Part One, Chapter 4 — Teaching Companion

What it asks It asks the student to read a nickname and the narrator’s shrug beside it. Every room and corridor has its “large oblong slit protected by a wire grating”. “For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes.” Whatever drops in “would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.” Using them is “an automatic action”. The student decides what the name admits that the Ministry never says, and who is laughing. The Ministry’s own orders never name a forgery: “always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints or misquotations”.

One reading

On the Party. The workers know what the slits really destroy: not paper, but the past. In a Ministry whose instructions “never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed”, a nickname is the one place the truth can be said, as a joke and so safely. And the narrator’s “For some reason” plays dumb on purpose.

• For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes.
• never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed

Another reading

On the workers. The name is said every day and no longer heard. Dropping paper in is “an automatic action”, and Winston drops his own notes “with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious”. A joke nobody hears is no protest. The name has become as automatic as the hand that lifts the flap.

• it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in
• with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames

Listen for

• Hears the official word held at arm’s length a page later, “or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify”, and asks whether the narrator treats “memory holes” the same way.
• Notices that the furnaces are “hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building”: the slit is within reach of every arm, and the fire is out of sight.
• Notices that the holes take even “a scrap of waste paper lying about”, so the habit of destroying runs ahead of any order.
• Weighs who gave the name: “they were nicknamed” names no one, so the joke belongs to the whole building and to nobody in it.

If stuck

• What are the slits in the walls used for?
• Where does the paper go once it drops in?
• Why might people give a joking nickname to something grim?

A strong answer A strong response says what the name admits and who is laughing. One reader says the joke is on the Party: the workers know the holes destroy memory, not paper, and in a Ministry whose orders never say “forgery”, a nickname is the one safe place to say so; the narrator’s “For some reason” plays dumb on purpose. Another says the joke is on the workers: the name is as “automatic” as the hand that lifts the flap, and Winston himself drops his notes in “as nearly as possible unconscious”. The best answers set the nickname beside “as the official phrase had it, to rectify”, and notice that the fire is hidden while the slit is always in reach.

What it asks It asks the student to judge one phrase. Winston knows that “in the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in, day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the press the names of people who had been vaporised and were therefore considered never to have existed.” Then: “There was a certain fitness in this, since her own husband had been vaporised a couple of years earlier.” The student decides whether seeing “fitness” here is a cold thought or a clear one, and argues from the chapter. The card must not say that she has deleted her husband’s name, or what she feels: the chapter says neither.

One reading

A cold thought. He sees her the way the Ministry would: the widow of a vaporised man is the right person to erase the vaporised, the way a part fits a machine. The word “fitness” is a word for neatness, not grief. He says nothing about what the work might cost her, and the next sentence moves straight on to Ampleforth.

• There was a certain fitness in this, since her own husband had been vaporised a couple of years earlier.
• And a few cubicles away a mild, ineffectual, dreamy creature named Ampleforth

Another reading

A clear one. The phrase is bitter irony: the Party’s logic, said in the Party’s tidy voice, so that its cruelty shows. Winston knows this loss well: perhaps thirty people he knew personally have disappeared. A man with that count does not need to call the arrangement monstrous. Calling it fitting says it for him.

• Perhaps thirty people personally known to Winston, not counting his parents, had disappeared at one time or another.
• were therefore considered never to have existed

Listen for

• Notices “therefore” in “were therefore considered never to have existed”: the Party’s logic runs straight from vanishing to never having been.
• Notices “toiled day in, day out” and “simply”: the narrator makes her work sound like any other clerk’s.
• Sees her as one more worker in the chapter, like Winston, who does the erasing by hand.
• Keeps to the page: it does not say whether she has deleted her husband’s name, or how she feels.

If stuck

• What is the work of the woman in the next cubicle?
• What happened to her husband?
• If someone called your hardest loss fitting, what might they mean?

