anything in our own lifetime. But one can
imagine little knots of resistance springing up here and there -- small
groups of people banding themselves together, and gradually growing, and
even leaving a few records behind, so that the next generations can carry
on where we leave off.'
'I'm not interested in the next generation, dear. I'm interested in
us.'
'You're only a rebel from the waist downwards,' he told her.
She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms round him in
delight.
In the ramifications of party doctrine she had not the faintest
interest. Whenever he began to talk of the principles of Ingsoc,
doublethink, the mutability of 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