It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen
Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind
he slipped quickly through the glass doors of VICTORY MANSIONS
but he was not quick enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering with him
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats
At one end of the hallway was a coloured poster
the poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall
the poster simply depicted an enormous face, more than a metre wide
the face of a man of about forty-five
a man with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features
Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift
Even at the best of times the lift seldom worked
and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours
It was part of the economy drive in preparation for hate week
The flat was seven flights up and Winston was thirty-nine years old
he had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle so he went slowly up the stairs
he rested several times on the way, on each landing
opposite the lift-shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall
It was one of those pictures contrived so that the eyes follow you about when you move
there was a caption beneath the picture of the face
“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”

Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures
the figures had something to do with the production of pig-iron
The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror
the device formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall
Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat
but the words were still distinguishable
The instrument (the Telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed
but there was no way of shutting it off completely
He moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure
the meagreness of his body was emphasized by the blue overalls
the blue overalls Which were the uniform of the party
His hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine
his skin had been roughened by coarse soap and blunt razor blades
and the cold of the winter that had just ended roughened his skin too

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold
Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals
the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue
but there seemed to be no colour in anything
the only colour was in the posters that were plastered everywhere
The black-moustachio’d face gazed down from every commanding corner
There was a picture on the house-front immediately opposite
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU
the dark eyes looked deep into Winston’s own eyes
Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind
the poster flapped, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC
In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs
it hovered for an instant, like a hummingbird
and then it darted away again with a curving flight
It was the police patrol, snooping into people’s windows
The patrols did not matter, however; only the Thought Police mattered

Behind Winston’s back the voice from the Telescreen was still babbling away
pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan
The Telescreen received, and transmitted simultaneously
Any sound that Winston made would be picked up by the Telescreen
any sound above the level of a very low whisper
moreover, he could be seen as well as heard by the Telescreen
so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment
How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork
It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time
But at any rate, they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to
You had to live–did live, from a habit that became instinct
the assumption that every sound you made was overheard
and, except in darkness, every movement made you was scrutinized

Winston kept his back turned to the Telescreen
It was safer; though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing
A kilometre away was the Ministry of Truth, his place of work
the building towered vast and white above the grimy landscape
“This,” he thought with a sort of vague distaste, “this was London”
“chief city of Airstrip One, the third most populous of the provinces of Oceania”
He tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that could tell him more
“had London always been quite like this?”
Were there always these vistas of rotting nineteenth-century houses?
the sides of the houses shored up with baulks of timber
their windows patched with cardboard, and their roofs with corrugated iron
had their crazy garden walls always been sagging in all directions?
And the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air
and the willow-herb straggled over the heaps of rubble
and the places where the bombs had cleared a larger patch
sordid colonies of wooden dwellings spring up like chicken-houses
But it was no use, he could not remember what it had been like
nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit tableaux
and these occurred against no background, and were mostly unintelligible

The Ministry of Truth was startlingly different from any other object in sight
[In Newspeak it was referred to as Minitrue]
[Newspeak was the official language of Oceania]
It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete
it soared up, terrace after terrace, 300 metres into the air
From where Winston stood it was just possible to read
picked out on its white face in elegant lettering
the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level
and it was said it contained just as many floors below the ground
Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size
the buildings completely dwarfed the surrounding architecture
from the roof of VICTORY MANSIONS you could see all four of them simultaneously
They were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided
The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts
The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war
The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order
And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs
Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty
The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one
There were no windows in the building at all
Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it
It was a place impossible to enter except on official business
and even then you could only enter by penetrating through a maze of obstacles
barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests
Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards
guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons

Winston turned round abruptly
He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism
the expression was advisable to wear when facing the Telescreen
He crossed the room into the tiny kitchen
By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen
he knew there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured bread
the bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow’s breakfast
He took down from the shelf a bottle of colourless liquid
all it had was a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN
It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit
Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock
and he gulped it down like a dose of medicine
Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes
The stuff was like nitric acid
and moreover, swallowing it in one the sensation was even stronger
it was like being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club
The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down
and soon the world began to look more cheerful
He took a cigarette from a crumpled packet marked VICTORY CIGARETTES
he incautiously he held the cigarettes upright, the tobacco fell out on to the floor
With the next cigarettes Winston was more successful
He went back to the living-room and sat down at a small table
the table stood to the left of the Telescreen
From the table drawer he took out a penholder and a bottle of ink
and he took a thick, quarto-sized blank book with a red back and a marbled cover

For some reason the Telescreen in the living-room was in an unusual position
it wasn’t placed on the end wall, as normal, where it could command the whole room
instead, the screen was placed in the longer wall, opposite the window
To one side of the screen there was a shallow alcove
the alcove in which Winston was now sitting
when the flats were built these alcoves had probably been intended to hold bookshelves
By sitting in the alcove Winston was able to remain outside the range of the Telescreen
but he had to keep well back, and out of sight
He could be heard, of course; anything above a whisper
but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen
he had an idea for the thing that he was now about to do
It was partly the unusual geography of the room that had suggested to him the idea
But the idea had also been suggested by the book that he had just taken out of the drawer
It was a peculiarly beautiful book, a little yellowed by age
Its smooth creamy paper was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years
He could guess, however, that the book was much older than that
He had seen the book lying in the window of a frowsy little junk-shop
he had walked past the shop in a slummy quarter of the town
(exactly which quarter of town he did not now remember)
he had been stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess this book
Party members were supposed not to go into ordinary shops
(‘dealing on the free market’, it was called)
but this was one of the rules not strictly adhered to
because there were various things which were impossible to get any other way
shoelaces and razor blades, and such little things
He had given a quick glance up and down the street
and then he slipped into the junk-shop and bought the book for two dollars fifty
At the time he was not conscious of wanting it for any particular purpose
He had carried the book guiltily home in his briefcase
Even with nothing written in the book, it was a compromising possession to be in

The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary, which was not illegal
(nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws)
but if detected it was reasonably certain that his act would be punished by death
or at least it would be punished by twenty-five years in a forced-labour camp
Winston fitted a nib into the penholder and sucked it to get the grease off
The pen was an archaic instrument, seldom used even for signatures
he had procured the pen, furtively and with some difficulty
he felt the paper shouldn’t be scratched with an ink-pencil
the beautiful creamy paper deserved to be written on with a real nib
Actually, he was not used to writing by hand
Apart from very short notes, it was usual to dictate everything into the speak-write
of course it was impossible to use a speak-write for his present purpose
He dipped the pen into the ink and then faltered for just a second
A tremor had gone through his bowels
To mark the paper was the decisive act
In small clumsy letters he wrote: April 4th, 1984.
He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him
To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984
It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine
and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945
but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two
For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary?
He was writing for the future, for the unborn
His mind hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page
and then his mind came against the Newspeak word DOUBLETHINK
For the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him
How was it possible to communicate with the future?
by its own nature to communicate with the future was impossible
Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him
or the future would be different from the present, and his predicament would be meaningless

For some time he sat gazing stupidly at the paper
The Telescreen had changed over to strident military music
It was curious that he seemed not merely to have lost the power of expressing himself
but he had even forgotten what it was that he had originally intended to say
For weeks he had been getting ready for this moment
it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage
The actual writing would be easy, he had thought
All he had to do was to transfer to paper his thoughts
the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head
the thoughts that had kept him awake at night for years
At this moment, however, even the monologue had dried up
Moreover, his varicose ulcer had begun itching unbearably
He dared not scratch it, because if he did so it always became inflamed
The seconds were ticking by, and he could not write
He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him
the itching of the skin above his ankle and the blaring of the music
and he felt the slight booziness caused by the gin

Suddenly he began writing in sheer panic
he was only imperfectly aware of what he was writing
His small but childish handwriting straggled up and down the page
April 4th, 1984. Last night to the flicks
All war films. One very good one of a ship full of refugees
they were being bombed somewhere in the Mediterranean
Audience much amused by shots of a great huge fat man
he was trying to swim away with a helicopter after him
first you saw him wallowing along in the water like a porpoise
then you saw him through the helicopters gunsights
then he was full of holes and the sea round him turned pink
and he sank suddenly, as though the holes had let in the water
audience shouting with laughter when he sank
then you saw a lifeboat full of children with a helicopter hovering over it
there was a middle-aged woman might have been a jewess
she was sitting up in the boat with a little boy about three years old in her arms
little boy screaming with fright and hiding his head between her breasts
as if he was trying to burrow right into her
and the woman putting her arms round him and comforting him
although she was blue with fright herself
all the time covering him up as much as possible
as if she thought her arms could keep the bullets off him
then the helicopter planted a twenty kilo bomb in among them
a terrible flash and the boat went all to matchwood
then there was a wonderful shot of a child’s arm going up up up
right up into the air a helicopter with a camera
its nose must have followed it up
and there was a lot of applause from the party seats
but a woman down in the prole part suddenly started kicking up a fuss
and she started shouting they didnt ought to have showed it
not in front of kids they didnt it aint right
not in front of kids it aint
until the police turned her turned her out
i dont suppose anything happened to her
nobody cares what the proles say
typical prole reaction they never…

