The Ministry of Truth

by Dorian Lynskey

  Nineteen Eighty-Four is about many things, and its readers’ concerns dictate which one is paramount at any point in history. During the cold war, it was a book about totalitarianism. In the 1980s, it became a warning about invasive technology. Today, it is most of all a defence of truth. At the end of Trump’s first week in office, The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik apologised for previously thinking that Orwell’s warning was too crude for the modern world: “one is reminded of what Orwell got right about this kind of brute authoritarianism—and that was essentially that it rests on lies told so often, and so repeatedly, that fighting the lie becomes not simply more dangerous but more exhausting than repeating it . . . People aren’t meant to believe it; they’re meant to be intimidated by it. The lie is not a claim about specific facts; the lunacy is a deliberate challenge to the whole larger idea of sanity.” And so we come back to where we began, with Orwell in Spain. “Looking Back on the Spanish War” has probably been quoted more in the last three years than in the previous sixty-three:

  I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that “the facts” existed and were more or less discoverable . . . It is just this common basis of agreement, with its implication that human beings are all one species of animal, that totalitarianism destroys . . . The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past.

  Orwell’s fear that “the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world” is the dark heart of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It gripped him long before he came up with Big Brother, Oceania, Newspeak or the telescreen, and it’s more important than any of them. In its original 1949 review, Life correctly identified the essence of Orwell’s message: “If men continue to believe in such facts as can be tested and to reverence the spirit of truth in seeking greater knowledge, they can never be fully enslaved.” Seventy years later, that feels like a very large if.

  Afterword

  You know how Nineteen Eighty-Four ends. Shattered by Room 101, Winston Smith sits at a table in the Chestnut Tree Café, anesthetised with Victory Gin, and numbly traces an equation in the dust. But what exactly is it? In the first edition, and every edition since 1987, he writes: “2 + 2 = 5.” But for almost forty years the Penguin paperback omitted the five: “2 + 2 = .”

  Nobody has yet uncovered evidence that explains the omission. One theory is that it was just a printing error, albeit a suspiciously meaningful one. Another is that a renegade compositor, unable to contemplate total defeat, removed it. A third possibility is that Orwell himself made the alteration shortly before his death. Whatever the reason, the chink in the text lets in a ray of hope for Winston, and thus radically changes Orwell’s message. In Michael Radford’s movie, John Hurt writes, “2 + 2” and then stops. “I think you need that moment,” said Radford. “Maybe he’ll get out of this. I would have been very upset to put 2 + 2 = 5. It’s too dark. It doesn’t speak to the human spirit anymore.”

  Like the Appendix Theory, the case of the missing five reveals a powerful desire to believe that Winston’s story isn’t as dismal as it seems and that Orwell was holding out a scintilla of hope for attentive readers: the “spirit of Man” endures after all. Personally, I don’t think the book is devoid of hope. Inspired by each other’s company, a coward and a cynic become heroic to the point of risking everything, and Winston is ultimately destroyed only because an immensely powerful man makes it his full-time job to destroy him. Remember, too, that O’Brien’s crowing about the immortality of Ingsoc and the impossibility of resistance is not to be taken at face value. But I think that the force of Orwell’s warning depends on the reader feeling that, for Winston and Julia in 1984, it is already too late, so as to be reminded that, in the real world, there is still time.

  Since day one, hostile critics of Nineteen Eighty-Four have accused Orwell of giving up on humanity: the future will be dreadful, and you can’t do anything about it. But nothing in Orwell’s life and work supports a diagnosis of despair. On the contrary, aside from the brief wobble of “Inside the Whale,” he consistently used his “power of facing unpleasant facts” to inspire greater awareness, including self-awareness, so as to root out the lies and fallacies that plague political life and threaten freedom. He would not have gone to such ruinous lengths to write Nineteen Eighty-Four if he only wanted to inform his readers that they were doomed. He wanted to galvanise, not paralyse, as Philip Rahv of Partisan Review emphasised in his 1949 review: “To read this novel simply as a flat prediction of what is to come is to misread it. It is not a writ of fatalism to bind our wills . . . His intention is, rather, to prod the Western world into a more conscious and militant resistance to the totalitarian virus to which it is now exposed.” In other words: the future might be dreadful unless you do something about it.

