problem is the same for  

All three super-states. It is absolutely necessary  to their structure that there should be no contact   with foreigners, except, to a limited extent,  with war prisoners and coloured slaves. Even   the official ally of the moment is always regarded  with the darkest suspicion. War prisoners apart,  

The average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes  on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia,   and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign  languages. If he were allowed contact with   foreigners he would discover that they are  creatures similar to himself and that most  

Of what he has been told about them is lies. The  sealed world in which he lives would be broken,   and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness  on which his morale depends might evaporate.   It is therefore realized on all sides that  however often Persia, or Egypt, or Java,  

Or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers  must never be crossed by anything except bombs.  Under this lies a fact never mentioned aloud,  but tacitly understood and acted upon: namely,   that the conditions of life in all three  super-states are very much the same. In  

Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called  Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism,   and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name  usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps   better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The  citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything  

Of the tenets of the other two philosophies,  but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous   outrages upon morality and common sense. Actually  the three philosophies are barely distinguishable,   and the social systems which they support are  not distinguishable at all. Everywhere there is  

The same pyramidal structure, the same worship of  semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by   and for continuous warfare. It follows that the  three super-states not only cannot conquer one   another, but would gain no advantage by doing  so. On the contrary, so long as they remain  

In conflict they prop one another up, like three  sheaves of corn. And, as usual, the ruling groups   of all three powers are simultaneously aware and  unaware of what they are doing. Their lives are   dedicated to world conquest, but they also know  that it is necessary that the war should continue  

Everlastingly and without victory. Meanwhile  the fact that there is no danger of conquest   makes possible the denial of reality which is the  special feature of Ingsoc and its rival systems of   thought. Here it is necessary to repeat what has  been said earlier, that by becoming continuous  

War has fundamentally changed its character. In past ages, a war, almost by definition,   was something that sooner or later came to  an end, usually in unmistakable victory or   defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the  main instruments by which human societies were  

Kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers  in all ages have tried to impose a false view   of the world upon their followers, but they  could not afford to encourage any illusion   that tended to impair military efficiency. So  long as defeat meant the loss of independence,  

Or some other result generally held to be  undesirable, the precautions against defeat   had to be serious. Physical facts could not be  ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics,   or politics, two and two might make five, but when  one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had  

To make four. Inefficient nations were always  conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for   efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover,  to be efficient it was necessary to be able to   learn from the past, which meant having a fairly  accurate idea of what had happened in the past.  

Newspapers and history books were, of course,  always coloured and biased, but falsification of   the kind that is practised today would have been  impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity,   and so far as the ruling classes were concerned  it was probably the most important of all  

Safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no  ruling class could be completely irresponsible.  But when war becomes literally continuous, it also  ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous   there is no such thing as military necessity.  Technical progress can cease and the most palpable  

Facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have  seen, researches that could be called scientific   are still carried out for the purposes of war,  but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming,   and their failure to show results is not  important. Efficiency, even military efficiency,  

Is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in  Oceania except the Thought Police. Since each   of the three super-states is unconquerable, each  is in effect a separate universe within which   almost any perversion of thought can be safely  practised. Reality only exerts its pressure  

Through the needs of everyday life—the need  to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing,   to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of  top-storey windows, and the like. Between life   and death, and between physical pleasure and  physical pain, there is still a distinction,  

But that is all. Cut off from contact with the  outer world, and with the past, the citizen of   Oceania is like a man in interstellar space,  who has no way of knowing which direction is up  

And which is down. The rulers of such a state are  absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not   be. They are obliged to prevent their followers  from starving to death in numbers large enough to   be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at  the same low level of military technique as their  

Rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they  can twist reality into whatever shape they choose. The war, therefore, if we judge it  by the standards of previous wars,   is merely an imposture. It is like the  battles between certain ruminant animals  

Whose horns are set at such an angle that they  are incapable of hurting one another. But though   it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up  the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps   to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a  hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen,  

Is now a purely internal affair. In the past,  the ruling groups of all countries, although   they might recognize their common interest and  therefore limit the destructiveness of war,   did fight against one another, and the victor  always plundered the vanquished. In our own  

Day they are not fighting against one another at  all. The war is waged by each ruling group against   its own subjects, and the object of the war is  not to make or prevent conquests of territory,   but to keep the structure of society intact.  The very word ‘war’, therefore, has become  

Misleading. It would probably be accurate to  say that by becoming continuous war has ceased   to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted  on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the   early twentieth century has disappeared and been  replaced by something quite different. The effect  

Would be much the same if the three super-states,  instead of fighting one another, should agree to   live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within  its own boundaries. For in that case each would   still be a self-contained universe, freed for  ever from the sobering influence of external  

Danger. A peace that was truly permanent  would be the same as a permanent war.   This—although the vast majority of Party members  understand it only in a shallower sense—is the   inner meaning of the Party slogan: War Is Peace. Winston stopped reading for a moment. Somewhere  

In remote distance a rocket bomb thundered. The  blissful feeling of being alone with the forbidden   book, in a room with no telescreen, had not worn  off. Solitude and safety were physical sensations,   mixed up somehow with the tiredness of  his body, the softness of the chair,  

The touch of the faint breeze from the window that  played upon his cheek. The book fascinated him,   or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense  it told him nothing that was new, but that was  

Part of the attraction. It said what he would have  said, if it had been possible for him to set his   scattered thoughts in order. It was the product  of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more   powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The  best books, he perceived, are those that tell you  

What you know already. He had just turned back  to Chapter 1 when he heard Julia’s footstep on   the stair and started out of his chair to meet  her. She dumped her brown tool-bag on the floor   and flung herself into his arms. It was more  than a week since they had seen one another. 

‘I’ve got the book,’ he said as  they disentangled themselves. ‘Oh, you’ve got it? Good,’ she  said without much interest,   and almost immediately knelt down  beside the oil stove to make the coffee. They did not return to the subject until they  had been in bed for half an hour. The evening  

Was just cool enough to make it worth while to  pull up the counterpane. From below came the   familiar sound of singing and the scrape of boots  on the flagstones. The brawny red-armed woman whom   Winston had seen there on his first visit was  almost a fixture in the yard. There seemed to  

Be no hour of daylight when she was not marching  to and fro between the washtub and the line,   alternately gagging herself with clothes  pegs and breaking forth into lusty song.   Julia had settled down on her side and seemed  to be already on the point of falling asleep.  

He reached out for the book, which was lying  on the floor, and sat up against the bedhead. ‘We must read it,’ he said. ‘You too. All  members of the Brotherhood have to read it.’ ‘You read it,’ she said with her eyes shut. ‘Read  

It aloud. That’s the best way. Then  you can explain it to me as you go.’ The clock’s hands said six, meaning  eighteen. They had three or four hours   ahead of them. He propped the book  against his knees and began reading: Chapter 1. Ignorance is Strength.

Throughout recorded time, and probably  since the end of the Neolithic Age,   there have been three kinds of people  in the world, the High, the Middle,   and the Low. They have been subdivided in many  ways, they have borne countless different names,  

And their relative numbers, as well as their  attitude towards one another, have varied from   age to age: but the essential structure of society  has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals   and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same  pattern has always reasserted itself, just as  

A gyroscope will always return to equilibrium,  however far it is pushed one way or the other ‘Julia, are you awake?’ said Winston. ‘Yes, my love, I’m listening.  Go on. It’s marvellous.’ He continued reading: The aims of these three groups are entirely  irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to  

Remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to  change places with the High. The aim of the Low,   when they have an aim—for it is an abiding  characteristic of the Low that they are too much   crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently  conscious of anything outside their daily lives—is  

To abolish all distinctions and create a society  in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout   history a struggle which is the same in its main  outlines recurs over and over again. For long   periods the High seem to be securely in power, but  sooner or later there always comes a moment when  

They lose either their belief in themselves  or their capacity to govern efficiently, or   both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who  enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them   that they are fighting for liberty and justice.  As soon as they have reached their objective,  

The Middle thrust the Low back into their old  position of servitude, and themselves become the   High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from  one of the other groups, or from both of them,   and the struggle begins over again. Of the three  groups, only the Low are never even temporarily  

Successful in achieving their aims. It would be  an exaggeration to say that throughout history   there has been no progress of a material  kind. Even today, in a period of decline,   the average human being is physically better off  than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance  

In wealth, no softening of manners, no reform  or revolution has ever brought human equality a   millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the  Low, no historic change has ever meant much more   than a change in the name of their masters. By the late nineteenth century the recurrence  

Of this pattern had become obvious to many  observers. There then rose schools of thinkers   who interpreted history as a cyclical process  and claimed to show that inequality was the   unalterable law of human life. This doctrine,  of course, had always had its adherents,  

But in the manner in which it was now put forward  there was a significant change. In the past the   need for a hierarchical form of society had  been the doctrine specifically of the High.   It had been preached by kings and aristocrats  and by the priests, lawyers, and the like who  

Were parasitical upon them, and it had generally  been softened by promises of compensation in an   imaginary world beyond the grave. The Middle, so  long as it was struggling for power, had always   made use of such terms as freedom, justice, and  fraternity. Now, however, the concept of human  

Brotherhood began to be assailed by people who  were not yet in positions of command, but merely   hoped to be so before long. In the past the Middle  had made revolutions under the banner of equality,   and then had established a fresh tyranny as  soon as the old one was overthrown. The new  

Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny  beforehand. Socialism, a theory which appeared   in the early nineteenth century and was the last  link in a chain of thought stretching back to the   slave rebellions of antiquity, was still deeply  infected by the Utopianism of past ages. But in  

Each variant of Socialism that appeared from about  nineteen hundred onwards the aim of establishing   liberty and equality was more and more openly  abandoned. The new movements which appeared   in the middle years of the century, Ingsoc in  Oceania, Neo-Bolshevism in Eurasia, Death-Worship,  

As it is commonly called, in Eastasia, had the  conscious aim of perpetuating unfreedom and   inequality. These new movements, of course, grew  out of the old ones and tended to keep their names   and pay lip-service to their ideology. But the  purpose of all of them was to arrest progress and  

Freeze history at a chosen moment. The familiar  pendulum swing was to happen once more, and then   stop. As usual, the High were to be turned out by  the Middle, who would then become the High; but   this time, by conscious strategy, the High would  be able to maintain their position permanently. 

The new doctrines arose partly because of  the accumulation of historical knowledge,   and the growth of the historical sense, which had  hardly existed before the nineteenth century. The   cyclical movement of history was now intelligible,  or appeared to be so; and if it was intelligible,  

Then it was alterable. But the principal,  underlying cause was that, as early as the   beginning of the twentieth century, human equality  had become technically possible. It was still true   that men were not equal in their native talents  and that functions had to be specialized in ways  

That favoured some individuals against others;  but there was no longer any real need for class   distinctions or for large differences of wealth.  In earlier ages, class distinctions had been not   only inevitable but desirable. Inequality was the  price of civilization. With the development of  

Machine production, however, the case was altered.  Even if it was still necessary for human beings   to do different kinds of work, it was no longer  necessary for them to live at different social or   economic levels. Therefore, from the point of view  of the new groups who were on the point of seizing  

Power, human equality was no longer an ideal to  be striven after, but a danger to be averted. In   more primitive ages, when a just and peaceful  society was in fact not possible, it had been   fairly easy to believe it. The idea of an earthly  paradise in which men should live together in a  

State of brotherhood, without laws and without  brute labour, had haunted the human imagination   for thousands of years. And this vision had had  a certain hold even on the groups who actually   profited by each historical change. The heirs of  the French, English, and American revolutions had  

Partly believed in their own phrases about the  rights of man, freedom of speech, equality before   the law, and the like, and have even allowed  their conduct to be influenced by them to some   extent. But by the fourth decade of the twentieth  century all the main currents of political thought  

Were authoritarian. The earthly paradise had  been discredited at exactly the moment when it   became realizable. Every new political theory,  by whatever name it called itself, led back to   hierarchy and regimentation. And in the general  hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930,  

Practices which had been long abandoned, in  some cases for hundreds of years—imprisonment   without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves,  public executions, torture to extract confessions,   the use of hostages, and the deportation of  whole populations—not only became common again,  

But were tolerated and even defended by people who  considered themselves enlightened and progressive.  It was only after a decade of national wars,  civil wars, revolutions, and counter-revolutions   in all parts of the world that Ingsoc and its  rivals emerged as fully worked-out political  

Theories. But they had been foreshadowed by the  various systems, generally called totalitarian,   which had appeared earlier in the century, and  the main outlines of the world which would emerge   from the prevailing chaos had long been obvious.  What kind of people would control this world had  

Been equally obvious. The new aristocracy was made  up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists,   technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity  experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists,   and professional politicians. These people, whose  origins lay in the salaried middle class and  

The upper grades of the working class, had been  shaped and brought together by the barren world of   monopoly industry and centralized government. As  compared with their opposite numbers in past ages,   they were less avaricious, less tempted by luxury,  hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more  

Conscious of what they were doing and more intent  on crushing opposition. This last difference was   cardinal. By comparison with that existing today,  all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted   and inefficient. The ruling groups were always  infected to some extent by liberal ideas, and  

Were content to leave loose ends everywhere, to  regard only the overt act and to be uninterested   in what their subjects were thinking. Even the  Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was tolerant   by modern standards. Part of the reason for this  was that in the past no government had the power  

To keep its citizens under constant surveillance.  The invention of print, however, made it easier   to manipulate public opinion, and the film and  the radio carried the process further. With the   development of television, and the technical  advance which made it possible to receive and  

Transmit simultaneously on the same instrument,  private life came to an end. Every citizen, or at   least every citizen important enough to be worth  watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a   day under the eyes of the police and in the sound  of official propaganda, with all other channels of  

Communication closed. The possibility of enforcing  not only complete obedience to the will of the   State, but complete uniformity of opinion on  all subjects, now existed for the first time.  After the revolutionary period of the fifties  and sixties, society regrouped itself, as always,  

Into High, Middle, and Low. But the new  High group, unlike all its forerunners,   did not act upon instinct but knew what was  needed to safeguard its position. It had long   been realized that the only secure basis for  oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege  

Are most easily defended when they are possessed  jointly. The so-called ‘abolition of private   property’ which took place in the middle years of  the century meant, in effect, the concentration of   property in far fewer hands than before: but with  this difference, that the new owners were a group  

Instead of a mass of individuals. Individually,  no member of the Party owns anything, except   petty personal belongings. Collectively,  the Party owns everything in Oceania,   because it controls everything, and disposes  of the products as it thinks fit. In the years  

Following the Revolution it was able to step into  this commanding position almost unopposed, because   the whole process was represented as an act of  collectivization. It had always been assumed   that if the capitalist class were expropriated,  Socialism must follow: and unquestionably the   capitalists had been expropriated. Factories,  mines, land, houses, transport—everything had  

Been taken away from them: and since these things  were no longer private property, it followed that   they must be public property. Ingsoc, which  grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and   inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried  out the main item in the Socialist programme;  

With the result, foreseen and intended beforehand,  that economic inequality has been made permanent. But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical  society go deeper than this. There are only four   ways in which a ruling group can fall from  power. Either it is conquered from without,  

Or it governs so inefficiently that the masses  are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and   discontented Middle group to come into being, or  it loses its own self-confidence and willingness   to govern. These causes do not operate singly,  and as a rule all four of them are present in  

Some degree. A ruling class which could guard  against all of them would remain in power   permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is  the mental attitude of the ruling class itself.  After the middle of the present century, the  first danger had in reality disappeared. Each  

Of the three powers which now divide the world  is in fact unconquerable, and could only become   conquerable through slow demographic changes which  a government with wide powers can easily avert.   The second danger, also, is only a theoretical  one. The masses never revolt of their own accord,  

And they never revolt merely because they are  oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not   permitted to have standards of comparison,  they never even become aware that they are   oppressed. The recurrent economic crises of past  times were totally unnecessary and are not now  

Permitted to happen, but other and equally  large dislocations can and do happen without   having political results, because there is no  way in which discontent can become articulate.   As for the problem of over-production, which has  been latent in our society since the development  

Of machine technique, it is solved by the  device of continuous warfare (see Chapter 3),   which is also useful in keying up public morale  to the necessary pitch. From the point of view of   our present rulers, therefore, the only genuine  dangers are the splitting-off of a new group of  

Able, under-employed, power-hungry people,  and the growth of liberalism and scepticism   in their own ranks. The problem, that is  to say, is educational. It is a problem of   continuously moulding the consciousness  both of the directing group and of the   larger executive group that lies immediately  below it. The consciousness of the masses  

Needs only to be influenced in a negative way. Given this background, one could infer, if one   did not know it already, the general structure  of Oceanic society. At the apex of the pyramid   comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and  all-powerful. Every success, every achievement,  

Every victory, every scientific discovery, all  knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue,   are held to issue directly from his leadership  and inspiration. Nobody has ever seen Big Brother.   He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the  telescreen. We may be reasonably sure that he  

Will never die, and there is already considerable  uncertainty as to when he was born. Big Brother is   the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit  itself to the world. His function is to act as a   focusing point for love, fear, and reverence,  emotions which are more easily felt towards an  

Individual than towards an organization. Below Big  Brother comes the Inner Party. Its numbers limited   to six millions, or something less than 2 per  cent of the population of Oceania. Below the Inner   Party comes the Outer Party, which, if the Inner  Party is described as the brain of the State,  

May be justly likened to the hands. Below that  come the dumb masses whom we habitually refer to   as ‘the proles’, numbering perhaps 85 per cent  of the population. In the terms of our earlier   classification, the proles are the Low: for the  slave population of the equatorial lands who pass  

Constantly from conqueror to conqueror, are not  a permanent or necessary part of the structure.  In principle, membership of these three groups is  not hereditary. The child of Inner Party parents   is in theory not born into the Inner Party.  Admission to either branch of the Party is by  

Examination, taken at the age of sixteen. Nor is  there any racial discrimination, or any marked   domination of one province by another. Jews,  Negroes, South Americans of pure Indian blood   are to be found in the highest ranks of the  Party, and the administrators of any area are  

Always drawn from the inhabitants of that area.  In no part of Oceania do the inhabitants have the   feeling that they are a colonial population ruled  from a distant capital. Oceania has no capital,   and its titular head is a person whose whereabouts  nobody knows. Except that English is its chief  

LINGUA FRANCA and Newspeak its official language,  it is not centralized in any way. Its rulers are   not held together by blood-ties but by adherence  to a common doctrine. It is true that our society   is stratified, and very rigidly stratified, on  what at first sight appear to be hereditary lines.  

There is far less to-and-fro movement between the  different groups than happened under capitalism   or even in the pre-industrial age. Between the two  branches of the Party there is a certain amount of   interchange, but only so much as will ensure that  weaklings are excluded from the Inner Party and  

That ambitious members of the Outer Party are made  harmless by allowing them to rise. Proletarians,   in practice, are not allowed to graduate  into the Party. The most gifted among them,   who might possibly become nuclei of discontent,  are simply marked down by the Thought Police and  

Eliminated. But this state of affairs is not  necessarily permanent, nor is it a matter of   principle. The Party is not a class in the old  sense of the word. It does not aim at transmitting   power to its own children, as such; and if there  were no other way of keeping the ablest people  

At the top, it would be perfectly prepared to  recruit an entire new generation from the ranks   of the proletariat. In the crucial years, the  fact that the Party was not a hereditary body   did a great deal to neutralize opposition.  The older kind of Socialist, who had been  

Trained to fight against something called ‘class  privilege’ assumed that what is not hereditary   cannot be permanent. He did not see that the  continuity of an oligarchy need not be physical,   nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary  aristocracies have always been shortlived,  

Whereas adoptive organizations such as the  Catholic Church have sometimes lasted for hundreds   or thousands of years. The essence of oligarchical  rule is not father-to-son inheritance,   but the persistence of a certain world-view and  a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon  

The living. A ruling group is a ruling group  so long as it can nominate its successors.   The Party is not concerned with perpetuating  its blood but with perpetuating itself. WHO   wields power is not important, provided that the  hierarchical structure remains always the same. 

All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental  attitudes that characterize our time are really   designed to sustain the mystique of the Party and  prevent the true nature of present-day society   from being perceived. Physical rebellion,  or any preliminary move towards rebellion,  

Is at present not possible. From the proletarians  nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves,   they will continue from generation to generation  and from century to century, working, breeding,   and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel,  but without the power of grasping that the world  

Could be other than it is. They could only  become dangerous if the advance of industrial   technique made it necessary to educate them more  highly; but, since military and commercial rivalry   are no longer important, the level of popular  education is actually declining. What opinions  

The masses hold, or do not hold, is looked  on as a matter of indifference. They can be   granted intellectual liberty because they have no  intellect. In a Party member, on the other hand,   not even the smallest deviation of opinion on  the most unimportant subject can be tolerated. 