A strong answer A strong response judges the phrase and argues from the chapter. One reader says it is cold: Winston sees her as the Ministry would, the right part in the right place, and “fitness” is a word for neatness that says nothing of grief before the eye moves on to Ampleforth. Another says it is clear sight told as irony: the Party’s logic, from vaporised to “never to have existed”, is put in its own tidy voice so that its cruelty shows, by a man who has lost perhaps thirty people himself. The best answers weigh “therefore”, notice how ordinary her toil is made to sound, and claim nothing about what she feels or whose names she has deleted.

What it asks It asks the student to trace how a man across the hall becomes a competitor. At first “Winston hardly knew Tillotson, and had no idea what work he was employed on.” Tillotson’s spectacles dart “a hostile flash”. Then Winston reasons that so tricky a job “would never be entrusted to a single person”, and that “as many as a dozen people were now working away on rival versions”. By the end: “Once again he glanced at his rival in the opposite cubicle.” He feels “a profound conviction” that his own version will be chosen. The student explains what has made Tillotson a rival. The card must not say that Tillotson is on the same job, or watching Winston: both are Winston’s suspicions. Nor may it say whose version wins: “There was no way of knowing whose version would finally be adopted”.

One reading

The Party’s system. As Winston reasons it, a committee “would be to admit openly that an act of fabrication was taking place”, so the work goes to people who do not talk, each on a rival version, and “some master brain” picks one. In a hall where nobody discusses the job, anyone across the way could be a competitor. The Party turns strangers into rivals, and that keeps the lie unspoken.

• to turn it over to a committee would be to admit openly that an act of fabrication was taking place
• People in the Records Department did not readily talk about their jobs.

Another reading

Winston’s own pride. Nothing shows that Tillotson is on the same job. Winston decides it: “Something seemed to tell him”. A craftsman who is “good at this kind of thing” wants someone to beat. His “profound conviction” that his own version will win is the feeling of a man who has just made something he is proud of.

• Something seemed to tell him with certainty that Tillotson was busy on the same job as himself.
• There was no way of knowing whose version would finally be adopted, but he felt a profound conviction that it would be his own.

Listen for

• Enjoys the joke in Tillotson’s manner, as if keeping a secret “between himself and the telescreen”: the one listener no secret can be kept from.
• Notices that the “hostile flash” comes from Tillotson’s spectacles, which may only be catching the light, and that Winston wears spectacles too.
• Hears the step from “It was perfectly possible” to “with certainty”, with nothing new in between but another glance.
• Keeps the suspicions as suspicions: the chapter does not say what Tillotson is writing, or whose version is adopted.

If stuck

• What does Winston actually know about Tillotson?
• Why does Winston think a dozen people might be rewriting the same speech?
• Why might it matter to Winston whose version wins, when he has “no way of knowing” which one is chosen?

A strong answer A strong response names what made the rivalry and argues from the chapter. One reader says the Party built it: as Winston reasons, a committee would admit “that an act of fabrication was taking place”, so the work goes to perhaps a dozen people who do not talk, each on “rival versions”, and a master brain chooses. Another says Winston’s pride built it: nothing shows Tillotson is on the same job, “Something seemed to tell him”, and a man who knows he is good wants someone to beat, so he feels “a profound conviction” that his own will be chosen. The best answers notice how a guess becomes a certainty with nothing in between, enjoy the secret kept from everyone but the telescreen, and leave the winner unknown.

What it asks It asks the student to read Winston’s ranking of his own guesses. “Winston did not know why Withers had been disgraced.” He tries “corruption or incompetence”, a “too-popular subordinate”, and “heretical tendencies”. Then: “Or perhaps – what was likeliest of all – the thing had simply happened because purges and vaporisations were a necessary part of the mechanics of government.” The student explains why that guess seems likeliest to him, and argues from the chapter. The card must not say why Withers fell: the chapter never says, and Winston only guesses.

One reading

What he has seen. In Winston’s world people vanish and nobody learns why. Trials are rare “show-pieces”. Most people simply disappear, and “One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them.” When that is how it always goes, a reason begins to look like the rare case. The guess is his experience talking.

• More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again.
• One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them.

Another reading

What he is about to do. The guess comes just before Winston takes Withers out of the record. If Withers fell for nothing he did, then nobody is to blame, and removing him is one more turn of the machine, like the “automatic action” at the memory hole. The paragraph goes straight from “he had never existed” to Winston’s plan for the speech. The guess may be likeliest because it asks nothing of him.

