As he put his hand to the door-knob Winston saw that he
had left the diary open on the table. DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER was
written all over it, in letters almost big enough to be legible
across the room. It was an inconceivably stupid thing to have
done. But, he realized, even in his panic he had not wanted to
smudge the creamy paper by shutting the book while the ink was
wet.
He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a
warm wave of relief flowed through him. A colourless,
crushed-looking woman, with wispy hair and a lined face, was
standing outside.
'Oh, comrade,' she began in a dreary, whining sort of
voice, 'I thought I heard you come in. Do you think you could
come across and have a look at our kitchen sink? It's got
blocked up and-'
It was Mrs Parsons, the wife of a neighbour on the same
floor. ('Mrs' was a word somewhat discountenanced by the Party
-- you were supposed to call everyone 'comrade' -- but with
some women one used it instinctively.) She was a woman of about
thirty, but looking much older. One had the impression that
there was dust in the creases of her face. Winston followed her
down the passage. These amateur repair jobs were an almost
daily irritation. Victory Mansions were old flats, built in
1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces. The plaster
flaked constantly from ceilings and walls, the pipes burst in
every hard frost, the roof leaked whenever there was snow, the
heating system was usually running at half steam when it was
not closed down altogether from motives of economy. Repairs,
except what you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by
remote committees which were liable to hold up even the mending
of a window- pane for two years.
'Of course it's only because Tom isn't home,' said Mrs
Parsons vaguely.
The Parsons' flat was bigger than Winston's, and dingy in
a different way. Everything had a battered, trampled-on look,
as though the place had just been visited by some large violent
animal. Games impedimenta -- hockey-sticks, boxing-gloves. a
burst football, a pair of sweaty shorts turned inside out --
lay all over the floor, and on the table there was a litter of
dirty dishes and dog-eared exercise-books. On the walls were
scarlet banners of the Youth League and the Spies, and a
full-sized poster of Big Brother. There was the usual
boiled-cabbage smell, common to the whole building, but it was
shot through by a sharper reek of sweat, which-one knew this at
the first sniff, though it was hard to say how was the sweat of
some person not present at the moment. In another room someone
with a comb and a piece of toilet paper was trying to keep tune
with the military music which was still issuing from the
telescreen.
'It's the children,' said Mrs Parsons, casting a half-
apprehensive glance at the door. 'They haven't been out today.
And of course-'
She had a habit of breaking off her sentences in the
middle. The kitchen sink was full nearly to the brim with
filthy greenish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage.
Winston knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. He
hated using his hands, and he hated bending down, which was
always liable to start him coughing. Mrs Parsons looked on
helplessly.
'Of course if Tom was home he'd put it right in a moment,'
she said. 'He loves anything like that. He's ever so good with
his hands, Tom is.'
Parsons was Winston's fellow-employee at the Ministry of
Truth. He was a fattish but active man of paralysing stupidity,
a mass of imbecile enthusiasms -- one of those completely
unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the
Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended. At
thirty-five he had just been unwillingly evicted from the Youth
League, and before graduating into the Youth League he had
managed to stay on in the Spies for a year beyond the statutory
age. At the Ministry he was employed in some subordinate post
for which intelligence was not required, but on the other hand
he was a leading figure on the Sports Committee and all the
other committees engaged in organizing community hikes,
spontaneous demonstrations, savings campaigns, and voluntary
activities generally. He would inform you with quiet pride,
between whiffs of his pipe, that he had put in an appearance at
the Community Centre every evening for the past four years. An
overpowering smell of sweat, a sort of unconscious testimony to
the strenuousness of his life, followed him about wherever he
went, and even remained behind him after he had gone.
'Have you got a spanner?-said Winston, fiddling with the
nut on the angle-joint.
'A spanner,' said Mrs Parsons, immediately becoming
invertebrate. 'I don't know, I'm sure. Perhaps the children -'
There was a trampling of boots and another blast on the
comb as the children charged into the living-room. Mrs Parsons
brought the spanner. Winston let out the water and disgustedly
removed the clot of human hair that had blocked up the pipe. He
cleaned his fingers as best he could in the cold water from the
tap and went back into the other room.
'Up with your hands!' yelled a savage voice.
A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from
behind the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic
pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made
the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were
dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red neckerchiefs
which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands
above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the
boy's demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.
'You're a traitor!' yelled the boy. 'You're a thought-
criminal! You're a Eurasian spy! I'll shoot you, I'll vaporize
you, I'll send you to the salt mines!'
Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting
'Traitor!' and 'Thought-criminal!' the little girl imitating
her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly
frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon
grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of calculating
ferocity in the boy's eye, a quite evident desire to hit or
kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big
enough to do so. It was a good job it was not a real pistol he
was holding, Winston thought.
Mrs. Parsons' eyes flitted nervously from Winston to the
children, and back again. In the better light of the
living-room he noticed with interest that there actually
was dust in the creases of her face.
'They do get so noisy,' she said. 'They're disappointed
because they couldn't go to see the hanging, that's what it is.
I'm too busy to take them. and Tom won't be back from work in
time.'
'Why can't we go and see the hanging?' roared the boy in
his huge voice.
'Want to see the hanging ! Want to see the hanging!'
chanted the little girl, still capering round.
