Speaker 1: Section four of nineteen eighty four by George Orwell. This
Speaker 1: legamois recording may be distributed and adapted freely for any purpose.
Speaker 1: Part one, Chapter four. With the deep unconscious sigh, which
Speaker 1: not even the nearness of the telescreen could prevent him
Speaker 1: from uttering. When his day's work started, Winston pulled the
Speaker 1: Speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and
Speaker 1: put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped together
Speaker 1: four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out
Speaker 1: of the pneumatic tube on the right hand side of
Speaker 1: his desk. In the walls of the cubicle, there were
Speaker 1: three orifices. To the right of the Speakwrite, a small
Speaker 1: pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger
Speaker 1: one for newspapers, And in the side wall, within easy
Speaker 1: reach of Winston's arm, a large, oblong slit protected by
Speaker 1: a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of
Speaker 1: waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of
Speaker 1: thousands throughout the building, not only in every room, but
Speaker 1: at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason, they
Speaker 1: were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document
Speaker 1: was due for destruction, or even when one saw a
Speaker 1: scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic
Speaker 1: action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole
Speaker 1: and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away
Speaker 1: on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces
Speaker 1: which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
Speaker 1: Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled.
Speaker 1: Each contained a message of only one or two lines
Speaker 1: in the abbreviated jargon, not actually news speak, but consisting
Speaker 1: largely of new speak words, which was used in the
Speaker 1: Ministry for internal purposes. There ran Times seventeen three eighty four,
Speaker 1: b B Speech Mal Reported Africa, Rectify Times nineteen twelve
Speaker 1: eighty three, Forecasts three YP fourth quarter eighty three, misprints Verify,
Speaker 1: Current Issue Times fourteen two eighty five, four many plenty
Speaker 1: mal quoted Chocolate, Rectify Times three twelve eighty three reporting
Speaker 1: b B day order double plus ungood refs one persons
Speaker 1: rewrite full wise up sub anti filing. With a faint
Speaker 1: feeling of satisfaction, Winston laid the fourth message aside. It
Speaker 1: was an intricate and responsible job and had better be
Speaker 1: dealt with last. The other three were routine matters, though
Speaker 1: the second one would probably mean some tedious wading through
Speaker 1: lists of figures. Winston dialed back numbers on the telescreen
Speaker 1: and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which
Speaker 1: slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few
Speaker 1: minutes delay. The messages he had received referred to articles
Speaker 1: or news items which, for one reason or another, it
Speaker 1: was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase
Speaker 1: had it, to rectify. For example, it appeared from the
Speaker 1: Times of the seventeenth of March that Big Brother, in
Speaker 1: his speech of the previous day, had predicted that the
Speaker 1: South Indian front would remain quiet, but that the Eurasian
Speaker 1: offensive would shortly be launched in North Africa. As it happened,
Speaker 1: the Eurasian Higher Command had launched its offensive in South
Speaker 1: India and left North Africa alone. It was therefore necessary
Speaker 1: to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother's speech in such
Speaker 1: a way as to make him predict the thing that
Speaker 1: had actually happened. Or again. The Times of the nineteenth
Speaker 1: of December had published the official forecasts of the output
Speaker 1: of various classes of consumption goods in the fourth quarter
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty three, which was also the sixth quarter
Speaker 1: of the ninth three year plan. Today's issue contained a
Speaker 1: statement of the actual output, from which it appeared that
Speaker 1: the forecasts were in every instance grossly wrong. Winston's job
Speaker 1: was to rectify the original figures by making them agree
Speaker 1: with the later ones. As for the third message, it
Speaker 1: referred to a very simple error which could be set
Speaker 1: right in a couple of minutes. As short a time
Speaker 1: ago as February, the Ministry of Plenty had issued a promise,
Speaker 1: a categorical pledge with the official words that there would
Speaker 1: be no reduction of the chocolate ration during nineteen eighty four. Actually,
Speaker 1: as Winston was aware, the chocolate ration was to be
Speaker 1: reduced from thirty grams to twenty at the end of
Speaker 1: the present week. All that was needed was to substitute
Speaker 1: for the original promise a warning that it would probably
Speaker 1: be necessary to reduce the ration at some time in April.
