Speaker 1: Section five 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 five. In the low ceilinged canteen deep underground,
Speaker 1: the lunch que jerked slowly forward. The room was already
Speaker 1: very full and deafeningly noisy. From the grille at the counter,
Speaker 1: the steam of stew came pouring forth, with a sour
Speaker 1: metallic smell which did not quite overcome the fumes of
Speaker 1: victory gin. On the far side of the room there
Speaker 1: was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall,
Speaker 1: where gin could be bought at ten cents. The large nip.
Speaker 1: Just the man I was looking for, said a voice
Speaker 1: at Winston's back. He turned round. It was his friend, Sime,
Speaker 1: who worked in the research department. Perhaps friend was not
Speaker 1: exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays.
Speaker 1: You had comrades. But there were some comrades whose society
Speaker 1: was pleasanter than that of others. Sime was a philologist,
Speaker 1: a specialist in news speak. Indeed, he was one of
Speaker 1: the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the
Speaker 1: eleventh edition of the New Speak Dictionary. He was a
Speaker 1: tiny creature, smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large,
Speaker 1: protuberant eyes, at once mournful and derisive, which seemed to
Speaker 1: search your face closely while he was speaking to you.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you whether you'd got any razor blades,
Speaker 1: he said, not one, said Winston, with a sort of
Speaker 1: guilty haste. I've tried all over the place that don't
Speaker 1: exist any longer. Every One kept asking you for razor blades. Actually,
Speaker 1: he had two unused ones which he was hoarding up.
Speaker 1: There had been a famine of them for months past.
Speaker 1: At any given moment, there was some necessary article which
Speaker 1: the party shops were unable to supply. Sometimes it was buttons,
Speaker 1: sometimes it was darning wool, Sometimes it was shoelacers. At
Speaker 1: present it was razor blades. You could only get hold
Speaker 1: of them, if at all, by scrounging more or less
Speaker 1: furtively on the free market. I have been using the
Speaker 1: same blade for six weeks, he added, untruthfully. The cue
Speaker 1: gave another jerk forward. As they halted. He turned and
Speaker 1: faced sim again. Each of them took a greasy metal
Speaker 1: tray from a pile at the end of the counter.
Speaker 1: Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday, said Sime.
Speaker 1: I was working, said Winston, indifferently. I shall see it
Speaker 1: on the flicks. I suppose a very inadequate substitute, said Sime.
Speaker 1: His mocking eyes roved over Winston's face. I know you,
Speaker 1: The eyes seemed to say, I see through you. I
Speaker 1: know very well why you didn't go to see those
Speaker 1: prisoners hanged. In an intellectual way, Sime was venomously orthodox.
Speaker 1: He would talk with a disagreeable, gloating satisfaction of helicopter
Speaker 1: raids on enemy villages, and trials and confessions of thought criminals,
Speaker 1: the executions in the cellars of the Ministry of Love.
Speaker 1: Talking to him was largely a matter of getting him
Speaker 1: away from such subjects and entangling him, if possible, in
Speaker 1: the technicalities of news speak, on which he was authoritative
Speaker 1: and interesting. Winston turned his head a little aside to
Speaker 1: avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes. It was
Speaker 1: a good hanging, said Sime, reminiscently. I think it spoils
Speaker 1: it when they tie their feet together. I like to
Speaker 1: see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the
Speaker 1: tongue sticking right out, and blue, quite a bright blue.
Speaker 1: That's the detail that appeals to me. Next, please, yelled
Speaker 1: the white aproned proll. With the ladle, Winston and Sime
Speaker 1: pushed their trays beneath the grill on to each was
Speaker 1: dumped swiftly the regulation lunch, a metal pannikin of pinkish
Speaker 1: gray stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of cheese,
Speaker 1: a mug of milkless Victory coffee, and one sacran tablet.
Speaker 1: There's a table over there under that telescreen, said Sime.
Speaker 1: Let's pick up a gin. On the way, the gin
Speaker 1: was served out to them in handle as china mugs.
Speaker 1: They threaded their way across the crowded room and un
Speaker 1: packed their trays onto the metal topped table. On one
Speaker 1: corner of which some one had left a pool of stew,
Speaker 1: a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit.
