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06.09.2021Heading: Finishing

Part one

I

It was a cold, clear April day, and the clock struck thirteen. Burying his chin in his chest to save himself from the evil wind, Winston Smith hurriedly darted through the glass door of the Victory apartment building, but nevertheless let in a whirlwind of granular dust.

The lobby smelled of boiled cabbage and old rugs. There was a colored poster hanging on the wall opposite the entrance, too big for the room. The poster showed a huge, more than a meter wide face - the face of a man of about forty-five, with a thick black mustache, coarse, but masculinely attractive. Winston headed for the stairs. There was no need to go to the elevator. Even at the best of times, it rarely worked, and now the electricity was cut off during the daytime. There was a savings regime - they were preparing for the Week of Hate. Winston had to overcome seven marches; he was in his forties, he had a varicose ulcer above his ankle; he climbed slowly and stopped several times to rest. On each landing, the same face looked out from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that no matter where you went, your eyes would not let go. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU, the caption read.

In the apartment, a rich voice said something about the production of pig iron, read out figures. The voice came from an oblong metal plate embedded in the right wall that looked like a cloudy mirror. Winston turned the knob, his voice weakened, but the speech was still intelligible. This device (it was called a telescreen) could be turned off, but it was impossible to turn it off completely. Winston moved to the window: a small, puny man, he seemed even more frail in the blue overalls of a party member. His hair was very blond, and his ruddy face was peeling from bad soap, blunt blades, and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

The world outside, behind closed windows, breathed cold. The wind swirled dust and scraps of paper; and although the sun was shining and the sky was a stark blue, everything in the city looked colorless except for the posters plastered everywhere. From every conspicuous angle the face of the black-whiskered looked out. From the house opposite - too. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU - said the signature, and dark eyes looked into the eyes of Winston. Below, above the pavement, a poster with a torn off corner fluttered in the wind, now hiding, now revealing a single word: ANGSOTS. A helicopter glided between the rooftops in the distance, hovered for a moment like a cadaver fly, and swooped away along the curve. It was a police patrol looking into people's windows. But patrols didn't count. Only the Thought Police counted.

Behind Winston, the voice from the telescreen was still talking about iron smelting and overfulfillment of the ninth three-year plan. The telescreen worked for reception and transmission. He caught every word as long as it was not whispered too softly; moreover, as long as Winston remained in the field of view of the cloudy plate, he was not only heard, but also seen. Of course, no one knew whether they were watching him at the moment or not. How often and on what schedule the Thought Police connected to your cable was anyone's guess. It is possible that they followed everyone - and around the clock. In any case, they could connect at any time. You had to live - and you lived, out of habit, which turned into instinct - with the knowledge that your every word is being overheard and your every movement, until the lights went out, they are watching.

Winston kept his back to the telescreen. It's safer that way; though—he knew it—his back betrayed him too. A kilometer from his window, the white building of the Ministry of Truth, the place of his service, towered over the grubby city. Here it is, Winston thought with vague distaste, here it is London, the capital city of Airstrip I, the third most populated province in the state of Oceania. He turned back to his childhood, trying to remember if London had always been like this. Have these rows of dilapidated 19th-century houses, propped up with logs, with cardboard-patched windows, patchwork roofs, drunken walls of front gardens, always stretched into the distance? And these clearings from the bombings, where alabaster dust curled and fireweed climbed over piles of debris; and big vacant lots where bombs have cleared a place for a whole mushroom family of squalid clapboard huts that look like chicken coops? But - to no avail, he could not remember; nothing remains of childhood but fragmentary, brightly lit scenes, devoid of background and most often unintelligible.

The Ministry of Truth—in Newspeak, mini-rights—was strikingly different from everything else around. This gigantic pyramidal building, shining with white concrete, rose, ledge by ledge, to a height of three hundred meters. From his window, Winston could read three Party slogans written in elegant type on the white façade:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS POWER

According to rumors, the Ministry of Truth contained three thousand offices above the surface of the earth and a corresponding root system in the bowels. In different parts of London there were only three other buildings of a similar type and size. They towered so high above the city that from the roof of the Pobeda residential building one could see all four at once. They housed four ministries, the entire state apparatus: the Ministry of Truth, which was in charge of information, education, leisure and the arts; the peace ministry, which was in charge of the war; the Ministry of Love, which was in charge of policing, and the Ministry of Plenty, which was in charge of the economy. In Newspeak: minilaw, miniworld, minilover and minizo.

The Ministry of Love was terrifying. There were no windows in the building. Winston never crossed his threshold, never came closer than half a kilometer to him. It was possible to get there only on official business, and even then, having overcome a whole labyrinth of barbed wire, steel doors and disguised machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading to the outer ring of fences were patrolled by black-uniformed guards who looked like gorillas and armed with jointed clubs.

Winston turned sharply. He put on an expression of calm optimism, most appropriate in front of a telescreen, and walked to the other side of the room, to the tiny kitchenette. Leaving the ministry at that hour, he sacrificed lunch in the dining room, and there was no food at home - except for a slice of black bread, which had to be saved until tomorrow morning. He took from the shelf a bottle of colorless liquid with a plain white label: Victory Gin. The smell of gin was nasty, oily, like Chinese rice vodka. Winston poured out an almost full cup, braced himself and swallowed it like medicine.

His face immediately turned red, and tears flowed from his eyes. The drink was like nitric acid; not only that: after a sip, it felt like you were hit on the back with a rubber truncheon. But soon the burning sensation in the stomach subsided, and the world began to look more cheerful. He pulled out a cigarette from a crumpled pack marked "Victory Cigarettes", absently holding it vertically, as a result of which all the tobacco from the cigarette spilled onto the floor. Winston was more careful with the next one. He returned to the room and sat down at a table to the left of the telescreen. From a desk drawer he took out a pen, a vial of ink, and a thick note book with a red spine and marbled binding.

For some unknown reason, the telescreen in the room was not installed as usual. He was placed not in the end wall, from where he could survey the whole room, but in a long one, opposite the window. To his side was a shallow niche, probably intended for bookshelves, where Winston now sat. Sitting deeper in it, he turned out to be inaccessible to the telescreen, or rather, invisible. Of course, they could eavesdrop on him, but they could not watch him while he was sitting there. This somewhat unusual layout of the room may have given him the idea to do what he intended to do now.

