cannot be
contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling
from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up
from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is
merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats.
For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot
withstand. even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you.
'But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't know what it
is?'
O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the nearer table.
He set it down carefully on the baize cloth. Winston could hear the blood
singing in his ears. He had the feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He
was in the middle of a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with
sunlight, across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances. Yet
the cage with the rats was not two metres away from him. They were enormous
rats. They were at the age when a rat's muzzle grows blunt and fierce and
his fur brown instead of grey.
'The rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audience,
'although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You will have
heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters of this town. In some
streets a woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five
minutes. The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they
will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They
show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless.'
There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach
Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at
each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair.
That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.
O'Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pr