A Party member lives from birth to death under the  eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone   he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever  he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting,   in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected  without warning and without knowing that  

He is being inspected. Nothing that he does is  indifferent. His friendships, his relaxations,   his behaviour towards his wife and children,  the expression of his face when he is alone,   the words he mutters in sleep, even the  characteristic movements of his body,   are all jealously scrutinized. Not only any  actual misdemeanour, but any eccentricity,  

However small, any change of habits, any nervous  mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of   an inner struggle, is certain to be detected.  He has no freedom of choice in any direction   whatever. On the other hand his actions are not  regulated by law or by any clearly formulated  

Code of behaviour. In Oceania there is no law.  Thoughts and actions which, when detected, mean   certain death are not formally forbidden, and the  endless purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments,   and vaporizations are not inflicted as punishment  for crimes which have actually been committed,  

But are merely the wiping-out of persons who  might perhaps commit a crime at some time in   the future. A Party member is required to have not  only the right opinions, but the right instincts.   Many of the beliefs and attitudes demanded of him  are never plainly stated, and could not be stated  

Without laying bare the contradictions inherent  in Ingsoc. If he is a person naturally orthodox   (in Newspeak a goodthinker), he will in all  circumstances know, without taking thought,   what is the true belief or the desirable emotion.  But in any case an elaborate mental training,  

Undergone in childhood and grouping itself  round the Newspeak words crimestop, blackwhite,   and doublethink, makes him unwilling and unable  to think too deeply on any subject whatever.  A Party member is expected to have no private  emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He  

Is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of  hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors,   triumph over victories, and self-abasement before  the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents   produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are  deliberately turned outwards and dissipated  

By such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and  the speculations which might possibly induce   a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in  advance by his early acquired inner discipline.   The first and simplest stage in the discipline,  which can be taught even to young children,  

Is called, in Newspeak, crimestop. CRIMESTOP  means the faculty of stopping short, as though   by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous  thought. It includes the power of not grasping   analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors,  of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if  

They are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or  repelled by any train of thought which is capable   of leading in a heretical direction. CRIMESTOP, in  short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity   is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the  full sense demands a control over one’s own mental  

Processes as complete as that of a contortionist  over his body. Oceanic society rests ultimately   on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and  that the Party is infallible. But since in reality   Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is  not infallible, there is need for an unwearying,  

Moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of  facts. The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so   many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually  contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent,   it means the habit of impudently claiming that  black is white, in contradiction of the plain  

Facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a  loyal willingness to say that black is white   when Party discipline demands this. But it means  also the ability to believe that black is white,   and more, to know that black is white, and to  forget that one has ever believed the contrary.  

This demands a continuous alteration of  the past, made possible by the system   of thought which really embraces all the rest,  and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.  The alteration of the past is necessary for  two reasons, one of which is subsidiary and,  

So to speak, precautionary. The subsidiary reason  is that the Party member, like the proletarian,   tolerates present-day conditions partly because  he has no standards of comparison. He must be   cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off  from foreign countries, because it is necessary  

For him to believe that he is better off than his  ancestors and that the average level of material   comfort is constantly rising. But by far the more  important reason for the readjustment of the past   is the need to safeguard the infallibility of the  Party. It is not merely that speeches, statistics,  

And records of every kind must be constantly  brought up to date in order to show that the   predictions of the Party were in all cases  right. It is also that no change in doctrine   or in political alignment can ever be admitted.  For to change one’s mind, or even one’s policy,  

Is a confession of weakness. If, for example,  Eurasia or Eastasia (whichever it may be)   is the enemy today, then that country must  always have been the enemy. And if the facts   say otherwise then the facts must be altered.  Thus history is continuously rewritten. This  

Day-to-day falsification of the past, carried out  by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the   stability of the regime as the work of repression  and espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love.  The mutability of the past is the central  tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued,  

Have no objective existence, but survive only in  written records and in human memories. The past   is whatever the records and the memories agree  upon. And since the Party is in full control   of all records and in equally full control of  the minds of its members, it follows that the  

Past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. It  also follows that though the past is alterable,   it never has been altered in any specific  instance. For when it has been recreated   in whatever shape is needed at the moment, then  this new version IS the past, and no different  

Past can ever have existed. This holds good even  when, as often happens, the same event has to be   altered out of recognition several times in  the course of a year. At all times the Party   is in possession of absolute truth, and clearly  the absolute can never have been different from  

What it is now. It will be seen that the control  of the past depends above all on the training   of memory. To make sure that all written records  agree with the orthodoxy of the moment is merely   a mechanical act. But it is also necessary to  remember that events happened in the desired  

Manner. And if it is necessary to rearrange  one’s memories or to tamper with written records,   then it is necessary to forget that one has done  so. The trick of doing this can be learned like   any other mental technique. It is learned by  the majority of Party members, and certainly  

By all who are intelligent as well as orthodox.  In Oldspeak it is called, quite frankly, ‘reality   control’. In Newspeak it is called doublethink,  though doublethink comprises much else as well. DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding  two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind  

Simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The  Party intellectual knows in which direction his   memories must be altered; he therefore knows that  he is playing tricks with reality; but by the   exercise of DOUBLETHINK he also satisfies himself  that reality is not violated. The process has  

To be conscious, or it would not be carried out  with sufficient precision, but it also has to be   unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling  of falsity and hence of guilt. doublethink lies   at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential  act of the Party is to use conscious deception  

While retaining the firmness of purpose that  goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate   lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget  any fact that has become inconvenient, and then,   when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back  from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,  

To deny the existence of objective reality and all  the while to take account of the reality which one   denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even  in using the word doublethink it is necessary   to exercise doublethink. For by using the word  one admits that one is tampering with reality;  

By a fresh act of doublethink one erases  this knowledge; and so on indefinitely,   with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.  Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the   Party has been able—and may, for all we  know, continue to be able for thousands  

Of years—to arrest the course of history. All past oligarchies have fallen from power   either because they ossified or because they grew  soft. Either they became stupid and arrogant,   failed to adjust themselves to changing  circumstances, and were overthrown; or  

They became liberal and cowardly, made concessions  when they should have used force, and once again   were overthrown. They fell, that is to say, either  through consciousness or through unconsciousness.   It is the achievement of the Party to have  produced a system of thought in which both  

Conditions can exist simultaneously. And upon no  other intellectual basis could the dominion of the   Party be made permanent. If one is to rule, and  to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate   the sense of reality. For the secret of rulership  is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility  

With the Power to learn from past mistakes. It need hardly be said that the subtlest   practitioners of doublethink are those who  invented doublethink and know that it is a vast   system of mental cheating. In our society, those  who have the best knowledge of what is happening  

Are also those who are furthest from seeing  the world as it is. In general, the greater   the understanding, the greater the delusion;  the more intelligent, the less sane. One clear   illustration of this is the fact that war hysteria  increases in intensity as one rises in the social  

Scale. Those whose attitude towards the war is  most nearly rational are the subject peoples   of the disputed territories. To these people the  war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps   to and fro over their bodies like a tidal wave.  Which side is winning is a matter of complete  

Indifference to them. They are aware that a change  of overlordship means simply that they will be   doing the same work as before for new masters who  treat them in the same manner as the old ones. The   slightly more favoured workers whom we call ‘the  proles’ are only intermittently conscious of the  

War. When it is necessary they can be prodded  into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left   to themselves they are capable of forgetting for  long periods that the war is happening. It is in   the ranks of the Party, and above all of the  Inner Party, that the true war enthusiasm is  

Found. World-conquest is believed in most firmly  by those who know it to be impossible. This   peculiar linking-together of opposites—knowledge  with ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism—is one of   the chief distinguishing marks of Oceanic society.  The official ideology abounds with contradictions   even when there is no practical reason for  them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies  

Every principle for which the Socialist movement  originally stood, and it chooses to do this in   the name of Socialism. It preaches a contempt for  the working class unexampled for centuries past,   and it dresses its members in a uniform which was  at one time peculiar to manual workers and was  

Adopted for that reason. It systematically  undermines the solidarity of the family,   and it calls its leader by a name which is a  direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty.   Even the names of the four Ministries by which we  are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their  

Deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of  Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of   Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture  and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These   contradictions are not accidental, nor  do they result from ordinary hypocrisy;  

They are deliberate exercises in doublethink.  For it is only by reconciling contradictions   that power can be retained indefinitely. In no  other way could the ancient cycle be broken.   If human equality is to be for ever averted—if  the High, as we have called them, are to keep  

Their places permanently—then the prevailing  mental condition must be controlled insanity. But there is one question which until  this moment we have almost ignored. It is;   why should human equality be averted?  Supposing that the mechanics of the   process have been rightly described,  what is the motive for this huge,  

Accurately planned effort to freeze  history at a particular moment of time? Here we reach the central secret. As we  have seen. the mystique of the Party,   and above all of the Inner Party, depends  upon doublethink But deeper than this lies   the original motive, the never-questioned  instinct that first led to the seizure of  

Power and brought doublethink, the Thought  Police, continuous warfare, and all the   other necessary paraphernalia into existence  afterwards. This motive really consists… Winston became aware of silence, as one  becomes aware of a new sound. It seemed   to him that Julia had been very still for  some time past. She was lying on her side,  

Naked from the waist upwards, with  her cheek pillowed on her hand and   one dark lock tumbling across her eyes. Her  breast rose and fell slowly and regularly. ‘Julia.’ No answer. ‘Julia, are you awake?’ No answer. She was asleep. He  

Shut the book, put it carefully on the floor, lay  down, and pulled the coverlet over both of them.  He had still, he reflected, not learned  the ultimate secret. He understood HOW;   he did not understand WHY. Chapter 1, like Chapter  3, had not actually told him anything that he did  

Not know, it had merely systematized the  knowledge that he possessed already. But   after reading it he knew better than before  that he was not mad. Being in a minority,   even a minority of one, did not make you  mad. There was truth and there was untruth,  

And if you clung to the truth even against  the whole world, you were not mad. A yellow   beam from the sinking sun slanted in through the  window and fell across the pillow. He shut his   eyes. The sun on his face and the girl’s smooth  body touching his own gave him a strong, sleepy,  

Confident feeling. He was safe, everything was  all right. He fell asleep murmuring ‘Sanity is   not statistical,’ with the feeling that this  remark contained in it a profound wisdom. When he woke it was with the sensation of  having slept for a long time, but a glance  

At the old-fashioned clock told him that it was  only twenty-thirty. He lay dozing for a while;   then the usual deep-lunged singing  struck up from the yard below: ‘It was only an ‘opeless fancy, It passed like an Ipril dye, 

But a look an’ a word an’ the dreams they stirred They ‘ave stolen my ‘eart awye!’ The drivelling song seemed to have kept  its popularity. You still heard it all   over the place. It had outlived the  Hate Song. Julia woke at the sound,   stretched herself luxuriously, and got out of bed.

‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘Let’s make some  more coffee. Damn! The stove’s gone out   and the water’s cold.’ She picked the stove  up and shook it. ‘There’s no oil in it.’ ‘We can get some from old Charrington, I expect.’ ‘The funny thing is I made sure  it was full. I’m going to put my  

Clothes on,’ she added. ‘It  seems to have got colder.’ Winston also got up and dressed himself.  The indefatigable voice sang on: ‘They sye that time ‘eals all things, They sye you can always forget;  But the smiles an’ the tears acrorss the years They twist my ‘eart-strings yet!’

As he fastened the belt of his overalls he  strolled across to the window. The sun must have   gone down behind the houses; it was not shining  into the yard any longer. The flagstones were   wet as though they had just been washed, and he  had the feeling that the sky had been washed too,  

So fresh and pale was the blue between the  chimney-pots. Tirelessly the woman marched   to and fro, corking and uncorking herself, singing  and falling silent, and pegging out more diapers,   and more and yet more. He wondered whether she  took in washing for a living or was merely the  

Slave of twenty or thirty grandchildren. Julia  had come across to his side; together they gazed   down with a sort of fascination at the sturdy  figure below. As he looked at the woman in her   characteristic attitude, her thick arms reaching  up for the line, her powerful mare-like buttocks  

Protruded, it struck him for the first time  that she was beautiful. It had never before   occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty,  blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing,   then hardened, roughened by work till it was  coarse in the grain like an over-ripe turnip,  

Could be beautiful. But it was so, and after all,  he thought, why not? The solid, contourless body,   like a block of granite, and the rasping  red skin, bore the same relation to the   body of a girl as the rose-hip to the rose. Why  should the fruit be held inferior to the flower?

‘She’s beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘She’s a metre across the  hips, easily,’ said Julia. ‘That is her style of beauty,’ said Winston. He held Julia’s supple waist easily encircled by   his arm. From the hip to the knee her flank was  against his. Out of their bodies no child would  

Ever come. That was the one thing they could never  do. Only by word of mouth, from mind to mind,   could they pass on the secret. The woman down  there had no mind, she had only strong arms,   a warm heart, and a fertile belly. He  wondered how many children she had given  

Birth to. It might easily be fifteen. She had  had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps,   of wild-rose beauty and then she had suddenly  swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard   and red and coarse, and then her life had been  laundering, scrubbing, darning, cooking, sweeping,  

Polishing, mending, scrubbing, laundering,  first for children, then for grandchildren,   over thirty unbroken years. At the end of it she  was still singing. The mystical reverence that he   felt for her was somehow mixed up with the aspect  of the pale, cloudless sky, stretching away behind  

The chimney-pots into interminable distance. It  was curious to think that the sky was the same for   everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here.  And the people under the sky were also very much   the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds  of thousands of millions of people just like this,  

People ignorant of one another’s existence, held  apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost   exactly the same—people who had never learned to  think but who were storing up in their hearts and   bellies and muscles the power that would one  day overturn the world. If there was hope,  

It lay in the proles! Without having read to  the end of THE BOOK, he knew that that must be   Goldstein’s final message. The future belonged to  the proles. And could he be sure that when their   time came the world they constructed would  not be just as alien to him, Winston Smith,  

As the world of the Party? Yes, because at the  least it would be a world of sanity. Where there   is equality there can be sanity. Sooner or  later it would happen, strength would change   into consciousness. The proles were immortal,  you could not doubt it when you looked at that  

Valiant figure in the yard. In the end their  awakening would come. And until that happened,   though it might be a thousand years, they would  stay alive against all the odds, like birds,   passing on from body to body the vitality which  the Party did not share and could not kill. 

‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘the thrush that sang  to us, that first day, at the edge of the wood?’ ‘He wasn’t singing to us,’ said  Julia. ‘He was singing to please   himself. Not even that. He was just singing.’

The birds sang, the proles sang. the Party did not  sing. All round the world, in London and New York,   in Africa and Brazil, and in the mysterious,  forbidden lands beyond the frontiers,   in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in  the villages of the endless Russian plain,  

In the bazaars of China and Japan—everywhere  stood the same solid unconquerable figure,   made monstrous by work and childbearing,  toiling from birth to death and still singing.   Out of those mighty loins a race of conscious  beings must one day come. You were the dead,  

Theirs was the future. But you could share  in that future if you kept alive the mind as   they kept alive the body, and passed on the  secret doctrine that two plus two make four. ‘We are the dead,’ he said. ‘We are the dead,’ echoed Julia dutifully.

‘You are the dead,’ said  an iron voice behind them. They sprang apart. Winston’s entrails seemed  to have turned into ice. He could see the white   all round the irises of Julia’s eyes. Her face had  turned a milky yellow. The smear of rouge that was  

Still on each cheekbone stood out sharply, almost  as though unconnected with the skin beneath. ‘You are the dead,’ repeated the iron voice. ‘It was behind the picture,’ breathed Julia. ‘It was behind the picture,’ said  the voice. ‘Remain exactly where   you are. Make no movement until you are ordered.’

It was starting, it was starting at last!  They could do nothing except stand gazing   into one another’s eyes. To run for life,  to get out of the house before it was too   late—no such thought occurred to them.  Unthinkable to disobey the iron voice  

From the wall. There was a snap as though  a catch had been turned back, and a crash   of breaking glass. The picture had fallen to  the floor uncovering the telescreen behind it. ‘Now they can see us,’ said Julia.

‘Now we can see you,’ said the voice. ‘Stand  out in the middle of the room. Stand back to   back. Clasp your hands behind your  heads. Do not touch one another.’  They were not touching, but it seemed to him  that he could feel Julia’s body shaking. Or  

Perhaps it was merely the shaking of his own.  He could just stop his teeth from chattering,   but his knees were beyond his control.  There was a sound of trampling boots below,   inside the house and outside. The yard seemed  to be full of men. Something was being dragged  

Across the stones. The woman’s singing  had stopped abruptly. There was a long,   rolling clang, as though the washtub had been  flung across the yard, and then a confusion of   angry shouts which ended in a yell of pain. ‘The house is surrounded,’ said Winston. ‘The house is surrounded,’ said the voice.

He heard Julia snap her teeth together. ‘I  suppose we may as well say good-bye,’ she said. ‘You may as well say good-bye,’ said the voice.  And then another quite different voice, a thin,   cultivated voice which Winston had  the impression of having heard before,  

Struck in; ‘And by the way,  while we are on the subject,   “Here comes a candle to light you to bed,  here comes a chopper to chop off your head”!’ Something crashed on to the bed behind  Winston’s back. The head of a ladder had  

Been thrust through the window and had burst  in the frame. Someone was climbing through   the window. There was a stampede of boots  up the stairs. The room was full of solid   men in black uniforms, with iron-shod boots  on their feet and truncheons in their hands.

Winston was not trembling any longer. Even his  eyes he barely moved. One thing alone mattered;   to keep still, to keep still and not give  them an excuse to hit you! A man with a   smooth prize-fighter’s jowl in which the mouth  was only a slit paused opposite him balancing  

His truncheon meditatively between thumb and  forefinger. Winston met his eyes. The feeling   of nakedness, with one’s hands behind one’s  head and one’s face and body all exposed,   was almost unbearable. The man protruded the  tip of a white tongue, licked the place where  

His lips should have been, and then passed on.  There was another crash. Someone had picked up   the glass paperweight from the table and  smashed it to pieces on the hearth-stone. The fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink  like a sugar rosebud from a cake, rolled across  

The mat. How small, thought Winston, how small it  always was! There was a gasp and a thump behind   him, and he received a violent kick on the ankle  which nearly flung him off his balance. One of  

The men had smashed his fist into Julia’s solar  plexus, doubling her up like a pocket ruler. She   was thrashing about on the floor, fighting for  breath. Winston dared not turn his head even by   a millimetre, but sometimes her livid, gasping  face came within the angle of his vision. Even  

In his terror it was as though he could feel  the pain in his own body, the deadly pain which   nevertheless was less urgent than the struggle  to get back her breath. He knew what it was like;   the terrible, agonizing pain which was there  all the while but could not be suffered yet,  

Because before all else it was necessary  to be able to breathe. Then two of the men   hoisted her up by knees and shoulders,  and carried her out of the room like a   sack. Winston had a glimpse of her face, upside  down, yellow and contorted, with the eyes shut,  

And still with a smear of rouge on either  cheek; and that was the last he saw of her. He stood dead still. No one had hit him yet.  Thoughts which came of their own accord but   seemed totally uninteresting began to flit  through his mind. He wondered whether they  

Had got Mr Charrington. He wondered what they  had done to the woman in the yard. He noticed   that he badly wanted to urinate, and felt a  faint surprise, because he had done so only   two or three hours ago. He noticed that the clock  on the mantelpiece said nine, meaning twenty-one.  

But the light seemed too strong. Would not  the light be fading at twenty-one hours on   an August evening? He wondered whether after all  he and Julia had mistaken the time—had slept the   clock round and thought it was twenty-thirty  when really it was nought eight-thirty on  

The following morning. But he did not pursue  the thought further. It was not interesting. There was another, lighter step in the passage.  Mr Charrington came into the room. The demeanour   of the black-uniformed men suddenly became  more subdued. Something had also changed in  

Mr Charrington’s appearance. His eye fell  on the fragments of the glass paperweight. ‘Pick up those pieces,’ he said sharply. A man stooped to obey. The cockney accent   had disappeared; Winston suddenly realized whose  voice it was that he had heard a few moments ago  

On the telescreen. Mr Charrington was still  wearing his old velvet jacket, but his hair,   which had been almost white, had turned black.  Also he was not wearing his spectacles. He gave   Winston a single sharp glance, as though verifying  his identity, and then paid no more attention to  

Him. He was still recognizable, but he was not the  same person any longer. His body had straightened,   and seemed to have grown bigger. His face had  undergone only tiny changes that had nevertheless   worked a complete transformation. The black  eyebrows were less bushy, the wrinkles were gone,  

The whole lines of the face seemed to have  altered; even the nose seemed shorter. It   was the alert, cold face of a man of about  five-and-thirty. It occurred to Winston that   for the first time in his life he was looking,  with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police.  Part Three. Chapter 1.

He did not know where he was. Presumably he was  in the Ministry of Love, but there was no way of   making certain. He was in a high-ceilinged  windowless cell with walls of glittering   white porcelain. Concealed lamps flooded it  with cold light, and there was a low, steady  

Humming sound which he supposed had something  to do with the air supply. A bench, or shelf,   just wide enough to sit on ran round the wall,  broken only by the door and, at the end opposite   the door, a lavatory pan with no wooden seat.  There were four telescreens, one in each wall.

There was a dull aching in his belly. It had  been there ever since they had bundled him   into the closed van and driven him away.  But he was also hungry, with a gnawing,   unwholesome kind of hunger. It might be  twenty-four hours since he had eaten,  

It might be thirty-six. He still did not know,  probably never would know, whether it had been   morning or evening when they arrested him.  Since he was arrested he had not been fed. He sat as still as he could on the narrow  bench, with his hands crossed on his knee.  

He had already learned to sit still. If you  made unexpected movements they yelled at you   from the telescreen. But the craving for  food was growing upon him. What he longed   for above all was a piece of bread. He had  an idea that there were a few breadcrumbs  

In the pocket of his overalls. It was even  possible—he thought this because from time   to time something seemed to tickle his leg—that  there might be a sizeable bit of crust there. In   the end the temptation to find out overcame  his fear; he slipped a hand into his pocket.

