0 1984
the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward,
his free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with
his speech. One minute more, and the feral roars of rage
were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued
exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.
The thing that impressed Winston in looking back was
that the speaker had switched from one line to the other ac-
tually in midsentence, not only without a pause, but without
even breaking the syntax. But at the moment he had other
things to preoccupy him. It was during the moment of dis-
order while the posters were being torn down that a man
whose face he did not see had tapped him on the shoulder
and said, ‘Excuse me, I think you’ve dropped your brief-
case.’ He took the brief-case abstractedly, without speaking.
He knew that it would be days before he had an opportuni-
ty to look inside it. The instant that the demonstration was
over he went straight to the Ministry of Truth, though the
time was now nearly twenty-three hours. The entire staff
of the Ministry had done likewise. The orders already issu-
ing from the telescreen, recalling them to their posts, were
hardly necessary.
Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always
been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political lit-
erature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports
and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets,
films, sound-tracks, photographs—all had to be rectified
at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued,
it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended
that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia,