1
00:00:00,520 --> 00:00:04,440
Speaker 1: Section four of nineteen eighty four by George Orwell. This

2
00:00:04,599 --> 00:00:08,199
legamois recording may be distributed and adapted freely for any purpose.

3
00:00:10,080 --> 00:00:15,359
Part one, Chapter four. With the deep unconscious sigh, which

4
00:00:15,400 --> 00:00:17,800
not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him

5
00:00:17,800 --> 00:00:21,359
from uttering. When his day's work started, Winston pulled the

6
00:00:21,359 --> 00:00:24,920
Speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and

7
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:28,920
put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together

8
00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:31,640
four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out

9
00:00:31,640 --> 00:00:33,960
of the pneumatic tube on the right hand side of

10
00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:37,520
his desk. In the walls of the cubicle, there were

11
00:00:37,560 --> 00:00:41,320
three orifices. To the right of the Speakwrite, a small

12
00:00:41,359 --> 00:00:44,359
pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger

13
00:00:44,399 --> 00:00:47,560
one for newspapers, And in the side wall, within easy

14
00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:51,200
reach of Winston's arm, a large, oblong slit protected by

15
00:00:51,200 --> 00:00:55,119
a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of

16
00:00:55,159 --> 00:00:59,079
waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of

17
00:00:59,119 --> 00:01:02,119
thousands throughout the building, not only in every room, but

18
00:01:02,159 --> 00:01:05,359
at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason, they

19
00:01:05,359 --> 00:01:09,239
were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document

20
00:01:09,319 --> 00:01:11,840
was due for destruction, or even when one saw a

21
00:01:11,879 --> 00:01:14,959
scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic

22
00:01:14,959 --> 00:01:17,359
action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole

23
00:01:17,560 --> 00:01:20,640
and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away

24
00:01:20,719 --> 00:01:23,640
on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces

25
00:01:23,640 --> 00:01:26,000
which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

26
00:01:28,079 --> 00:01:31,159
Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled.

27
00:01:31,799 --> 00:01:34,280
Each contained a message of only one or two lines

28
00:01:34,519 --> 00:01:38,680
in the abbreviated jargon, not actually news speak, but consisting

29
00:01:38,760 --> 00:01:41,439
largely of new speak words, which was used in the

30
00:01:41,480 --> 00:01:47,359
Ministry for internal purposes. There ran Times seventeen three eighty four,

31
00:01:47,480 --> 00:01:52,359
b B Speech Mal Reported Africa, Rectify Times nineteen twelve

32
00:01:52,359 --> 00:01:56,719
eighty three, Forecasts three YP fourth quarter eighty three, misprints Verify,

33
00:01:56,799 --> 00:02:01,200
Current Issue Times fourteen two eighty five, four many plenty

34
00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:06,599
mal quoted Chocolate, Rectify Times three twelve eighty three reporting

35
00:02:06,680 --> 00:02:10,080
b B day order double plus ungood refs one persons

36
00:02:10,120 --> 00:02:15,360
rewrite full wise up sub anti filing. With a faint

37
00:02:15,400 --> 00:02:19,439
feeling of satisfaction, Winston laid the fourth message aside. It

38
00:02:19,520 --> 00:02:21,759
was an intricate and responsible job and had better be

39
00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:25,919
dealt with last. The other three were routine matters, though

40
00:02:25,960 --> 00:02:28,599
the second one would probably mean some tedious wading through

41
00:02:28,599 --> 00:02:33,639
lists of figures. Winston dialed back numbers on the telescreen

42
00:02:33,680 --> 00:02:36,639
and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which

43
00:02:36,639 --> 00:02:38,879
slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few

44
00:02:38,879 --> 00:02:43,159
minutes delay. The messages he had received referred to articles

45
00:02:43,199 --> 00:02:45,800
or news items which, for one reason or another, it

46
00:02:45,879 --> 00:02:48,719
was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase

47
00:02:48,759 --> 00:02:52,639
had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from the