Speaker 1: Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for an
Speaker 1: instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the oily tasting
Speaker 1: stuff down. When he had winked the tears out of
Speaker 1: his eyes, he suddenly discovered that he was hungry. He
Speaker 1: began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among its
Speaker 1: general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy, pinkish stuff, which was
Speaker 1: probably a preparation of meat. Neither of them spoke again
Speaker 1: till they had emptied their pannikins from the table. At
Speaker 1: Winston's left, a little behind his back, some one was
Speaker 1: talking rapidly and continuously, a harsh gabble, almost like the
Speaker 1: quacking of a duck, which pierced the general uproar of
Speaker 1: the room. How is the dictionary getting on? Said Winston,
Speaker 1: raising his voice to overcome the noise, slowly said sim
Speaker 1: I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating. He had brightened up
Speaker 1: immediately at the mention of news speak. He pushed his
Speaker 1: panic and aside, took up his hunk of bread in
Speaker 1: one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and
Speaker 1: leaned across the table so as to be able to
Speaker 1: speak without shouting. The eleventh edition is the definitive edition,
Speaker 1: he said. We're getting the language into its final shape,
Speaker 1: the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else.
Speaker 1: When we've finished with it, people like you will have
Speaker 1: to learn it all over again. You think I dare
Speaker 1: say that our chief job is inventing new words? But
Speaker 1: not a bit of it. We're destroying words, scores of them,
Speaker 1: hundreds of them every day. We're cutting the language down
Speaker 1: to the bone. The eleventh edition won't contain a single
Speaker 1: word that will become obsolete before the year twenty fifty.
Speaker 1: He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple
Speaker 1: of mouthfuls, then continued speaking with a sort of pedant's passion.
Speaker 1: His thin, dark face had become animated, his eyes had
Speaker 1: lost their mocking expression and grown almost dreamy. It's a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course, the great
Speaker 1: wastage is in the verb and adjectives, but there are
Speaker 1: hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well.
Speaker 1: It isn't only the synonyms. There are also the antonyms.
Speaker 1: After all, what justification is there for a word which
Speaker 1: is simply the opposite of some other word? A word
Speaker 1: contains its opposite in itself. Take good, for instance. If
Speaker 1: you have a word like good, what need is there
Speaker 1: for a word like bad? Unngood will do just as
Speaker 1: well better, because it's an exact opposite which the other
Speaker 1: is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version
Speaker 1: of good, what sense is there in having a whole
Speaker 1: string of vague, useless words like excellent and splendid and
Speaker 1: all the rest of them. Plus good covers the meaning
Speaker 1: or double plus good if you want something stronger. Still,
Speaker 1: of course we use those forms already, But in the
Speaker 1: final version of news Speak, there'll be nothing else. In
Speaker 1: the end, the whole notion of goodness and badness will
Speaker 1: be covered by only six words, in reality, only one word.
Speaker 1: Don't you see the beauty of that? Winston? It was B.
Speaker 1: B's idea originally, of course, he added, as an afterthought.
Speaker 1: A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at
Speaker 1: the mention of big brother. Nevertheless, Sime immediately detected a
Speaker 1: certain lack of enthusiasm. You haven't a real appreciation of
Speaker 1: new speak, Winston, he said, almost sadly. Even when you
Speaker 1: write it, you're still thinking in old speak. I've read
Speaker 1: some of those pieces that you write in the Times.
Speaker 1: Occasionally they're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart,
Speaker 1: you'd prefer to stick to old speak, with all its
Speaker 1: vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp
Speaker 1: the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know
Speaker 1: that news Speaker is the only language in the world
Speaker 1: whose vocabulary gets smaller every year. Winston did know that,
Speaker 1: of course, he smiled sympathetically, he hoped, not trusting himself
Speaker 1: to speak. Sime bit off another fragment of the dark
Speaker 1: colored bread, chewed it briefly, and went on, don't you
Speaker 1: see that the whole aim of news Speaker is to
Speaker 1: narrow the range of thought. In the end, we shall
Speaker 1: make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no
Speaker 1: words in which to express. Every concept that can ever
Speaker 1: be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with
Speaker 1: its meaning rigidly defined, and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed
Speaker 1: out and forgotten. Already in the eleventh edition, we're not
Speaker 1: far from that point, but the process will still be
Speaker 1: continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year,
Speaker 1: fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always
Speaker 1: a little smaller even now. Of course, there's no reason
Speaker 1: or excuse for committing thought crime. It's merely a question
Speaker 1: of self discipline, reality control. But in the end there
Speaker 1: won't be any need even for that. The revolution will
Speaker 1: be complete when the language is perfect. New speak is ingsok,
Speaker 1: and ingsock is news speak. He added, with a sort
Speaker 1: of mystical satisfaction. Has it ever occurred to you, Winston,
Speaker 1: that by the year twenty fifty, at the very latest,
Speaker 1: not a single human being will be alive. Who could
Speaker 1: understand such a conversation as we are having now? Except?
