O'Brien's servant, however, had
admitted
the two of them
without demur.
without demur.
Orwell - 1984
Wait.
Let me give you
my address. '
They were standing in front of a telescreen. Somewhat
absentmindedly O'Brien felt two of his pockets and then
produced a small leather-covered notebook and a gold
ink-pencil. Immediately beneath the telescreen, in such a
position that anyone who was watching at the other end of
the instrument could read what he was writing, he scribbled
an address, tore out the page and handed it to Winston.
'I am usually at home in the evenings,' he said. 'If not, my
servant will give you the dictionary'
He was gone, leaving Winston holding the scrap of paper,
which this time there was no need to conceal. Nevertheless
he carefully memorized what was written on it, and some
hours later dropped it into the memory hole along with a
mass of other papers.
They had been talking to one another for a couple of
minutes at the most. There was only one meaning that the
episode could possibly have. It had been contrived as a way
of letting Winston know O'Brien's address. This was neces-
sary, because except by direct enquiry it was never possible
to discover where anyone lived. There were no directories
of any kind. 'If you ever want to see me, this is where I can
1984
be found,' was what O'Brien had been saying to him. Per-
haps there would even be a message concealed somewhere
in the dictionary. But at any rate, one thing was certain. The
conspiracy that he had dreamed of did exist, and he had
reached the outer edges of it.
He knew that sooner or later he would obey O'Brien's
summons. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps after a long de-
lay — he was not certain. What was happening was only the
working-out of a process that had started years ago. The
first step had been a secret, involuntary thought, the sec-
ond had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from
thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last
step was something that would happen in the Ministry of
Love. He had accepted it. The end was contained in the be-
ginning. But it was frightening: or, more exactly, it was like
a foretaste of death, like being a little less alive. Even while
he was speaking to O'Brien, when the meaning of the words
had sunk in, a chilly shuddering feeling had taken posses-
sion of his body. He had the sensation of stepping into the
dampness of a grave, and it was not much better because
he had always known that the grave was there and waiting
for him.
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Chapter 7
Winston had woken up with his eyes full of tears. Ju-
lia rolled sleepily against him, murmuring something
that might have been 'What's the matter? '
'I dreamt — ' he began, and stopped short. It was too com-
plex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and
there was a memory connected with it that had swum into
his mind in the few seconds after waking.
He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmo-
sphere of the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in which
his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a land-
scape on a summer evening after rain. It had all occurred
inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glass
was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everything
was flooded with clear soft light in which one could see into
interminable distances. The dream had also been compre-
hended by — indeed, in some sense it had consisted in — a
gesture of the arm made by his mother, and made again
thirty years later by the Jewish woman he had seen on the
news film, trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets,
before the helicopter blew them both to pieces.
'Do you know,' he said, 'that until this moment I believed
I had murdered my mother? '
'Why did you murder her? ' said Julia, almost asleep.
'I didn't murder her. Not physically'
1984
In the dream he had remembered his last glimpse of his
mother, and within a few moments of waking the cluster
of small events surrounding it had all come back. It was a
memory that he must have deliberately pushed out of his
consciousness over many years. He was not certain of the
date, but he could not have been less than ten years old, pos-
sibly twelve, when it had happened.
His father had disappeared some time earlier, how much
earlier he could not remember. He remembered better the
rackety, uneasy circumstances of the time: the periodical
panics about air-raids and the sheltering in Tube stations,
the piles of rubble everywhere, the unintelligible proc-
lamations posted at street corners, the gangs of youths in
shirts all the same colour, the enormous queues outside
the bakeries, the intermittent machine-gun fire in the dis-
tance — above all, the fact that there was never enough to
eat. He remembered long afternoons spent with other boys
in scrounging round dustbins and rubbish heaps, picking
out the ribs of cabbage leaves, potato peelings, sometimes
even scraps of stale breadcrust from which they carefully
scraped away the cinders; and also in waiting for the pass-
ing of trucks which travelled over a certain route and were
known to carry cattle feed, and which, when they jolted
over the bad patches in the road, sometimes spilt a few frag-
ments of oil-cake.
When his father disappeared, his mother did not show
any surprise or any violent grief, but a sudden change came
over her. She seemed to have become completely spiritless.
It was evident even to Winston that she was waiting for
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something that she knew must happen. She did everything
that was needed — cooked, washed, mended, made the bed,
swept the floor, dusted the mantelpiece — always very slowly
and with a curious lack of superfluous motion, like an art-
ist's lay- figure moving of its own accord. Her large shapely
body seemed to relapse naturally into stillness. For hours
at a time she would sit almost immobile on the bed, nurs-
ing his young sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of two
or three, with a face made simian by thinness. Very occa-
sionally she would take Winston in her arms and press him
against her for a long time without saying anything. He was
aware, in spite of his youthfulness and selfishness, that this
was somehow connected with the never-mentioned thing
that was about to happen.
He remembered the room where they lived, a dark, close-
smelling room that seemed half filled by a bed with a white
counterpane. There was a gas ring in the fender, and a shelf
where food was kept, and on the landing outside there was
a brown earthenware sink, common to several rooms. He
remembered his mother's statuesque body bending over the
gas ring to stir at something in a saucepan. Above all he
remembered his continuous hunger, and the fierce sordid
battles at mealtimes. He would ask his mother naggingly,
over and over again, why there was not more food, he would
shout and storm at her (he even remembered the tones of
his voice, which was beginning to break prematurely and
sometimes boomed in a peculiar way), or he would attempt
a snivelling note of pathos in his efforts to get more than his
share. His mother was quite ready to give him more than
1984
his share. She took it for granted that he, 'the boy', should
have the biggest portion; but however much she gave him
he invariably demanded more. At every meal she would be-
seech him not to be selfish and to remember that his little
sister was sick and also needed food, but it was no use. He
would cry out with rage when she stopped ladling, he would
try to wrench the saucepan and spoon out of her hands, he
would grab bits from his sister's plate. He knew that he was
starving the other two, but he could not help it; he even felt
that he had a right to do it. The clamorous hunger in his bel-
ly seemed to justify him. Between meals, if his mother did
not stand guard, he was constantly pilfering at the wretched
store of food on the shelf.