48
00:02:52,719 --> 00:02:55,560
Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in

49
00:02:55,639 --> 00:02:58,319
his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the

50
00:02:58,360 --> 00:03:01,960
South Indian front would remain quiet, but that the Eurasian

51
00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:05,919
offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened,

52
00:03:05,919 --> 00:03:08,840
the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South

53
00:03:08,879 --> 00:03:13,039
India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary

54
00:03:13,039 --> 00:03:16,039
to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech in such

55
00:03:16,039 --> 00:03:17,759
a way as to make him predict the thing that

56
00:03:17,800 --> 00:03:22,159
had actually happened. Or again. The Times of the nineteenth

57
00:03:22,199 --> 00:03:25,000
of December had published the official forecasts of the output

58
00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:28,400
of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter

59
00:03:28,439 --> 00:03:31,840
of nineteen eighty three, which was also the sixth quarter

60
00:03:31,879 --> 00:03:35,439
of the ninth three year plan. Today's issue contained a

61
00:03:35,479 --> 00:03:38,039
statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that

62
00:03:38,080 --> 00:03:42,280
the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job

63
00:03:42,360 --> 00:03:44,800
was to rectify the original figures by making them agree

64
00:03:44,800 --> 00:03:48,120
with the later ones. As for the third message, it

65
00:03:48,199 --> 00:03:50,360
referred to a very simple error which could be set

66
00:03:50,439 --> 00:03:53,319
right in a couple of minutes. As short a time

67
00:03:53,319 --> 00:03:56,599
ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise,

68
00:03:56,919 --> 00:03:59,879
a categorical pledge with the official words that there would

69
00:03:59,879 --> 00:04:04,120
be no reduction of the chocolate ration during nineteen eighty four. Actually,

70
00:04:04,120 --> 00:04:07,000
as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be

71
00:04:07,039 --> 00:04:09,199
reduced from thirty grams to twenty at the end of

72
00:04:09,199 --> 00:04:12,800
the present week. All that was needed was to substitute

73
00:04:12,800 --> 00:04:15,400
for the original promise a warning that it would probably

74
00:04:15,439 --> 00:04:19,600
be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.

75
00:04:20,120 --> 00:04:22,480
As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages,

76
00:04:22,720 --> 00:04:25,560
he clipped his speek written corrections to the appropriate copy

77
00:04:25,600 --> 00:04:29,439
of the Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then,

78
00:04:29,480 --> 00:04:32,480
with a movement which was nearly as possible unconscious, he

79
00:04:32,519 --> 00:04:34,920
crumpled up the original message and any notes that he

80
00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:37,959
himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole,

81
00:04:38,040 --> 00:04:42,480
to be devoured by the flames. What happened in the

82
00:04:42,560 --> 00:04:45,560
unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led he did

83
00:04:45,639 --> 00:04:48,399
not know in detail, but he did know in general terms.

84
00:04:49,240 --> 00:04:51,240
As soon as all the corrections which happened to be

85
00:04:51,279 --> 00:04:54,040
necessary in any particular number of the Times had been

86
00:04:54,079 --> 00:04:57,959
assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original

87
00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:00,680
copy destroyed, and the corrected cop be placed on the

88
00:05:00,720 --> 00:05:04,639
files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was

89
00:05:04,639 --> 00:05:11,040
applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films,

90
00:05:11,360 --> 00:05:15,680
sound tracks, cartoons, photographs, to every kind of literature or

91
00:05:15,680 --> 00:05:20,040
documentation which might conceive a behold any political or ideological significance.