But besides that, a marble-bound book prompted me. The book was amazingly beautiful. The smooth, cream-colored paper had yellowed slightly with age, the kind of paper that hadn't been produced for forty years or more. Winston suspected that the book was even older. He spotted it in a junk dealer's window in a slum neighborhood (where exactly, he'd already forgotten) and was tempted to buy it. Party members were not supposed to go to ordinary shops (this was called "purchasing goods on the free market"), but the ban was often ignored: many things, such as shoelaces and razor blades, could not be obtained otherwise. Winston looked around quickly, dived into the shop and bought a book for two dollars and fifty. Why, he didn't know yet. He furtively brought it home in a briefcase. Even empty, it compromised the owner.

He intended now to start a diary. This was not an illegal act (there was nothing illegal at all, since there were no more laws themselves), but if the diary was discovered, Winston would face death or, at best, twenty-five years in a hard labor camp. Winston inserted a nib into the pen and licked it to remove the grease. The pen was an archaic instrument, rarely even signed, and Winston obtained his secretly and not without difficulty: this beautiful cream paper, it seemed to him, deserved to be written on with real ink, and not scratched with an ink pencil. In fact, he was not used to writing by hand. Except for the shortest notes, he dictated everything in speech writing, but dictation, of course, was not suitable here. He dipped his pen and hesitated. His stomach was seized. To touch the paper with a pen is an irreversible step. In small clumsy letters he wrote:

And leaned back. He was overcome by a sense of complete helplessness. First of all, he did not know if it was true that the year was 1984. About this - no doubt: he was almost sure that he was 39 years old, and he was born in 1944 or 45; but now it is impossible to fix any date more precisely than with an error of a year or two.

And for whom, he suddenly wondered, is this diary being written? For the future, for those who have not yet been born. His mind wandered over the dubious date written on the sheet, and suddenly stumbled upon the Newspeak word doublethink. And for the first time he could see the full scale of his undertaking. How to communicate with the future? This is essentially impossible. Either tomorrow would be like today and then he wouldn't listen to him, or it would be different and Winston's troubles would tell him nothing.

Winston sat staring blankly at the paper. Harsh military music blared from the telescreen. It is curious: he not only lost the ability to express his thoughts, but even forgot what he wanted to say. How many weeks he had been preparing for this moment, and it did not even occur to him that more than one courage would be required here. Just write it down - what's easier? Transfer to paper the endless disturbing monologue that has been resounding in his head for years, years. And now even this monologue has dried up. And the ulcer above the ankle itched unbearably. He was afraid to scratch his leg - this always started inflammation. The seconds ticked by. Only the whiteness of the paper, and the itching over the ankle, and the rattling music, and the light drunkenness in his head - that was all that his senses now perceived.

And suddenly he began to write - just out of panic, very vaguely aware that he was coming from a pen. Beaded, but childishly clumsy lines crawled up and down the sheet, losing first capital letters, and then dots.

April 4, 1984 Yesterday at the cinema. All war movies. One very good one somewhere in the Mediterranean is bombing a ship with refugees. The audience is amused by the shots where a huge fat man tries to swim away and he is pursued by a helicopter. at first we see how he flounders like a dolphin in the water, then we see him from a helicopter through the sight, then he is all perforated and the sea around him is pink and immediately sinks as if he had taken water through the holes, when he went to the bottom the audience began to laugh. Then a boat full of children and a helicopter hovering over it. there on the bow sat a middle-aged woman who looked like a Jewess and in her arms was a boy of about three years old. The boy screams in fear and hides his head on her chest as if he wants to screw into her, and she calms him down and covers him with her hands, although she herself turned blue with fear, all the time she tries to cover him with her hands better, as if she can shield from bullets, then the helicopter dropped on them A 20 kilogram bomb, a terrible explosion and the boat shattered into pieces, then a wonderful shot of a child's hand flying up, up straight into the sky, it must have been filmed from the glass nose of a helicopter and loudly applauded in the party ranks, but where the proles were sitting, some woman raised a scandal and a cry, that this should not be shown in front of children where it suits where it suits in front of children and scandalized until the police took her out they took her out hardly anything will be done to her you never know what the prols say typical prolov’s reaction to this no one pays ...

Winston stopped writing, partly because his hand was cramped. He himself did not understand why he spilled this nonsense onto paper. But it is curious that while he was moving the pen, a completely different incident stood in his memory, so much so that at least now write it down. It became clear to him that because of this incident, he decided to suddenly go home and start a diary today.

It happened in the morning in the ministry - if you can say "happened" about such a nebula.

The time was approaching eleven o'clock, and in the documentation department where Winston worked, the staff were taking chairs out of the booths and placing them in the middle of the hall in front of the big telescreen, gathering for a two-minute hate. Winston prepared to take his place in the middle row, when two more suddenly appeared, familiar faces, but he did not have to talk to them. He often met the girl in the corridors. He did not know her name, only that she worked in the Literature Department. From the fact that he sometimes saw her with a wrench and oily hands, she was working on one of the novel-writing machines. She was freckled, with thick dark hair, about twenty-seven; behaved self-confidently, moved swiftly in a sporty way. The scarlet sash - the emblem of the Youth Anti-Sex Union - tightly wrapped several times around the waist of the overalls, emphasized steep hips. Winston disliked her at first sight. And he knew why. From her emanated the spirit of hockey fields, cold baths, tourist outings and, in general, orthodoxy. He disliked almost all women, especially young and pretty ones. It was the women, and the young in the first place, who were the most fanatical adherents of the party, swallowers of slogans, voluntary spies and sniffers of heresy. And this one seemed to him even more dangerous than the others. Once she met him in the corridor, looked askance - as if pierced by a glance - and black fear crept into his soul. He even had a sneaking suspicion that she was in the Thought Police. However, this was unlikely. Nevertheless, whenever she was near, Winston experienced an uneasy feeling, mixed with hostility and fear.

There are few novels in the history of 20th century literature as important as the book that George Orwell wrote. "1984" ( summary we will describe in the article) is a dystopia that tells about the society of the future, which lives under the yoke of totalitarian power.

