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1984 - Planet eBook

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stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston.Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean outfrom the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas andpour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you,not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. Youwill be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. Youwill never have existed.’Then why bother to torture me? thought Winston, with amomentary bitterness. O’Brien checked his step as thoughWinston had uttered the thought aloud. His large ugly facecame nearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.‘You are thinking,’ he said, ‘that since we intend to destroyyou utterly, so that nothing that you say or do canmake the smallest difference—in that case, why do we go tothe trouble of interrogating you first? That is what you werethinking, was it not?’‘Yes,’ said Winston.O’Brien smiled slightly. ‘You are a flaw in the pattern,Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I nottell you just now that we are different from the persecutorsof the past? We are not content with negative obedience, noreven with the most abject submission. When finally yousurrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do notdestroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resistsus we never destroy him. We convert him, we capturehis inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and allillusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance,but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him oneof ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that

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