Winston stopped writing, partly because he was suffering from cramp
He did not know what had made him pour out this stream of rubbish
But a curious thing happened while he had been writing
a totally different memory had clarified itself in his mind
it became so clear he almost felt the need to write it down
he now realized it was this other incident that motivated him to start his diary today
It had happened that morning at the Ministry
if anything so nebulous could be said to have actually “happened”

It was nearly eleven hundred o’clock in the Records Department, where Winston worked
they were dragging the chairs into the centre of the hall opposite the Telescreen
they were making the preparations for the two minutes hate
Winston was taking his place in one of the middle rows
two people whom he knew by sight, but had never spoken to, came unexpectedly into the room
One of them was a girl whom he often passed in the corridors
He did not know her name, but he knew that she worked in the Fiction Department
he had sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying a spanner
he presumed she had some mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines
She was a bold-looking girl, of about twenty-seven, with thick hair
she had a freckled face, and swift, athletic movements
she wore a narrow scarlet sash emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League
it was wound several times round the waist of her overalls
wound just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips
Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her
He knew the reason why he had instantly disliked her
she managed to carry the atmosphere of hockey-fields and cold baths
somehow she embodied community hikes and general clean-mindedness
He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones
It was always the women who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party
the swallowers of slogans and the amateur spies
they had a nose for finding unorthodoxy among their ranks
But this particular girl gave him the impression of being more dangerous than most
Once when they passed in the corridor she gave him a quick sidelong glance
her glance seemed to pierce right into him
for a moment her glance had filled him with black terror
The idea had even crossed his mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police
he knew it was very unlikely that she really worked for the Thought Police
but he continued to feel a peculiar uneasiness whenever she was anywhere near him
and his uneasiness had fear mixed up in it, as well as hostility

The other person was a man named O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party
he was holder of some position so important and remote that Winston had only a dim idea of its nature
A momentary hush passed over the group of people round the chairs
they saw the black overalls of an Inner Party member approaching
O’Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse, humorous, brutal face
In spite of his formidable appearance he had a certain charm of manner
He had a trick of resettling his spectacles on his nose which was curiously disarming
in some indefinable way this mannerism was curiously civilized
It was a gesture of an eighteenth-century nobleman offering his snuffbox
but in the current times no one thought in such terms anymore
Winston had seen O’Brien perhaps a dozen times in almost as many years
he was intrigued by the contrast between O’Brien’s urbane manner and his prize-fighter’s physique
but he didn’t feel deeply drawn to him solely because of this
he held a secret believe about him, although perhaps it was more a hope
perhaps O’Brien’s political orthodoxy was not perfect
Something in his face irresistibly suggested the possibility
And again, perhaps it was not even unorthodoxy that was written in his face
perhaps it was simply intelligence that was written on his face
But at any rate he had the appearance of being a person that you could talk to
if somehow you could cheat the Telescreen and get him alone
Winston had never made the smallest effort to verify this guess
indeed, there was no way of confirming his suspicions
At this moment O’Brien glanced at his wrist-watch
he saw that it was nearly eleven hundred
he had evidently decided to stay in the Records Department until the two minutes hate was over
He took a chair in the same row as Winston, a couple of places away
A small, sandy-haired woman who worked in the next cubicle to Winston was between them
The girl with dark hair was sitting immediately behind them

The next moment a hideous, grinding screech burst from the Telescreen at the end of the room
It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck
the noise was like some monstrous machine running without oil; the hate had started
As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen
There were hisses here and there among the audience
The little sandy-haired woman gave a squeak of mingled fear and disgust
Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once had been one of the leading figures of the Party
but this was long ago. How long ago, nobody quite remembered
he had been almost on a level with Big Brother himself
but then he had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities
he had been condemned to death, but he mysteriously escaped and disappeared
The programmes of the two minutes hate varied from day to day
but there was no programme in which Goldstein was not the principal figure
He was the primal traitor and the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity
All subsequent crimes against the Party sprang directly out of his teaching
he was the source of all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, and deviations
Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies
perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters
perhaps, so it was occasionally rumoured, he was in some hiding-place in Oceania itself

