In general
terms, what are you prepared to do?
terms, what are you prepared to do?
Orwell - 1984
To this day he did not know with any certainty
that his mother was dead. It was perfectly possible that she
had merely been sent to a forced-labour camp. As for his
sister, she might have been removed, like Winston himself,
to one of the colonies for homeless children (Reclamation
Centres, they were called) which had grown up as a result
of the civil war, or she might have been sent to the labour
1984
camp along with his mother, or simply left somewhere or
other to die.
The dream was still vivid in his mind, especially the en-
veloping protecting gesture of the arm in which its whole
meaning seemed to be contained. His mind went back to
another dream of two months ago. Exactly as his mother
had sat on the dingy whitequilted bed, with the child cling-
ing to her, so she had sat in the sunken ship, far underneath
him, and drowning deeper every minute, but still looking
up at him through the darkening water.
He told Julia the story of his mother's disappearance.
Without opening her eyes she rolled over and settled herself
into a more comfortable position.
'I expect you were a beastly little swine in those days,' she
said indistinctly. 'All children are swine. '
'Yes. But the real point of the story '
From her breathing it was evident that she was going
off to sleep again. He would have liked to continue talking
about his mother. He did not suppose, from what he could
remember of her, that she had been an unusual woman, still
less an intelligent one; and yet she had possessed a kind of
nobility, a kind of purity, simply because the standards that
she obeyed were private ones. Her feelings were her own,
and could not be altered from outside. It would not have
occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby
becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him,
and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him
love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother
had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert
the child's death or her own; but it seemed natural to her to
do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the
little boy with her arm, which was no more use against the
bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the Par-
ty had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere
feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing
you of all power over the material world. When once you
were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel,
what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no dif-
ference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you
nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted
clean out of the stream of history. And yet to the people
of only two generations ago this would not have seemed
all-important, because they were not attempting to alter
history. They were governed by private loyalties which they
did not question. What mattered were individual relation-
ships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear,
a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself.
The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in
this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or
an idea, they were loyal to one another. For the first time in
his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely
as an inert force which would one day spring to life and re-
generate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had
not become hardened inside. They had held on to the primi-
tive emotions which he himself had to re-learn by conscious
effort. And in thinking this he remembered, without appar-
ent relevance, how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed
1984
hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gut-
ter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk.
"The proles are human beings,' he said aloud. 'We are not
human. '
'Why not? ' said Julia, who had woken up again.
He thought for a little while. 'Has it ever occurred to you,'
he said, 'that the best thing for us to do would be simply to
walk out of here before it's too late, and never see each other
again? '
'Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several times. But I'm
not going to do it, all the same. '
'We've been lucky' he said 'but it can't last much longer.
You're young. You look normal and innocent. If you keep
clear of people like me, you might stay alive for another fifty
years. '
'No. I've thought it all out. What you do, I'm going to do.
And don't be too downhearted. I'm rather good at staying
alive. '
'We may be together for another six months — a year —
there's no knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do
you realize how utterly alone we shall be? When once they
get hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that
either of us can do for the other. If I confess, they'll shoot
you, and if I refuse to confess, they'll shoot you just the same.
Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying, will
put off your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of us
will even know whether the other is alive or dead. We shall
be utterly without power of any kind. The one thing that
matters is that we shouldn't betray one another, although
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
even that can't make the slightest difference. '
'If you mean confessing,' she said, 'we shall do that, right
enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They
torture you. '
'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal.
What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If
they could make me stop loving you — that would be the
real betrayal. '
She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said final-
ly 'It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say
anything — ANYTHING — but they can't make you believe
it. They can't get inside you. '
'No,' he said a little more hopefully, 'no; that's quite true.
They can't get inside you. If you can FEEL that staying hu-
man is worth while, even when it can't have any result
whatever, you've beaten them. '
He thought of the telescreen with its never- sleeping ear.
They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your
head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness
they had never mastered the secret of finding out what an-
other human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less true
when you were actually in their hands. One did not know
what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was pos-
sible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that
registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing- down
by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning.
Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be
tracked down by enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you
by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay
1984
human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could
not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter
them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in
the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or
thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysteri-
ous even to yourself, remained impregnable.
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
Chapter 8
They had done it, they had done it at last!
The room they were standing in was long-shaped and
softly lit. The telescreen was dimmed to a low murmur; the
richness of the dark-blue carpet gave one the impression of
treading on velvet. At the far end of the room O'Brien was
sitting at a table under a green-shaded lamp, with a mass of
papers on either side of him. He had not bothered to look up
when the servant showed Julia and Winston in.
Winston's heart was thumping so hard that he doubted
whether he would be able to speak. They had done it, they
had done it at last, was all he could think. It had been a rash
act to come here at all, and sheer folly to arrive together;
though it was true that they had come by different routes
and only met on O'Brien's doorstep. But merely to walk into
such a place needed an effort of the nerve. It was only on
very rare occasions that one saw inside the dwelling-plac-
es of the Inner Party, or even penetrated into the quarter
of the town where they lived. The whole atmosphere of the
huge block of flats, the richness and spaciousness of every-
thing, the unfamiliar smells of good food and good tobacco,
the silent and incredibly rapid lifts sliding up and down, the
white-jacketed servants hurrying to and fro — everything
was intimidating. Although he had a good pretext for com-
ing here, he was haunted at every step by the fear that a
1984
black-uniformed guard would suddenly appear from round
the corner, demand his papers, and order him to get out.
