I do not see
how one can calculate the time.
how one can calculate the time.
Orwell - 1984
Someone had picked
up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to
pieces on the hearth-stone.
The fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink like a sug-
1984
ar rosebud from a cake, rolled across the mat. How small,
thought Winston, how small it always was! There was a gasp
and a thump behind him, and he received a violent kick on
the ankle which nearly flung him off his balance. One of the
men had smashed his fist into Julia's solar plexus, doubling
her up like a pocket ruler. She was thrashing about on the
floor, fighting for breath. Winston dared not turn his head
even by a millimetre, but sometimes her livid, gasping face
came within the angle of his vision. Even in his terror it was
as though he could feel the pain in his own body, the deadly
pain which nevertheless was less urgent than the struggle to
get back her breath. He knew what it was like; the terrible,
agonizing pain which was there all the while but could not
be suffered yet, because before all else it was necessary to
be able to breathe. Then two of the men hoisted her up by
knees and shoulders, and carried her out of the room like a
sack. Winston had a glimpse of her face, upside down, yel-
low and contorted, with the eyes shut, and still with a smear
of rouge on either cheek; and that was the last he saw of
her.
He stood dead still. No one had hit him yet. Thoughts
which came of their own accord but seemed totally uninter-
esting began to flit through his mind. He wondered whether
they had got Mr Charrington. He wondered what they had
done to the woman in the yard. He noticed that he bad-
ly wanted to urinate, and felt a faint surprise, because he
had done so only two or three hours ago. He noticed that
the clock on the mantelpiece said nine, meaning twenty-
one. But the light seemed too strong. Would not the light
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be fading at twenty- one hours on an August evening? He
wondered whether after all he and Julia had mistaken the
time — had slept the clock round and thought it was twen-
ty-thirty when really it was nought eight-thirty on the
following morning. But he did not pursue the thought fur-
ther. It was not interesting.
There ws another, lighter step in the passage. Mr
Charrington came into the room. The demeanour of
the black-uniformed men suddenly became more sub-
dued. Something had also changed in Mr Charrington's
appearance. His eye fell on the fragments of the glass pa-
perweight.
'Pick up those pieces,' he said sharply.
A man stooped to obey. The cockney accent had disap-
peared; Winston suddenly realized whose voice it was that
he had heard a few moments ago on the telescreen. Mr Char-
rington was still wearing his old velvet jacket, but his hair,
which had been almost white, had turned black. Also he was
not wearing his spectacles. He gave Winston a single sharp
glance, as though verifying his identity, and then paid no
more attention to him. He was still recognizable, but he was
not the same person any longer. His body had straightened,
and seemed to have grown bigger. His face had undergone
only tiny changes that had nevertheless worked a complete
transformation. The black eyebrows were less bushy, the
wrinkles were gone, the whole lines of the face seemed to
have altered; even the nose seemed shorter. It was the alert,
cold face of a man of about five-and-thirty It occurred to
Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking,
1984
with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police.
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Part Three
284 1984
Chapter i
He did not know where he was. Presumably he was in
the Ministry of Love, but there was no way of mak-
ing certain. He was in a high- ceilinged windowless cell with
walls of glittering white porcelain. Concealed lamps flood-
ed it with cold light, and there was a low, steady humming
sound which he supposed had something to do with the
air supply. A bench, or shelf, just wide enough to sit on ran
round the wall, broken only by the door and, at the end op-
posite the door, a lavatory pan with no wooden seat. There
were four telescreens, one in each wall.
There was a dull aching in his belly. It had been there
ever since they had bundled him into the closed van and
driven him away. But he was also hungry, with a gnaw-
ing, unwholesome kind of hunger. It might be twenty-four
hours since he had eaten, it might be thirty-six. He still did
not know, probably never would know, whether it had been
morning or evening when they arrested him. Since he was
arrested he had not been fed.
He sat as still as he could on the narrow bench, with his
hands crossed on his knee. He had already learned to sit
still. If you made unexpected movements they yelled at you
from the telescreen. But the craving for food was growing
upon him. What he longed for above all was a piece of bread.
He had an idea that there were a few breadcrumbs in the
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pocket of his overalls. It was even possible — he thought this
because from time to time something seemed to tickle his
leg — that there might be a sizeable bit of crust there. In the
end the temptation to find out overcame his fear; he slipped
a hand into his pocket.
'Smith! ' yelled a voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith
W. ! Hands out of pockets in the cells! '
He sat still again, his hands crossed on his knee. Be-
fore being brought here he had been taken to another place
which must have been an ordinary prison or a temporary
lock-up used by the patrols. He did not know how long he
had been there; some hours at any rate; with no clocks and
no daylight it was hard to gauge the time. It was a noisy, evil-
smelling place. They had put him into a cell similar to the
one he was now in, but filthily dirty and at all times crowded
by ten or fifteen people. The majority of them were common
criminals, but there were a few political prisoners among
them. He had sat silent against the wall, jostled by dirty
bodies, too preoccupied by fear and the pain in his belly to
take much interest in his surroundings, but still noticing
the astonishing difference in demeanour between the Party
prisoners and the others. The Party prisoners were always
silent and terrified, but the ordinary criminals seemed to
care nothing for anybody. They yelled insults at the guards,
fought back fiercely when their belongings were impound-
ed, wrote obscene words on the floor, ate smuggled food
which they produced from mysterious hiding-places in their
clothes, and even shouted down the telescreen when it tried
to restore order. On the other hand some of them seemed
1984
to be on good terms with the guards, called them by nick-
names, and tried to wheedle cigarettes through the spyhole
in the door. The guards, too, treated the common criminals
with a certain forbearance, even when they had to handle
them roughly. There was much talk about the forced-labour
camps to which most of the prisoners expected to be sent.