Winston’s diaphragm was constricted
He could never see the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions
It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard
a clever face, and yet somehow there was something inherently despicable about it
the face also had a kind of senile silliness due to the long thin nose
and near the end of his nose a pair of spectacles was perched
the face resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheep-like quality
Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party
an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it
and yet it was just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling
“other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it”
He was abusing Big Brother, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party
he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia
he was advocating freedom of speech and freedom of the Press
he was advocating for freedom of assembly and freedom of thought
he was crying hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed
all of his speech was in rapid polysyllabic patterns
a sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators of the Party
and the speech even contained Newspeak words
it contained even more Newspeak words than any Party member would normally use in real life
but no one was to be left in any doubt as to the reality of Goldstein’s claptrap
behind his head marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army
row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces
they swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished
and each man was replaced by others exactly similar
The dull rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots formed the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice

The hate had not proceeded for more than thirty seconds
uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room
The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen
the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it
these things were too much to be borne by the audience
besides, just the sight of Goldstein produced fear automatically
even the thought of Goldstein produced anger in the people
He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia
when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other
But there was a strange fact that could not be denied
you only had to look around to see Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody
a thousand times a day his theories were refuted
on posters on the wall, on the Telescreen, in newspapers, in books
all of Goldstein’s ideas had been smashed to pieces and ridiculed
they were held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were
but in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less
Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him
A day never passed when spies and saboteurs were not unmasked by the Thought Police
He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network
countless conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State
The Brotherhood, its name was supposed to be
There were also whispered stories of a terrible book
this book was said to be a compendium of all the heresies
Goldstein was said to have authored this awful book
and the book circulated clandestinely here and there
It was a book without a title, referred to simply as “THE BOOK”
But one knew of such things only through vague rumours
Neither the Brotherhood nor THE BOOK was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention
if there was a way of avoiding it, Party members would avoid mentioning it

In its second minute the hate rose to a frenzy
People were leaping up and down in their places
and they were shouting at the tops of their voices
they tried to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen
The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink
her mouth was opening and shutting like that of a landed fish
Even O’Brien’s heavy face was flushed
He was sitting very straight in his chair
his powerful chest swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a wave
The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out ‘Swine! Swine! Swine!’
and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen
the dictionary struck Goldstein’s nose and bounced off
but despite this, the voice continued inexorably
In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others
and he was kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair
The horrible thing about the two minutes hate was not that one was obliged to act a part
on the contrary, it was impossible to avoid joining in with the others
Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary
A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness
a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer
these emotions seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current
even against one’s will, it turned you into a grimacing, screaming lunatic
And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion
an emotion which could be moved from one object to another
like the flame of a blowlamp that could burn whatever you turned it to
Thus, at one moment Winston’s hatred was not turned against Goldstein at all
but, on the contrary, his hatred turned against Big Brother
he hated the Party and he hated the Thought Police
and at such moments his heart went out to the lonely, derided heretic on the screen
the sole guardian of truth and sanity in a world of lies
And yet the very next instant he was at one with the people about him
and all that was said of Goldstein seemed to him to be true
At those moments his secret loathing of Big Brother changed into adoration
and Big Brother seemed to tower up like an invincible, fearless protector
Big Brother stood like a rock against the hordes of Asia, and Goldstein
in spite of isolation and his feelings of helplessness
and in spite of the doubt that hung about his very existence
despite these things, Goldstein seemed like some sinister enchanter
capable by the mere power of his voice to wreck the structure of civilization
It was even possible, at moments, to switch one’s hatred
you could turn your hatred this way or that by a voluntary act
Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen
like a nightmare that one is only vaguely aware one is in
like the violent effort with which one wrenches one’s head away from the pillow
he turned his hatred to the dark-haired girl behind him
Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind
He thought about flogging her to death with a rubber truncheon
He imagined tying her naked to a wooden stake
and he imagined shooting her full of arrows, like Saint Sebastian
He ravished her in his mind and cut her throat at the moment of climax
Better than before, moreover, he realized WHY it was that he hated her
He hated her because she was young and pretty and Sexless
he hated her because he wanted to go to bed with her
be he knew that he would never sleep with her
because round her sweet supple waist there was only the odious scarlet sash
the sash seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm
he hated that purple aggressive symbol of chastity she wore

