Chapter IV
At the start of the day Winston sighs, clears his speakwrite, and prepares four small slips of paper delivered by the pneumatic tube. Each slip contains a brief correction directive written in Newspeak jargon. He retrieves the relevant issues of the Times, noting that the Party’s official statements often conflict with reality. One message requires rewriting Big Brother’s speech to match an actual Eurasian offensive in South India; another mandates adjusting false consumption‑goods forecasts for the Ninth Three‑Year Plan; a third corrects a promised chocolate ration reduction by substituting a vague future warning; the fourth involves a more complex rewrite of an unsatisfactory Big Brother Order for the Day.
Winston submits the corrected articles, crumples and discards the originals in a “memory hole” where they are incinerated, explaining the endless cycle of alteration that keeps the past continually up‑to‑date. He reflects on the broad scope of the Ministry of Truth’s operations—altering newspapers, books, films, and any document that could betray Party doctrine—so that all records eventually reflect only Party‑approved truth.
He observes his neighbor, Tillotson, a dark‑chinned man working at his own speakwrite, and notes a sand‑haired woman who tracks the erasure of “unpersons.” He also mentions Ampleforth, a whimsical clerk tasked with producing ideologically acceptable poetry. Winston contemplates the fates of individuals who have vanished, recalling that about thirty people he knows have disappeared, including Tillotson’s own husband, who was vaporised.
The narrative shifts to Winston’s deeper assignment: rewriting a Big Brother Order that originally praised the organization FFCC and highlighted Comrade Withers, who has since become an “unperson.” Winston speculates on the reasons for Withers’ disgrace—corruption, heresy, or mere political convenience—and decides the Order must be replaced with a wholly fictitious heroic figure. He invents Comrade Ogilvy, a nonexistent youth who performed extraordinary deeds from childhood through military service and died heroically over the Indian Ocean, complete with a fabricated biography and possible award. Winston dictating the new Order in Big Brother’s style, embeds the fabricated story into the official record, confident that his version will survive the Party’s selection process. He ends the chapter reflecting on the paradox that the Party can create dead men but not living ones, as Ogilvy’s invented past will persist as authentic history.