It was 'all right' in the camps, he gathered, so long as you
had good contacts and knew the ropes. There was bribery,
favouritism, and racketeering of every kind, there was ho-
mosexuality and prostitution, there was even illicit alcohol
distilled from potatoes. The positions of trust were given
only to the common criminals, especially the gangsters and
the murderers, who formed a sort of aristocracy. All the
dirty jobs were done by the politicals.
There was a constant come-and-go of prisoners of every
description: drug-peddlers, thieves, bandits, black-mar-
keteers, drunks, prostitutes. Some of the drunks were so
violent that the other prisoners had to combine to sup-
press them. An enormous wreck of a woman, aged about
sixty, with great tumbling breasts and thick coils of white
hair which had come down in her struggles, was carried in,
kicking and shouting, by four guards, who had hold of her
one at each corner. They wrenched off the boots with which
she had been trying to kick them, and dumped her down
across Winston's lap, almost breaking his thigh-bones. The
woman hoisted herself upright and followed them out with
a yell of 'F bastards! ' Then, noticing that she was sit-
ting on something uneven, she slid off Winston's knees on
to the bench.
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'Beg pardon, dearie,' she said. 'I wouldn't 'a sat on you,
only the buggers put me there. They dono 'ow to treat a lady,
do they? ' She paused, patted her breast, and belched. 'Par-
don,' she said, 'I ain't meself, quite. '
She leant forward and vomited copiously on the floor.
"Ihass better,' she said, leaning back with closed eyes.
'Never keep it down, thass what I say. Get it up while it's
fresh on your stomach, like. '
She revived, turned to have another look at Winston and
seemed immediately to take a fancy to him. She put a vast
arm round his shoulder and drew him towards her, breath-
ing beer and vomit into his face.
"Wass your name, dearie? ' she said.
'Smith,' said Winston.
'Smith? ' said the woman. "Thass funny. My name's Smith
too. Why' she added sentimentally, T might be your moth-
er! '
She might, thought Winston, be his mother. She was
about the right age and physique, and it was probable that
people changed somewhat after twenty years in a forced-la-
bour camp.
No one else had spoken to him. To a surprising extent
the ordinary criminals ignored the Party prisoners. "The
polITS,' they called them, with a sort of uninterested con-
tempt. The Party prisoners seemed terrified of speaking to
anybody, and above all of speaking to one another. Only
once, when two Party members, both women, were pressed
close together on the bench, he overheard amid the din of
voices a few hurriedly- whispered words; and in particular a
1984
reference to something called 'room one-oh-one', which he
did not understand.
It might be two or three hours ago that they had brought
him here. The dull pain in his belly never went away, but
sometimes it grew better and sometimes worse, and his
thoughts expanded or contracted accordingly. When it
grew worse he thought only of the pain itself, and of his de-
sire for food. When it grew better, panic took hold of him.
There were moments when he foresaw the things that would
happen to him with such actuality that his heart galloped
and his breath stopped. He felt the smash of truncheons on
his elbows and iron-shod boots on his shins; he saw himself
grovelling on the floor, screaming for mercy through bro-
ken teeth. He hardly thought of Julia. He could not fix his
mind on her. He loved her and would not betray her; but
that was only a fact, known as he knew the rules of arith-
metic. He felt no love for her, and he hardly even wondered
what was happening to her. He thought oftener of O'Brien,
with a flickering hope. O'Brien might know that he had
been arrested. The Brotherhood, he had said, never tried to
save its members. But there was the razor blade; they would
send the razor blade if they could. There would be perhaps
five seconds before the guard could rush into the cell. The
blade would bite into him with a sort of burning coldness,
and even the fingers that held it would be cut to the bone.
Everything came back to his sick body, which shrank trem-
bling from the smallest pain. He was not certain that he
would use the razor blade even if he got the chance. It was
more natural to exist from moment to moment, accepting
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another ten minutes' life even with the certainty that there
was torture at the end of it.
Sometimes he tried to calculate the number of porcelain
bricks in the walls of the cell. It should have been easy, but
he always lost count at some point or another. More often he
wondered where he was, and what time of day it was. At one
moment he felt certain that it was broad daylight outside,
and at the next equally certain that it was pitch darkness. In
this place, he knew instinctively, the lights would never be
turned out. It was the place with no darkness: he saw now
why O'Brien had seemed to recognize the allusion. In the
Ministry of Love there were no windows. His cell might be
at the heart of the building or against its outer wall; it might
be ten floors below ground, or thirty above it. He moved
himself mentally from place to place, and tried to deter-
mine by the feeling of his body whether he was perched
high in the air or buried deep underground.
There was a sound of marching boots outside. The steel
door opened with a clang. A young officer, a trim black-uni-
formed figure who seemed to glitter all over with polished
leather, and whose pale, straight-featured face was like a
wax mask, stepped smartly through the doorway. He mo-
tioned to the guards outside to bring in the prisoner they
were leading. The poet Ampleforth shambled into the cell.
The door clanged shut again.
Ampleforth made one or two uncertain movements from
side to side, as though having some idea that there was an-
other door to go out of, and then began to wander up and
down the cell. He had not yet noticed Winston's presence.
1984
His troubled eyes were gazing at the wall about a metre
above the level of Winston's head. He was shoeless; large,
dirty toes were sticking out of the holes in his socks. He
was also several days away from a shave. A scrubby beard
covered his face to the cheekbones, giving him an air of
ruffianism that went oddly with his large weak frame and
nervous movements.
Winston roused himself a little from his lethargy. He
must speak to Ampleforth, and risk the yell from the tele-
screen. It was even conceivable that Ampleforth was the
bearer of the razor blade.