One day a chocolate-ration was issued. There had been
no such issue for weeks or months past. He remembered
quite clearly that precious little morsel of chocolate. It was a
two-ounce slab (they still talked about ounces in those days)
between the three of them. It was obvious that it ought to
be divided into three equal parts. Suddenly, as though he
were listening to somebody else, Winston heard himself
demanding in a loud booming voice that he should be giv-
en the whole piece. His mother told him not to be greedy.
There was a long, nagging argument that went round and
round, with shouts, whines, tears, remonstrances, bargain-
ings. His tiny sister, clinging to her mother with both hands,
exactly like a baby monkey, sat looking over her shoulder at
him with large, mournful eyes. In the end his mother broke
off three-quarters of the chocolate and gave it to Winston,
giving the other quarter to his sister. The little girl took hold
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 205
of it and looked at it dully, perhaps not knowing what it was.
Winston stood watching her for a moment. Then with a
sudden swift spring he had snatched the piece of chocolate
out of his sister's hand and was fleeing for the door.
'Winston, Winston! ' his mother called after him. 'Come
back! Give your sister back her chocolate! '
He stopped, but did not come back. His mother's anx-
ious eyes were fixed on his face. Even now he was thinking
about the thing, he did not know what it was that was on
the point of happening. His sister, conscious of having been
robbed of something, had set up a feeble wail. His mother
drew her arm round the child and pressed its face against
her breast. Something in the gesture told him that his sis-
ter was dying. He turned and fled down the stairs, with the
chocolate growing sticky in his hand.
He never saw his mother again. After he had devoured
the chocolate he felt somewhat ashamed of himself and
hung about in the streets for several hours, until hunger
drove him home. When he came back his mother had dis-
appeared. This was already becoming normal at that time.
Nothing was gone from the room except his mother and his
sister. They had not taken any clothes, not even his mother's
overcoat. To this day he did not know with any certainty
that his mother was dead. It was perfectly possible that she
had merely been sent to a forced-labour camp. As for his
sister, she might have been removed, like Winston himself,
to one of the colonies for homeless children (Reclamation
Centres, they were called) which had grown up as a result
of the civil war, or she might have been sent to the labour
1984
camp along with his mother, or simply left somewhere or
other to die.
The dream was still vivid in his mind, especially the en-
veloping protecting gesture of the arm in which its whole
meaning seemed to be contained. His mind went back to
another dream of two months ago. Exactly as his mother
had sat on the dingy whitequilted bed, with the child cling-
ing to her, so she had sat in the sunken ship, far underneath
him, and drowning deeper every minute, but still looking
up at him through the darkening water.
He told Julia the story of his mother's disappearance.
Without opening her eyes she rolled over and settled herself
into a more comfortable position.
'I expect you were a beastly little swine in those days,' she
said indistinctly. 'All children are swine. '
'Yes. But the real point of the story '
From her breathing it was evident that she was going
off to sleep again. He would have liked to continue talking
about his mother. He did not suppose, from what he could
remember of her, that she had been an unusual woman, still
less an intelligent one; and yet she had possessed a kind of
nobility, a kind of purity, simply because the standards that
she obeyed were private ones. Her feelings were her own,
and could not be altered from outside. It would not have
occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby
becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him,
and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him
love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother
had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed
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nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert
the child's death or her own; but it seemed natural to her to
do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the
little boy with her arm, which was no more use against the
bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the Par-
ty had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere
feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing
you of all power over the material world. When once you
were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel,
what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no dif-
ference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you
nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted
clean out of the stream of history. And yet to the people
of only two generations ago this would not have seemed
all-important, because they were not attempting to alter
history. They were governed by private loyalties which they
did not question. What mattered were individual relation-
ships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear,
a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself.
The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in
this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or
an idea, they were loyal to one another. For the first time in
his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely
as an inert force which would one day spring to life and re-
generate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had
not become hardened inside. They had held on to the primi-
tive emotions which he himself had to re-learn by conscious
effort. And in thinking this he remembered, without appar-
ent relevance, how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed
1984
hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gut-
ter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk.
"The proles are human beings,' he said aloud. 'We are not
human. '
'Why not? ' said Julia, who had woken up again.
He thought for a little while. 'Has it ever occurred to you,'
he said, 'that the best thing for us to do would be simply to
walk out of here before it's too late, and never see each other
again? '
'Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several times. But I'm
not going to do it, all the same. '
'We've been lucky' he said 'but it can't last much longer.
You're young. You look normal and innocent. If you keep
clear of people like me, you might stay alive for another fifty
years. '
'No. I've thought it all out. What you do, I'm going to do.
And don't be too downhearted. I'm rather good at staying
alive. '
'We may be together for another six months — a year —
there's no knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do
you realize how utterly alone we shall be? When once they
get hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that
either of us can do for the other. If I confess, they'll shoot
you, and if I refuse to confess, they'll shoot you just the same.
Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying, will
put off your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of us
will even know whether the other is alive or dead. We shall
be utterly without power of any kind. The one thing that
matters is that we shouldn't betray one another, although
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even that can't make the slightest difference. '
'If you mean confessing,' she said, 'we shall do that, right
enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They
torture you. '
'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal.
What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If
they could make me stop loving you — that would be the
real betrayal. '
She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said final-
ly 'It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say
anything — ANYTHING — but they can't make you believe
it. They can't get inside you. '
'No,' he said a little more hopefully, 'no; that's quite true.
They can't get inside you. If you can FEEL that staying hu-
man is worth while, even when it can't have any result
whatever, you've beaten them. '
He thought of the telescreen with its never- sleeping ear.
They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your
head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness
they had never mastered the secret of finding out what an-
other human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less true
when you were actually in their hands. One did not know
what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was pos-
sible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that
registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing- down
by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning.
Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be
tracked down by enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you
by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay
1984
human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could
not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter
them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in
the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or
thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysteri-
ous even to yourself, remained impregnable.
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Chapter 8
They had done it, they had done it at last!
