NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

GEORGE ORWELL

PART I

I

I

t was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were s triking thirteen. Wins ton Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breas t in an effort to es cape the vile wind, s lipped quickly through the glas s doors of Victory Mans ions , though not quickly enough to prevent a s wirl of gritty dus t from enteringalong with him.

The hallway s melt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats . At one end of it a coloured pos ter,too large for indoor dis play, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted s imply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black mous tache and ruggedly hands ome features . Wins ton made for the s tairs . It was no us e trying the lift. Even at the bes t of times it was s eldom working, and at pres ent the electric current was cut off during daylight hours . It was part of the economy drive in preparation for Hate Week. The flat was s even flights up, and Wins ton, who was thirty-nine and had a varicos e ulcer above his right ankle, went s lowly, res ting s everal times on the way. On each landing, oppos ite the lift- s haft, the pos ter with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of thos e pictures which are s o contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Ins ide the flat a fruity voice was reading out a

lis t of figures which had s omething to do withthe production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the s urface of the right-hand wall. Wins ton turned a s witch and the voice s ank s omewhat, though the words were s till dis tinguis hable. The ins trument (the teles creen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of s hutting it off completely. He moved over to the window: a s mallis h, frail figure, the meagrenes s of his body merely emphas ized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His hair was very fair, his face naturally s anguine, his s kin roughened by coars e s oap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had jus t ended.

Outs ide, even through the s hut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the s treet little eddies of wind were whirling dus t and torn paper into s pirals , and though the s un was s hining and the s ky a hars h blue, there s eemed to be no colour in anything, except the pos ters that were plas tered everywhere. The blackmous tachio’d face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the hous e-front immediately oppos ite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption s aid, while the dark eyes looked deep into Wins ton’s own. Down at s treet level another pos ter, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering thes ingle word INGSOC. In the far dis tance a helicopter s kimmed down between the roofs , hovered for an ins tant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight.

It was the police patrol, s nooping into people’s windows . The patrols did not matter, however. Only the

Thought Police mattered.

Behind Wins ton’s back the voice from the teles creen was s till babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The teles creen received and trans mitted s imultaneous ly. Any s ound that Wins ton made, above the level of a very low whis per, would be picked up by it, moreover, s o long as he remained within the field of vis ion which the metal plaque commanded, he could be s een as well as heard.

There was of cours e no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what s ys tem, the Thought Policeplugged in on any individual wire was gues s work. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. Youhad to live --did live, from habit that became ins tinct --in the as s umption that every s ound you made was overheard, and, except in darknes s , every movement s crutinized.

Wins ton kept his back turned to the teles creen.

It was s afer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing. A kilometre away the Minis try of Truth, his place of work, towered vas t and white above the grimy lands cape. This , he thought with a s ort of vague dis tas te --this was London, chief city of Airs trip One, its elf the third mos t populous of the provinces of Oceania. He tried to s queeze out s ome childhood memory that s hould tell him whether London had always been quite like this . Were there always thes e vis tas of rotting nineteenth-century hous es , their s ides s hored up with baulks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron,

their crazy garden walls s agging in all directions ? And the bombed s ites where the plas ter dus t s wirled in the air and the willow-herb s traggled over the heaps of rubble; and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch and there had s prung up s ordid colonies of wooden dwellings like chicken-hous es ? But it was no us e, he could not remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a s eries of bright-lit tableaux occurring agains t no background and mos tly unintelligible.

The Minis try of Truth --Minitrue, in News peak[1] -- was s tartlingly different from any other object in s ight. It was an enormous pyramidal s tructure of glittering white concrete, s oaring up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air. From where Wins ton s tood it was jus t pos s ible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three s logans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The Minis try of Truth contained, it was s aid, three thous and rooms above ground level, and corres ponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were jus t three other buildings of s imilar appearance and s ize. So completely did they dwarf the s urrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mans ions you could s ee all four of them s imultaneous ly.

They were the homes of the four Minis tries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided.

The Minis try of Truth, which concerned its elf with news , entertainment, education, and the fine arts . The Minis try of Peace, which concerned its elf with war. The Minis try

of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Minis try of Plenty, which was res pons ible for economic affairs . Their names , in News peak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.

The Minis try of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Wins ton had never been ins ide the Minis try of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it. It was a placeimpos s ible to enter except on official bus ines s , and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements , s teel doors , and hidden machine-gun nes ts . Even the s treets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla- faced guards in black uniforms , armed with jointed truncheons .

Wins ton turned round abruptly. He had s et his features into the expres s ion of quiet optimis m which it was advis able to wear when facing the teles creen. He cros s ed the room into the tiny kitchen. By leaving the Minis try at this time of day he had s acrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured bread which had got to be s aved for tomorrow’s breakfas t. He took down from the s helf a bottle of colourles s liquid with a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave off a s ickly, oily s mell, as of Chines e rice-s pirit.Wins ton poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved hims elf for a s hock, and gulped it down like a dos e of medicine.

Ins tantly his face turned s carlet and the water ran out of his eyes . The s tuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in s wallowing it one had the s ens ation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club.

The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died

down and the world began to look more cheerful. He took a cigarette from a crumpled packet marked VICTORY CIGARETTES and incautious ly held it upright, whereupon the tobacco fell out on to the floor. With the next he was more s ucces s ful. He went back to the living-room and s at down at a s mall table that s tood to the left of the teles creen. From the table drawer he took out a penholder, a bottle of ink, and a thick, quarto- s ized blank book with a red back and a marbled cover.