Ampleforth,' he said.
There was no yell from the telescreen. Ampleforth
paused, mildly startled. His eyes focused themselves slowly
on Winston.
Ah, Smith! ' he said. 'You too! '
'What are you in for? '
'To tell you the truth — ' He sat down awkwardly on the
bench opposite Winston. 'There is only one offence, is there
not? ' he said.
And have you committed it? '
Apparently I have. '
He put a hand to his forehead and pressed his temples for
a moment, as though trying to remember something.
'These things happen,' he began vaguely. 'I have been
able to recall one instance — a possible instance. It was an
indiscretion, undoubtedly. We were producing a definitive
edition of the poems of Kipling. I allowed the word 'God' to
remain at the end of a line. I could not help it! ' he added al-
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most indignantly, raising his face to look at Winston. 'It was
impossible to change the line. The rhyme was 'rod". Do you
realize that there are only twelve rhymes to 'rod' in the en-
tire language? For days I had racked my brains. There WAS
no other rhyme. '
The expression on his face changed. The annoyance
passed out of it and for a moment he looked almost pleased.
A sort of intellectual warmth, the joy of the pedant who has
found out some useless fact, shone through the dirt and
scrubby hair.
'Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole his-
tory of English poetry has been determined by the fact that
the English language lacks rhymes? '
No, that particular thought had never occurred to Win-
ston. Nor, in the circumstances, did it strike him as very
important or interesting.
'Do you know what time of day it is? ' he said.
Ampleforth looked startled again. 'I had hardly thought
about it. They arrested me — it could be two days ago — per-
haps three. ' His eyes flitted round the walls, as though he
half expected to find a window somewhere. 'There is no dif-
ference between night and day in this place.
I do not see
how one can calculate the time. '
They talked desultorily for some minutes, then, without
apparent reason, a yell from the telescreen bade them be
silent. Winston sat quietly, his hands crossed. Ampleforth,
too large to sit in comfort on the narrow bench, fidgeted
from side to side, clasping his lank hands first round one
knee, then round the other. The telescreen barked at him to
1984
keep still. Time passed. Twenty minutes, an hour — it was
difficult to judge. Once more there was a sound of boots
outside. Winston's entrails contracted. Soon, very soon,
perhaps in five minutes, perhaps now, the tramp of boots
would mean that his own turn had come.
The door opened. The cold-faced young officer stepped
into the cell. With a brief movement of the hand he indi-
cated Ampleforth.
'Room 101,' he said.
Ampleforth marched clumsily out between the guards,
his face vaguely perturbed, but uncomprehending.
What seemed like a long time passed. The pain in Win-
ston's belly had revived. His mind sagged round and round
on the same trick, like a ball falling again and again into
the same series of slots. He had only six thoughts. The pain
in his belly; a piece of bread; the blood and the screaming;
O'Brien; Julia; the razor blade. There was another spasm in
his entrails, the heavy boots were approaching. As the door
opened, the wave of air that it created brought in a power-
ful smell of cold sweat. Parsons walked into the cell. He was
wearing khaki shorts and a sports-shirt.
This time Winston was startled into self-forgetfulness.
'YOU here! ' he said.
Parsons gave Winston a glance in which there was
neither interest nor surprise, but only misery. He began
walking jerkily up and down, evidently unable to keep still.
Each time he straightened his pudgy knees it was apparent
that they were trembling. His eyes had a wide-open, staring
look, as though he could not prevent himself from gazing at
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something in the middle distance.
'What are you in for? ' said Winston.
'Thoughtcrime! ' said Parsons, almost blubbering. The
tone of his voice implied at once a complete admission of
his guilt and a sort of incredulous horror that such a word
could be applied to himself. He paused opposite Winston
and began eagerly appealing to him: 'You don't think they'll
shoot me, do you, old chap? They don't shoot you if you
haven't actually done anything — only thoughts, which you
can't help? I know they give you a fair hearing. Oh, I trust
them for that! They'll know my record, won't they? YOU
know what kind of chap I was. Not a bad chap in my way.
Not brainy, of course, but keen. I tried to do my best for the
Party, didn't I? I'll get off with five years, don't you think? Or
even ten years? A chap like me could make himself pretty
useful in a labour- camp. They wouldn't shoot me for going
off the rails just once? '
'Are you guilty? ' said Winston.
'Of course I'm guilty! ' cried Parsons with a servile glance
at the telescreen. 'You don't think the Party would arrest
an innocent man, do you? ' His frog-like face grew calm-
er, and even took on a slightly sanctimonious expression.
'Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man,' he said senten-
tiously 'It's insidious. It can get hold of you without your
even knowing it. Do you know how it got hold of me? In my
sleep! Yes, that's a fact. There I was, working away, trying to
do my bit — never knew I had any bad stuff in my mind at all.
And then I started talking in my sleep. Do you know what
they heard me saying? '
1984
He sank his voice, like someone who is obliged for medi-
cal reasons to utter an obscenity.
"Down with Big Brother! ' Yes, I said that! Said it over
and over again, it seems. Between you and me, old man, I'm
glad they got me before it went any further. Do you know
what I'm going to say to them when I go up before the tribu-
nal? 'Thank you,' I'm going to say, 'thank you for saving me
before it was too late. "
'Who denounced you? ' said Winston.
'It was my little daughter,' said Parsons with a sort of
doleful pride. 'She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I
was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day.
Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any
grudge for it. In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her
up in the right spirit, anyway'
He made a few more jerky movements up and down,
several times, casting a longing glance at the lavatory pan.
Then he suddenly ripped down his shorts.
'Excuse me, old man,' he said. T can't help it. It's the wait-
ing. '
He plumped his large posterior into the lavatory pan.