The room they were standing in was long-shaped and
softly lit. The telescreen was dimmed to a low murmur; the
richness of the dark-blue carpet gave one the impression of
treading on velvet. At the far end of the room O'Brien was
sitting at a table under a green-shaded lamp, with a mass of
papers on either side of him. He had not bothered to look up
when the servant showed Julia and Winston in.
Winston's heart was thumping so hard that he doubted
whether he would be able to speak. They had done it, they
had done it at last, was all he could think. It had been a rash
act to come here at all, and sheer folly to arrive together;
though it was true that they had come by different routes
and only met on O'Brien's doorstep. But merely to walk into
such a place needed an effort of the nerve. It was only on
very rare occasions that one saw inside the dwelling-plac-
es of the Inner Party, or even penetrated into the quarter
of the town where they lived. The whole atmosphere of the
huge block of flats, the richness and spaciousness of every-
thing, the unfamiliar smells of good food and good tobacco,
the silent and incredibly rapid lifts sliding up and down, the
white-jacketed servants hurrying to and fro — everything
was intimidating. Although he had a good pretext for com-
ing here, he was haunted at every step by the fear that a
1984
black-uniformed guard would suddenly appear from round
the corner, demand his papers, and order him to get out.
O'Brien's servant, however, had admitted the two of them
without demur. He was a small, dark-haired man in a white
jacket, with a diamond- shaped, completely expressionless
face which might have been that of a Chinese. The passage
down which he led them was softly carpeted, with cream-
papered walls and white wainscoting, all exquisitely clean.
That too was intimidating. Winston could not remember
ever to have seen a passageway whose walls were not grimy
from the contact of human bodies.
O'Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers and
seemed to be studying it intently. His heavy face, bent down
so that one could see the line of the nose, looked both for-
midable and intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds he sat
without stirring. Then he pulled the speakwrite towards
him and rapped out a message in the hybrid jargon of the
Ministries:
'Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise
stop suggestion contained item six doubleplus ridiculous
verging crimethink cancel stop unproceed construction-wise
antegetting plusfull estimates machinery overheads stop end
message. '
He rose deliberately from his chair and came towards
them across the soundless carpet. A little of the official at-
mosphere seemed to have fallen away from him with the
Newspeak words, but his expression was grimmer than
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 213
usual, as though he were not pleased at being disturbed. The
terror that Winston already felt was suddenly shot through
by a streak of ordinary embarrassment. It seemed to him
quite possible that he had simply made a stupid mistake.
For what evidence had he in reality that O'Brien was any
kind of political conspirator? Nothing but a flash of the eyes
and a single equivocal remark: beyond that, only his own
secret imaginings, founded on a dream. He could not even
fall back on the pretence that he had come to borrow the
dictionary, because in that case Julia's presence was impos-
sible to explain. As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought
seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed
a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had
stopped.
Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise.
Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken
aback to be able to hold his tongue.
'You can turn it off! ' he said.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privi-
lege. '
He was opposite them now. His solid form towered
over the pair of them, and the expression on his face was
still indecipherable. He was waiting, somewhat sternly, for
Winston to speak, but about what? Even now it was quite
conceivable that he was simply a busy man wondering ir-
ritably why he had been interrupted. Nobody spoke. After
the stopping of the telescreen the room seemed deadly si-
lent. The seconds marched past, enormous. With difficulty
Winston continued to keep his eyes fixed on O'Brien's. Then
1984
suddenly the grim face broke down into what might have
been the beginnings of a smile. With his characteristic ges-
ture O'Brien resettled his spectacles on his nose.
'Shall I say it, or will you? ' he said.
'I will say it,' said Winston promptly. 'That thing is really
turned off? '
'Yes, everything is turned off. We are alone. '
'We have come here because '
He paused, realizing for the first time the vagueness of
his own motives. Since he did not in fact know what kind
of help he expected from O'Brien, it was not easy to say why
he had come here. He went on, conscious that what he was
saying must sound both feeble and pretentious:
'We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some
kind of secret organization working against the Party, and
that you are involved in it. We want to join it and work for it.
We are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles
of Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are also adulter-
ers. I tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your
mercy. If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other
way, we are ready'
He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, with the
feeling that the door had opened. Sure enough, the little yel-
low-faced servant had come in without knocking. Winston
saw that he was carrying a tray with a decanter and glasses.
'Martin is one of us,' said O'Brien impassively. 'Bring
the drinks over here, Martin. Put them on the round table.
Have we enough chairs? Then we may as well sit down and
talk in comfort. Bring a chair for yourself, Martin. This is
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business. You can stop being a servant for the next ten min-
utes. '
The little man sat down, quite at his ease, and yet still
with a servant-like air, the air of a valet enjoying a priv-
ilege. Winston regarded him out of the corner of his eye.
It struck him that the man's whole life was playing a part,
and that he felt it to be dangerous to drop his assumed per-
sonality even for a moment. O'Brien took the decanter by
the neck and filled up the glasses with a dark-red liquid. It
aroused in Winston dim memories of something seen long
ago on a wall or a hoarding — a vast bottle composed of elec-
tric lights which seemed to move up and down and pour its
contents into a glass. Seen from the top the stuff looked al-
most black, but in the decanter it gleamed like a ruby. It had
a sour-sweet smell. He saw Julia pick up her glass and sniff
at it with frank curiosity.
'It is called wine,' said O'Brien with a faint smile. 'You
will have read about it in books, no doubt. Not much of it
gets to the Outer Party, I am afraid. ' His face grew solemn
again, and he raised his glass: 'I think it is fitting that we
should begin by drinking a health. To our Leader: To Em-
manuel Goldstein. '
Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine
was a thing he had read and dreamed about. Like the glass
paperweight or Mr Charrington's half- remembered rhymes,
it belonged to the vanished, romantic past, the olden time
as he liked to call it in his secret thoughts. For some reason
he had always thought of wine as having an intensely sweet
taste, like that of blackberry jam and an immediate intoxi-
1984
eating effect. Actually, when he came to swallow it, the stuff
was distinctly disappointing. The truth was that after years
of gin-drinking he could barely taste it. He set down the
empty glass.