For s ome reas on the teles creen in the living- room was in an unus ual pos ition. Ins tead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in thelonger wall, oppos ite the window. To one s ide of it there was a s hallow alcove in which Wins ton was now s itting, and which, when the flats were built, had probably been intended to hold books helves .By s itting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Wins ton was able to remain outs ide the range of the teles creen, s o far as s ight went. He could be heard, of cours e, but s o long as he s tayed in his pres ent pos ition he could not be s een. It was partly the unus ual geography of the room that had s ugges ted to him the thing that he was now about to do.

But it had als o been s ugges ted by the book that he had jus t taken out of the drawer. It was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its s mooth creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at leas t forty years pas t. He could gues s , however, that the book was much older than that. He had s een it lying in the window of a frows y little junk-s hop in a s lummy quarter of the town (jus t what

quarter he did not now remember) and had been s tricken immediately by an overwhelming des ire to pos s es s it. Party members were s uppos ed not to go intoordinary s hops (“dealing on the free market”, it was called), but the rule was not s trictly kept, becaus e there were various things , s uch as s hoelaces and razor blades , which it was impos s ible toget hold of in any other way. He had given a quick glance up and down the s treet and then had s lipped ins ide and bought the book for two dollars fifty. At the time he was not cons cious of wanting it for any particular purpos e. He had carried it guiltily home in his briefcas e. Even with nothing written in it, it was a compromis ing pos s es s ion.

The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, s ince there were no longer any laws ), but if detected it was reas onably certain that it would be punis hed by death, or at leas t by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp.

Wins ton fitted a nib into the penholder and s ucked it to get the greas e off. The pen was an archaic ins trument, s eldom us ed even for s ignatures , and he had procured one, furtively and with s ome difficulty, s imply becaus e of a feeling that the beautiful creamy paper des erved to be written on with a real nib ins tead of being s cratched with an ink-pencil. Actually he was not us ed to writing by hand. Apart from very s hort notes , it was us ual to dictate everything into the s peak-write which was of cours e impos s ible for his pres ent purpos e. He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for jus t as econd.

A tremor had gone through his bowels . To mark the paper was the decis ive act. In s mall clums y letters he wrote:

April 4th, 1984.

He s at back. A s ens e of complete helples s nes s had des cended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It mus t be round about that date, s ince he was fairly s ure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never pos s ible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two.

For whom, it s uddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page, and then fetched up with a bump agains t the News peak word doublethink. For the firs t time the magnitude ofwhat he had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impos s ible. Either the future would res emble the pres ent, in which cas e it would not lis tento him: or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningles s .

For s ome time he s at gazing s tupidly at the paper. The teles creen had changed over to s trident military mus ic. It was curious that he s eemed not merely to have los t the power of expres s ing hims elf, but even to have forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to s ay. For weeks pas t he had been making ready for this moment, and it had never cros s ed his mind that anything would be needed except courage. The actual writing would be eas y. All he had to do was to trans fer to paper the interminable res tles s monologue that had been running ins ide his head, literally for years . At this moment, however, even the

monologue had dried up. Moreover his varicos e ulcer had begun itching unbearably. He dared not s cratch it, becaus e if he did s o it always became inflamed. The s econds were ticking by. He was cons cious of nothing except the blanknes s of the page in front of him, the itching of the s kin above his ankle, the blaring of the mus ic, and a s light boozines s caus ed by the gin.

Suddenly he began writing in s heer panic, only imperfectly aware of what he was s etting down. His s mall but childis h handwriting s traggled up and down the page, s hedding firs t its capital letters and finally even its full s tops :

April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks. All war films. One very good one of a ship full ofrefugees being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean. Audience much amused by shots of agreat huge fat man trying to swim away with a helicopter after him, first you saw him wallowingalong in the water like a porpoise, then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights, then he wasfull of holes and the sea round him turned pink and he sank as suddenly as though the holes had letin the water, audience shouting with laughter when he sank.

then you saw a lifeboat full of childrenwith a helicopter hovering over it. there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewesssitting up in the bow with a little boy about three years old in her arms. little boy screaming withfright and hiding his head between her breasts as if he was trying to burrow right into her and thewoman putting her arms round him and comforting him although she was blue with fright herself,all the time covering him up as much as possible as if she thought

her arms could keep the bulletsoff him. then the helicopter planted a 20 kilo bomb in among them terrific flash and the boat wentall to matchwood. then there was a wonderful shot of a child’s arm going up up up right up into theair a helicopter with a camera in its nose must have followed it up and there was a lot of applausefrom the party seats but a woman down in the prole part of the house suddenly started kicking up afuss and shouting they didnt oughter of showed it not in front of kids they didnt it aint right not infront of kids it aint until the police turned her turned her out i dont suppose anything happened toher nobody cares what the proles say typical prole reaction they never-

Wins ton s topped writing, partly becaus e he was s uffering from cramp. He did not know whathad made him pour out this s tream of rubbis h. But the curious thing was that while he was doing s o a totally different memory had clarified its elf in his mind, to the point where he almos t felt equal to writing it down. It was , he now realized, becaus e of this other incident that he had s uddenly decided to come home and begin the diary today.

It had happened that morning at the Minis try, if anything s o nebulous could be s aid to happen.

It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Wins ton worked, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall oppos ite the big teles creen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate.