Speaker 1: As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages,
Speaker 1: he clipped his speek written corrections to the appropriate copy
Speaker 1: of the Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then,
Speaker 1: with a movement which was nearly as possible unconscious, he
Speaker 1: crumpled up the original message and any notes that he
Speaker 1: himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole,
Speaker 1: to be devoured by the flames. What happened in the
Speaker 1: unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led he did
Speaker 1: not know in detail, but he did know in general terms.
Speaker 1: As soon as all the corrections which happened to be
Speaker 1: necessary in any particular number of the Times had been
Speaker 1: assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original
Speaker 1: copy destroyed, and the corrected cop be placed on the
Speaker 1: files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was
Speaker 1: applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films,
Speaker 1: sound tracks, cartoons, photographs, to every kind of literature or
Speaker 1: documentation which might conceive a behold any political or ideological significance.
Speaker 1: Day by day, and almost minute by minute, the past
Speaker 1: was brought up to date. In this way, every prediction
Speaker 1: made by the party could be shown by documentary evidence
Speaker 1: to have been correct. Nor was any item of news,
Speaker 1: or any expression of opinion which conflicted with the needs
Speaker 1: of the moment ever allowed to remain on record. All
Speaker 1: history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as
Speaker 1: often as was necessary. In no case would it have
Speaker 1: been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that
Speaker 1: any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the
Speaker 1: Record's department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked,
Speaker 1: consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track
Speaker 1: down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other
Speaker 1: documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction.
Speaker 1: A number of the times, which might, because of changes
Speaker 1: in political alignment or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother,
Speaker 1: have been rewritten A dozen times still stood on the
Speaker 1: files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed
Speaker 1: to contradict it. Books also were recalled and rewritten again
Speaker 1: and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that
Speaker 1: any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions which
Speaker 1: Winston received and which he invariably got rid of as
Speaker 1: soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or
Speaker 1: implied that an act of forgery was to be committed.
Speaker 1: Always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations,
Speaker 1: which it was necessary to put right in the interests
Speaker 1: of accuracy. But actually he thought as he readjusted the
Speaker 1: Ministry of Plenty's figures. It was not even forgery. It
Speaker 1: was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another.
Speaker 1: Most of the material that you were dealing with had
Speaker 1: no connection with anything in the real world, not even
Speaker 1: the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie.
Speaker 1: Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original
Speaker 1: version as in their rectified version. A great deal of
Speaker 1: the time you were expected to make them up out
Speaker 1: of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast
Speaker 1: had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at
Speaker 1: one hundred forty five million pairs. The actual output was
Speaker 1: given as sixty two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast,
Speaker 1: marked the figure down to fifty seven millions, so as
Speaker 1: to allow for the usual claim that the quota had
Speaker 1: been over fulfilled. In any case, sixty two millions was
Speaker 1: no nearer the truth than fifty seven millions, more than
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty five millions. Very likely no boots
Speaker 1: had been produced at all. Likely, as still, nobody knew
Speaker 1: how many had been produced, much less cared. All one
Speaker 1: knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were
Speaker 1: produced on paper, while perhaps half off the population of
Speaker 1: Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class
Speaker 1: of recorded fact, great or small, Everything faded away into
Speaker 1: a shadow world in which finally even the date of
Speaker 1: the year had become uncertain. Winston glanced across the hall
Speaker 1: in the corresponding cubicle. On the other side, a small,
Speaker 1: precise looking, dark chinned man named Tillotson was working steadily
Speaker 1: away with a folded newspaper on his knee and his
Speaker 1: mouth very close to the mouthpiece of the speak write.