‘Smith!’ yelled a voice from the telescreen. ‘6079  Smith W.! Hands out of pockets in the cells!’ He sat still again, his hands crossed on his  knee. Before being brought here he had been   taken to another place which must have been an  ordinary prison or a temporary lock-up used by  

The patrols. He did not know how long he had  been there; some hours at any rate; with no   clocks and no daylight it was hard to gauge the  time. It was a noisy, evil-smelling place. They  

Had put him into a cell similar to the one he  was now in, but filthily dirty and at all times   crowded by ten or fifteen people. The majority  of them were common criminals, but there were   a few political prisoners among them. He had sat  silent against the wall, jostled by dirty bodies,  

Too preoccupied by fear and the pain in his  belly to take much interest in his surroundings,   but still noticing the astonishing difference  in demeanour between the Party prisoners and   the others. The Party prisoners were always silent  and terrified, but the ordinary criminals seemed  

To care nothing for anybody. They yelled insults  at the guards, fought back fiercely when their   belongings were impounded, wrote obscene words on  the floor, ate smuggled food which they produced   from mysterious hiding-places in their clothes,  and even shouted down the telescreen when it  

Tried to restore order. On the other hand some of  them seemed to be on good terms with the guards,   called them by nicknames, and tried to wheedle  cigarettes through the spyhole in the door. The   guards, too, treated the common criminals with  a certain forbearance, even when they had to  

Handle them roughly. There was much talk about  the forced-labour camps to which most of the   prisoners expected to be sent. It was ‘all right’  in the camps, he gathered, so long as you had good   contacts and knew the ropes. There was bribery,  favouritism, and racketeering of every kind,  

There was homosexuality and prostitution, there  was even illicit alcohol distilled from potatoes.   The positions of trust were given only to the  common criminals, especially the gangsters and   the murderers, who formed a sort of aristocracy.  All the dirty jobs were done by the politicals.

There was a constant come-and-go of prisoners  of every description: drug-peddlers, thieves,   bandits, black-marketeers, drunks, prostitutes.  Some of the drunks were so violent that the other   prisoners had to combine to suppress them. An  enormous wreck of a woman, aged about sixty,  

With great tumbling breasts and thick coils of  white hair which had come down in her struggles,   was carried in, kicking and shouting,  by four guards, who had hold of her one   at each corner. They wrenched off the boots  with which she had been trying to kick them,  

And dumped her down across Winston’s lap,  almost breaking his thigh-bones. The woman   hoisted herself upright and followed them  out with a yell of ‘F—— bastards!’ Then,   noticing that she was sitting on something uneven,  she slid off Winston’s knees on to the bench. ‘Beg pardon, dearie,’ she said.  ‘I wouldn’t ‘a sat on you,  

Only the buggers put me there. They dono  ‘ow to treat a lady, do they?’ She paused,   patted her breast, and belched. ‘Pardon,’  she said, ‘I ain’t meself, quite.’ She leant forward and vomited  copiously on the floor. 

‘Thass better,’ she said, leaning back with closed  eyes. ‘Never keep it down, thass what I say. Get   it up while it’s fresh on your stomach, like.’ She revived, turned to have another look at   Winston and seemed immediately to take  a fancy to him. She put a vast arm round  

His shoulder and drew him towards her,  breathing beer and vomit into his face. ‘Wass your name, dearie?’ she said. ‘Smith,’ said Winston. ‘Smith?’ said the woman. ‘Thass  funny. My name’s Smith too. Why,’   she added sentimentally, ‘I might be your mother!’

She might, thought Winston, be his mother.  She was about the right age and physique,   and it was probable that people changed somewhat  after twenty years in a forced-labour camp. No one else had spoken to him. To a surprising  extent the ordinary criminals ignored the Party  

Prisoners. ‘The polITS,’ they called them, with a  sort of uninterested contempt. The Party prisoners   seemed terrified of speaking to anybody, and  above all of speaking to one another. Only once,   when two Party members, both women, were  pressed close together on the bench,   he overheard amid the din of voices  a few hurriedly-whispered words;  

And in particular a reference to something called  ‘room one-oh-one’, which he did not understand. It might be two or three hours ago that they  had brought him here. The dull pain in his   belly never went away, but sometimes it grew  better and sometimes worse, and his thoughts  

Expanded or contracted accordingly. When it  grew worse he thought only of the pain itself,   and of his desire for food. When it grew better,  panic took hold of him. There were moments when he   foresaw the things that would happen to him with  such actuality that his heart galloped and his  

Breath stopped. He felt the smash of truncheons  on his elbows and iron-shod boots on his shins; he   saw himself grovelling on the floor, screaming for  mercy through broken teeth. He hardly thought of  

Julia. He could not fix his mind on her. He loved  her and would not betray her; but that was only a   fact, known as he knew the rules of arithmetic. He  felt no love for her, and he hardly even wondered  

What was happening to her. He thought oftener of  O’Brien, with a flickering hope. O’Brien might   know that he had been arrested. The Brotherhood,  he had said, never tried to save its members. But   there was the razor blade; they would send the  razor blade if they could. There would be perhaps  

Five seconds before the guard could rush into the  cell. The blade would bite into him with a sort of   burning coldness, and even the fingers that held  it would be cut to the bone. Everything came back  

To his sick body, which shrank trembling from the  smallest pain. He was not certain that he would   use the razor blade even if he got the chance. It  was more natural to exist from moment to moment,  

Accepting another ten minutes’ life even with the  certainty that there was torture at the end of it. Sometimes he tried to calculate the number of  porcelain bricks in the walls of the cell. It   should have been easy, but he always lost count  at some point or another. More often he wondered  

Where he was, and what time of day it was. At one  moment he felt certain that it was broad daylight   outside, and at the next equally certain  that it was pitch darkness. In this place,   he knew instinctively, the lights would never be  turned out. It was the place with no darkness:  

He saw now why O’Brien had seemed to recognize  the allusion. In the Ministry of Love there were   no windows. His cell might be at the heart  of the building or against its outer wall;   it might be ten floors below ground,  or thirty above it. He moved himself  

Mentally from place to place, and  tried to determine by the feeling   of his body whether he was perched high  in the air or buried deep underground. There was a sound of marching boots outside. The  steel door opened with a clang. A young officer,  

A trim black-uniformed figure who seemed  to glitter all over with polished leather,   and whose pale, straight-featured face was  like a wax mask, stepped smartly through   the doorway. He motioned to the guards  outside to bring in the prisoner they   were leading. The poet Ampleforth shambled  into the cell. The door clanged shut again.

Ampleforth made one or two uncertain  movements from side to side,   as though having some idea that there was  another door to go out of, and then began   to wander up and down the cell. He had not yet  noticed Winston’s presence. His troubled eyes  

Were gazing at the wall about a metre above  the level of Winston’s head. He was shoeless;   large, dirty toes were sticking out  of the holes in his socks. He was also   several days away from a shave. A scrubby  beard covered his face to the cheekbones,  

Giving him an air of ruffianism that went oddly  with his large weak frame and nervous movements. Winston roused himself a little from his lethargy.  He must speak to Ampleforth, and risk the yell   from the telescreen. It was even conceivable that  Ampleforth was the bearer of the razor blade. 

‘Ampleforth,’ he said. There was no yell from the   telescreen. Ampleforth paused, mildly startled.  His eyes focused themselves slowly on Winston. ‘Ah, Smith!’ he said. ‘You too!’ ‘What are you in for?’ ‘To tell you the truth—’ He sat down awkwardly  

On the bench opposite Winston. ‘There is  only one offence, is there not?’ he said. ‘And have you committed it?’ ‘Apparently I have.’ He put a hand to his forehead and  pressed his temples for a moment,   as though trying to remember something.

‘These things happen,’ he began vaguely. ‘I  have been able to recall one instance—a possible   instance. It was an indiscretion, undoubtedly.  We were producing a definitive edition of the   poems of Kipling. I allowed the word “God” to  remain at the end of a line. I could not help  

It!’ he added almost indignantly, raising his  face to look at Winston. ‘It was impossible to   change the line. The rhyme was “rod”. Do you  realize that there are only twelve rhymes to   “rod” in the entire language? For days I had  racked my brains. There WAS no other rhyme.’

The expression on his face changed.  The annoyance passed out of it and   for a moment he looked almost pleased.  A sort of intellectual warmth, the joy   of the pedant who has found out some useless  fact, shone through the dirt and scrubby hair.

‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ he said,  ‘that the whole history of English poetry   has been determined by the fact that  the English language lacks rhymes?’ No, that particular thought had  never occurred to Winston. Nor,   in the circumstances, did it strike  him as very important or interesting.

‘Do you know what time of day it is?’ he said. Ampleforth looked startled again.  ‘I had hardly thought about it. They   arrested me—it could be two days ago—perhaps  three.’ His eyes flitted round the walls,   as though he half expected to find a window  somewhere. ‘There is no difference between  

Night and day in this place. I do not  see how one can calculate the time.’ They talked desultorily for some minutes,  then, without apparent reason, a yell from   the telescreen bade them be silent. Winston  sat quietly, his hands crossed. Ampleforth,  

Too large to sit in comfort on the  narrow bench, fidgeted from side to side,   clasping his lank hands first round one knee,  then round the other. The telescreen barked   at him to keep still. Time passed. Twenty  minutes, an hour—it was difficult to judge.  

Once more there was a sound of boots outside.  Winston’s entrails contracted. Soon, very soon,   perhaps in five minutes, perhaps now, the tramp  of boots would mean that his own turn had come. The door opened. The cold-faced  young officer stepped into the   cell. With a brief movement of  the hand he indicated Ampleforth.

‘Room 101,’ he said. Ampleforth marched clumsily  out between the guards,   his face vaguely perturbed, but uncomprehending. What seemed like a long time passed. The pain in  Winston’s belly had revived. His mind sagged round   and round on the same trick, like a ball falling  again and again into the same series of slots. He  

Had only six thoughts. The pain in his belly;  a piece of bread; the blood and the screaming;   O’Brien; Julia; the razor blade. There was  another spasm in his entrails, the heavy boots   were approaching. As the door opened, the wave of  air that it created brought in a powerful smell of  

Cold sweat. Parsons walked into the cell. He  was wearing khaki shorts and a sports-shirt. This time Winston was startled  into self-forgetfulness. ‘YOU here!’ he said. Parsons gave Winston a glance in which there was  neither interest nor surprise, but only misery.  

He began walking jerkily up and down, evidently  unable to keep still. Each time he straightened   his pudgy knees it was apparent that they were  trembling. His eyes had a wide-open, staring look,   as though he could not prevent himself from  gazing at something in the middle distance. ‘What are you in for?’ said Winston.

‘Thoughtcrime!’ said Parsons, almost blubbering.  The tone of his voice implied at once a complete   admission of his guilt and a sort of  incredulous horror that such a word could   be applied to himself. He paused opposite  Winston and began eagerly appealing to him:  

‘You don’t think they’ll shoot me, do you, old  chap? They don’t shoot you if you haven’t actually   done anything—only thoughts, which you can’t help?  I know they give you a fair hearing. Oh, I trust  

Them for that! They’ll know my record, won’t they?  YOU know what kind of chap I was. Not a bad chap   in my way. Not brainy, of course, but keen. I  tried to do my best for the Party, didn’t I?  

I’ll get off with five years, don’t you think? Or  even ten years? A chap like me could make himself   pretty useful in a labour-camp. They wouldn’t  shoot me for going off the rails just once?’ ‘Are you guilty?’ said Winston. ‘Of course I’m guilty!’ cried Parsons with  

A servile glance at the telescreen. ‘You don’t  think the Party would arrest an innocent man,   do you?’ His frog-like face grew calmer, and  even took on a slightly sanctimonious expression.   ‘Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man,’  he said sententiously. ‘It’s insidious. It can  

Get hold of you without your even knowing it. Do  you know how it got hold of me? In my sleep! Yes,   that’s a fact. There I was, working away, trying  to do my bit—never knew I had any bad stuff in my  

Mind at all. And then I started talking in my  sleep. Do you know what they heard me saying?’  He sank his voice, like someone who is obliged  for medical reasons to utter an obscenity. ‘”Down with Big Brother!” Yes, I said  that! Said it over and over again,  

It seems. Between you and me, old man,  I’m glad they got me before it went any   further. Do you know what I’m going to say  to them when I go up before the tribunal?   “Thank you,” I’m going to say, “thank you  for saving me before it was too late.”‘

‘Who denounced you?’ said Winston. ‘It was my little daughter,’ said Parsons  with a sort of doleful pride. ‘She listened   at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and  nipped off to the patrols the very next day.  

Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I  don’t bear her any grudge for it. In fact   I’m proud of her. It shows I brought  her up in the right spirit, anyway.’ He made a few more jerky movements  up and down, several times, casting  

A longing glance at the lavatory pan.  Then he suddenly ripped down his shorts. ‘Excuse me, old man,’ he said. ‘I  can’t help it. It’s the waiting.’ He plumped his large posterior into the lavatory  pan. Winston covered his face with his hands. ‘Smith!’ yelled the voice from  the telescreen. ‘6079 Smith W.!  

Uncover your face. No faces covered in the cells.’ Winston uncovered his face. Parsons used  the lavatory, loudly and abundantly. It   then turned out that the plug was defective and  the cell stank abominably for hours afterwards. Parsons was removed. More prisoners came and went,  mysteriously. One, a woman, was consigned to ‘Room  

101’, and, Winston noticed, seemed to shrivel  and turn a different colour when she heard the   words. A time came when, if it had been morning  when he was brought here, it would be afternoon;   or if it had been afternoon, then it would be  midnight. There were six prisoners in the cell,  

Men and women. All sat very still. Opposite  Winston there sat a man with a chinless,   toothy face exactly like that of  some large, harmless rodent. His fat,   mottled cheeks were so pouched at the bottom  that it was difficult not to believe that he  

Had little stores of food tucked away there.  His pale-grey eyes flitted timorously from   face to face and turned quickly away  again when he caught anyone’s eye. The door opened, and another prisoner was brought  in whose appearance sent a momentary chill through  

Winston. He was a commonplace, mean-looking man  who might have been an engineer or technician   of some kind. But what was startling was  the emaciation of his face. It was like   a skull. Because of its thinness the mouth  and eyes looked disproportionately large,  

And the eyes seemed filled with a murderous,  unappeasable hatred of somebody or something. The man sat down on the bench at a little distance  from Winston. Winston did not look at him again,   but the tormented, skull-like face was  as vivid in his mind as though it had  

Been straight in front of his eyes. Suddenly  he realized what was the matter. The man was   dying of starvation. The same thought seemed to  occur almost simultaneously to everyone in the   cell. There was a very faint stirring all the  way round the bench. The eyes of the chinless  

Man kept flitting towards the skull-faced man,  then turning guiltily away, then being dragged   back by an irresistible attraction. Presently he  began to fidget on his seat. At last he stood up,   waddled clumsily across the cell, dug  down into the pocket of his overalls,  

And, with an abashed air, held out a grimy  piece of bread to the skull-faced man. There was a furious, deafening roar from  the telescreen. The chinless man jumped   in his tracks. The skull-faced man had  quickly thrust his hands behind his back,   as though demonstrating to all the  world that he refused the gift.

‘Bumstead!’ roared the voice. ‘2713  Bumstead J.! Let fall that piece of bread!’ The chinless man dropped the  piece of bread on the floor. ‘Remain standing where you are,’ said the  voice. ‘Face the door. Make no movement.’  The chinless man obeyed. His large pouchy cheeks  were quivering uncontrollably. The door clanged  

Open. As the young officer entered and stepped  aside, there emerged from behind him a short   stumpy guard with enormous arms and shoulders.  He took his stand opposite the chinless man,   and then, at a signal from the  officer, let free a frightful blow,  

With all the weight of his body behind it,  full in the chinless man’s mouth. The force   of it seemed almost to knock him clear of the  floor. His body was flung across the cell and   fetched up against the base of the lavatory  seat. For a moment he lay as though stunned,  

With dark blood oozing from his mouth and nose. A  very faint whimpering or squeaking, which seemed   unconscious, came out of him. Then he rolled  over and raised himself unsteadily on hands and   knees. Amid a stream of blood and saliva, the two  halves of a dental plate fell out of his mouth. 

The prisoners sat very still, their hands  crossed on their knees. The chinless man   climbed back into his place. Down one side of  his face the flesh was darkening. His mouth   had swollen into a shapeless cherry-coloured  mass with a black hole in the middle of it.

From time to time a little blood dripped  on to the breast of his overalls. His   grey eyes still flitted from face  to face, more guiltily than ever,   as though he were trying to discover how much  the others despised him for his humiliation.

The door opened. With a small gesture the  officer indicated the skull-faced man. ‘Room 101,’ he said. There was a gasp and a flurry  at Winston’s side. The man had   actually flung himself on his knees on  the floor, with his hand clasped together.

‘Comrade! Officer!’ he cried. ‘You don’t have  to take me to that place! Haven’t I told you   everything already? What else is it you want  to know? There’s nothing I wouldn’t confess,   nothing! Just tell me what it is  and I’ll confess straight off.   Write it down and I’ll sign  it—anything! Not room 101!’

‘Room 101,’ said the officer. The man’s face, already very pale, turned  a colour Winston would not have believed   possible. It was definitely,  unmistakably, a shade of green. ‘Do anything to me!’ he yelled. ‘You’ve been  starving me for weeks. Finish it off and let  

Me die. Shoot me. Hang me. Sentence me to  twenty-five years. Is there somebody else   you want me to give away? Just say who it  is and I’ll tell you anything you want.   I don’t care who it is or what you do to  them. I’ve got a wife and three children.  

The biggest of them isn’t six years old.  You can take the whole lot of them and cut   their throats in front of my eyes, and I’ll  stand by and watch it. But not Room 101!’ ‘Room 101,’ said the officer. The man looked frantically  round at the other prisoners,  

As though with some idea that he could  put another victim in his own place. His   eyes settled on the smashed face of the  chinless man. He flung out a lean arm. ‘That’s the one you ought to be taking,  not me!’ he shouted. ‘You didn’t hear  

What he was saying after they bashed his  face. Give me a chance and I’ll tell you   every word of it. HE’S the one that’s  against the Party, not me.’ The guards   stepped forward. The man’s voice rose to a  shriek. ‘You didn’t hear him!’ he repeated.  

‘Something went wrong with the telescreen.  HE’S the one you want. Take him, not me!’ The two sturdy guards had stooped to take him  by the arms. But just at this moment he flung   himself across the floor of the cell and grabbed  one of the iron legs that supported the bench.  

He had set up a wordless howling, like an animal.  The guards took hold of him to wrench him loose,   but he clung on with astonishing strength.  For perhaps twenty seconds they were hauling   at him. The prisoners sat quiet,  their hands crossed on their knees,  

Looking straight in front of them. The  howling stopped; the man had no breath   left for anything except hanging on. Then  there was a different kind of cry. A kick   from a guard’s boot had broken the fingers of  one of his hands. They dragged him to his feet. ‘Room 101,’ said the officer.

The man was led out, walking unsteadily,  with head sunken, nursing his crushed hand,   all the fight had gone out of him. A long time passed. If it had been   midnight when the skull-faced man was  taken away, it was morning: if morning,  

It was afternoon. Winston was alone, and had been  alone for hours. The pain of sitting on the narrow   bench was such that often he got up and walked  about, unreproved by the telescreen. The piece   of bread still lay where the chinless man had  dropped it. At the beginning it needed a hard  

Effort not to look at it, but presently hunger  gave way to thirst. His mouth was sticky and   evil-tasting. The humming sound and the unvarying  white light induced a sort of faintness, an empty   feeling inside his head. He would get up because  the ache in his bones was no longer bearable,  

And then would sit down again almost at once  because he was too dizzy to make sure of staying   on his feet. Whenever his physical sensations  were a little under control the terror returned.   Sometimes with a fading hope he thought of O’Brien  and the razor blade. It was thinkable that the  

Razor blade might arrive concealed in his food, if  he were ever fed. More dimly he thought of Julia.   Somewhere or other she was suffering perhaps  far worse than he. She might be screaming with  

Pain at this moment. He thought: ‘If I could save  Julia by doubling my own pain, would I do it? Yes,   I would.’ But that was merely an intellectual  decision, taken because he knew that he ought  

To take it. He did not feel it. In this place  you could not feel anything, except pain and   foreknowledge of pain. Besides, was it possible,  when you were actually suffering it, to wish for   any reason that your own pain should increase?  But that question was not answerable yet. 

The boots were approaching again.  The door opened. O’Brien came in. Winston started to his feet. The shock  of the sight had driven all caution out   of him. For the first time in many years  he forgot the presence of the telescreen. ‘They’ve got you too!’ he cried.

‘They got me a long time ago,’ said O’Brien with  a mild, almost regretful irony. He stepped aside.   From behind him there emerged a broad-chested  guard with a long black truncheon in his hand. ‘You know this, Winston,’ said O’Brien. ‘Don’t   deceive yourself. You did know  it—you have always known it.’

Yes, he saw now, he had always known it.  But there was no time to think of that.   All he had eyes for was the truncheon in  the guard’s hand. It might fall anywhere;   on the crown, on the tip of the ear,  on the upper arm, on the elbow——

The elbow! He had slumped to his knees, almost  paralysed, clasping the stricken elbow with his   other hand. Everything had exploded into yellow  light. Inconceivable, inconceivable that one   blow could cause such pain! The light cleared and  he could see the other two looking down at him.  