Speaker 1: Began Winston doubtfully, and he stopped. It had been on
Speaker 1: the tip of his tongue to say, except the prole
Speaker 1: But he checked himself, not feeling fully certain that this
Speaker 1: remark was not in some way unorthodox. Sime, however, had
Speaker 1: divined what he was about to say. The prolls are
Speaker 1: not human beings, he said carelessly. By twenty fifty earlier,
Speaker 1: probably all real knowledge of old speak will have disappeared.
Speaker 1: The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: Milton Byron. They'll exist only in new speak versions, not
Speaker 1: merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something
Speaker 1: contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature
Speaker 1: of the party will change. Even the slogans will change.
Speaker 1: How could you have a slogan like freedom is slavery?
Speaker 1: When the concept of freedom has been abolished. The whole
Speaker 1: climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will
Speaker 1: be no thought. As we understand it now, Orthodoxy means
Speaker 1: not thinking, not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. One
Speaker 1: of these days, thought Winston, with sudden, deep conviction, Sime
Speaker 1: will be vaporiz. He is too intelligent, he sees too
Speaker 1: clearly and speaks too plainly. The party does not like
Speaker 1: such people. One day he will disappear. It is written
Speaker 1: in his face. Winston had finished his bread and cheese.
Speaker 1: He turned a little sideways in his chair to drink
Speaker 1: his mug of coffee. At the table on his left,
Speaker 1: the man with a strident voice was still talking remorselessly away.
Speaker 1: A young woman who was perhaps his secretary, and who
Speaker 1: was sitting with her back to Winston, was listening to
Speaker 1: him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with everything that
Speaker 1: he said. From time to time, Winston caught some such remarkers,
Speaker 1: I think you're so right. I do so agree with you,
Speaker 1: uttered in a youthful and rather silly feminine voice. But
Speaker 1: the other voice never stopped for an instant even when
Speaker 1: the girl was speaking. Winston knew the man by sight,
Speaker 1: though he knew no more about him than that he
Speaker 1: held some important post in the fiction department. He was
Speaker 1: a man of about thirty, with a muscular throat and
Speaker 1: a large mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little,
Speaker 1: and because of the angle at which he was sitting,
Speaker 1: his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two
Speaker 1: blank disks instead of eyes. What was slightly horrible was
Speaker 1: that from the stream of sound that poured out of
Speaker 1: his mouth, it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word.
Speaker 1: Just once Winston caught a phrase, complete and final elimination
Speaker 1: of Goldsteinism jerked out very rapidly, and as it seemed,
Speaker 1: all in one piece, like a line of type cast solid.
Speaker 1: For the rest it was just a noise, a quack
Speaker 1: quack quacking. And yet though you could not actually hear
Speaker 1: what the man was saying, you could not be in
Speaker 1: any doubt about its general nature. He might be denouncing
Speaker 1: Goldstein and demanding sterner measures against thought criminals and saboteurs.
Speaker 1: He might be fulminating against the atrocities of the Eurasian Army.
Speaker 1: He might be praising Big Brother or the heroes on
Speaker 1: the Malabar front. It made no difference. Whatever it was,
Speaker 1: you could be certain that every word of it was
Speaker 1: pure Orthodoxy, pure insock As he watched the eyeless face
Speaker 1: with the jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had
Speaker 1: a curious feeling that this was not a real human being,
Speaker 1: but some kind of dummy. It was not the man's
Speaker 1: brain that was speaking, It was his larynx. The stuff
Speaker 1: that was coming out of him consisted of words, but
Speaker 1: it was not speech in the true sense. It was
Speaker 1: a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.
Speaker 1: Sime had fallen silent for a moment, and with the
Speaker 1: handle of his spoon, was tracing patterns in the puddle
Speaker 1: of stew. The voice from the other table quacked rapidly on,
Speaker 1: easily audible in spite of the surrounding din There is
Speaker 1: a word in new speak, said Sime. I don't know
Speaker 1: whether you know it, duck speak to quack like a duck.