The hate rose to its climax
The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep’s bleat
for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep
Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier
the soldier seemed to be advancing towards the viewers
huge and terrible, with his sub-machine gun roaring
he seemed to spring out of the surface of the screen
some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats
But at the same moment everyone could draw a deep sigh of relief
the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother
black-haired, black-moustachio’d, full of power and mysterious calm
a face so vast that it almost filled up the screen
Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying, but they understood the message
It was merely a few words of encouragement uttered in the din of battle
none of the words were distinguishable individually
but the message restored confidence by the fact of being spoken
Then the face of Big Brother faded away again
and instead of the face the three slogans of the Party stood out
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen
as though the impact that it had made on everyone’s eyeballs was too vivid to wear off immediately
The little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her
With a tremulous murmur that sounded like ‘My Saviour!’ she extended her arms towards the screen
Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer

At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmical chant
“B-B!…B-B!” over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause
a heavy, murmurous sound, somehow curiously savage
in the background of the sound one seemed to hear the stamp of naked feet
and one seemed to hear the throbbing of tom-toms
For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up
It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion
Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother
but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis
a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise
Winston’s entrails seemed to grow cold
In the two minutes hate he could not help sharing in the general delirium
but this sub-human chanting of ‘B-B!…B-B!’ always filled him with horror
Of course he chanted with the rest, it was impossible to do otherwise
To dissemble your feelings and to control your face
to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctive reaction
But there was a space of a couple of seconds where he could have slipped
during this time the expression of his eyes might have betrayed him
And it was exactly at this moment that the significant thing happened
if, indeed, the significant thing really did happen

O’Brien had stood up and he momentarily he caught his eye
he was in the act of resettling his spectacles on his nose
of course, he did it with his characteristic gesture
But there was a fraction of a second when their eyes met
and for as long as it took to happen Winston knew
yes, he KNEW! that O’Brien was thinking the same thing as himself
An unmistakable message had passed between them
It was as though their two minds had opened
and the thoughts were flowing from one mind into the other through their eyes
“I am with you,” O’Brien seemed to be saying to him
“I know precisely what you are feeling”
“I know all about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust”
“But don’t worry, I am on your side!”
And then the flash of intelligence was gone
and O’Brien’s face was as inscrutable as everybody else’s

That was all, and he was already uncertain whether it had happened
Such incidents never had any sequel
All that they did was to keep alive in him the belief, or hope
there are others like him who are also the enemies of the Party
Perhaps the rumours of vast underground conspiracies were true
perhaps the Brotherhood really existed after all!
It was impossible to be sure that the Brotherhood was not simply a myth
in spite of the endless arrests and confessions and executions
Some days he believed in it, some days not
There was no evidence, only fleeting glimpses that might mean anything or nothing
snatches of overheard conversation, faint scribbles on lavatory walls
once, even, when two strangers met, a small movement of the hand
it had looked as though it might be a signal of recognition
It was all guesswork: very likely he had imagined everything
He had gone back to his cubicle without looking at O’Brien again
The idea of following up their momentary contact hardly crossed his mind
It would have been inconceivably dangerous even if he had known how to set about doing it
For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance
and that was the end of the story
But even that was a memorable event
an event in the locked loneliness in which one had to live

Winston roused himself and sat up straighter
The gin was rising from his stomach and he let out a belch
His eyes re-focused on the page and discovered something
while he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing
he had been writing as though by automatic action
And it was no longer the same cramped, awkward handwriting as before
His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper
printing in large neat capitals, he had written:
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
he had written it over and over again, filling half a page
He could not help feeling a twinge of panic
It was absurd to be more worried about what he had already done
the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than opening the diary
for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages
he was tempted to abandon writing the diary altogether
He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless
Whether he wrote it, or whether he refrained from writing it
Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it
The Thought Police would get him either way
He had committed the essential crime that contained all other crimes
even if he had never set pen to paper the crime had been committed
Thoughtcrime, they called it
Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever
You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years
but sooner or later they were bound to get you
It was always at night–the arrests invariably happened at night
The sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder
the lights glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed
In the vast majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest
People simply disappeared, always during the night
Your name was removed from the registers
every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out
your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten
You were abolished, annihilated: Vaporized was the usual word

For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria
He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl
theyll shoot me i don’t care
theyll shoot me in the back of the neck
i dont care
down with big brother
they always shoot you in the back of the neck
i dont care
down with big brother

He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen
The next moment he was violently startled
There was a knocking at the door
Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope
whoever it was might go away after a single attempt
But no, the knocking was repeated
The worst thing of all would be to delay
His heart was thumping like a drum
but his face, from long habit, was expressionless
He got up and moved heavily towards the door