Speaker 1: He had the air of trying to keep what he
Speaker 1: was saying a secret between himself and the telescreen. He
Speaker 1: looked up, and his spectacles started a hostile flash in
Speaker 1: Winston's direction. Winston hardly knew Tillotson, and had no idea
Speaker 1: what work he was employed on. People in the records
Speaker 1: department did not readily talk about their jobs. In the
Speaker 1: long windowless hall, with its double row of cubicles and
Speaker 1: its endless rustle of papers and hum of voices murmuring
Speaker 1: into speak writes, there were quite a dozen people whom
Speaker 1: Winston and did not even know by name, though he
Speaker 1: daily saw them hurrying to and fro in the corridors,
Speaker 1: or gesticulating in the two minutes hate. He knew that
Speaker 1: in the cubicle next to him, the little woman with
Speaker 1: sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking
Speaker 1: down and deleting from the press the names of people
Speaker 1: who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to
Speaker 1: have existed. There was a certain fitness in this, since
Speaker 1: her own husband had been vaporized a couple of years earlier,
Speaker 1: and a few cubicles away, a mild ineffectual, dreamy creature
Speaker 1: named Ampleforth, with very hairy ears and a surprising talent
Speaker 1: for juggling with rhymes and meters, was engaged in producing
Speaker 1: garbled versions definitive texts. They were called of poems which
Speaker 1: had become ideologically offensive, but which for one reason or another,
Speaker 1: were to be retained in the anthologies. And this hall,
Speaker 1: with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one sub section,
Speaker 1: a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity
Speaker 1: of the record's department. Beyond above below were other swarms
Speaker 1: of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs. There
Speaker 1: were the huge printing shops with their sub editors, their
Speaker 1: typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking
Speaker 1: of photographs. There was the teleprogram's section, with its engineers,
Speaker 1: its producers, and its teams of actors specially chosen for
Speaker 1: their skill in imitating voices. There were the armies of
Speaker 1: reference clerks, whose job was simply to draw up lists
Speaker 1: of books and periodicals which were due for recall. There
Speaker 1: were the vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored,
Speaker 1: and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed,
Speaker 1: And somewhere or other quite anonymous. There were the directing
Speaker 1: brains who co ordinated the whole effort and laid down
Speaker 1: the lines of policy which made it necessary that this
Speaker 1: fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified
Speaker 1: and the other rubbed out of existence. And the Records Department,
Speaker 1: after all, was itself only a single branch of the
Speaker 1: Ministry of Truth, whose prime job was not to reconstruct
Speaker 1: the past, but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks,
Speaker 1: telescreen programs, plays, novels, with every conceivable kind of information, instruction,
Speaker 1: or entertainment. From a statue to a slogan, from a
Speaker 1: lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's
Speaker 1: spelling book to a New Speak dictionary. And the Ministry
Speaker 1: had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party,
Speaker 1: but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower
Speaker 1: level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a
Speaker 1: whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama,
Speaker 1: and entertainment. Generally, here were produced rubbish newspapers containing almost
Speaker 1: nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five cent novelettes,
Speaker 1: film z oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were
Speaker 1: composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of
Speaker 1: kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole
Speaker 1: subsection pornosecond was called in New Speak, engaged in producing
Speaker 1: the lowest kind of pornography, which was sent out in
Speaker 1: sealed packets, and which no Party member other than those
Speaker 1: who worked on it was permitted to look at. Three
Speaker 1: messages had slid out of the pneumatic tube while Winston
Speaker 1: was working, but they were simple matters, and he had
Speaker 1: disposed of them before the two minutes hate interrupted him.
Speaker 1: When the hate was over, he returned to his cubicle,
Speaker 1: took the New Speak dictionary from the shelf, pushed the
Speaker 1: Speak right to one side, cleaned his spectacles, and settled
Speaker 1: down to his main job of the morning. Winston's greatest
Speaker 1: pleasure in life was in his work. Most of it
Speaker 1: was a tedious routine, but included in it there were
Speaker 1: also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose
Speaker 1: yourself in them, as in the depths of a mathematical problem,
Speaker 1: delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to
Speaker 1: guide you except your knowledge of the principles of INGSOK
Speaker 1: and your estimate of what the party wanted you to say.