Origins of the novel

Writer George Orwell completed his main book in 1948. The title of the novel "1984" is a hidden reference to the date of its creation (the last two digits are reversed). Orwell's book has a lot of hidden allusions and metaphors.

The novel was written in the first post-war years, when all of Europe experienced the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust. Of course, these tragic events influenced Orwell's attitude and were reflected in his work. First of all, the writer on the pages of "1984" continued to develop those ideas that he based on his other famous story - "Animal Farm", written a little earlier.

Winston Smith

The main character of the work is Winston Smith. At the time of the story, he is approximately 39 years old (that is, he was born in 1944 or 1945). The biography of this ordinary resident of London is a detailed cast of the era. Orwell, with the help of the memoirs of his protagonist, restores to the reader a picture of the history of several decades.

Thoughtcrime

The whole dystopian novel is imbued with fantastic absurdity, which has come to a society that has suffered from nuclear war, revolutions and the horrors of state terror. The authorities monitored their citizens 24 hours a day using the latest technology (cameras, TV screens, etc.). In exactly the same way, the state was massively conveying to the inhabitants the information necessary for the regime (on an unswitched radio, newspapers, etc.).

The plot of the plot is that Smith, who worked in the Ministry of Truth, despite widespread doublethink, begins to doubt what the party says. In fact, he commits the most serious crime in his society - a thought crime. This is yet another "invention" of Orwell, inspired by the totalitarian regimes of the mid-20th century. Indeed, any inhabitant of Oceania (as Smith's home country was now called) who even thought of something that went against the line of the party was subjected to extermination.

Two Minutes of Hate

The first few chapters of his book, Orwell introduces the reader to the dystopian world of the future. Winston Smith attends the 2 Minute Hate. This event is regularly held within the walls of the official public institutions. Two Minutes are general gatherings at which video reports are shown explaining to viewers the importance of hating enemies.

The main enemies of Oceania are Eurasia and Eastasia. According to Orwell, the world is a map divided approximately equally among three countries. Eurasia is the legal successor of the Soviet Union, where neo-Bolshevism is the official ideology. Very little is known about Eastasia. There are references in the novel that this state lives according to the so-called death cult.

Wars of Oceania

One way or another, all three countries exist within the framework of totalitarian ideologies. These states are continuously world war. The conflict goes on at the time to which the narrative in the novel refers. London (the capital of Oceania) is far from the fronts, so only information carefully processed by the Ministry of Truth comes here.

At the two-minute hate, where Smith is present, the audience again (as every day before) learns about the enemy plans of Eastasia and Eurasia. They must be destroyed. The entire economy of Oceania is subordinated to this goal. All the resources and energy of the population are spent on supporting the front. Such an economic imbalance was also normal for real totalitarian states that existed during the years of Orwell's life. 1984 is a novel that vividly depicts the consequences of the triumph of such regimes.

O'Brien and Julia

At the 2 Minute Hate, Smith meets two characters who will later turn out to be key characters in the entire novel. First, this is a member of the O'Brien party (his name is unknown). Smith hopes that he also doubts what the Party is saying. Orwell worked on this character for a long time. "1984" (a brief summary is impossible without mentioning other characters) reveals a few facts of his biography. Nevertheless, the author himself said that this mysterious person has an important prototype - Gletkin from the novel "Blinding Darkness" by Arthur Koestler.

The second important character is Julia - also a member of the party. At first, Smith was suspicious of her, fearing that she was spying on him and could inform the punitive authorities. Once Winston went to the residential area of the proles (proletarians - the lowest class in society), where he visited a trading shop. Such travel was undesirable for party members. On the way back, Smith ran into Julia. He was horrified at the thought that the girl might report where she had seen him.

Secret meetings

However, the next day, Julia sent Winston a secret note in which she confessed her love to him. It was rather problematic to openly do this - the relations between men and women were extremely strictly controlled by "Angsots". According to the official ideology, all feelings were considered a relic of the past, and any sexual intercourse was only biological in nature, it was a necessary measure for the birth of offspring.

But Julia and Winston realize that there is something more than just between them. They begin to secretly meet, appointing each other dates in deserted places. In the Proles, the couple rents an apartment in the same trading shop where Smith once went.

goldstein

Soon the main characters of the work decide to open themselves to O'Brien. They hope that this mysterious and sympathetic man will be able to bring the couple together with the mysterious Brotherhood. The most controversial rumors circulated about this organization. According to Smith, the Brotherhood consisted of opponents of the regime who were trying to fight the Ingsots.

The main characters meet O'Brien. He confesses that he is indeed a member of the Brotherhood. A party official surreptitiously gives Julia and Winston a book authored by a certain Goldstein. State propaganda called him internal enemy No. 1. It was an oppositionist who was trying to destroy the totalitarian regime of Oceania.

denouement

It's safe to say that "1984" is a novel with an unexpected plot. Some time after the fateful conversation with O'Brien, Winston and Julia were captured by the Thought Police in their safe house. It turned out that the owner of the shop, from whom they rented an apartment, was a secret informer of the authorities. The thought police just specialized in finding and capturing traitors whose thoughts ran counter to the party ideology.

The couple is separated. Smith ended up in the dungeons of the Ministry of Love, which Orwell also came up with. "1984" (you will find a summary in this article) at this point comes to its denouement. Now the captured Winston will have to go through all the interrogations and tortures that are usually carried out on traitors.

Smith's recantation

To the surprise of the protagonist, O'Brien becomes his executioner - the same person whom he trusted when he told about his doubts in "Angsots". Smith endures physical torture, but does not give up his beliefs (this is what they demanded of him). Prior to this, novels in English did not contain this. Orwell described in detail the bullying and the inner psychological state of Smith, who endured pain and humiliation.

Gradually, Winston began to yield to O'Brien. Inwardly, he hoped that he would be able to deceive the Ministry of Love by making all the necessary confessions, but without abandoning his convictions in his heart. Finally, Smith has the last thing he has not yet renounced - love for Julia. But even that feeling was destroyed. O'Brien tapped into Smith's old childhood fear during the last torture. It was the fear of rats. Winston was chained face-first to a cage containing hungry, carnivorous rodents.

The fear was so acute that Smith agreed to confess to anything, just to stop the torture. After that, he was released from the Ministry of Love and Room 101. In the final scene of the novel, the main novel sits in a cafe, drinks alcohol, listens to the radio and realizes that he has been cured of his own doubts about the correctness of the party.