Speaker 1: It is one of those interesting words that have two
Speaker 1: contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse applied
Speaker 1: to some one you agree with, it is praise. Unquestionably,
Speaker 1: Sime will be vaporized, Winston thought again. He thought it
Speaker 1: with a kind of sadness, although well knowing that Sime
Speaker 1: despised him and slightly disliked him, and was fully capable
Speaker 1: of denancing him as a thought criminal if he saw
Speaker 1: any reason for doing so. There was something subtly wrong
Speaker 1: with Sime. There was something that he lacked discretion, aloofness,
Speaker 1: a sort of saving stupidity. You could not say that
Speaker 1: he was unorthodox. He believed in the principles of ingsok.
Speaker 1: He venerated Big Brother. He rejoiced over victories. He hated heretics,
Speaker 1: not merely with sincerity, but with a sort of restless
Speaker 1: zeal an up to dateness of information which the ordinary
Speaker 1: party member did not approach. Yet a faint air of
Speaker 1: disreputability always clung to him. He said things that would
Speaker 1: have been better unsaid. He had read too many books.
Speaker 1: He frequented the Chestnut Tree Cafe, haunt of painters and musicians.
Speaker 1: There was no law, not even an unwritten law, against
Speaker 1: frequenting the Chestnut Tree Cafe. Yet the place was somehow
Speaker 1: ill omened. The old, discredited leaders of the party had
Speaker 1: been used to gather there before they were finally purged.
Speaker 1: Goldstein himself, it was said, had sometimes been seen there
Speaker 1: years and decades ago. Sime's fate was not difficult to foresee.
Speaker 1: And yet it was a fact that if Sime grasped
Speaker 1: even for three seconds the nature of his Winston's secret opinions,
Speaker 1: he would betray him instantly to the thought police. So
Speaker 1: would anybody else for that matter. But Sime, more than
Speaker 1: most zeal was not enough. Orthodoxy was unconsciousness. Sime looked up.
Speaker 1: Here comes Parsons. He said, something in the tone of
Speaker 1: his voice seemed to add that bloody fool. Parsons, Winston's
Speaker 1: fellow tenant at Victory Mansions, was in fact threading his
Speaker 1: way across the room. A tubby, middle sized man with
Speaker 1: fair hair and a frog like face. At thirty five,
Speaker 1: he was already putting on rolls of fat at neck
Speaker 1: and waist line. But his movements were brisk and boyish.
Speaker 1: His whole appearance was that of a little boy grown large,
Speaker 1: so much so that although he was wearing the regulation overalls,
Speaker 1: it was almost impossible not to think of him as
Speaker 1: being dressed in the blue shorts, gray shirt, and red
Speaker 1: Neckerchief of the Spies. In visualizing him, one always I
Speaker 1: saw a picture of dimpled knees and sleeves rolled back
Speaker 1: from pudgy forearms. Parsons did indeed invariably revert to shorts
Speaker 1: when a community hike or any other physical activity gave
Speaker 1: him an excuse for doing so. He greeted them both
Speaker 1: with a cheery Hullo hallo, and sat down at the table,
Speaker 1: giving off an intense smell of sweat. Beads of moisture
Speaker 1: stood out all over his pink face. His powers of
Speaker 1: sweating were extraordinary. At the community center, you could always
Speaker 1: tell when he had been playing table tennis by the
Speaker 1: dampness of the bat handle. Sime had produced a strip
Speaker 1: of paper on which there was a long column of words,
Speaker 1: and was studying it with an ink pencil between his fingers.
Speaker 1: Look at him working away in the lunch hour, said Parsons,
Speaker 1: nudging Winston. Keenness, Eh, what's such you've got there, old boy?
Speaker 1: Something a bit too brainy for me, I expect smith,
Speaker 1: Old boy, I'll tell you why I'm chasing you. It's
Speaker 1: that sub you forgot to give me. Which sub is that?
Speaker 1: Said Winston, automatically, feeling for money. About a quarter of
Speaker 1: one's salary had to be here marked for voluntary subscriptions,
Speaker 1: which were so numerous that it was difficult to keep
Speaker 1: track of them. For hate week. You know the house
Speaker 1: by house fund. I'm treasurer for our block. We're making
Speaker 1: an all out effort, going to put on a tremendous show.