O'Brien's servant, however, had admitted the two of them
without demur. He was a small, dark-haired man in a white
jacket, with a diamond- shaped, completely expressionless
face which might have been that of a Chinese. The passage
down which he led them was softly carpeted, with cream-
papered walls and white wainscoting, all exquisitely clean.
That too was intimidating. Winston could not remember
ever to have seen a passageway whose walls were not grimy
from the contact of human bodies.
O'Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers and
seemed to be studying it intently. His heavy face, bent down
so that one could see the line of the nose, looked both for-
midable and intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds he sat
without stirring. Then he pulled the speakwrite towards
him and rapped out a message in the hybrid jargon of the
Ministries:
'Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise
stop suggestion contained item six doubleplus ridiculous
verging crimethink cancel stop unproceed construction-wise
antegetting plusfull estimates machinery overheads stop end
message. '
He rose deliberately from his chair and came towards
them across the soundless carpet. A little of the official at-
mosphere seemed to have fallen away from him with the
Newspeak words, but his expression was grimmer than
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 213
usual, as though he were not pleased at being disturbed. The
terror that Winston already felt was suddenly shot through
by a streak of ordinary embarrassment. It seemed to him
quite possible that he had simply made a stupid mistake.
For what evidence had he in reality that O'Brien was any
kind of political conspirator? Nothing but a flash of the eyes
and a single equivocal remark: beyond that, only his own
secret imaginings, founded on a dream. He could not even
fall back on the pretence that he had come to borrow the
dictionary, because in that case Julia's presence was impos-
sible to explain. As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought
seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed
a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had
stopped.
Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise.
Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken
aback to be able to hold his tongue.
'You can turn it off! ' he said.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privi-
lege. '
He was opposite them now. His solid form towered
over the pair of them, and the expression on his face was
still indecipherable. He was waiting, somewhat sternly, for
Winston to speak, but about what? Even now it was quite
conceivable that he was simply a busy man wondering ir-
ritably why he had been interrupted. Nobody spoke. After
the stopping of the telescreen the room seemed deadly si-
lent. The seconds marched past, enormous. With difficulty
Winston continued to keep his eyes fixed on O'Brien's. Then
1984
suddenly the grim face broke down into what might have
been the beginnings of a smile. With his characteristic ges-
ture O'Brien resettled his spectacles on his nose.
'Shall I say it, or will you? ' he said.
'I will say it,' said Winston promptly. 'That thing is really
turned off? '
'Yes, everything is turned off. We are alone. '
'We have come here because '
He paused, realizing for the first time the vagueness of
his own motives. Since he did not in fact know what kind
of help he expected from O'Brien, it was not easy to say why
he had come here. He went on, conscious that what he was
saying must sound both feeble and pretentious:
'We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some
kind of secret organization working against the Party, and
that you are involved in it. We want to join it and work for it.
We are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles
of Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are also adulter-
ers. I tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your
mercy. If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other
way, we are ready'
He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, with the
feeling that the door had opened. Sure enough, the little yel-
low-faced servant had come in without knocking. Winston
saw that he was carrying a tray with a decanter and glasses.
'Martin is one of us,' said O'Brien impassively. 'Bring
the drinks over here, Martin. Put them on the round table.
Have we enough chairs? Then we may as well sit down and
talk in comfort. Bring a chair for yourself, Martin. This is
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
business. You can stop being a servant for the next ten min-
utes. '
The little man sat down, quite at his ease, and yet still
with a servant-like air, the air of a valet enjoying a priv-
ilege. Winston regarded him out of the corner of his eye.
It struck him that the man's whole life was playing a part,
and that he felt it to be dangerous to drop his assumed per-
sonality even for a moment. O'Brien took the decanter by
the neck and filled up the glasses with a dark-red liquid. It
aroused in Winston dim memories of something seen long
ago on a wall or a hoarding — a vast bottle composed of elec-
tric lights which seemed to move up and down and pour its
contents into a glass. Seen from the top the stuff looked al-
most black, but in the decanter it gleamed like a ruby. It had
a sour-sweet smell. He saw Julia pick up her glass and sniff
at it with frank curiosity.
'It is called wine,' said O'Brien with a faint smile. 'You
will have read about it in books, no doubt. Not much of it
gets to the Outer Party, I am afraid. ' His face grew solemn
again, and he raised his glass: 'I think it is fitting that we
should begin by drinking a health. To our Leader: To Em-
manuel Goldstein. '
Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine
was a thing he had read and dreamed about. Like the glass
paperweight or Mr Charrington's half- remembered rhymes,
it belonged to the vanished, romantic past, the olden time
as he liked to call it in his secret thoughts. For some reason
he had always thought of wine as having an intensely sweet
taste, like that of blackberry jam and an immediate intoxi-
1984
eating effect. Actually, when he came to swallow it, the stuff
was distinctly disappointing. The truth was that after years
of gin-drinking he could barely taste it. He set down the
empty glass.
"Then there is such a person as Goldstein? ' he said.
'Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do
not know. '
'And the conspiracy — the organization? Is it real? It is not
simply an invention of the Thought Police? '
'No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call it. You will never
learn much more about the Brotherhood than that it exists
and that you belong to it. I will come back to that pres-
ently' He looked at his wrist-watch. 'It is unwise even for
members of the Inner Party to turn off the telescreen for
more than half an hour. You ought not to have come here
together, and you will have to leave separately. You, com-
rade' — he bowed his head to Julia — 'will leave first. We have
about twenty minutes at our disposal. You will understand
that I must start by asking you certain questions.
In general
terms, what are you prepared to do? '
Anything that we are capable of,' said Winston.
O'Brien had turned himself a little in his chair so that he
was facing Winston. He almost ignored Julia, seeming to
take it for granted that Winston could speak for her. For a
moment the lids flitted down over his eyes. He began asking
his questions in a low, expressionless voice, as though this
were a routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers
were known to him already.
'You are prepared to give your lives? '
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to commit murder? '
'Yes. '
'To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death
of hundreds of innocent people? '
'Yes. '
'To betray your country to foreign powers? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to cor-
rupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming
drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal
diseases — to do anything which is likely to cause demoral-
ization and weaken the power of the Party? '
'Yes. '
'If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to
throw sulphuric acid in a child's face — are you prepared to
do that? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the
rest of your life as a waiter or a dock- worker? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we or-
der you to do so? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never
see one another again? '
'No! ' broke in Julia.
It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before
he answered. For a moment he seemed even to have been
1984
deprived of the power of speech. His tongue worked sound-
lessly, forming the opening syllables first of one word, then
of the other, over and over again. Until he had said it, he
did not know which word he was going to say. 'No,' he said
finally.
'You did well to tell me,' said O'Brien. 'It is necessary for
us to know everything. '
He turned himself toward Julia and added in a voice
with somewhat more expression in it:
'Do you understand that even if he survives, it may be
as a different person? We may be obliged to give him a new
identity. His face, his movements, the shape of his hands,
the colour of his hair — even his voice would be different.
And you yourself might have become a different person.
Our surgeons can alter people beyond recognition. Some-
times it is necessary. Sometimes we even amputate a limb. '
Winston could not help snatching another sidelong
glance at Martin's Mongolian face. There were no scars
that he could see. Julia had turned a shade paler, so that
her freckles were showing, but she faced O'Brien boldly. She
murmured something that seemed to be assent.
'Good. Then that is settled. '
There was a silver box of cigarettes on the table. With a
rather absent-minded air O'Brien pushed them towards the
others, took one himself, then stood up and began to pace
slowly to and fro, as though he could think better standing.
They were very good cigarettes, very thick and well-packed,
with an unfamiliar silkiness in the paper. O'Brien looked at
his wrist-watch again.
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
'You had better go back to your Pantry, Martin,' he said.
'I shall switch on in a quarter of an hour. Take a good look
at these comrades' faces before you go. You will be seeing
them again. I may not. '
Exactly as they had done at the front door, the little man's
dark eyes flickered over their faces. There was not a trace
of friendliness in his manner. He was memorizing their
appearance, but he felt no interest in them, or appeared
to feel none. It occurred to Winston that a synthetic face
was perhaps incapable of changing its expression. Without
speaking or giving any kind of salutation, Martin went out,
closing the door silently behind him. O'Brien was strolling
up and down, one hand in the pocket of his black overalls,
the other holding his cigarette.
'You understand,' he said, 'that you will be fighting in
the dark. You will always be in the dark. You will receive
orders and you will obey them, without knowing why. Later
I shall send you a book from which you will learn the true
nature of the society we live in, and the strategy by which
we shall destroy it. When you have read the book, you will
be full members of the Brotherhood. But between the gen-
eral aims that we are fighting for and the immedi ate tasks
of the moment, you will never know anything. I tell you
that the Brotherhood exists, but I cannot tell you wheth-
er it numbers a hundred members, or ten million. From
your personal knowledge you will never be able to say that
it numbers even as many as a dozen. You will have three
or four contacts, who will be renewed from time to time
as they disappear. As this was your first contact, it will be
1984
preserved. When you receive orders, they will come from
me. If we find it necessary to communicate with you, it will
be through Martin. When you are finally caught, you will
confess. That is unavoidable. But you will have very little
to confess, other than your own actions. You will not be
able to betray more than a handful of unimportant people.
Probably you will not even betray me. By that time I may be
dead, or I shall have become a different person, with a dif-
ferent face. '
He continued to move to and fro over the soft carpet. In
spite of the bulkiness of his body there was a remarkable
grace in his movements. It came out even in the gesture
with which he thrust a hand into his pocket, or manipu-
lated a cigarette. More even than of strength, he gave an
impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged
by irony. However much in earnest he might be, he had
nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic.
When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal disease, am-
putated limbs, and altered faces, it was with a faint air of
persiflage. 'This is unavoidable,' his voice seemed to say;
'this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly. But this is
not what we shall be doing when life is worth living again. '
A wave of admiration, almost of worship, flowed out from
Winston towards O'Brien. For the moment he had forgot-
ten the shadowy figure of Goldstein. When you looked at
O'Brien's powerful shoulders and his blunt- featured face, so
ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible to believe that
he could be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was
not equal to, no danger that he could not foresee. Even Julia
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
seemed to be impressed. She had let her cigarette go out and
was listening intently. O'Brien went on:
'You will have heard rumours of the existence of the
Brotherhood. No doubt you have formed your own picture
of it. You have imagined, probably, a huge underworld of
conspirators, meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling mes-
sages on walls, recognizing one another by codewords or by
special movements of the hand. Nothing of the kind exists.