Wins ton was jus t taking his place in one of the middle rows when two people whom he knew by s ight, but had

never s poken to, came unexpectedly into the room. One of them was a girl whom he often pas s ed in the corridors . He did not know her name, but he knew that s he worked in the Fiction Department. Pres umably -- s ince he had s ometimes s een her with oily hands and carrying a s panner -- s he had s ome mechanical job onone of the novel-writing machines . She was a bold- looking girl, of about twenty-s even, with thick hair, a freckled face, and s wift, athletic movements . A narrow s carlet s as h, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, was wound s everal times round the wais t of her overalls , jus t tightly enough to bring out the s hapelines s of her hips . Wins ton had dis liked her from the very firs t moment of s eeing her. He knew the reas on. It was becaus e of the atmos phere of hockey-fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean- mindednes s which s he managed to carry about with her. He dis liked nearly all women, and es pecially the young and pretty ones . It was always the women, and above all the young ones , who were the mos t bigoted adherents of the Party, the s wallowers of s logans , the amateur s pies and nos ers -out of unorthodoxy. But this particular girl gave him the impres s ion of being more dangerous than mos t. Once when they pas s ed in the corridor s he gave him a quick s idelong glance which s eemed to pierce right into him and for a moment had filled him with black terror. The idea had even cros s ed his mind that s he might be an agent of the ThoughtPolice. That, it was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar uneas ines s , which had fear mixed up in it as well as hos tility, whenever s he was anywhere near him.

The other pers on was a man named O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party and holder of s ome pos t s o important and remote that Wins ton had only a dim idea of its nature. A momentary hus h pas s ed over the group of people round the chairs as they s aw the black overalls of an Inner Party member approaching. O’Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coars e, humorous , brutal face. In s pite of his formidable appearance he had a certain charm of manner. He had a trick of res ettling his s pectacles on his nos e which was curious ly dis arming --in s ome indefinable way, curious ly civilized. It was a ges ture which, if anyone had s till thought in s uch terms , might have recalled an eighteenth-century nobleman offering his s nuffbox.

Wins ton had s een O’Brien perhaps a dozen times in almos t as many years . He felt deeply drawn to him, and not s olely becaus e he was intrigued by the contras t between O’Brien’s urbane manner and his prizefighter’s phys ique. Much more it was becaus e of a s ecretly held belief --or perhaps not even a belief, merely a hope -- that O’Brien’s political orthodoxy was not perfect.

Something in his faces ugges ted it irres is tibly. And again, perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written in his face, but s imply intelligence. But at any rate he had the appearance of being a pers on that you could talk to if s omehow you could cheat the teles creen and get him alone. Wins ton had never made the s malles t effort to verify this gues s : indeed, there was no way of doing s o. At this moment O’Brien glanced at his wris t-watch, s aw that it was nearly eleven hundred, and evidently decided to s tay in the Records Department until the Two Minutes Hate was over. He took a chair in the s ame row as Wins ton, a couple of places away. A

s mall, s andy-haired woman who worked in the next cubicle to Wins ton was between them. The girl with dark hair was s itting immediately behind.

The next moment a hideous , grinding s peech, as of s ome mons trous machine running without oil, burs t from the big teles creen at the end of the room. It was a nois e that s et one’s teethon edge and bris tled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had s tarted.

As us ual, the face of Emmanuel Golds tein, the Enemy of the People, had flas hed on to thes creen.

There were his s es here and there among the audience.

The little s andy-haired woman gave a s queak of mingled fear and dis gus t. Golds tein was the renegade and backs lider who once, long ago (how long ago, nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almos t on a level with Big Brother hims elf, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities , had been condemned to death, and had mys terious ly es caped and dis appeared. The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Golds tein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earlies t defiler of the Party’s purity. All s ubs equent crimes agains t the Party, all treacheries , acts of s abotage, heres ies , deviations , s prang directly out of his teaching.

Somewhere or other he was s till alive and hatching his cons piracies : perhaps s omewhere beyond the s ea, under the protection of his foreign paymas ters , perhaps even --s o itwas occas ionally rumoured -- in s ome hiding-place in Oceania its elf.

Wins ton’s diaphragm was cons tricted. He could

never s ee the face of Golds tein without apainful mixture of emotions . It was a lean Jewis h face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a s mall goatee beard --a clever face, and yet s omehow inherently des picable, with a kind of s enile s illines s in the long thin nos e, near the end of which a pair of s pectacles was perched. It res embled the face of a s heep, and the voice, too, had a s heep-like quality. Golds tein was delivering his us ual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party --an attack s o exaggerated and pervers e that a child s hould have been able to s ee through it, and yet jus t plaus ible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, les s level-headed than ones elf, might be taken in by it. He was abus ing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictators hip of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclus ion of peace with Euras ia, he was advocating freedom of s peech, freedom of the Pres s , freedom of as s embly, freedom of thought, he was crying hys terically that the revolution had been betrayed --and all this in rapid polys yllabic s peech which was a s ort of parody of the habitual s tyle of the orators of the Party, and even contained News peak words : more News peak words , indeed, than any Party member would normally us e in real life. And all the while, les t one s hould bein any doubt as to the reality which Golds tein’s s pecious claptrap covered, behind his head on the teles creen there marched the endles s columns of the Euras ian army --row after row of s olid-lookingmen with expres s ionles s As iatic faces , who s wam up to the s urface of the s creen and vanis hed, to be replaced by others exactly s imilar. The dull rhythmic tramp of the s oldiers ’ boots formed the background to Golds tein’s bleating voice.

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty s econds , uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The s elf- s atis fied s heep-like face on the s creen, and the terrifying power of the Euras ian army behind it, were too much to be borne: bes ides , the s ight or even the thought of Golds tein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more cons tant than either Euras ia or Eas tas ia, s ince when Oceania was at war with one of thes e Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was s trange was that although Golds tein was hated and des pis ed by everybody, although every day and a thous and times a day, on platforms , on the teles creen, in news papers , in books , his theories were refuted, s mas hed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbis h that they were --in s pite of all this , his influencenever s eemed to grow les s . Always there were fres h dupes waiting to be s educed by him. A day never pas s ed when s pies and s aboteurs acting under his directions were not unmas ked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vas t s hadowy army, an underground network of cons pirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State. The Brotherhood, its name was s uppos ed to be. There were als o whis pered s tories of a terrible book, a compendium of all the heres ies , of which Golds tein was the author and which circulated clandes tinely here and there. It was a book without a title. People referred to it, if at all, s imply as the book.

