the past, and the denial of objective
reality, and to use Newspeak words, she became bored and confused and said
that she never paid any attention to that kind of thing. One knew that it
was all rubbish, so why let oneself be worried by it? She knew when to
cheer and when to boo, and that was all one needed. If he persisted in
talking of such subjects, she had a disconcerting habit of falling asleep.
She was one of those people who can go to sleep at any hour and in any
position. Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an
appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy
meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most
successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to
accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully
grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not
sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By
lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything,
and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue
behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a
bird.



VI

It had happened at last. The expected message had come. All his life,
it seemed to him, he had been waiting for this to happen.
He was walking down the long corridor at the Ministry and he was
almost at the spot where Julia had slipped the note into his hand when he
became aware that someone larger than himself was walking just behind him.
The person, whoever it was, gave a small cough, evidently as a prelude to
speaking. Winston stopped abruptly and