You will have heard of the things that happen in the
poor quarters of this town.
poor quarters of this town.
Orwell - 1984
The so-called laws of Na-
ture were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I
wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like
a soap bubble. ' Winston worked it out. 'If he THINKS he
floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously THINK I see
him do it, then the thing happens. ' Suddenly, like a lump
of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the
thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We
imagine it. It is hallucination. ' He pushed the thought un-
der instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that
1984
somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world
where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a
world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through
our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever
happens in all minds, truly happens.
He had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he
was in no danger of succumbing to it. He realized, never-
theless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The
mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous
thought presented itself. The process should be automatic,
instinctive. CRIMESTOP, they called it in Newspeak.
He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He pre-
sented himself with propositions — 'the Party says the earth
is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water' — and
trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the ar-
guments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed
great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arith-
metical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement
as 'two and two make five' were beyond his intellectual
grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability
at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and
at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors.
Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult
to attain.
All the while, with one part of his mind, he wondered
how soon they would shoot him. 'Everything depends on
yourself,' O'Brien had said; but he knew that there was no
conscious act by which he could bring it nearer. It might
be ten minutes hence, or ten years. They might keep him
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for years in solitary confinement, they might send him to
a labour-camp, they might release him for a while, as they
sometimes did. It was perfectly possible that before he was
shot the whole drama of his arrest and interrogation would
be enacted all over again. The one certain thing was that
death never came at an expected moment. The tradition —
the unspoken tradition: somehow you knew it, though you
never heard it said — was that they shot you from behind;
always in the back of the head, without warning, as you
walked down a corridor from cell to cell.
One day — but 'one day' was not the right expression; just
as probably it was in the middle of the night: once — he fell
into a strange, blissful reverie. He was walking down the
corridor, waiting for the bullet. He knew that it was com-
ing in another moment. Everything was settled, smoothed
out, reconciled. There were no more doubts, no more argu-
ments, no more pain, no more fear. His body was healthy
and strong. He walked easily, with a joy of movement and
with a feeling of walking in sunlight. He was not any longer
in the narrow white corridors in the Ministry of Love, he
was in the enormous sunlit passage, a kilometre wide, down
which he had seemed to walk in the delirium induced by
drugs. He was in the Golden Country, following the foot-
track across the old rabbit- cropped pasture. He could feel
the short springy turf under his feet and the gentle sun-
shine on his face. At the edge of the field were the elm trees,
faintly stirring, and somewhere beyond that was the stream
where the dace lay in the green pools under the willows.
Suddenly he started up with a shock of horror. The
1984
sweat broke out on his backbone. He had heard himself cry
aloud:
'Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia! '
For a moment he had had an overwhelming hallucina-
tion of her presence. She had seemed to be not merely with
him, but inside him. It was as though she had got into the
texture of his skin. In that moment he had loved her far
more than he had ever done when they were together and
free. Also he knew that somewhere or other she was still
alive and needed his help.
He lay back on the bed and tried to compose himself.
What had he done? How many years had he added to his
servitude by that moment of weakness?
In another moment he would hear the tramp of boots
outside. They could not let such an outburst go unpunished.
They would know now, if they had not known before, that
he was breaking the agreement he had made with them. He
obeyed the Party, but he still hated the Party. In the old
days he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appear-
ance of conformity. Now he had retreated a step further:
in the mind he had surrendered, but he had hoped to keep
the inner heart inviolate. He knew that he was in the wrong,
but he preferred to be in the wrong. They would understand
that — O'Brien would understand it. It was all confessed in
that single foolish cry.
He would have to start all over again. It might take years.
He ran a hand over his face, trying to familiarize himself
with the new shape. There were deep furrows in the cheeks,
the cheekbones felt sharp, the nose flattened. Besides, since
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last seeing himself in the glass he had been given a complete
new set of teeth. It was not easy to preserve inscrutabili-
ty when you did not know what your face looked like. In
any case, mere control of the features was not enough. For
the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret
you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the
while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let
it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could
be given a name. From now onwards he must not only think
right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he
must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of
matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with
the rest of him, a kind of cyst.
