---
title: "Nineteen Eighty-Four"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 16 of 25
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-nineteen-eighty-four-fp20120511/16/
cite: "George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, section 16. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-nineteen-eighty-four-fp20120511/16/"
---

# Nineteen Eighty-Four

*George Orwell*

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> Title: 1984 [Nineteen Eighty-Four]
Date of first publication: 1949
Author: Eric Arthur Blair (as George Orwell) (1903-1950)
Date first posted: May 17, 2012
Date last updated: June 26, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20120511

> This eBook was produced by: David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

> A NOVEL BY

> George Orwell

> SECKER & WARBURG                         LONDON

> S. J. REGINALD SAUNDERS & CO. LTD.      TORONTO

> COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1949
    S. J. REGINALD SAUNDERS AND COMPANY LIMITED

> _All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
    this book or portions thereof in any form._

> _first Canadian edition_

> PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
    BY THE HADDON CRAFTSMEN, SCRANTON, PA.

> *       *       *       *       *

> _Books by George Orwell_

> NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
    ANIMAL FARM
    DICKENS, DALI AND OTHERS
    COMING UP FOR AIR
    BURMESE DAYS
    DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON
    HOMAGE TO CATALONIA
    THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER

> [The end of _1984 [Nineteen Eighty-Four]_ by Eric Arthur Blair (as George Orwell)]

## 16. VIII

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-nineteen-eighty-four-fp20120511/16/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-nineteen-eighty-four-fp20120511/16/#p-N

[¶0] They had done it, they had done it at last!

[¶1] The room they were standing in was long-shaped and softly lit. The
telescreen was dimmed to a low murmur; the richness of the dark-blue
carpet gave one the impression of treading on velvet. At the far end of
the room O'Brien was sitting at a table under a green-shaded lamp, with
a mass of papers on either side of him. He had not bothered to look up
when the servant showed Julia and Winston in.

[¶2] Winston's heart was thumping so hard that he doubted whether he would be
able to speak. They had done it, they had done it at last, was all he
could think. It had been a rash act to come here at all, and sheer folly
to arrive together; though it was true that they had come by different
routes and only met on O'Brien's doorstep. But merely to walk into such
a place needed an effort of the nerve. It was only on very rare
occasions that one saw inside the dwelling places of the Inner Party, or
even penetrated into the quarter of the town where they lived. The whole
atmosphere of the huge block of flats, the richness and spaciousness of
everything, the unfamiliar smells of good food and good tobacco, the
silent and incredibly rapid lifts sliding up and down, the
white-jacketed servants hurrying to and fro--everything was
intimidating. Although he had a good pretext for coming here, he was
haunted at every step by the fear that a black-uniformed guard would
suddenly appear from round the corner, demand his papers, and order him
to get out. O'Brien's servant, however, had admitted the two of them
without demur. He was a small, dark-haired man in a white jacket, with a
diamond-shaped, completely expressionless face which might have been
that of a Chinese. The passage down which he led them was softly
carpeted, with cream-papered walls and white wainscoting, all
exquisitely clean. That too was intimidating. Winston could not remember
ever to have seen a passageway whose walls were not grimy from the
contact of human bodies.

[¶3] O'Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers and seemed to be
studying it intently. His heavy face, bent down so that one could see
the line of the nose, looked both formidable and intelligent. For
perhaps twenty seconds he sat without stirring. Then he pulled the
speakwrite toward him and rapped out a message in the hybrid jargon of
the Ministries:

[¶4] "Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise stop suggestion
contained item six doubleplus ridiculous verging crimethink cancel stop
unproceed constructionwise antegetting plusful estimates machinery
overheads stop end message."