• He did not exist: he had never existed.
• Winston decided that it would not be enough simply to reverse the tendency of Big Brother’s speech.

Listen for

• Weighs the word “mechanics”: the guess makes the Party a machine, and nobody asks a machine for its reasons.
• Notices that the one “real clue” is two words of jargon on the slip, which “indicated that Withers was already dead”: Winston learns of a death from the wording of an order.
• Notices that even arrest settles nothing: some are “released and allowed to remain at liberty for as much as a year or two years before being executed”.
• Keeps to the page: the chapter never says why Withers fell, and all four guesses stay open.

If stuck

• What are Winston’s four guesses about Withers?
• What do people in Winston’s world usually learn about those who disappear?
• If nothing a person did could explain their fall, who would be to blame?

A strong answer A strong response explains why the last guess seems likeliest to Winston and argues from the chapter. One reader says it is his experience: people simply disappear, “One never had the smallest clue” why, and a reason has become the rare case. Another says it is the guess that asks nothing of him: it comes just before he takes Withers out of the record, and if purges are only “the mechanics of government”, nobody is to blame and the job is one more piece of machinery. The best answers weigh the word “mechanics”, notice that Winston learns of a death from two words of jargon, and never say why Withers fell.

What it asks It asks the student to think about the voice at the top of the Party. Winston begins “dictating in Big Brother’s familiar style: a style at once military and pedantic”, with “a trick of asking questions and then promptly answering them”, and so “easy to imitate.” Earlier the same morning he rewrote a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech “in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened.” The student decides what it means that a clerk can speak for Big Brother, and argues from the chapter.

One reading

The clerks. Big Brother’s words are whatever the Records Department last made them. His forecast about Africa was wrong until Winston made it right, and Winston’s draft of his Order for the Day praises a man made up an hour ago. A voice any skilled clerk can do, in a style built on tricks, may be little more than a style.

• It was therefore necessary to rewrite a paragraph of Big Brother’s speech, in such a way as to make him predict the thing that had actually happened.
• a style at once military and pedantic, and, because of a trick of asking questions and then promptly answering them

Another reading

The Party, through Winston. The voice is easy for him because he knows the Party’s mind so well. His best work has “nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of what the Party wanted you to say.” When he speaks as Big Brother, the Party speaks through him, and the clerk is its instrument, not its author. In the end “some master brain in the Inner Party” chooses which version is said.

• delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of what the Party wanted you to say
• And presently some master brain in the Inner Party would select this version or that

Listen for

• Notices that the trick Winston copies is a question that answers itself, “What lessons do we learn from this fact, comrades?”, the opposite of a real question.
• Notices that Winston has even been trusted with the Times leading articles, “written entirely in Newspeak”: the Party lends him its most official voice.
• Notices how little the chapter says about who Big Brother is, and how much it says about the people who write his words.
• Weighs “familiar”: the style is known to everyone, so a good imitation cannot be told from the real thing.

If stuck

• What did Winston change in Big Brother’s speech about the war?
• What makes Big Brother’s style easy to copy?
• If someone else always wrote a leader’s words, would those words still be the leader’s?

A strong answer A strong response says who speaks, and argues from the morning’s work. One reader says the clerks do: Big Brother’s speech about Africa says whatever it was last rewritten to say, Winston’s draft of the Order for the Day praises a man invented an hour ago, and a voice made of tricks anyone can learn may be no more than a style. Another says the Party speaks through the clerk: Winston can do the voice because he knows “the principles of Ingsoc” and what “the Party wanted you to say”, and a “master brain” decides which version is kept. The best answers notice that Big Brother’s trick is a question that answers itself, and keep to what this chapter shows of him.