One day they would decide to shoot him. You could not
tell when it would happen, but a few seconds beforehand
it should be possible to guess. It was always from behind,
walking down a corridor. Ten seconds would be enough. In
that time the world inside him could turn over. And then
suddenly, without a word uttered, without a check in his
step, without the changing of a line in his face — suddenly
the camouflage would be down and bang! would go the bat-
teries of his hatred. Hatred would fill him like an enormous
roaring flame. And almost in the same instant bang! would
go the bullet, too late, or too early. They would have blown
his brain to pieces before they could reclaim it. The hereti-
cal thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their
reach for ever. They would have blown a hole in their own
perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom.
He shut his eyes. It was more difficult than accepting
1984
an intellectual discipline. It was a question of degrading
himself, mutilating himself. He had got to plunge into the
filthiest of filth. What was the most horrible, sickening thing
of all? He thought of Big Brother. The enormous face (be-
cause of constantly seeing it on posters he always thought
of it as being a metre wide), with its heavy black moustache
and the eyes that followed you to and fro, seemed to float
into his mind of its own accord. What were his true feelings
towards Big Brother?
There was a heavy tramp of boots in the passage. The
steel door swung open with a clang. O'Brien walked into
the cell. Behind him were the waxen-faced officer and the
black-uniformed guards.
'Get up,' said O'Brien. 'Come here. '
Winston stood opposite him. O'Brien took Winston's
shoulders between his strong hands and looked at him
closely.
'You have had thoughts of deceiving me,' he said. "That
was stupid. Stand up straighter. Look me in the face. '
He paused, and went on in a gentler tone:
'You are improving. Intellectually there is very little
wrong with you. It is only emotionally that you have failed
to make progress. Tell me, Winston — and remember, no
lies: you know that I am always able to detect a lie — tell me,
what are your true feelings towards Big Brother? '
T hate him. '
'You hate him. Good. Then the time has come for you
to take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not
enough to obey him: you must love him. '
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He released Winston with a little push towards the
guards.
'Room 101,' he said.
356 1984
Chapter 5
At each stage of his imprisonment he had known, or
seemed to know, whereabouts he was in the window-
less building. Possibly there were slight differences in the air
pressure. The cells where the guards had beaten him were
below ground level. The room where he had been interro-
gated by O'Brien was high up near the roof. This place was
many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible
to go.
It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But
he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that
there were two small tables straight in front of him, each
covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two
from him, the other was further away, near the door. He
was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly that he could
move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped his
head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of
him.
For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and
O'Brien came in.
'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room
101. 1 told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone
knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing
in the world. '
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying some-
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thing made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set
it down on the further table. Because of the position in
which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what
the thing was.
"The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from
individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by
fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths.
There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even
fatal'
He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a
better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire
cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the
front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask,
with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or
four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was
divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there
was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.
'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world
happens to be rats. '
A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain
what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his
first glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of
the mask- like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into
him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.
'You can't do that! ' he cried out in a high cracked voice.
'You couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible. '
'Do you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of pan-
ic that used to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of
blackness in front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears.
358 1984
There was something terrible on the other side of the wall.
You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag
it into the open. It was the rats that were on the other side
of the wall'
'O'Brien! ' said Winston, making an effort to control his
voice. 'You know this is not necessary. What is it that you
want me to do? '
O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was
in the schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected.
He looked thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were
addressing an audience somewhere behind Winston's back.
'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There
are occasions when a human being will stand out against
pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is
something unendurable — something that cannot be con-
templated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you
are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a
rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not coward-
ly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which
cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you,
they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you
cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what
is required of you. '
'But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't know
what it is? '
O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the
nearer table. He set it down carefully on the baize cloth.
Winston could hear the blood singing in his ears. He had the
feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He was in the middle
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 359
of a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with sunlight,
across which all sounds came to him out of immense dis-
tances. Yet the cage with the rats was not two metres away
from him. They were enormous rats. They were at the age
when a rat's muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown
instead of grey.
'The rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audi-
ence, 'although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of
that.
You will have heard of the things that happen in the
poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare
not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes.
The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time
they will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dy-
ing people. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing
when a human being is helpless. '
There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed
to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they
were trying to get at each other through the partition. He
heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to
come from outside himself.
O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed
something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made
a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was
hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held im-
movably. O'Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a
metre from Winston's face.
T have pressed the first lever,' said O'Brien. 'You under-
stand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit over
your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever,
360 1984
the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will
shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap
through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore
straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Some-
times they burrow through the cheeks and devour the
tongue. '
The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a
succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in
the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his
panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left — to
think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of
the brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convul-
sion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness.
Everything had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a
screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutch-
ing an idea. There was one and only one way to save himself.
He must interpose another human being, the BODY of an-
other human being, between himself and the rats.
The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out
the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of
hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming
now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an
old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink
hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston
could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black
panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.
'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said
O'Brien as didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 361
cheek. And then — no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny
fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had
suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just
ONE person to whom he could transfer his punishment —
ONE body that he could thrust between himself and the
rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.
'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care
what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones.
Not me! Julia! Not me! '
He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away
from the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had
fallen through the floor, through the walls of the build-
ing, through the earth, through the oceans, through the
atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the
stars — always away, away, away from the rats. He was light
years distant, but O'Brien was still standing at his side.
There was still the cold touch of wire against his cheek. But
through the darkness that enveloped him he heard another
metallic click, and knew that the cage door had clicked shut
and not open.
362 1984
Chapter 6
The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight
slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It
was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from
the telescreens.
Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty
glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed
him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCH-
ING YOU, the caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and
filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few
drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It
was saccharine flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the
cafe.
Winston was listening to the telescreen. At present only
music was coming out of it, but there was a possibility that
at any moment there might be a special bulletin from the
Ministry of Peace. The news from the African front was dis-
quieting in the extreme. On and off he had been worrying
about it all day. A Eurasian army (Oceania was at war with
Eurasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia) was
moving southward at terrifying speed. The mid-day bulle-
tin had not mentioned any definite area, but it was probable
that already the mouth of the Congo was a battlefield. Braz-
zaville and Leopoldville were in danger. One did not have
to look at the map to see what it meant. It was not merely
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 363
a question of losing Central Africa: for the first time in the
whole war, the territory of Oceania itself was menaced.
A violent emotion, not fear exactly but a sort of undif-
ferentiated excitement, flared up in him, then faded again.
He stopped thinking about the war. In these days he could
never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few
moments at a time. He picked up his glass and drained it
at a gulp. As always, the gin made him shudder and even
retch slightly. The stuff was horrible. The cloves and sac-
charine, themselves disgusting enough in their sickly way,
could not disguise the flat oily smell; and what was worst
of all was that the smell of gin, which dwelt with him night
and day, was inextricably mixed up in his mind with the
smell of those
He never named them, even in his thoughts, and so
far as it was possible he never visualized them. They were
something that he was half-aware of, hovering close to his
face, a smell that clung to his nostrils. As the gin rose in
him he belched through purple lips. He had grown fatter
since they released him, and had regained his old colour —
indeed, more than regained it. His features had thickened,
the skin on nose and cheekbones was coarsely red, even
the bald scalp was too deep a pink. A waiter, again unbid-
den, brought the chessboard and the current issue of 'The
Times', with the page turned down at the chess problem.
Then, seeing that Winston's glass was empty, he brought the
gin bottle and filled it. There was no need to give orders.
They knew his habits. The chessboard was always waiting
for him, his corner table was always reserved; even when
364 1984
the place was full he had it to himself, since nobody cared
to be seen sitting too close to him. He never even bothered
to count his drinks. At irregular intervals they presented
him with a dirty slip of paper which they said was the bill,
but he had the impression that they always undercharged
him. It would have made no difference if it had been the
other way about. He had always plenty of money nowadays.
He even had a job, a sinecure, more highly-paid than his old
job had been.
The music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took
over. Winston raised his head to listen. No bulletins from
the front, however. It was merely a brief announcement
from the Ministry of Plenty. In the preceding quarter, it ap-
peared, the Tenth Three-Year Plan's quota for bootlaces had
been overfulfilled by 98 per cent.
He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It
was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to
play and mate in two moves. ' Winston looked up at the por-
trait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a
sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so
arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the
world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal,
unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed
back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.
The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a dif-
ferent and much graver tone: 'You are warned to stand by
for an important announcement at fifteen-thirty Fifteen-
thirty! This is news of the highest importance. Take care
not to miss it. Fifteen-thirty! ' The tinkling music struck up
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 365
again.
