Speaker 1: Section one of nineteen eighty four by George Orwell. This
Speaker 1: legamous recording may be distributed and adapted freely for any purpose.
Speaker 1: Part one, Chapter one. It was a bright, cold day
Speaker 1: in April, and the clocks were striking. Thirteen Winston Smith,
Speaker 1: his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to
Speaker 1: escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors
Speaker 1: of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a
Speaker 1: swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. The
Speaker 1: hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At
Speaker 1: one end of it, a colored poster too large for
Speaker 1: indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted
Speaker 1: simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide, the
Speaker 1: face of a man about forty five, with a heavy
Speaker 1: black mustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs.
Speaker 1: It was no use trying the lift. Even at the
Speaker 1: best of times, it was seldom working, and at present
Speaker 1: the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It
Speaker 1: was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week.
Speaker 1: The flat was seven flights up and Winston, who was
Speaker 1: thirty nine and had a varicus ulcer above his right
Speaker 1: ankle went slowly, resting several times on the way, on
Speaker 1: each landing opposite the lift shaft. The poster with the
Speaker 1: enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of
Speaker 1: those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow
Speaker 1: you about when you move. Big Brother is watching you.
Speaker 1: The caption beneath it ran. Inside the flat, a fruity
Speaker 1: voice was reading out a list of figures which had
Speaker 1: something to do with the production of pig iron. The
Speaker 1: voice came from an oblong metal pluck like a dulled mirror,
Speaker 1: which formed part of the surface of the right hand wall.
Speaker 1: Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though
Speaker 1: the words were still distinguishable. The instrument, the telescreen it
Speaker 1: was called, could be dimmed, but there was no way
Speaker 1: of shutting it off completely. He moved over to the window,
Speaker 1: a smallish, frail figure, the meagerness of his body merely
Speaker 1: emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of
Speaker 1: the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine,
Speaker 1: his skin roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades,
Speaker 1: and the cold of the winter that had just ended outside.
Speaker 1: Even through the shut windowpane, the world looked cold down
Speaker 1: in the street. Little eddies of wind were whirling dust
Speaker 1: and torn paper into spirals, And though the sun was
Speaker 1: shining and the sky are harsh blue, there seemed to
Speaker 1: be no color in anything except the posters that were
Speaker 1: plastered everywhere. The black mustachioed face gazed down from every
Speaker 1: commanding corner. There was one on the house front immediately opposite.
Speaker 1: Big brother is watching you, the caption said, while the
Speaker 1: dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level,
Speaker 1: another poster torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind,
Speaker 1: alternately covering and uncovering the single word inksock. In the
Speaker 1: far distance, a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered
Speaker 1: for an instant like a blue bottle, and darted away
Speaker 1: again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol
Speaker 1: snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however,
Speaker 1: Only the thought police mattered. Behind Winston's back, the voice
Speaker 1: from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig Iron
Speaker 1: and the over fulfillment of the ninth three year plan.
Speaker 1: The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously, any sound that Winston
Speaker 1: made above the level of a very low whisper would
Speaker 1: be picked up by it. Moreover, so long as he
Speaker 1: remained within the field of vision which the metal plak commanded,
Speaker 1: he could be seen as well as heard. There was,
Speaker 1: of course, no way of knowing whether you were being
Speaker 1: watched at any given moment. How often or on what
Speaker 1: system the thought police plugged in on any individual wire
Speaker 1: was guess work. It was even conceivable that they watched
Speaker 1: everybody all the time. But at any rate they could
Speaker 1: plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had
Speaker 1: to live, did live from habit that became instinct, in
Speaker 1: the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and,
Speaker 1: except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. Winston kept his back
Speaker 1: turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he
Speaker 1: well knew, even a back can be revealing a kilometer away.
Speaker 1: The Ministry of Truth, his place of work, towered vast
Speaker 1: and white above the grimy landscape. This, he thought, with
Speaker 1: a sort of vague distaste. This was London, chief city
Speaker 1: of airstrip I, itself the third most populous of the
Speaker 1: provinces of Oceania. He tried to squeeze out some childhood
Speaker 1: memory that should tell him whether London had always been
Speaker 1: quite like this? Were there always these vistas of rotting
Speaker 1: nineteenth century houses, their sides shored up with the bulks
Speaker 1: of timber, their windows patched with cardboard, and their roofs
Speaker 1: with corrugated iron, Their crazy garden walls sagging in all directions.