The members of the Brotherhood have no way of recogniz-
ing one another, and it is impossible for any one member to
be aware of the identity of more than a few others. Gold-
stein himself, if he fell into the hands of the Thought Police,
could not give them a complete list of members, or any in-
formation that would lead them to a complete list. No such
list exists. The Brotherhood cannot be wiped out because it
is not an organization in the ordinary sense. Nothing holds
it together except an idea which is indestructible. You will
never have anything to sustain you, except the idea. You
will get no comradeship and no encouragement. When fi-
nally you are caught, you will get no help. We never help
our members. At most, when it is absolutely necessary that
someone should be silenced, we are occasionally able to
smuggle a razor blade into a prisoner's cell. You will have
to get used to living without results and without hope. You
will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess,
and then you will die. Those are the only results that you
will ever see. There is no possibility that any perceptible
change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the
dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part
1984
in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far
away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be
a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to
extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act col-
lectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from
individual to individual, generation after generation. In the
face of the Thought Police there is no other way'
He halted and looked for the third time at his wrist-
watch.
'It is almost time for you to leave, comrade,' he said to Ju-
lia. 'Wait. The decanter is still half full. '
He filled the glasses and raised his own glass by the
stem.
'What shall it be this time? ' he said, still with the same
faint suggestion of irony. 'To the confusion of the Thought
Police? To the death of Big Brother? To humanity? To the
future? '
'To the past,' said Winston.
'The past is more important,' agreed O'Brien gravely.
They emptied their glasses, and a moment later Julia
stood up to go. O'Brien took a small box from the top of a
cabinet and handed her a flat white tablet which he told her
to place on her tongue. It was important, he said, not to go
out smelling of wine: the lift attendants were very obser-
vant. As soon as the door had shut behind her he appeared
to forget her existence. He took another pace or two up and
down, then stopped.
'There are details to be settled,' he said. 'I assume that
you have a hiding-place of some kind? '
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 223
Winston explained about the room over Mr Char-
rington's shop.
"That will do for the moment. Later we will arrange
something else for you. It is important to change one's hid-
ing-place frequently. Meanwhile I shall send you a copy of
THE BOOK' — even O'Brien, Winston noticed, seemed to
pronounce the words as though they were in italics — 'Gold-
stein's book, you understand, as soon as possible. It may
be some days before I can get hold of one. There are not
many in existence, as you can imagine. The Thought Police
hunt them down and destroy them almost as fast as we can
produce them. It makes very little difference. The book is
indestructible. If the last copy were gone, we could repro-
duce it almost word for word. Do you carry a brief-case to
work with you? ' he added.
'As a rule, yes. '
'What is it like? '
'Black, very shabby. With two straps. '
'Black, two straps, very shabby — good. One day in the
fairly near future — I cannot give a date — one of the messag-
es among your morning's work will contain a misprinted
word, and you will have to ask for a repeat. On the following
day you will go to work without your brief-case. At some
time during the day, in the street, a man will touch you on
the arm and say 'I think you have dropped your brief-case. '
The one he gives you will contain a copy of Goldstein's book.
You will return it within fourteen days. '
They were silent for a moment.
'There are a couple of minutes before you need go,' said
1984
O'Brien. 'We shall meet again — if we do meet again '
Winston looked up at him. 'In the place where there is no
darkness? ' he said hesitantly.
O'Brien nodded without appearance of surprise. 'In the
place where there is no darkness,' he said, as though he had
recognized the allusion. 'And in the meantime, is there any-
thing that you wish to say before you leave? Any message?
Any question? . '
Winston thought. There did not seem to be any further
question that he wanted to ask: still less did he feel any
impulse to utter high-sounding generalities. Instead of any-
thing directly connected with O'Brien or the Brotherhood,
there came into his mind a sort of composite picture of the
dark bedroom where his mother had spent her last days,
and the little room over Mr Charrington's shop, and the
glass paperweight, and the steel engraving in its rosewood
frame. Almost at random he said:
'Did you ever happen to hear an old rhyme that begins
'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's'? '
Again O'Brien nodded. With a sort of grave courtesy he
completed the stanza:
'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,
You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's,
When willyoupay me? say the bells of Old Bailey,
When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch. '
'You knew the last line! ' said Winston.
'Yes, I knew the last line. And now, I am afraid, it is time
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 225
for you to go. But wait. You had better let me give you one
of these tablets. '
As Winston stood up O'Brien held out a hand. His pow-
erful grip crushed the bones of Winston's palm. At the
door Winston looked back, but O'Brien seemed already to
be in process of putting him out of mind. He was waiting
with his hand on the switch that controlled the telescreen.
Beyond him Winston could see the writing-table with its
green-shaded lamp and the speakwrite and the wire baskets
deep-laden with papers. The incident was closed. Within
thirty seconds, it occurred to him, O'Brien would be back at
his interrupted and important work on behalf of the Party.
1984
Chapter 9
Winston was gelatinous with fatigue. Gelatinous was
the right word. It had come into his head spontane-
ously. His body seemed to have not only the weakness of a
jelly, but its translucency He felt that if he held up his hand
he would be able to see the light through it.
that his mother was dead. It was perfectly possible that she
had merely been sent to a forced-labour camp. As for his
sister, she might have been removed, like Winston himself,
to one of the colonies for homeless children (Reclamation
Centres, they were called) which had grown up as a result
of the civil war, or she might have been sent to the labour
1984
camp along with his mother, or simply left somewhere or
other to die.