Winston's heart stirred. That was the bulletin from the
front; instinct told him that it was bad news that was com-
ing. All day, with little spurts of excitement, the thought
of a smashing defeat in Africa had been in and out of his
mind. He seemed actually to see the Eurasian army swarm-
ing across the never-broken frontier and pouring down
into the tip of Africa like a column of ants. Why had it not
been possible to outflank them in some way? The outline of
the West African coast stood out vividly in his mind. He
picked up the white knight and moved it across the board.
THERE was the proper spot. Even while he saw the black
horde racing southward he saw another force, mysteriously
assembled, suddenly planted in their rear, cutting their co-
munications by land and sea. He felt that by willing it he
was bringing that other force into existence. But it was nec-
essary to act quickly. If they could get control of the whole
of Africa, if they had airfields and submarine bases at the
Cape, it would cut Oceania in two. It might mean anything:
defeat, breakdown, the redivision of the world, the destruc-
tion of the Party! He drew a deep breath. An extraordinary
medley of feeling — but it was not a medley, exactly; rather it
was successive layers of feeling, in which one could not say
which layer was undermost — struggled inside him.
The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in its
place, but for the moment he could not settle down to se-
rious study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered
again. Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in
the dust on the table:
366 1984
2+2=5
"They can't get inside you,' she had said. But they could
get inside you. 'What happens to you here is FOR EVER,'
O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things,
your own acts, from which you could never recover. Some-
thing was killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out.
He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. There was
no danger in it. He knew as though instinctively that they
now took almost no interest in his doings. He could have
arranged to meet her a second time if either of them had
wanted to. Actually it was by chance that they had met. It
was in the Park, on a vile, biting day in March, when the
earth was like iron and all the grass seemed dead and there
was not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had
pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind. He
was hurrying along with frozen hands and watering eyes
when he saw her not ten metres away from him. It struck
him at once that she had changed in some ill-defined way.
They almost passed one another without a sign, then he
turned and followed her, not very eagerly. He knew that
there was no danger, nobody would take any interest in him.
She did not speak. She walked obliquely away across the
grass as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed to re-
sign herself to having him at her side. Presently they were in
among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for
concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted.
It was vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and
fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. He put his
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 367
arm round her waist.
There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden
microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did not mat-
ter, nothing mattered. They could have lain down on the
ground and done THAT if they had wanted to. His flesh
froze with horror at the thought of it. She made no response
whatever to the clasp of his arm; she did not even try to dis-
engage herself. He knew now what had changed in her. Her
face was sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden
by the hair, across her forehead and temple; but that was not
the change. It was that her waist had grown thicker, and, in
a surprising way, had stiffened. He remembered how once,
after the explosion of a rocket bomb, he had helped to drag
a corpse out of some ruins, and had been astonished not
only by the incredible weight of the thing, but by its rigidity
and awkwardness to handle, which made it seem more like
stone than flesh. Her body felt like that. It occurred to him
that the texture of her skin would be quite different from
what it had once been.
He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. As they
walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him for
the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of con-
tempt and dislike. He wondered whether it was a dislike that
came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also
by his bloated face and the water that the wind kept squeez-
ing from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by
side but not too close together. He saw that she was about
to speak. She moved her clumsy shoe a few centimetres and
deliberately crushed a twig. Her feet seemed to have grown
368 1984
broader, he noticed.
'I betrayed you,' she said baldly.
'I betrayed you,' he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something
something you can't stand up to, can't even think about.
And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody
else, do it to so-and-so. ' And perhaps you might pretend,
afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it
to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't
true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think
there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite
ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to
the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer.
All you care about is yourself
All you care about is yourself,' he echoed.
And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other
person any longer.
ture were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I
wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like
a soap bubble. ' Winston worked it out. 'If he THINKS he
floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously THINK I see
him do it, then the thing happens. ' Suddenly, like a lump
of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the
thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We
imagine it. It is hallucination. ' He pushed the thought un-
der instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that
1984
somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world
where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a
world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through
our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever
happens in all minds, truly happens.
He had no difficulty in disposing of the fallacy, and he
was in no danger of succumbing to it. He realized, never-
theless, that it ought never to have occurred to him. The
mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous
thought presented itself. The process should be automatic,
instinctive. CRIMESTOP, they called it in Newspeak.