[¶5] He rose deliberately from his chair and came toward them across the
soundless carpet. A little of the official atmosphere seemed to have
fallen away from him with the Newspeak words, but his expression was
grimmer than usual, as though he were not pleased at being disturbed.
The terror that Winston already felt was suddenly shot through by a
streak of ordinary embarrassment. It seemed to him quite possible that
he had simply made a stupid mistake. For what evidence had he in reality
that O'Brien was any kind of political conspirator? Nothing but a flash
of the eyes and a single equivocal remark; beyond that, only his own
secret imaginings, founded on a dream. He could not even fall back on
the pretense that he had come to borrow the dictionary, because in that
case Julia's presence was impossible to explain. As O'Brien passed the
telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside, and
pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had
stopped.

[¶6] Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the
midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold
his tongue.

[¶7] "You can turn it off!" he said.

[¶8] "Yes," said O'Brien, "we can turn it off. We have that privilege."

[¶9] He was opposite them now. His solid form towered over the pair of them,
and the expression on his face was still indecipherable. He was waiting,
somewhat sternly, for Winston to speak, but about what? Even now it was
quite conceivable that he was simply a busy man wondering irritably why
he had been interrupted. Nobody spoke. After the stopping of the
telescreen the room seemed deadly silent. The seconds marched past,
enormous. With difficulty Winston continued to keep his eyes fixed on
O'Brien's. Then suddenly the grim face broke down into what might have
been the beginnings of a smile. With his characteristic gesture O'Brien
resettled his spectacles on his nose.

[¶10] "Shall I say it, or will you?" he said.

[¶11] "I will say it," said Winston promptly. "That thing is really turned
off?"

[¶12] "Yes, everything is turned off. We are alone."

[¶13] "We have come here because--"

[¶14] He paused, realizing for the first time the vagueness of his own
motives. Since he did not in fact know what kind of help he expected
from O'Brien, it was not easy to say why he had come here. He went on,
conscious that what he was saying must sound both feeble and
pretentious:

[¶15] "We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some kind of secret
organization working against the Party, and that you are involved in it.
We want to join it and work for it. We are enemies of the Party. We
disbelieve in the principles of Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are
also adulterers. I tell you this because we want to put ourselves at
your mercy. If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other way, we
are ready."

[¶16] He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, with the feeling that the door
had opened. Sure enough, the little yellow-faced servant had come in
without knocking. Winston saw that he was carrying a tray with a
decanter and glasses.

[¶17] "Martin is one of us," said O'Brien impassively. "Bring the drinks over
here, Martin. Put them on the round table. Have we enough chairs? Then
we may as well sit down and talk in comfort. Bring a chair for yourself,
Martin. This is business. You can stop being a servant for the next ten
minutes."

[¶18] The little man sat down, quite at his ease, and yet still with a
servantlike air, the air of a valet enjoying a privilege. Winston
regarded him out of the corner of his eye. It struck him that the man's
whole life was playing a part, and that he felt it to be dangerous to
drop his assumed personality even for a moment. O'Brien took the
decanter by the neck and filled up the glasses with a dark-red liquid.
It aroused in Winston dim memories of something seen long ago on a wall
or a hoarding--a vast bottle composed of electric lights which seemed to
move up and down and pour its contents into a glass. Seen from the top
the stuff looked almost black, but in the decanter it gleamed like a
ruby. It had a sour-sweet smell. He saw Julia pick up her glass and
sniff at it with frank curiosity.

[¶19] "It is called wine," said O'Brien with a faint smile. "You will have
read about it in books, no doubt. Not much of it gets to the Outer
Party, I am afraid." His face grew solemn again, and he raised his
glass: "I think it is fitting that we should begin by drinking a
health. To our Leader: To Emmanuel Goldstein."

[¶20] Winston took up his glass with a certain eagerness. Wine was a thing he
had read and dreamed about. Like the glass paperweight or Mr.
Charrington's half-remembered rhymes, it belonged to the vanished,
romantic past, the olden time as he liked to call it in his secret
thoughts. For some reason he had always thought of wine as having an
intensely sweet taste, like that of blackberry jam, and an immediate
intoxicating effect. Actually, when he came to swallow it, the stuff was
distinctly disappointing. The truth was that after years of gin drinking
he could barely taste it. He set down the empty glass.

[¶21] "Then there is such a person as Goldstein?" he said.

[¶22] "Yes, there is such a person, and he is alive. Where, I do not know."

[¶23] "And the conspiracy--the organization? It is real? It is not simply an
invention of the Thought Police?"

[¶24] "No, it is real. The Brotherhood, we call it. You will never learn much
more about the Brotherhood than that it exists and that you belong to
it. I will come back to that presently." He looked at his wristwatch.
"It is unwise even for members of the Inner Party to turn off the
telescreen for more than half an hour. You ought not to have come here
together, and you will have to leave separately. You, comrade--" he
bowed his head to Julia--"will leave first. We have about twenty minutes
at our disposal. You will understand that I must start by asking you
certain questions. In general terms, what are you prepared to do?"

[¶25] "Anything that we are capable of," said Winston.

[¶26] O'Brien had turned himself a little in his chair so that he was facing
Winston. He almost ignored Julia, seeming to take it for granted that
Winston could speak for her. For a moment the lids flitted down over his
eyes. He began asking his questions in a low, expressionless voice, as
though this were a routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers
were known to him already.

[¶27] "You are prepared to give your lives?"

[¶28] "Yes."

[¶29] "You are prepared to commit murder?"

[¶30] "Yes."

[¶31] "To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of
innocent people?"

[¶32] "Yes."

[¶33] "To betray your country to foreign powers?"

[¶34] "Yes."

[¶35] "You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds
of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage
prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases--to do anything which is
likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?"

[¶36] "Yes."

[¶37] "If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw
sulphuric acid in a child's face--are you prepared to do that?"

[¶38] "Yes."

[¶39] "You are prepared to lose your identity and live out the rest of your
life as a waiter or a dock worker?"

[¶40] "Yes."

[¶41] "You are prepared to commit suicide, if and when we order you to do so?"

[¶42] "Yes."

[¶43] "You are prepared, the two of you, to separate and never see one another
again?"

[¶44] "No!" broke in Julia.

[¶45] It appeared to Winston that a long time passed before he answered. For a
moment he seemed even to have been deprived of the power of speech. His
tongue worked soundlessly, forming the opening syllables first of one
word, then of the other, over and over again. Until he had said it, he
did not know which word he was going to say. "No," he said finally.

[¶46] "You did well to tell me," said O'Brien. "It is necessary for us to know
everything."

[¶47] He turned himself toward Julia and added in a voice with somewhat more
expression in it:

[¶48] "Do you understand that even if he survives, it may be as a different
person? We may be obliged to give him a new identity. His face, his
movements, the shape of his hands, the color of his hair--even his voice
would be different. And you yourself might have become a different
person. Our surgeons can alter people beyond recognition. Sometimes it
is necessary. Sometimes we even amputate a limb."

[¶49] Winston could not help snatching another sidelong glance at Martin's
Mongolian face. There were no scars that he could see. Julia had turned
a shade paler, so that her freckles were showing, but she faced O'Brien
boldly. She murmured something that seemed to be assent.

[¶50] "Good. Then that is settled."

[¶51] There was a silver box of cigarettes on the table. With a rather
absent-minded air O'Brien pushed them toward the others, took one
himself, then stood up and began to pace slowly to and fro, as though he
could think better standing. They were very good cigarettes, very thick
and well-packed, with an unfamiliar silkiness in the paper. O'Brien
looked at his wristwatch again.

[¶52] "You had better go back to your pantry, Martin," he said. "I shall
switch on in a quarter of an hour. Take a good look at these comrades'
faces before you go. You will be seeing them again. I may not."