The dream was still vivid in his mind, especially the en-
veloping protecting gesture of the arm in which its whole
meaning seemed to be contained. His mind went back to
another dream of two months ago. Exactly as his mother
had sat on the dingy whitequilted bed, with the child cling-
ing to her, so she had sat in the sunken ship, far underneath
him, and drowning deeper every minute, but still looking
up at him through the darkening water.
He told Julia the story of his mother's disappearance.
Without opening her eyes she rolled over and settled herself
into a more comfortable position.
'I expect you were a beastly little swine in those days,' she
said indistinctly. 'All children are swine. '
'Yes. But the real point of the story '
From her breathing it was evident that she was going
off to sleep again. He would have liked to continue talking
about his mother. He did not suppose, from what he could
remember of her, that she had been an unusual woman, still
less an intelligent one; and yet she had possessed a kind of
nobility, a kind of purity, simply because the standards that
she obeyed were private ones. Her feelings were her own,
and could not be altered from outside. It would not have
occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby
becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him,
and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him
love. When the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother
had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did not avert
the child's death or her own; but it seemed natural to her to
do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the
little boy with her arm, which was no more use against the
bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the Par-
ty had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere
feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing
you of all power over the material world. When once you
were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel,
what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no dif-
ference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you
nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted
clean out of the stream of history. And yet to the people
of only two generations ago this would not have seemed
all-important, because they were not attempting to alter
history. They were governed by private loyalties which they
did not question. What mattered were individual relation-
ships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear,
a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself.
The proles, it suddenly occurred to him, had remained in
this condition. They were not loyal to a party or a country or
an idea, they were loyal to one another. For the first time in
his life he did not despise the proles or think of them merely
as an inert force which would one day spring to life and re-
generate the world. The proles had stayed human. They had
not become hardened inside. They had held on to the primi-
tive emotions which he himself had to re-learn by conscious
effort. And in thinking this he remembered, without appar-
ent relevance, how a few weeks ago he had seen a severed
1984
hand lying on the pavement and had kicked it into the gut-
ter as though it had been a cabbage-stalk.
"The proles are human beings,' he said aloud. 'We are not
human. '
'Why not? ' said Julia, who had woken up again.
He thought for a little while. 'Has it ever occurred to you,'
he said, 'that the best thing for us to do would be simply to
walk out of here before it's too late, and never see each other
again? '
'Yes, dear, it has occurred to me, several times. But I'm
not going to do it, all the same. '
'We've been lucky' he said 'but it can't last much longer.
You're young. You look normal and innocent. If you keep
clear of people like me, you might stay alive for another fifty
years. '
'No. I've thought it all out. What you do, I'm going to do.
And don't be too downhearted. I'm rather good at staying
alive. '
'We may be together for another six months — a year —
there's no knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do
you realize how utterly alone we shall be? When once they
get hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that
either of us can do for the other. If I confess, they'll shoot
you, and if I refuse to confess, they'll shoot you just the same.
Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying, will
put off your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of us
will even know whether the other is alive or dead. We shall
be utterly without power of any kind. The one thing that
matters is that we shouldn't betray one another, although
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
even that can't make the slightest difference. '
'If you mean confessing,' she said, 'we shall do that, right
enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They
torture you. '
'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal.
What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If
they could make me stop loving you — that would be the
real betrayal. '
She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said final-
ly 'It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say
anything — ANYTHING — but they can't make you believe
it. They can't get inside you. '
'No,' he said a little more hopefully, 'no; that's quite true.
They can't get inside you. If you can FEEL that staying hu-
man is worth while, even when it can't have any result
whatever, you've beaten them. '
He thought of the telescreen with its never- sleeping ear.
They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your
head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness
they had never mastered the secret of finding out what an-
other human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less true
when you were actually in their hands. One did not know
what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was pos-
sible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that
registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing- down
by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning.
Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be
tracked down by enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you
by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay
1984
human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could
not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter
them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in
the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or
thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysteri-
ous even to yourself, remained impregnable.
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
Chapter 8
They had done it, they had done it at last!
The room they were standing in was long-shaped and
softly lit. The telescreen was dimmed to a low murmur; the
richness of the dark-blue carpet gave one the impression of
treading on velvet. At the far end of the room O'Brien was
sitting at a table under a green-shaded lamp, with a mass of
papers on either side of him. He had not bothered to look up
when the servant showed Julia and Winston in.
Winston's heart was thumping so hard that he doubted
whether he would be able to speak. They had done it, they
had done it at last, was all he could think. It had been a rash
act to come here at all, and sheer folly to arrive together;
though it was true that they had come by different routes
and only met on O'Brien's doorstep. But merely to walk into
such a place needed an effort of the nerve. It was only on
very rare occasions that one saw inside the dwelling-plac-
es of the Inner Party, or even penetrated into the quarter
of the town where they lived. The whole atmosphere of the
huge block of flats, the richness and spaciousness of every-
thing, the unfamiliar smells of good food and good tobacco,
the silent and incredibly rapid lifts sliding up and down, the
white-jacketed servants hurrying to and fro — everything
was intimidating. Although he had a good pretext for com-
ing here, he was haunted at every step by the fear that a
1984
black-uniformed guard would suddenly appear from round
the corner, demand his papers, and order him to get out.
