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Copywork
About This Passage
Study how Orwell pushes the chapter past mere lying into something stranger and bleaker. Winston first downgrades his work from forgery to the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another, as if even calling it a lie would give it too much dignity. The reason follows: the material has no connection with anything in the real world, not even the backhanded connection a lie keeps to the truth it denies. A liar at least knows the fact he is hiding; here there is no fact at all, only invented numbers replacing other invented numbers. The flat, almost bored tone enacts the very emptiness Winston describes.
But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Retell this chapter in order: Winston goes to his job at the Ministry of Truth, where his work is to 'rectify' old newspapers so the past always matches what the Party says today; he drops the originals into a memory hole to be burned, so all of history becomes a palimpsest rewritten with no proof left; he reflects on coworkers, including a woman who deletes erased people though her own husband was vaporised, and on a disgraced official, Withers, who has become an unperson; for his main job he replaces Withers's mention by inventing a heroic but entirely fictional Comrade Ogilvy, reflecting that an invented man can become as authentically 'real' in the records as any historical figure, and that his work is not even forgery but the substitution of one nonsense for another. When you reach Winston's reflection that the records have no connection to the real world, slow down and weigh what that means for the very idea of truth.
Discussion Questions
- Winston's entire job at the Ministry of Truth is to 'rectify' old records so the past always agrees with the Party's present. What does it reveal about this society that altering the past is steady, organized, full-time work, and why? Support your reading with the text.
- Winston is skilled at this work and takes his greatest pleasure in the hardest forgeries, even though the job is to replace truth with lies. Do you read Winston here mainly as a victim trapped by the system, or as someone who shares real responsibility for the lying? Defend one reading with evidence from the chapter, and explain why it fits the text better than the other.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
The act of putting one thing in place of another; Winston decides his work is merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another, since neither version was ever true.
Item 2
In a way that is genuine and real; once the forgery is forgotten, the invented Ogilvy will exist as authentically in the record as any real historical figure.
Item 3
Enormously large, like numbers used to describe space; astronomical totals of boots are recorded on paper while half of Oceania may go barefoot.
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Critical Thinking
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