"Then there is such a person as Goldstein? ' he said.
'Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do
not know. '
'And the conspiracy — the organization? Is it real? It is not
simply an invention of the Thought Police? '
'No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call it. You will never
learn much more about the Brotherhood than that it exists
and that you belong to it. I will come back to that pres-
ently' He looked at his wrist-watch. 'It is unwise even for
members of the Inner Party to turn off the telescreen for
more than half an hour. You ought not to have come here
together, and you will have to leave separately. You, com-
rade' — he bowed his head to Julia — 'will leave first. We have
about twenty minutes at our disposal. You will understand
that I must start by asking you certain questions. In general
terms, what are you prepared to do? '
Anything that we are capable of,' said Winston.
O'Brien had turned himself a little in his chair so that he
was facing Winston. He almost ignored Julia, seeming to
take it for granted that Winston could speak for her. For a
moment the lids flitted down over his eyes. He began asking
his questions in a low, expressionless voice, as though this
were a routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers
were known to him already.
'You are prepared to give your lives? '
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'Yes. '
'You are prepared to commit murder? '
'Yes. '
'To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death
of hundreds of innocent people? '
'Yes. '
'To betray your country to foreign powers? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to cor-
rupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming
drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal
diseases — to do anything which is likely to cause demoral-
ization and weaken the power of the Party? '
'Yes. '
'If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to
throw sulphuric acid in a child's face — are you prepared to
do that? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the
rest of your life as a waiter or a dock- worker? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we or-
der you to do so? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never
see one another again? '
'No! ' broke in Julia.
It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before
he answered. For a moment he seemed even to have been
1984
deprived of the power of speech. His tongue worked sound-
lessly, forming the opening syllables first of one word, then
of the other, over and over again. Until he had said it, he
did not know which word he was going to say. 'No,' he said
finally.
'You did well to tell me,' said O'Brien. 'It is necessary for
us to know everything. '
He turned himself toward Julia and added in a voice
with somewhat more expression in it:
'Do you understand that even if he survives, it may be
as a different person? We may be obliged to give him a new
identity. His face, his movements, the shape of his hands,
the colour of his hair — even his voice would be different.
And you yourself might have become a different person.
Our surgeons can alter people beyond recognition. Some-
times it is necessary. Sometimes we even amputate a limb. '
Winston could not help snatching another sidelong
glance at Martin's Mongolian face. There were no scars
that he could see. Julia had turned a shade paler, so that
her freckles were showing, but she faced O'Brien boldly. She
murmured something that seemed to be assent.
'Good. Then that is settled. '
There was a silver box of cigarettes on the table. With a
rather absent-minded air O'Brien pushed them towards the
others, took one himself, then stood up and began to pace
slowly to and fro, as though he could think better standing.
They were very good cigarettes, very thick and well-packed,
with an unfamiliar silkiness in the paper. O'Brien looked at
his wrist-watch again.
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'You had better go back to your Pantry, Martin,' he said.
'I shall switch on in a quarter of an hour. Take a good look
at these comrades' faces before you go. You will be seeing
them again. I may not. '
Exactly as they had done at the front door, the little man's
dark eyes flickered over their faces. There was not a trace
of friendliness in his manner. He was memorizing their
appearance, but he felt no interest in them, or appeared
to feel none. It occurred to Winston that a synthetic face
was perhaps incapable of changing its expression. Without
speaking or giving any kind of salutation, Martin went out,
closing the door silently behind him. O'Brien was strolling
up and down, one hand in the pocket of his black overalls,
the other holding his cigarette.
'You understand,' he said, 'that you will be fighting in
the dark. You will always be in the dark. You will receive
orders and you will obey them, without knowing why. Later
I shall send you a book from which you will learn the true
nature of the society we live in, and the strategy by which
we shall destroy it. When you have read the book, you will
be full members of the Brotherhood. But between the gen-
eral aims that we are fighting for and the immedi ate tasks
of the moment, you will never know anything. I tell you
that the Brotherhood exists, but I cannot tell you wheth-
er it numbers a hundred members, or ten million. From
your personal knowledge you will never be able to say that
it numbers even as many as a dozen. You will have three
or four contacts, who will be renewed from time to time
as they disappear. As this was your first contact, it will be
1984
preserved. When you receive orders, they will come from
me. If we find it necessary to communicate with you, it will
be through Martin. When you are finally caught, you will
confess. That is unavoidable. But you will have very little
to confess, other than your own actions. You will not be
able to betray more than a handful of unimportant people.
Probably you will not even betray me. By that time I may be
dead, or I shall have become a different person, with a dif-
ferent face. '
He continued to move to and fro over the soft carpet. In
spite of the bulkiness of his body there was a remarkable
grace in his movements. It came out even in the gesture
with which he thrust a hand into his pocket, or manipu-
lated a cigarette. More even than of strength, he gave an
impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged
by irony. However much in earnest he might be, he had
nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic.
When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal disease, am-
putated limbs, and altered faces, it was with a faint air of
persiflage. 'This is unavoidable,' his voice seemed to say;
'this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly. But this is
not what we shall be doing when life is worth living again. '
A wave of admiration, almost of worship, flowed out from
Winston towards O'Brien. For the moment he had forgot-
ten the shadowy figure of Goldstein. When you looked at
O'Brien's powerful shoulders and his blunt- featured face, so
ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible to believe that
he could be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was
not equal to, no danger that he could not foresee. Even Julia
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seemed to be impressed. She had let her cigarette go out and
was listening intently. O'Brien went on:
'You will have heard rumours of the existence of the
Brotherhood. No doubt you have formed your own picture
of it. You have imagined, probably, a huge underworld of
conspirators, meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling mes-
sages on walls, recognizing one another by codewords or by
special movements of the hand. Nothing of the kind exists.