The guard was laughing at his contortions. One  question at any rate was answered. Never, for any   reason on earth, could you wish for an increase  of pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing:  

That it should stop. Nothing in the world was so  bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there   are no heroes, no heroes, he thought over and over  as he writhed on the floor, clutching uselessly at   his disabled left arm. Chapter 2.

He was lying on something that felt like a camp  bed, except that it was higher off the ground   and that he was fixed down in some way so that  he could not move. Light that seemed stronger   than usual was falling on his face. O’Brien  was standing at his side, looking down at him  

Intently. At the other side of him stood a man  in a white coat, holding a hypodermic syringe. Even after his eyes were open he took in  his surroundings only gradually. He had   the impression of swimming up into this  room from some quite different world,  

A sort of underwater world far beneath it.  How long he had been down there he did not   know. Since the moment when they arrested him  he had not seen darkness or daylight. Besides,   his memories were not continuous. There had  been times when consciousness, even the sort of  

Consciousness that one has in sleep, had stopped  dead and started again after a blank interval.   But whether the intervals were of days or weeks  or only seconds, there was no way of knowing. With that first blow on the elbow the nightmare  had started. Later he was to realize that all that  

Then happened was merely a preliminary,  a routine interrogation to which nearly   all prisoners were subjected. There was a  long range of crimes—espionage, sabotage,   and the like—to which everyone had to confess as a  matter of course. The confession was a formality,  

Though the torture was real. How many times he had  been beaten, how long the beatings had continued,   he could not remember. Always there were five or  six men in black uniforms at him simultaneously.   Sometimes it was fists, sometimes it was  truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods,  

Sometimes it was boots. There were times when he  rolled about the floor, as shameless as an animal,   writhing his body this way and that in an endless,  hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply   inviting more and yet more kicks, in his ribs,  in his belly, on his elbows, on his shins,  

In his groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the  base of his spine. There were times when it went   on and on until the cruel, wicked, unforgivable  thing seemed to him not that the guards continued   to beat him but that he could not force himself  into losing consciousness. There were times when  

His nerve so forsook him that he began shouting  for mercy even before the beating began, when the   mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was  enough to make him pour forth a confession of   real and imaginary crimes. There were other times  when he started out with the resolve of confessing  

Nothing, when every word had to be forced out of  him between gasps of pain, and there were times   when he feebly tried to compromise, when he said  to himself: ‘I will confess, but not yet. I must  

Hold out till the pain becomes unbearable. Three  more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell   them what they want.’ Sometimes he was beaten  till he could hardly stand, then flung like a  

Sack of potatoes on to the stone floor of a cell,  left to recuperate for a few hours, and then taken   out and beaten again. There were also longer  periods of recovery. He remembered them dimly,   because they were spent chiefly in sleep or  stupor. He remembered a cell with a plank bed,  

A sort of shelf sticking out from the wall, and  a tin wash-basin, and meals of hot soup and bread   and sometimes coffee. He remembered a surly barber  arriving to scrape his chin and crop his hair,   and businesslike, unsympathetic men in white  coats feeling his pulse, tapping his reflexes,  

Turning up his eyelids, running harsh fingers  over him in search for broken bones, and shooting   needles into his arm to make him sleep. The beatings grew less frequent,   and became mainly a threat, a horror to which  he could be sent back at any moment when his  

Answers were unsatisfactory. His questioners  now were not ruffians in black uniforms but   Party intellectuals, little rotund men with  quick movements and flashing spectacles,   who worked on him in relays over periods which  lasted—he thought, he could not be sure—ten or  

Twelve hours at a stretch. These other questioners  saw to it that he was in constant slight pain, but   it was not chiefly pain that they relied on. They  slapped his face, wrung his ears, pulled his hair,  

Made him stand on one leg, refused him leave to  urinate, shone glaring lights in his face until   his eyes ran with water; but the aim of this was  simply to humiliate him and destroy his power of   arguing and reasoning. Their real weapon was  the merciless questioning that went on and on,  

Hour after hour, tripping him up, laying traps  for him, twisting everything that he said,   convicting him at every step of lies and  self-contradiction until he began weeping   as much from shame as from nervous fatigue.  Sometimes he would weep half a dozen times in  

A single session. Most of the time they screamed  abuse at him and threatened at every hesitation   to deliver him over to the guards again; but  sometimes they would suddenly change their tune,   call him comrade, appeal to him in the name of  Ingsoc and Big Brother, and ask him sorrowfully  

Whether even now he had not enough loyalty to the  Party left to make him wish to undo the evil he   had done. When his nerves were in rags after  hours of questioning, even this appeal could   reduce him to snivelling tears. In the end the  nagging voices broke him down more completely  

Than the boots and fists of the guards. He became  simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed,   whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern  was to find out what they wanted him to confess,   and then confess it quickly, before the bullying  started anew. He confessed to the assassination  

Of eminent Party members, the distribution of  seditious pamphlets, embezzlement of public funds,   sale of military secrets, sabotage of every kind.  He confessed that he had been a spy in the pay of   the Eastasian government as far back as 1968.  He confessed that he was a religious believer,  

An admirer of capitalism, and a sexual pervert.  He confessed that he had murdered his wife,   although he knew, and his questioners must  have known, that his wife was still alive. He   confessed that for years he had been in personal  touch with Goldstein and had been a member of an  

Underground organization which had included  almost every human being he had ever known.   It was easier to confess everything and implicate  everybody. Besides, in a sense it was all true.   It was true that he had been the enemy of the  Party, and in the eyes of the Party there was  

No distinction between the thought and the deed. There were also memories of another kind. They   stood out in his mind disconnectedly, like  pictures with blackness all round them. He was in a cell which might  have been either dark or light,  

Because he could see nothing except a pair of  eyes. Near at hand some kind of instrument was   ticking slowly and regularly. The eyes  grew larger and more luminous. Suddenly   he floated out of his seat, dived  into the eyes, and was swallowed up.

He was strapped into a chair surrounded  by dials, under dazzling lights. A man   in a white coat was reading the dials. There  was a tramp of heavy boots outside. The door   clanged open. The waxed-faced officer  marched in, followed by two guards. ‘Room One O One,’ said the officer.

The man in the white coat did not turn  round. He did not look at Winston either;   he was looking only at the dials. He was rolling down a mighty corridor, a kilometre  wide, full of glorious, golden light, roaring with  

Laughter and shouting out confessions at the  top of his voice. He was confessing everything,   even the things he had succeeded in holding  back under the torture. He was relating the   entire history of his life to an audience who  knew it already. With him were the guards,  

The other questioners, the men in white coats,  O’Brien, Julia, Mr Charrington, all rolling down   the corridor together and shouting with laughter.  Some dreadful thing which had lain embedded in   the future had somehow been skipped over and  had not happened. Everything was all right,  

There was no more pain, the last detail of  his life was laid bare, understood, forgiven.  He was starting up from the plank bed in the  half-certainty that he had heard O’Brien’s   voice. All through his interrogation, although  he had never seen him, he had had the feeling  

That O’Brien was at his elbow, just out of sight.  It was O’Brien who was directing everything. It   was he who set the guards on to Winston and who  prevented them from killing him. It was he who  

Decided when Winston should scream with pain, when  he should have a respite, when he should be fed,   when he should sleep, when the drugs should  be pumped into his arm. It was he who asked   the questions and suggested the answers.  He was the tormentor, he was the protector,  

He was the inquisitor, he was the friend. And  once—Winston could not remember whether it was   in drugged sleep, or in normal sleep, or even in a  moment of wakefulness—a voice murmured in his ear:   ‘Don’t worry, Winston; you are in my keeping.  For seven years I have watched over you. Now  

The turning-point has come. I shall save  you, I shall make you perfect.’ He was   not sure whether it was O’Brien’s voice; but  it was the same voice that had said to him,   ‘We shall meet in the place where there is no  darkness,’ in that other dream, seven years ago. 

He did not remember any ending to his  interrogation. There was a period of blackness   and then the cell, or room, in which he now was  had gradually materialized round him. He was   almost flat on his back, and unable to move. His  body was held down at every essential point. Even  

The back of his head was gripped in some manner.  O’Brien was looking down at him gravely and rather   sadly. His face, seen from below, looked coarse  and worn, with pouches under the eyes and tired   lines from nose to chin. He was older than Winston  had thought him; he was perhaps forty-eight or  

Fifty. Under his hand there was a dial with a  lever on top and figures running round the face. ‘I told you,’ said O’Brien, ‘that  if we met again it would be here.’ ‘Yes,’ said Winston. Without any warning except a slight movement  of O’Brien’s hand, a wave of pain flooded his  

Body. It was a frightening pain, because  he could not see what was happening,   and he had the feeling that some mortal injury  was being done to him. He did not know whether   the thing was really happening, or whether the  effect was electrically produced; but his body was  

Being wrenched out of shape, the joints were being  slowly torn apart. Although the pain had brought   the sweat out on his forehead, the worst of all  was the fear that his backbone was about to snap.   He set his teeth and breathed hard through his  nose, trying to keep silent as long as possible.

‘You are afraid,’ said O’Brien, watching his face,   ‘that in another moment something is going to  break. Your especial fear is that it will be   your backbone. You have a vivid mental picture  of the vertebrae snapping apart and the spinal  

Fluid dripping out of them. That is what  you are thinking, is it not, Winston?’ Winston did not answer. O’Brien drew  back the lever on the dial. The wave   of pain receded almost as quickly as it had come. ‘That was forty,’ said O’Brien. ‘You  can see that the numbers on this dial  

Run up to a hundred. Will you please  remember, throughout our conversation,   that I have it in my power to inflict pain  on you at any moment and to whatever degree   I choose? If you tell me any lies, or attempt to  prevaricate in any way, or even fall below your  

Usual level of intelligence, you will cry out  with pain, instantly. Do you understand that?’ ‘Yes,’ said Winston. O’Brien’s manner became less severe. He  resettled his spectacles thoughtfully,   and took a pace or two up and down. When he spoke  his voice was gentle and patient. He had the air  

Of a doctor, a teacher, even a priest, anxious  to explain and persuade rather than to punish. ‘I am taking trouble with you, Winston,’ he  said, ‘because you are worth trouble. You   know perfectly well what is the matter  with you. You have known it for years,  

Though you have fought against the knowledge.  You are mentally deranged. You suffer from a   defective memory. You are unable to remember real  events and you persuade yourself that you remember   other events which never happened. Fortunately it  is curable. You have never cured yourself of it,  

Because you did not choose to. There was a small  effort of the will that you were not ready to   make. Even now, I am well aware, you are clinging  to your disease under the impression that it is a  

Virtue. Now we will take an example. At this  moment, which power is Oceania at war with?’ ‘When I was arrested, Oceania  was at war with Eastasia.’ ‘With Eastasia. Good. And Oceania has always  been at war with Eastasia, has it not?’ Winston drew in his breath. He opened his mouth to  

Speak and then did not speak. He could  not take his eyes away from the dial. ‘The truth, please, Winston. YOUR truth.  Tell me what you think you remember.’  ‘I remember that until only a week before  I was arrested, we were not at war with  

Eastasia at all. We were in alliance  with them. The war was against Eurasia.   That had lasted for four years. Before that——’ O’Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand. ‘Another example,’ he said. ‘Some years ago  you had a very serious delusion indeed. You  

Believed that three men, three one-time  Party members named Jones, Aaronson,   and Rutherford—men who were executed for  treachery and sabotage after making the   fullest possible confession—were not guilty of  the crimes they were charged with. You believed   that you had seen unmistakable documentary  evidence proving that their confessions were  

False. There was a certain photograph about  which you had a hallucination. You believed   that you had actually held it in your hands.  It was a photograph something like this.’ An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between  O’Brien’s fingers. For perhaps five seconds it  

Was within the angle of Winston’s vision. It  was a photograph, and there was no question   of its identity. It was THE photograph. It  was another copy of the photograph of Jones,   Aaronson, and Rutherford at the party function  in New York, which he had chanced upon eleven  

Years ago and promptly destroyed. For  only an instant it was before his eyes,   then it was out of sight again. But he had  seen it, unquestionably he had seen it! He   made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench the  top half of his body free. It was impossible to  

Move so much as a centimetre in any direction.  For the moment he had even forgotten the dial.   All he wanted was to hold the photograph in  his fingers again, or at least to see it. ‘It exists!’ he cried. ‘No,’ said O’Brien.

He stepped across the room. There was a memory  hole in the opposite wall. O’Brien lifted the   grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was  whirling away on the current of warm air;   it was vanishing in a flash of flame.  O’Brien turned away from the wall.

‘Ashes,’ he said. ‘Not even identifiable ashes.  Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.’ ‘But it did exist! It does exist! It exists  in memory. I remember it. You remember it.’ ‘I do not remember it,’ said O’Brien. Winston’s heart sank. That was doublethink.  He had a feeling of deadly helplessness. If  

He could have been certain that O’Brien  was lying, it would not have seemed to   matter. But it was perfectly possible  that O’Brien had really forgotten the   photograph. And if so, then already he would  have forgotten his denial of remembering it,  

And forgotten the act of forgetting. How could  one be sure that it was simple trickery? Perhaps   that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really  happen: that was the thought that defeated him. O’Brien was looking down at him  speculatively. More than ever he  

Had the air of a teacher taking pains  with a wayward but promising child. ‘There is a Party slogan dealing with the control  of the past,’ he said. ‘Repeat it, if you please.’ ‘”Who controls the past controls the future:   who controls the present controls the  past,”‘ repeated Winston obediently.

‘”Who controls the present controls the  past,”‘ said O’Brien, nodding his head   with slow approval. ‘Is it your opinion,  Winston, that the past has real existence?’ Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon  Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He  

Not only did not know whether ‘yes’ or ‘no’  was the answer that would save him from pain;   he did not even know which answer  he believed to be the true one. O’Brien smiled faintly. ‘You are no metaphysician,   Winston,’ he said. ‘Until this moment you had  never considered what is meant by existence.  

I will put it more precisely. Does the  past exist concretely, in space? Is there   somewhere or other a place, a world of solid  objects, where the past is still happening?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then where does the past exist, if at all?’ ‘In records. It is written down.’ ‘In records. And——?’

‘In the mind. In human memories.’ ‘In memory. Very well, then. We,  the Party, control all records,   and we control all memories. Then  we control the past, do we not?’ ‘But how can you stop people  remembering things?’ cried   Winston again momentarily forgetting  the dial. ‘It is involuntary. It is  

Outside oneself. How can you control  memory? You have not controlled mine!’ O’Brien’s manner grew stern again.  He laid his hand on the dial.  ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘YOU have not  controlled it. That is what has brought you   here. You are here because you have failed  in humility, in self-discipline. You would  

Not make the act of submission which is the  price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic,   a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can  see reality, Winston. You believe that reality   is something objective, external, existing in  its own right. You also believe that the nature  

Of reality is self-evident. When you delude  yourself into thinking that you see something,   you assume that everyone else sees the same thing  as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is   not external. Reality exists in the human mind,  and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind,  

Which can make mistakes, and in any case  soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party,   which is collective and immortal. Whatever  the Party holds to be the truth, is truth.   It is impossible to see reality except  by looking through the eyes of the Party.  

That is the fact that you have got to relearn,  Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction,   an effort of the will. You must humble  yourself before you can become sane.’  He paused for a few moments, as though to  allow what he had been saying to sink in.

‘Do you remember,’ he went  on, ‘writing in your diary,   “Freedom is the freedom to say  that two plus two make four”?’ ‘Yes,’ said Winston. O’Brien held up his left hand,  its back towards Winston,   with the thumb hidden and  the four fingers extended. ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’ ‘Four.’

‘And if the party says that it is  not four but five—then how many?’ ‘Four.’ The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle  of the dial had shot up to fifty-five. The   sweat had sprung out all over Winston’s body.  The air tore into his lungs and issued again  

In deep groans which even by clenching his  teeth he could not stop. O’Brien watched him,   the four fingers still extended. He drew back the  lever. This time the pain was only slightly eased. ‘How many fingers, Winston?’ ‘Four.’ The needle went up to sixty. ‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!’ The needle must have risen again,  but he did not look at it. The heavy,   stern face and the four fingers filled his vision.  The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars,   enormous, blurry, and seeming to  vibrate, but unmistakably four. ‘How many fingers, Winston?’

‘Four! Stop it, stop it! How  can you go on? Four! Four!’ ‘How many fingers, Winston?’ ‘Five! Five! Five!’ ‘No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You   still think there are four.  How many fingers, please?’ ‘Four! five! Four! Anything you  like. Only stop it, stop the pain!’

Abruptly he was sitting up with O’Brien’s  arm round his shoulders. He had perhaps lost   consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds that  had held his body down were loosened. He felt very   cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth  were chattering, the tears were rolling down his  

Cheeks. For a moment he clung to O’Brien like a  baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round   his shoulders. He had the feeling that O’Brien was  his protector, that the pain was something that   came from outside, from some other source, and  that it was O’Brien who would save him from it.

‘You are a slow learner,  Winston,’ said O’Brien gently. ‘How can I help it?’ he blubbered. ‘How can I   help seeing what is in front of  my eyes? Two and two are four.’ ‘Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are  five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes  

They are all of them at once. You must try  harder. It is not easy to become sane.’ He laid Winston down on the bed. The  grip of his limbs tightened again,   but the pain had ebbed away and the trembling  had stopped, leaving him merely weak and cold.  

O’Brien motioned with his head to the man in the  white coat, who had stood immobile throughout the   proceedings. The man in the white coat bent  down and looked closely into Winston’s eyes,   felt his pulse, laid an ear against his chest,  tapped here and there, then he nodded to O’Brien. ‘Again,’ said O’Brien.

The pain flowed into Winston’s body. The needle  must be at seventy, seventy-five. He had shut his   eyes this time. He knew that the fingers were  still there, and still four. All that mattered   was somehow to stay alive until the spasm was  over. He had ceased to notice whether he was  

Crying out or not. The pain lessened again. He  opened his eyes. O’Brien had drawn back the lever. ‘How many fingers, Winston?’ ‘Four. I suppose there are four. I would see  five if I could. I am trying to see five.’

‘Which do you wish: to persuade me that  you see five, or really to see them?’ ‘Really to see them.’ ‘Again,’ said O’Brien. Perhaps the needle was   eighty—ninety. Winston could not intermittently  remember why the pain was happening. Behind his   screwed-up eyelids a forest of fingers  seemed to be moving in a sort of dance,  

Weaving in and out, disappearing behind one  another and reappearing again. He was trying   to count them, he could not remember why. He  knew only that it was impossible to count them,   and that this was somehow due to the mysterious  identity between five and four. The pain died  

Down again. When he opened his eyes it was  to find that he was still seeing the same   thing. Innumerable fingers, like moving trees,  were still streaming past in either direction,   crossing and recrossing. He shut his eyes again. ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. You will  kill me if you do that again. Four,   five, six—in all honesty I don’t know.’ ‘Better,’ said O’Brien. A needle slid into Winston’s arm. Almost in  the same instant a blissful, healing warmth   spread all through his body. The pain was  already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes  

And looked up gratefully at O’Brien. At sight of  the heavy, lined face, so ugly and so intelligent,   his heart seemed to turn over. If he could have  moved he would have stretched out a hand and laid  

It on O’Brien’s arm. He had never loved him so  deeply as at this moment, and not merely because   he had stopped the pain. The old feeling, that  at bottom it did not matter whether O’Brien was  

A friend or an enemy, had come back. O’Brien was  a person who could be talked to. Perhaps one did   not want to be loved so much as to be understood.  O’Brien had tortured him to the edge of lunacy,  

And in a little while, it was certain, he would  send him to his death. It made no difference. In   some sense that went deeper than friendship,  they were intimates: somewhere or other,   although the actual words might never be  spoken, there was a place where they could  

Meet and talk. O’Brien was looking down at  him with an expression which suggested that   the same thought might be in his own mind. When  he spoke it was in an easy, conversational tone. ‘Do you know where you are, Winston?’ he said. ‘I don’t know. I can guess.  In the Ministry of Love.’

‘Do you know how long you have been here?’ ‘I don’t know. Days, weeks,  months—I think it is months.’ ‘And why do you imagine that  we bring people to this place?’ ‘To make them confess.’ ‘No, that is not the reason. Try again.’ ‘To punish them.’

‘No!’ exclaimed O’Brien. His voice had  changed extraordinarily, and his face   had suddenly become both stern and animated.  ‘No! Not merely to extract your confession,   not to punish you. Shall I tell you why  we have brought you here? To cure you! To  

Make you sane! Will you understand, Winston,  that no one whom we bring to this place ever   leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested  in those stupid crimes that you have committed.   The Party is not interested in the overt  act: the thought is all we care about. We  

Do not merely destroy our enemies, we change  them. Do you understand what I mean by that?’ He was bending over Winston. His face  looked enormous because of its nearness,   and hideously ugly because it was seen from below.  Moreover it was filled with a sort of exaltation,  

A lunatic intensity. Again Winston’s heart  shrank. If it had been possible he would have   cowered deeper into the bed. He felt certain  that O’Brien was about to twist the dial out   of sheer wantonness. At this moment, however,  O’Brien turned away. He took a pace or two up  

And down. Then he continued less vehemently: ‘The first thing for you to understand is that   in this place there are no martyrdoms. You have  read of the religious persecutions of the past.   In the Middle Ages there was the Inquisition. It  was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy,  

And ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it  burned at the stake, thousands of others rose up.   Why was that? Because the Inquisition killed its  enemies in the open, and killed them while they   were still unrepentant: in fact, it killed them  because they were unrepentant. Men were dying  

Because they would not abandon their true beliefs.  Naturally all the glory belonged to the victim and   all the shame to the Inquisitor who burned him.  Later, in the twentieth century, there were the   totalitarians, as they were called. There were  the German Nazis and the Russian Communists.  