O'Brien's servant, however, had admitted the two of them
without demur. He was a small, dark-haired man in a white
jacket, with a diamond- shaped, completely expressionless
face which might have been that of a Chinese. The passage
down which he led them was softly carpeted, with cream-
papered walls and white wainscoting, all exquisitely clean.
That too was intimidating. Winston could not remember
ever to have seen a passageway whose walls were not grimy
from the contact of human bodies.
O'Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers and
seemed to be studying it intently. His heavy face, bent down
so that one could see the line of the nose, looked both for-
midable and intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds he sat
without stirring. Then he pulled the speakwrite towards
him and rapped out a message in the hybrid jargon of the
Ministries:
'Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise
stop suggestion contained item six doubleplus ridiculous
verging crimethink cancel stop unproceed construction-wise
antegetting plusfull estimates machinery overheads stop end
message. '
He rose deliberately from his chair and came towards
them across the soundless carpet. A little of the official at-
mosphere seemed to have fallen away from him with the
Newspeak words, but his expression was grimmer than
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 213
usual, as though he were not pleased at being disturbed. The
terror that Winston already felt was suddenly shot through
by a streak of ordinary embarrassment. It seemed to him
quite possible that he had simply made a stupid mistake.
For what evidence had he in reality that O'Brien was any
kind of political conspirator? Nothing but a flash of the eyes
and a single equivocal remark: beyond that, only his own
secret imaginings, founded on a dream. He could not even
fall back on the pretence that he had come to borrow the
dictionary, because in that case Julia's presence was impos-
sible to explain. As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought
seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed
a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had
stopped.
Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise.
Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken
aback to be able to hold his tongue.
'You can turn it off! ' he said.
'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privi-
lege. '
He was opposite them now. His solid form towered
over the pair of them, and the expression on his face was
still indecipherable. He was waiting, somewhat sternly, for
Winston to speak, but about what? Even now it was quite
conceivable that he was simply a busy man wondering ir-
ritably why he had been interrupted. Nobody spoke. After
the stopping of the telescreen the room seemed deadly si-
lent. The seconds marched past, enormous. With difficulty
Winston continued to keep his eyes fixed on O'Brien's. Then
1984
suddenly the grim face broke down into what might have
been the beginnings of a smile. With his characteristic ges-
ture O'Brien resettled his spectacles on his nose.
'Shall I say it, or will you? ' he said.
'I will say it,' said Winston promptly. 'That thing is really
turned off? '
'Yes, everything is turned off. We are alone. '
'We have come here because '
He paused, realizing for the first time the vagueness of
his own motives. Since he did not in fact know what kind
of help he expected from O'Brien, it was not easy to say why
he had come here. He went on, conscious that what he was
saying must sound both feeble and pretentious:
'We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some
kind of secret organization working against the Party, and
that you are involved in it. We want to join it and work for it.
We are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles
of Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are also adulter-
ers. I tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your
mercy. If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other
way, we are ready'
He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, with the
feeling that the door had opened. Sure enough, the little yel-
low-faced servant had come in without knocking. Winston
saw that he was carrying a tray with a decanter and glasses.
'Martin is one of us,' said O'Brien impassively. 'Bring
the drinks over here, Martin. Put them on the round table.
Have we enough chairs? Then we may as well sit down and
talk in comfort. Bring a chair for yourself, Martin. This is
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
business. You can stop being a servant for the next ten min-
utes. '
The little man sat down, quite at his ease, and yet still
with a servant-like air, the air of a valet enjoying a priv-
ilege. Winston regarded him out of the corner of his eye.
It struck him that the man's whole life was playing a part,
and that he felt it to be dangerous to drop his assumed per-
sonality even for a moment. O'Brien took the decanter by
the neck and filled up the glasses with a dark-red liquid. It
aroused in Winston dim memories of something seen long
ago on a wall or a hoarding — a vast bottle composed of elec-
tric lights which seemed to move up and down and pour its
contents into a glass. Seen from the top the stuff looked al-
most black, but in the decanter it gleamed like a ruby. It had
a sour-sweet smell. He saw Julia pick up her glass and sniff
at it with frank curiosity.
'It is called wine,' said O'Brien with a faint smile. 'You
will have read about it in books, no doubt. Not much of it
gets to the Outer Party, I am afraid. ' His face grew solemn
again, and he raised his glass: 'I think it is fitting that we
should begin by drinking a health. To our Leader: To Em-
manuel Goldstein. '
Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine
was a thing he had read and dreamed about. Like the glass
paperweight or Mr Charrington's half- remembered rhymes,
it belonged to the vanished, romantic past, the olden time
as he liked to call it in his secret thoughts. For some reason
he had always thought of wine as having an intensely sweet
taste, like that of blackberry jam and an immediate intoxi-
1984
eating effect. Actually, when he came to swallow it, the stuff
was distinctly disappointing. The truth was that after years
of gin-drinking he could barely taste it. He set down the
empty glass.
"Then there is such a person as Goldstein? ' he said.
'Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do
not know. '
'And the conspiracy — the organization? Is it real? It is not
simply an invention of the Thought Police? '
'No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call it. You will never
learn much more about the Brotherhood than that it exists
and that you belong to it. I will come back to that pres-
ently' He looked at his wrist-watch. 'It is unwise even for
members of the Inner Party to turn off the telescreen for
more than half an hour. You ought not to have come here
together, and you will have to leave separately. You, com-
rade' — he bowed his head to Julia — 'will leave first. We have
about twenty minutes at our disposal. You will understand
that I must start by asking you certain questions.
In general
terms, what are you prepared to do? '
Anything that we are capable of,' said Winston.
O'Brien had turned himself a little in his chair so that he
was facing Winston. He almost ignored Julia, seeming to
take it for granted that Winston could speak for her. For a
moment the lids flitted down over his eyes. He began asking
his questions in a low, expressionless voice, as though this
were a routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers
were known to him already.
'You are prepared to give your lives? '
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to commit murder? '
'Yes. '
'To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death
of hundreds of innocent people? '
'Yes. '
'To betray your country to foreign powers? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to cor-
rupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming
drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal
diseases — to do anything which is likely to cause demoral-
ization and weaken the power of the Party? '
'Yes. '
'If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to
throw sulphuric acid in a child's face — are you prepared to
do that? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the
rest of your life as a waiter or a dock- worker? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we or-
der you to do so? '
'Yes. '
'You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never
see one another again? '
'No! ' broke in Julia.
It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before
he answered. For a moment he seemed even to have been
1984
deprived of the power of speech. His tongue worked sound-
lessly, forming the opening syllables first of one word, then
of the other, over and over again. Until he had said it, he
did not know which word he was going to say. 'No,' he said
finally.
'You did well to tell me,' said O'Brien. 'It is necessary for
us to know everything. '
He turned himself toward Julia and added in a voice
with somewhat more expression in it:
'Do you understand that even if he survives, it may be
as a different person? We may be obliged to give him a new
identity. His face, his movements, the shape of his hands,
the colour of his hair — even his voice would be different.
And you yourself might have become a different person.
Our surgeons can alter people beyond recognition. Some-
times it is necessary. Sometimes we even amputate a limb. '
Winston could not help snatching another sidelong
glance at Martin's Mongolian face. There were no scars
that he could see. Julia had turned a shade paler, so that
her freckles were showing, but she faced O'Brien boldly. She
murmured something that seemed to be assent.
'Good. Then that is settled. '
There was a silver box of cigarettes on the table. With a
rather absent-minded air O'Brien pushed them towards the
others, took one himself, then stood up and began to pace
slowly to and fro, as though he could think better standing.
They were very good cigarettes, very thick and well-packed,
with an unfamiliar silkiness in the paper. O'Brien looked at
his wrist-watch again.
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
'You had better go back to your Pantry, Martin,' he said.
'I shall switch on in a quarter of an hour. Take a good look
at these comrades' faces before you go. You will be seeing
them again. I may not. '
Exactly as they had done at the front door, the little man's
dark eyes flickered over their faces. There was not a trace
of friendliness in his manner. He was memorizing their
appearance, but he felt no interest in them, or appeared
to feel none. It occurred to Winston that a synthetic face
was perhaps incapable of changing its expression. Without
speaking or giving any kind of salutation, Martin went out,
closing the door silently behind him. O'Brien was strolling
up and down, one hand in the pocket of his black overalls,
the other holding his cigarette.
'You understand,' he said, 'that you will be fighting in
the dark. You will always be in the dark. You will receive
orders and you will obey them, without knowing why. Later
I shall send you a book from which you will learn the true
nature of the society we live in, and the strategy by which
we shall destroy it. When you have read the book, you will
be full members of the Brotherhood. But between the gen-
eral aims that we are fighting for and the immedi ate tasks
of the moment, you will never know anything. I tell you
that the Brotherhood exists, but I cannot tell you wheth-
er it numbers a hundred members, or ten million. From
your personal knowledge you will never be able to say that
it numbers even as many as a dozen. You will have three
or four contacts, who will be renewed from time to time
as they disappear. As this was your first contact, it will be
1984
preserved. When you receive orders, they will come from
me. If we find it necessary to communicate with you, it will
be through Martin. When you are finally caught, you will
confess. That is unavoidable. But you will have very little
to confess, other than your own actions. You will not be
able to betray more than a handful of unimportant people.
Probably you will not even betray me. By that time I may be
dead, or I shall have become a different person, with a dif-
ferent face. '
He continued to move to and fro over the soft carpet. In
spite of the bulkiness of his body there was a remarkable
grace in his movements. It came out even in the gesture
with which he thrust a hand into his pocket, or manipu-
lated a cigarette. More even than of strength, he gave an
impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged
by irony. However much in earnest he might be, he had
nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic.
When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal disease, am-
putated limbs, and altered faces, it was with a faint air of
persiflage. 'This is unavoidable,' his voice seemed to say;
'this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly. But this is
not what we shall be doing when life is worth living again. '
A wave of admiration, almost of worship, flowed out from
Winston towards O'Brien. For the moment he had forgot-
ten the shadowy figure of Goldstein. When you looked at
O'Brien's powerful shoulders and his blunt- featured face, so
ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible to believe that
he could be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was
not equal to, no danger that he could not foresee. Even Julia
Free eBooks at Planet eBook. com
seemed to be impressed. She had let her cigarette go out and
was listening intently. O'Brien went on:
'You will have heard rumours of the existence of the
Brotherhood. No doubt you have formed your own picture
of it. You have imagined, probably, a huge underworld of
conspirators, meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling mes-
sages on walls, recognizing one another by codewords or by
special movements of the hand. Nothing of the kind exists.