But one knew of s uch things only through vague rumours . Neither the Brotherhood nor the book was a s ubject that any ordinary Party member would mention if there was a way of avoiding it.

In its s econd minute the Hate ros e to a frenzy.

People were leaping up and down in theirplaces and s houting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the s creen. The little s andy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouthwas opening and s hutting like that of a landed fis h. Even O’Brien’s heavy face was flus hed. He was s itting very s traight in his chair, his powerful ches t s welling and quivering as though he were s tanding up to the as s ault of a wave. The dark- haired girl behind Wins ton had begun crying out “Swine!

Swine! Swine!” and s uddenly s he picked up a heavy News peak dictionary and flung it at the s creen. It s truck Golds tein’s nos e and bounced off; the voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Wins ton found that he was s houting with the others and kicking his heel violently agains t the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impos s ible to avoid joining in. Within thirty s econds any pretence was always unneces s ary. A hideous ecs tas y of fear and vindictivenes s , a des ire to kill, to torture, to s mas h faces in with a s ledge-hammer, s eemed to flow through the whole group of peoplelike an electric current, turning one even agains t one’s will into a grimacing, s creaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abs tract, undirected emotion which could be s witched from oneobject to another like the flame of a blowlamp.

Thus , at one moment Wins ton’s hatred was not turned agains t Golds tein at all, but, on the contrary, agains t Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police; and at s uch moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the s creen, s ole guardian of truth and s anity

in a world of lies . And yet the very next ins tant he was at one with the people about him, and all that was s aid of Golds tein s eemed to him to be true. At thos e moments his s ecret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration, and Big Brother s eemed to tower up, an invincible, fearles s protector, s tanding like a rock agains t the hordes of As ia, and Golds tein, in s pite of his is olation, his helples s nes s , and the doubt that hung about his very exis tence, s eemed like s ome s inis ter enchanter, capable by the mere power of his voice of wrecking the s tructure of civilization.

It was even pos s ible, at moments , to s witch one’s hatred this way or that by a voluntary act.

Suddenly, by the s ort of violent effort with which one wrenches one’s head away from the pillow ina nightmare, Wins ton s ucceeded in trans ferring his hatred from the face on the s creen to the dark-haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flas hed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a s take and s hoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebas tian. He would ravis h her and cut her throat at the moment of climax. Better than before, moreover, he realized why it was that he hated her. He hated her becaus e s he was young and pretty and s exles s , becaus e he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do s o, becaus e round her s weet s upple wais t, which s eemed to as k you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious s carlet s as h, aggres s ive s ymbol of chas tity.

The Hate ros e to its climax. The voice of Golds tein had become an actual s heep’s bleat, and for an ins tant the face changed into that of a s heep. Then

the s heep-face melted into the figure of a Euras ian s oldier who s eemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his s ub-machine gun roaring, and s eeming to s pring out of the s urface of the s creen, s o that s ome of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their s eats . But in the s ame moment, drawing a deep s igh of relieffrom everybody, the hos tile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired, blackmous tachio’d, full of power and mys terious calm, and s o vas t that it almos t filled up the s creen.Nobody heard what Big Brother was s aying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the s ort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not dis tinguis hable individually but res toring confidence by the fact of being s poken. Then the face of Big Brother faded away again, and ins tead the three s logans of the Party s tood out in bold capitals :

WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

But the face of Big Brother s eemed to pers is t for s everal s econds on the s creen, as thoughthe impact that it had made on everyone’s eyeballs was too vivid to wear off immediately. The little s andy-haired woman had flung hers elf forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With atremulous murmur that s ounded like “My Saviour!” s he extended her arms towards the s creen.

Then s he buried her face in her hands . It was apparent that s he was uttering a prayer.

At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, s low, rhythmical chant of “BB!....B- B!....” --over and over again, very s lowly, with a long

paus e between the firs t “B” and the s econd-a heavy, murmurous s ound, s omehow curious ly s avage, in the background of which one s eemed to hear the s tamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms . For perhaps as much as thirty s econds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a s ort of hymn to the wis dom and majes ty of Big Brother, but s till more it was an act of s elf-hypnos is , a deliberate drowning of cons cious nes s by means of rhythmic nois e. Wins ton’s entrails s eemed to grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hate he could not help s haring in thegeneral delirium, but this s ub-human chanting of “B-B!....B-B!” always filled him with horror. Of cours e he chanted with the res t: it was impos s ible to do otherwis e. To dis s emble your feelings , tocontrol your face, to do what everyone els e was doing, was an ins tinctive reaction. But there was a s pace of a couple of s econds during which the expres s ion of his eyes might conceivably have betrayed him. And it was exactly at this moment that the s ignificant thing happened --if, indeed, it did happen.

Momentarily he caught O’Brien’s eye. O’Brien had s tood up. He had taken off his s pectacles and was in the act of res ettling them on his nos e with his characteris tic ges ture. But there was a fraction of a s econd when their eyes met, and for as long as it took to happen Wins ton knew -- yes , he knew! --that O’Brien was thinking the s ame thing as hims elf. An unmis takable mes s age had pas s ed. It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes . “I am with you,” O’Brien s eemed to be s aying to him. “I

know precis ely what you are feeling. I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your dis gus t. But don’t worry, I am on your s ide!” And then the flas h of intelligence was gone, and O’Brien’s face was as ins crutable as everybody els e’s .