Speaker 1: And the bombed sights where the plaster dust swirled in
Speaker 1: the and the willow herbs straggled over the heaps of rubble,
Speaker 1: and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch,
Speaker 1: and there had sprung up sordid colonies of wooden dwellings
Speaker 1: like chicken houses. But it was no use. He could
Speaker 1: not remember. Nothing remained of his childhood except a series
Speaker 1: of bright lit tableaus, occurring against no background, and mostly unintelligible.
Speaker 1: The Ministry of truth mini true in new Speak. New
Speaker 1: Speak was the official language of Oceania. For an account
Speaker 1: of its structure and etymology, see appendix. Was startlingly different
Speaker 1: from any other object in sight. It was an enormous,
Speaker 1: pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up terrace after
Speaker 1: terrace three hundred meters into the air. From where Winston stood,
Speaker 1: it was just possible to read, picked out on its
Speaker 1: white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the party.
Speaker 1: War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength. The
Speaker 1: Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms
Speaker 1: above ground level and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London.
Speaker 1: There were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size.
Speaker 1: So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from
Speaker 1: the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four
Speaker 1: of them simultaneously. They were the homes of the four
Speaker 1: ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided.
Speaker 1: The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education,
Speaker 1: and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned
Speaker 1: itself with war, The Ministry of Love, which maintained law
Speaker 1: and order, and the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible
Speaker 1: for economic affairs. Their names in news speak, Mini True,
Speaker 1: Mini packs, Mini Love, and mini plenty. The Ministry of
Speaker 1: Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows
Speaker 1: in it at all. Winston had never been inside the
Speaker 1: Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometer of it.
Speaker 1: It was a place impossible to enter except on official business,
Speaker 1: and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed
Speaker 1: wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine gun nests. Even
Speaker 1: the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed
Speaker 1: by guerrilla faced guards in black uniforms armed with jointed truncheons.
Speaker 1: Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into
Speaker 1: the expression of quiet optimism, which it was advisable to
Speaker 1: wear when facing the telescreen. He crossed the room into
Speaker 1: the tiny kitchen. By leaving the ministry at this time
Speaker 1: of day, he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen,
Speaker 1: and he was aware that there was no food in
Speaker 1: the kitchen except a hunk of dark colored bread, which
Speaker 1: had got to be saved for to morrow's breakfast. He
Speaker 1: took down from the shelf a bottle of colorless liquid
Speaker 1: with a plain white label marked Victory Gin. It gave
Speaker 1: off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice spirit.
Speaker 1: Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock,
Speaker 1: and gulped it down like a dose of medicine. Instantly
Speaker 1: his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of
Speaker 1: his eyes. The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover,
Speaker 1: in swallowing it, one had the sensation of being hit
Speaker 1: on the back of the head with a rubber club.
Speaker 1: The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down,
Speaker 1: and the world began to look more cheerful. He took
Speaker 1: a cigarette from a crumpled packet marked Victory Cigarettes and
Speaker 1: incautiously held it upright, whereupon the tobacco fell out on
Speaker 1: to the floor. With the next he was more successful.
Speaker 1: He went back to the living room and sat down
Speaker 1: at a small table that stood to the left of
Speaker 1: the telescreen. From the table drawer he took out a
Speaker 1: pen holder, a bottle of ink, and a thick, quarto
Speaker 1: sized black book with a red back and a marbled cover.
Speaker 1: For some reason, the telescreen in the living room was
Speaker 1: in an unusual position. Instead of being placed as was normal,
Speaker 1: in the end wall, where it could command the whole room,
Speaker 1: it was in the longer wall, opposite the window. To
Speaker 1: one side of it, there was a shallow alcove in
Speaker 1: which Winston was now sitting, and which when the flats
Speaker 1: were built had probably been intended to hold book shelves.
Speaker 1: By sitting in the alcove and keeping well back, Winston
Speaker 1: was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen.