Meaning of the novel

The finale showed what Orwell so badly wanted to portray. "1984" (we presented you with a summary) is a novel about how a repressive machine can destroy any person. Even Smith, who resisted tyranny to the last, eventually gave in. First, he was physically destroyed (in the truest sense of the word - he began to lose his teeth, etc.). Then he finally lost his beliefs.

The unhappy ending only added to the cult novel. It became an instant bestseller. Until now, no such book has been published in the world. Previous dystopian novels could not boast the finely crafted and described fictional world that Orwell envisioned.

However, as mentioned above, English writer and didn't have to do anything. In fact, he only logically developed all those phenomena that gave rise to Nazism and other totalitarian regimes in the first half of the 20th century.

The success of the novel is also due to the many metaphors that have migrated to all languages of the world. This is the already described doublethink, "Angsots", two minutes of hatred, etc. Orwell became the author of the famous formula "twice two - exactly five", which described the principle of falsehood of propaganda, as well as the image of Big Brother. References to "1984" are important components of modern Western popular culture.

Why write material about a book published almost 70 years ago? Who needs it anyway? Wouldn't it be akin to a banal school essay on the topic “The Image of an Oak in L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace" Not at all. After all, we are talking about the unforgettable work of George Orwell "1984".

Until now, this book continues to excite the minds of the reading public, inspires musicians and artists. Until now, having read it, young people begin to talk nonsense in the spirit of “socialism is slavery and totalitarianism!” Until now, Orwell himself is considered by many to be a brilliant analyst, a master of words and, in general, a prophet. The anti-Sovietists (including the so-called "democratic socialists") have a worthy place on the shelf, while fans of the USSR are ready to organize mass burnings of it. The expressions "Big Brother is watching you", "Newspeak", "room 101" and others are used everywhere today - from journalism to memes.

And even today "1984" has an impact on the formation of the political thinking of society.- both in Russia and abroad. Therefore, it needs analysis and criticism.

Who was Mr. Orwell?

Let me begin by saying a few words about Mr. Orwell himself and the setting in which 1984 was written. Not for the sake of getting personal, but for the sake of what in historical science is called source criticism.

In his youth, the Englishman George Orwell adhered to revolutionary views close to Marxist. However, by the 1930s, he was clearly aware that the degeneration of the political system of the USSR was taking the country further and further away from the ideas of socialism. In 1936, he participated in the Spanish Civil War as part of the detachments created by the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), which fought both against the fascist supporters of Franco and against the Stalinists. Throughout the further biography of Orwell, his Political Views undergo a curious transformation. Nicholas Walter in Orwell and Anarchism writes about the situation in the late 1940s: “Edward Morgan Forster considered him a "true liberal", Fenner Brockway a libertarian socialist, Crick a leftist social democrat. Kenneth Allsop, in turn, presented an apolitical (virtually anti-political) version in his Picture Post article (January 8, 1955), suggesting that Orwell was both a socialist and an individualist.” In Soviet papers, he was identified as a “Trotskyist” - at some point this was indeed true. But if Trotsky, revealing the contradictions of the development of the Soviet Union and denouncing the “traitors of the revolution” in the person of the partycrats, did not lose his conviction in the need to fight for socialism and stood in positions of critical support for the USSR, then Orwell gradually went into skepticism and disappointment. This disappointment ended quite ugly. The writer, who castigates repression, denunciation and indoctrination of the population in the Soviet Union, has himself become an informer and not the least important cog of the ideological machine. His story "Animal Farm" was translated into Russian and massively distributed by Western intelligence services in the Soviet zones of occupation in Berlin and Vienna. Mr. Orwell himself compiled for the punitive authorities list out of more than 130 names of cultural and art figures. Notice what brilliant featuresgave to his "colleagues in the shop" English writer:

Writer Bernard Shaw "takes a decidedly pro-Russian stance on all major issues";

Actor Michael Redgrave, "probably a communist";

Singer Paul Robeson "very dislikes whites";

Writer John Steinbeck is "a fake, pseudo-naive writer";

Writer John Boynton Priestley is "anti-American", "makes big money in the USSR";

The poet Stephen Spender is "very unreliable and influenced by others", has "homosexual inclinations".

Agree, these are characteristics worthy of the Ministry of Love. Speaking of the Ministry of Love…

Child of the Cold War

1984 was released in 1949 against the backdrop of the unfolding Cold War (a term believed to have been invented by Orwell himself), mass purges of pro-Soviet elements in the West, and mounting anti-Soviet hysteria in the media. When victory over Germany elevates the USSR in the eyes of the world, and Eastern Europe is repainted in red, Mr. Orwell creates an imperishable dystopia in between treatment for tuberculosis, mourning for his dead wife and writing denunciations of his acquaintances.

"Democratic Socialist" he called himself until the end of days) publishes the main anti-socialist novel in world history.

There is an opinion that Orwell wrote this work “not about the USSR”, someone even sees criticism of Western capitalism here. But, given the content of the novel, these versions, in my opinion, turn out to be untenable.

If someone suddenly does not know about the main storyline, then I will briefly introduce you to it. 1984 (or so). The world is divided between three totalitarian socialist superpowers - Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, which are constantly at war with each other. They fight, as it turns out, not for victory, but for the sake of the process - to keep society in suspense and destroy surpluses of manufactured products, maintaining a low standard of living for the population. The population is divided into several parts. The disenfranchised inhabitants of the "disputed" areas between the powers are engaged in slave labor. The proles are the uncouth majority who create the main benefits of society. Members of the Outer Party - live a little better than the proles, work in ministries, they are constantly monitored through devices stuck everywhere - telescreens. Finally, members of the Inner Party are the elite of society, they do not live as richly as the noble bourgeois of a bygone era, but, as it turns out, they do not need this, because their goal is power for the sake of power. The latter hide behind the image of the imperious and mustachioed Big Brother. Well, you understand who became his prototype.

