No
bulletins
from
the front, however.
the front, however.
Orwell - 1984
'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. '
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
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-
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
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. '
'No,' he said, 'you don't feel the same. '
There did not seem to be anything more to say. The wind
plastered their thin overalls against their bodies. Almost at
once it became embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides,
it was too cold to keep still. She said something about catch-
ing her Tube and stood up to go.
'We must meet again,' he said.
'Yes,' she said, 'we must meet again. '
He followed irresolutely for a little distance, half a pace
behind her. They did not speak again. She did not actually
try to shake him off, but walked at just such a speed as to
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 369
prevent his keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind
that he would accompany her as far as the Tube station, but
suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed
pointless and unbearable. He was overwhelmed by a desire
not so much to get away from Julia as to get back to the
Chestnut Tree Cafe, which had never seemed so attractive
as at this moment. He had a nostalgic vision of his corner
table, with the newspaper and the chessboard and the ever-
flowing gin. Above all, it would be warm in there. The next
moment, not altogether by accident, he allowed himself to
become separated from her by a small knot of people. He
made a halfhearted attempt to catch up, then slowed down,
turned, and made off in the opposite direction. When he
had gone fifty metres he looked back. The street was not
crowded, but already he could not distinguish her. Any one
of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers. Perhaps
her thickened, stiffened body was no longer recognizable
from behind.
At the time when it happens,' she had said, 'you do mean
it. ' He had meant it. He had not merely said it, he had wished
it. He had wished that she and not he should be delivered
over to the
Something changed in the music that trickled from the
telescreen. A cracked and jeering note, a yellow note, came
into it. And then — perhaps it was not happening, perhaps
it was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound — a
voice was singing:
'Under the spreading chestnut tree
370 1984
/ sold you and you sold me '
The tears welled up in his eyes. A passing waiter noticed
that his glass was empty and came back with the gin bottle.
He took up his glass and sniffed at it. The stuff grew
not less but more horrible with every mouthful he drank.
But it had become the element he swam in. It was his life,
his death, and his resurrection. It was gin that sank him
into stupor every night, and gin that revived him every
morning. When he woke, seldom before eleven hundred,
with gummed-up eyelids and fiery mouth and a back that
seemed to be broken, it would have been impossible even
to rise from the horizontal if it had not been for the bottle
and teacup placed beside the bed overnight. Through the
midday hours he sat with glazed face, the bottle handy, lis-
tening to the telescreen. From fifteen to closing-time he
was a fixture in the Chestnut Tree. No one cared what he
did any longer, no whistle woke him, no telescreen admon-
ished him. Occasionally, perhaps twice a week, he went to a
dusty, forgotten-looking office in the Ministry of Truth and
did a little work, or what was called work. He had been ap-
pointed to a sub-committee of a sub-committee which had
sprouted from one of the innumerable committees dealing
with minor difficulties that arose in the compilation of the
Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. They were
engaged in producing something called an Interim Report,
but what it was that they were reporting on he had never
definitely found out. It was something to do with the ques-
tion of whether commas should be placed inside brackets,
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 371
or outside. There were four others on the committee, all of
them persons similar to himself. There were days when they
assembled and then promptly dispersed again, frankly ad-
mitting to one another that there was not really anything to
be done. But there were other days when they settled down
to their work almost eagerly, making a tremendous show
of entering up their minutes and drafting long memoranda
which were never finished — when the argument as to what
they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily
involved and abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions,
enormous digressions, quarrels — threats, even, to appeal to
higher authority. And then suddenly the life would go out
of them and they would sit round the table looking at one
another with extinct eyes, like ghosts fading at cock-crow.
The telescreen was silent for a moment. Winston raised
his head again. The bulletin! But no, they were merely
changing the music. He had the map of Africa behind his
eyelids. The movement of the armies was a diagram: a black
arrow tearing vertically southward, and a white arrow hori-
zontally eastward, across the tail of the first. As though for
reassurance he looked up at the imperturbable face in the
portrait. Was it conceivable that the second arrow did not
even exist?