The members of the Brotherhood have no way of recogniz-
ing one another, and it is impossible for any one member to
be aware of the identity of more than a few others. Gold-
stein himself, if he fell into the hands of the Thought Police,
could not give them a complete list of members, or any in-
formation that would lead them to a complete list.
my address. '
They were standing in front of a telescreen. Somewhat
absentmindedly O'Brien felt two of his pockets and then
produced a small leather-covered notebook and a gold
ink-pencil. Immediately beneath the telescreen, in such a
position that anyone who was watching at the other end of
the instrument could read what he was writing, he scribbled
an address, tore out the page and handed it to Winston.
'I am usually at home in the evenings,' he said. 'If not, my
servant will give you the dictionary'
He was gone, leaving Winston holding the scrap of paper,
which this time there was no need to conceal. Nevertheless
he carefully memorized what was written on it, and some
hours later dropped it into the memory hole along with a
mass of other papers.
They had been talking to one another for a couple of
minutes at the most. There was only one meaning that the
episode could possibly have. It had been contrived as a way
of letting Winston know O'Brien's address. This was neces-
sary, because except by direct enquiry it was never possible
to discover where anyone lived. There were no directories
of any kind. 'If you ever want to see me, this is where I can
1984
be found,' was what O'Brien had been saying to him. Per-
haps there would even be a message concealed somewhere
in the dictionary. But at any rate, one thing was certain. The
conspiracy that he had dreamed of did exist, and he had
reached the outer edges of it.
He knew that sooner or later he would obey O'Brien's
summons. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps after a long de-
lay — he was not certain. What was happening was only the
working-out of a process that had started years ago. The
first step had been a secret, involuntary thought, the sec-
ond had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from
thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last
step was something that would happen in the Ministry of
Love. He had accepted it. The end was contained in the be-
ginning. But it was frightening: or, more exactly, it was like
a foretaste of death, like being a little less alive. Even while
he was speaking to O'Brien, when the meaning of the words
had sunk in, a chilly shuddering feeling had taken posses-
sion of his body. He had the sensation of stepping into the
dampness of a grave, and it was not much better because
he had always known that the grave was there and waiting
for him.
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Chapter 7
Winston had woken up with his eyes full of tears. Ju-
lia rolled sleepily against him, murmuring something
that might have been 'What's the matter? '
'I dreamt — ' he began, and stopped short. It was too com-
plex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and
there was a memory connected with it that had swum into
his mind in the few seconds after waking.
He lay back with his eyes shut, still sodden in the atmo-
sphere of the dream. It was a vast, luminous dream in which
his whole life seemed to stretch out before him like a land-
scape on a summer evening after rain. It had all occurred
inside the glass paperweight, but the surface of the glass
was the dome of the sky, and inside the dome everything
was flooded with clear soft light in which one could see into
interminable distances. The dream had also been compre-
hended by — indeed, in some sense it had consisted in — a
gesture of the arm made by his mother, and made again
thirty years later by the Jewish woman he had seen on the
news film, trying to shelter the small boy from the bullets,
before the helicopter blew them both to pieces.
'Do you know,' he said, 'that until this moment I believed
I had murdered my mother? '
'Why did you murder her? ' said Julia, almost asleep.
'I didn't murder her. Not physically'
1984
In the dream he had remembered his last glimpse of his
mother, and within a few moments of waking the cluster
of small events surrounding it had all come back. It was a
memory that he must have deliberately pushed out of his
consciousness over many years. He was not certain of the
date, but he could not have been less than ten years old, pos-
sibly twelve, when it had happened.
His father had disappeared some time earlier, how much
earlier he could not remember. He remembered better the
rackety, uneasy circumstances of the time: the periodical
panics about air-raids and the sheltering in Tube stations,
the piles of rubble everywhere, the unintelligible proc-
lamations posted at street corners, the gangs of youths in
shirts all the same colour, the enormous queues outside
the bakeries, the intermittent machine-gun fire in the dis-
tance — above all, the fact that there was never enough to
eat. He remembered long afternoons spent with other boys
in scrounging round dustbins and rubbish heaps, picking
out the ribs of cabbage leaves, potato peelings, sometimes
even scraps of stale breadcrust from which they carefully
scraped away the cinders; and also in waiting for the pass-
ing of trucks which travelled over a certain route and were
known to carry cattle feed, and which, when they jolted
over the bad patches in the road, sometimes spilt a few frag-
ments of oil-cake.
When his father disappeared, his mother did not show
any surprise or any violent grief, but a sudden change came
over her. She seemed to have become completely spiritless.
It was evident even to Winston that she was waiting for
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something that she knew must happen. She did everything
that was needed — cooked, washed, mended, made the bed,
swept the floor, dusted the mantelpiece — always very slowly
and with a curious lack of superfluous motion, like an art-
ist's lay- figure moving of its own accord. Her large shapely
body seemed to relapse naturally into stillness. For hours
at a time she would sit almost immobile on the bed, nurs-
ing his young sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of two
or three, with a face made simian by thinness. Very occa-
sionally she would take Winston in her arms and press him
against her for a long time without saying anything. He was
aware, in spite of his youthfulness and selfishness, that this
was somehow connected with the never-mentioned thing
that was about to happen.
He remembered the room where they lived, a dark, close-
smelling room that seemed half filled by a bed with a white
counterpane. There was a gas ring in the fender, and a shelf
where food was kept, and on the landing outside there was
a brown earthenware sink, common to several rooms. He
remembered his mother's statuesque body bending over the
gas ring to stir at something in a saucepan. Above all he
remembered his continuous hunger, and the fierce sordid
battles at mealtimes. He would ask his mother naggingly,
over and over again, why there was not more food, he would
shout and storm at her (he even remembered the tones of
his voice, which was beginning to break prematurely and
sometimes boomed in a peculiar way), or he would attempt
a snivelling note of pathos in his efforts to get more than his
share. His mother was quite ready to give him more than
1984
his share. She took it for granted that he, 'the boy', should
have the biggest portion; but however much she gave him
he invariably demanded more. At every meal she would be-
seech him not to be selfish and to remember that his little
sister was sick and also needed food, but it was no use. He
would cry out with rage when she stopped ladling, he would
try to wrench the saucepan and spoon out of her hands, he
would grab bits from his sister's plate. He knew that he was
starving the other two, but he could not help it; he even felt
that he had a right to do it. The clamorous hunger in his bel-
ly seemed to justify him. Between meals, if his mother did
not stand guard, he was constantly pilfering at the wretched
store of food on the shelf.