The members of the Brotherhood have no way of recogniz-
ing one another, and it is impossible for any one member to
be aware of the identity of more than a few others. Gold-
stein himself, if he fell into the hands of the Thought Police,
could not give them a complete list of members, or any in-
formation that would lead them to a complete list. No such
list exists. The Brotherhood cannot be wiped out because it
is not an organization in the ordinary sense. Nothing holds
it together except an idea which is indestructible. You will
never have anything to sustain you, except the idea. You
will get no comradeship and no encouragement. When fi-
nally you are caught, you will get no help. We never help
our members. At most, when it is absolutely necessary that
someone should be silenced, we are occasionally able to
smuggle a razor blade into a prisoner's cell. You will have
to get used to living without results and without hope. You
will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess,
and then you will die. Those are the only results that you
will ever see. There is no possibility that any perceptible
change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the
dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part
1984
in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far
away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be
a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to
extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act col-
lectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from
individual to individual, generation after generation. In the
face of the Thought Police there is no other way'
He halted and looked for the third time at his wrist-
watch.
'It is almost time for you to leave, comrade,' he said to Ju-
lia. 'Wait. The decanter is still half full. '
He filled the glasses and raised his own glass by the
stem.
'What shall it be this time? ' he said, still with the same
faint suggestion of irony. 'To the confusion of the Thought
Police? To the death of Big Brother? To humanity? To the
future? '
'To the past,' said Winston.
'The past is more important,' agreed O'Brien gravely.
They emptied their glasses, and a moment later Julia
stood up to go. O'Brien took a small box from the top of a
cabinet and handed her a flat white tablet which he told her
to place on her tongue. It was important, he said, not to go
out smelling of wine: the lift attendants were very obser-
vant. As soon as the door had shut behind her he appeared
to forget her existence. He took another pace or two up and
down, then stopped.
'There are details to be settled,' he said. 'I assume that
you have a hiding-place of some kind? '
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 223
Winston explained about the room over Mr Char-
rington's shop.
"That will do for the moment. Later we will arrange
something else for you. It is important to change one's hid-
ing-place frequently. Meanwhile I shall send you a copy of
THE BOOK' — even O'Brien, Winston noticed, seemed to
pronounce the words as though they were in italics — 'Gold-
stein's book, you understand, as soon as possible. It may
be some days before I can get hold of one. There are not
many in existence, as you can imagine. The Thought Police
hunt them down and destroy them almost as fast as we can
produce them. It makes very little difference. The book is
indestructible. If the last copy were gone, we could repro-
duce it almost word for word. Do you carry a brief-case to
work with you? ' he added.
'As a rule, yes. '
'What is it like? '
'Black, very shabby. With two straps. '
'Black, two straps, very shabby — good. One day in the
fairly near future — I cannot give a date — one of the messag-
es among your morning's work will contain a misprinted
word, and you will have to ask for a repeat. On the following
day you will go to work without your brief-case. At some
time during the day, in the street, a man will touch you on
the arm and say 'I think you have dropped your brief-case. '
The one he gives you will contain a copy of Goldstein's book.
You will return it within fourteen days. '
They were silent for a moment.
'There are a couple of minutes before you need go,' said
1984
O'Brien. 'We shall meet again — if we do meet again '
Winston looked up at him. 'In the place where there is no
darkness? ' he said hesitantly.
O'Brien nodded without appearance of surprise. 'In the
place where there is no darkness,' he said, as though he had
recognized the allusion. 'And in the meantime, is there any-
thing that you wish to say before you leave? Any message?
Any question? . '
Winston thought. There did not seem to be any further
question that he wanted to ask: still less did he feel any
impulse to utter high-sounding generalities. Instead of any-
thing directly connected with O'Brien or the Brotherhood,
there came into his mind a sort of composite picture of the
dark bedroom where his mother had spent her last days,
and the little room over Mr Charrington's shop, and the
glass paperweight, and the steel engraving in its rosewood
frame. Almost at random he said:
'Did you ever happen to hear an old rhyme that begins
'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's'? '
Again O'Brien nodded. With a sort of grave courtesy he
completed the stanza:
'Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St Clement's,
You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St Martin's,
When willyoupay me? say the bells of Old Bailey,
When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch. '
'You knew the last line! ' said Winston.
'Yes, I knew the last line. And now, I am afraid, it is time
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 225
for you to go. But wait. You had better let me give you one
of these tablets. '
As Winston stood up O'Brien held out a hand. His pow-
erful grip crushed the bones of Winston's palm. At the
door Winston looked back, but O'Brien seemed already to
be in process of putting him out of mind. He was waiting
with his hand on the switch that controlled the telescreen.
Beyond him Winston could see the writing-table with its
green-shaded lamp and the speakwrite and the wire baskets
deep-laden with papers. The incident was closed. Within
thirty seconds, it occurred to him, O'Brien would be back at
his interrupted and important work on behalf of the Party.
1984
Chapter 9
Winston was gelatinous with fatigue. Gelatinous was
the right word. It had come into his head spontane-
ously. His body seemed to have not only the weakness of a
jelly, but its translucency He felt that if he held up his hand
he would be able to see the light through it.