92
00:05:21,319 --> 00:05:23,720
Day by day, and almost minute by minute, the past

93
00:05:23,839 --> 00:05:26,959
was brought up to date. In this way, every prediction

94
00:05:27,040 --> 00:05:29,600
made by the party could be shown by documentary evidence

95
00:05:29,639 --> 00:05:32,360
to have been correct. Nor was any item of news,

96
00:05:32,759 --> 00:05:35,680
or any expression of opinion which conflicted with the needs

97
00:05:35,720 --> 00:05:39,439
of the moment ever allowed to remain on record. All

98
00:05:39,519 --> 00:05:44,000
history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as

99
00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:47,079
often as was necessary. In no case would it have

100
00:05:47,120 --> 00:05:49,560
been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that

101
00:05:49,639 --> 00:05:53,399
any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the

102
00:05:53,439 --> 00:05:56,959
Record's department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked,

103
00:05:57,399 --> 00:06:00,120
consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track

104
00:06:00,199 --> 00:06:03,480
down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other

105
00:06:03,519 --> 00:06:06,360
documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction.

106
00:06:07,519 --> 00:06:10,199
A number of the times, which might, because of changes

107
00:06:10,240 --> 00:06:13,920
in political alignment or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother,

108
00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:17,279
have been rewritten A dozen times still stood on the

109
00:06:17,279 --> 00:06:20,759
files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed

110
00:06:20,759 --> 00:06:24,959
to contradict it. Books also were recalled and rewritten again

111
00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:28,680
and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that

112
00:06:28,720 --> 00:06:32,519
any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions which

113
00:06:32,519 --> 00:06:35,720
Winston received and which he invariably got rid of as

114
00:06:35,720 --> 00:06:37,920
soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or

115
00:06:37,920 --> 00:06:40,439
implied that an act of forgery was to be committed.

116
00:06:41,439 --> 00:06:45,759
Always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations,

117
00:06:45,959 --> 00:06:48,079
which it was necessary to put right in the interests

118
00:06:48,079 --> 00:06:52,839
of accuracy. But actually he thought as he readjusted the

119
00:06:52,879 --> 00:06:56,399
Ministry of Plenty's figures. It was not even forgery. It

120
00:06:56,480 --> 00:06:59,439
was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another.

121
00:07:00,279 --> 00:07:02,319
Most of the material that you were dealing with had

122
00:07:02,360 --> 00:07:05,240
no connection with anything in the real world, not even

123
00:07:05,240 --> 00:07:07,959
the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie.

124
00:07:08,759 --> 00:07:11,319
Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original

125
00:07:11,439 --> 00:07:14,839
version as in their rectified version. A great deal of

126
00:07:14,879 --> 00:07:16,600
the time you were expected to make them up out

127
00:07:16,639 --> 00:07:20,120
of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast

128
00:07:20,120 --> 00:07:22,560
had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at

129
00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:27,079
one hundred forty five million pairs. The actual output was

130
00:07:27,120 --> 00:07:32,000
given as sixty two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast,

131
00:07:32,439 --> 00:07:35,399
marked the figure down to fifty seven millions, so as

132
00:07:35,439 --> 00:07:37,519
to allow for the usual claim that the quota had

133
00:07:37,519 --> 00:07:41,480
been over fulfilled. In any case, sixty two millions was

134
00:07:41,519 --> 00:07:44,360
no nearer the truth than fifty seven millions, more than

135
00:07:44,399 --> 00:07:47,759
one hundred and forty five millions. Very likely no boots

136
00:07:47,759 --> 00:07:51,279
had been produced at all. Likely, as still, nobody knew

137
00:07:51,319 --> 00:07:54,600
how many had been produced, much less cared. All one

138
00:07:54,680 --> 00:07:57,800
knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were

139
00:07:57,800 --> 00:08:00,800
produced on paper, while perhaps half off the population of

140
00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:04,560
Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class

141
00:08:04,600 --> 00:08:08,279
of recorded fact, great or small, Everything faded away into

142
00:08:08,319 --> 00:08:11,199
a shadow world in which finally even the date of

143
00:08:11,240 --> 00:08:16,600
the year had become uncertain. Winston glanced across the hall

144
00:08:17,240 --> 00:08:19,839
in the corresponding cubicle. On the other side, a small,

145
00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:24,120
precise looking, dark chinned man named Tillotson was working steadily

146
00:08:24,160 --> 00:08:27,079
away with a folded newspaper on his knee and his

147
00:08:27,160 --> 00:08:29,439
mouth very close to the mouthpiece of the speak write.