The Russians persecuted heresy more cruelly than  the Inquisition had done. And they imagined that   they had learned from the mistakes of the past;  they knew, at any rate, that one must not make   martyrs. Before they exposed their victims to  public trial, they deliberately set themselves  

To destroy their dignity. They wore them down by  torture and solitude until they were despicable,   cringing wretches, confessing whatever was put  into their mouths, covering themselves with abuse,   accusing and sheltering behind one another,  whimpering for mercy. And yet after only a few  

Years the same thing had happened over again. The  dead men had become martyrs and their degradation   was forgotten. Once again, why was it? In the  first place, because the confessions that they   had made were obviously extorted and untrue.  We do not make mistakes of that kind. All the  

Confessions that are uttered here are true. We  make them true. And above all we do not allow   the dead to rise up against us. You must stop  imagining that posterity will vindicate you,   Winston. Posterity will never hear of you. You  will be lifted clean out from the stream of  

History. We shall turn you into gas and pour you  into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you,   not a name in a register, not a memory in a living  brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well  

As in the future. You will never have existed.’ Then why bother to torture me? thought Winston,   with a momentary bitterness. O’Brien checked  his step as though Winston had uttered the   thought aloud. His large ugly face came  nearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.

‘You are thinking,’ he said, ‘that  since we intend to destroy you utterly,   so that nothing that you say or do can make the  smallest difference—in that case, why do we go   to the trouble of interrogating you first?  That is what you were thinking, was it not?’ ‘Yes,’ said Winston.

O’Brien smiled slightly. ‘You are a flaw in the  pattern, Winston. You are a stain that must be   wiped out. Did I not tell you just now that we  are different from the persecutors of the past? We   are not content with negative obedience, nor even  with the most abject submission. When finally you  

Surrender to us, it must be of your own free will.  We do not destroy the heretic because he resists   us: so long as he resists us we never destroy  him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind,  

We reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion  out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in   appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make  him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is  

Intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should  exist anywhere in the world, however secret and   powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death  we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days   the heretic walked to the stake still a heretic,  proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Even the  

Victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion  locked up in his skull as he walked down the   passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the  brain perfect before we blow it out. The command   of the old despotisms was “Thou shalt not”. The  command of the totalitarians was “Thou shalt”.  

Our command is “Thou Art”. No one whom we bring to  this place ever stands out against us. Everyone is   washed clean. Even those three miserable traitors  in whose innocence you once believed—Jones,   Aaronson, and Rutherford—in the end we broke them  down. I took part in their interrogation myself.  

I saw them gradually worn down, whimpering,  grovelling, weeping—and in the end it was not   with pain or fear, only with penitence. By the  time we had finished with them they were only   the shells of men. There was nothing left in them  except sorrow for what they had done, and love of  

Big Brother. It was touching to see how they loved  him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they   could die while their minds were still clean.’ His voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation,   the lunatic enthusiasm, was still in his face. He  is not pretending, thought Winston, he is not a  

Hypocrite, he believes every word he says. What  most oppressed him was the consciousness of his   own intellectual inferiority. He watched the  heavy yet graceful form strolling to and fro,   in and out of the range of his vision. O’Brien  was a being in all ways larger than himself. There  

Was no idea that he had ever had, or could  have, that O’Brien had not long ago known,   examined, and rejected. His mind contained  Winston’s mind. But in that case how could   it be true that O’Brien was mad? It must be he,  Winston, who was mad. O’Brien halted and looked  

Down at him. His voice had grown stern again. ‘Do not imagine that you will save yourself,   Winston, however completely you surrender to  us. No one who has once gone astray is ever   spared. And even if we chose to let you live out  the natural term of your life, still you would  

Never escape from us. What happens to you here  is for ever. Understand that in advance. We shall   crush you down to the point from which there is no  coming back. Things will happen to you from which  

You could not recover, if you lived a thousand  years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary   human feeling. Everything will be dead inside  you. Never again will you be capable of love,   or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter,  or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You  

Will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty,  and then we shall fill you with ourselves.’ He paused and signed to the man in the white  coat. Winston was aware of some heavy piece of   apparatus being pushed into place behind his  head. O’Brien had sat down beside the bed,  

So that his face was almost  on a level with Winston’s. ‘Three thousand,’ he said, speaking over  Winston’s head to the man in the white coat. Two soft pads, which felt slightly moist, clamped  themselves against Winston’s temples. He quailed.  

There was pain coming, a new kind of pain. O’Brien  laid a hand reassuringly, almost kindly, on his. ‘This time it will not hurt,’ he  said. ‘Keep your eyes fixed on mine.’ At this moment there was a devastating  explosion, or what seemed like an explosion,  

Though it was not certain whether there was any  noise. There was undoubtedly a blinding flash of   light. Winston was not hurt, only prostrated.  Although he had already been lying on his back   when the thing happened, he had a curious  feeling that he had been knocked into that  

Position. A terrific painless blow had flattened  him out. Also something had happened inside his   head. As his eyes regained their focus he  remembered who he was, and where he was,   and recognized the face that was gazing into  his own; but somewhere or other there was a  

Large patch of emptiness, as though a  piece had been taken out of his brain. ‘It will not last,’ said O’Brien. ‘Look me in  the eyes. What country is Oceania at war with?’ Winston thought. He knew what  was meant by Oceania and that  

He himself was a citizen of Oceania. He  also remembered Eurasia and Eastasia;   but who was at war with whom he did not know. In  fact he had not been aware that there was any war. ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘Oceania is at war with Eastasia.  Do you remember that now?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Oceania has always been at war with  Eastasia. Since the beginning of your life,   since the beginning of the Party,  since the beginning of history,   the war has continued without a break,  always the same war. Do you remember that?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Eleven years ago you created a legend about  three men who had been condemned to death for   treachery. You pretended that you had seen a  piece of paper which proved them innocent. No   such piece of paper ever existed. You invented  it, and later you grew to believe in it. You  

Remember now the very moment at which you  first invented it. Do you remember that?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to  you. You saw five fingers. Do you remember that?’ ‘Yes.’ O’Brien held up the fingers of his  left hand, with the thumb concealed.

‘There are five fingers there.  Do you see five fingers?’ ‘Yes.’ And he did see them, for a fleeting instant,  before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw   five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then  everything was normal again, and the old fear,  

The hatred, and the bewilderment came  crowding back again. But there had been   a moment—he did not know how long, thirty  seconds, perhaps—of luminous certainty,   when each new suggestion of O’Brien’s had filled  up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth,   and when two and two could have  been three as easily as five,  

If that were what was needed. It had faded  but before O’Brien had dropped his hand;   but though he could not recapture it, he  could remember it, as one remembers a vivid   experience at some period of one’s life  when one was in effect a different person.

‘You see now,’ said O’Brien,  ‘that it is at any rate possible.’ ‘Yes,’ said Winston. O’Brien stood up with a   satisfied air. Over to his left Winston saw the  man in the white coat break an ampoule and draw  

Back the plunger of a syringe. O’Brien turned  to Winston with a smile. In almost the old   manner he resettled his spectacles on his nose. ‘Do you remember writing in your diary,’ he said,   ‘that it did not matter whether I was a friend  or an enemy, since I was at least a person who  

Understood you and could be talked to? You  were right. I enjoy talking to you. Your   mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind  except that you happen to be insane. Before   we bring the session to an end you can  ask me a few questions, if you choose.’ ‘Any question I like?’

‘Anything.’ He saw that Winston’s eyes were upon   the dial. ‘It is switched off.  What is your first question?’ ‘What have you done with Julia?’ said Winston. O’Brien smiled again. ‘She betrayed you,  Winston. Immediately—unreservedly. I have   seldom seen anyone come over to us so promptly.  You would hardly recognize her if you saw her.  

All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her  folly, her dirty-mindedness—everything   has been burned out of her. It was a  perfect conversion, a textbook case.’ ‘You tortured her?’ O’Brien left this unanswered.  ‘Next question,’ he said. ‘Does Big Brother exist?’ ‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big  Brother is the embodiment of the Party.’

‘Does he exist in the same way as I exist?’ ‘You do not exist,’ said O’Brien. Once again the sense of helplessness  assailed him. He knew, or he could imagine,   the arguments which proved his own  nonexistence; but they were nonsense,  

They were only a play on words. Did  not the statement, ‘You do not exist’,   contain a logical absurdity? But what use  was it to say so? His mind shrivelled as he   thought of the unanswerable, mad arguments  with which O’Brien would demolish him.

‘I think I exist,’ he said wearily. ‘I am  conscious of my own identity. I was born   and I shall die. I have arms and legs. I occupy a  particular point in space. No other solid object   can occupy the same point simultaneously.  In that sense, does Big Brother exist?’

‘It is of no importance. He exists.’ ‘Will Big Brother ever die?’ ‘Of course not. How could he die? Next question.’ ‘Does the Brotherhood exist?’ ‘That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose  to set you free when we have finished with you,  

And if you live to be ninety years old, still  you will never learn whether the answer to that   question is Yes or No. As long as you live  it will be an unsolved riddle in your mind.’ Winston lay silent. His breast rose  and fell a little faster. He still had  

Not asked the question that had come into  his mind the first. He had got to ask it,   and yet it was as though his tongue would  not utter it. There was a trace of amusement   in O’Brien’s face. Even his spectacles  seemed to wear an ironical gleam. He knows,  

Thought Winston suddenly, he knows what I am going  to ask! At the thought the words burst out of him: ‘What is in Room One O One’ The expression on O’Brien’s face  did not change. He answered drily:

‘You know what is in Room One O One, Winston.  Everyone knows what is in Room One O One.’ He raised a finger to the man in the white  coat. Evidently the session was at an end.   A needle jerked into Winston’s arm. He  sank almost instantly into deep sleep.  Chapter 3.

‘There are three stages in your reintegration,’  said O’Brien. ‘There is learning, there is   understanding, and there is acceptance. It is  time for you to enter upon the second stage.’ As always, Winston was lying flat on his  back. But of late his bonds were looser.  

They still held him to the bed, but he  could move his knees a little and could   turn his head from side to side and raise  his arms from the elbow. The dial, also,   had grown to be less of a terror. He could  evade its pangs if he was quick-witted enough:  

It was chiefly when he showed stupidity that  O’Brien pulled the lever. Sometimes they got   through a whole session without use of the dial.  He could not remember how many sessions there had   been. The whole process seemed to stretch out over  a long, indefinite time—weeks, possibly—and the  

Intervals between the sessions might sometimes  have been days, sometimes only an hour or two. ‘As you lie there,’ said O’Brien, ‘you have often  wondered—you have even asked me—why the Ministry   of Love should expend so much time and trouble on  you. And when you were free you were puzzled by  

What was essentially the same question. You could  grasp the mechanics of the Society you lived in,   but not its underlying motives. Do  you remember writing in your diary,   “I understand HOW: I do not understand  WHY”? It was when you thought about “why”  

That you doubted your own sanity. You  have read The Book, Goldstein’s book,   or parts of it, at least. Did it tell you  anything that you did not know already?’ ‘You have read it?’ said Winston. ‘I wrote it. That is to say,  

I collaborated in writing it. No book  is produced individually, as you know.’ ‘Is it true, what it says?’ ‘As description, yes. The programme  it sets forth is nonsense. The secret   accumulation of knowledge—a gradual spread  of enlightenment—ultimately a proletarian  

Rebellion—the overthrow of the Party. You foresaw  yourself that that was what it would say. It is   all nonsense. The proletarians will never revolt,  not in a thousand years or a million. They cannot.   I do not have to tell you the reason: you know  it already. If you have ever cherished any  

Dreams of violent insurrection, you must abandon  them. There is no way in which the Party can be   overthrown. The rule of the Party is for ever.  Make that the starting-point of your thoughts.’ He came closer to the bed. ‘For ever!’  he repeated. ‘And now let us get back to  

The question of “how” and “why”. You  understand well enough HOW the Party   maintains itself in power. Now tell me WHY  we cling to power. What is our motive? Why   should we want power? Go on, speak,’  he added as Winston remained silent.

Nevertheless Winston did not speak for  another moment or two. A feeling of weariness   had overwhelmed him. The faint, mad gleam of  enthusiasm had come back into O’Brien’s face.   He knew in advance what O’Brien would say. That  the Party did not seek power for its own ends,  

But only for the good of the majority. That it  sought power because men in the mass were frail,   cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty  or face the truth, and must be ruled over and   systematically deceived by others who were  stronger than themselves. That the choice for  

Mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and  that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness   was better. That the party was the eternal  guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing   evil that good might come, sacrificing its own  happiness to that of others. The terrible thing,  

Thought Winston, the terrible thing was that when  O’Brien said this he would believe it. You could   see it in his face. O’Brien knew everything. A  thousand times better than Winston he knew what   the world was really like, in what degradation  the mass of human beings lived and by what lies  

And barbarities the Party kept them there.  He had understood it all, weighed it all,   and it made no difference: all was justified  by the ultimate purpose. What can you do,   thought Winston, against the lunatic  who is more intelligent than yourself,  

Who gives your arguments a fair hearing  and then simply persists in his lunacy? ‘You are ruling over us for our  own good,’ he said feebly. ‘You   believe that human beings are not fit  to govern themselves, and therefore——’ He started and almost cried out. A  pang of pain had shot through his  

Body. O’Brien had pushed the lever  of the dial up to thirty-five. ‘That was stupid, Winston, stupid!’ he said. ‘You  should know better than to say a thing like that.’ He pulled the lever back and continued: ‘Now I will tell you the answer to my question.  

It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for  its own sake. We are not interested in the good   of others; we are interested solely in power.  Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness:   only power, pure power. What pure power means  you will understand presently. We are different  

From all the oligarchies of the past, in that  we know what we are doing. All the others,   even those who resembled ourselves, were  cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis   and the Russian Communists came very close  to us in their methods, but they never had  

The courage to recognize their own motives.  They pretended, perhaps they even believed,   that they had seized power unwillingly and for  a limited time, and that just round the corner   there lay a paradise where human beings would be  free and equal. We are not like that. We know that  

No one ever seizes power with the intention of  relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is   an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in  order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the   revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.  The object of persecution is persecution. The  

Object of torture is torture. The object of power  is power. Now do you begin to understand me?’  Winston was struck, as he had been struck before,  by the tiredness of O’Brien’s face. It was strong   and fleshy and brutal, it was full of intelligence  and a sort of controlled passion before which he  

Felt himself helpless; but it was tired. There  were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged   from the cheekbones. O’Brien leaned over him,  deliberately bringing the worn face nearer. ‘You are thinking,’ he said, ‘that my face is old  and tired. You are thinking that I talk of power,  

And yet I am not even able to prevent the  decay of my own body. Can you not understand,   Winston, that the individual is only  a cell? The weariness of the cell is   the vigour of the organism. Do you  die when you cut your fingernails?’

He turned away from the bed and began strolling  up and down again, one hand in his pocket. ‘We are the priests of power,’ he said. ‘God is  power. But at present power is only a word so  

Far as you are concerned. It is time for you  to gather some idea of what power means. The   first thing you must realize is that power is  collective. The individual only has power in so   far as he ceases to be an individual. You know  the Party slogan: “Freedom is Slavery”. Has it  

Ever occurred to you that it is reversible?  Slavery is freedom. Alone—free—the human   being is always defeated. It must be so,  because every human being is doomed to die,   which is the greatest of all failures. But if  he can make complete, utter submission, if he  

Can escape from his identity, if he can merge  himself in the Party so that he IS the Party,   then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second  thing for you to realize is that power is power   over human beings. Over the body—but, above all,  over the mind. Power over matter—external reality,  

As you would call it—is not important.  Already our control over matter is absolute.’ For a moment Winston ignored the dial.  He made a violent effort to raise   himself into a sitting position, and merely  succeeded in wrenching his body painfully. ‘But how can you control matter?’ he  burst out. ‘You don’t even control the  

Climate or the law of gravity. And  there are disease, pain, death——’ O’Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand.  ‘We control matter because we control the mind.   Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by  degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could  

Not do. Invisibility, levitation—anything.  I could float off this floor like a soap   bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because  the Party does not wish it. You must get rid   of those nineteenth-century ideas about the  laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.’

‘But you do not! You are not  even masters of this planet.   What about Eurasia and Eastasia?  You have not conquered them yet.’ ‘Unimportant. We shall conquer them  when it suits us. And if we did not,   what difference would it make? We can shut  them out of existence. Oceania is the world.’

‘But the world itself is only a speck of  dust. And man is tiny—helpless! How long   has he been in existence? For millions  of years the earth was uninhabited.’ ‘Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are,   no older. How could it be older? Nothing  exists except through human consciousness.’

‘But the rocks are full of the bones of  extinct animals—mammoths and mastodons   and enormous reptiles which lived here  long before man was ever heard of.’ ‘Have you ever seen those bones, Winston?  Of course not. Nineteenth-century   biologists invented them. Before  man there was nothing. After man,  

If he could come to an end, there would  be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.’ ‘But the whole universe is outside us.  Look at the stars! Some of them are a   million light-years away. They  are out of our reach for ever.’ 

‘What are the stars?’ said O’Brien indifferently.  ‘They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We   could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could  blot them out. The earth is the centre of the   universe. The sun and the stars go round it.’ Winston made another convulsive movement. This  

Time he did not say anything. O’Brien continued  as though answering a spoken objection: ‘For certain purposes, of course, that is not  true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we   predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to  assume that the earth goes round the sun and that  

The stars are millions upon millions of kilometres  away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond   us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The  stars can be near or distant, according as we   need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are  unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?’

Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever  he said, the swift answer crushed him like   a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he KNEW, that  he was in the right. The belief that nothing   exists outside your own mind—surely there must be  some way of demonstrating that it was false? Had  

It not been exposed long ago as a fallacy?  There was even a name for it, which he had   forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners  of O’Brien’s mouth as he looked down at him. ‘I told you, Winston,’ he said, ‘that  metaphysics is not your strong point.  

The word you are trying to think of is  solipsism. But you are mistaken. This   is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you  like. But that is a different thing: in fact,   the opposite thing. All this is a digression,’  he added in a different tone. ‘The real power,  

The power we have to fight for night and day, is  not power over things, but over men.’ He paused,   and for a moment assumed again his air of a  schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil:   ‘How does one man assert his  power over another, Winston?’ Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.

‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not  enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be   sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?  Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power   is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting  them together again in new shapes of your own  

Choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of  world we are creating? It is the exact opposite   of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old  reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery   and torment, a world of trampling and being  trampled upon, a world which will grow not less  

But MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress  in our world will be progress towards more pain.   The old civilizations claimed that they were  founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon   hatred. In our world there will be no emotions  except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.  

Everything else we shall destroy—everything.  Already we are breaking down the habits of thought   which have survived from before the Revolution.  We have cut the links between child and parent,   and between man and man, and between man and  woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or  

A friend any longer. But in the future there will  be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken   from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs  from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated.   Procreation will be an annual formality like the  renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the  

Orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.  There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards   the Party. There will be no love, except the  love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter,   except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy.  There will be no art, no literature, no science.  

When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need  of science. There will be no distinction between   beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity,  no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing   pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do  not forget this, Winston—always there will be  

The intoxication of power, constantly increasing  and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every   moment, there will be the thrill of victory,  the sensation of trampling on an enemy who   is helpless. If you want a picture of the future,  imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.’

He paused as though he expected Winston to speak.  Winston had tried to shrink back into the surface   of the bed again. He could not say anything.  His heart seemed to be frozen. O’Brien went on:  ‘And remember that it is for ever. The face will  always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic,  

The enemy of society, will always be there, so  that he can be defeated and humiliated over again.   Everything that you have undergone since you have  been in our hands—all that will continue, and   worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests,  the tortures, the executions, the disappearances  

Will never cease. It will be a world of terror  as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party   is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the  weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism.   Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever.  Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated,  

Discredited, ridiculed, spat upon and yet they  will always survive. This drama that I have played   out with you during seven years will be played out  over and over again generation after generation,   always in subtler forms. Always we shall have the  heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain,  

Broken up, contemptible—and in the end utterly  penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our   feet of his own accord. That is the world that we  are preparing, Winston. A world of victory after   victory, triumph after triumph after triumph:  an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon  

The nerve of power. You are beginning, I can see,  to realize what that world will be like. But in   the end you will do more than understand it. You  will accept it, welcome it, become part of it.’  Winston had recovered himself sufficiently  to speak. ‘You can’t!’ he said weakly.

‘What do you mean by that remark, Winston?’ ‘You could not create such a world as you have  just described. It is a dream. It is impossible.’ ‘Why?’ ‘It is impossible to found a civilization on fear  and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.’ ‘Why not?’