Speaker 1: So far as sight went, he could be heard, of course,
Speaker 1: but so long as he stayed in his present position,
Speaker 1: he could not be seen. It was partly the unusual
Speaker 1: geography of the room that had suggested to him the
Speaker 1: thing that he was now about to do, But it
Speaker 1: had also been suggested by the book that he had
Speaker 1: just taken out of the drawer. It was a peculiarly
Speaker 1: beautiful book. Its smooth, creamy paper, a little yellowed by age,
Speaker 1: was of a kind that had not been manufactured for
Speaker 1: at least forty years past. He could guess, however, that
Speaker 1: the book was much older than that. He had seen
Speaker 1: it lying in the window of a frowsy little junk
Speaker 1: shop in a slummy quarter of the town. Just what
Speaker 1: quarter he did not now remember, and had been stricken
Speaker 1: immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it. Party members
Speaker 1: were supposed not to go into ordinary shops dealing on
Speaker 1: the free market, it was called, but the rule was
Speaker 1: not strictly kept because there were various things such as
Speaker 1: shoelaces and razor blades, which it was impossible to get
Speaker 1: hold of in any other way. He had given a
Speaker 1: quick glance up and down the street, and then had
Speaker 1: slipped inside and bought the book for two dollars fifty.
Speaker 1: At the time he was not conscious of wanting it
Speaker 1: for any particular purpose. He had carried it guiltily home
Speaker 1: in his briefcase, even with nothing written in it. It
Speaker 1: was a compromising possession. The thing that he was about
Speaker 1: to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal.
Speaker 1: Nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws,
Speaker 1: but if detected, it was reasonably certain that it would
Speaker 1: be punished by death or at least by twenty five
Speaker 1: years in a forced labor camp. Winston fitted a neb
Speaker 1: into the pen holder and sucked it to get the
Speaker 1: grease off. The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used
Speaker 1: even for signatures, and he had procured one furtively and
Speaker 1: with some difficulty, simply because of a feeling that the beautiful,
Speaker 1: creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real
Speaker 1: nib instead of being scratched with an ink pencil. Actually,
Speaker 1: he was not used to writing by hand, apart from
Speaker 1: very short notes. It was usual to dictate everything into
Speaker 1: the speak write, which was of course impossible for his
Speaker 1: present purpose. He dipped the pen into the ink and
Speaker 1: then faltered for just a second. A tremor had gone
Speaker 1: through his bowels. To mark the paper was the decisive act.
Speaker 1: In small, clumsy letters, he wrote April fourth, nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended
Speaker 1: upon him. To begin with, he did not know with
Speaker 1: any certainty that this was nineteen eighty four. It must
Speaker 1: be round about that date, since he was fairly sure
Speaker 1: that his age was thirty nine, and he believed that
Speaker 1: he had been born in nineteen forty four or nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five. But it was never possible nowadays to pin
Speaker 1: down any date within a year or two. For whom
Speaker 1: it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing
Speaker 1: this diary for the future, for the unborn. His mind
Speaker 1: hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page,
Speaker 1: and then fetched up with a bump against the new
Speaker 1: speak word double think. For the first time, the magnitude
Speaker 1: of what he had undertaken came home to him. How
Speaker 1: could you communicate with the future? It was of its
Speaker 1: nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in
Speaker 1: which case it would not listen to him, or it
Speaker 1: would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.
Speaker 1: For some time, he sat gazing stupidly at the paper.
Speaker 1: The telescreen had changed over to strident military music. It
Speaker 1: was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost
Speaker 1: the power of expressing himself, but even to have forgotten
Speaker 1: what it was that he had originally intended to say.
Speaker 1: For weeks past, he had been making ready for this moment,
Speaker 1: and it had never crossed his mind that anything would
Speaker 1: be needed except courage. The actual writing would be easy.
Speaker 1: All he had to do was to transfer to paper
Speaker 1: the interminable, restless monologue that had been running inside his
Speaker 1: head literally for years. At this moment, however, even the
Speaker 1: monolog had dried up. Moreover, his varicus ulcer had begun
Speaker 1: itching unbearably. He dared not scratch it, because if he
Speaker 1: did so, it always became inflamed. The seconds were ticking by.