He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He pre-
sented himself with propositions — 'the Party says the earth
is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water' — and
trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the ar-
guments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed
great powers of reasoning and improvisation. The arith-
metical problems raised, for instance, by such a statement
as 'two and two make five' were beyond his intellectual
grasp. It needed also a sort of athleticism of mind, an ability
at one moment to make the most delicate use of logic and
at the next to be unconscious of the crudest logical errors.
Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult
to attain.
All the while, with one part of his mind, he wondered
how soon they would shoot him. 'Everything depends on
yourself,' O'Brien had said; but he knew that there was no
conscious act by which he could bring it nearer. It might
be ten minutes hence, or ten years. They might keep him
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for years in solitary confinement, they might send him to
a labour-camp, they might release him for a while, as they
sometimes did. It was perfectly possible that before he was
shot the whole drama of his arrest and interrogation would
be enacted all over again. The one certain thing was that
death never came at an expected moment. The tradition —
the unspoken tradition: somehow you knew it, though you
never heard it said — was that they shot you from behind;
always in the back of the head, without warning, as you
walked down a corridor from cell to cell.
One day — but 'one day' was not the right expression; just
as probably it was in the middle of the night: once — he fell
into a strange, blissful reverie. He was walking down the
corridor, waiting for the bullet. He knew that it was com-
ing in another moment. Everything was settled, smoothed
out, reconciled. There were no more doubts, no more argu-
ments, no more pain, no more fear. His body was healthy
and strong. He walked easily, with a joy of movement and
with a feeling of walking in sunlight. He was not any longer
in the narrow white corridors in the Ministry of Love, he
was in the enormous sunlit passage, a kilometre wide, down
which he had seemed to walk in the delirium induced by
drugs. He was in the Golden Country, following the foot-
track across the old rabbit- cropped pasture. He could feel
the short springy turf under his feet and the gentle sun-
shine on his face. At the edge of the field were the elm trees,
faintly stirring, and somewhere beyond that was the stream
where the dace lay in the green pools under the willows.
Suddenly he started up with a shock of horror. The
1984
sweat broke out on his backbone. He had heard himself cry
aloud:
'Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia! '
For a moment he had had an overwhelming hallucina-
tion of her presence. She had seemed to be not merely with
him, but inside him. It was as though she had got into the
texture of his skin. In that moment he had loved her far
more than he had ever done when they were together and
free. Also he knew that somewhere or other she was still
alive and needed his help.
He lay back on the bed and tried to compose himself.
What had he done? How many years had he added to his
servitude by that moment of weakness?
In another moment he would hear the tramp of boots
outside. They could not let such an outburst go unpunished.
They would know now, if they had not known before, that
he was breaking the agreement he had made with them. He
obeyed the Party, but he still hated the Party. In the old
days he had hidden a heretical mind beneath an appear-
ance of conformity. Now he had retreated a step further:
in the mind he had surrendered, but he had hoped to keep
the inner heart inviolate. He knew that he was in the wrong,
but he preferred to be in the wrong. They would understand
that — O'Brien would understand it. It was all confessed in
that single foolish cry.
He would have to start all over again. It might take years.
He ran a hand over his face, trying to familiarize himself
with the new shape. There were deep furrows in the cheeks,
the cheekbones felt sharp, the nose flattened. Besides, since
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last seeing himself in the glass he had been given a complete
new set of teeth. It was not easy to preserve inscrutabili-
ty when you did not know what your face looked like. In
any case, mere control of the features was not enough. For
the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret
you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the
while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let
it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could
be given a name. From now onwards he must not only think
right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he
must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of
matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with
the rest of him, a kind of cyst.
One day they would decide to shoot him. You could not
tell when it would happen, but a few seconds beforehand
it should be possible to guess. It was always from behind,
walking down a corridor. Ten seconds would be enough. In
that time the world inside him could turn over. And then
suddenly, without a word uttered, without a check in his
step, without the changing of a line in his face — suddenly
the camouflage would be down and bang! would go the bat-
teries of his hatred. Hatred would fill him like an enormous
roaring flame. And almost in the same instant bang! would
go the bullet, too late, or too early. They would have blown
his brain to pieces before they could reclaim it. The hereti-
cal thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their
reach for ever. They would have blown a hole in their own
perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom.
