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“ 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 at 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”
1984,1949: p.19 “
Day by day,and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown
by documentary evidence to have been corect;nor was any item of news,or any expression of opinion,which conflicted with the needs
of moment,ever allowed to remain on record.All history was a palimpsest,scraped clean and reinscrabed exactly as often as was
necessary.In no case would it have been possible,once the deed was done,to prove that any falsification had taken place.” 1984,1949:
p.40
3.8 Doublethink
The idea of “doublethink” emerges as an important consequence of the Party’s massive campaign of large-scale psychological manipulation. Simply put,
doublethink is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s mind at the same time. As the Party’s mind-control techniques break down an individual’s
capacity for independent thought, it becomes possible for that individual to believe anything that the Party tells them, even while possessing information that
runs counter to what they are being told. At the Hate Week rally, for instance, the Party shifts its diplomatic allegiance, so the nation it has been at war with
suddenly becomes its ally, and its former ally becomes its new enemy. When the Party speaker suddenly changes the nation he refers to as an enemy in the middle
of his speech, the crowd accepts his words immediately, and is ashamed to find that it has made the wrong signs for the event. In the same way, people are able to
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accept the Party ministries’ names, though they contradict their functions: the Ministry of Plenty oversees economic shortages, the Ministry of Peace wages war,
the Ministry of Truth conducts propaganda and historical revisionism, and the Ministry of Love is the center of the Party’s operations of torture and punishment.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously,and accepting both of them.The Party
intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality;but by the
exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated.The process has to be conscious,or it would bring with it a
feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.”
1984,1949: p.214
3.9 Urban Decay
Urban decay proves a pervasive motif in 1984. The London is a dilapidated, rundown city in which buildings are crumbling, conveniences such as
elevators never work, and necessities such as electricity and plumbing are extremely unreliable. That is the shoddy disintegration of London, just like the
widespread hunger and poverty of its inhabitants, is due to the Party’s mismanagement and incompetence. One of the themes of 1984, inspired by the
history of twentieth-century communism, is that totalitarian regimes are viciously effective at enhancing their own power and miserably incompetent at providing
for their citizens. The grimy urban decay in London is an important visual reminder of this idea, and offers insight into the Party’s priorities through its
contrast to the immense technology the Party develops to spy on its citizens. This is illustrated by the following quote:
“The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats.At one end of it a colored poster,too large for indoor display,had been tacked to the
wall.It depicted simply an enormous face,more than a meter wide,the
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face of a man of about forty-five,with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features.Winston made for the stairs.It was no use
trying the lift.Even at the best of times it was seldom working,and at present the electric 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 Wiston,who was thirty nine,and had a varicose ulcer above his
right ankle,resting several times on the way.”
1984,1949: p.1 and “Victory Mansions were old flats,built in 1930 or thereabouts,and
were falling to pieces.The plaster flaked constantly from ceiling and walls,the pipes burst in every hard frost,the roof leaked whenever
there was snow,the heating system was usually running at half steam when it was not closed down altogether from motives of
economy.Repairs,except what you could do for yourself,had to be sanctioned by remote committees which were liable to hold up even
the mending of a window pane for two years.” 1984,1949: p.21
3.10 Party Propaganda