  The seventieth anniversary of Nineteen Eighty-Four falls at a dark time for liberal democracy, no doubt. Yet around the world, millions of people in the “reality-based community” continue to push back against the Medium-Sized Lie, to reaffirm that facts matter, to fight for the preservation of honesty and integrity, and to insist on the freedom to say that two and two make four. For them, the book still has much to offer. Because Orwell was more interested in psychology than in systems, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a durable compendium of everything he ever learned about human nature as it relates to politics—every cognitive bias, unexamined prejudice, moral compromise, trick of language and mechanism of power that enables injustice to gain the upper hand—and remains an unbeatable guide to what to watch out for. Orwell was writing for his own time but also, like Winston, “for the future, for the unborn.” As he wrote in his preface to Animal Farm, liberal values “are not indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by conscious effort.”

  Nineteen Eighty-Four was Orwell’s final, essential contribution to that collective effort. In the statement he dictated to Fredric Warburg from his bed in Cranham sanatorium during his final months, he explained the fundamental reason why he wrote it: not to bind our wills but to strengthen them. “The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one. Don’t let it happen. It depends on you.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness,” George Orwell claimed in “Why I Write.” At the risk of disappointing him, I have to say that writing this book was one of the most rewarding and enjoyable experiences of my life. That was largely due to the feeling that I was not alone.

  My agents Antony Topping and Zoë Pagnamenta believed in me and my idea when I was at a low ebb. Without their hard work, encouragement and advice, this book would not exist. My editors, Gerald Howard at Doubleday and Ravi Mirchandani at Picador, understood from the start exactly what I was trying to do; their wise counsel and good humour enabled me to do it. I am also grateful to their colleagues, notably Nora Grubb at Doubleday and Paul Martinovic at Picador. Thanks to David Pearson and Michael Windsor for their striking jacket designs, Amy Stackhouse for her rigorous copyediting, and Alexandra Dao for my first proper author photograph in too many years.

  Dan Jolin, Lucy Jolin, John Mullen, Alexis Petridis, Padraig Reidy and Jude Rogers all read early drafts of various chapters (every single one in Lucy’s case) and gave me invaluable feedback. I discussed the idea with Dan before I’d written a word of the proposal and he helped me turn something sprawling and incoherent into a focused project. Countless friends encouraged me during the writing of this book, giving me the vital conviction that it would be something that people wanted to read. Every thoughtful question or enthusiastic Facebook comment helped. Particular thanks to Joshua Black
burn, Matt Blackden, Jude Clarke, Sarah Ditum, Sarah Donaldson, Tom Doyle, Ian Dunt, Paul Hewson, Caitlin Moran, Brídín Murphy Mitchell, Richard Niland, Hugo Rifkind, my mother, Tola, and my sister, Tammy.

  I’m enormously grateful to Robert Icke, Duncan Macmillan and Michael Radford for taking the time to sit down with me to discuss their adaptations of Nineteen Eighty-Four and their personal theories about the book. Emma Pritchard at the Almeida Theatre and Alice Phipps at United Agents facilitated those interviews. Helen Lewis kindly introduced me to Robert. Tony Zanetta, Chris O’Leary and Paul Trynka answered my questions about David Bowie’s relationship with Nineteen Eighty-Four. Susie Boyt generously offered to show me unpublished letters that Orwell had written to her father-in-law, David Astor. Michaelangelo Matos shared Orwell-related research from his forthcoming book about music in the year 1984, which I can’t wait to read. Ewan Pearson sent me an elusive piece of source material. John Niven wisely advised me to ditch the working title, and it only took me a year to follow his advice. I hope he likes the new one.

