pencil felt thick and awkward in his fingers. He began to write
down the thoughts that came into his head. He wrote first in large clumsy
capitals:

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it:

TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE

But then there came a sort of check. His mind, as though shying away
from something, seemed unable to concentrate. He knew that he knew what
came next, but for the moment he could not recall it. When he did recall
it, it was only by consciously reasoning out what it must be: it did not
come of its own accord. He wrote:

GOD IS POWER

He accepted everything. The past was alterable. The past never had
been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at
war with Eastasia. Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford were guilty of the
crimes they were charged with. He had never seen the photograph that
disproved their guilt. It had never existed, he had invented it. He
remembered remembering contrary things, but those were false memories,
products of self-deception. How easy it all was! Only surrender, and
everything else followed. It was like swimming against a current that swept
you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to
turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had
changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any
case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was easy,
except--!
Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense.
The law of gravity was nonsense. 'If I wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could
float off this f