Читать книгу 1984. A2 - Джордж Оруэлл, George Orwell - Страница 5

Winston sat at his desk, getting ready for work. He put on his glasses to look at the four pieces of paper beside him. Winston's job was to correct old newspaper articles, so they matched what the Party wanted people to believe.

In Winston's office, there were holes in the walls called memory holes. When Winston needed to destroy something, he put it in a memory hole. After that, no one could ever see these papers again.

Winston read the four messages. In one of them, for example, Big Brother made a prediction about the war, but it turned out to be wrong. Winston now had to rewrite the news to make it seem like Big Brother was always right. Another one mentioned the chocolate rations: although the Ministry of Plenty promised to keep the chocolate rations on the same level, they became smaller. Winston had to correct the numbers to make everyone believe the change was planned.

When Winston finished rewriting the news, he sent them through memory holes. Winston believed he wasn't lying – he just replaced one piece of nonsense with another. And he wasn't the only person who did this: his whole department at the Ministry of Truth was changing history. They also corrected books, films, and other records.

Wilson saw a colleague across the hall. Winston didn't know that person at all. In the department, people rarely talked about their jobs. They hardly ever saw each other – unless they were all attending a Hate event. After all, they were too busy writing newspapers, films, books, and everything else.

Winston finally got to the fourth message. It spoke about some Mr Withers, who was now non-existent. Big Brother used to praise him a lot, but now any information about him in Big Brother's speeches had to be different. So, Winston invented a man – Mr Ogilvy, who didn't exist an hour ago, but was now a fact.

The Party wanted to control everything people knew about the past. The Ministry of Truth also produced newspapers and entertainment for the poorer people called “proles.” These were filled with sports, crime stories, and gossip to distract them.

Glossary

beside [bɪ'saɪd] – prep рядом с

distract [dɪ'strækt] – v отвлекать

entertainment [ˌentə'teɪnmənt] – n развлечение

exist [ɪɡ'zɪst] – v существовать

gossip ['ɡɒsɪp] – n сплетня

mention ['menʃən] – v упоминать

non-existent [ˌnɒnɪɡ'zɪstənt] – adj несуществующий

nonsense ['nɒnsəns] – n чепуха

praise [preɪz] – v хвалить

prediction [prɪ'dɪkʃən] – n предсказание, прогноз

turn out [tɜ:n aʊt] – v оказываться, заканчиваться

unless [ən'les] – conj если не