1984 Chapter 3
1984
Chapter 3
The Ministry of Truth
Winston pulls the speakwrite towards him and puts on his glasses. To the right of the speakwrite there is a small hole, to the left a larger one. In the office wall there is a third hole, larger than the other two.
Messages come to Winston's office through the smallest hole. Newspapers come to him through the middle hole. The largest hole is for waste paper. Hot air carries the papers away. These large holes are called "memory holes", for some reason.
Today four messages come through the smallest hole, onto his desk. The messages are about changes to the Times newspaper. For example, in Big Brother's speech in the Times of 17 March, he said that South India was safe. The Eurasians would attack North Africa.
This did not happen. The Eurasians attacked South India, not North Africa. Winston had to rewrite part of Big Brother's speech so you could read in the Times for 17 March that Big Brother knew about the attack before it happened.
When Winston finished, his changes to the Times went with the newspaper down the middle hole. A new edition would soon appear, with his changes. Every copy of the old edition would disappear. Destroyed. The message to Winston with the changes would disappear down the memory hole, to be burned.
Every day newspapers, magazines, photographs, films, posters and books are all changed. The past is changed. The Party is always right. The Party was always right. The Records Department, where they destroy all the old copies of everything, is the largest department in the Ministry of Truth, but there is no truth. The new copies are not true and the old copies were not true either.
For example, the Ministry of Plenty said they would make 145 million pairs of boots last year. Sixty-two million pairs were made. Winston changed 145 million to 57 million. So the Party made five million more boots last year than they expected to. But it is possible that no boots at all were made last year. And it is possible that nobody knows or cares how many boots were made. You can read in the newspapers that five million extra pairs of boots were made and you can see that half the people in Oceania have no boots.
Winston looks around the office. A woman with fair hair spends all day looking for the names of people who were vaporized. Each of them is, in Newspeak, an unperson. She takes their names out of every newspaper, book, letter... Her own husband was vaporized last year. She took his name out too. People disappear from the newspapers when they are vaporized and they can also appear in the newspapers when they do not exist. Winston remembers Mr Ogilvy. He appeared in the newspapers because he led the sort of life the Party wanted. Ogilvy joined the Spies at the age of six. At eleven he told the Thought Police that his uncle was a criminal. At seventeen he was an organizer in the Young People's League. At nineteen he invented a new bomb which had killed thirty-one Eurasians when it was first tried. At twenty-three, Ogilvy died like a hero, fighting the Eurasians. There were photographs of Ogilvy, but there was no Ogilvy. Not really. The photographs were made at the Ministry of Truth. Ogilvy was part of a past that never happened.
Anything can be changed. A dreamy man with hairy ears called Ampleforth re-writes old poems until they support everything the Party believes in.
But all this work, all these changes, are not the main work of the Ministry of Truth. Most workers in the Ministry are busy writing everything that the people of Oceania read or see: all the newspapers, films, plays, poems, school books, telescreen programs and songs, the Newspeak dictionaries and children's spelling books.
After his morning’s work, Winston goes to the cafeteria. It is full, very noisy and smells of cheap food and the gin that is sold from a hole in the wall.
"Ah, I was looking for you," says a voice behind Winston.
It is Syme, his friend from the Dictionary Department. Perhaps "friend" is not exactly the right word. You do not have friends these days, you have comrades. But some comrades are more interesting than others. Syme is working on the eleventh edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. He is a small man, even smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large eyes. These eyes are sad but they seem to laugh at you and to search your face closely when he talks to you.
"Do you have any razor blades?" asks Syme.
"None," says Winston quickly, perhaps too quickly. "I've looked for them everywhere." Everyone is asking for razor blades. There have been none in the Party shops for months. There is always something which the Party can not make enough of. Sometimes it is buttons, sometimes it is wool; now it is razor blades. "I've been using the same blade for six weeks," he lies. He actually has two new ones at home.
The people waiting for food and gin move forward, slowly. Winston and Syme take dirty plates from the pile.
"Did you go to the park yesterday?" asks Syme. "All the Eurasian prisoners were hanged."
"I was working," says Winston. "I'll see it at the cinema."
"That's not as good," says Syme. His eyes look hard at Winston's face. "I know you," they seem to say. "I know why you didn't go to see the prisoners die."
Syme is an enthusiastic supporter of the Party’s decisions about war, prisoners, thoughtcrime, the deaths in the underground rooms below the Ministry of Love. Winston always tries to move conversation with him away from all that. Syme knows a lot about Newspeak and when he talks about language he is interesting.
"The prisoners kicked when they were hanged," says Syme. "I always like that. It spoils it when their legs are tied together. And one of them had his tongue hanging right out of his mouth. It was quite a bright blue. I like that kind of detail."
"Next, please," calls the prole who is giving out the food, and Winston and Syme give her their plates. She puts some gray meat on each one. There is also some bread, a small piece of cheese and a cup of black coffee with no sugar.
"There's a table there, under that telescreen," says Syme. "Let’s get a gin and sit there."
The gin is poured for them into big cups and they walk through the crowded cafeteria to a metal table. There are some pieces of meat on the table from the last person's meal.
They eat in silence. Winston drinks his gin quickly, which brings tears to his eyes.
"How's the Dictionary?" he says, speaking loudly because of the noise.
"I'm on the adjectives," says Syme. "It's wonderful work." His eyes shine with enthusiasm. He pushes his plate away, takes his bread in one hand and his cheese in the other, and puts his mouth near Winston's ear so he does not have to shout. "The eleventh edition is the final one," he says. "We're building a new language. When we’ve finished, people like you will have to learn to speak again. You think the main job is inventing new words, don't you? Wrong! We’re destroying words - lots of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're only leaving the really necessary ones, and they’ll stay in use for a long time."
He eats his bread hungrily. His thin, dark face comes alive and his eyes are shining like the eyes of a man in love. "It's a beautiful thing to destroy words," he says. "For example, a word like ‘good’. If you have ‘good’ in the language, you don't need ‘bad’.You can say ‘ungood’."
Winston smiles. It is safer not to say anything.
Syme continues. "Do you understand? The aim of Newspeak is to simplify the way you think. In the end we will make thoughtcrime impossible, because people won't have the words to think the crime. By the year 2050 there will be nobody alive who could even understand this conversation."
"Except . . ." Winston begins and then stops. He wants to say, "Except the proles," But he is not sure if the Party will accept the thought.
Syme guesses what he is going to say. "The proles are not really people," he says. "By 2050 - earlier, probably - you won't need a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’. The word ‘freedom’ won't exist, so the whole idea of freedom won't exist either. The good Party member won't have ideas. If You're a good Party member, you won't need to think."
One of these days, thinks Winston, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too openly. He goes to the Chestnut Tree Cafe, where the painters and musicians go and where Goldstein himself used to go. The Party does not like people like that. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.
Syme looks up. "Here comes Parsons," he says. You can hear his opinion of Parsons in his voice. He thinks Parsons is a fool.
Winston's neighbor from Victory Mansions is coming towards them. He is a fat, middle-sized man with fair hair and an ugly face. He looks like a little boy in a man's clothes. Winston imagines him wearing not his blue Party overalls but the uniform of the Spies.
Parsons shouts "Hello, hello" happily and sits down at the table. He smells of sweat. Syme takes a piece of paper from his pocket with a list of words on it and studies the words with an ink-pencil in his hand.
"Look at him, working in the lunch hour!" says Parsons. "What do you have there, old boy? Something too clever for me, I imagine. Smith, old boy, I'll tell you why I'm looking for you. You didn’t give me the money."
"What money?" says Winston, feeling for money in his pocket. About a quarter of your earnings are paid back to the Party in different ways.
"The money for Hate Week. You know I collect the money for Victory Mansions, and We're going to have the best flags around. Two dollars you promised me."
Winston finds two dirty dollar notes and gives them to Parsons. Parsons writes ‘Two dollars’ very carefully in small clear letters next to Winston's name in a little notebook. It is clear that he rarely reads or writes.
"Oh, Smith, old boy," he says. "I heard that my son threw stones at you yesterday. I talked to him about it. He won't do it again, believe me."
"I think he was angry because he couldn't see the Eurasian prisoners hang," says Winston.
"Yes! Well, that shows what good children they are, doesn't it? Both of them. They only think about the Spies - and the war, of course. Do you know what my girl did last week? She was on a walk in the country with the Spies and she saw a strange man. She and two other girls followed him and then told the police about him."
"What did they do that for?" Winston asks, shocked.
"They thought he was a Eurasian spy," says Parsons. "They noticed his shoes were different," he says proudly.
Winston looks at the dirty cafeteria, looks at all the ugly people in their ugly overalls, eats the terrible food and listens to the telescreen. A voice from the Ministry of Plenty is saying that they are all going to get more chocolate - twenty grams a week. Is he the only one who remembers that last week they got thirty grams? They are getting less chocolate, not more. But Parsons will not remember. And even a clever man like Syme finds a way to believe it.
Winston comes out of his sad dream. The girl with dark hair, who he remembers from the Two Minutes Hate, is at the next table. She is looking at him, but when he looks back at her she looks away again. Winston is suddenly afraid. Why is she watching him? Is she following him? Perhaps she is not in the Thought Police, but Party members can be even more dangerous as spies. How did he look when the telescreen voice told them about the chocolate? It is dangerous to look disbelieving. There is even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it is called.
Winston eats the terrible food and listens to the telescreen.
The girl turns her back to him again. At that moment the telescreen tells them all to return to work and the three men jump to their feet.