In Oceania, where the action of the novel takes place, the dominant ideology is English socialism (aka Ingsoc), which has retained only a purely conditional connection with Marxism, from which it originated. The party keeps the population in the strictest obedience, isolating the "infidels" even by gestures or facial expressions. All around devastation, deficit, a ban on sexuality and pleasure. All around brainwashing and whistleblowing. Several ministries work to maintain universal control: the Ministry of Love - deals with repression and surveillance, the Ministry of Peace - wages war, the Ministry of Plenty - poisons people with hunger, the Ministry of Truth - conducts propaganda, falsifies documents every minute, changing the past. At the top of the pyramid is Big Brother. The main enemy of the state is Emmanuel Goldstein, copied from Trotsky. The main slogans are: "Freedom is slavery", "Ignorance is strength", "War is peace".

The protagonist - Winston Smith - is perhaps the last to understand the inferiority of this system. He very successfully acquires a comrade-debauchee Julia, striving for the release of repressed sexuality. However, their emerging rebellion ends in failure - Smith has been tirelessly watched for 7 years, playing cat and mouse. In the dungeons of the Ministry of Love, both are morally broken.

Shades of lies

“A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it - a lesson for good fellows. Do not build your terrible socialism - you will only get what was described above. Approximately such a conclusion at the time to do after reading the novel. It is not surprising, because the work was created as an element of anti-communist propaganda during the years of the Cold War.

I am not a Stalinist or a zealous fan of the USSR, but since the degree of absurdity and slander in “1984” cannot be called anything other than epic, now I have a thankless mission to defend both Stalin and the Union.

"Socialist" Orwell now and then throughout the novel whirls about the destroyed capitalism. Like, no matter how bad he is, life is still better with him. For Winston Smith, the capitalist past becomes a kind of "paradise lost" - and there was no party dictate, and there was freedom, and even good things were produced. Alas, reality is in conflict with Orwell's conjectures. Whether it became, for example, in Soviet Russia with unfinished socialism to live worse than in tsarist Russia - you can judge from .

It is especially amusing to read fragments describing poverty and devastation in Oceania. Despite the fact that Orwell himself could not help but know - by 1949 Soviet Union, contrary to all predictions, as the Phoenix rose from the ruins left by the Great Patriotic War. It cannot be denied that social countries there were problems with the range of light industry goods, in some places there was an illegal sale of things. But the basic set of products made it possible to maintain a fairly high standard of living for those times - especially, coupled with developed social security.

The episodes where the author describes the backward "Soviet" science, mass artificially created illiteracy and degraded culture are also indignant. It's time to talk not about hyperbole, not about twitching, and brazen outright lies. It is a pity that Mr. Orwell did not live to see April 12, 1961 - I wonder what he would have written then about the "decaying" social science? And what can I say - the Soviet Union overcame eternal Russian illiteracy, created dozens of written languages for peoples who did not have them at all. The evil Bolsheviks began to culturally form the proletarian mass, and the "base" art of the "totalitarian" era is still a kind of standard in Russia. Incidentally, this formed special type person. No matter how much Orwell described the angry and scattered inhabitants of Oceania, even opponents of the left are forced to admit today that the citizens of the socialist countries were distinguished by humanity and goodwill.

No less remarkable are the arguments about lack of freedom and universal control. With a tremor in recounting places of detention, concentration camps and other delights of totalitarianism, Orwell somehow forgets about several points. Firstly, the concentration camps were not invented by Russians or Germans - they were created by the compatriots of the author of the novel. Moreover, while he was writing his libel, the British military massively tortured and killed Greek communists (what an irony!) No worse than the Nazis somewhere in Buchenwald. Secondly, all of himself "socialist" Orwell for some reason forgets that any state - because it is an instrument of domination of the upper classes over the lower ones. Putting a sign of identity between communism and despotism, unequivocally blaming the Soviet Union, the author somehow does not notice that he is moving to a policy of double standards. You can read about how, for example, any dissent was eradicated in the USA in the 20th century in Henry Alexandrov. Finally, is it legitimate to expose whistleblowing and brainwashing with ideology when you yourself are a whistleblower and brainwasher?

Yes, Orwell interestingly plays with the separation of the party from the people, the cult of personality, which sometimes only covers the interests of the nomenklatura.But nowhere does an elite exist that would hold power not out of economic interests, but just like that - for the sake of management and sadism.History has shown that even the ruling elite in the USSR, pursuing their own selfish interests, eventually reincarnated as the class of the new bourgeoisie, appropriating the national wealth accumulated by generations of hard workers.

By the way, about the social hierarchy. The novel "1984" openly states that social mobility under "socialism" is lower than in a class society. It is touching to read this, remembering how Brezhnev started out as a factory worker, and Gorbachev as a tractor driver. It was quite a typical path for the Soviet partocrats - even in Orwell's time. So where did these speculations come from?

In general, one can only marvel at the fact that Orwell has earned himself the fame of a thinker and almost a sociologist. His lengthy reasoning that "society has always been divided into three parts - lower, middle and higher" is not inferior in banality to someancient Greek thinkers . Only the ancient Greeks can be forgiven for this - there was no mention of sociology as a science then, but there is no reason to excuse Orwell, who lived in the 20th century, for such stupidity. Moreover, after these arguments, the author of “1984” gives out an idea worthy of a hardened reactionary: no matter how many riots and revolutions happened in the world, they turned out to be futile as a result, because everything returned to normal. And here lies and substitution of concepts in the novel reach their climax. Only a complete ignoramus will put up a sign of identity between the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie of modern times and the Soviet bureaucracy. Only a person who is completely unfamiliar with history will undertake to assert that revolutions did not ultimately lead to a change in the socio-political system and, accordingly, to its progress. However, for Mr. Orwell, it comes out in two counts.

Orwell's "Philosophy" kills with its superficiality in a number of episodes. The author famously draws parallels between Bolshevism and Nazism, categorically states that the destruction of private property does not contribute to the emergence of equality, and so on. If you list all the blunders, distortions, double standards, outright lies and hypertrophied cliches with which the novel is teeming, then you can write a whole monograph. In order not to tire the reader, I will dwell on one more point that interested me as a historian. Throughout the work, the author relishes the fact that in Oceania every minute the past is adjusted to the present - and for some reason these falsifications again become the prerogative of the Ingsoc. Meanwhile, changing history to suit the interests of the ruling class is a phenomenon that arose almost simultaneously with the very science of the past. Here you can give a lot of examples - from the nobles of antiquity, who wanted to sum up their genealogy under the genealogical tree of the gods, and ending with the ruling circles of the United States, who appropriated the main merit in the victory in World War II.

actual liar

As we see today, Orwell turned out to be not so hot a prophet. There is no world system of "totalitarian socialism". The globe has not split into several chronically warring despotisms. In 1984, the Soviet Union was already on the verge of Perestroika, as a result of which it collapsed.