Speaker 1: I tell you it won't be my fault if Old
Speaker 1: Victory Mansions doesn't have the biggest outfit of flags in
Speaker 1: the whole street. Two dollars, you promised me. Winston found
Speaker 1: and handed over two crist and filthy notes, which Parsons
Speaker 1: entered in a small note book in the neat handwriting
Speaker 1: of the illiterate. By the way, old boy, he said,
Speaker 1: I hear that little beggar of mine let fly at
Speaker 1: you with his catapult yesterday. I gave him a good
Speaker 1: dressing down for it. In fact, I told him I'd
Speaker 1: take the catapult away if he does it again. I
Speaker 1: think it was a little upset at not going to
Speaker 1: the execution, said Winston. Ah, well, what I mean to say?
Speaker 1: That shows the right spirit, doesn't it. Mischievous little beggars
Speaker 1: they are, both of them, but talk about keenness. All
Speaker 1: they think about is the Spies, the war. Of course,
Speaker 1: do you know what that little girl of mine did
Speaker 1: last Saturday when her troop was on a hike at
Speaker 1: Berkhamstead Way, she got two other girls to go with her,
Speaker 1: slipped off from the hike and spent the whole afternoon
Speaker 1: following a strange man. They kept on his tail for
Speaker 1: two hours, right through the woods, and then when they
Speaker 1: got into Amersham handed him over to the patrols. What
Speaker 1: did they do that for, said Winston, somewhat taken aback.
Speaker 1: Parsons went on triumphantly. My kid made sure he was
Speaker 1: some kind of enemy agent. Might have been dropped by parachute,
Speaker 1: for instance. But here's the point, old boy, what do
Speaker 1: you think put her on to him in the first place?
Speaker 1: She spotted he was wearing a funny kind of shoes,
Speaker 1: said she'd never seen any one wearing shoes like that before,
Speaker 1: so the chances were he was a foreigner. Pretty smart
Speaker 1: for a nipper of seven. Eh. What happened to the man?
Speaker 1: Said Winston. Ah that I couldn't say, of course, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be altogether surprised if Parsons made the motion
Speaker 1: of aiming a rifle and clicked his tongue for the explosion, good,
Speaker 1: said sim abstractedly, without looking up from his strip of paper.
Speaker 1: Of course, we can't afford to take chances, agreed Winston
Speaker 1: dutifully what I mean to say. There is a war
Speaker 1: on said Parsons, as though in confirmation of this, a
Speaker 1: trumpet call floated from the telescreen just above their heads. However,
Speaker 1: it was not the proclamation of a military victory this time,
Speaker 1: but merely an announcement from the Ministry of Plenty. Comrades,
Speaker 1: cried an eager, youthful voice. Attention, comrades, we have glorious
Speaker 1: news for you. We have won the battle for production.
Speaker 1: Returns now completed of the output of all classes of
Speaker 1: consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen
Speaker 1: by no less than twenty percent over the past year.
Speaker 1: All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible, spontaneous demonstrations
Speaker 1: when workers marched out of factories and officers and paraded
Speaker 1: through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big
Speaker 1: Brother for the new happy life which his wise leadership
Speaker 1: has bestowed upon us. Here are some of the completed
Speaker 1: figures food stuffs. The phrase our new happy life recurred
Speaker 1: several times. It had been a favorite of late with
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Plenty. Parsons, his attention caught by the
Speaker 1: trumpet call, sat listening with a sort of gaping solemnity,
Speaker 1: a sort of edified boredom. He could not follow the figures,
Speaker 1: but he was aware that they were in some way
Speaker 1: a cause for satisfaction. He had lugged out a huge
Speaker 1: and filthy pipe, which was already half full of charred tobacco.
Speaker 1: With the tobacco ration at a hundred grams a week,
Speaker 1: it was seldom possible to fill a pipe to the top.
Speaker 1: Winston was smoking a Victory cigarette, which he held carefully horizontal.
Speaker 1: The new ration did not start till to morrow, and
Speaker 1: he had only four cigarettes left for the moment. He
Speaker 1: had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was
Speaker 1: listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen.
Speaker 1: It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank
Speaker 1: Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams
Speaker 1: a week, and only yesterday, he reflected, it had been
Speaker 1: announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty
Speaker 1: grads week. Was it possible that they could swallow that
Speaker 1: after only twenty four hours. Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons
Speaker 1: swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The
Speaker 1: eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately,
Speaker 1: with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize
Speaker 1: anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had
Speaker 1: been thirty grams. Sime too, in some more complex way,
Speaker 1: involving doublethink. Sime swallowed it. Was he then alone, in
Speaker 1: the possession of a memory. The fabulous statistics continued to
Speaker 1: pour out of the telescreen. As compared with the last year,
Speaker 1: there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture,
Speaker 1: more cooking pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books,
Speaker 1: more babies, more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity.