His interest flagged again. He drank another mouthful of
gin, picked up the white knight and made a tentative move.
Check. But it was evidently not the right move, because
Uncalled, a memory floated into his mind. He saw a
candle-lit room with a vast white- counterpaned bed, and
himself, a boy of nine or ten, sitting on the floor, shaking
1984
a dice-box, and laughing excitedly. His mother was sitting
opposite him and also laughing.
It must have been about a month before she disappeared.
It was a moment of reconciliation, when the nagging hun-
ger in his belly was forgotten and his earlier affection for
her had temporarily revived. He remembered the day well,
a pelting, drenching day when the water streamed down
the window-pane and the light indoors was too dull to read
by. The boredom of the two children in the dark, cramped
bedroom became unbearable. Winston whined and griz-
zled, made futile demands for food, fretted about the room
pulling everything out of place and kicking the wainscot-
ing until the neighbours banged on the wall, while the
younger child wailed intermittently. In the end his mother
said, 'Now be good, and I'll buy you a toy. A lovely toy —
you'll love it'; and then she had gone out in the rain, to a
little general shop which was still sporadically open nearby,
and came back with a cardboard box containing an outfit
of Snakes and Ladders. He could still remember the smell
of the damp cardboard. It was a miserable outfit. The board
was cracked and the tiny wooden dice were so ill- cut that
they would hardly lie on their sides. Winston looked at the
thing sulkily and without interest. But then his mother lit a
piece of candle and they sat down on the floor to play. Soon
he was wildly excited and shouting with laughter as the tid-
dly-winks climbed hopefully up the ladders and then came
slithering down the snakes again, almost to the starting-
point. They played eight games, winning four each. His tiny
sister, too young to understand what the game was about,
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had sat propped up against a bolster, laughing because the
others were laughing. For a whole afternoon they had all
been happy together, as in his earlier childhood.
He pushed the picture out of his mind. It was a false
memory. He was troubled by false memories occasionally.
They did not matter so long as one knew them for what they
were. Some things had happened, others had not happened.
He turned back to the chessboard and picked up the white
knight again. Almost in the same instant it dropped on to
the board with a clatter. He had started as though a pin had
run into him.
A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It was the bul-
letin! Victory! It always meant victory when a trumpet-call
preceded the news. A sort of electric drill ran through the
cafe. Even the waiters had started and pricked up their
ears.
The trumpet-call had let loose an enormous volume of
noise. Already an excited voice was gabbling from the tele-
screen, but even as it started it was almost drowned by a
roar of cheering from outside. The news had run round the
streets like magic. He could hear just enough of what was
issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all hap-
pened, as he had foreseen; a vast seaborne armada had
secretly assembled a sudden blow in the enemy's rear, the
white arrow tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments
of triumphant phrases pushed themselves through the din:
'Vast strategic manoeuvre — perfect co-ordination — utter
rout — half a million prisoners — complete demoraliza-
tion — control of the whole of Africa — bring the war within
1984
measurable distance of its end — victory — greatest victory
in human history — victory, victory, victory! '
Under the table Winston's feet made convulsive move-
ments. He had not stirred from his seat, but in his mind
he was running, swiftly running, he was with the crowds
outside, cheering himself deaf. He looked up again at the
portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the
world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed
themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes ago — yes,
only ten minutes — there had still been equivocation in
his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front
would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eur-
asian army that had perished! Much had changed in him
since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, in-
dispensable, healing change had never happened, until this
moment.
The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its
tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting
outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning
back to their work. One of them approached with the gin
bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no at-
tention as his glass was filled up.
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. '
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
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-
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
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. '
'No,' he said, 'you don't feel the same. '
There did not seem to be anything more to say. The wind
plastered their thin overalls against their bodies. Almost at
once it became embarrassing to sit there in silence: besides,
it was too cold to keep still. She said something about catch-
ing her Tube and stood up to go.