  As a freelance journalist, I relied on my editors to give me time off from my regular commitments and to hold the door open for when I was ready to return. I’m very grateful to Ted Kessler, Niall Doherty and Chris Catchpole at Q; Bill Prince at GQ; Helen Lewis at The New Statesman; Nick de Semlyen at Empire; Rob Fearn, Laura Snapes and all my editors at The Guardian; and Andrew Harrison and my colleagues on the Remainiacs podcast. Thanks also to Remainiacs listeners for putting up with an unreasonable number of Orwell references. What can I say? The man got into my head.

  So, too, did some of the people who have written about Orwell. I’ve never met any of them but I enjoyed spending time in their company, in a manner of speaking, especially Robert Colls, Peter Davison, Jeffrey Meyers, John Rodden, William Steinhoff, D. J. Taylor and the late Bernard Crick. I am indebted to their scholarship. I am also grateful to the staff of the Orwell Archive at University College London and of the British Library, where the vast majority of this book was researched and written. After the National Health Service, I consider the BL to be Britain’s most cherishable public institution. Writing a book whose central theme is the importance of objective truth sharpened my appreciation of all the journalists, scholars and fact-checkers who endeavour to get the facts straight in an era when lies, hoaxes, rumours and errors proliferate. Their ranks include the editors and contributors of Wikipedia and Snopes, tireless online communities which renew my faith in people’s determination to see things as they are.

  Nobody has done more to ensure that this book was not a horrible, exhausting struggle than Lucy Aitken, who has been with me every step of the way, from the first inkling to the final edit. In addition to reading drafts of several chapters, and bringing her deep knowledge of the advertising industry to the section about Apple’s “1984” commercial, she offered endless encouragement, curiosity and love. It is to her, and our daughters Eleanor and Rosa, that this book is dedicated. May we all live to see better times.

  APPENDIX

  A PRÉCIS OF NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  It is a bright cold day in April and the clocks are striking thirteen. Winston Smith, thirty-nine, goes home to his apartment in Victory Mansions, London, Airstrip One, Oceania, to begin a secret diary. This is a dangerous endeavour in a one-party state where the Thought Police, spy helicopters and two-way telescreens create a culture of constant surveillance. The ubiquitous posters of Oceania’s mysterious leader read: “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.” Winston manufactures propaganda in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, a towering white building emblazoned with the slogans of the Party: “WAR IS PEACE / FREEDOM IS SLAVERY / IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” The Ministries of Love, Peace and Plenty have similarly ironic names. Winston has been inspired to start the diary by that morning’s Two Minutes Hate, a ritual directed at Emmanuel Goldstein, the alleged traitor, author of a book of heresies, and leader of the underground resistance movement known as the Brotherhood. During the ritual, Winston fixated on two people who felt significant: a charismatic official from Ingsoc’s Inner Party called O’Brien and a dark-haired young woman who works for the fiction department and may be a spy for the Thought Police. The memory spurs him to write “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER.” From that moment, Winston knows he is doomed.

  CHAPTER 2

  The center2wife of Winston’s neighbour and Records Department colleague Parsons asks him to help her unblock her kitchen sink. The Parsons’ children are Spies, encouraged by the Party to report anyone, even their own parents, whom they suspect of thoughtcrime. While working on the sink, Winston remembers a dream seven years earlier in which O’Brien promised to meet him in the place where there is no darkness. Back in his apartment, he dedicates his diary to the future and the past.

  CHAPTER 3

  Winston dreams of his mother and sister, who disappeared during the 1950s, and feels immense guilt, though he can’t say why. The dream shifts to the dark-haired girl, removing her clothes in a rural paradise he calls the Golden Country. While performing compulsory physical exercises in front of the telescreen, Winston’s mind wanders to the way the Party rewrites history: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” It cannot be publicly admitted, for instance, that Oceania was once at war with Eastasia and not Eurasia. This is an example of doublethink, the mental habit of believing two contradictory things at the same time, as the Party demands. Winston cannot trust his own memories.