148
00:08:30,439 --> 00:08:32,320
He had the air of trying to keep what he

149
00:08:32,399 --> 00:08:35,879
was saying a secret between himself and the telescreen. He

150
00:08:35,919 --> 00:08:38,600
looked up, and his spectacles started a hostile flash in

151
00:08:38,639 --> 00:08:44,120
Winston's direction. Winston hardly knew Tillotson, and had no idea

152
00:08:44,240 --> 00:08:47,279
what work he was employed on. People in the records

153
00:08:47,279 --> 00:08:50,799
department did not readily talk about their jobs. In the

154
00:08:50,879 --> 00:08:54,039
long windowless hall, with its double row of cubicles and

155
00:08:54,080 --> 00:08:56,919
its endless rustle of papers and hum of voices murmuring

156
00:08:56,960 --> 00:08:59,679
into speak writes, there were quite a dozen people whom

157
00:08:59,679 --> 00:09:02,080
Winston and did not even know by name, though he

158
00:09:02,159 --> 00:09:05,399
daily saw them hurrying to and fro in the corridors,

159
00:09:05,480 --> 00:09:08,840
or gesticulating in the two minutes hate. He knew that

160
00:09:08,879 --> 00:09:10,840
in the cubicle next to him, the little woman with

161
00:09:10,960 --> 00:09:14,399
sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking

162
00:09:14,440 --> 00:09:17,039
down and deleting from the press the names of people

163
00:09:17,080 --> 00:09:19,919
who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to

164
00:09:19,960 --> 00:09:24,080
have existed. There was a certain fitness in this, since

165
00:09:24,080 --> 00:09:26,679
her own husband had been vaporized a couple of years earlier,

166
00:09:27,559 --> 00:09:31,039
and a few cubicles away, a mild ineffectual, dreamy creature

167
00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:34,960
named Ampleforth, with very hairy ears and a surprising talent

168
00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:38,399
for juggling with rhymes and meters, was engaged in producing

169
00:09:38,440 --> 00:09:42,960
garbled versions definitive texts. They were called of poems which

170
00:09:42,960 --> 00:09:46,559
had become ideologically offensive, but which for one reason or another,

171
00:09:46,600 --> 00:09:50,200
were to be retained in the anthologies. And this hall,

172
00:09:50,399 --> 00:09:53,639
with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one sub section,

173
00:09:54,039 --> 00:09:56,519
a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity

174
00:09:56,519 --> 00:10:01,799
of the record's department. Beyond above below were other swarms

175
00:10:01,840 --> 00:10:06,559
of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs. There

176
00:10:06,559 --> 00:10:09,320
were the huge printing shops with their sub editors, their

177
00:10:09,360 --> 00:10:13,519
typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking

178
00:10:13,559 --> 00:10:18,000
of photographs. There was the teleprogram's section, with its engineers,

179
00:10:18,039 --> 00:10:21,120
its producers, and its teams of actors specially chosen for

180
00:10:21,159 --> 00:10:24,879
their skill in imitating voices. There were the armies of

181
00:10:24,919 --> 00:10:27,480
reference clerks, whose job was simply to draw up lists

182
00:10:27,480 --> 00:10:31,480
of books and periodicals which were due for recall. There

183
00:10:31,480 --> 00:10:34,679
were the vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored,

184
00:10:34,960 --> 00:10:38,000
and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed,

185
00:10:38,759 --> 00:10:42,039
And somewhere or other quite anonymous. There were the directing

186
00:10:42,080 --> 00:10:44,879
brains who co ordinated the whole effort and laid down

187
00:10:44,879 --> 00:10:47,519
the lines of policy which made it necessary that this

188
00:10:47,600 --> 00:10:50,720
fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified

189
00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:55,919
and the other rubbed out of existence. And the Records Department,

190
00:10:55,960 --> 00:10:58,159
after all, was itself only a single branch of the

191
00:10:58,159 --> 00:11:01,679
Ministry of Truth, whose prime job was not to reconstruct

192
00:11:01,720 --> 00:11:06,720
the past, but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks,

193
00:11:06,879 --> 00:11:12,399
telescreen programs, plays, novels, with every conceivable kind of information, instruction,

194
00:11:12,679 --> 00:11:15,600
or entertainment. From a statue to a slogan, from a

195
00:11:15,679 --> 00:11:19,000
lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's

196
00:11:19,039 --> 00:11:22,960
spelling book to a New Speak dictionary. And the Ministry

197
00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:25,799
had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party,

198
00:11:26,240 --> 00:11:28,559
but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower

199
00:11:28,639 --> 00:11:31,879
level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a

200
00:11:31,919 --> 00:11:36,320
whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama,

201
00:11:36,480 --> 00:11:41,759
and entertainment. Generally, here were produced rubbish newspapers containing almost

202
00:11:41,759 --> 00:11:46,519
nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five cent novelettes,

203
00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:50,279
film z oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were

204
00:11:50,320 --> 00:11:53,080
composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of

205
00:11:53,159 --> 00:11:57,559
kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole

206
00:11:57,600 --> 00:12:01,879
subsection pornosecond was called in New Speak, engaged in producing

207
00:12:01,879 --> 00:12:04,879
the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in

208
00:12:04,919 --> 00:12:07,720
sealed packets, and which no Party member other than those

209
00:12:07,720 --> 00:12:12,000
who worked on it was permitted to look at. Three

210
00:12:12,039 --> 00:12:14,639
messages had slid out of the pneumatic tube while Winston

211
00:12:14,759 --> 00:12:17,320
was working, but they were simple matters, and he had

212
00:12:17,320 --> 00:12:20,320
disposed of them before the two minutes hate interrupted him.

213
00:12:20,879 --> 00:12:23,200
When the hate was over, he returned to his cubicle,

214
00:12:23,639 --> 00:12:26,320
took the New Speak dictionary from the shelf, pushed the

215
00:12:26,360 --> 00:12:29,840
Speak right to one side, cleaned his spectacles, and settled

216
00:12:29,879 --> 00:12:33,639
down to his main job of the morning. Winston's greatest

217
00:12:33,639 --> 00:12:36,200
pleasure in life was in his work. Most of it

218
00:12:36,279 --> 00:12:38,519
was a tedious routine, but included in it there were

219
00:12:38,519 --> 00:12:41,720
also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose

220
00:12:41,759 --> 00:12:44,360
yourself in them, as in the depths of a mathematical problem,

221
00:12:44,919 --> 00:12:47,360
delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to

222
00:12:47,399 --> 00:12:49,879
guide you except your knowledge of the principles of INGSOK

223
00:12:50,279 --> 00:12:52,519
and your estimate of what the party wanted you to say.

224
00:12:53,679 --> 00:12:56,679
Winston was good at this kind of thing. On occasion

225
00:12:56,679 --> 00:12:59,480
he had even been entrusted with the rectification of the Times,

226
00:12:59,559 --> 00:13:02,519
leading our articles, which were written entirely in New Speak.

227
00:13:03,360 --> 00:13:05,919
He unrolled the message that he had set aside earlier.