He shut his eyes. It was more difficult than accepting
1984
an intellectual discipline. It was a question of degrading
himself, mutilating himself. He had got to plunge into the
filthiest of filth. What was the most horrible, sickening thing
of all? He thought of Big Brother. The enormous face (be-
cause of constantly seeing it on posters he always thought
of it as being a metre wide), with its heavy black moustache
and the eyes that followed you to and fro, seemed to float
into his mind of its own accord. What were his true feelings
towards Big Brother?
There was a heavy tramp of boots in the passage. The
steel door swung open with a clang. O'Brien walked into
the cell. Behind him were the waxen-faced officer and the
black-uniformed guards.
'Get up,' said O'Brien. 'Come here. '
Winston stood opposite him. O'Brien took Winston's
shoulders between his strong hands and looked at him
closely.
'You have had thoughts of deceiving me,' he said. "That
was stupid. Stand up straighter. Look me in the face. '
He paused, and went on in a gentler tone:
'You are improving. Intellectually there is very little
wrong with you. It is only emotionally that you have failed
to make progress. Tell me, Winston — and remember, no
lies: you know that I am always able to detect a lie — tell me,
what are your true feelings towards Big Brother? '
T hate him. '
'You hate him. Good. Then the time has come for you
to take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not
enough to obey him: you must love him. '
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He released Winston with a little push towards the
guards.
'Room 101,' he said.
356 1984
Chapter 5
At each stage of his imprisonment he had known, or
seemed to know, whereabouts he was in the window-
less building. Possibly there were slight differences in the air
pressure. The cells where the guards had beaten him were
below ground level. The room where he had been interro-
gated by O'Brien was high up near the roof. This place was
many metres underground, as deep down as it was possible
to go.
It was bigger than most of the cells he had been in. But
he hardly noticed his surroundings. All he noticed was that
there were two small tables straight in front of him, each
covered with green baize. One was only a metre or two
from him, the other was further away, near the door. He
was strapped upright in a chair, so tightly that he could
move nothing, not even his head. A sort of pad gripped his
head from behind, forcing him to look straight in front of
him.
For a moment he was alone, then the door opened and
O'Brien came in.
'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room
101. 1 told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone
knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing
in the world. '
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying some-
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thing made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set
it down on the further table. Because of the position in
which O'Brien was standing. Winston could not see what
the thing was.
"The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, 'varies from
individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by
fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths.
There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even
fatal'
He had moved a little to one side, so that Winston had a
better view of the thing on the table. It was an oblong wire
cage with a handle on top for carrying it by. Fixed to the
front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask,
with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or
four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was
divided lengthways into two compartments, and that there
was some kind of creature in each. They were rats.
'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world
happens to be rats. '
A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain
what, had passed through Winston as soon as he caught his
first glimpse of the cage. But at this moment the meaning of
the mask- like attachment in front of it suddenly sank into
him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.
'You can't do that! ' he cried out in a high cracked voice.
'You couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible. '
'Do you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of pan-
ic that used to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of
blackness in front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears.
358 1984
There was something terrible on the other side of the wall.
You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag
it into the open. It was the rats that were on the other side
of the wall'
'O'Brien! ' said Winston, making an effort to control his
voice. 'You know this is not necessary. What is it that you
want me to do? '
O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was
in the schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected.
He looked thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were
addressing an audience somewhere behind Winston's back.
'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There
are occasions when a human being will stand out against
pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is
something unendurable — something that cannot be con-
templated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you
are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a
rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not coward-
ly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which
cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats. For you,
they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you
cannot withstand, even if you wished to. You will do what
is required of you. '
'But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't know
what it is? '
O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the
nearer table. He set it down carefully on the baize cloth.
Winston could hear the blood singing in his ears. He had the
feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He was in the middle
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 359
of a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with sunlight,
across which all sounds came to him out of immense dis-
tances. Yet the cage with the rats was not two metres away
from him. They were enormous rats. They were at the age
when a rat's muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown
instead of grey.
'The rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audi-
ence, 'although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of
that.
You will have heard of the things that happen in the
poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare
not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes.
The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time
they will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dy-
ing people. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing
when a human being is helpless. '
There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed
to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they
were trying to get at each other through the partition. He
heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to
come from outside himself.
O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed
something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made
a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was
hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held im-
movably. O'Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a
metre from Winston's face.