One day a chocolate-ration was issued. There had been
no such issue for weeks or months past. He remembered
quite clearly that precious little morsel of chocolate. It was a
two-ounce slab (they still talked about ounces in those days)
between the three of them. It was obvious that it ought to
be divided into three equal parts. Suddenly, as though he
were listening to somebody else, Winston heard himself
demanding in a loud booming voice that he should be giv-
en the whole piece. His mother told him not to be greedy.
There was a long, nagging argument that went round and
round, with shouts, whines, tears, remonstrances, bargain-
ings. His tiny sister, clinging to her mother with both hands,
exactly like a baby monkey, sat looking over her shoulder at
him with large, mournful eyes. In the end his mother broke
off three-quarters of the chocolate and gave it to Winston,
giving the other quarter to his sister. The little girl took hold
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 205
of it and looked at it dully, perhaps not knowing what it was.
Winston stood watching her for a moment. Then with a
sudden swift spring he had snatched the piece of chocolate
out of his sister's hand and was fleeing for the door.
'Winston, Winston! ' his mother called after him. 'Come
back! Give your sister back her chocolate! '
He stopped, but did not come back. His mother's anx-
ious eyes were fixed on his face. Even now he was thinking
about the thing, he did not know what it was that was on
the point of happening. His sister, conscious of having been
robbed of something, had set up a feeble wail. His mother
drew her arm round the child and pressed its face against
her breast. Something in the gesture told him that his sis-
ter was dying. He turned and fled down the stairs, with the
chocolate growing sticky in his hand.
He never saw his mother again. After he had devoured
the chocolate he felt somewhat ashamed of himself and
hung about in the streets for several hours, until hunger
drove him home. When he came back his mother had dis-
appeared. This was already becoming normal at that time.
Nothing was gone from the room except his mother and his
sister. They had not taken any clothes, not even his mother's
overcoat. To this day he did not know with any certainty
that his mother was dead. It was perfectly possible that she
had merely been sent to a forced-labour camp. As for his
sister, she might have been removed, like Winston himself,
to one of the colonies for homeless children (Reclamation
Centres, they were called) which had grown up as a result
of the civil war, or she might have been sent to the labour
1984
camp along with his mother, or simply left somewhere or
other to die.
The dream was still vivid in his mind, especially the en-
veloping protecting gesture of the arm in which its whole
meaning seemed to be contained. His mind went back to
another dream of two months ago. Exactly as his mother
had sat on the dingy whitequilted bed, with the child cling-
ing to her, so she had sat in the sunken ship, far underneath
him, and drowning deeper every minute, but still looking
up at him through the darkening water.
He told Julia the story of his mother's disappearance.
Without opening her eyes she rolled over and settled herself
into a more comfortable position.
'I expect you were a beastly little swine in those days,' she
said indistinctly. 'All children are swine. '
'Yes. But the real point of the story '
From her breathing it was evident that she was going
off to sleep again. He would have liked to continue talking
about his mother. He did not suppose, from what he could
remember of her, that she had been an unusual woman, still
less an intelligent one; and yet she had possessed a kind of
nobility, a kind of purity, simply because the standards that
she obeyed were private ones. Her feelings were her own,
and could not be altered from outside. It would not have
occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby
becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him,
and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him
love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother
had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed
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nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert
the child's death or her own; but it seemed natural to her to
do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the
little boy with her arm, which was no more use against the
bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the Par-
ty had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere
feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing
you of all power over the material world. When once you
were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel,
what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no dif-
ference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you
nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted
clean out of the stream of history. And yet to the people
of only two generations ago this would not have seemed
all-important, because they were not attempting to alter
history. They were governed by private loyalties which they
did not question. What mattered were individual relation-
ships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear,
a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself.
The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in
this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or
an idea, they were loyal to one another. For the first time in
his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely
as an inert force which would one day spring to life and re-
generate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had
not become hardened inside. They had held on to the primi-
tive emotions which he himself had to re-learn by conscious
effort. And in thinking this he remembered, without appar-
ent relevance, how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed
1984
hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gut-
ter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk.
"The proles are human beings,' he said aloud. 'We are not
human. '
'Why not? ' said Julia, who had woken up again.
He thought for a little while. 'Has it ever occurred to you,'
he said, 'that the best thing for us to do would be simply to
walk out of here before it's too late, and never see each other
again? '
'Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several times. But I'm
not going to do it, all the same. '
'We've been lucky' he said 'but it can't last much longer.
You're young. You look normal and innocent. If you keep
clear of people like me, you might stay alive for another fifty
years. '
'No. I've thought it all out. What you do, I'm going to do.
And don't be too downhearted. I'm rather good at staying
alive. '
'We may be together for another six months — a year —
there's no knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do
you realize how utterly alone we shall be? When once they
get hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that
either of us can do for the other. If I confess, they'll shoot
you, and if I refuse to confess, they'll shoot you just the same.
Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying, will
put off your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of us
will even know whether the other is alive or dead. We shall
be utterly without power of any kind. The one thing that
matters is that we shouldn't betray one another, although
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even that can't make the slightest difference. '
'If you mean confessing,' she said, 'we shall do that, right
enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They
torture you. '
'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal.
What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If
they could make me stop loving you — that would be the
real betrayal. '
She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said final-
ly 'It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say
anything — ANYTHING — but they can't make you believe
it. They can't get inside you. '
'No,' he said a little more hopefully, 'no; that's quite true.
They can't get inside you. If you can FEEL that staying hu-
man is worth while, even when it can't have any result
whatever, you've beaten them. '
He thought of the telescreen with its never- sleeping ear.
They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your
head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness
they had never mastered the secret of finding out what an-
other human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less true
when you were actually in their hands. One did not know
what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was pos-
sible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that
registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing- down
by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning.
Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be
tracked down by enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you
by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay
1984
human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could
not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter
them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in
the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or
thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysteri-
ous even to yourself, remained impregnable.
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Chapter 8
They had done it, they had done it at last!