That was all, and he was already uncertain whether it had happened. Such incidents never had any s equel. All that they did was to keep alive in him the belief, or hope, that others bes ides hims elf were the enemies of the Party. Perhaps the rumours of vas t underground cons piracies were true after all --perhaps the Brotherhood really exis ted! It was impos s ible, in s pite of the endles s arres ts and confes s ions and executions , to be s ure that the Brotherhood was not s imply a myth. Some days he believed in it, s ome days not. There was no evidence, only fleeting glimps es that might mean anything or nothing: s natches of overheard convers ation, faint s cribbles on lavatory walls --once, even, when two s trangers met, a s mall movement of the hand which had looked as though it might be a s ignal of recognition. It was all gues s work: very likely he had imaginedeverything. He had gone back to his cubicle without looking at O’Brien again. The idea of following up their momentary contact hardly cros s ed his mind. It would have been inconceivably dangerous even if he had known how to s et about doing it. For a s econd, two s econds , they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the s tory. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked lonelines s in which one had to live.

Wins ton rous ed hims elf and s at up s traighter.

He let out a belch. The gin was ris ing from his s tomach.

His eyes re-focus ed on the page. He dis covered that while he s at helples s ly mus ing he had als o been writing, as though by automatic action. And it was no longer the s ame cramped, awkward handwriting as before. His pen had s lid voluptuous ly over the s mooth paper, printing in large neat capitals -

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

over and over again, filling half a page.

He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was abs urd, s ince the writing of thos e particular words was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening

the diary, but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the s poiled pages and abandon the enterpris e altogether.

He did not do s o, however, becaus e he knew that it was us eles s . Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference.

The Thought Police would get him jus t the s ame. He had committed --would s till have committed, even if he had never s et pen to paper --the es s ential crime that contained all others in its elf. Thoughtcrime, they called it.Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge s ucces s fully for a while, even for years , but s ooner or later they were bound to get you.

It was always at night --the arres ts invariably happened at night. The s udden jerk out of s leep, the rough hand s haking your s houlder, the lights glaring in your eyes , the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vas t majority of cas es there was no trial, no report of the arres t. People s imply dis appeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the regis ters , every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time exis tence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolis hed, annihilated: vapourized was the us ual word.

For a moment he was s eized by a kind of hys teria. He began writing in a hurried untidy s crawl:

theyll shoot me i don’t care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck

i dontcare down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont caredown with big brother-

He s at back in his chair, s lightly as hamed of hims elf, and laid down the pen. The next moment he s tarted violently. There was a knocking at the door.

Already! He s at as s till as a mous e, in the futile hope that whoever it was might go away after a s ingle attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The wors t thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, was probably expres s ionles s . He got up and moved heavily towards the door.

II

A

s he put his hand to the door-knob Wins ton s aw that he had left the diary open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was written all over it, in letters almos t big enough to be legible acros s the room. It was an inconceivably s tupid thing to have done. But, he realized, even in his panic he had not wanted to s mudge the creamy paper by s hutting the book while the ink was wet.

He drew in his breath and opened the door.

Ins tantly a warm wave of relief flowed through him. A colourles s , crus hed-looking woman, with wis py hair and a lined face, was s tanding outs ide.

“Oh, comrade,” s he began in a dreary, whining s ort of voice, “I thought I heard you come in. Do you

think you could come acros s and have a look at our kitchen s ink? It’s got blocked up and--”

It was Mrs . Pars ons , the wife of a neighbour on the s ame floor. (“Mrs .” was a word s omewhat dis countenanced by the Party --you were s uppos ed to call everyone “comrade” --but with s ome women one us ed it ins tinctively.) She was a woman of about thirty, but looking much older. One had the impres s ion that there was dus t in the creas es of her face. Wins ton followed her down the pas s age. Thes e amateur repair jobs were an almos t daily irritation. Victory Mans ions were old flats , built in 1930 or thereabouts , and were falling to pieces . The plas ter flaked cons tantly from ceilings and walls , the pipes burs t in every hard fros t, the roof leaked whenever there was s now, the heating s ys tem was us ually running at half s team when it was not clos ed down altogether from motives of economy.

Repairs , except what you could do for yours elf, had to be s anctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending of a window-pane for two years .

“Of cours e it’s only becaus e Tom is n’t home,”

s aid Mrs . Pars ons vaguely.

The Pars ons ’ flat was bigger than Wins ton’s , and dingy in a different way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look, as though the place had jus t been vis ited by s ome large violent animal. Games impedimenta -- hockey-s ticks , boxing-gloves , a burs t football, a pair of s weaty s horts turned ins ide out --lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of dirty dis hes and dog-eared exercis e-books . On the walls were s carlet banners of the Youth League and the

Spies , and a full-s ized pos ter of Big Brother. There was the us ual boiled-cabbage s mell, common to the wholebuilding, but it was s hot through by a s harper reek of s weat, which -- one knew this at the firs t s niff, though it was hard to s ay how --was the s weat of s ome pers on not pres ent at the moment. Inanother room s omeone with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune with the military mus ic which was s till is s uing from the teles creen.

“It’s the children,” s aid Mrs . Pars ons , cas ting a half-apprehens ive glance at the door. “They haven’t been out today. And of cours e--”

She had a habit of breaking off her s entences in the middle. The kitchen s ink was full nearly to the brim with filthy greenis h water which s melt wors e than ever of cabbage. Wins ton knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. He hated us ing his hands , and he hated bending down, which was always liable to s tart him coughing. Mrs . Pars ons looked on helples s ly.

“Of cours e if Tom was home he’d put it right in a moment,” s he s aid. “He loves anything like that. He’s ever s o good with his hands , Tom is .”