Speaker 1: He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the
Speaker 1: page in front of him, the itching of the skin
Speaker 1: above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a
Speaker 1: slight booziness caused by the gin. Suddenly he began writing
Speaker 1: in sheer panic, only imperfectly aware of what he was
Speaker 1: setting down. His small but childish handwriting straggled up and
Speaker 1: down the page, shedding first its capital letters and finally
Speaker 1: even its full stops. April fourth, nineteen eighty four, Last
Speaker 1: Night to the flicks, all war films. One very good
Speaker 1: one of a ship full of refugees being bombed somewhere
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of a great,
Speaker 1: huge fat man trying to swim away, with the helicopter
Speaker 1: after him. First you saw him wallowing along in the
Speaker 1: water like a paupoise. Then you saw him through the
Speaker 1: helicopter's gun sights. Then he was full of holes, and
Speaker 1: the sea round him turned pink, and he sank as suddenly,
Speaker 1: as though the holes had let in the water. Audience
Speaker 1: shouting with laughter when he sank. Then you saw a
Speaker 1: lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it.
Speaker 1: There was a middle aged woman, might have been a jewess,
Speaker 1: sitting up in the bow with a little boy about
Speaker 1: three years old in her arms. Little boy screaming with
Speaker 1: fright and hiding his head between her breasts as if
Speaker 1: he was trying to burrow right into her, and the
Speaker 1: woman putting her arms round him and comforting, although she
Speaker 1: was blue with fright herself, all the time covering him
Speaker 1: up as much as possible, as if she thought her
Speaker 1: arms could keep the bullets off him. Then the helicopter
Speaker 1: planted a twenty kilo bomb in among them, terrific flash,
Speaker 1: and the boat went all to matchwood. Then there was
Speaker 1: a wonderful shot of a child's arm going up, up,
Speaker 1: up right up into the air. A helicopter with a
Speaker 1: camera in its nose must have followed it up, and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of applause from the party seats.
Speaker 1: But a woman down in the prole part of the
Speaker 1: house suddenly started kicking up a fuss and shouting. They
Speaker 1: didn't order have showed it, not in front of the kids.
Speaker 1: They didn't. It ain't right, not in front of kids.
Speaker 1: It ain't until the police turned her, turned her out.
Speaker 1: I don't suppose anything happened to her. Nobody cares what
Speaker 1: the prolls say, typical prole reaction. They never Winston stopped writing,
Speaker 1: partly because he was suffering from cramp. He did not
Speaker 1: know what had made him pour out this stream of rubbish.
Speaker 1: But the curious thing was that while he was doing so,
Speaker 1: a totally different memory had clarified itself in his mind,
Speaker 1: to the point where he almost felt equal to writing
Speaker 1: it down. It was he now realized, because of this
Speaker 1: other incident, that he had suddenly decided to come home
Speaker 1: and begin the diary to day. It had happened that
Speaker 1: morning at the Ministry. If anything so nebulous could be
Speaker 1: said to happen, it was nearly eleven hundred and in
Speaker 1: the records department, where Winston worked. They were dragging the
Speaker 1: chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the
Speaker 1: center of the hall, opposite the big telescreen, in preparation
Speaker 1: for the two minutes hate. Winston was just taking his
Speaker 1: place in one of the middle rows when two people
Speaker 1: whom he knew by sight but had never spoken to,
Speaker 1: came unexpectedly into the room. One of them was a
Speaker 1: girl whom he often passed in the corridors. He did
Speaker 1: not know her name, but he knew that she worked
Speaker 1: in the fiction department, presumably since he had sometimes seen
Speaker 1: her with oily hands and carrying a spanner. She had
Speaker 1: some mechanical job on one of the novel writing machines.
Speaker 1: She was a bold looking girl of about twenty seven,
Speaker 1: with thick hair, a freckled face, and swift athletic movements.
Speaker 1: A narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Antisex League,
Speaker 1: was wound several times round the waist of her overalls,
Speaker 1: just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips.
Speaker 1: Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of
Speaker 1: seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of hockey fields and cold baths and community
Speaker 1: hikes and general clean mindedness which she managed to carry
Speaker 1: about with her. He disliked nearly all women, and especially
Speaker 1: the young and pretty ones. It was always the women,
Speaker 1: and above all the young ones who were the most
Speaker 1: bigoted adherents of the party, the swallowers of slogans, the
Speaker 1: amateur's spies, and noses out of unorthodoxy. But this particular
Speaker 1: girl gave him the impression of being more dangerous than most. Once,
Speaker 1: when they passed in the corridor, she gave him a quick,
Speaker 1: sidelong glance which seemed to pierce right into him, and
Speaker 1: for a moment had filled him with black terror. The
Speaker 1: idea had even crossed his mind that she might be
Speaker 1: an agent of the thought police. That it was true
Speaker 1: was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar
Speaker 1: uneasiness which had fear mixed up in it, as well
Speaker 1: as hostility, whenever she was anywhere near him. The other
Speaker 1: person was a man named O'Brien, a member of the
Speaker 1: Inner Party and holder of some post so important and
Speaker 1: remote that Winston had only a dim idea of its nature.