Speaker 1: Winston was good at this kind of thing. On occasion
Speaker 1: he had even been entrusted with the rectification of the Times,
Speaker 1: leading our articles, which were written entirely in New Speak.
Speaker 1: He unrolled the message that he had set aside earlier.
Speaker 1: It ran Times three twelve eighty three, reporting b B
Speaker 1: day order double plus angood ref's n persons rewrite full
Speaker 1: wise up sub anti filing. In Old Speak or Standard English,
Speaker 1: this might be rendered the reporting of Big Brother's Order
Speaker 1: for the day. In the Times of December the third
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to
Speaker 1: non existent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your
Speaker 1: draft to higher authority before filing. Winston read through the
Speaker 1: offending article. Big Brother's Order for the day, it seemed
Speaker 1: had been chiefly devoted to praising the work of an
Speaker 1: organization known as f f c C, which supplied cigarettes
Speaker 1: and other comforts to the sailors in the Floating Fortresses.
Speaker 1: A certain Comrade Withers, a prominent member of the Inner Party,
Speaker 1: had been singled out for special mention and awarded a
Speaker 1: decoration the Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second Class. Three months later,
Speaker 1: f f c C had suddenly been dissolved, with no
Speaker 1: reasons given. One could assume that Withers and his associates
Speaker 1: were now in disgrace, but there had been no report
Speaker 1: of the matter in the press or on the telescreen.
Speaker 1: That was to be expected, since it was unusual for
Speaker 1: political offenders to be put on trial or even publicly denounced.
Speaker 1: The Great Purgers involving thousands of people with public trials
Speaker 1: of traitors and thought criminals who made abject confession of
Speaker 1: their crimes and were afterwards executed were special show pieces,
Speaker 1: not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years.
Speaker 1: More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the
Speaker 1: party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One
Speaker 1: never had the smallest clue as to what had happened
Speaker 1: to them. In some cases, they might not even be dead.
Speaker 1: Perhaps thirty people personally known to Winston, not counting his parents,
Speaker 1: had disappeared at one time or another. Winston stroked his
Speaker 1: nose gently with a paper clip in the cubicle cross
Speaker 1: the way. Comrade Tillotson was still crouching secretively over his
Speaker 1: speak right, he raised his head for a moment again
Speaker 1: the hostile spectacle flash. Winston wondered whether Comrade Tillotson was
Speaker 1: engaged on the same job as himself. It was perfectly possible.
Speaker 1: So tricky a piece of work would never be entrusted
Speaker 1: to a single person. On the other hand, to turn
Speaker 1: it over to a committee would be to admit openly
Speaker 1: that an act of fabrication was taking place. Very likely,
Speaker 1: as many as a dozen people were now working away
Speaker 1: on rival versions of what Big Brother had actually said,
Speaker 1: and presently some master brain in the inner party would
Speaker 1: select this version or that would re edit it and
Speaker 1: set in motion the complex processes of cross referencing that
Speaker 1: would be required, and then the chosen lie would pass
Speaker 1: into the permanent records and become truth. Winston did not
Speaker 1: know why Withers had been disgraced. Perhaps it was for
Speaker 1: corruption or incompetence. Perhaps Big Brother was merely getting rid
Speaker 1: of a too popular subordinate. Perhaps Withers or someone close
Speaker 1: to him had been suspected of heretical tendencies. Or perhaps,
Speaker 1: what was likeliest of all, the thing had simply happened
Speaker 1: because purges and vaporizations were a necessary part of the
Speaker 1: mechanics of government. The only real clue lay in the
Speaker 1: words ref's on persons, which indicated that Withers was already dead.
Speaker 1: You could not invariably assume this to be the case
Speaker 1: when people were arrested. Sometimes they were released and allowed
Speaker 1: to remain at liberty for as much as a year
Speaker 1: or two years before being executed. Very occasionally, some person
Speaker 1: whom you had believed dead long since would make a
Speaker 1: ghostly reappearance at some public trial, where he would implicate
Speaker 1: hundreds of others by his testimony before vanishing. This time forever. Withers, however,
Speaker 1: was already an unperson. He did not exist, he had
Speaker 1: never existed. Winston decided that it would not be enough
Speaker 1: simply to reverse the tendency of Big Brother's speech. It
Speaker 1: was better to make it deal with something totally unconnected
Speaker 1: with its original subject. He might turn the speech into
Speaker 1: the usual denunciation of traitors and thought criminals, but that
Speaker 1: was a little too obvious, while to invent a victory
Speaker 1: at the front or some triumph of overproduction in the
Speaker 1: ninth three year Plan might complicate the records too much.