But in some ways the author of 1984 turned out to be right. If on its pages, generously dotted with lies, grains of truth would not have been lying around, it would hardly have had such great popularity today. The repressive culture, which Herbert Marcuse wrote about in the 60s, gave rise to a “one-dimensional man” - an ideal consumer with an atrophied instinct to fight. New technical means - video cameras, cellular communications, the Internet - have opened up opportunities not only for communication, but also for total control and surveillance of the population. It seems that the story of Snowden showed the whole world that Big Brother is really watching us.

The Cold War is over, but the ideological machine processes the consciousness of the individual relentlessly - cold-bloodedly and cruelly. Truth becomes inseparable from lies, freedom from slavery, knowledge from disinformation. When shooting a new adaptation of "1984", one could easily put a real fragment of the program with Dmitry Kiselev into it - and it would look organic!

As in the book, the images and terms used by propaganda are separated from their original prototypes. Stalin, Nicholas II, Lenin, St. George ribbon, Great Patriotic War, the flag of Ukraine - all this and much more has merged into a bizarre phantasmagoria that instills a false consciousness in the masses.

Only it’s not the terrible Stalin and his henchmen who do all this, but quite the capitalist elites, about the fate of whichrykh mourned in his novel Orwell.

Is there a way out of this situation? As the protagonist of the book, Winston Smith, said (and here Orwell apparently remembered his Marxist past), "all hope is in the proles." Billions of working people all over the world, who create the benefits of civilization with their physical and mental abilities, but are regularly robbed, stupefied, oppressed– only they are able to change society for the better.The only question is that this time they must be even more conscious and organized than a hundred years ago - otherwise then some new George Orwell will blame some new Big Brother.

But it is also noteworthy that the novel "1984", being an element of anti-socialist propaganda, today can also be used against the "proles", playing the role of a demotivator. Why fight if victory will certainly turn into defeat, and attempts to build an absolute democracy will turn into slavery?

Not so long ago, a friend of mine wrote that the main goal of all dystopias– to deprive people of hope for a progressive and bright future, to “dissuade” people from looking for an alternative. I would not speak for the entire genre, but in relation to Orwell's novel, this saying is 100% true.

I

The lobby smelled of boiled cabbage and old rugs. There was a colored poster hanging on the wall opposite the entrance, too big for the room. The poster showed a huge face, more than a meter wide, - the face of a man of about forty-five, with a thick black mustache, coarse, but manly attractive. Winston headed for the stairs. There was no need to go to the elevator. He rarely worked even at the best of times, and now, during the daytime, the electricity was turned off altogether. There was a savings regime - they were preparing for the Week of Hate. Winston had to overcome seven marches; he was forty years old, he had a varicose ulcer above his ankle: he rose slowly and stopped several times to rest. On each landing, the same face looked out from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that no matter where you went, your eyes would not let go. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU, the signature read.

In the apartment, a rich voice said something about the production of pig iron, read out figures. The voice came from an oblong metal plate embedded in the right wall that looked like a cloudy mirror. Winston turned the knob, his voice weakened, but the speech was still intelligible. This device (it was called a telescreen) could be extinguished, but completely turned off - it was impossible. Winston went to the window; a short, puny man, he seemed even more puny in the blue overalls of a party member. His hair was very blond, and his ruddy face was peeling from bad soap, blunt blades, and the cold of the winter that had just ended.

The world outside, behind closed windows, breathed cold. The wind swirled dust and scraps of paper; and although the sun was shining and the sky was a stark blue, everything in the city looked colorless except for the posters plastered everywhere. From every conspicuous angle the face of the black-whiskered looked out. From the house opposite, too. BIG BROTHER IS LOOKING AT YOU said the signature, and the dark eyes looked into Winston's. Below, over the pavement, a poster with a corner torn off was fluttering in the wind, now hiding, now revealing a single word: ANGSOTS. A helicopter glided between the rooftops in the distance, hovered for a moment like a cadaver fly, and swooped away along the curve. It was a police patrol looking into people's windows. But patrols didn't count. Only the Thought Police counted.

Behind Winston, the voice from the telescreen was still talking about iron smelting and overfulfillment of the ninth three-year plan. The telescreen worked for reception and transmission. He caught every word as long as it was not whispered too softly; moreover, as long as Winston remained in the field of view of the cloudy plate, he was not only heard, but also seen. Of course, no one knew whether they were watching him at the moment or not. How often and on what schedule the thought police connect to your cable - one could only guess about this. It is possible that they followed everyone - and around the clock. In any case, they could connect at any time. You had to live - and you lived, out of habit, which turned into instinct - with the knowledge that your every word is being overheard and your every movement, until the lights went out, they are watching.

Winston kept his back to the telescreen. It's safer that way; although - he knew it - the back also betrays. A kilometer from his window, the white building of the Ministry of Truth, the place of his service, towered over the grubby city. Here it is, Winston thought with vague distaste, here it is London, the capital city of Airstrip I, the third most populated province in the state of Oceania. He turned back to his childhood, tried to remember if London had always been like this. Have these rows of dilapidated 19th-century houses, propped up with logs, with cardboard-patched windows, patchwork roofs, drunken walls of front gardens, always stretched into the distance? And these clearings from the bombings, where alabaster dust curled and fireweed climbed over piles of debris; and big vacant lots where bombs have cleared a place for a whole mushroom family of squalid clapboard huts that look like chicken coops? But - to no avail, he could not remember; nothing remains of childhood but fragmentary brightly lit scenes, devoid of background and most often unintelligible.

The Ministry of Truth - in Newspeak, Miniprav - was strikingly different from everything that lay around. This gigantic pyramidal building, shining with white concrete, rose, ledge by ledge, to a height of three hundred meters. From his window, Winston could read three Party slogans written in elegant type on the white façade:

...

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS POWER

I

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS POWER

It happened in the morning in the ministry - if you can say "happened" about such a nebula.