Pars ons was Wins ton’s fellow-employee at the Minis try of Truth. He was a fattis h but active man of paralys ing s tupidity, a mas s of imbecile enthus ias ms -- one of thos e completelyunques tioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the s tability of the Party depended. At thirty-five he had jus t been unwillingly evicted from the Youth League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had managed to s tay on in the Spies for a year beyond the s tatutory age. At the Minis try he was employed in s ome

s ubordinate pos t for which intelligence was not required, but on the other hand he was a leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the other committees engaged in organizing community hikes , s pontaneous demons trations , s avings campaigns , and voluntary activities generally. He would inform you with quiet pride, between whiffs of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at the Community Centre every evening for the pas t four years . An overpowering s mell of s weat, a s ort of uncons cious tes timony to the s trenuous nes s of his life, followed him about wherever he went, and even remained behind him after he had gone.

“Have you got a s panner?” s aid Wins ton, fiddling with the nut on the angle-joint.

“A s panner,” s aid Mrs . Pars ons , immediately becoming invertebrate. “I don’t know, I’m s ure. Perhaps the children--”

There was a trampling of boots and another blas t on the comb as the children charged into the living-room. Mrs . Pars ons brought the s panner. Wins ton let out the water and dis gus tedly removed the clot of human hair that had blocked up the pipe. He cleaned his fingers as bes t he could in the cold water from the tap and went back into the other room.

“Up with your hands !” yelled a s avage voice.

A hands ome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic pis tol, while his s mall s is ter, about two years younger, made the s ame ges ture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were dres s ed in the blue s horts , greys hirts , and red neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies . Wins ton rais ed his hands

above his head, but with an uneas y feeling, s o vicious was the boy’s demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.

“You’re a traitor!” yelled the boy. “You’re a thought-criminal! You’re a Euras ian s py! I’ll s hoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll s end you to the s alt mines !”

Suddenly they were both leaping round him, s houting “Traitor!” and “Thought-criminal!” the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was s omehow s lightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will s oon grow up into man-eaters . There was a s ort of calculating ferocity in the boy’s eye, a quite evident des ire to hit or kick Wins ton and a cons cious nes s of being very nearly big enough to do s o. It was a good job it was not a real pis tol he was holding, Wins ton thought.

Mrs . Pars ons ’ eyes flitted nervous ly from Wins ton to the children, and back again. In thebetter light of the living-room he noticed with interes t that there actually was dus t in the creas es of her face.

“They do get s o nois y,” s he s aid. “They’re dis appointed becaus e they couldn’t go to s ee the hanging, that’s what it is . I’m too bus y to take them.

and Tom won’t be back from work in time.”

“Why can’t we go and s ee the hanging?” roared the boy in his huge voice.

“Want to s ee the hanging! Want to s ee the hanging!” chanted the little girl, s till capering round.

Some Euras ian pris oners , guilty of war crimes , were to be hanged in the Park that evening, Wins ton remembered. This happened about once a month, and was a popular s pectacle. Children always clamoured to

be taken to s ee it. He took his leave of Mrs . Pars ons and made for the door. But he had not gone s ix s teps down the pas s age when s omething hit the back of his neck an agonizingly painful blow. It was as though a red- hot wire had been jabbed into him. He s pun round jus t in time to s ee Mrs . Pars ons dragging her s on back into the doorway while the boy pocketed a catapult.

“Golds tein!” bellowed the boy as the door clos ed on him. But what mos t s truck Wins ton was the look of helples s fright on the woman’s greyis h face.

Back in the flat he s tepped quickly pas t the teles creen and s at down at the table again, s tillrubbing his neck. The mus ic from the teles creen had s topped.

Ins tead, a clipped military voice was reading out, with a s ort of brutal relis h, a des cription of the armaments of the new Floating Fortres s which had jus t been anchored between lceland and the Faroe ls lands .

With thos e children, he thought, that wretched woman mus t lead a life of terror. Another year, two years , and they would be watching her night and day for s ymptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was wors t of all was that by means of s uch organizations as the Spies they were s ys tematically turned into ungovernable little s avages , and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel agains t the dis cipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it.

The s ongs , the proces s ions , the banners , the hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles , the yelling of s logans , the wors hip of Big Brother --it was all a s ort of glorious game to them. All their ferocity was turned outwards , agains t the enemies of the State, agains t foreigners ,

traitors , s aboteurs , thought-criminals . It was almos t normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reas on, for hardly a week pas s ed in which the Times did not carry a paragraph des cribing how s ome eaves dropping little s neak --“child hero” was the phras e generally us ed --had overheard s ome compromis ing remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.

The s ting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked up his pen half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find s omething more to write in the diary.

Suddenly he began thinking of O’Brien again.

Years ago -- how long was it? Seven years it mus t be -- he had dreamed that he was walking through a pitch-dark room. And s omeone s itting to one s ide of him had s aid as he pas s ed: ‘We s hall meet in the place where there is no darknes s .’ It was s aid very quietly, almos t cas ually --a s tatement, not a command. He had walked on without paus ing. What was curious was that at the time, in the dream, the words had not made much impres s ion on him. It was only later and bydegrees that they had s eemed to take on s ignificance. He could not now remember whether it was before or after having the dream that he had s een O’Brien for the firs t time, nor could he remember when he had firs t identified the voice as O’Brien’s . But at any rate the identification exis ted. It was O’Brien who had s poken to him out of the dark.

Wins ton had never been able to feel s ure -- even after this morning’s flas h of the eyes it was s till impos s ible to be s ure whether O’Brien was a friend or an enemy. Nor did it even s eem to matter greatly. There

was a link of unders tanding between them, more important than affection or partis ans hip. “We s hall meet in the place where there is no darknes s ,” he had s aid.