Some Eurasian prisoners, guilty of war crimes, were to be
hanged in the Park that evening, Winston remembered. This
happened about once a month, and was a popular spectacle.
Children always clamoured to be taken to see it. He took his
leave of Mrs Parsons and made for the door. But he had not gone
six steps down the passage when something hit the back of his
neck an agonizingly painful blow. It was as though a red-hot
wire had been jabbed into him. He spun round just in time to
see Mrs Parsons dragging her son back into the doorway while
the boy pocketed a catapult.
'Goldstein!' bellowed the boy as the door closed on him.
But what most struck Winston was the look of helpless fright on
the woman's greyish face.
Back in the flat he stepped quickly past the telescreen
and sat down at the table again, still rubbing his neck. The
music from the telescreen had stopped. Instead, a clipped
military voice was reading out, with a sort of brutal relish, a
description of the armaments of the new Floating Fortress which
had just been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must
lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would
be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy.
Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of
all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they
were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages,
and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel
against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they
adored the Party and everything connected with it. The songs,
the processions, the banners, the hiking, the drilling with
dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship of Big
Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All
their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the
State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs,
thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty
to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason,
for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not
carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little
sneak -- 'child hero' was the phrase generally used -- had
overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to
the Thought Police.
The sting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked
up his pen half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find
something more to write in the diary. Suddenly he began
thinking of O'Brien again.
Years ago -- how long was it? Seven years it must be -- he
had dreamed that he was walking through a pitch-dark room. And
someone sitting to one side of him had said as he passed: 'We
shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.' It was
said very quietly, almost casually -- a statement, not a
command. He had walked on without pausing. What was curious was
that at the time, in the dream, the words had not made much
impression on him. It was only later and by degrees that they
had seemed to take on significance. He could not now remember
whether it was before or after having the dream that he had
seen O'Brien for the first time, nor could he remember when he
had first identified the voice as O'Brien's. But at any rate
the identification existed. It was O'Brien who had spoken to
him out of the dark.
Winston had never been able to feel sure -- even after
this morning's flash of the eyes it was still impossible to be
sure whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy. Nor did it even
seem to matter greatly. There was a link of understanding
between them, more important than affection or partisanship.
'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,' he had
said. Winston did not know what it meant, only that in some way
or another it would come true.
The voice from the telescreen paused. A trumpet call,
clear and beautiful, floated into the stagnant air. The voice
continued raspingly:
'Attention! Your attention, please ! A newsflash has this
moment arrived from the Malabar front. Our forces in South
India have won a glorious victory. I am authorized to say that
the action we are now reporting may well bring the war within
measurable distance of its end. Here is the newsflash -'
Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough,
following on a gory description of the annihilation of a
Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners,
came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate
ration would be reduced from thirty grammes to twenty.
Winston belched again. The gin was wearing off, leaving a
deflated feeling. The telescreen -- perhaps to celebrate the
victory, perhaps to drown the memory of the lost chocolate --
crashed into 'Oceania, 'tis for thee'. You were supposed to
stand to attention. However, in his present position he was
invisible.
'Oceania, 'tis for thee' gave way to lighter music.
Winston walked over to the window, keeping his back to the
telescreen. The day was still cold and clear. Somewhere far
away a rocket bomb exploded with a dull, reverberating roar.
About twenty or thirty of them a week were falling on London at
present.
Down in the street the wind flapped the torn poster to and
fro, and the word INGSOC fitfully appeared and vanished.
Ingsoc. The sacred principles of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink,
the mutability of the past. He felt as though he were wandering
in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world
where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was
dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a
single human creature now living was on his side? And what way
of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure
for ever? Like an answer, the three slogans on the white
face of the Ministry of Truth came back to him:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket. There,
too, in tiny clear lettering, the same slogans were inscribed,
and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even
from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the
covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrappings
of a cigarette Packet -- everywhere. Always the eyes watching
you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or
eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed -- no
escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres
inside your skull.
The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the
Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them,
looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed
before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it
could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombs would not batter
it down. He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary.
For the future, for the past -- for an age that might be
imaginary. And in front of him there lay not death but
annihilation. The diary would be reduced to ashes and himself
to vapour. Only the Thought Police would read what he had
written, before they wiped it out of existence and out of
memory. How could you make appeal to the future when not a
trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece
of paper, could physically survive?
The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten
minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty.
Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new
heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that
nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some
obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making
yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the
human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and
wrote:
To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is
free, when men are different from one another and do not live
alone -- to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be
undone:
From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude,
from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink --
greetings !
He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that
it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his
thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences
of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote:
Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS
death.
Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became
important to stay alive as long as possible. Two fingers of his
right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail
that might betray you. Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a
woman, probably: someone like the little sandy- haired woman or
the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start
wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval,
why he had used an oldfashioned pen, what he had been
writing -- and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He
went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with
the gritty dark-brown soap which rasped your skin like
sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose.
He put the diary away in the drawer. It was quite useless
to think of hiding it, but he could at least make sure whether
or not its existence had been discovered. A hair laid across
the page-ends was too obvious. With the tip of his finger he
picked up an identifiable grain of whitish dust and deposited
it on the corner of the cover, where it was bound to be shaken
off if the book was moved.
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