The room they were standing in was long-shaped and
softly lit. The telescreen was dimmed to a low murmur; the
richness of the dark-blue carpet gave one the impression of
treading on velvet. At the far end of the room O'Brien was
sitting at a table under a green-shaded lamp, with a mass of
papers on either side of him. He had not bothered to look up
when the servant showed Julia and Winston in.
Winston's heart was thumping so hard that he doubted
whether he would be able to speak. They had done it, they
had done it at last, was all he could think. It had been a rash
act to come here at all, and sheer folly to arrive together;
though it was true that they had come by different routes
and only met on O'Brien's doorstep. But merely to walk into
such a place needed an effort of the nerve. It was only on
very rare occasions that one saw inside the dwelling-plac-
es of the Inner Party, or even penetrated into the quarter
of the town where they lived. The whole atmosphere of the
huge block of flats, the richness and spaciousness of every-
thing, the unfamiliar smells of good food and good tobacco,
the silent and incredibly rapid lifts sliding up and down, the
white-jacketed servants hurrying to and fro — everything
was intimidating. Although he had a good pretext for com-
ing here, he was haunted at every step by the fear that a
1984
black-uniformed guard would suddenly appear from round
the corner, demand his papers, and order him to get out.
O'Brien's servant, however, had admitted the two of them
without demur. He was a small, dark-haired man in a white
jacket, with a diamond- shaped, completely expressionless
face which might have been that of a Chinese. The passage
down which he led them was softly carpeted, with cream-
papered walls and white wainscoting, all exquisitely clean.
That too was intimidating. Winston could not remember
ever to have seen a passageway whose walls were not grimy
from the contact of human bodies.
O'Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers and
seemed to be studying it intently. His heavy face, bent down
so that one could see the line of the nose, looked both for-
midable and intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds he sat
without stirring. Then he pulled the speakwrite towards
him and rapped out a message in the hybrid jargon of the
Ministries:
'Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise
stop suggestion contained item six doubleplus ridiculous
verging crimethink cancel stop unproceed construction-wise
antegetting plusfull estimates machinery overheads stop end
message. '
He rose deliberately from his chair and came towards
them across the soundless carpet. A little of the official at-
mosphere seemed to have fallen away from him with the
Newspeak words, but his expression was grimmer than
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 213
usual, as though he were not pleased at being disturbed. The
terror that Winston already felt was suddenly shot through
by a streak of ordinary embarrassment. It seemed to him
quite possible that he had simply made a stupid mistake.
For what evidence had he in reality that O'Brien was any
kind of political conspirator? Nothing but a flash of the eyes
and a single equivocal remark: beyond that, only his own
secret imaginings, founded on a dream. He could not even
fall back on the pretence that he had come to borrow the
dictionary, because in that case Julia's presence was impos-
sible to explain. As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought
seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed
a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had
stopped.
Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise.
Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken
aback to be able to hold his tongue.
'You can turn it off! ' he said.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privi-
lege. '
He was opposite them now. His solid form towered
over the pair of them, and the expression on his face was
still indecipherable. He was waiting, somewhat sternly, for
Winston to speak, but about what? Even now it was quite
conceivable that he was simply a busy man wondering ir-
ritably why he had been interrupted. Nobody spoke. After
the stopping of the telescreen the room seemed deadly si-
lent. The seconds marched past, enormous. With difficulty
Winston continued to keep his eyes fixed on O'Brien's. Then
1984
suddenly the grim face broke down into what might have
been the beginnings of a smile. With his characteristic ges-
ture O'Brien resettled his spectacles on his nose.
'Shall I say it, or will you? ' he said.
'I will say it,' said Winston promptly. 'That thing is really
turned off? '
'Yes, everything is turned off. We are alone. '
'We have come here because '
He paused, realizing for the first time the vagueness of
his own motives. Since he did not in fact know what kind
of help he expected from O'Brien, it was not easy to say why
he had come here. He went on, conscious that what he was
saying must sound both feeble and pretentious:
'We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some
kind of secret organization working against the Party, and
that you are involved in it. We want to join it and work for it.
We are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles
of Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are also adulter-
ers. I tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your
mercy. If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other
way, we are ready'
He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, with the
feeling that the door had opened. Sure enough, the little yel-
low-faced servant had come in without knocking. Winston
saw that he was carrying a tray with a decanter and glasses.
'Martin is one of us,' said O'Brien impassively. 'Bring
the drinks over here, Martin. Put them on the round table.
Have we enough chairs? Then we may as well sit down and
talk in comfort. Bring a chair for yourself, Martin. This is
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business. You can stop being a servant for the next ten min-
utes. '
The little man sat down, quite at his ease, and yet still
with a servant-like air, the air of a valet enjoying a priv-
ilege. Winston regarded him out of the corner of his eye.
It struck him that the man's whole life was playing a part,
and that he felt it to be dangerous to drop his assumed per-
sonality even for a moment. O'Brien took the decanter by
the neck and filled up the glasses with a dark-red liquid. It
aroused in Winston dim memories of something seen long
ago on a wall or a hoarding — a vast bottle composed of elec-
tric lights which seemed to move up and down and pour its
contents into a glass. Seen from the top the stuff looked al-
most black, but in the decanter it gleamed like a ruby. It had
a sour-sweet smell. He saw Julia pick up her glass and sniff
at it with frank curiosity.
'It is called wine,' said O'Brien with a faint smile. 'You
will have read about it in books, no doubt. Not much of it
gets to the Outer Party, I am afraid. ' His face grew solemn
again, and he raised his glass: 'I think it is fitting that we
should begin by drinking a health. To our Leader: To Em-
manuel Goldstein. '
Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine
was a thing he had read and dreamed about. Like the glass
paperweight or Mr Charrington's half- remembered rhymes,
it belonged to the vanished, romantic past, the olden time
as he liked to call it in his secret thoughts. For some reason
he had always thought of wine as having an intensely sweet
taste, like that of blackberry jam and an immediate intoxi-
1984
eating effect. Actually, when he came to swallow it, the stuff
was distinctly disappointing. The truth was that after years
of gin-drinking he could barely taste it. He set down the
empty glass.
