"America In The Crosshairs Of A Cultural Timebomb"

Fortresses! Just
think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade,
that's much better,' she added encouragingly as Winston, with a violent
lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time
in several years.



IV

With the deep, unconscious sigh which not even the nearness of the
telescreen could prevent him from uttering when his day's work started,
Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its
mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. Then he unrolled and clipped
together four small cylinders of paper which had already flopped out of the
pneumatic tube on the right-hand side of his desk.
In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of
the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a
larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of
Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last
was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or
tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at
short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed
memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or
even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic
action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in,
whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous
furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled. Each
contained a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated jargon --
not actually Newspeak, but consisting larg