Orwell's Revenge Read Online Free PDF

WATCHING YOU.
    But how exactly does the telescreen work? What’s connected to what? Where and how do all the people who are watching all the other people select whom they will watch? Orwell never explains. He is in fact remarkably unspecific about the single critical piece of technology onwhich his book so completely depends. A few privileged members of the Inner Party can turn off their telescreens, but most people can’t. Nor do most people have any control over what they watch. The word “dial” (in connection with telescreens) appears only a single time in 1984, and thenas if by accident. Employees in the Ministry of Truth apparently can file a request for documents on their telescreens, but the documents are delivered via pneumatic tubes. If you need some ingenious, revolutionary, high-tech prop to glue your whole book together, you owe it to your reader toexplain how the gadget works. Orwell never does.
    All we know is that Big Brother has the screens, which convey everything. You have Newspeak, which conveys nothing. Big Brother is watching, always watching, watching everyone, watching you. And you? You are blinding yourself on Victory Gin.

CHAPTER 2
    As he put his hand to the doorknob Blair saw that he had left Smith’s diary open on the table. It was an inconceivablystupid thing to have done. He drew in his breath and opened the door. Instantly a warm wave of relief flowed through him. A large, stooping woman with wispy gray hair, a sacking apron, and shuffling carpet slipperswas standing outside.
    â€œOh, comrade,” she began in a dreary, whining sort of voice. “I thought I heard you come in. Do you think you could come across and have a look at our kitchen sink?It’s got blocked up. I’ve been trying to clear the pipe with a stick. But I can’t seem—”
    It was Mrs. Wilkes, Blair’s neighbor. He followed her down the passage. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of a woman who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery. She looked up and caught his eye, and her expression was as desolate as any he had ever seen. It struck him that she was thinking just the same thing as he was. She knew well enough what was happening to her—understood as well as he did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling on the slimy floor of a cold kitchen in a decaying building, poking a stick downa foul drain-pipe.
    The Wilkes’s flat was bigger than Blair’s, and dingy in a different way.In front of the fire there was almost always a line of damp washing, and in the middle of the room was a big kitchen table at which the family ate. Blair had never seen this table completely uncovered, but he had seen its various wrappings at different times. At the bottom there was a layer of old newspapers stained by Worcester Sauce; above that a sheet of sticky white oil cloth; above that a green serge cloth; above that a coarse linen cloth, never changed andseldom taken off. The kitchen sink was full nearly to the brim with filthy greenish water which smelt worse than ever of cabbage.
    It was all so typical, Blair thought. The buildings were falling apart. The electric power was horribly unreliable. Repairs, except those you could do for yourself, had to be sanctioned by remote committees, which were liable to hold up even the mending ofa window pane for two years. Blair knelt down and examined the angle-joint of the pipe. Mrs. Wilkes looked on helplessly.
    â€œOf course if my Vaunnie was home he’d put it right in a moment,” she said. “He loves anything like that. He’s ever so good with his hands,Vaunnie is.”
    Blair knew that Vaughan Wilkes was nothing of the sort. A low-ranking guard at the Ministry of Love, Wilkes was a fattish but active man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms —one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whomthe stability of the Party depended. He had no