At the same time as the woman entered O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, a position so high and remote that Winston had only the faintest idea of him. Seeing the black overalls of the Inner Party member, the people sitting in front of the telescreen fell silent for a moment. O'Brien was a big, stocky man with a thick neck and a rough, mocking face. Despite his formidable appearance, he was not without charm. He had a habit of adjusting his spectacles on his nose, and there was something oddly disarming in that characteristic gesture, something subtly intelligent. An eighteenth-century nobleman offering his snuffbox is what would come to the mind of someone who was still capable of thinking in such comparisons. Over the course of ten years, Winston saw O'Brien probably a dozen times. He was drawn to O'Brien, but not only because he was puzzled by this contrast between the manners and the physique of a heavyweight boxer. Deep down, Winston suspected—or perhaps he didn't suspect, he only hoped—that O'Brien was not entirely politically correct. His face suggested such thoughts. But again, it is possible that it was not doubt in dogmas that was written on the face, but simply intelligence. Somehow, he gave the impression of being someone you could talk to if you were alone with him and out of sight of the telescreen. Winston never tried to test this conjecture; and it was beyond his power. O'Brien glanced at his watch, saw that it was almost 11:00, and decided to stay for two minutes of hate in the records department. He sat down in the same row with Winston, two seats behind him. Between them was a small, red-haired woman who worked next door to Winston. The dark-haired woman sat right behind him.

And then, from a large telescreen in the wall, a disgusting howl and screeching erupted - as if some monstrous unlubricated machine had been launched. The sound made his hair stand on end and his teeth hurt. The hate has begun.

As always, the enemy of the people Emmanuel Goldstein appeared on the screen. The audience hushed. The little woman with reddish hair squealed in fear and disgust. Goldstein, an apostate and a renegade, once, a long time ago (so long ago that no one even remembered when), was one of the leaders of the party, almost equal to Big Brother himself, and then embarked on the path of counter-revolution, was sentenced to death and mysteriously escaped, disappeared. The two-minute program changed every day, but Goldstein was always the main character in it. The first traitor, the main defiler of party purity. From his theories grew all further crimes against the Party, all sabotage, betrayal, heresy, deviations. No one knows where he still lived and forged sedition: perhaps overseas, under the protection of his foreign masters, or perhaps - there were such rumors - here in Oceania, underground.

Winston found it difficult to breathe. Goldstein's face always gave him a complex and painful feeling. A dry Jewish face in a halo of light gray hair, a goatee - an intelligent face and at the same time inexplicably repulsive; and there was something senile about that long, gristly nose, with the spectacles slid down almost to the very tip. He was like a sheep, and there was a bleat in his voice. As always, Goldstein attacked party doctrine viciously; the attacks were so absurd and absurd that they would not deceive even a child, but they were not without persuasiveness, and the listener involuntarily feared that other people, less sober than he, might believe Goldstein. He reviled Big Brother, he denounced the dictatorship of the Party. He demanded immediate peace with Eurasia, called for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought; he shouted hysterically that the revolution had been betrayed, all in a pattering manner, with compound words, as if parodying the style of party orators, even with Newspeak words, moreover, they were found in him more often than in the speech of any party member. And all the time, so that there was no doubt about what was behind Goldstein's hypocritical ranting, endless Eurasian columns marched behind his face on the screen: rank after rank, thick-set soldiers with imperturbable Asian physiognomies floated out of the depths to the surface and dissolved, giving way to exactly the same . The dull rhythmic clatter of soldiers' boots accompanied Goldstein's bleating.

The hatred began some thirty seconds ago, and half of the audience could no longer hold back their furious exclamations. It was unbearable to see this self-satisfied sheep's face and behind it - the awesome power of the Eurasian troops; in addition, at the sight of Goldstein and even at the thought of him, fear and anger arose reflexively. Hatred for him was more constant than for Eurasia and Eastasia, for when Oceania was at war with one of them, it usually made peace with the other. But what is surprising is that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everyone, although every day, a thousand times a day, his teaching was refuted, smashed, destroyed, ridiculed as miserable nonsense, his influence did not diminish at all. There were new dupes all the time, just waiting for him to seduce them. Not a day passed without the Thought Police unmasking the spies and saboteurs acting on his orders. He commanded a huge underground army, a network of conspirators seeking to overthrow the regime. It was supposed to be called the Brotherhood. There was also whispering of a terrible book, a compendium of all heresies, written by Goldstein and distributed illegally. The book had no title. In conversations, she was mentioned - if she was mentioned at all - simply as book. But such things were known only through obscure rumors. The member of the party did his best not to talk about the Brotherhood or book.

By the second minute, the hatred turned into a frenzy. People jumped up and shouted at the top of their lungs to drown out Goldstein's intolerable bleating voice. The little woman with reddish hair turned crimson and opened her mouth like a fish on dry land. O'Brien's heavy face turned purple too. He sat erect, his powerful chest heaving and trembling as if the surf was beating against it. A dark-haired girl behind Winston screamed, “Scoundrel! Scoundrel! Scoundrel!" and then she grabbed a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the telescreen. The dictionary hit Goldstein in the nose and flew off. But the voice was indestructible. In a moment of lucidity, Winston realized that he himself was screaming along with the others and violently kicking the bar of a chair. The terrible thing about the two minutes of hate was not that you had to act out the role, but that you simply could not stay away. Some thirty seconds - and you no longer need to pretend. As if from an electric discharge, vile writhings of fear and vindictiveness attacked the entire assembly, a frenzied desire to kill, torment, crush faces with a hammer: people grimaced and screamed, turned into madmen. At the same time, the rage was abstract and untargeted, it could be turned in any direction, like the flame of a blowtorch. And suddenly it turned out that Winston's hatred was directed not at all at Goldstein, but, on the contrary, at Big Brother, at the party, at the thought police; at such moments his heart was with that lonely, ridiculed heretic, the only guardian of sanity and truth in a world of lies. And in a second he was already at one with the others, and everything that was said about Goldstein seemed to be true. Then the secret revulsion for Big Brother turned into adoration, and Big Brother towered over everyone - an invulnerable, fearless defender who stood like a rock before the Eurasian hordes, and Goldstein, despite his outcast and helplessness, despite doubts that he was still alive at all, seemed to be a sinister sorcerer, capable of destroying the building of civilization with the power of his voice alone.