Winston covered his face with his hands.
'Smith! ' yelled the voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith
W! Uncover your face. No faces covered in the cells. '
Winston uncovered his face. Parsons used the lavatory,
loudly and abundantly. It then turned out that the plug was
defective and the cell stank abominably for hours after-
wards.
Parsons was removed. More prisoners came and went,
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mysteriously. One, a woman, was consigned to 'Room 101',
and, Winston noticed, seemed to shrivel and turn a differ-
ent colour when she heard the words. A time came when, if
it had been morning when he was brought here, it would be
afternoon; or if it had been afternoon, then it would be mid-
night. There were six prisoners in the cell, men and women.
All sat very still. Opposite Winston there sat a man with a
chinless, toothy face exactly like that of some large, harm-
less rodent. His fat, mottled cheeks were so pouched at the
bottom that it was difficult not to believe that he had little
stores of food tucked away there. His pale-grey eyes flitted
timorously from face to face and turned quickly away again
when he caught anyone's eye.
The door opened, and another prisoner was brought in
whose appearance sent a momentary chill through Win-
ston. He was a commonplace, mean-looking man who
might have been an engineer or technician of some kind.
But what was startling was the emaciation of his face. It
was like a skull. Because of its thinness the mouth and eyes
looked disproportionately large, and the eyes seemed filled
with a murderous, unappeasable hatred of somebody or
something.
The man sat down on the bench at a little distance from
Winston. Winston did not look at him again, but the tor-
mented, skull-like face was as vivid in his mind as though
it had been straight in front of his eyes. Suddenly he real-
ized what was the matter. The man was dying of starvation.
The same thought seemed to occur almost simultaneously
to everyone in the cell. There was a very faint stirring all
296 1984
the way round the bench. The eyes of the chinless man kept
flitting towards the skull-faced man, then turning guiltily
away, then being dragged back by an irresistible attraction.
Presently he began to fidget on his seat. At last he stood up,
waddled clumsily across the cell, dug down into the pocket
of his overalls, and, with an abashed air, held out a grimy
piece of bread to the skull-faced man.
There was a furious, deafening roar from the telescreen.
The chinless man jumped in his tracks. The skull-faced man
had quickly thrust his hands behind his back, as though
demonstrating to all the world that he refused the gift.
'Bumstead! ' roared the voice. '2713 Bumstead J. ! Let fall
that piece of bread! '
The chinless man dropped the piece of bread on the
floor.
'Remain standing where you are,' said the voice. 'Face the
door. Make no movement. '
The chinless man obeyed. His large pouchy cheeks were
quivering uncontrollably. The door clanged open. As the
young officer entered and stepped aside, there emerged
from behind him a short stumpy guard with enormous
arms and shoulders. He took his stand opposite the chin-
less man, and then, at a signal from the officer, let free a
frightful blow, with all the weight of his body behind it, full
in the chinless man's mouth. The force of it seemed almost
to knock him clear of the floor. His body was flung across
the cell and fetched up against the base of the lavatory seat.
For a moment he lay as though stunned, with dark blood
oozing from his mouth and nose. A very faint whimper-
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ing or squeaking, which seemed unconscious, came out of
him. Then he rolled over and raised himself unsteadily on
hands and knees. Amid a stream of blood and saliva, the
two halves of a dental plate fell out of his mouth.
The prisoners sat very still, their hands crossed on their
knees. The chinless man climbed back into his place. Down
one side of his face the flesh was darkening. His mouth had
swollen into a shapeless cherry- coloured mass with a black
hole in the middle of it.
From time to time a little blood dripped on to the breast
of his overalls. His grey eyes still flitted from face to face,
more guiltily than ever, as though he were trying to discov-
er how much the others despised him for his humiliation.
The door opened. With a small gesture the officer indi-
cated the skull-faced man.
'Room 101,' he said.
There was a gasp and a flurry at Winston's side. The man
had actually flung himself on his knees on the floor, with
his hand clasped together.
'Comrade! Officer! ' he cried. 'You don't have to take me to
that place! Haven't I told you everything already? What else
is it you want to know? There's nothing I wouldn't confess,
nothing! Just tell me what it is and I'll confess straight off.
Write it down and I'll sign it — anything! Not room 101! '
'Room 101,' said the officer.
The man's face, already very pale, turned a colour Win-
ston would not have believed possible. It was definitely,
unmistakably, a shade of green.
'Do anything to me! ' he yelled. 'You've been starving me
298 1984
for weeks. Finish it off and let me die. Shoot me. Hang me.
Sentence me to twenty-five years. Is there somebody else
you want me to give away? Just say who it is and I'll tell you
anything you want. I don't care who it is or what you do to
them. I've got a wife and three children. The biggest of them
isn't six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and
cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and
watch it. But not Room 101! '
'Room 101,' said the officer.
The man looked frantically round at the other prisoners,
as though with some idea that he could put another victim
in his own place. His eyes settled on the smashed face of the
chinless man. He flung out a lean arm.
'That's the one you ought to be taking, not me! ' he shout-
ed. 'You didn't hear what he was saying after they bashed
his face. Give me a chance and I'll tell you every word of it.
HE'S the one that's against the Party, not me. ' The guards
stepped forward. The man's voice rose to a shriek. 'You
didn't hear him! ' he repeated. 'Something went wrong with
the telescreen. HE'S the one you want. Take him, not me! '
The two sturdy guards had stooped to take him by the
arms. But just at this moment he flung himself across the
floor of the cell and grabbed one of the iron legs that sup-
ported the bench. He had set up a wordless howling, like an
animal. The guards took hold of him to wrench him loose,
but he clung on with astonishing strength. For perhaps
twenty seconds they were hauling at him.
up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to
pieces on the hearth-stone.
The fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink like a sug-
1984
ar rosebud from a cake, rolled across the mat. How small,
thought Winston, how small it always was! There was a gasp
and a thump behind him, and he received a violent kick on
the ankle which nearly flung him off his balance. One of the
men had smashed his fist into Julia's solar plexus, doubling
her up like a pocket ruler. She was thrashing about on the
floor, fighting for breath. Winston dared not turn his head
even by a millimetre, but sometimes her livid, gasping face
came within the angle of his vision. Even in his terror it was
as though he could feel the pain in his own body, the deadly
pain which nevertheless was less urgent than the struggle to
get back her breath. He knew what it was like; the terrible,
agonizing pain which was there all the while but could not
be suffered yet, because before all else it was necessary to
be able to breathe. Then two of the men hoisted her up by
knees and shoulders, and carried her out of the room like a
sack. Winston had a glimpse of her face, upside down, yel-
low and contorted, with the eyes shut, and still with a smear
of rouge on either cheek; and that was the last he saw of
her.
He stood dead still. No one had hit him yet. Thoughts
which came of their own accord but seemed totally uninter-
esting began to flit through his mind. He wondered whether
they had got Mr Charrington. He wondered what they had
done to the woman in the yard. He noticed that he bad-
ly wanted to urinate, and felt a faint surprise, because he
had done so only two or three hours ago. He noticed that
the clock on the mantelpiece said nine, meaning twenty-
one. But the light seemed too strong. Would not the light
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be fading at twenty- one hours on an August evening? He
wondered whether after all he and Julia had mistaken the
time — had slept the clock round and thought it was twen-
ty-thirty when really it was nought eight-thirty on the
following morning. But he did not pursue the thought fur-
ther. It was not interesting.
There ws another, lighter step in the passage. Mr
Charrington came into the room. The demeanour of
the black-uniformed men suddenly became more sub-
dued. Something had also changed in Mr Charrington's
appearance. His eye fell on the fragments of the glass pa-
perweight.
'Pick up those pieces,' he said sharply.
A man stooped to obey. The cockney accent had disap-
peared; Winston suddenly realized whose voice it was that
he had heard a few moments ago on the telescreen. Mr Char-
rington was still wearing his old velvet jacket, but his hair,
which had been almost white, had turned black. Also he was
not wearing his spectacles. He gave Winston a single sharp
glance, as though verifying his identity, and then paid no
more attention to him. He was still recognizable, but he was
not the same person any longer. His body had straightened,
and seemed to have grown bigger. His face had undergone
only tiny changes that had nevertheless worked a complete
transformation. The black eyebrows were less bushy, the
wrinkles were gone, the whole lines of the face seemed to
have altered; even the nose seemed shorter. It was the alert,
cold face of a man of about five-and-thirty It occurred to
Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking,
1984
with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police.
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Part Three
284 1984
Chapter i
He did not know where he was. Presumably he was in
the Ministry of Love, but there was no way of mak-
ing certain. He was in a high- ceilinged windowless cell with
walls of glittering white porcelain. Concealed lamps flood-
ed it with cold light, and there was a low, steady humming
sound which he supposed had something to do with the
air supply. A bench, or shelf, just wide enough to sit on ran
round the wall, broken only by the door and, at the end op-
posite the door, a lavatory pan with no wooden seat. There
were four telescreens, one in each wall.
There was a dull aching in his belly. It had been there
ever since they had bundled him into the closed van and
driven him away. But he was also hungry, with a gnaw-
ing, unwholesome kind of hunger. It might be twenty-four
hours since he had eaten, it might be thirty-six. He still did
not know, probably never would know, whether it had been
morning or evening when they arrested him. Since he was
arrested he had not been fed.
He sat as still as he could on the narrow bench, with his
hands crossed on his knee. He had already learned to sit
still. If you made unexpected movements they yelled at you
from the telescreen. But the craving for food was growing
upon him. What he longed for above all was a piece of bread.
He had an idea that there were a few breadcrumbs in the
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pocket of his overalls. It was even possible — he thought this
because from time to time something seemed to tickle his
leg — that there might be a sizeable bit of crust there. In the
end the temptation to find out overcame his fear; he slipped
a hand into his pocket.
'Smith! ' yelled a voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith
W. ! Hands out of pockets in the cells! '
He sat still again, his hands crossed on his knee. Be-
fore being brought here he had been taken to another place
which must have been an ordinary prison or a temporary
lock-up used by the patrols. He did not know how long he
had been there; some hours at any rate; with no clocks and
no daylight it was hard to gauge the time. It was a noisy, evil-
smelling place. They had put him into a cell similar to the
one he was now in, but filthily dirty and at all times crowded
by ten or fifteen people. The majority of them were common
criminals, but there were a few political prisoners among
them. He had sat silent against the wall, jostled by dirty
bodies, too preoccupied by fear and the pain in his belly to
take much interest in his surroundings, but still noticing
the astonishing difference in demeanour between the Party
prisoners and the others. The Party prisoners were always
silent and terrified, but the ordinary criminals seemed to
care nothing for anybody. They yelled insults at the guards,
fought back fiercely when their belongings were impound-
ed, wrote obscene words on the floor, ate smuggled food
which they produced from mysterious hiding-places in their
clothes, and even shouted down the telescreen when it tried
to restore order. On the other hand some of them seemed
1984
to be on good terms with the guards, called them by nick-
names, and tried to wheedle cigarettes through the spyhole
in the door. The guards, too, treated the common criminals
with a certain forbearance, even when they had to handle
them roughly. There was much talk about the forced-labour
camps to which most of the prisoners expected to be sent.