Speaker 1: A momentary hush passed over the group of people round
Speaker 1: the chairs as they saw the black overalls of an
Speaker 1: Inner Party member approaching. O'Brien was a large, burly man,
Speaker 1: with the other a thick neck and a coarse, humorous,
Speaker 1: brutal face. In spite of his formidable appearance, he had
Speaker 1: a certain charm of manner. He had a trick of
Speaker 1: resettling his spectacles on his nose, which was curiously disarming,
Speaker 1: in some indefinable way, curiously civilized. It was a gesture
Speaker 1: of which, if any one had still thought in such terms,
Speaker 1: might have recalled an eighteenth century nobleman offering his snuff box.
Speaker 1: Winston had seen O'Brien perhaps a dozen times in almost
Speaker 1: as many years. He felt deeply drawn to him, and
Speaker 1: not solely because he was intrigued by the contrast between
Speaker 1: O'Brien's urbane manner and his prize fighters physique. Much more,
Speaker 1: it was because of a secretly held belief, or perhaps
Speaker 1: not even a belief, merely a hope that O'Brien's political
Speaker 1: orthodoxy was not perfect. Something in his face suggested it irresistibly.
Speaker 1: And again, perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was
Speaker 1: written in his face, but simply intelligence. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: he had the appearance of being a person that you
Speaker 1: could talk to if some how you could cheat the
Speaker 1: telescreen and get him alone. Winston had never made the
Speaker 1: smallest effort to verify this guess. Indeed, there was no
Speaker 1: way of doing so. At this moment, O'Brien glanced at
Speaker 1: his wristwatch, saw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and
Speaker 1: evidently decided to stay in the record's department until the
Speaker 1: two minutes hate was over. He took a chair in
Speaker 1: the same row as Winston. A couple of places away.
Speaker 1: A small, sandy haired woman who worked in the next
Speaker 1: cubicle to Winston was between them. The girl with dark
Speaker 1: hair was sitting immediately behind. The next moment, a hideous
Speaker 1: grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil,
Speaker 1: burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room.
Speaker 1: It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge
Speaker 1: and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck.
Speaker 1: The hate had started, as usual. The face of Emmanuel Goldstein,
Speaker 1: the enemy of the People, had flashed onto the screen.
Speaker 1: There were hisses here and there among the audience. The
Speaker 1: little sandy haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear
Speaker 1: and discussed Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who, once
Speaker 1: long ago, how long ago nobody quite remembered, had been
Speaker 1: one of the leading figures of the party, almost on
Speaker 1: a level with Big Brother himself, and then had engaged
Speaker 1: in counter revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death, and
Speaker 1: had mysteriously escaped and disappeared. The programs of the Two
Speaker 1: Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was
Speaker 1: none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He
Speaker 1: was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the party's purity.
Speaker 1: All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies,
Speaker 1: deviations sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other,
Speaker 1: he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies, perhaps somewhere
Speaker 1: beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign pay masters.
Speaker 1: Perhaps even so, it was occasionally rumored in some hiding
Speaker 1: place in Oceania itself. Winston's diaphragm was constricted. He could
Speaker 1: never see the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture
Speaker 1: of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face, with a great,
Speaker 1: fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small, goaty beard,
Speaker 1: a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a
Speaker 1: kind of senile silliness in the long, thin nose, near
Speaker 1: the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched.
Speaker 1: It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too,
Speaker 1: had a sheeplike quality. Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous
Speaker 1: attack upon the doctrines of the Party, an attack so
Speaker 1: exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able
Speaker 1: to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to
Speaker 1: fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people less
Speaker 1: level headed than oneself might be taken in by it.