'We must meet again,' he said.
'Yes,' she said, 'we must meet again. '
He followed irresolutely for a little distance, half a pace
behind her. They did not speak again. She did not actually
try to shake him off, but walked at just such a speed as to
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 369
prevent his keeping abreast of her. He had made up his mind
that he would accompany her as far as the Tube station, but
suddenly this process of trailing along in the cold seemed
pointless and unbearable. He was overwhelmed by a desire
not so much to get away from Julia as to get back to the
Chestnut Tree Cafe, which had never seemed so attractive
as at this moment. He had a nostalgic vision of his corner
table, with the newspaper and the chessboard and the ever-
flowing gin. Above all, it would be warm in there. The next
moment, not altogether by accident, he allowed himself to
become separated from her by a small knot of people. He
made a halfhearted attempt to catch up, then slowed down,
turned, and made off in the opposite direction. When he
had gone fifty metres he looked back. The street was not
crowded, but already he could not distinguish her. Any one
of a dozen hurrying figures might have been hers. Perhaps
her thickened, stiffened body was no longer recognizable
from behind.
At the time when it happens,' she had said, 'you do mean
it. ' He had meant it. He had not merely said it, he had wished
it. He had wished that she and not he should be delivered
over to the
Something changed in the music that trickled from the
telescreen. A cracked and jeering note, a yellow note, came
into it. And then — perhaps it was not happening, perhaps
it was only a memory taking on the semblance of sound — a
voice was singing:
'Under the spreading chestnut tree
370 1984
/ sold you and you sold me '
The tears welled up in his eyes. A passing waiter noticed
that his glass was empty and came back with the gin bottle.
He took up his glass and sniffed at it. The stuff grew
not less but more horrible with every mouthful he drank.
But it had become the element he swam in. It was his life,
his death, and his resurrection. It was gin that sank him
into stupor every night, and gin that revived him every
morning. When he woke, seldom before eleven hundred,
with gummed-up eyelids and fiery mouth and a back that
seemed to be broken, it would have been impossible even
to rise from the horizontal if it had not been for the bottle
and teacup placed beside the bed overnight. Through the
midday hours he sat with glazed face, the bottle handy, lis-
tening to the telescreen. From fifteen to closing-time he
was a fixture in the Chestnut Tree. No one cared what he
did any longer, no whistle woke him, no telescreen admon-
ished him. Occasionally, perhaps twice a week, he went to a
dusty, forgotten-looking office in the Ministry of Truth and
did a little work, or what was called work. He had been ap-
pointed to a sub-committee of a sub-committee which had
sprouted from one of the innumerable committees dealing
with minor difficulties that arose in the compilation of the
Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. They were
engaged in producing something called an Interim Report,
but what it was that they were reporting on he had never
definitely found out. It was something to do with the ques-
tion of whether commas should be placed inside brackets,
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 371
or outside. There were four others on the committee, all of
them persons similar to himself. There were days when they
assembled and then promptly dispersed again, frankly ad-
mitting to one another that there was not really anything to
be done. But there were other days when they settled down
to their work almost eagerly, making a tremendous show
of entering up their minutes and drafting long memoranda
which were never finished — when the argument as to what
they were supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily
involved and abstruse, with subtle haggling over definitions,
enormous digressions, quarrels — threats, even, to appeal to
higher authority. And then suddenly the life would go out
of them and they would sit round the table looking at one
another with extinct eyes, like ghosts fading at cock-crow.
The telescreen was silent for a moment. Winston raised
his head again. The bulletin! But no, they were merely
changing the music. He had the map of Africa behind his
eyelids. The movement of the armies was a diagram: a black
arrow tearing vertically southward, and a white arrow hori-
zontally eastward, across the tail of the first. As though for
reassurance he looked up at the imperturbable face in the
portrait. Was it conceivable that the second arrow did not
even exist?