228
00:13:06,399 --> 00:13:10,720
It ran Times three twelve eighty three, reporting b B

229
00:13:10,919 --> 00:13:14,879
day order double plus angood ref's n persons rewrite full

230
00:13:14,960 --> 00:13:20,240
wise up sub anti filing. In Old Speak or Standard English,

231
00:13:20,279 --> 00:13:23,559
this might be rendered the reporting of Big Brother's Order

232
00:13:23,559 --> 00:13:25,799
for the day. In the Times of December the third

233
00:13:25,879 --> 00:13:30,000
nineteen eighty three is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to

234
00:13:30,039 --> 00:13:33,480
non existent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your

235
00:13:33,519 --> 00:13:38,000
draft to higher authority before filing. Winston read through the

236
00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:41,440
offending article. Big Brother's Order for the day, it seemed

237
00:13:41,480 --> 00:13:43,720
had been chiefly devoted to praising the work of an

238
00:13:43,799 --> 00:13:47,639
organization known as f f c C, which supplied cigarettes

239
00:13:47,639 --> 00:13:50,240
and other comforts to the sailors in the Floating Fortresses.

240
00:13:51,480 --> 00:13:54,759
A certain Comrade Withers, a prominent member of the Inner Party,

241
00:13:55,039 --> 00:13:57,759
had been singled out for special mention and awarded a

242
00:13:57,799 --> 00:14:03,519
decoration the Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second Class. Three months later,

243
00:14:03,639 --> 00:14:05,879
f f c C had suddenly been dissolved, with no

244
00:14:06,000 --> 00:14:09,559
reasons given. One could assume that Withers and his associates

245
00:14:09,559 --> 00:14:11,919
were now in disgrace, but there had been no report

246
00:14:11,919 --> 00:14:13,840
of the matter in the press or on the telescreen.

247
00:14:14,799 --> 00:14:17,320
That was to be expected, since it was unusual for

248
00:14:17,360 --> 00:14:20,519
political offenders to be put on trial or even publicly denounced.

249
00:14:21,519 --> 00:14:24,840
The Great Purgers involving thousands of people with public trials

250
00:14:24,840 --> 00:14:27,799
of traitors and thought criminals who made abject confession of

251
00:14:27,840 --> 00:14:31,600
their crimes and were afterwards executed were special show pieces,

252
00:14:31,639 --> 00:14:34,320
not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years.

253
00:14:35,120 --> 00:14:37,960
More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the

254
00:14:37,960 --> 00:14:42,000
party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One

255
00:14:42,039 --> 00:14:44,200
never had the smallest clue as to what had happened

256
00:14:44,200 --> 00:14:47,279
to them. In some cases, they might not even be dead.

257
00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:51,879
Perhaps thirty people personally known to Winston, not counting his parents,

258
00:14:52,120 --> 00:14:56,919
had disappeared at one time or another. Winston stroked his

259
00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:00,279
nose gently with a paper clip in the cubicle cross

260
00:15:00,279 --> 00:15:03,320
the way. Comrade Tillotson was still crouching secretively over his

261
00:15:03,399 --> 00:15:06,600
speak right, he raised his head for a moment again

262
00:15:06,639 --> 00:15:11,039
the hostile spectacle flash. Winston wondered whether Comrade Tillotson was

263
00:15:11,039 --> 00:15:14,639
engaged on the same job as himself. It was perfectly possible.

264
00:15:15,320 --> 00:15:17,559
So tricky a piece of work would never be entrusted

265
00:15:17,600 --> 00:15:20,240
to a single person. On the other hand, to turn

266
00:15:20,240 --> 00:15:22,399
it over to a committee would be to admit openly

267
00:15:22,559 --> 00:15:26,360
that an act of fabrication was taking place. Very likely,

268
00:15:26,399 --> 00:15:28,440
as many as a dozen people were now working away

269
00:15:28,440 --> 00:15:31,120
on rival versions of what Big Brother had actually said,

270
00:15:31,840 --> 00:15:34,840
and presently some master brain in the inner party would

271
00:15:34,879 --> 00:15:38,039
select this version or that would re edit it and

272
00:15:38,080 --> 00:15:41,159
set in motion the complex processes of cross referencing that

273
00:15:41,200 --> 00:15:44,399
would be required, and then the chosen lie would pass

274
00:15:44,399 --> 00:15:49,039
into the permanent records and become truth. Winston did not

275
00:15:49,240 --> 00:15:52,519
know why Withers had been disgraced. Perhaps it was for