Speaker 1: He was abusing Big Brother. He was denouncing the dictatorship
Speaker 1: of the Party. He was demanding the immediate conclusion of
Speaker 1: peace with Eurasia. He was advocating freedom of speech, freedom
Speaker 1: of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought. He
Speaker 1: was crying hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed. And
Speaker 1: all this in rapid policy labic speech, which was a
Speaker 1: sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators
Speaker 1: of the party, and even contained new speak words, more
Speaker 1: new speak words, indeed, than any party member would normally
Speaker 1: use in real life. And all the while, lest one
Speaker 1: should be in any doubt as to the reality which
Speaker 1: Goldstein's specious clap trap covered. Behind his head on the telescreen,
Speaker 1: there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army, row
Speaker 1: after row of solid looking men with expressionless asiatic faces,
Speaker 1: who swam up to the surface of the screen and
Speaker 1: vanished to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull,
Speaker 1: rhythmic tramp of the soldier's boots formed the background to
Speaker 1: Goldstein's bleating voice. Before the hate had proceeded for thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the
Speaker 1: people in the room. The self satisfied sheeplike face on
Speaker 1: the screen and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army
Speaker 1: behind it were too much to be borne. Besides, the
Speaker 1: sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and
Speaker 1: anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant
Speaker 1: than either Eurasia or East Asia, since when Oceana was
Speaker 1: at war with one of these powers, it was generally
Speaker 1: at peace with the other. But what was strange was
Speaker 1: that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although
Speaker 1: every day, at the thousand times a day, on platforms,
Speaker 1: on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed,
Speaker 1: held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish
Speaker 1: that they were. In spite of all this, his influence
Speaker 1: never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes
Speaker 1: waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed
Speaker 1: when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not
Speaker 1: unmasked by the thought police. He was the commander of
Speaker 1: a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated
Speaker 1: to the overthrow of the state. The Brotherhood, its name
Speaker 1: was supposed to be. There were also whispered stories of
Speaker 1: a terrible book, a compendium of all the heresies of
Speaker 1: which Goldstein was the author, and which circulated clandestineley here
Speaker 1: and there. It was a book without a title. People
Speaker 1: referred to it, if at all, simply as the Book,
Speaker 1: but one knew of such things only through vague rumors.
Speaker 1: Neither the Brotherhood nor the book was the subject that
Speaker 1: any ordinary party member would mention if there was a
Speaker 1: way of avoiding it. In its second minute, the hate
Speaker 1: rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down
Speaker 1: in their places and shouting at the tops of their
Speaker 1: voices in an effort to drown the maddening, bleating voice
Speaker 1: that came from the screen. The little sandy haired woman
Speaker 1: had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and
Speaker 1: shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy
Speaker 1: face was flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair,
Speaker 1: his powerful chest swelling and quivering, as though he were
Speaker 1: standing up to the assault of a wave. The dark
Speaker 1: haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out swine, swine, swine,
Speaker 1: and suddenly she picked up a heavy news speak dictionary
Speaker 1: and flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein's nose
Speaker 1: and bounced off. The voice continued inexorably in a loose as.
Speaker 1: At a moment, Winston found that he was shouting with
Speaker 1: the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung
Speaker 1: of his chair. The horrible thing about the two minutes
Speaker 1: hate was not that one was obliged to act apart,
Speaker 1: but on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid
Speaker 1: joining in. Within thirty seconds. Any pretense was always unnecessary.
Speaker 1: A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill,
Speaker 1: to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer,
Speaker 1: seemed to flow through the whole group of people like
Speaker 1: an electric current, turning one, even against one's will, into
Speaker 1: a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one
Speaker 1: felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched
Speaker 1: from one object to another, like the flame of a
Speaker 1: blow lamp. Thus, at one moment, Winston's hatred was not
Speaker 1: turned against Goldstein at all, but on the contrary, against
Speaker 1: big Brother, the party, and the thought police. And at
Speaker 1: such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided
Speaker 1: heretic on the screen, sole guardian of truth and sanity
Speaker 1: in a world of lies. And yet the very next instant,
Speaker 1: he was at one with the people about him, and
Speaker 1: all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to
Speaker 1: be true. At those moments, his secret loathing of Big
Speaker 1: Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother seemed to tower up,
Speaker 1: an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a rock against the
Speaker 1: hordes of Asia, and Goldstein, in spite of his isolation,
Speaker 1: his helplessness, and the doubts that hung about his very existence,
Speaker 1: seemed like some sinister enchanter, capable, by the mere power
Speaker 1: of his voice, of wrecking the structure of civilization. It
Speaker 1: was even possible, at moments to switch one's hatred this
Speaker 1: way or that by a voluntary act, suddenly, by the
Speaker 1: sort of violent effort with which one wrenches one's head
Speaker 1: away from the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded in
Speaker 1: transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to
Speaker 1: the dark haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed
Speaker 1: through his mind. He would flog her to death with
Speaker 1: a rubber truncheon he would tie her naked to a
Speaker 1: stake and shoot her full of arrows. Like Saint Sebastie.