His interest flagged again. He drank another mouthful of
gin, picked up the white knight and made a tentative move.
Check. But it was evidently not the right move, because
Uncalled, a memory floated into his mind. He saw a
candle-lit room with a vast white- counterpaned bed, and
himself, a boy of nine or ten, sitting on the floor, shaking
1984
a dice-box, and laughing excitedly. His mother was sitting
opposite him and also laughing.
It must have been about a month before she disappeared.
It was a moment of reconciliation, when the nagging hun-
ger in his belly was forgotten and his earlier affection for
her had temporarily revived. He remembered the day well,
a pelting, drenching day when the water streamed down
the window-pane and the light indoors was too dull to read
by. The boredom of the two children in the dark, cramped
bedroom became unbearable. Winston whined and griz-
zled, made futile demands for food, fretted about the room
pulling everything out of place and kicking the wainscot-
ing until the neighbours banged on the wall, while the
younger child wailed intermittently. In the end his mother
said, 'Now be good, and I'll buy you a toy. A lovely toy —
you'll love it'; and then she had gone out in the rain, to a
little general shop which was still sporadically open nearby,
and came back with a cardboard box containing an outfit
of Snakes and Ladders. He could still remember the smell
of the damp cardboard. It was a miserable outfit. The board
was cracked and the tiny wooden dice were so ill- cut that
they would hardly lie on their sides. Winston looked at the
thing sulkily and without interest. But then his mother lit a
piece of candle and they sat down on the floor to play. Soon
he was wildly excited and shouting with laughter as the tid-
dly-winks climbed hopefully up the ladders and then came
slithering down the snakes again, almost to the starting-
point. They played eight games, winning four each. His tiny
sister, too young to understand what the game was about,
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
had sat propped up against a bolster, laughing because the
others were laughing. For a whole afternoon they had all
been happy together, as in his earlier childhood.
He pushed the picture out of his mind. It was a false
memory. He was troubled by false memories occasionally.
They did not matter so long as one knew them for what they
were. Some things had happened, others had not happened.
He turned back to the chessboard and picked up the white
knight again. Almost in the same instant it dropped on to
the board with a clatter. He had started as though a pin had
run into him.
A shrill trumpet-call had pierced the air. It was the bul-
letin! Victory! It always meant victory when a trumpet-call
preceded the news. A sort of electric drill ran through the
cafe. Even the waiters had started and pricked up their
ears.
The trumpet-call had let loose an enormous volume of
noise. Already an excited voice was gabbling from the tele-
screen, but even as it started it was almost drowned by a
roar of cheering from outside. The news had run round the
streets like magic. He could hear just enough of what was
issuing from the telescreen to realize that it had all hap-
pened, as he had foreseen; a vast seaborne armada had
secretly assembled a sudden blow in the enemy's rear, the
white arrow tearing across the tail of the black. Fragments
of triumphant phrases pushed themselves through the din:
'Vast strategic manoeuvre — perfect co-ordination — utter
rout — half a million prisoners — complete demoraliza-
tion — control of the whole of Africa — bring the war within
1984
measurable distance of its end — victory — greatest victory
in human history — victory, victory, victory! '
Under the table Winston's feet made convulsive move-
ments. He had not stirred from his seat, but in his mind
he was running, swiftly running, he was with the crowds
outside, cheering himself deaf. He looked up again at the
portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the
world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed
themselves in vain! He thought how ten minutes ago — yes,
only ten minutes — there had still been equivocation in
his heart as he wondered whether the news from the front
would be of victory or defeat. Ah, it was more than a Eur-
asian army that had perished! Much had changed in him
since that first day in the Ministry of Love, but the final, in-
dispensable, healing change had never happened, until this
moment.
The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its
tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting
outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning
back to their work. One of them approached with the gin
bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no at-
tention as his glass was filled up.