Speaker 1: Year by year, and minute by minute, everybody and everything
Speaker 1: was whizzing rapidly upwards, as Sime had done earlier. Winston
Speaker 1: had taken up his spoon and was dabbling in the
Speaker 1: pale colored gravy that dribbled across the table, drawing a
Speaker 1: long streak of it out into a pattern. He meditated
Speaker 1: resentfully on the physical texture of life. Had it always
Speaker 1: been like this? Had food always tasted like this? He
Speaker 1: looked round the canteen, a low ceilinged, crowded room, its
Speaker 1: walls grimy from the contact of innumerable bodies, battered, metal
Speaker 1: tables and chairs placed so close together that you sat
Speaker 1: with elbows touching, bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs,
Speaker 1: all surfaces, greasy grime in every crack, and a sourish
Speaker 1: composite smell of bad gin and bad coffee, and metallic stew,
Speaker 1: and dirty clothes. Always in your stomach and in your skin.
Speaker 1: There was a sort of protest, a feeling that you
Speaker 1: had been cheated of something that you had a right to.
Speaker 1: It was true that he had no memories of anything
Speaker 1: greatly different in any time that he could accurately remember.
Speaker 1: There had never been quite enough to eat. One had
Speaker 1: never had socks or underclothes that were not full of holes.
Speaker 1: Furniture had always been battered and rickety rooms, underheated, tube trains,
Speaker 1: crowded houses falling to pieces bread, dark colored tea, rarity, coffee,
Speaker 1: filthy tasting cigarettes, insufficient, nothing cheap and plentiful except synthetic gin.
Speaker 1: And though of course it grew worse as one's body aged,
Speaker 1: was it not a sign that this was not the
Speaker 1: natural order of things? If one's heart sickened at the
Speaker 1: discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness
Speaker 1: of one's socks, the lifts that never worked, the cold water,
Speaker 1: the gritty soap, the cigarettes that came to pieces, the
Speaker 1: food with its strange, evil tastes. Why should one feel
Speaker 1: it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of
Speaker 1: ancestral memory that things had once been different. He looked
Speaker 1: round the canteen again. Nearly every one was ugly, and
Speaker 1: would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than
Speaker 1: in the uniform blue overalls. On the far side of
Speaker 1: the room, sitting at a table alone, a small, curiously
Speaker 1: beetle like man was drinking a cup of coffee, his
Speaker 1: little eyes darting suspicious glances from side to side. How
Speaker 1: easy it was, thought Winston, if you did not look
Speaker 1: about you to believe that the physical type set up
Speaker 1: by the party as an ideal, tall, muscular youths and
Speaker 1: deep bosomed maidens, blond haired, vital, sun burnt, carefree existed
Speaker 1: and even predominated. Actually, so far as he could judge,
Speaker 1: the majority of people in airstrip one were small, dark,
Speaker 1: and ill favored. It was curious how that beetle like
Speaker 1: type proliferated in the ministries, Little dumpy men growing stout
Speaker 1: very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements,
Speaker 1: and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes. It was
Speaker 1: the type that seemed to flourish best under the domination
Speaker 1: of the party. The announcements from the Ministry of Plenty
Speaker 1: ended on another trumpet call and gave way to tinny music. Parsons,
Speaker 1: stirred to vague enthusiasm by the bombardment of figures, took
Speaker 1: his pipe out of his mouth. The Ministry of Plenty
Speaker 1: certainly done a good job this year, he said, with
Speaker 1: a knowing shake of his head. By the way, Smith,
Speaker 1: old boy, I suppose you haven't got any razor blades.
Speaker 1: You can let me have not one, said Winston. I've
Speaker 1: been using the same blade for six weeks myself. Ah. Well,
Speaker 1: just thought i'd ask you, old boy. Sorry, said Winston.
Speaker 1: The quacking voice from the next table, temporarily silenced during
Speaker 1: the Ministry's announcement, had started up again as loud as ever.
Speaker 1: For some reason, Winston suddenly found himself thinking of missus Parsons,
Speaker 1: with her wispy hair and the dust in the creases
Speaker 1: of her face. Within two years, those children would be
Speaker 1: denouncing her to the thought police Missus. Parsons would be vaporized.