Speaker 1: He would ravish her and cut her throat. At the
Speaker 1: moment of climax, better than before. Moreover, he realized why
Speaker 1: it was that he hated her. He hated her because
Speaker 1: she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted
Speaker 1: to go to bed with her and would never do so.
Speaker 1: Because round her sweet supple waist, which seemed to ask
Speaker 1: you to encircle it with your arm, there was only
Speaker 1: the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity. The hate
Speaker 1: rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become
Speaker 1: an actual sheep's fleet, and for an instant the face
Speaker 1: changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep face
Speaker 1: melted into the figure of an Eurasian soldier who seemed
Speaker 1: to be advancing, huge and terrible, his submachine gun roaring
Speaker 1: and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen,
Speaker 1: so that some of the people in the front row
Speaker 1: actually flinched backwards in their seats, But in the same moment,
Speaker 1: drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile
Speaker 1: figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black haired,
Speaker 1: black mustache, showed full of power and mysterious calm, and
Speaker 1: so vast that it almost filled up the screen. Nobody
Speaker 1: heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a
Speaker 1: few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are
Speaker 1: uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually, but
Speaker 1: restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the
Speaker 1: face of Big Brother faded away, and instead the three
Speaker 1: slogans of the party stood out in bold capitals. War
Speaker 1: is peace, freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength. But the
Speaker 1: face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds
Speaker 1: on the screen, as though the impact that it had
Speaker 1: made on everyone's eyeballs was too vivid to wear off. Immediately,
Speaker 1: the little sandy haired woman had flung herself forward over
Speaker 1: the back of the chair in front of her with
Speaker 1: a tremulous murmur that sounded like my savior. She extended
Speaker 1: her arms towards the screen. Then she buried her face
Speaker 1: in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering
Speaker 1: a prayer. At this moment, the entire group of people
Speaker 1: broke into a deep, slow rhythmical chant of B B
Speaker 1: B B over and over again, very slowly. With a
Speaker 1: long pause between the first B and the second, a heavy,
Speaker 1: murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which
Speaker 1: one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet and
Speaker 1: the throbbing of Tom Tom's For perhaps as much as
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, they kept it up. It was a refrain
Speaker 1: that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly
Speaker 1: it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and
Speaker 1: majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an
Speaker 1: act of self hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by
Speaker 1: means of rhythmic noise. Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold
Speaker 1: in the two minutes. Hate he could not help sharing
Speaker 1: in the general delirium, But this subhuman chanting of B
Speaker 1: B B B always filled him with horror. Of course,
Speaker 1: he chanted with the rest. It was impossible to do otherwise.
Speaker 1: To dissemble your feelings, to control your face, to do
Speaker 1: what every one else was doing, was an instinctive reaction.
Speaker 1: That there was a space of a couple of seconds
Speaker 1: during which the expression of his eyes might conceivably have
Speaker 1: betrayed him. And it was exactly at this moment that
Speaker 1: the significant thing happened, if indeed it did happen, Momentarily
Speaker 1: he caught O'Brien's eye. O'Brien had stood up, he had
Speaker 1: taken off his spectacles and was in the act of
Speaker 1: resettling them on his nose with his characteristic gesture. But
Speaker 1: there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met,
Speaker 1: and for as long as it took to happen, Winston knew, yes,
Speaker 1: he knew that O'Brien was thinking the same thing as himself.
Speaker 1: An unmistakable message had passed. It was as though their
Speaker 1: two minds had opened, and the thoughts were flowing from
Speaker 1: one end to the other through their eyes. I am
Speaker 1: with you, O'Brien, seemed to be saying to him. I
Speaker 1: know precisely what you were feeling. I know all about
Speaker 1: your contempt, your hatred, your disgust, but don't worry. I
Speaker 1: am on your side. And then the flash of intelligence
Speaker 1: was gone, and O'Brien's face was as inscrutable as if
Speaker 1: everybody else's. That was all, and he was already uncertain
Speaker 1: whether it had happened. Such incidents never had any sequel.