Speaker 1: What was needed was a piece of pure fantasy. Suddenly
Speaker 1: there sprang into his mind, ready made as it were,
Speaker 1: the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently
Speaker 1: died in battle in heroic circumstances. There were occasions when
Speaker 1: Big Brother devoted his order for the day to commemorating
Speaker 1: some humble rank and file party member whose life and
Speaker 1: death he held up as an example worthy to be followed.
Speaker 1: To day he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true
Speaker 1: that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but
Speaker 1: a few lines of print and a couple of faked
Speaker 1: photographs would soon bring him into existence. Winston thought for
Speaker 1: a moment, then pulled the speak right towards him and
Speaker 1: began dictating in big brother's familiar style, a style at
Speaker 1: once military and pedantic, and because of a trick of
Speaker 1: asking questions and then promptly answer answering them, what lessons
Speaker 1: do we learn from this fact? Comrades the lesson which
Speaker 1: is also one of the fundamental principles of ingsock, that
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera easy to imitate. At the age
Speaker 1: of three, Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum,
Speaker 1: a submachine gun, and a model helicopter. At six, a
Speaker 1: year early by a special relaxation of the rules, he
Speaker 1: had joined the Spies. At nine, he had been a
Speaker 1: troop leader. At eleven, he had denounced his uncle to
Speaker 1: the thought Police after overhearing a conversation which appeared to
Speaker 1: him to have criminal tendencies. At seventeen he had been
Speaker 1: a district organizer of the Junior Antisex League. At nineteen
Speaker 1: he had designed a hand grenade which had been adopted
Speaker 1: by the Ministry of Peace, and which at its first
Speaker 1: trial had killed thirty one Eurasian prisoners in one burst.
Speaker 1: At twenty three, he had perished in action pursued by
Speaker 1: enemy jet planes while flying over the Indian Ocean with
Speaker 1: important despatches. He had weighted his body with his machine
Speaker 1: gun and leapt out of the helicopter into deep water despatches.
Speaker 1: And all an end, said a big brother, which it
Speaker 1: was impossible to contemplate without feelings of envy. Big brother
Speaker 1: added a few remarks on the purity and singlemindedness of
Speaker 1: Comrade Ogilvy's life. He was a total abstainer and a
Speaker 1: non smoker, had no recreations except a daily hour in
Speaker 1: the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy, believing
Speaker 1: marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible
Speaker 1: with the twenty four hour a day devotion to duty.
Speaker 1: He had no subjects of conversation except the principles of ingsock,
Speaker 1: and no aim in life except the defeat of the
Speaker 1: Eurasian enemy and the hunting down of spies, saboteurs, thought criminals,
Speaker 1: and traitors generally. Winston debated with himself whether to award
Speaker 1: Comrade Ogilvy the Order of Conspicuous Merit. In the end
Speaker 1: he decided against it because of the unnecessary cross referencing
Speaker 1: that it would entail once again. He glanced at his
Speaker 1: rival in the opposite cubicle. Something seemed to tell him
Speaker 1: with certainty that till And was busy on the same
Speaker 1: job as himself. There was no way of knowing whose
Speaker 1: job would finally be adopted, but he felt a profound
Speaker 1: conviction that it would be his own. Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined
Speaker 1: an hour ago, was now a fact. It struck him
Speaker 1: as curious that you could create dead men but not
Speaker 1: living ones. Comrade Ogilvie, who had never existed in the present,
Speaker 1: now existed in the past, and when once the act
Speaker 1: of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically
Speaker 1: and upon the same evidence as charlamagnu or Julius Caesar.
Speaker 1: End of Section four