1984 | Page 2

remember: nothing remained of his childhood except a series
of bright-lit tableaux occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible. The Ministry of Truth | Minitrue, in Newspeak* | was startlingly dierent
from any other ob ject in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of
glittering white concrete, soaring 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 corresponding rami cations below. Scattered about London
there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So com-
pletely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that 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, entertain-
ment, education, and the ne 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 aairs. Their names,
in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.
The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows
2

in it 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 ocial business,
and then only by penetrating through a maze of 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 in black uniforms, armed
with jointed truncheons. Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression
of quiet optimism which it 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 sacri ced his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there
was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured bread which had got
to be saved for tomorrow's breakfast. He took down from the shelf a bottle
of colourless liquid with a plain white label marked VICTORY GIN. It gave
o a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a
teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine.
Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes. The stu
was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being
hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however,
the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful.
He took a cigarette from a crumpled packet marked VICTORY CIGARETTES
and incautiously held it upright, whereupon the tobacco fell out on to the
oor.
With the next he was more successful. He went back to the living-room and sat
down at a small table that stood to the left of the telescreen. From the table
drawer he took out a penholder, a bottle of ink, and 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.
Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command
the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window. To one side
of it there was a shallow alcove in which Winston was now sitting, and which,
when the
ats were built, had probably been intended to hold bookshelves. By
sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside
the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course,
but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen. It was
partly the unusual geography of the room that had suggested to him the thing
that he was now about to do. But it had also been suggested by the book that he had just taken out of the
drawer. It was a peculiarly beautiful book. Its smooth creamy paper, a little
yellowed by age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty
years past. He could guess, however, that the book was much older than that.
He had seen it lying in the window of a frowsy little junk-shop in a slummy
quarter of the town (just what quarter he did not now remember) and had been
stricken immediately by an overwhelming desire to possess it. Party members
were supposed not to go into ordinary shops ('dealing on the free market', it was
called), but the rule was not strictly kept, because there were various things,
such as shoelaces and razor blades, which it was impossible to get hold of in any
other way. He had given a quick glance up