T have pressed the first lever,' said O'Brien. 'You under-
stand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit over
your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever,
360 1984
the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will
shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap
through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore
straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Some-
times they burrow through the cheeks and devour the
tongue. '
The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a
succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in
the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his
panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left — to
think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of
the brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convul-
sion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness.
Everything had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a
screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutch-
ing an idea. There was one and only one way to save himself.
He must interpose another human being, the BODY of an-
other human being, between himself and the rats.
The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out
the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of
hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming
now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an
old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink
hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston
could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black
panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.
'It was a common punishment in Imperial China,' said
O'Brien as didactically as ever.
The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 361
cheek. And then — no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny
fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had
suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just
ONE person to whom he could transfer his punishment —
ONE body that he could thrust between himself and the
rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.
'Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care
what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones.
Not me! Julia! Not me! '
He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away
from the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had
fallen through the floor, through the walls of the build-
ing, through the earth, through the oceans, through the
atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the
stars — always away, away, away from the rats. He was light
years distant, but O'Brien was still standing at his side.
There was still the cold touch of wire against his cheek. But
through the darkness that enveloped him he heard another
metallic click, and knew that the cage door had clicked shut
and not open.
362 1984
Chapter 6
The Chestnut Tree was almost empty. A ray of sunlight
slanting through a window fell on dusty table-tops. It
was the lonely hour of fifteen. A tinny music trickled from
the telescreens.
Winston sat in his usual corner, gazing into an empty
glass. Now and again he glanced up at a vast face which eyed
him from the opposite wall. BIG BROTHER IS WATCH-
ING YOU, the caption said. Unbidden, a waiter came and
filled his glass up with Victory Gin, shaking into it a few
drops from another bottle with a quill through the cork. It
was saccharine flavoured with cloves, the speciality of the
cafe.
Winston was listening to the telescreen. At present only
music was coming out of it, but there was a possibility that
at any moment there might be a special bulletin from the
Ministry of Peace. The news from the African front was dis-
quieting in the extreme. On and off he had been worrying
about it all day. A Eurasian army (Oceania was at war with
Eurasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia) was
moving southward at terrifying speed. The mid-day bulle-
tin had not mentioned any definite area, but it was probable
that already the mouth of the Congo was a battlefield. Braz-
zaville and Leopoldville were in danger. One did not have
to look at the map to see what it meant. It was not merely
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 363
a question of losing Central Africa: for the first time in the
whole war, the territory of Oceania itself was menaced.
A violent emotion, not fear exactly but a sort of undif-
ferentiated excitement, flared up in him, then faded again.
He stopped thinking about the war. In these days he could
never fix his mind on any one subject for more than a few
moments at a time. He picked up his glass and drained it
at a gulp. As always, the gin made him shudder and even
retch slightly. The stuff was horrible. The cloves and sac-
charine, themselves disgusting enough in their sickly way,
could not disguise the flat oily smell; and what was worst
of all was that the smell of gin, which dwelt with him night
and day, was inextricably mixed up in his mind with the
smell of those
He never named them, even in his thoughts, and so
far as it was possible he never visualized them. They were
something that he was half-aware of, hovering close to his
face, a smell that clung to his nostrils. As the gin rose in
him he belched through purple lips. He had grown fatter
since they released him, and had regained his old colour —
indeed, more than regained it. His features had thickened,
the skin on nose and cheekbones was coarsely red, even
the bald scalp was too deep a pink. A waiter, again unbid-
den, brought the chessboard and the current issue of 'The
Times', with the page turned down at the chess problem.
Then, seeing that Winston's glass was empty, he brought the
gin bottle and filled it. There was no need to give orders.
They knew his habits. The chessboard was always waiting
for him, his corner table was always reserved; even when
364 1984
the place was full he had it to himself, since nobody cared
to be seen sitting too close to him. He never even bothered
to count his drinks. At irregular intervals they presented
him with a dirty slip of paper which they said was the bill,
but he had the impression that they always undercharged
him. It would have made no difference if it had been the
other way about. He had always plenty of money nowadays.
He even had a job, a sinecure, more highly-paid than his old
job had been.
The music from the telescreen stopped and a voice took
over. Winston raised his head to listen. No bulletins from
the front, however. It was merely a brief announcement
from the Ministry of Plenty. In the preceding quarter, it ap-
peared, the Tenth Three-Year Plan's quota for bootlaces had
been overfulfilled by 98 per cent.