Speaker 1: All that they did was to keep alive in him
Speaker 1: the belief or hope that others beside himself were the
Speaker 1: enemies of the party. Perhaps the rumors of vast underground
Speaker 1: to conspiracies were true, after all, perhaps the Brotherhood really existed.
Speaker 1: It was impossible, in spite of the endless arrests and
Speaker 1: confessions and executions, to be sure that the Brotherhood was
Speaker 1: not simply a myth. Some days he believed in it,
Speaker 1: some days not. There was no evidence, only fleeting glimpses
Speaker 1: that might mean anything or nothing, snatches of overheard conversation,
Speaker 1: faint scribbles on lavatory walls. Once, even when two strangers
Speaker 1: met a small movement of the hand which had looked
Speaker 1: as though it might be a signal of recognition, it
Speaker 1: was all guesswork, very likely he had imagined everything. He
Speaker 1: had gone back to his cubicle without looking at O'Brien again.
Speaker 1: The idea of following up their momentary contact hardly crossed
Speaker 1: his mind. It would have been inconceivably dangerous, even if
Speaker 1: he had known how to set about doing it. For
Speaker 1: a second, two seconds they had exchanged an equivocal glance,
Speaker 1: and that was the end of the story. But even
Speaker 1: that was a memorable event in the locked loneliness in
Speaker 1: which one had to live. Winston roused himself and sat
Speaker 1: up straighter. He let out a belch. The gin was
Speaker 1: rising from his stomach. His eyes refocused on the page.
Speaker 1: He discovered that while he sat helplessly musing, he had
Speaker 1: also been writing, as though by automatic action, and it
Speaker 1: was no longer the same cramped, awkward handwriting as before.
Speaker 1: His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing
Speaker 1: in large, neat capitals, Down with big Brother, down with
Speaker 1: big Brother, Down with big Brother, Down with big Brother,
Speaker 1: Down with big Brother, over and over again, filling half
Speaker 1: a page. He could not help feeling a twinge of panic.
Speaker 1: It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words
Speaker 1: was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening
Speaker 1: the diary. But for a moment he was tempted to
Speaker 1: tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.
Speaker 1: He did not do so, however, because he knew that
Speaker 1: it was useless. Whether he wrote down with Big Brother
Speaker 1: or whether he refrained from writing it made no difference.
Speaker 1: Whether he went on with the diary or whether he
Speaker 1: did not go on with it made no difference. The
Speaker 1: thought police would get him just the same. He had committed,
Speaker 1: would still have committed even if he had never set
Speaker 1: pen to paper. The essential crime that contained all others
Speaker 1: in itself, thought crime, they called it. Thought crime was
Speaker 1: not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might
Speaker 1: dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner
Speaker 1: or later they were bound to get you. It was
Speaker 1: always at night. The arrests invariably happened at night. The
Speaker 1: sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder,
Speaker 1: the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard
Speaker 1: faces round the bed. In the vast majority of cases,
Speaker 1: there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People
Speaker 1: simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed
Speaker 1: from the registers. Every record of everything you had ever
Speaker 1: done was wiped out. Your one time existence was denied
Speaker 1: and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated, vaporized was the
Speaker 1: usual word for a moment he was seized by a
Speaker 1: kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried, untidy scrawl.
Speaker 1: They'll shoot me. I don't care. They'll shoot me in
Speaker 1: the back of the neck. I don't care. Down with
Speaker 1: big brother. They always shoot you in the back of
Speaker 1: the neck. I don't care down with big brother. He
Speaker 1: sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and
Speaker 1: laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently.
Speaker 1: There was a knocking at the door. All ready He
Speaker 1: sat as still as a mouse in the futile hope
Speaker 1: that whoever it was might go away after a single attempt.
Speaker 1: But no, the knocking was repeated. The worst thing of
Speaker 1: all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like
Speaker 1: a drum, but his face, from long habit was probably expressionless.
Speaker 1: He got up and moved heavily towards the door. End
Speaker 1: of Section one,