Wins ton did not know what it meant, only that in s ome way or another it would come true.

The voice from the teles creen paus ed. A trumpet call, clear and beautiful, floated into thes tagnant air. The voice continued ras pingly:

“Attention! Your attention, pleas e! A news flas h has this moment arrived from the Malabarfront. Our forces in South India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to s ay that the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within meas urable dis tance of its end. Here is the news flas h--”

Bad news coming, thought Wins ton. And s ure enough, following on a gory des cription of the annihilation of a Euras ian army, with s tupendous figures of killed and pris oners , came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty.

Wins ton belched again. The gin was wearing off, leaving a deflated feeling. The teles creen -perhaps to celebrate the victory, perhaps to drown the memory of the los t chocolate -- cras hed into “Oceania, ’tis for thee”. You were s uppos ed to s tand to attention.

However, in his pres ent pos itionhe was invis ible.

“Oceania, ’tis for thee” gave way to lighter mus ic. Wins ton walked over to the window, keeping his back to the teles creen. The day was s till cold and clear.

Somewhere far away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating roar. About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London at pres ent.

Down in the s treet the wind flapped the torn pos ter to and fro, and the word INGSOC fitfully appeared and vanis hed. Ings oc. The s acred principles of Ings oc. News peak, doublethink, the mutability of the pas t. He felt as though he were wandering in the fores ts of the s ea bottom, los t in a mons trous world where he hims elf was the mons ter. He was alone. The pas t was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a s ingle human creature now living was on his s ide? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure for ever? Like an ans wer, the three s logans on the white face of the Minis try of Truth came back to him:

WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket. There, too, in tiny clear lettering, the s ame s logans were ins cribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes purs ued you. On coins , on s tamps , on the covers of books , on banners , on pos ters , and on the wrappings of a cigarette packet --everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you.

As leep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors , in the bath or in bed --no es cape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres ins ide your s kull.

The s un had s hifted round, and the myriad windows of the Minis try of Truth, with the light no longer s hining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a

fortres s . His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal s hape. It was too s trong, it could not be s tormed. A thous and rocket bombs would not batter it down. He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary. For the future, for the pas t --for an age that might be imaginary. And in front of him there lay not death butannihilation. The diary would be reduced to as hes and hims elf to vapour. Only the Thought Police would read what he had written, before they wiped it out of exis tence and out of memory. How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word s cribbled on a piece of paper, could phys ically s urvive?

The teles creen s truck fourteen. He mus t leave in ten minutes . He had to be back at work by fourteen- thirty.

Curious ly, the chiming of the hour s eemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghos t uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But s o long as he uttered it, in s ome obs cure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yours elf heard but by s taying s ane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote:

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are

different from one another and do not live alone --to a time when truth exists and

what is done cannot be undone:

From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink -- greetings!

He was already dead, he reflected. It s eemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts , that he had taken the decis ive s tep. The cons equences of every act are included in the act its elf. He wrote:

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

Now he had recognized hims elf as a dead man it became important to s tay alive as long as pos s ible.

Two fingers of his right hand were inks tained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you. Some nos ing zealot in the Minis try (a woman, probably:

s omeone like the little s andy-haired woman or the dark- haired girl from the Fiction Department) might s tart wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval, why he had us ed an old-fas hioned pen, what he had been writing --and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He went to the bathroom and carefully s crubbed the ink away with the gritty dark- brown s oap which ras ped your s kin like s andpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpos e.

He put the diary away in the drawer. It was quite us eles s to think of hiding it, but he could at leas t make s ure whether or not its exis tence had been dis covered. A hair laid acros s the page-ends was too

obvious . With the tip of his finger he picked up an identifiable grain of whitis h dus t anddepos ited it on the corner of the cover, where it was bound to be s haken off if the book was moved.

III

W

ins ton was dreaming of his mother.

He mus t, he thought, have been ten or eleven years old when his mother had dis appeared. She was a tall, s tatues que, rather s ilent woman with s low movements and magnificent fair hair. His father he remembered more vaguely as dark and thin, dres s ed always in neat dark clothes (Wins ton remembered es pecially the very thin s oles of his father’s s hoes ) and wearing s pectacles . The two of them mus t evidently have been s wallowed up in one of the firs t great purges of the fifties .

At this moment his mother was s itting in s ome place deep down beneath him, with his young s is ter in her arms . He did not remember his s is ter at all, except as a tiny, feeble baby, always s ilent, with large, watchful eyes . Both of them were looking up at him. They were down in s ome s ubterranean place --the bottom of a well, for ins tance, or a very deep grave --but it was a place which, already far below him, was its elf moving downwards . They were in the s aloon of a s inking s hip, looking up at him through the darkening water. There was s till air in the s aloon, they could s till s ee him and he them, but all the while they were s inking down, down into the green waters which in another moment mus t hide them from s ight for ever. He was out in the light

and air while they were being s ucked down to death, and they were down there becaus e he was up here. He knew it and they knew it, and he could s ee the knowledge in their faces . There was no reproach either in their faces or in their hearts , only the knowledge that they mus t die in order that he might remain alive, and that this was part of the unavoidable order of things .

He could not remember what had happened, but he knew in his dream that in s ome way the lives of his mother and his s is ter had been s acrificed to his own. It was one of thos e dreams which, while retaining the characteris tic dream s cenery, are a continuation of one’s intellectual life, and in which one becomes aware of facts and ideas which s till s eem new and valuable after one is awake. The thing that now s uddenly s truck Wins ton was that his mother’s death, nearly thirty years ago, had been tragic and s orrowful in a way that was no longer pos s ible. Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was s till privacy, love, and friends hip, and when the members of a family s tood by one another without needing to know the reas on. His mother’s memory tore at his heart becaus e s he had died loving him, when he was too young and s elfis h to love her in return, and becaus e s omehow, he did not remember how, s he had s acrificed hers elf to a conception of loyalty that was private and unalterable.