Speaker 1: Sime would be vaporized, Winston would be vaporized. O'Brien would
Speaker 1: be vaporized. Parsons, on the other hand, would never be vaporized.
Speaker 1: The eyeless creature with the quacking voice would never be vaporized.
Speaker 1: The little beetle like men who scuttle so nimbly through
Speaker 1: the labyrinthine corridors of ministries, they too, would never be vaporized.
Speaker 1: And the girl with dark hair, the girl from the
Speaker 1: fiction department, she would never be vaporized either. It seemed
Speaker 1: to him that he knew instinctively who would survive and
Speaker 1: who would perish, though just what it was that made
Speaker 1: for survival it was not easy to say. At this moment.
Speaker 1: He was dragged out of his reverie with a violent jerk.
Speaker 1: The girl at the next table had turned partly round
Speaker 1: and was looking at him. It was the girl with
Speaker 1: dark hair. She was looking at him in a sidelong way,
Speaker 1: but with curious intensity. The instant she caught his eye,
Speaker 1: she looked away again. The sweat started out on Winston's backbone.
Speaker 1: A horrible pang of terror went through him. It was
Speaker 1: gone almost at once, but had left a sort of
Speaker 1: nagging uneasiness behind. Why was she watching him? Why did
Speaker 1: she keep following him about? Unfortunately, he could not remember
Speaker 1: whether she had already been at the table when he arrived,
Speaker 1: or had come thereafterwards, But yesterday, at any rate, during
Speaker 1: the two minutes hate, she had sat immediately behind him
Speaker 1: when there was no apparent need to do so. Quite
Speaker 1: likely her real object had been to listen to him
Speaker 1: and make sure whether he was shouting loudly enough. His
Speaker 1: earlier thought returned to him. Probably she was not actually
Speaker 1: a member of the thought police, But then it was
Speaker 1: precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all.
Speaker 1: He did not know how long she had been looking
Speaker 1: at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes,
Speaker 1: and it was possible that his features had not been
Speaker 1: perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your
Speaker 1: thoughts wander when you were in any public place or
Speaker 1: within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give
Speaker 1: you away a nervous tick, an unconscious look of anxiety,
Speaker 1: a habit of muttering to yourself, anything that carried with
Speaker 1: it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide
Speaker 1: in any case, to wear an improper expression on your face,
Speaker 1: to look incredulous when a victory was announced, For example,
Speaker 1: was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word
Speaker 1: for it in news speak, face crime. It was called
Speaker 1: The girl had turned her back on him again. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: after all, she was not really following him about. Perhaps
Speaker 1: it was coincidence that she had sat so close to
Speaker 1: him two days running. His cigarette had gone out, and
Speaker 1: he laid it carefully on the edge of the table.
Speaker 1: He would finish smoking it after work if he could
Speaker 1: keep the tobacco in it. Quite likely the person at
Speaker 1: the next table was a spy of the thought police,
Speaker 1: and quite likely he would be in the cellars of
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Love within three days. But a cigarette
Speaker 1: end must not be wasted. Sime had folded up his
Speaker 1: strip of paper and stowed it away in his pocket.
Speaker 1: Parsons had begun talking again. Did I ever tell you,
Speaker 1: old boy, he said, chuckling round the stem of his pipe,
Speaker 1: about the time when those two nippers of mine set
Speaker 1: fire to the old market woman's skirt because they saw
Speaker 1: her wrapping up sausages in a poster of b B.
Speaker 1: Sneaked up behind her and set fire to it with
Speaker 1: a box of matches. Burned her quite badly, I believe
Speaker 1: little beggars, eh, But keen as mustard. That's a first
Speaker 1: rate training they give them in the spies nowadays, better
Speaker 1: than in my day. Even what do you think's the
Speaker 1: latest thing? They've served them out with ear trumpets for
Speaker 1: listening through key holes. My little girl brought one home
Speaker 1: the other night, tried it out on our sitting room
Speaker 1: door and reckoned. She could hear twice as much as
Speaker 1: with her ear to the hole. Of course, it's only
Speaker 1: a toy, mind, You still gives them the right idea, eh.
Speaker 1: At this moment, the telescreen let out a piercing whistle.
Speaker 1: It was the signal to return to work. All three
Speaker 1: men sprang to their feet to join in the struggle
Speaker 1: round the lifts, and the remaining tobacco fell out of
Speaker 1: Winston's cigarette. End of Section five.