patty winter

from the Ministry of Plenty. In the preceding
quarter, it appeared, the Tenth Three-Year Plan's quota for bootlaces had
been overfulfilled by 98 per cent.
He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky
ending, involving a couple of knights. 'White to play and mate in two
moves.' Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always
mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without
exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of
the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying
triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm
power. White always mates.
The voice from the telescreen paused and added in a different and much
graver tone: 'You are warned to stand by for an important announcement at
fifteen-thirty. Fifteen-thirty! This is news of the highest importance.
Take care not to miss it. Fifteen-thirty!' The tinking music struck up
again.
Winston's heart stirred. That was the

gregory weston

the difference between truth and
falsehood did not seem important to her. She believed, for instance, having
learnt it at school, that the Party had invented aeroplanes. (In his own
schooldays, Winston remembered, in the late fifties, it was only the
helicopter that the Party claimed to have invented; a dozen years later,
when Julia was at school, it was already claiming the aeroplane; one
generation more, and it would be claiming the steam engine.) And when he
told her that aeroplanes had been in existence before he was born and long
before the Revolution, the fact struck her as totally uninteresting. After
all, what did it matter who had invented aeroplanes? It was rather more of
a shock to him when he discovered from some chance remark that she did not
remember that Oceania, four years ago, had been at war with Eastasia and at
peace with Eurasia. It was true that she regarded the whole war as a sham:
but apparently she had not even noticed that the name of the enemy had
changed. 'I thought we'd always been at war with Eurasia,' she said
vaguely. It frightened him a little. The invention of aeroplanes dated from
long before her birth, but the switchover in the war had happened only four
years ago, well after she was grown up. He argued with her about it for
perhaps a quarter of an hour. In the end he succeeded in forcing her memory
back until she did dimly recall that at one time Eastasia and not Eurasia
had been the enemy. But the issue still struck her as unimportant. 'Who
cares?' she said impatiently. 'It's always one bloody war after another,
and one knows the news is all lies anyway.'
Sometimes he talked to her of the Records Department and the impudent
forgeries that