276
00:15:52,559 --> 00:15:56,480
corruption or incompetence. Perhaps Big Brother was merely getting rid

277
00:15:56,519 --> 00:15:59,960
of a too popular subordinate. Perhaps Withers or someone close

278
00:16:00,080 --> 00:16:03,840
to him had been suspected of heretical tendencies. Or perhaps,

279
00:16:03,879 --> 00:16:06,559
what was likeliest of all, the thing had simply happened

280
00:16:06,559 --> 00:16:09,480
because purges and vaporizations were a necessary part of the

281
00:16:09,519 --> 00:16:13,080
mechanics of government. The only real clue lay in the

282
00:16:13,120 --> 00:16:17,080
words ref's on persons, which indicated that Withers was already dead.

283
00:16:18,559 --> 00:16:21,000
You could not invariably assume this to be the case

284
00:16:21,039 --> 00:16:24,480
when people were arrested. Sometimes they were released and allowed

285
00:16:24,519 --> 00:16:26,360
to remain at liberty for as much as a year

286
00:16:26,480 --> 00:16:30,679
or two years before being executed. Very occasionally, some person

287
00:16:30,720 --> 00:16:33,480
whom you had believed dead long since would make a

288
00:16:33,480 --> 00:16:36,720
ghostly reappearance at some public trial, where he would implicate

289
00:16:36,840 --> 00:16:42,919
hundreds of others by his testimony before vanishing. This time forever. Withers, however,

290
00:16:43,039 --> 00:16:46,440
was already an unperson. He did not exist, he had

291
00:16:46,480 --> 00:16:49,799
never existed. Winston decided that it would not be enough

292
00:16:49,840 --> 00:16:53,080
simply to reverse the tendency of Big Brother's speech. It

293
00:16:53,120 --> 00:16:55,639
was better to make it deal with something totally unconnected

294
00:16:55,679 --> 00:16:59,799
with its original subject. He might turn the speech into

295
00:16:59,799 --> 00:17:03,159
the usual denunciation of traitors and thought criminals, but that

296
00:17:03,279 --> 00:17:05,799
was a little too obvious, while to invent a victory

297
00:17:05,799 --> 00:17:08,680
at the front or some triumph of overproduction in the

298
00:17:08,759 --> 00:17:12,200
ninth three year Plan might complicate the records too much.

299
00:17:13,519 --> 00:17:16,960
What was needed was a piece of pure fantasy. Suddenly

300
00:17:17,000 --> 00:17:19,480
there sprang into his mind, ready made as it were,

301
00:17:19,720 --> 00:17:22,599
the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently

302
00:17:22,640 --> 00:17:27,000
died in battle in heroic circumstances. There were occasions when

303
00:17:27,039 --> 00:17:29,559
Big Brother devoted his order for the day to commemorating

304
00:17:29,599 --> 00:17:32,759
some humble rank and file party member whose life and

305
00:17:32,880 --> 00:17:35,279
death he held up as an example worthy to be followed.

306
00:17:36,160 --> 00:17:39,759
To day he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true

307
00:17:39,759 --> 00:17:42,480
that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but

308
00:17:42,599 --> 00:17:44,480
a few lines of print and a couple of faked

309
00:17:44,480 --> 00:17:49,279
photographs would soon bring him into existence. Winston thought for

310
00:17:49,319 --> 00:17:52,039
a moment, then pulled the speak right towards him and

311
00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:55,559
began dictating in big brother's familiar style, a style at

312
00:17:55,599 --> 00:17:58,319
once military and pedantic, and because of a trick of

313
00:17:58,359 --> 00:18:02,000
asking questions and then promptly answer answering them, what lessons

314
00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:05,279
do we learn from this fact? Comrades the lesson which

315
00:18:05,319 --> 00:18:08,079
is also one of the fundamental principles of ingsock, that

316
00:18:08,680 --> 00:18:13,440
et cetera, et cetera easy to imitate. At the age