It was 'all right' in the camps, he gathered, so long as you
had good contacts and knew the ropes. There was bribery,
favouritism, and racketeering of every kind, there was ho-
mosexuality and prostitution, there was even illicit alcohol
distilled from potatoes. The positions of trust were given
only to the common criminals, especially the gangsters and
the murderers, who formed a sort of aristocracy. All the
dirty jobs were done by the politicals.
There was a constant come-and-go of prisoners of every
description: drug-peddlers, thieves, bandits, black-mar-
keteers, drunks, prostitutes. Some of the drunks were so
violent that the other prisoners had to combine to sup-
press them. An enormous wreck of a woman, aged about
sixty, with great tumbling breasts and thick coils of white
hair which had come down in her struggles, was carried in,
kicking and shouting, by four guards, who had hold of her
one at each corner. They wrenched off the boots with which
she had been trying to kick them, and dumped her down
across Winston's lap, almost breaking his thigh-bones. The
woman hoisted herself upright and followed them out with
a yell of 'F bastards! ' Then, noticing that she was sit-
ting on something uneven, she slid off Winston's knees on
to the bench.
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'Beg pardon, dearie,' she said. 'I wouldn't 'a sat on you,
only the buggers put me there. They dono 'ow to treat a lady,
do they? ' She paused, patted her breast, and belched. 'Par-
don,' she said, 'I ain't meself, quite. '
She leant forward and vomited copiously on the floor.
"Ihass better,' she said, leaning back with closed eyes.
'Never keep it down, thass what I say. Get it up while it's
fresh on your stomach, like. '
She revived, turned to have another look at Winston and
seemed immediately to take a fancy to him. She put a vast
arm round his shoulder and drew him towards her, breath-
ing beer and vomit into his face.
"Wass your name, dearie? ' she said.
'Smith,' said Winston.
'Smith? ' said the woman. "Thass funny. My name's Smith
too. Why' she added sentimentally, T might be your moth-
er! '
She might, thought Winston, be his mother. She was
about the right age and physique, and it was probable that
people changed somewhat after twenty years in a forced-la-
bour camp.
No one else had spoken to him. To a surprising extent
the ordinary criminals ignored the Party prisoners. "The
polITS,' they called them, with a sort of uninterested con-
tempt. The Party prisoners seemed terrified of speaking to
anybody, and above all of speaking to one another. Only
once, when two Party members, both women, were pressed
close together on the bench, he overheard amid the din of
voices a few hurriedly- whispered words; and in particular a
1984
reference to something called 'room one-oh-one', which he
did not understand.
It might be two or three hours ago that they had brought
him here. The dull pain in his belly never went away, but
sometimes it grew better and sometimes worse, and his
thoughts expanded or contracted accordingly. When it
grew worse he thought only of the pain itself, and of his de-
sire for food. When it grew better, panic took hold of him.
There were moments when he foresaw the things that would
happen to him with such actuality that his heart galloped
and his breath stopped. He felt the smash of truncheons on
his elbows and iron-shod boots on his shins; he saw himself
grovelling on the floor, screaming for mercy through bro-
ken teeth. He hardly thought of Julia. He could not fix his
mind on her. He loved her and would not betray her; but
that was only a fact, known as he knew the rules of arith-
metic. He felt no love for her, and he hardly even wondered
what was happening to her. He thought oftener of O'Brien,
with a flickering hope. O'Brien might know that he had
been arrested. The Brotherhood, he had said, never tried to
save its members. But there was the razor blade; they would
send the razor blade if they could. There would be perhaps
five seconds before the guard could rush into the cell. The
blade would bite into him with a sort of burning coldness,
and even the fingers that held it would be cut to the bone.
Everything came back to his sick body, which shrank trem-
bling from the smallest pain. He was not certain that he
would use the razor blade even if he got the chance. It was
more natural to exist from moment to moment, accepting
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another ten minutes' life even with the certainty that there
was torture at the end of it.
Sometimes he tried to calculate the number of porcelain
bricks in the walls of the cell. It should have been easy, but
he always lost count at some point or another. More often he
wondered where he was, and what time of day it was. At one
moment he felt certain that it was broad daylight outside,
and at the next equally certain that it was pitch darkness. In
this place, he knew instinctively, the lights would never be
turned out. It was the place with no darkness: he saw now
why O'Brien had seemed to recognize the allusion. In the
Ministry of Love there were no windows. His cell might be
at the heart of the building or against its outer wall; it might
be ten floors below ground, or thirty above it. He moved
himself mentally from place to place, and tried to deter-
mine by the feeling of his body whether he was perched
high in the air or buried deep underground.
There was a sound of marching boots outside. The steel
door opened with a clang. A young officer, a trim black-uni-
formed figure who seemed to glitter all over with polished
leather, and whose pale, straight-featured face was like a
wax mask, stepped smartly through the doorway. He mo-
tioned to the guards outside to bring in the prisoner they
were leading. The poet Ampleforth shambled into the cell.
The door clanged shut again.
Ampleforth made one or two uncertain movements from
side to side, as though having some idea that there was an-
other door to go out of, and then began to wander up and
down the cell. He had not yet noticed Winston's presence.
1984
His troubled eyes were gazing at the wall about a metre
above the level of Winston's head. He was shoeless; large,
dirty toes were sticking out of the holes in his socks. He
was also several days away from a shave. A scrubby beard
covered his face to the cheekbones, giving him an air of
ruffianism that went oddly with his large weak frame and
nervous movements.
Winston roused himself a little from his lethargy. He
must speak to Ampleforth, and risk the yell from the tele-
screen. It was even conceivable that Ampleforth was the
bearer of the razor blade.
Ampleforth,' he said.
