3rd 1983 on Big Brother's Order for the Day is very unsatisfactory and makes references to non-existent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing.
In his Order for the Day, Big Brother had spoken about FFCC. It was an organization, which supplied cigarettes and other things to the sailors in the Floating Fortresses. A certain Comrade Withers, a member of the Inner Party, had been awarded the Order of Conspicuous Merit, Second Class.
Three months later FFCC had suddenly stopped existing. There had been no report of it in the Press or on the telescreen. People who had done something against the Party usually simply disappeared and you never heard of them again, public trials were rare and happened only when the Party needed them. One never knew what had happened to those people. In some cases they might not even be dead. Perhaps thirty people Winston personally knew had disappeared at one time or another.
Winston was lost in thought. In the cubicle across the way Comrade Tillotson was still working. He raised his head for a moment: again the same unfriendly look. Winston asked himself whether Comrade Tillotson was doing the same job as himself. It was possible. A single person couldn't do such a job. A committee couldn't work on it either, because they would then have to admit that they falsified facts. Very likely several people were now working away on different versions of the Order for the Day. Then someone in the Inner Party would choose one of the versions, re-edit it, and then the chosen lie would become truth.
Winston did not know what had happened to Withers. There were many possibilities. What Winston knew for sure was that Withers had already been dead. He knew it from the words «refs unperson». You don't talk of someone as an unperson when they were arrested. Sometimes they were released for a year or two years before they were executed. Withers, however, did not exist: he had never existed. Winston decided that it was better to make Big Brother's speech deal with something totally different from its original subject.
Big Brother might have spoken about traitors and thoughtcriminals, about a victory at the front, or about the Ninth Three- Year Plan. But that was either too obvious or too complicated. It should rather be pure fantasy. Suddenly Winston thought of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle as a hero. Today Big Brother should speak about Comrade Ogilvy. It was true that Comrade Ogilvy didn't exist, but a few lines of print and a couple of photographs that had never been taken would soon change it.
Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite towards him and began dictating in Big Brother's military and pedantic style. It was easy to imitate, because Big Brother often asked questions and then answered them («What lessons do we learn from this fact, comrades? The lesson that», etc., etc.).
At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had played only with a drum, a sub-machine gun, and a model helicopter. At six – a year early – he had joined the Spies, at nine he had been a troop leader. At eleven he had reported his uncle to the Thought Police. At seventeen he had been an active member of the Junior Anti-Sex League. At nineteen he had designed a hand-grenade which the Ministry of Peace had started using and which, at its first trial, had killed thirty-one Eurasian prisoners at once. At twenty-three he had died in action. Big Brother added that Comrade Ogilvy hadn't drunk or smoked, had never been married, and had been devoted to the Party. He had only spoken to his comrades about the principles of Ingsoc, and had fought the Eurasian enemy and hunted down spies, thought-criminals, and traitors.
Winston thought for a moment whether he should award Comrade Ogilvy the Order of Conspicuous Merit, but he decided against. It would make it too complicated.
Once again he looked at Tillotson in the opposite cubicle. Winston was sure that Tillotson was busy on the same job as himself. He couldn't know whose job would be chosen as a final version, but he felt that it would be his own. Comrade Ogilvy was now a fact. Winston found it curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past. When the act of falsification was forgotten, he would exist just as Charlemagne[3]or Julius Caesar[4] existed.
Chapter 5
The canteen with its low ceiling was full and it was very noisy. People were waiting in line for their meal and Victory Gin.
«There you are», said a voice at Winston's back.
He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department. Perhaps «friend» was not the right word. You did not have friends anymore, you had comrades: but there were some comrades who you liked more than others. Syme was a specialist in Newspeak. He was now working on the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. He was smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large eyes. It seemed that his eyes searched your face, when he spoke to you.
«Have you got any razor blades?» he asked.
«Not one!» said Winston quickly. «I've tried everywhere. They don't exist any longer».
Everyone kept asking you for razor blades. Actually he had two unused ones which he was keeping for himself. There were no razor blades anywhere for months past. There was always something that you couldn't find in the Party shops. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was shoelaces; right now it was razor blades. You could only get them, if at all, by asking for them more or less secretly on the «free» market.
«I've been using the same blade for six weeks», he lied.
The queue moved forward. As they stopped he turned to Syme again. Each of them took a dirty metal tray from the counter.
«Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday?» said Syme.
«I was working», said Winston. «I shall see the film, I suppose».
«It's not the same at all», said Syme.
His eyes searched Winston's face. «I know you», the eyes seemed to say, «I know very well why you didn't go». Syme was very orthodox. It was very interesting to talk to him about Newspeak, but you first had to get him away from such subjects as helicopter raids on enemy villages, and trials of thoughtcriminals. Winston turned his head a little aside to avoid the large dark eyes.
«It was a good hanging», said Syme. «I don't like it when they tie their feet together. I like to see them kicking. And above all, at the end, the bright blue tongue. That's the detail that I like».
«Nex', please!» yelled the prole behind the counter.
Winston and Syme each got their lunch – pinkish-grey stew, a large piece of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of Victory Coffee without milk, and one saccharine tablet.
«There's a table over there, under that telescreen», said Syme. «Let's get a gin on the way».
The gin was served in china mugs with no handles. They went across the crowded room to one of the tables and put their trays on it. On one corner of the table, there was stew. It looked like vomit. Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for a moment, and drank all at once. He suddenly discovered that he was hungry. Winston and Syme didn't speak again until they finished their stew. The pinkish cubes in it were probably meat. From the table at Winston's left, a little behind his back, someone was talking and in the general noise of the room it sounded like the quacking of a duck.
«How is the Dictionary getting on?» said Winston loudly so that Syme could hear him.
«Slowly», said Syme. Winston could see he was happy to talk about Newspeak. «I'm on the adjectives».
Syme took up his bread in one hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so that he could speak without shouting.
«We're getting the language into its final shape», he said, «the shape it's going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. We do not invent new words. We're destroying words – hundreds of them, every day. The Eleventh Edition won't contain any words that will be out of use before the year 2050».
He bit into his bread and continued speaking passionately. His thin dark face had become happy; his eyes weren't searching Winston's face anymore.
«It's a