‘It would have no vitality. It would  disintegrate. It would commit suicide.’ ‘Nonsense. You are under the impression that  hatred is more exhausting than love. Why should   it be? And if it were, what difference  would that make? Suppose that we choose  

To wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we  quicken the tempo of human life till men are   senile at thirty. Still what difference  would it make? Can you not understand   that the death of the individual is  not death? The party is immortal.’

As usual, the voice had battered Winston into  helplessness. Moreover he was in dread that   if he persisted in his disagreement  O’Brien would twist the dial again.   And yet he could not keep silent. Feebly,  without arguments, with nothing to support  

Him except his inarticulate horror of what  O’Brien had said, he returned to the attack. ‘I don’t know—I don’t care. Somehow you will fail.  Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you.’ ‘We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You  are imagining that there is something called human  

Nature which will be outraged by what we do and  will turn against us. But we create human nature.   Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps you have  returned to your old idea that the proletarians   or the slaves will arise and overthrow us.  Put it out of your mind. They are helpless,  

Like the animals. Humanity is the Party.  The others are outside—irrelevant.’ ‘I don’t care. In the end they will  beat you. Sooner or later they will   see you for what you are, and then  they will tear you to pieces.’ ‘Do you see any evidence that that is  happening? Or any reason why it should?’

‘No. I believe it. I know that you  will fail. There is something in the   universe—I don’t know, some spirit, some  principle—that you will never overcome.’ ‘Do you believe in God, Winston?’ ‘No.’ ‘Then what is it, this  principle that will defeat us?’ ‘I don’t know. The spirit of Man.’

‘And do you consider yourself a man?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘If you are a man, Winston, you are  the last man. Your kind is extinct;   we are the inheritors. Do you understand  that you are ALONE? You are outside history,   you are non-existent.’ His manner  changed and he said more harshly:  

‘And you consider yourself morally superior  to us, with our lies and our cruelty?’ ‘Yes, I consider myself superior.’ O’Brien did not speak. Two other voices were  speaking. After a moment Winston recognized one   of them as his own. It was a sound-track of the  conversation he had had with O’Brien, on the night  

When he had enrolled himself in the Brotherhood.  He heard himself promising to lie, to steal,   to forge, to murder, to encourage drug-taking and  prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases,   to throw vitriol in a child’s face. O’Brien  made a small impatient gesture, as though to say  

That the demonstration was hardly worth making.  Then he turned a switch and the voices stopped. ‘Get up from that bed,’ he said. The bonds had loosened themselves. Winston lowered  himself to the floor and stood up unsteadily.

‘You are the last man,’ said O’Brien. ‘You are  the guardian of the human spirit. You shall see   yourself as you are. Take off your clothes.’ Winston undid the bit of string that held his   overalls together. The zip fastener had long  since been wrenched out of them. He could not  

Remember whether at any time since his arrest he  had taken off all his clothes at one time. Beneath   the overalls his body was looped with filthy  yellowish rags, just recognizable as the remnants   of underclothes. As he slid them to the ground he  saw that there was a three-sided mirror at the far  

End of the room. He approached it, then stopped  short. An involuntary cry had broken out of him.  ‘Go on,’ said O’Brien. ‘Stand between the wings of  the mirror. You shall see the side view as well.’ He had stopped because he was frightened.  A bowed, grey-coloured, skeleton-like thing  

Was coming towards him. Its actual appearance  was frightening, and not merely the fact that   he knew it to be himself. He moved closer to the  glass. The creature’s face seemed to be protruded,   because of its bent carriage. A forlorn,  jailbird’s face with a nobby forehead  

Running back into a bald scalp, a crooked nose,  and battered-looking cheekbones above which his   eyes were fierce and watchful. The cheeks were  seamed, the mouth had a drawn-in look. Certainly   it was his own face, but it seemed to him that  it had changed more than he had changed inside.  

The emotions it registered would be different from  the ones he felt. He had gone partially bald. For   the first moment he had thought that he had gone  grey as well, but it was only the scalp that was  

Grey. Except for his hands and a circle of his  face, his body was grey all over with ancient,   ingrained dirt. Here and there under the  dirt there were the red scars of wounds,   and near the ankle the varicose ulcer was an  inflamed mass with flakes of skin peeling off it.  

But the truly frightening thing was the emaciation  of his body. The barrel of the ribs was as narrow   as that of a skeleton: the legs had shrunk so  that the knees were thicker than the thighs.   He saw now what O’Brien had meant about seeing  the side view. The curvature of the spine was  

Astonishing. The thin shoulders were hunched  forward so as to make a cavity of the chest,   the scraggy neck seemed to be bending double  under the weight of the skull. At a guess he   would have said that it was the body of a man  of sixty, suffering from some malignant disease.

‘You have thought sometimes,’ said  O’Brien, ‘that my face—the face of   a member of the Inner Party—looks old and  worn. What do you think of your own face?’ He seized Winston’s shoulder and spun  him round so that he was facing him.

‘Look at the condition you are in!’ he said.  ‘Look at this filthy grime all over your body.   Look at the dirt between your toes. Look at that  disgusting running sore on your leg. Do you know   that you stink like a goat? Probably you have  ceased to notice it. Look at your emaciation.  

Do you see? I can make my thumb and forefinger  meet round your bicep. I could snap your neck   like a carrot. Do you know that you have  lost twenty-five kilograms since you have   been in our hands? Even your hair is coming out  in handfuls. Look!’ He plucked at Winston’s head  

And brought away a tuft of hair. ‘Open your  mouth. Nine, ten, eleven teeth left. How many   had you when you came to us? And the few you have  left are dropping out of your head. Look here!’ He seized one of Winston’s remaining  front teeth between his powerful thumb  

And forefinger. A twinge of pain shot  through Winston’s jaw. O’Brien had   wrenched the loose tooth out by the  roots. He tossed it across the cell. ‘You are rotting away,’ he said; ‘you are  falling to pieces. What are you? A bag of  

Filth. Now turn around and look into that mirror  again. Do you see that thing facing you? That is   the last man. If you are human, that is  humanity. Now put your clothes on again.’ Winston began to dress himself with slow stiff  movements. Until now he had not seemed to notice  

How thin and weak he was. Only one thought stirred  in his mind: that he must have been in this place   longer than he had imagined. Then suddenly as  he fixed the miserable rags round himself a  

Feeling of pity for his ruined body overcame him.  Before he knew what he was doing he had collapsed   on to a small stool that stood beside the bed and  burst into tears. He was aware of his ugliness,   his gracelessness, a bundle of bones in filthy  underclothes sitting weeping in the harsh white  

Light: but he could not stop himself. O’Brien  laid a hand on his shoulder, almost kindly. ‘It will not last for ever,’ he said. ‘You can   escape from it whenever you choose.  Everything depends on yourself.’ ‘You did it!’ sobbed Winston.  ‘You reduced me to this state.’

‘No, Winston, you reduced yourself to it. This is  what you accepted when you set yourself up against   the Party. It was all contained in that first act.  Nothing has happened that you did not foresee.’ He paused, and then went on: ‘We have beaten you, Winston. We  

Have broken you up. You have seen what your body  is like. Your mind is in the same state. I do   not think there can be much pride left in you.  You have been kicked and flogged and insulted,  

You have screamed with pain, you have rolled  on the floor in your own blood and vomit. You   have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed  everybody and everything. Can you think of a   single degradation that has not happened to you?’ Winston had stopped weeping, though the tears  

Were still oozing out of his  eyes. He looked up at O’Brien. ‘I have not betrayed Julia,’ he said. O’Brien looked down at him  thoughtfully. ‘No,’ he said;   ‘no; that is perfectly true.  You have not betrayed Julia.’ The peculiar reverence for O’Brien,  which nothing seemed able to destroy,  

Flooded Winston’s heart again. How intelligent, he  thought, how intelligent! Never did O’Brien fail   to understand what was said to him. Anyone else  on earth would have answered promptly that he   HAD betrayed Julia. For what was there that they  had not screwed out of him under the torture? He  

Had told them everything he knew about her,  her habits, her character, her past life;   he had confessed in the most trivial detail  everything that had happened at their meetings,   all that he had said to her and she to him, their  black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague  

Plottings against the Party—everything. And  yet, in the sense in which he intended the word,   he had not betrayed her. He had not stopped  loving her; his feelings towards her had   remained the same. O’Brien had seen what  he meant without the need for explanation. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how soon will they shoot me?’

‘It might be a long time,’ said O’Brien.  ‘You are a difficult case. But don’t give   up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or  later. In the end we shall shoot you.’  Chapter 4. He was much better. He was growing  fatter and stronger every day,   if it was proper to speak of days.

The white light and the humming sound were the  same as ever, but the cell was a little more   comfortable than the others he had been in. There  was a pillow and a mattress on the plank bed,  

And a stool to sit on. They had given him a  bath, and they allowed him to wash himself   fairly frequently in a tin basin. They even gave  him warm water to wash with. They had given him   new underclothes and a clean suit of overalls.  They had dressed his varicose ulcer with soothing  

Ointment. They had pulled out the remnants of  his teeth and given him a new set of dentures. Weeks or months must have passed.  It would have been possible now to   keep count of the passage of time, if  he had felt any interest in doing so,  

Since he was being fed at what appeared to be  regular intervals. He was getting, he judged,   three meals in the twenty-four hours; sometimes  he wondered dimly whether he was getting them by   night or by day. The food was surprisingly good,  with meat at every third meal. Once there was even  

A packet of cigarettes. He had no matches, but  the never-speaking guard who brought his food   would give him a light. The first time he tried  to smoke it made him sick, but he persevered,   and spun the packet out for a long time,  smoking half a cigarette after each meal.

They had given him a white slate with a stump of  pencil tied to the corner. At first he made no use   of it. Even when he was awake he was completely  torpid. Often he would lie from one meal to the   next almost without stirring, sometimes asleep,  sometimes waking into vague reveries in which  

It was too much trouble to open his eyes. He had  long grown used to sleeping with a strong light on   his face. It seemed to make no difference, except  that one’s dreams were more coherent. He dreamed  

A great deal all through this time, and they were  always happy dreams. He was in the Golden Country,   or he was sitting among enormous glorious,  sunlit ruins, with his mother, with Julia,   with O’Brien—not doing anything, merely sitting in  the sun, talking of peaceful things. Such thoughts  

As he had when he was awake were mostly about  his dreams. He seemed to have lost the power   of intellectual effort, now that the stimulus of  pain had been removed. He was not bored, he had no   desire for conversation or distraction. Merely  to be alone, not to be beaten or questioned,  

To have enough to eat, and to be clean  all over, was completely satisfying. By degrees he came to spend less time in sleep,  but he still felt no impulse to get off the bed.   All he cared for was to lie quiet and feel  the strength gathering in his body. He would  

Finger himself here and there, trying to make sure  that it was not an illusion that his muscles were   growing rounder and his skin tauter. Finally it  was established beyond a doubt that he was growing   fatter; his thighs were now definitely thicker  than his knees. After that, reluctantly at first,  

He began exercising himself regularly. In a  little while he could walk three kilometres,   measured by pacing the cell, and his bowed  shoulders were growing straighter. He attempted   more elaborate exercises, and was astonished  and humiliated to find what things he could  

Not do. He could not move out of a walk, he  could not hold his stool out at arm’s length,   he could not stand on one leg without  falling over. He squatted down on his heels,   and found that with agonizing pains in thigh and  calf he could just lift himself to a standing  

Position. He lay flat on his belly and tried to  lift his weight by his hands. It was hopeless,   he could not raise himself a centimetre. But  after a few more days—a few more mealtimes—even   that feat was accomplished. A time came when  he could do it six times running. He began to  

Grow actually proud of his body, and to  cherish an intermittent belief that his   face also was growing back to normal. Only  when he chanced to put his hand on his bald   scalp did he remember the seamed, ruined face  that had looked back at him out of the mirror.

His mind grew more active. He sat down  on the plank bed, his back against the   wall and the slate on his knees, and set to work  deliberately at the task of re-educating himself.  He had capitulated, that was agreed. In reality,  as he saw now, he had been ready to capitulate  

Long before he had taken the decision. From the  moment when he was inside the Ministry of Love—and   yes, even during those minutes when he and Julia  had stood helpless while the iron voice from the   telescreen told them what to do—he had grasped  the frivolity, the shallowness of his attempt to  

Set himself up against the power of the Party.  He knew now that for seven years the Thought   Police had watched him like a beetle under a  magnifying glass. There was no physical act,   no word spoken aloud, that they had not noticed,  no train of thought that they had not been able  

To infer. Even the speck of whitish dust on the  cover of his diary they had carefully replaced.   They had played sound-tracks to him, shown him  photographs. Some of them were photographs of   Julia and himself. Yes, even… He could not fight  against the Party any longer. Besides, the Party  

Was in the right. It must be so; how could the  immortal, collective brain be mistaken? By what   external standard could you check its judgements?  Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question   of learning to think as they thought. Only——! The pencil felt thick and awkward in his fingers.  

He began to write down the thoughts that came into  his head. He wrote first in large clumsy capitals: Freedom Is Slavery! Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it: Two And Two Make Five! But then there came a sort of check. His  mind, as though shying away from something,  

Seemed unable to concentrate. He  knew that he knew what came next,   but for the moment he could not recall  it. When he did recall it, it was only   by consciously reasoning out what it must be:  it did not come of its own accord. He wrote: God Is Power!

He accepted everything. The past was alterable.  The past never had been altered. Oceania was at   war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war  with Eastasia. Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford   were guilty of the crimes they were charged with.  He had never seen the photograph that disproved  

Their guilt. It had never existed, he had invented  it. He remembered remembering contrary things,   but those were false memories, products of  self-deception. How easy it all was! Only   surrender, and everything else followed. It was  like swimming against a current that swept you  

Backwards however hard you struggled, and then  suddenly deciding to turn round and go with   the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had  changed except your own attitude: the predestined   thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he  had ever rebelled. Everything was easy, except——!

Anything could be true. The so-called laws of  Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was   nonsense. ‘If I wished,’ O’Brien had said, ‘I  could float off this floor like a soap bubble.’   Winston worked it out. ‘If he thinks he floats  off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I  

See him do it, then the thing happens.’ Suddenly,  like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the   surface of water, the thought burst into his  mind: ‘It doesn’t really happen. We imagine it.   It is hallucination.’ He pushed the thought under  instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed  

That somewhere or other, outside oneself, there  was a ‘real’ world where ‘real’ things happened.   But how could there be such a world? What  knowledge have we of anything, save through   our own minds? All happenings are in the mind.  Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.

He had no difficulty in disposing of  the fallacy, and he was in no danger   of succumbing to it. He realized, nevertheless,  that it ought never to have occurred to him. The   mind should develop a blind spot whenever  a dangerous thought presented itself. The  

Process should be automatic, instinctive.  crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop.  He presented himself with propositions—’the Party   says the earth is flat’, ‘the party says that ice  is heavier than water’—and trained himself in not  

Seeing or not understanding the arguments that  contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed   great powers of reasoning and improvisation.  The arithmetical problems raised, for instance,   by such a statement as ‘two and two make five’  were beyond his intellectual grasp. It needed  

Also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability at  one moment to make the most delicate use of logic   and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest  logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as   intelligence, and as difficult to attain. All the while, with one part of his mind,  

He wondered how soon they would shoot him.  ‘Everything depends on yourself,’ O’Brien   had said; but he knew that there was no conscious  act by which he could bring it nearer. It might be   ten minutes hence, or ten years. They might  keep him for years in solitary confinement,  

They might send him to a labour-camp, they might  release him for a while, as they sometimes did.   It was perfectly possible that before he  was shot the whole drama of his arrest and   interrogation would be enacted all over again.  The one certain thing was that death never came  

At an expected moment. The tradition—the unspoken  tradition: somehow you knew it, though you never   heard it said—was that they shot you from behind;  always in the back of the head, without warning,   as you walked down a corridor from cell to cell. One day—but ‘one day’ was not the right  

Expression; just as probably it was in the  middle of the night: once—he fell into a strange,   blissful reverie. He was walking down the  corridor, waiting for the bullet. He knew   that it was coming in another moment.  Everything was settled, smoothed out,  

Reconciled. There were no more doubts, no more  arguments, no more pain, no more fear. His body   was healthy and strong. He walked easily,  with a joy of movement and with a feeling of   walking in sunlight. He was not any longer in the  narrow white corridors in the Ministry of Love,  

He was in the enormous sunlit passage, a  kilometre wide, down which he had seemed   to walk in the delirium induced by drugs. He was  in the Golden Country, following the foot-track   across the old rabbit-cropped pasture. He could  feel the short springy turf under his feet and  

The gentle sunshine on his face. At the edge of  the field were the elm trees, faintly stirring,   and somewhere beyond that was the stream where  the dace lay in the green pools under the willows. Suddenly he started up with a shock of horror. The  

Sweat broke out on his backbone.  He had heard himself cry aloud: ‘Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!’ For a moment he had had an overwhelming  hallucination of her presence. She had   seemed to be not merely with him, but inside  him. It was as though she had got into the  

Texture of his skin. In that moment he had loved  her far more than he had ever done when they were   together and free. Also he knew that somewhere  or other she was still alive and needed his help. He lay back on the bed and tried to  compose himself. What had he done?  

How many years had he added to his  servitude by that moment of weakness? In another moment he would hear the tramp of boots  outside. They could not let such an outburst go   unpunished. They would know now, if they had not  known before, that he was breaking the agreement  

He had made with them. He obeyed the Party, but  he still hated the Party. In the old days he had   hidden a heretical mind beneath an appearance of  conformity. Now he had retreated a step further:   in the mind he had surrendered, but he had  hoped to keep the inner heart inviolate.  

He knew that he was in the wrong, but he  preferred to be in the wrong. They would   understand that—O’Brien would understand it. It  was all confessed in that single foolish cry. He would have to start all over again. It  might take years. He ran a hand over his face,  

Trying to familiarize himself with the new  shape. There were deep furrows in the cheeks,   the cheekbones felt sharp,  the nose flattened. Besides,   since last seeing himself in the glass he had  been given a complete new set of teeth. It was  

Not easy to preserve inscrutability when you did  not know what your face looked like. In any case,   mere control of the features was not enough. For  the first time he perceived that if you want to  

Keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.  You must know all the while that it is there,   but until it is needed you must never let it  emerge into your consciousness in any shape  

That could be given a name. From now onwards he  must not only think right; he must feel right,   dream right. And all the while he must keep  his hatred locked up inside him like a ball  

Of matter which was part of himself and yet  unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst.  One day they would decide to shoot him. You could  not tell when it would happen, but a few seconds  

Beforehand it should be possible to guess. It was  always from behind, walking down a corridor. Ten   seconds would be enough. In that time the world  inside him could turn over. And then suddenly,   without a word uttered, without a check in  his step, without the changing of a line in  

His face—suddenly the camouflage would be down  and bang! would go the batteries of his hatred.   Hatred would fill him like an enormous roaring  flame. And almost in the same instant bang!   would go the bullet, too late, or too early. They  would have blown his brain to pieces before they  

Could reclaim it. The heretical thought would be  unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach for   ever. They would have blown a hole in their own  perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom.  He shut his eyes. It was more difficult than  accepting an intellectual discipline. It was a  

Question of degrading himself, mutilating himself.  He had got to plunge into the filthiest of filth.   What was the most horrible, sickening thing of  all? He thought of Big Brother. The enormous   face (because of constantly seeing it on posters  he always thought of it as being a metre wide),  

With its heavy black moustache and  the eyes that followed you to and fro,   seemed to float into his mind of its own accord.  What were his true feelings towards Big Brother? There was a heavy tramp of boots in the passage.   The steel door swung open with  a clang. O’Brien walked into the  

Cell. Behind him were the waxen-faced  officer and the black-uniformed guards. ‘Get up,’ said O’Brien. ‘Come here.’ Winston stood opposite him. O’Brien took Winston’s   shoulders between his strong  hands and looked at him closely. ‘You have had thoughts of deceiving me,’ he   said. ‘That was stupid. Stand up  straighter. Look me in the face.’

He paused, and went on in a gentler tone: ‘You are improving. Intellectually there is very  little wrong with you. It is only emotionally   that you have failed to make progress. Tell me,  Winston—and remember, no lies: you know that I  

Am always able to detect a lie—tell me, what  are your true feelings towards Big Brother?’ ‘I hate him.’ ‘You hate him. Good. Then the time  has come for you to take the last   step. You must love Big Brother. It is not  enough to obey him: you must love him.’

He released Winston with a  little push towards the guards. ‘Room One O One,’ he said. Chapter 5. At each stage of his imprisonment  he had known, or seemed to know,   whereabouts he was in the windowless building.  Possibly there were slight differences in the  

Air pressure. The cells where the guards  had beaten him were below ground level.   The room where he had been interrogated  by O’Brien was high up near the roof.   This place was many metres underground,  as deep down as it was possible to go.

It was bigger than most of the cells he had been  in. But he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he   noticed was that there were two small tables  straight in front of him, each covered with   green baize. One was only a metre or two from  him, the other was further away, near the door.  

He was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly  that he could move nothing, not even his head.   A sort of pad gripped his head from behind,  forcing him to look straight in front of him. For a moment he was alone, then the  door opened and O’Brien came in.