There was no yell from the telescreen. Ampleforth
paused, mildly startled. His eyes focused themselves slowly
on Winston.
Ah, Smith! ' he said. 'You too! '
'What are you in for? '
'To tell you the truth — ' He sat down awkwardly on the
bench opposite Winston. 'There is only one offence, is there
not? ' he said.
And have you committed it? '
Apparently I have. '
He put a hand to his forehead and pressed his temples for
a moment, as though trying to remember something.
'These things happen,' he began vaguely. 'I have been
able to recall one instance — a possible instance. It was an
indiscretion, undoubtedly. We were producing a definitive
edition of the poems of Kipling. I allowed the word 'God' to
remain at the end of a line. I could not help it! ' he added al-
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most indignantly, raising his face to look at Winston. 'It was
impossible to change the line. The rhyme was 'rod". Do you
realize that there are only twelve rhymes to 'rod' in the en-
tire language? For days I had racked my brains. There WAS
no other rhyme. '
The expression on his face changed. The annoyance
passed out of it and for a moment he looked almost pleased.
A sort of intellectual warmth, the joy of the pedant who has
found out some useless fact, shone through the dirt and
scrubby hair.
'Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole his-
tory of English poetry has been determined by the fact that
the English language lacks rhymes? '
No, that particular thought had never occurred to Win-
ston. Nor, in the circumstances, did it strike him as very
important or interesting.
'Do you know what time of day it is? ' he said.
Ampleforth looked startled again. 'I had hardly thought
about it. They arrested me — it could be two days ago — per-
haps three. ' His eyes flitted round the walls, as though he
half expected to find a window somewhere. 'There is no dif-
ference between night and day in this place.
I do not see
how one can calculate the time. '
They talked desultorily for some minutes, then, without
apparent reason, a yell from the telescreen bade them be
silent. Winston sat quietly, his hands crossed. Ampleforth,
too large to sit in comfort on the narrow bench, fidgeted
from side to side, clasping his lank hands first round one
knee, then round the other. The telescreen barked at him to
1984
keep still. Time passed. Twenty minutes, an hour — it was
difficult to judge. Once more there was a sound of boots
outside. Winston's entrails contracted. Soon, very soon,
perhaps in five minutes, perhaps now, the tramp of boots
would mean that his own turn had come.
The door opened. The cold-faced young officer stepped
into the cell. With a brief movement of the hand he indi-
cated Ampleforth.
'Room 101,' he said.
Ampleforth marched clumsily out between the guards,
his face vaguely perturbed, but uncomprehending.
What seemed like a long time passed. The pain in Win-
ston's belly had revived. His mind sagged round and round
on the same trick, like a ball falling again and again into
the same series of slots. He had only six thoughts. The pain
in his belly; a piece of bread; the blood and the screaming;
O'Brien; Julia; the razor blade. There was another spasm in
his entrails, the heavy boots were approaching. As the door
opened, the wave of air that it created brought in a power-
ful smell of cold sweat. Parsons walked into the cell. He was
wearing khaki shorts and a sports-shirt.
This time Winston was startled into self-forgetfulness.
'YOU here! ' he said.
Parsons gave Winston a glance in which there was
neither interest nor surprise, but only misery. He began
walking jerkily up and down, evidently unable to keep still.
Each time he straightened his pudgy knees it was apparent
that they were trembling. His eyes had a wide-open, staring
look, as though he could not prevent himself from gazing at
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something in the middle distance.
'What are you in for? ' said Winston.
'Thoughtcrime! ' said Parsons, almost blubbering. The
tone of his voice implied at once a complete admission of
his guilt and a sort of incredulous horror that such a word
could be applied to himself. He paused opposite Winston
and began eagerly appealing to him: 'You don't think they'll
shoot me, do you, old chap? They don't shoot you if you
haven't actually done anything — only thoughts, which you
can't help? I know they give you a fair hearing. Oh, I trust
them for that! They'll know my record, won't they? YOU
know what kind of chap I was. Not a bad chap in my way.
Not brainy, of course, but keen. I tried to do my best for the
Party, didn't I? I'll get off with five years, don't you think? Or
even ten years? A chap like me could make himself pretty
useful in a labour- camp. They wouldn't shoot me for going
off the rails just once? '
'Are you guilty? ' said Winston.
'Of course I'm guilty! ' cried Parsons with a servile glance
at the telescreen. 'You don't think the Party would arrest
an innocent man, do you? ' His frog-like face grew calm-
er, and even took on a slightly sanctimonious expression.
'Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man,' he said senten-
tiously 'It's insidious. It can get hold of you without your
even knowing it. Do you know how it got hold of me? In my
sleep! Yes, that's a fact. There I was, working away, trying to
do my bit — never knew I had any bad stuff in my mind at all.
And then I started talking in my sleep. Do you know what
they heard me saying? '
1984
He sank his voice, like someone who is obliged for medi-
cal reasons to utter an obscenity.
"Down with Big Brother! ' Yes, I said that! Said it over
and over again, it seems. Between you and me, old man, I'm
glad they got me before it went any further. Do you know
what I'm going to say to them when I go up before the tribu-
nal? 'Thank you,' I'm going to say, 'thank you for saving me
before it was too late. "
'Who denounced you? ' said Winston.
'It was my little daughter,' said Parsons with a sort of
doleful pride. 'She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I
was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day.
Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh? I don't bear her any
grudge for it. In fact I'm proud of her. It shows I brought her
up in the right spirit, anyway'
He made a few more jerky movements up and down,
several times, casting a longing glance at the lavatory pan.
Then he suddenly ripped down his shorts.
'Excuse me, old man,' he said. T can't help it. It's the wait-
ing. '
He plumped his large posterior into the lavatory pan.
Winston covered his face with his hands.