  CHAPTER 4

  Winston goes back to work at the Ministry of Truth, where he amends back copies of the Times to reflect the latest party line, incinerating previous versions in the memory hole. He studies his colleagues: a small, nervous man called Tillotson and an absent-minded poet called Ampleforth. He rewrites a recent speech by Big Brother to eliminate Withers, a war hero who has since been purged and rendered an unperson, and replace him with Comrade Ogilvy, who is his own invention. When he is finished, Ogilvy exists and Withers does not.

  CHAPTER 5

  Winston has lunch in the canteen with the servile drudge Parsons and the philologist Syme, who rhapsodises about the advance of Newspeak: a condensed vocabulary designed to restrict thought. Winston sees the dark-haired girl again and still suspects her of being a Party spy.

  CHAPTER 6

  Winston recalls his brief, unhappy marriage to the Party loyalist Katharine a decade earlier, and a visit to a prostitute three years ago. The memories make him consider the suppression of sexual desire in Oceania.

  CHAPTER 7

  Winston ponders the status of the proles and the destruction of history. He remembers seeing the alleged traitors Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford in the Chestnut Tree Café and, years later, finding a photograph that proved their innocence, though he immediately destroyed it. He vows to cling onto his own sanity and belief in objective truth, exemplified by the equation 2 + 2 = 4.

  CHAPTER 8

  Defying the prohibition against individualism, or ownlife, Winston ventures into the prole district, where he unsuccessfully questions a confused old man about life before Ingsoc. He visits the junkshop where he bought his diary and purchases a coral paperweight. The owner, Mr. Charrington, tells him about an old song called “Oranges and Lemons.” On the way home, Winston sees the dark-haired girl again. He thinks about his inevitable torture and death.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 1

  The dark-haired girl passes Winston a note saying “I love you.” They agree to meet in Victory Square during a display of Eurasian prisoners, where they arrange a rendezvous in the countryside west of London.

  CHAPTER 2

  Winston meets the dark-haired girl in fields which are almost identical to the Golden Country of his dreams. Introducing herself as Julia, she reveals that she, too, hates the Party. They make love among the bluebells.

  CHAPTER 3

  May. As Winston and Julia’s secret affair develops, he learns more abo
ut her private, apolitical rebellion against the Party. “We are the dead,” he tells her.

  CHAPTER 4

  Winston rents the room above Charrington’s shop as a love nest. From the window he hears a prole woman singing a song manufactured by the Music Department. It is improbably potent.

  CHAPTER 5

  June. Syme disappears. Preparations for Hate Week accelerate. Winston and Julia compare world views.

  CHAPTER 6

  O’Brien invites Winston to visit his home and collect a copy of the latest Newspeak dictionary.

  CHAPTER 7

  In a dream Winston remembers betraying his mother and sister over a piece of chocolate on the day they disappeared. The dream reminds him that the proles, unlike Party members, have stayed human. Winston and Julia vow that they will never betray each other.

  CHAPTER 8

  Winston and Julia visit O’Brien’s apartment and ask to join Goldstein’s Brotherhood. Attended by his manservant Martin, O’Brien makes them pledge to make enormous sacrifices and commit terrible crimes in the name of the Brotherhood. He arranges for Winston to receive a copy of Goldstein’s book, which explains the true nature of Ingsoc. The two men swap lines from “Oranges and Lemons.”

  CHAPTER 9

  August. Just as Hate Week reaches its climax, it is declared that Oceania is in fact at war with Eastasia: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. At the rally, Winston receives Goldstein’s book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. In bed with Julia, he reads the best part of two chapters, which explain the reason for continual war, the similarity between the three super-states, the structure of the Party and the operation of doublethink. He stops reading at a crucial point because Julia has fallen asleep.