[¶53] Exactly as they had done at the front door, the little man's dark eyes
flickered over their faces. There was not a trace of friendliness in his
manner. He was memorizing their appearance, but he felt no interest in
them, or appeared to feel none. It occurred to Winston that a synthetic
face was perhaps incapable of changing its expression. Without speaking
or giving any kind of salutation, Martin went out, closing the door
silently behind him. O'Brien was strolling up and down, one hand in the
pocket of his black overalls, the other holding his cigarette.

[¶54] "You understand," he said, "that you will be fighting in the dark. You
will always be in the dark. You will receive orders and you will obey
them, without knowing why. Later I shall send you a book from which you
will learn the true nature of the society we live in, and the strategy
by which we shall destroy it. When you have read the book, you will be
full members of the Brotherhood. But between the general aims that we
are fighting for, and the immediate tasks of the moment, you will never
know anything. I tell you that the Brotherhood exists, but I cannot tell
you whether it numbers a hundred members, or ten million. From your
personal knowledge you will never be able to say that it numbers even as
many as a dozen. You will have three or four contacts, who will be
renewed from time to time as they disappear. As this was your first
contact, it will be preserved. When you receive orders, they will come
from me. If we find it necessary to communicate with you, it will be
through Martin. When you are finally caught, you will confess. That is
unavoidable. But you will have very little to confess, other than your
own actions. You will not be able to betray more than a handful of
unimportant people. Probably you will not even betray me. By that time I
may be dead, or I shall have become a different person, with a different
face."

[¶55] He continued to move to and fro over the soft carpet. In spite of the
bulkiness of his body there was a remarkable grace in his movements. It
came out even in the gesture with which he thrust a hand into his
pocket, or manipulated a cigarette. More even than of strength, he gave
an impression of confidence and of an understanding tinged by irony.
However much in earnest he might be, he had nothing of the
single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic. When he spoke of murder,
suicide, venereal disease, amputated limbs, and altered faces, it was
with a faint air of persiflage. "This is unavoidable," his voice seemed
to say; "this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly. But this is not
what we shall be doing when life is worth living again." A wave of
admiration, almost of worship, flowed out from Winston toward O'Brien.
For the moment he had forgotten the shadowy figure of Goldstein. When
you looked at O'Brien's powerful shoulders and his blunt-featured face,
so ugly and yet so civilized, it was impossible to believe that he could
be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was not equal to, no danger
that he could not foresee. Even Julia seemed to be impressed. She had
let her cigarette go out and was listening intently. O'Brien went on:

[¶56] "You will have heard rumors of the existence of the Brotherhood. No
doubt you have formed your own picture of it. You have imagined,
probably, a huge underworld of conspirators, meeting secretly in
cellars, scribbling messages on walls, recognizing one another by code
words or by special movements of the hand. Nothing of the kind exists.
The members of the Brotherhood have no way of recognizing one another,
and it is impossible for any one member to be aware of the identity of
more than a very few others. Goldstein himself, if he fell into the
hands of the Thought Police, could not give them a complete list of
members, or any information that would lead them to a complete list. No
such list exists. The Brotherhood cannot be wiped out because it is not
an organization in the ordinary sense. Nothing holds it together except
an idea which is indestructible. You will never have anything to sustain
you except the idea. You will get no comradeship and no encouragement.
When finally you are caught, you will get no help. We never help our
members. At most, when it is absolutely necessary that someone should be
silenced, we are occasionally able to smuggle a razor blade into a
prisoner's cell. You will have to get used to living without results
and without hope. You will work for a while, you will be caught, you
will confess, and then you will die. Those are the only results that you
will ever see. There is no possibility that any perceptible change will
happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead. Our only true life is
in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and
splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no
knowing. It might be a thousand years. At present nothing is possible
except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act
collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual
to individual, generation after generation. In the face of the Thought
Police, there is no other way."

[¶57] He halted and looked for the third time at his wristwatch.

[¶58] "It is almost time for you to leave, comrade," he said to Julia. "Wait.
The decanter is still half full."