'Smith! ' yelled the voice from the telescreen. '6079 Smith
W! Uncover your face. No faces covered in the cells. '
Winston uncovered his face. Parsons used the lavatory,
loudly and abundantly. It then turned out that the plug was
defective and the cell stank abominably for hours after-
wards.
Parsons was removed. More prisoners came and went,
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mysteriously. One, a woman, was consigned to 'Room 101',
and, Winston noticed, seemed to shrivel and turn a differ-
ent colour when she heard the words. A time came when, if
it had been morning when he was brought here, it would be
afternoon; or if it had been afternoon, then it would be mid-
night. There were six prisoners in the cell, men and women.
All sat very still. Opposite Winston there sat a man with a
chinless, toothy face exactly like that of some large, harm-
less rodent. His fat, mottled cheeks were so pouched at the
bottom that it was difficult not to believe that he had little
stores of food tucked away there. His pale-grey eyes flitted
timorously from face to face and turned quickly away again
when he caught anyone's eye.
The door opened, and another prisoner was brought in
whose appearance sent a momentary chill through Win-
ston. He was a commonplace, mean-looking man who
might have been an engineer or technician of some kind.
But what was startling was the emaciation of his face. It
was like a skull. Because of its thinness the mouth and eyes
looked disproportionately large, and the eyes seemed filled
with a murderous, unappeasable hatred of somebody or
something.
The man sat down on the bench at a little distance from
Winston. Winston did not look at him again, but the tor-
mented, skull-like face was as vivid in his mind as though
it had been straight in front of his eyes. Suddenly he real-
ized what was the matter. The man was dying of starvation.
The same thought seemed to occur almost simultaneously
to everyone in the cell. There was a very faint stirring all
296 1984
the way round the bench. The eyes of the chinless man kept
flitting towards the skull-faced man, then turning guiltily
away, then being dragged back by an irresistible attraction.
Presently he began to fidget on his seat. At last he stood up,
waddled clumsily across the cell, dug down into the pocket
of his overalls, and, with an abashed air, held out a grimy
piece of bread to the skull-faced man.
There was a furious, deafening roar from the telescreen.
The chinless man jumped in his tracks. The skull-faced man
had quickly thrust his hands behind his back, as though
demonstrating to all the world that he refused the gift.
'Bumstead! ' roared the voice. '2713 Bumstead J. ! Let fall
that piece of bread! '
The chinless man dropped the piece of bread on the
floor.
'Remain standing where you are,' said the voice. 'Face the
door. Make no movement. '
The chinless man obeyed. His large pouchy cheeks were
quivering uncontrollably. The door clanged open. As the
young officer entered and stepped aside, there emerged
from behind him a short stumpy guard with enormous
arms and shoulders. He took his stand opposite the chin-
less man, and then, at a signal from the officer, let free a
frightful blow, with all the weight of his body behind it, full
in the chinless man's mouth. The force of it seemed almost
to knock him clear of the floor. His body was flung across
the cell and fetched up against the base of the lavatory seat.
For a moment he lay as though stunned, with dark blood
oozing from his mouth and nose. A very faint whimper-
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ing or squeaking, which seemed unconscious, came out of
him. Then he rolled over and raised himself unsteadily on
hands and knees. Amid a stream of blood and saliva, the
two halves of a dental plate fell out of his mouth.
The prisoners sat very still, their hands crossed on their
knees. The chinless man climbed back into his place. Down
one side of his face the flesh was darkening. His mouth had
swollen into a shapeless cherry- coloured mass with a black
hole in the middle of it.
From time to time a little blood dripped on to the breast
of his overalls. His grey eyes still flitted from face to face,
more guiltily than ever, as though he were trying to discov-
er how much the others despised him for his humiliation.
The door opened. With a small gesture the officer indi-
cated the skull-faced man.
'Room 101,' he said.
There was a gasp and a flurry at Winston's side. The man
had actually flung himself on his knees on the floor, with
his hand clasped together.
'Comrade! Officer! ' he cried. 'You don't have to take me to
that place! Haven't I told you everything already? What else
is it you want to know? There's nothing I wouldn't confess,
nothing! Just tell me what it is and I'll confess straight off.
Write it down and I'll sign it — anything! Not room 101! '
'Room 101,' said the officer.
The man's face, already very pale, turned a colour Win-
ston would not have believed possible. It was definitely,
unmistakably, a shade of green.
'Do anything to me! ' he yelled. 'You've been starving me
298 1984
for weeks. Finish it off and let me die. Shoot me. Hang me.
Sentence me to twenty-five years. Is there somebody else
you want me to give away? Just say who it is and I'll tell you
anything you want. I don't care who it is or what you do to
them. I've got a wife and three children. The biggest of them
isn't six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and
cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and
watch it. But not Room 101! '
'Room 101,' said the officer.
The man looked frantically round at the other prisoners,
as though with some idea that he could put another victim
in his own place. His eyes settled on the smashed face of the
chinless man. He flung out a lean arm.
'That's the one you ought to be taking, not me! ' he shout-
ed. 'You didn't hear what he was saying after they bashed
his face. Give me a chance and I'll tell you every word of it.
HE'S the one that's against the Party, not me. ' The guards
stepped forward. The man's voice rose to a shriek. 'You
didn't hear him! ' he repeated. 'Something went wrong with
the telescreen. HE'S the one you want. Take him, not me! '
The two sturdy guards had stooped to take him by the
arms. But just at this moment he flung himself across the
floor of the cell and grabbed one of the iron legs that sup-
ported the bench. He had set up a wordless howling, like an
animal. The guards took hold of him to wrench him loose,
but he clung on with astonishing strength. For perhaps
twenty seconds they were hauling at him.