‘You asked me once,’ said O’Brien,   ‘what was in Room One O One. I told you  that you knew the answer already. Everyone   knows it. The thing that is in Room One  O One is the worst thing in the world.’ The door opened again. A guard came  in, carrying something made of wire,  

A box or basket of some kind. He set it  down on the further table. Because of the   position in which O’Brien was standing.  Winston could not see what the thing was. ‘The worst thing in the world,’ said  O’Brien, ‘varies from individual to  

Individual. It may be burial alive, or death  by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement,   or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it  is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.’ He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston  had a better view of the thing on the table. It  

Was an oblong wire cage with a handle on top  for carrying it by. Fixed to the front of it   was something that looked like a fencing mask,  with the concave side outwards. Although it was   three or four metres away from him, he could  see that the cage was divided lengthways into  

Two compartments, and that there was some  kind of creature in each. They were rats. ‘In your case,’ said O’Brien, ‘the worst  thing in the world happens to be rats.’ A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he  was not certain what, had passed through  

Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse  of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of   the mask-like attachment in front of it suddenly  sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water. ‘You can’t do that!’ he cried out in  a high cracked voice. ‘You couldn’t,   you couldn’t! It’s impossible.’

‘Do you remember,’ said O’Brien, ‘the moment  of panic that used to occur in your dreams?   There was a wall of blackness in front of  you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There   was something terrible on the other side of  the wall. You knew that you knew what it was,  

But you dared not drag it into the open. It was  the rats that were on the other side of the wall.’ ‘O’Brien!’ said Winston, making an  effort to control his voice. ‘You   know this is not necessary. What  is it that you want me to do?’

O’Brien made no direct answer. When  he spoke it was in the schoolmasterish   manner that he sometimes affected. He  looked thoughtfully into the distance,   as though he were addressing an audience  somewhere behind Winston’s back. ‘By itself,’ he said, ‘pain is not always  enough. There are occasions when a human being  

Will stand out against pain, even to the point  of death. But for everyone there is something   unendurable—something that cannot be contemplated.  Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are   falling from a height it is not cowardly to  clutch at a rope. If you have come up from  

Deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs  with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot   be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For  you, they are unendurable. They are a form of  

Pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you  wished to. You will do what is required of you.’ ‘But what is it, what is it? How can  I do it if I don’t know what it is?’ O’Brien picked up the cage and brought it  across to the nearer table. He set it down  

Carefully on the baize cloth. Winston could  hear the blood singing in his ears. He had   the feeling of sitting in utter loneliness.  He was in the middle of a great empty plain,   a flat desert drenched with sunlight, across which  all sounds came to him out of immense distances.  

Yet the cage with the rats was not two metres  away from him. They were enormous rats. They   were at the age when a rat’s muzzle grows blunt  and fierce and his fur brown instead of grey.  ‘The rat,’ said O’Brien, still addressing  his invisible audience, ‘although a rodent,  

Is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You  will have heard of the things that happen in   the poor quarters of this town. In some streets a  woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house,   even for five minutes. The rats are  certain to attack it. Within quite  

A small time they will strip it to the  bones. They also attack sick or dying   people. They show astonishing intelligence  in knowing when a human being is helpless.’  There was an outburst of squeals from the  cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far  

Away. The rats were fighting; they were trying  to get at each other through the partition. He   heard also a deep groan of despair. That,  too, seemed to come from outside himself. O’Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so,  

Pressed something in it. There was a sharp  click. Winston made a frantic effort to   tear himself loose from the chair. It was  hopeless; every part of him, even his head,   was held immovably. O’Brien moved the cage nearer.  It was less than a metre from Winston’s face.

‘I have pressed the first lever,’ said O’Brien.  ‘You understand the construction of this cage.   The mask will fit over your head, leaving no  exit. When I press this other lever, the door   of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes  will shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever  

Seen a rat leap through the air? They will leap on  to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes   they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they  burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue.’ The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston  heard a succession of shrill cries which appeared  

To be occurring in the air above his head. But  he fought furiously against his panic. To think,   to think, even with a split second left—to think  was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour   of the brutes struck his nostrils. There was  a violent convulsion of nausea inside him,  

And he almost lost consciousness. Everything  had gone black. For an instant he was insane,   a screaming animal. Yet he came out of  the blackness clutching an idea. There   was one and only one way to save himself.  He must interpose another human being,   the BODY of another human being,  between himself and the rats.

The circle of the mask was large enough now to  shut out the vision of anything else. The wire   door was a couple of hand-spans from his face.  The rats knew what was coming now. One of them   was leaping up and down, the other, an old  scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up,  

With his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely  sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers   and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took  hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless. ‘It was a common punishment in Imperial  China,’ said O’Brien as didactically as ever.

The mask was closing on his face. The wire  brushed his cheek. And then—no, it was not relief,   only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late,  perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood   that in the whole world there was just ONE person  to whom he could transfer his punishment—ONE body  

That he could thrust between himself and the rats.  And he was shouting frantically, over and over. ‘Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not  me! Julia! I don’t care what you do   to her. Tear her face off, strip her  to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!’

He was falling backwards, into enormous depths,  away from the rats. He was still strapped in   the chair, but he had fallen through the  floor, through the walls of the building,   through the earth, through the oceans, through  the atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs  

Between the stars—always away, away, away from the  rats. He was light years distant, but O’Brien was   still standing at his side. There was still the  cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through   the darkness that enveloped him he heard another  metallic click, and knew that the cage door had  

Clicked shut and not open. Chapter 6. The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of  sunlight slanting through a window fell on dusty   table-tops. It was the lonely hour of fifteen.  A tinny music trickled from the telescreens. Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing  into an empty glass. Now and again he  

Glanced up at a vast face which eyed him from  the opposite wall. Big Brother is Watching You,   the caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came  and filled his glass up with Victory Gin,   shaking into it a few drops from  another bottle with a quill through  

The cork. It was saccharine flavoured  with cloves, the speciality of the cafe. Winston was listening to the telescreen.  At present only music was coming out of it,   but there was a possibility that at any  moment there might be a special bulletin  

From the Ministry of Peace. The news from the  African front was disquieting in the extreme.   On and off he had been worrying about it all day.  A Eurasian army (Oceania was at war with Eurasia:   Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia) was  moving southward at terrifying speed. The mid-day  

Bulletin had not mentioned any definite area,  but it was probable that already the mouth of   the Congo was a battlefield. Brazzaville and  Leopoldville were in danger. One did not have   to look at the map to see what it meant. It was  not merely a question of losing Central Africa:  

For the first time in the whole war, the  territory of Oceania itself was menaced. A violent emotion, not fear exactly but  a sort of undifferentiated excitement,   flared up in him, then faded again. He stopped  thinking about the war. In these days he could  

Never fix his mind on any one subject for more  than a few moments at a time. He picked up his   glass and drained it at a gulp. As always, the  gin made him shudder and even retch slightly.   The stuff was horrible. The cloves and saccharine,  themselves disgusting enough in their sickly way,  

Could not disguise the flat oily smell; and what  was worst of all was that the smell of gin, which   dwelt with him night and day, was inextricably  mixed up in his mind with the smell of those——

He never named them, even in his thoughts, and so  far as it was possible he never visualized them.   They were something that he was half-aware  of, hovering close to his face, a smell that   clung to his nostrils. As the gin rose in him he  belched through purple lips. He had grown fatter  

Since they released him, and had regained his old  colour—indeed, more than regained it. His features   had thickened, the skin on nose and cheekbones  was coarsely red, even the bald scalp was too   deep a pink. A waiter, again unbidden, brought the  chessboard and the current issue of ‘The Times’,  

With the page turned down at the chess problem.  Then, seeing that Winston’s glass was empty,   he brought the gin bottle and filled it. There was  no need to give orders. They knew his habits. The   chessboard was always waiting for him, his corner  table was always reserved; even when the place was  

Full he had it to himself, since nobody cared  to be seen sitting too close to him. He never   even bothered to count his drinks. At irregular  intervals they presented him with a dirty slip   of paper which they said was the bill, but he had  the impression that they always undercharged him.  

It would have made no difference if it had been  the other way about. He had always plenty of   money nowadays. He even had a job, a sinecure,  more highly-paid than his old job had been. The music from the telescreen stopped  and a voice took over. Winston raised  

His head to listen. No bulletins from  the front, however. It was merely a   brief announcement from the Ministry  of Plenty. In the preceding quarter,   it appeared, the Tenth Three-Year Plan’s quota for  bootlaces had been overfulfilled by 98 per cent.

He examined the chess problem and set  out the pieces. It was a tricky ending,   involving a couple of knights. ‘White to play  and mate in two moves.’ Winston looked up at the   portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he  thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always,  

Without exception, it is so arranged. In  no chess problem since the beginning of   the world has black ever won. Did it not  symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph   of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at  him, full of calm power. White always mates.

The voice from the telescreen paused and added in  a different and much graver tone: ‘You are warned   to stand by for an important announcement  at fifteen-thirty. Fifteen-thirty! This   is news of the highest importance. Take  care not to miss it. Fifteen-thirty!’   The tinkling music struck up again. Winston’s heart stirred. That was  

The bulletin from the front; instinct told him  that it was bad news that was coming. All day,   with little spurts of excitement, the thought  of a smashing defeat in Africa had been in and   out of his mind. He seemed actually to see the  Eurasian army swarming across the never-broken  

Frontier and pouring down into the tip of  Africa like a column of ants. Why had it not   been possible to outflank them in some way?  The outline of the West African coast stood   out vividly in his mind. He picked up the white  knight and moved it across the board. THERE was  

The proper spot. Even while he saw the black  horde racing southward he saw another force,   mysteriously assembled, suddenly planted in  their rear, cutting their communications by   land and sea. He felt that by willing it he was  bringing that other force into existence. But  

It was necessary to act quickly. If they  could get control of the whole of Africa,   if they had airfields and submarine bases at the  Cape, it would cut Oceania in two. It might mean   anything: defeat, breakdown, the redivision  of the world, the destruction of the Party!  

He drew a deep breath. An extraordinary  medley of feeling—but it was not a medley,   exactly; rather it was successive layers  of feeling, in which one could not say   which layer was undermost—struggled inside him. The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in  

Its place, but for the moment he could not settle  down to serious study of the chess problem. His   thoughts wandered again. Almost unconsciously he  traced with his finger in the dust on the table: Two plus two make five.

‘They can’t get inside you,’ she had said. But  they could get inside you. ‘What happens to you   here is FOR EVER,’ O’Brien had said. That was  a true word. There were things, your own acts,   from which you could never recover. Something was  killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out.

He had seen her; he had even spoken to her.  There was no danger in it. He knew as though   instinctively that they now took almost no  interest in his doings. He could have arranged   to meet her a second time if either of them had  wanted to. Actually it was by chance that they  

Had met. It was in the Park, on a vile, biting  day in March, when the earth was like iron and   all the grass seemed dead and there was not a  bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had   pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the  wind. He was hurrying along with frozen hands  

And watering eyes when he saw her not ten  metres away from him. It struck him at once   that she had changed in some ill-defined way.  They almost passed one another without a sign,   then he turned and followed her, not very  eagerly. He knew that there was no danger,  

Nobody would take any interest in him. She did not  speak. She walked obliquely away across the grass   as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed  to resign herself to having him at her side.   Presently they were in among a clump of ragged  leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or  

As protection from the wind. They halted. It was  vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs   and fretted the occasional, dirty-looking  crocuses. He put his arm round her waist. There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden  microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did  

Not matter, nothing mattered. They could have  lain down on the ground and done THAT if they   had wanted to. His flesh froze with horror at the  thought of it. She made no response whatever to   the clasp of his arm; she did not even try to  disengage herself. He knew now what had changed  

In her. Her face was sallower, and there was a  long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her   forehead and temple; but that was not the change.  It was that her waist had grown thicker, and,   in a surprising way, had stiffened. He remembered  how once, after the explosion of a rocket bomb,  

He had helped to drag a corpse out of some  ruins, and had been astonished not only   by the incredible weight of the thing, but  by its rigidity and awkwardness to handle,   which made it seem more like stone than  flesh. Her body felt like that. It occurred  

To him that the texture of her skin would be  quite different from what it had once been. He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they  speak. As they walked back across the grass,   she looked directly at him for the first  time. It was only a momentary glance,  

Full of contempt and dislike. He wondered  whether it was a dislike that came purely   out of the past or whether it was inspired also  by his bloated face and the water that the wind   kept squeezing from his eyes. They sat down  on two iron chairs, side by side but not too  

Close together. He saw that she was about  to speak. She moved her clumsy shoe a few   centimetres and deliberately crushed a twig. Her  feet seemed to have grown broader, he noticed. ‘I betrayed you,’ she said baldly. ‘I betrayed you,’ he said.

She gave him another quick look of dislike. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘they threaten you   with something something you can’t stand up  to, can’t even think about. And then you say,   “Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do  it to so-and-so.” And perhaps you might pretend,  

Afterwards, that it was only a trick and that  you just said it to make them stop and didn’t   really mean it. But that isn’t true. At  the time when it happens you do mean it.   You think there’s no other way of saving  yourself, and you’re quite ready to save  

Yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to  the other person. You don’t give a damn what   they suffer. All you care about is yourself.’ ‘All you care about is yourself,’ he echoed. ‘And after that, you don’t feel the same  towards the other person any longer.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you don’t feel the same.’ There did not seem to be anything more to  say. The wind plastered their thin overalls   against their bodies. Almost at once it became  embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides,  

It was too cold to keep still. She said something  about catching her Tube and stood up to go. ‘We must meet again,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we must meet again.’ He followed irresolutely for a little distance,  half a pace behind her. They did not speak again.  

She did not actually try to shake him off, but  walked at just such a speed as to prevent his   keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind  that he would accompany her as far as the Tube   station, but suddenly this process of trailing  along in the cold seemed pointless and unbearable.  

He was overwhelmed by a desire not so much to get  away from Julia as to get back to the Chestnut   Tree Cafe, which had never seemed so attractive  as at this moment. He had a nostalgic vision   of his corner table, with the newspaper and the  chessboard and the ever-flowing gin. Above all,  

It would be warm in there. The next  moment, not altogether by accident,   he allowed himself to become separated from  her by a small knot of people. He made a   half-hearted attempt to catch up, then slowed  down, turned, and made off in the opposite  

Direction. When he had gone fifty metres  he looked back. The street was not crowded,   but already he could not distinguish her. Any  one of a dozen hurrying figures might have   been hers. Perhaps her thickened, stiffened  body was no longer recognizable from behind.

‘At the time when it happens,’ she had said, ‘you  do mean it.’ He had meant it. He had not merely   said it, he had wished it. He had wished that  she and not he should be delivered over to the——

Something changed in the music that trickled  from the telescreen. A cracked and jeering note,   a yellow note, came into it. And  then—perhaps it was not happening,   perhaps it was only a memory taking on the  semblance of sound—a voice was singing: ‘Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me——’

The tears welled up in his eyes. A  passing waiter noticed that his glass   was empty and came back with the gin bottle. He took up his glass and sniffed at it. The   stuff grew not less but more horrible with  every mouthful he drank. But it had become  

The element he swam in. It was his life, his  death, and his resurrection. It was gin that   sank him into stupor every night, and gin that  revived him every morning. When he woke, seldom   before eleven hundred, with gummed-up eyelids and  fiery mouth and a back that seemed to be broken,  

It would have been impossible even to rise  from the horizontal if it had not been for the   bottle and teacup placed beside the bed overnight.  Through the midday hours he sat with glazed face,   the bottle handy, listening to the telescreen.  From fifteen to closing-time he was a fixture  

In the Chestnut Tree. No one cared what  he did any longer, no whistle woke him,   no telescreen admonished him. Occasionally,  perhaps twice a week, he went to a dusty,   forgotten-looking office in the Ministry of Truth  and did a little work, or what was called work.  

He had been appointed to a sub-committee of a  sub-committee which had sprouted from one of   the innumerable committees dealing with minor  difficulties that arose in the compilation of   the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary.  They were engaged in producing something called  

An Interim Report, but what it was that they were  reporting on he had never definitely found out. It   was something to do with the question of whether  commas should be placed inside brackets, or   outside. There were four others on the committee,  all of them persons similar to himself. There  

Were days when they assembled and then promptly  dispersed again, frankly admitting to one another   that there was not really anything to be done. But  there were other days when they settled down to   their work almost eagerly, making a tremendous  show of entering up their minutes and drafting  

Long memoranda which were never finished—when  the argument as to what they were supposedly   arguing about grew extraordinarily involved and  abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions,   enormous digressions, quarrels—threats, even, to  appeal to higher authority. And then suddenly the  

Life would go out of them and they would sit  round the table looking at one another with   extinct eyes, like ghosts fading at cock-crow. The telescreen was silent for a moment. Winston   raised his head again. The bulletin! But  no, they were merely changing the music.  

He had the map of Africa behind his eyelids.  The movement of the armies was a diagram:   a black arrow tearing vertically southward,  and a white arrow horizontally eastward,   across the tail of the first. As though for  reassurance he looked up at the imperturbable  

Face in the portrait. Was it conceivable  that the second arrow did not even exist? His interest flagged again. He drank another  mouthful of gin, picked up the white knight   and made a tentative move. Check. But it  was evidently not the right move, because——

Uncalled, a memory floated into his mind. He saw  a candle-lit room with a vast white-counterpaned   bed, and himself, a boy of nine or ten,  sitting on the floor, shaking a dice-box,   and laughing excitedly. His mother was  sitting opposite him and also laughing.

It must have been about a month before she  disappeared. It was a moment of reconciliation,   when the nagging hunger in his belly was forgotten  and his earlier affection for her had temporarily   revived. He remembered the day well, a pelting,  drenching day when the water streamed down the  

Window-pane and the light indoors was too dull to  read by. The boredom of the two children in the   dark, cramped bedroom became unbearable. Winston  whined and grizzled, made futile demands for food,   fretted about the room pulling everything out  of place and kicking the wainscoting until the  

Neighbours banged on the wall, while the younger  child wailed intermittently. In the end his mother   said, ‘Now be good, and I’ll buy you a toy.  A lovely toy—you’ll love it’; and then she   had gone out in the rain, to a little general shop  which was still sporadically open nearby, and came  

Back with a cardboard box containing an outfit of  Snakes and Ladders. He could still remember the   smell of the damp cardboard. It was a miserable  outfit. The board was cracked and the tiny wooden   dice were so ill-cut that they would hardly lie on  their sides. Winston looked at the thing sulkily  

And without interest. But then his mother lit a  piece of candle and they sat down on the floor to   play. Soon he was wildly excited and shouting with  laughter as the tiddly-winks climbed hopefully   up the ladders and then came slithering down the  snakes again, almost to the starting-point. They  

Played eight games, winning four each. His tiny  sister, too young to understand what the game   was about, had sat propped up against a bolster,  laughing because the others were laughing. For a   whole afternoon they had all been happy  together, as in his earlier childhood. 

He pushed the picture out of his mind. It was a  false memory. He was troubled by false memories   occasionally. They did not matter so long  as one knew them for what they were. Some   things had happened, others had not happened. He  turned back to the chessboard and picked up the  

White knight again. Almost in the same instant  it dropped on to the board with a clatter. He   had started as though a pin had run into him. A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It   was the bulletin! Victory! It always meant victory  when a trumpet-call preceded the news. A sort of  

Electric drill ran through the cafe. Even the  waiters had started and pricked up their ears. The trumpet-call had let loose an enormous  volume of noise. Already an excited voice   was gabbling from the telescreen, but even as  it started it was almost drowned by a roar of  

Cheering from outside. The news had run round the  streets like magic. He could hear just enough of   what was issuing from the telescreen to realize  that it had all happened, as he had foreseen;   a vast seaborne armada had secretly assembled a  sudden blow in the enemy’s rear, the white arrow  

Tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments  of triumphant phrases pushed themselves through   the din: ‘Vast strategic manoeuvre—perfect  co-ordination—utter rout—half a million   prisoners—complete demoralization—control of the  whole of Africa—bring the war within measurable   distance of its end—victory—greatest victory  in human history—victory, victory, victory!’

Under the table Winston’s feet made convulsive  movements. He had not stirred from his seat,   but in his mind he was running, swiftly running,  he was with the crowds outside, cheering himself   deaf. He looked up again at the portrait of Big  Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world!  

The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed  themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes   ago—yes, only ten minutes—there had still been  equivocation in his heart as he wondered whether   the news from the front would be of victory  or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eurasian  

Army that had perished! Much had changed in him  since that first day in the Ministry of Love,   but the final, indispensable, healing change  had never happened, until this moment. The voice from the telescreen was still  pouring forth its tale of prisoners and  

Booty and slaughter, but the shouting  outside had died down a little. The   waiters were turning back to their work. One of  them approached with the gin bottle. Winston,   sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention  as his glass was filled up. He was not running  

Or cheering any longer. He was back in the  Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven,   his soul white as snow. He was in the  public dock, confessing everything,   implicating everybody. He was walking down the  white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking  

In sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The  long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain. He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty  years it had taken him to learn what kind   of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache.  O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn,  

Self-willed exile from the loving breast!  Two gin-scented tears trickled down the   sides of his nose. But it was all  right, everything was all right,   the struggle was finished. He had won the  victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. Appendix. The Principles of Newspeak.