Such things , he s aw, could not happen today. Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complexs orrows . All this he s eemed to s ee in the large eyes of his mother and his s is ter, looking up at him through the green water, hundreds of fathoms down and s till s inking.

Suddenly he was s tanding on s hort s pringy turf, on a s ummer evening when the s lanting rays of the s un gilded the ground. The lands cape that he was looking at recurred s o often in his dreams that he was never fully certain whether or not he had s een it in the real world. In his waking thoughts he called it the Golden Country. It was an old, rabbit-bitten pas ture, with a foot-track wandering acros s it and a molehill here and there. In the ragged hedge on the oppos ite s ide of the field the boughs of the elm trees were s waying very faintly in the breeze, their leaves jus t s tirring in dens e mas s es like women’s hair. Somewhere near at hand, though out of s ight, there was a clear, s low-moving s tream where dace were s wimming in the pools under the willow trees .

The girl with dark hair was coming towards them acros s the field. With what s eemed a s ingle movement s he tore off her clothes and flung them dis dainfully as ide. Her body was white ands mooth, but it arous ed no des ire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that ins tant was admiration for the ges ture with which s he had thrown her clothes as ide. With its grace and careles s nes s it s eemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole s ys tem of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be s wept into nothingnes s by a s ingle s plendid movement of the arm. That too was a ges ture belonging to the ancient time. Wins ton woke up with the word “Shakes peare” on his lips .

The teles creen was giving forth an ear-s plitting whis tle which continued on the s ame note for thirty s econds . It was nought s even fifteen, getting-up time

for office workers . Wins ton wrenched his body out of bed -- naked, for a member of the Outer Party received only 3,000 clothing coupons annually, and a s uit of pyjamas was 600 --and s eized a dingy s inglet and a pair of s horts that were lying acros s a chair. The Phys ical Jerks would begin in three minutes . The next moment he was doubled up by a violent coughing fit which nearly always attacked him s oon after waking up. Itemptied his lungs s o completely that he could only begin breathing again by lying on his back and taking a s eries of deep gas ps . His veins had s welled with the effort of the cough, and the varicos eulcer had s tarted itching.

“Thirty to forty group!” yapped a piercing female voice. “Thirty to forty group! Take your places , pleas e. Thirties to forties !”

Wins ton s prang to attention in front of the teles creen, upon which the image of a youngis h woman, s crawny but mus cular, dres s ed in tunic and gym-s hoes , had already appeared.

“Arms bending and s tretching!” s he rapped out.

“Take your time by me. One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! Come on, comrades , put a bit of life into it!

One, two, three four! One two, three, four!...”

The pain of the coughing fit had not quite driven out of Wins ton’s mind the impres s ion made by his dream, and the rhythmic movements of the exercis e res tored it s omewhat. As he mechanically s hot his arms back and forth, wearing on his face the look of grim enjoyment which was cons idered proper during the Phys ical Jerks , he was s truggling to think his way backward into the dim period of his early childhood. It was extraordinarily difficult. Beyond the late fifties

everything faded. When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life los t its s harpnes s . You remembered huge events which had quite probably not happened, you remembered the detail of incidents without being able to recapture their atmos phere, and there were long blank periods to which you could as s ign nothing. Everything had been different then. Even the names of countries , and their s hapes on the map, had been different.Airs trip One, for ins tance, had not been s o called in thos e days : it had been called England or Britain, though London, he felt fairly certain, had always been called London.

Wins ton could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war, but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood, becaus e one of his early memories was of an air raid which appeared to take everyone by s urpris e. Perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colches ter. He did not remember the raid its elf, but he did remember his father’s hand clutching his own as they hurried down, down, down into s ome place deep in the earth, round and round a s piral s taircas e which rang under his feet and which finally s o wearied his legs that he began whimpering and they had to s top and res t. His mother, in her s low, dreamy way, was following a long way behind them. She was carrying his baby s is ter -- orperhaps it was only a bundle of blankets that s he was carrying: he was not certain whether his s is ter had been born then. Finally they had emerged into a nois y, crowded place which he had realized to be a Tube s tation.

There were people s itting all over the s tone- flagged floor, and other people, packed tightly together, were s itting on metal bunks , one above the other.

Wins ton and his mother and father found thems elves a place on the floor, and near them an old man and an old woman were s itting s ide by s ide on a bunk. The old man had on a decent dark s uit and a black cloth cap pus hed back from very white hair: his face was s carlet and his eyes were blue and full of tears . He reeked of gin. It s eemed to breathe out of his s kin in place of s weat, and one could have fancied that the tears welling from his eyes were pure gin. But though s lightly drunk he was als o s uffering under s ome grief that was genuine and unbearable. In his childis h way Wins ton gras ped that s ome terrible thing, s omething that was beyond forgivenes s and could never be remedied, had jus t happened. Itals o s eemed to him that he knew what it was . Someone whom the old man loved --a little granddaughter, perhaps -- had been killed. Every few minutes the old man kept repeating:

“We didn’t ought to ’ave trus ted ’em. I s aid s o, Ma, didn’t I? That’s what comes of trus ting ’em. I s aid s o all along. We didn’t ought to ’ave trus ted the buggers .”

But which buggers they didn’t ought to have trus ted Wins ton could not now remember.

Since about that time, war had been literally continuous , though s trictly s peaking it had not always been the s ame war. For s everal months during his childhood there had been confus ed s treet fighting in London its elf, s ome of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the his tory of the whole period, to s ay who