What it asks It asks the student to read Ogilvy as the Party’s idea of a perfect life. Winston gives him a drum, a sub-machine gun and a model helicopter at three, the Spies at six, and at eleven an uncle “denounced” to the Thought Police. He dies at twenty-three, leaping into the sea “despatches and all – an end, said Big Brother, which it was impossible to contemplate without feelings of envy.” Big Brother adds that Ogilvy “was a total abstainer and a non-smoker”, had “taken a vow of celibacy”, and had “no aim in life except the defeat of the Eurasian enemy and the hunting-down of spies”. The student explains why a Party would hold up this death as something to envy. Ogilvy is funny, and the talk can enjoy that, but it should not stop at the joke: his virtues are the Party’s own.

One reading

Because the perfect citizen is a dead one. Ogilvy has no wife, no family, no pastime but “a daily hour in the gymnasium”, and no talk but Ingsoc. Every private part of a life has been cut away, and his death finishes the job. To envy him is to wish for nothing of your own, which is what the Party wants of the living.

• had no recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium
• believing marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day devotion to duty

Another reading

Because envy is a measure the living always fail. Nobody alive can match a boy who refused all toys but a drum, a gun and a helicopter. Holding him up makes every listener a little ashamed of a wife, a cigarette, an idle hour. Envy keeps people looking up at the Party’s ideal and down at themselves, and a citizen who feels he falls short is easier to rule.

• At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum, a sub-machine gun and a model helicopter.
• There were occasions when Big Brother devoted his Order for the Day to commemorating some humble, rank-and-file Party member whose life and death he held up as an example worthy to be followed.

Listen for

• Notices what Ogilvy gives up for the Party, one by one: his uncle at eleven, marriage, drink, tobacco, every pastime but the gymnasium.
• Notices the hand grenade that killed “thirty-one Eurasian prisoners in one burst”, offered as one more proud step in a good life.
• Notices that Ogilvy is built from Winston’s “estimate of what the Party wanted you to say”: the portrait is of what Winston thinks the Party loves.
• Enjoys the comedy, the toys and the leap “despatches and all”, without letting it end the talk.

If stuck

• What does Ogilvy do at three, at eleven and at twenty-three?
• What does Ogilvy have no time for in his life?
• Why would anyone envy someone who has died?

A strong answer A strong response explains why a death is held up for envy, and argues from Ogilvy’s invented life. One reader says the Party’s perfect citizen is a dead one: Ogilvy has no family, no drink, no pastime but “a daily hour in the gymnasium” and no talk but Ingsoc, and his death only finishes the cutting away, so to envy him is to want nothing of your own. Another says envy is a measure the living are meant to fail: no one alive matches a boy who refused all toys but a drum, a gun and a helicopter, and a citizen ashamed of falling short looks up to the Party and down at himself. The best answers take Ogilvy’s virtues seriously as the Party’s, enjoy the comedy without stopping there, and notice that Winston built him from his “estimate of what the Party wanted you to say”.

What it asks It asks the student to test Winston’s own defence of the work. As he re-adjusts the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, he thinks “it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another.” The forecast for boots was “a hundred and forty-five million pairs”. The output was “given as sixty-two millions”. He marks the forecast down to “fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been over-fulfilled.” “Very likely no boots had been produced at all.” And “perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot.” The student builds a thesis on who, if anyone, the swap harms, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card should not call Winston a hypocrite in one stroke: his point, that statistics were “just as much a fantasy in their original version”, deserves a real answer.

One reading

No one. The figures had “no connection with anything in the real world”. Sixty-two millions was “no nearer the truth” than fifty-seven or a hundred and forty-five. The barefoot are barefoot whichever number is printed. You cannot betray a truth that was never on the page, so Winston is right that there is nothing here to forge.

• Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version.
• In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than a hundred and forty-five millions.

Another reading

Everyone who might have known. A forecast of a hundred and forty-five million against an output of sixty-two million was a lie caught out: two of the Party’s own numbers that did not agree. Rectifying them destroys the one trace that the Party promised and failed. Winston even goes past the job and writes in fifty-seven, so that a failure reads as a success. The barefoot lose more than boots. They lose any record that could show they were let down.

• Winston’s job was to rectify the original figures by making them agree with the later ones.
• Winston, however, in re-writing the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been over-fulfilled.