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and  had been devised to meet the ideological needs of   Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year nineteen  eighty-four there was not as yet anyone who used   Newspeak as his sole means of communication,  either in speech or writing. The leading articles  

In ‘The Times’ were written in it, but this was a  Tour de Force which could only be carried out by a   specialist. It was expected that Newspeak would  have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard   English, as we should call it) by about the year  twenty fifty. Meanwhile it gained ground steadily,  

All Party members tending to use Newspeak words  and grammatical constructions more and more in   their everyday speech. The version in use in  nineteen eighty-four, and embodied in the Ninth   and Tenth Editions of the Newspeak Dictionary, was  a provisional one, and contained many superfluous  

Words and archaic formations which were due to be  suppressed later. It is with the final, perfected   version, as embodied in the Eleventh Edition  of the Dictionary, that we are concerned here. The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a  medium of expression for the world-view and mental  

Habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but  to make all other modes of thought impossible.   It was intended that when Newspeak had been  adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten,   a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging  from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally  

Unthinkable, at least so far as thought is  dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so   constructed as to give exact and often very subtle  expression to every meaning that a Party member   could properly wish to express, while excluding  all other meanings and also the possibility  

Of arriving at them by indirect methods. This  was done partly by the invention of new words,   but chiefly by eliminating undesirable  words and by stripping such words as   remained of unorthodox meanings, and so  far as possible of all secondary meanings   whatever. To give a single example. The  word ‘Free’ still existed in Newspeak,  

But it could only be used in such statements  as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field   is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its  old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually   free’ since political and intellectual freedom  no longer existed even as concepts, and were  

Therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from  the suppression of definitely heretical words,   reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in  itself, and no word that could be dispensed with   was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not  to extend but to diminish the range of thought,  

And this purpose was indirectly assisted by  cutting the choice of words down to a minimum. Newspeak was founded on the English language as  we now know it, though many Newspeak sentences,   even when not containing newly-created words,  would be barely intelligible to an English-speaker  

Of our own day. Newspeak words were divided into  three distinct classes, known as the A vocabulary,   the B vocabulary (also called compound words),  and the C vocabulary. It will be simpler to   discuss each class separately, but the grammatical  peculiarities of the language can be dealt with  

In the section devoted to the A vocabulary, since  the same rules held good for all three categories. The A Vocabulary. The A vocabulary consisted of the words needed  for the business of everyday life—for such   things as eating, drinking, working, putting  on one’s clothes, going up and down stairs,  

Riding in vehicles, gardening, cooking, and the  like. It was composed almost entirely of words   that we already possess words like hit, run, dog,  tree, sugar, house, field—but in comparison with   the present-day English vocabulary their number  was extremely small, while their meanings were  

Far more rigidly defined. All ambiguities and  shades of meaning had been purged out of them.   So far as it could be achieved, a Newspeak  word of this class was simply a staccato   sound expressing one clearly understood concept.  It would have been quite impossible to use the A  

Vocabulary for literary purposes or for political  or philosophical discussion. It was intended only   to express simple, purposive thoughts, usually  involving concrete objects or physical actions.  The grammar of Newspeak had two outstanding  peculiarities. The first of these was an almost   complete interchangeability between different  parts of speech. Any word in the language (in  

Principle this applied even to very abstract words  such as IF or WHEN) could be used either as verb,   noun, adjective, or adverb. Between the verb and  the noun form, when they were of the same root,   there was never any variation, this rule of itself  involving the destruction of many archaic forms.  

The word ‘thought’, for example, did not exist  in Newspeak. Its place was taken by ‘think’,   which did duty for both noun and verb. No  etymological principle was followed here:   in some cases it was the original noun that was  chosen for retention, in other cases the verb.  

Even where a noun and verb of kindred meaning  were not etymologically connected, one or other   of them was frequently suppressed. There was, for  example, no such word as ‘cut’, its meaning being   sufficiently covered by the noun-verb knife.  Adjectives were formed by adding the suffix  

‘ful’ to the noun-verb, and adverbs by adding  ‘wise’. Thus for example, ‘speedful’ meant ‘rapid’   and ‘speedwise’ meant ‘quickly’. Certain of our  present-day adjectives, such as good, strong, big,   black, soft, were retained, but their total number  was very small. There was little need for them,  

Since almost any adjectival meaning could be  arrived at by adding ‘ful’ to a noun-verb.   None of the now-existing adverbs was retained,  except for a very few already ending in ‘wise’:   the ‘wise’ termination was invariable. The word  ‘well’, for example, was replaced by’goodwise’. 

In addition, any word—this again applied in  principle to every word in the language—could   be negatived by adding the affix ‘un’, or  could be strengthened by the affix ‘plus’,   or, for still greater emphasis, ‘doubleplus’.  Thus, for example, ‘uncold’ meant ‘warm’,   while ‘pluscold’ and ‘doublepluscold’ meant,  respectively, ‘very cold’ and ‘superlatively  

Cold’. It was also possible, as in present-day  English, to modify the meaning of almost any word   by prepositional affixes such as ‘Ante’, ‘Post’,  ‘Up’, ‘Down’, etc. By such methods it was found   possible to bring about an enormous diminution of  vocabulary. Given, for instance, the word ‘good’,  

There was no need for such a word as ‘bad’, since  the required meaning was equally well—indeed,   better—expressed by ‘ungood’. All that  was necessary, in any case where two   words formed a natural pair of opposites, was  to decide which of them to suppress. ‘Dark’,  

For example, could be replaced by ‘unlight’, or  ‘light’ by ‘undark’, according to preference. The second distinguishing mark of Newspeak  grammar was its regularity. Subject to a few   exceptions which are mentioned below all  inflexions followed the same rules. Thus,  

In all verbs the preterite and the past participle  were the same and ended in ‘ed’. The preterite of   ‘steal’ was ‘stealed’, the preterite of ‘think’  was ‘thinked’, and so on throughout the language,   all such forms as swam, gave, brought, spoke,  taken, etc., being abolished. All plurals were  

Made by adding ‘s’ or ‘es’ as the case might be.  The plurals of ‘man’, ‘ox’, ‘life’, were ‘mans’,   ‘oxes’, ‘lifes’. Comparison of adjectives was  invariably made by adding ‘er’ and ‘est’ (‘good’,   ‘gooder’, ‘goodest’), irregular forms and the  ‘more’, ‘most’ formation being suppressed.

The only classes of words that were still  allowed to inflect irregularly were the pronouns,   the relatives, the demonstrative adjectives, and  the auxiliary verbs. All of these followed their   ancient usage, except that ‘whom’ had been  scrapped as unnecessary, and the ‘shall’ and  

‘should’ tenses had been dropped, all their  uses being covered by ‘will’ and ‘would’.   There were also certain irregularities in  word-formation arising out of the need for   rapid and easy speech. A word which was difficult  to utter, or was liable to be incorrectly heard,  

Was held to be ipso facto a bad word;  occasionally therefore, for the sake of euphony,   extra letters were inserted into a word or an  archaic formation was retained. But this need   made itself felt chiefly in connexion with  the B vocabulary. WHY so great an importance  

Was attached to ease of pronunciation  will be made clear later in this essay. The B Vocabulary. The B vocabulary consisted of words which had been   deliberately constructed for political purposes:  words, that is to say, which not only had in every  

Case a political implication, but were intended  to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the   person using them. Without a full understanding of  the principles of Ingsoc it was difficult to use   these words correctly. In some cases they could be  translated into Oldspeak, or even into words taken  

From the A vocabulary, but this usually demanded  a long paraphrase and always involved the loss   of certain overtones. The B words were a sort of  verbal shorthand, often packing whole ranges of   ideas into a few syllables, and at the same time  more accurate and forcible than ordinary language. 

The B words were in all cases compound  words. (Compound words such as ‘speakwrite’,   were of course to be found in the ‘A’ vocabulary,  but these were merely convenient abbreviations and   had no special ideological colour.) They consisted  of two or more words, or portions of words,  

Welded together in an easily pronounceable form.  The resulting amalgam was always a noun-verb,   and inflected according to the ordinary rules.  To take a single example: the word ‘goodthink’,   meaning, very roughly, ‘orthodoxy’, or,  if one chose to regard it as a verb,  

‘to think in an orthodox manner’. This inflected  as follows: noun-verb, ‘goodthink’; past tense   and past participle, ‘goodthinked’;  present participle, ‘good-thinking’;   adjective, ‘goodthinkful’; adverb,  ‘goodthinkwise’; verbal noun, ‘goodthinker’. The B words were not constructed on any  etymological plan. The words of which they were  

Made up could be any parts of speech, and could be  placed in any order and mutilated in any way which   made them easy to pronounce while indicating  their derivation. In the word ‘crimethink’   (thoughtcrime), for instance, the ‘think’ came  second, whereas in ‘thinkpol’ (Thought Police)  

It came first, and in the latter word ‘police’  had lost its second syllable. Because of the   great difficulty in securing euphony, irregular  formations were commoner in the B vocabulary   than in the ‘A’ vocabulary. For example, the  adjective forms of ‘minitrue’, ‘minipax’,   and ‘miniluv’ were, respectively, ‘minitruthful’,  ‘minipeaceful’, and ‘minilovely’, simply because  

‘trueful’, ‘paxful’, and ‘loveful’ were  slightly awkward to pronounce. In principle,   however, all B words could inflect, and  all inflected in exactly the same way. Some of the B words had highly subtilized  meanings, barely intelligible to anyone   who had not mastered the language  as a whole. Consider, for example,  

Such a typical sentence from a ‘Times’ leading  article as ‘Oldthinkers Unbellyfeel Ingsoc’.   The shortest rendering that one could make of  this in Oldspeak would be: ‘Those whose ideas   were formed before the Revolution cannot  have a full emotional understanding of the  

Principles of English Socialism.’ But this is  not an adequate translation. To begin with,   in order to grasp the full meaning of the Newspeak  sentence quoted above, one would have to have a   clear idea of what is meant by INGSOC. And in  addition, only a person thoroughly grounded in  

Ingsoc could appreciate the full force of the word  ‘bellyfeel’, which implied a blind, enthusiastic   acceptance difficult to imagine today; or of the  word ‘oldthink’, which was inextricably mixed up   with the idea of wickedness and decadence. But  the special function of certain Newspeak words,  

Of which ‘oldthink’ was one, was not so much to  express meanings as to destroy them. These words,   necessarily few in number, had had their meanings  extended until they contained within themselves   whole batteries of words which, as they were  sufficiently covered by a single comprehensive  

Term, could now be scrapped and forgotten. The  greatest difficulty facing the compilers of the   Newspeak Dictionary was not to invent new words,  but, having invented them, to make sure what they   meant: to make sure, that is to say, what ranges  of words they cancelled by their existence. 

As we have already seen in the case of the word  FREE, words which had once borne a heretical   meaning were sometimes retained for the sake  of convenience, but only with the undesirable   meanings purged out of them. Countless other  words such as honour, justice, morality,  

Internationalism, democracy, science, and religion  had simply ceased to exist. A few blanket words   covered them, and, in covering them, abolished  them. All words grouping themselves round the   concepts of liberty and equality, for instance,  were contained in the single word ‘crimethink’,   while all words grouping themselves round the  concepts of objectivity and rationalism were  

Contained in the single word ‘oldthink’. Greater  precision would have been dangerous. What was   required in a Party member was an outlook similar  to that of the ancient Hebrew who knew, without   knowing much else, that all nations other than  his own worshipped ‘false gods’. He did not need  

To know that these gods were called Baal, Osiris,  Moloch, Ashtaroth, and the like: probably the less   he knew about them the better for his orthodoxy.  He knew Jehovah and the commandments of Jehovah:   he knew, therefore, that all gods with other  names or other attributes were false gods. In  

Somewhat the same way, the party member knew what  constituted right conduct, and in exceedingly   vague, generalized terms he knew what kinds of  departure from it were possible. His sexual life,   for example, was entirely regulated by the two  Newspeak words ‘sexcrime’ (sexual immorality)  

And ‘goodsex’ (chastity). SEXCRIME covered all  sexual misdeeds whatever. It covered fornication,   adultery, homosexuality, and other perversions,  and, in addition, normal intercourse practised for   its own sake. There was no need to enumerate them  separately, since they were all equally culpable,  

And, in principle, all punishable by death. In  the C vocabulary, which consisted of scientific   and technical words, it might be necessary to give  specialized names to certain sexual aberrations,   but the ordinary citizen had no need of them. He  knew what was meant by ‘goodsex’ — that is to say,  

Normal intercourse between man and wife, for the  sole purpose of begetting children, and without   physical pleasure on the part of the woman: all  else was sexcrime. In Newspeak it was seldom   possible to follow a heretical thought further  than the perception that it was heretical: beyond  

That point the necessary words were nonexistent. No word in the B vocabulary was ideologically   neutral. A great many were euphemisms.  Such words, for instance, as ‘joycamp’   (forced-labour camp) or ‘minipax’ (Ministry of  Peace, that is Ministry of War) meant almost  

The exact opposite of what they appeared to mean.  Some words, on the other hand, displayed a frank   and contemptuous understanding of the real nature  of Oceanic society. An example was ‘prolefeed’,   meaning the rubbishy entertainment and spurious  news which the Party handed out to the masses.  

Other words, again, were ambivalent, having the  connotation ‘good’ when applied to the Party and   ‘bad’ when applied to its enemies. But in addition  there were great numbers of words which at first   sight appeared to be mere abbreviations and  which derived their ideological colour not  

From their meaning, but from their structure. So far as it could be contrived, everything that   had or might have political significance of any  kind was fitted into the B vocabulary. The name   of every organization, or body of people,  or doctrine, or country, or institution,  

Or public building, was invariably cut down  into the familiar shape; that is, a single   easily pronounced word with the smallest number  of syllables that would preserve the original   derivation. In the Ministry of Truth, for example,  the Records Department, in which Winston Smith  

Worked, was called Recdep, the Fiction Department  was called Ficdep, the Teleprogrammes Department   was called Teledep, and so on. This was not done  solely with the object of saving time. Even in   the early decades of the twentieth century,  telescoped words and phrases had been one of  

The characteristic features of political language;  and it had been noticed that the tendency to use   abbreviations of this kind was most marked  in totalitarian countries and totalitarian   organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi,  Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In the  

Beginning the practice had been adopted as it  were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used   with a conscious purpose. It was perceived that in  thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly   altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the  associations that would otherwise cling to it.  

The words Communist International, for instance,  call up a composite picture of universal human   brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx,  and the Paris Commune. The word ‘Comintern’,   on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit  organization and a well-defined body of doctrine.   It refers to something almost as easily  recognized, and as limited in purpose,  

As a chair or a table. ‘Comintern’ is a word that  can be uttered almost without taking thought,   whereas ‘Communist International’ is a phrase  over which one is obliged to linger at least   momentarily. In the same way, the associations  called up by a word like ‘Minitrue’ are fewer  

And more controllable than those called up by  ‘Ministry of Truth’. This accounted not only   for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible,  but also for the almost exaggerated care that was   taken to make every word easily pronounceable. In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every   consideration other than exactitude of  meaning. Regularity of grammar was always  

Sacrificed to it when it seemed necessary. And  rightly so, since what was required, above all   for political purposes, was short clipped words  of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered   rapidly and which roused the minimum of echoes in  the speaker’s mind. The words of the B vocabulary  

Even gained in force from the fact that nearly all  of them were very much alike. Almost invariably   these words—goodthink, minipax, prolefeed,  sexcrime, joycamp, Ingsoc, bellyfeel, thinkpol,   and countless others—were words of two or three  syllables, with the stress distributed equally  

Between the first syllable and the last. The use  of them encouraged a gabbling style of speech,   at once staccato and monotonous. And this was  exactly what was aimed at. The intention was to   make speech, and especially speech on any subject  not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible  

Independent of consciousness. For the purposes  of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or   sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking,  but a Party member called upon to make a political   or ethical judgement should be able to spray forth  the correct opinions as automatically as a machine  

Gun spraying forth bullets. His training fitted  him to do this, the language gave him an almost   foolproof instrument, and the texture of the  words, with their harsh sound and a certain wilful   ugliness which was in accord with the spirit  of Ingsoc, assisted the process still further.

So did the fact of having very few words to  choose from. Relative to our own, the Newspeak   vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it  were constantly being devised. Newspeak, indeed,   differed from most all other languages in that its  vocabulary grew smaller instead of larger every  

Year. Each reduction was a gain, since the smaller  the area of choice, the smaller the temptation to   take thought. Ultimately it was hoped to make  articulate speech issue from the larynx without   involving the higher brain centres at all. This  aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word  

‘duckspeak’, meaning ‘to quack like a duck’.  Like various other words in the B vocabulary,   ‘duckspeak’ was ambivalent in meaning. Provided  that the opinions which were quacked out were   orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and  when ‘The Times’ referred to one of the orators of  

The Party as a ‘doubleplusgood duckspeaker’  it was paying a warm and valued compliment. The C Vocabulary. The C vocabulary was supplementary to the others   and consisted entirely of scientific and technical  terms. These resembled the scientific terms in use  

Today, and were constructed from the same roots,  but the usual care was taken to define them   rigidly and strip them of undesirable meanings.  They followed the same grammatical rules as the   words in the other two vocabularies. Very few of  the C words had any currency either in everyday  

Speech or in political speech. Any scientific  worker or technician could find all the words he   needed in the list devoted to his own speciality,  but he seldom had more than a smattering of the   words occurring in the other lists. Only a very  few words were common to all lists, and there was  

No vocabulary expressing the function of Science  as a habit of mind, or a method of thought,   irrespective of its particular branches.  There was, indeed, no word for ‘Science’,   any meaning that it could possibly bear being  already sufficiently covered by the word Ingsoc. 

From the foregoing account it will be seen that  in Newspeak the expression of unorthodox opinions,   above a very low level, was well-nigh impossible.  It was of course possible to utter heresies of   a very crude kind, a species of blasphemy. It  would have been possible, for example, to say  

‘Big Brother is ungood’. But this statement, which  to an orthodox ear merely conveyed a self-evident   absurdity, could not have been sustained by  reasoned argument, because the necessary words   were not available. Ideas inimical to Ingsoc could  only be entertained in a vague wordless form,  

And could only be named in very broad terms which  lumped together and condemned whole groups of   heresies without defining them in doing so. One  could, in fact, only use Newspeak for unorthodox   purposes by illegitimately translating some  of the words back into Oldspeak. For example,  

‘all mans are equal’ was a possible Newspeak  sentence, but only in the same sense in which   ‘all men are redhaired’ is a possible Oldspeak  sentence. It did not contain a grammatical error,   but it expressed a palpable untruth — that  is that all men are of equal size, weight,  

Or strength. The concept of political equality  no longer existed, and this secondary meaning   had accordingly been purged out of the word  ‘equal’. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, when Oldspeak   was still the normal means of communication,  the danger theoretically existed that in using  

Newspeak words one might remember their original  meanings. In practice it was not difficult for any   person well grounded in doublethink to avoid doing  this, but within a couple of generations even the   possibility of such a lapse would have vanished.  A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole  

Language would no more know that ‘equal’ had once  had the secondary meaning of ‘politically equal’,   or that ‘free’ had once meant ‘intellectually  free’, than for instance, a person who had   never heard of chess would be aware of the  secondary meanings attaching to ‘queen’ and  

‘rook’. There would be many crimes and errors  which it would be beyond his power to commit,   simply because they were nameless and therefore  unimaginable. And it was to be foreseen that   with the passage of time the distinguishing  characteristics of Newspeak would become more  

And more pronounced—its words growing fewer  and fewer, their meanings more and more rigid,   and the chance of putting them to  improper uses always diminishing. When Oldspeak had been once and for all  superseded, the last link with the past  

Would have been severed. History had already been  rewritten, but fragments of the literature of the   past survived here and there, imperfectly  censored, and so long as one retained one’s   knowledge of Oldspeak it was possible to  read them. In the future such fragments,  

Even if they chanced to survive, would be  unintelligible and untranslatable. It was   impossible to translate any passage of Oldspeak  into Newspeak unless it either referred to some   technical process or some very simple everyday  action, or was already orthodox (‘Goodthinkful’  

Would be the Newspeak expression) in tendency.  In practice this meant that no book written   before approximately 1960 could be translated as  a whole. Pre-revolutionary literature could only   be subjected to ideological translation  — that is, alteration in sense as well   as language. Take for example the well-known  passage from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that  all men are created equal, that they are endowed   by their creator with certain inalienable  rights, that among these are life, liberty,   and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these  rights, governments are instituted among men,  

Deriving their powers from the consent of the  governed. that whenever any form of government   becomes destructive of those ends, it is the  right of the people to alter or abolish it,   and to institute new government… It would have been quite impossible  

To render this into Newspeak while keeping to the  sense of the original. The nearest one could come   to doing so would be to swallow the whole  passage up in the single word ‘crimethink’.   A full translation could only be an ideological  translation, whereby Jefferson’s words would be  

Changed into a panegyric on absolute government. A good deal of the literature of the past was,   indeed, already being transformed in this way.  Considerations of prestige made it desirable   to preserve the memory of certain historical  figures, while at the same time bringing their  

Achievements into line with the philosophy of  Ingsoc. Various writers, such as Shakespeare,   Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens, and some others  were therefore in process of translation:   when the task had been completed, their original  writings, with all else that survived of the  

Literature of the past, would be destroyed. These  translations were a slow and difficult business,   and it was not expected that they would be  finished before the first or second decade   of the twenty-first century. There were  also large quantities of merely utilitarian   literature—indispensable technical manuals,  and the like—that had to be treated in the  

Same way. It was chiefly in order to allow  time for the preliminary work of translation   that the final adoption of Newspeak had been  fixed for so late a date as Twenty Fifty. Thank you for listening. If you like our recordings consider liking  this video and subscribing to our channel,  

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