And sometimes it was possible, straining, consciously to turn your hatred on one or another object. With some frenzied effort of will, as you lift your head from the pillow during a nightmare, Winston switched hatred from the screen face to the dark-haired girl behind. Beautiful clear pictures flashed through my mind. He will beat her with a rubber club. She will tie her naked to a post, shoot her with arrows, like Saint Sebastian. She will rape her and cut her throat in her last convulsions. And more clearly than before, he understood for what hates her. For being young, beautiful and sexless; for the fact that he wants to sleep with her and will never achieve this; for the fact that on a delicate thin waist, as if created in order to hug her, is not his hand, but this scarlet sash, a militant symbol of purity. Hatred ended in convulsions. Goldstein's speech turned into a natural bleat, and his face was momentarily replaced by a sheep's snout. Then the muzzle dissolved into the Eurasian soldier: huge and terrible, he walked at them, firing from his machine gun, threatening to break through the surface of the screen - so that many recoiled in their chairs. But they immediately sighed with relief: the figure of the enemy was obscured by the influx of the head of Big Brother, black-haired, black-moustached, full of strength and mysterious calmness - so huge that it occupied almost the entire screen. What Elder Brother says, no one heard. Just a few words of encouragement, like those spoken by a chieftain in the thunder of battle—albeit inaudible in themselves, they inspire confidence by the mere fact of uttering them. Then Big Brother's face dimmed, and a clear, large inscription came out - three party slogans:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS POWER

But for a few more moments Big Brother's face seemed to stay on the screen: the imprint left by him in the eye was so bright that it could not be erased immediately. A small woman with reddish hair leaned against the back of the front chair. In a sobbing whisper, she said something like: “My Savior!” – and stretched out her hands to the telescreen. Then she lowered her face and covered it with her hands. Apparently she was praying.

Then the whole assembly began to chant slowly, measuredly, in low voices: “ES-BE! .. ES-BE! .. ES-BE!” - again and again, stretching, with a long pause between "ES" and "BE", and there was something strangely primitive in this heavy undulating sound - the clatter of bare feet and the roar of large drums seemed to be behind him. This went on for half a minute. In general, this often happened at those moments when feelings reached a special intensity. Partly it was a hymn to the greatness and wisdom of Big Brother, but more of a self-hypnosis - people drowned their minds in rhythmic noise. Winston felt a chill in his stomach. During the two minutes of hatred, he could not help but surrender to the general madness, but this savage cry of “ES-BE! .. ES-BE!” always terrified him. Of course, he chanted with the others, otherwise it was impossible. To hide one's feelings, to own one's face, to do what others do - all this has become an instinct. But there was such a gap of two seconds when the expression in his eyes could well give him away. It was at this time that an amazing event occurred - if it really happened.

He met O'Brien's eyes. O'Brien was already up. He took off his glasses and now, having put them on, adjusted them on his nose with a characteristic gesture. But for a fraction of a second their eyes met, and in that brief moment Winston understood—yes, he understood! – that O'Brien thinks the same thing. The signal could not be interpreted otherwise. It was as if their minds opened up and thoughts flowed from one to the other through their eyes. "I'm with you," O'Brien seemed to say. “I know exactly how you feel. I know about your contempt, your hatred, your disgust. Don't worry, I'm on your side!" But that glimmer of intelligence faded, and O'Brien's face became as inscrutable as the others.

That was it—and Winston was beginning to doubt whether it was real. Such cases did not continue. Only one thing: they supported in him the belief - or hope - that there are still, besides him, enemies of the party. Maybe the rumors about ramified plots are true after all - maybe the Brotherhood really exists! After all, despite the endless arrests, confessions, executions, there was no certainty that the Brotherhood was not a myth. One day he believed it, another day he didn't. There was no evidence - only a glimpse of glances that could mean anything and nothing, snippets of other people's conversations, half-erased inscriptions in the latrines, and once, when two strangers met in his presence, he noticed a slight movement of hands in which one could see a greeting. Just guesswork; it is quite possible that all this is a figment of the imagination. He went to his cabin without looking at O'Brien. He didn't even think about developing a fleeting connection. Even if he knew how to approach it, such an attempt would be unimaginably dangerous. In a second, they managed to exchange an ambiguous look - that's all. But even this was a memorable event for a man whose life passes under the castle of loneliness.

Winston shook himself and sat up straight. He belched. Jin rebelled in his stomach.

His eyes focused back on the page. It turned out that while he was busy thinking helplessly, the hand continued to write automatically. But not convulsive doodles, as at the beginning. The pen voluptuously slid over the glossy paper, in large block letters:

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

time after time, and half the page was already written.

A panic attack came over him. Nonsense, of course: writing these words is no more dangerous than just keeping a diary; nevertheless, he was tempted to tear up the spoiled pages and abandon his undertaking altogether.

But he didn't, he knew it was useless. Whether he writes DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER or not, there is no difference. Will continue the diary or will not - no difference. The Thought Police will get to him anyway. He committed - and if he had not touched the paper with a pen, he would still have committed - the absolute crime that contains all the others. Thought crime, that's what it's called. Thoughtcrime cannot be hidden forever. You can dodge for a while, and not even one year, but sooner or later they will get to you.

It always happened at night - they were arrested at night. Suddenly they wake you up, a rough hand shakes your shoulder, shines in your eyes, the bed is surrounded by stern faces. As a rule, there was no trial, and no arrest was reported anywhere. People just disappeared, and always at night. Your name has been removed from the lists, all references to what you did have been erased, the fact of your existence is denied and will be forgotten. You are canceled, destroyed: as they say, sprayed.

For a moment he succumbed to hysterics. In hasty crooked letters he began to write:

they shoot me I don't care let them shoot me in the back of the head I don't care down with my older brother they always shoot me in the back of the head I don't care down with my older brother.

With a touch of shame, he looked up from the table and put down his pen. And then he trembled all over. They knocked on the door.

Already! He hid like a mouse, hoping that if they didn't get through the first time, they would leave. But no, the knock was repeated. The worst thing here is to linger. His heart was thumping like a drum, but his face, from long habit, probably remained impassive. He stood up and walked slowly towards the door.