Listen for

• Notices that the argument comes to him “as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures”, while he is doing the very work it excuses.
• Notices “however”. His job was to make the figures “agree with the later ones”, but he goes further and writes in fifty-seven, “so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been over-fulfilled”.
• Sets the boots beside the chocolate: a “categorical pledge” of no cut becomes a warning, days before the ration falls “from thirty grammes to twenty”.
• Revises by separating harm to the truth, which may never have been on the page, from harm to the chance of proving anything: “In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.”

If stuck

• What was the forecast for boots, and what was the output?
• What number does Winston write in, and why that one?
• If a score was made up both before and after it was changed, did changing it matter?

A strong answer A strong response states a thesis on who, if anyone, is harmed, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says no one: the figures had “no connection with anything in the real world”, sixty-two millions was “no nearer the truth” than the others, and the barefoot are barefoot whatever is printed. The strongest objection is that the two numbers once disagreed, and that gap was the only trace of a broken promise; rectifying it, and writing in fifty-seven so the quota looks “over-fulfilled”, wipes out the chance of ever proving it. A good revision might hold that the swap harms not the truth, which was never there, but the evidence, and that the people who go barefoot are the ones who lose it.

What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. Winston thinks the work is “not even forgery”, yet his “greatest pleasure in life” is the hard job, the “delicate pieces of forgery” so intricate that “you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem”. He builds Ogilvy line by line, weighs a medal for him and refuses it, and feels “a profound conviction” that his version will beat the rival across the hall. “Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact.” The student builds a thesis on whether that pleasure makes him part of what he hates, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say that Winston feels guilt over the work: the chapter shows absorption and pride, not remorse. Nor may it say that his version is chosen: “There was no way of knowing whose version would finally be adopted”.

One reading

Yes. The Party’s lies do not make themselves. They need hands, and the best hands are the ones that care. Winston is “good at this kind of thing”, has been trusted with the Times leading articles, and wants his own invention to be the lie that becomes “truth”. A man who works for the pleasure of it gives more than a man who works from fear. His pleasure is part of how the Party gets its best work done.

• Winston was good at this kind of thing.
• and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth

Another reading

No, or not by the pleasure alone. What he enjoys is the puzzle, “as in the depths of a mathematical problem”, and a skill is not a loyalty. He would do the work either way, as everyone in the hall does. The job is the one part of the day that uses his whole mind, and the thought he ends on, that “you could create dead men but not living ones”, is a mind still looking hard at what it does. The pleasure may be the part of him the Party has not made.

• jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem
• It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones.

Listen for

• Follows the word “forgery” through the chapter: “not even forgery” for the boots, “delicate pieces of forgery” for the jobs he loves, and “the act of forgery” at the end.
• Weighs his craftsman’s reasons: he refuses Ogilvy the Order of Conspicuous Merit, the medal Withers once won, for “the unnecessary cross-referencing that it would entail”, and turns down a denunciation of traitors as “a little too obvious”. The work gives him room to have standards, and he has them.
• Sets the pleasure beside the chapter’s first sentence: the day he enjoys most begins with a “deep, unconscious sigh” that not even the telescreen can stop. What the pleasure means may depend on what the sigh is for.
• Revises by separating whether he serves the Party, which every worker in the hall does, from whether his pleasure adds anything to that service, and keeps to the page: no guilt, and no winning version.

If stuck

• What does the chapter call Winston’s greatest pleasure, and which jobs give it?
• What does Winston decide about Ogilvy’s medal, and why?
• Can you enjoy doing something well without agreeing with what it is for?

A strong answer A strong response states a thesis on whether the pleasure makes Winston part of what he hates, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says yes: the Party’s lies need skilled hands, Winston is “good at this kind of thing”, and he wants his own invention to become “the chosen lie”, so his pleasure is how the Party gets its best work. The strongest objection is that what he enjoys is the puzzle, “as in the depths of a mathematical problem”, and that his mind is still free enough to find it “curious” that you could create dead men but not living ones. A good revision might hold that the pleasure does not decide whose side he is on but does decide how well the Party is served, or that the work is a share in the lie whatever he feels, and the pleasure only shows how easily that share is given.