[¶59] He filled the glasses and raised his own glass by the stem.

[¶60] "What shall it be this time?" he said, still with the same faint
suggestion of irony. "To the confusion of the Thought Police? To the
death of Big Brother? To humanity? To the future?"

[¶61] "To the past," said Winston.

[¶62] "The past is more important," agreed O'Brien gravely. They emptied their
glasses, and a moment later Julia stood up to go. O'Brien took a small
box from the top of a cabinet and handed her a flat white tablet which
he told her to place on her tongue. It was important, he said, not to go
out smelling of wine: the lift attendants were very observant. As soon
as the door had shut behind her he appeared to forget her existence. He
took another pace or two up and down, then stopped.

[¶63] "There are details to be settled," he said. "I assume that you have a
hiding place of some kind?"

[¶64] Winston explained about the room over Mr. Charrington's shop.

[¶65] "That will do for the moment. Later we will arrange something else for
you. It is important to change one's hiding place frequently. Meanwhile
I shall send you a copy of _the book_--" even O'Brien, Winston
noticed, seemed to pronounce the words as though they were in
italics--"Goldstein's book, you understand, as soon as possible. It may
be some days before I can get hold of one. There are not many in
existence, as you can imagine. The Thought Police hunts them down and
destroys them almost as fast as we can produce them. It makes very
little difference. The book is indestructible. If the last copy were
gone, we could reproduce it almost word for word. Do you carry a brief
case to work with you?" he added.

[¶66] "As a rule, yes."

[¶67] "What is it like?"

[¶68] "Black, very shabby. With two straps."

[¶69] "Black, two straps, very shabby--good. One day in the fairly near
future--I cannot give a date--one of the messages among your morning's
work will contain a misprinted word, and you will have to ask for a
repeat. On the following day you will go to work without your brief
case. At some time during the day, in the street, a man will touch you
on the arm and say, 'I think you have dropped your brief case.' The one
he gives you will contain a copy of Goldstein's book. You will return it
within fourteen days."

[¶70] They were silent for a moment.

[¶71] "There are a couple of minutes before you need go," said O'Brien. "We
shall meet again--if we do meet again--"

[¶72] Winston looked up at him. "In the place where there is no darkness?" he
said hesitantly.

[¶73] O'Brien nodded without appearance of surprise. "In the place where there
is no darkness," he said, as though he had recognized the allusion. "And
in the meantime, is there anything that you wish to say before you
leave? Any message? Any question?"

[¶74] Winston thought. There did not seem to be any further question that he
wanted to ask; still less did he feel any impulse to utter high-sounding
generalities. Instead of anything directly connected with O'Brien or the
Brotherhood, there came into his mind a sort of composite picture of the
dark bedroom where his mother had spent her last days, and the little
room over Mr. Charrington's shop, and the glass paperweight, and the
steel engraving in its rosewood frame. Almost at random he said:

[¶75] "Did you ever happen to hear an old rhyme that begins _Oranges and
lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's_?"

[¶76] Again O'Brien nodded. With a sort of grave courtesy he completed the
stanza:

[¶77] "_Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement's,_
    _You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St. Martin's,_
    _When will you pay me? say the bells of Old Bailey,_
    _When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch._"

[¶78] "You knew the last line!" said Winston.

[¶79] "Yes, I knew the last line. And now, I am afraid, it is time for you to
go. But wait. You had better let me give you one of these tablets."

[¶80] As Winston stood up O'Brien held out a hand. His powerful grip crushed
the bones of Winston's palm. At the door Winston looked back, but
O'Brien seemed already to be in process of putting him out of mind. He
was waiting with his hand on the switch that controlled the telescreen.
Beyond him Winston could see the writing table with its green-shaded
lamp and the speakwrite and the wire baskets deep-laden with papers. The
incident was closed. Within thirty seconds, it occurred to him, O'Brien
would be back at his interrupted and important work on behalf of the
Party.