317
00:18:13,440 --> 00:18:16,440
of three, Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum,

318
00:18:16,640 --> 00:18:20,680
a submachine gun, and a model helicopter. At six, a

319
00:18:20,759 --> 00:18:23,680
year early by a special relaxation of the rules, he

320
00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:26,160
had joined the Spies. At nine, he had been a

321
00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:29,160
troop leader. At eleven, he had denounced his uncle to

322
00:18:29,200 --> 00:18:32,240
the thought Police after overhearing a conversation which appeared to

323
00:18:32,319 --> 00:18:36,079
him to have criminal tendencies. At seventeen he had been

324
00:18:36,119 --> 00:18:40,279
a district organizer of the Junior Antisex League. At nineteen

325
00:18:40,359 --> 00:18:42,759
he had designed a hand grenade which had been adopted

326
00:18:42,759 --> 00:18:45,440
by the Ministry of Peace, and which at its first

327
00:18:45,599 --> 00:18:49,039
trial had killed thirty one Eurasian prisoners in one burst.

328
00:18:49,960 --> 00:18:53,279
At twenty three, he had perished in action pursued by

329
00:18:53,359 --> 00:18:55,759
enemy jet planes while flying over the Indian Ocean with

330
00:18:55,839 --> 00:18:59,279
important despatches. He had weighted his body with his machine

331
00:18:59,319 --> 00:19:03,000
gun and leapt out of the helicopter into deep water despatches.

332
00:19:03,039 --> 00:19:05,640
And all an end, said a big brother, which it

333
00:19:05,720 --> 00:19:09,799
was impossible to contemplate without feelings of envy. Big brother

334
00:19:09,839 --> 00:19:12,720
added a few remarks on the purity and singlemindedness of

335
00:19:12,720 --> 00:19:16,279
Comrade Ogilvy's life. He was a total abstainer and a

336
00:19:16,319 --> 00:19:19,440
non smoker, had no recreations except a daily hour in

337
00:19:19,480 --> 00:19:23,160
the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy, believing

338
00:19:23,200 --> 00:19:25,480
marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible

339
00:19:25,519 --> 00:19:27,599
with the twenty four hour a day devotion to duty.

340
00:19:28,960 --> 00:19:32,079
He had no subjects of conversation except the principles of ingsock,

341
00:19:32,720 --> 00:19:35,319
and no aim in life except the defeat of the

342
00:19:35,319 --> 00:19:39,240
Eurasian enemy and the hunting down of spies, saboteurs, thought criminals,

343
00:19:39,279 --> 00:19:44,559
and traitors generally. Winston debated with himself whether to award

344
00:19:44,599 --> 00:19:48,000
Comrade Ogilvy the Order of Conspicuous Merit. In the end

345
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:51,200
he decided against it because of the unnecessary cross referencing

346
00:19:51,240 --> 00:19:55,480
that it would entail once again. He glanced at his

347
00:19:55,599 --> 00:19:58,920
rival in the opposite cubicle. Something seemed to tell him

348
00:19:58,960 --> 00:20:01,039
with certainty that till And was busy on the same

349
00:20:01,119 --> 00:20:04,240
job as himself. There was no way of knowing whose

350
00:20:04,279 --> 00:20:07,000
job would finally be adopted, but he felt a profound

351
00:20:07,039 --> 00:20:11,640
conviction that it would be his own. Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined

352
00:20:11,640 --> 00:20:14,880
an hour ago, was now a fact. It struck him

353
00:20:14,880 --> 00:20:17,119
as curious that you could create dead men but not

354
00:20:17,240 --> 00:20:21,240
living ones. Comrade Ogilvie, who had never existed in the present,

355
00:20:21,599 --> 00:20:24,359
now existed in the past, and when once the act

356
00:20:24,359 --> 00:20:27,599
of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically

357
00:20:27,759 --> 00:20:31,920
and upon the same evidence as charlamagnu or Julius Caesar.

358
00:20:34,680 --> 00:20:35,680
End of Section four