"Then there is such a person as Goldstein? ' he said.
'Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do
not know. '
'And the conspiracy — the organization? Is it real? It is not
simply an invention of the Thought Police? '
'No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call it. You will never
learn much more about the Brotherhood than that it exists
and that you belong to it. I will come back to that pres-
ently' He looked at his wrist-watch. 'It is unwise even for
members of the Inner Party to turn off the telescreen for
more than half an hour. You ought not to have come here
together, and you will have to leave separately. You, com-
rade' — he bowed his head to Julia — 'will leave first. We have
about twenty minutes at our disposal. You will understand
that I must start by asking you certain questions. In general
terms, what are you prepared to do? '
Anything that we are capable of,' said Winston.
O'Brien had turned himself a little in his chair so that he
was facing Winston. He almost ignored Julia, seeming to
take it for granted that Winston could speak for her. For a
moment the lids flitted down over his eyes. He began asking
his questions in a low, expressionless voice, as though this
were a routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers
were known to him already.
'You are prepared to give your lives? '
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'Yes. '
'You are prepared to commit murder? '
'Yes. '
'To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death
of hundreds of innocent people? '
'Yes. '
'To betray your country to foreign powers? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to cor-
rupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming
drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal
diseases — to do anything which is likely to cause demoral-
ization and weaken the power of the Party? '
'Yes. '
'If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to
throw sulphuric acid in a child's face — are you prepared to
do that? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the
rest of your life as a waiter or a dock- worker? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we or-
der you to do so? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never
see one another again? '
'No! ' broke in Julia.
It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before
he answered. For a moment he seemed even to have been
1984
deprived of the power of speech. His tongue worked sound-
lessly, forming the opening syllables first of one word, then
of the other, over and over again. Until he had said it, he
did not know which word he was going to say. 'No,' he said
finally.
'You did well to tell me,' said O'Brien. 'It is necessary for
us to know everything. '
He turned himself toward Julia and added in a voice
with somewhat more expression in it:
'Do you understand that even if he survives, it may be
as a different person? We may be obliged to give him a new
identity. His face, his movements, the shape of his hands,
the colour of his hair — even his voice would be different.
And you yourself might have become a different person.
Our surgeons can alter people beyond recognition. Some-
times it is necessary. Sometimes we even amputate a limb. '
Winston could not help snatching another sidelong
glance at Martin's Mongolian face. There were no scars
that he could see. Julia had turned a shade paler, so that
her freckles were showing, but she faced O'Brien boldly. She
murmured something that seemed to be assent.
'Good. Then that is settled. '
There was a silver box of cigarettes on the table. With a
rather absent-minded air O'Brien pushed them towards the
others, took one himself, then stood up and began to pace
slowly to and fro, as though he could think better standing.
They were very good cigarettes, very thick and well-packed,
with an unfamiliar silkiness in the paper. O'Brien looked at
his wrist-watch again.
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'You had better go back to your Pantry, Martin,' he said.
'I shall switch on in a quarter of an hour. Take a good look
at these comrades' faces before you go. You will be seeing
them again. I may not. '
Exactly as they had done at the front door, the little man's
dark eyes flickered over their faces. There was not a trace
of friendliness in his manner. He was memorizing their
appearance, but he felt no interest in them, or appeared
to feel none. It occurred to Winston that a synthetic face
was perhaps incapable of changing its expression. Without
speaking or giving any kind of salutation, Martin went out,
closing the door silently behind him. O'Brien was strolling
up and down, one hand in the pocket of his black overalls,
the other holding his cigarette.
'You understand,' he said, 'that you will be fighting in
the dark. You will always be in the dark. You will receive
orders and you will obey them, without knowing why. Later
I shall send you a book from which you will learn the true
nature of the society we live in, and the strategy by which
we shall destroy it. When you have read the book, you will
be full members of the Brotherhood. But between the gen-
eral aims that we are fighting for and the immedi ate tasks
of the moment, you will never know anything. I tell you
that the Brotherhood exists, but I cannot tell you wheth-
er it numbers a hundred members, or ten million. From
your personal knowledge you will never be able to say that
it numbers even as many as a dozen. You will have three
or four contacts, who will be renewed from time to time
as they disappear. As this was your first contact, it will be
1984
preserved. When you receive orders, they will come from
me. If we find it necessary to communicate with you, it will
be through Martin. When you are finally caught, you will
confess. That is unavoidable. But you will have very little
to confess, other than your own actions. You will not be
able to betray more than a handful of unimportant people.
Probably you will not even betray me. By that time I may be
dead, or I shall have become a different person, with a dif-
ferent face. '
He continued to move to and fro over the soft carpet. In
spite of the bulkiness of his body there was a remarkable
grace in his movements. It came out even in the gesture
with which he thrust a hand into his pocket, or manipu-
lated a cigarette. More even than of strength, he gave an
impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged
by irony. However much in earnest he might be, he had
nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic.
When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal disease, am-
putated limbs, and altered faces, it was with a faint air of
persiflage. 'This is unavoidable,' his voice seemed to say;
'this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly. But this is
not what we shall be doing when life is worth living again. '
A wave of admiration, almost of worship, flowed out from
Winston towards O'Brien. For the moment he had forgot-
ten the shadowy figure of Goldstein. When you looked at
O'Brien's powerful shoulders and his blunt- featured face, so
ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible to believe that
he could be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was
not equal to, no danger that he could not foresee. Even Julia
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seemed to be impressed. She had let her cigarette go out and
was listening intently. O'Brien went on:
'You will have heard rumours of the existence of the
Brotherhood. No doubt you have formed your own picture
of it. You have imagined, probably, a huge underworld of
conspirators, meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling mes-
sages on walls, recognizing one another by codewords or by
special movements of the hand. Nothing of the kind exists.
The members of the Brotherhood have no way of recogniz-
ing one another, and it is impossible for any one member to
be aware of the identity of more than a few others. Gold-
stein himself, if he fell into the hands of the Thought Police,
could not give them a complete list of members, or any in-
formation that would lead them to a complete list.