He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It
was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to
play and mate in two moves. ' Winston looked up at the por-
trait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a
sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so
arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the
world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal,
unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed
back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.
The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a dif-
ferent and much graver tone: 'You are warned to stand by
for an important announcement at fifteen-thirty Fifteen-
thirty! This is news of the highest importance. Take care
not to miss it. Fifteen-thirty! ' The tinkling music struck up
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 365
again.
Winston's heart stirred. That was the bulletin from the
front; instinct told him that it was bad news that was com-
ing. All day, with little spurts of excitement, the thought
of a smashing defeat in Africa had been in and out of his
mind. He seemed actually to see the Eurasian army swarm-
ing across the never-broken frontier and pouring down
into the tip of Africa like a column of ants. Why had it not
been possible to outflank them in some way? The outline of
the West African coast stood out vividly in his mind. He
picked up the white knight and moved it across the board.
THERE was the proper spot. Even while he saw the black
horde racing southward he saw another force, mysteriously
assembled, suddenly planted in their rear, cutting their co-
munications by land and sea. He felt that by willing it he
was bringing that other force into existence. But it was nec-
essary to act quickly. If they could get control of the whole
of Africa, if they had airfields and submarine bases at the
Cape, it would cut Oceania in two. It might mean anything:
defeat, breakdown, the redivision of the world, the destruc-
tion of the Party! He drew a deep breath. An extraordinary
medley of feeling — but it was not a medley, exactly; rather it
was successive layers of feeling, in which one could not say
which layer was undermost — struggled inside him.
The spasm passed. He put the white knight back in its
place, but for the moment he could not settle down to se-
rious study of the chess problem. His thoughts wandered
again. Almost unconsciously he traced with his finger in
the dust on the table:
366 1984
2+2=5
"They can't get inside you,' she had said. But they could
get inside you. 'What happens to you here is FOR EVER,'
O'Brien had said. That was a true word. There were things,
your own acts, from which you could never recover. Some-
thing was killed in your breast: burnt out, cauterized out.
He had seen her; he had even spoken to her. There was
no danger in it. He knew as though instinctively that they
now took almost no interest in his doings. He could have
arranged to meet her a second time if either of them had
wanted to. Actually it was by chance that they had met. It
was in the Park, on a vile, biting day in March, when the
earth was like iron and all the grass seemed dead and there
was not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had
pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind. He
was hurrying along with frozen hands and watering eyes
when he saw her not ten metres away from him. It struck
him at once that she had changed in some ill-defined way.
They almost passed one another without a sign, then he
turned and followed her, not very eagerly. He knew that
there was no danger, nobody would take any interest in him.
She did not speak. She walked obliquely away across the
grass as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed to re-
sign herself to having him at her side. Presently they were in
among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for
concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted.
It was vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and
fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. He put his
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 367
arm round her waist.
There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden
microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did not mat-
ter, nothing mattered. They could have lain down on the
ground and done THAT if they had wanted to. His flesh
froze with horror at the thought of it. She made no response
whatever to the clasp of his arm; she did not even try to dis-
engage herself. He knew now what had changed in her. Her
face was sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden
by the hair, across her forehead and temple; but that was not
the change. It was that her waist had grown thicker, and, in
a surprising way, had stiffened. He remembered how once,
after the explosion of a rocket bomb, he had helped to drag
a corpse out of some ruins, and had been astonished not
only by the incredible weight of the thing, but by its rigidity
and awkwardness to handle, which made it seem more like
stone than flesh. Her body felt like that. It occurred to him
that the texture of her skin would be quite different from
what it had once been.
He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. As they
walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him for
the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of con-
tempt and dislike. He wondered whether it was a dislike that
came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also
by his bloated face and the water that the wind kept squeez-
ing from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by
side but not too close together. He saw that she was about
to speak. She moved her clumsy shoe a few centimetres and
deliberately crushed a twig. Her feet seemed to have grown
368 1984
broader, he noticed.
'I betrayed you,' she said baldly.
'I betrayed you,' he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something
something you can't stand up to, can't even think about.
And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody
else, do it to so-and-so. ' And perhaps you might pretend,
afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it
to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't
true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think
there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite
ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to
the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer.
All you care about is yourself
All you care about is yourself,' he echoed.
And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other
person any longer.
