1984 - Planet eBook

tion from one of the Party textbooks. The Party claimed, ofcourse, to have liberated the proles from bondage. Beforethe Revolution they had been hideously oppressed by thecapitalists, they had been starved and flogged, women hadbeen forced to work in the coal mines (women still did workin the coal mines, as a matter of fact), children had beensold into the factories at the age of six. But simultaneously,true to the Principles of doublethink, the Party taughtthat the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept insubjection, like animals, by the application of a few simplerules. In reality very little was known about the proles. Itwas not necessary to know much. So long as they continuedto work and breed, their other activities were withoutimportance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned looseupon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style oflife that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestralpattern. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, theywent to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming-periodof beauty and sexual desire, they married attwenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for themost part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of homeand children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football,beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizonof their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.A few agents of the Thought Police moved always amongthem, spreading false rumours and marking down andeliminating the few individuals who were judged capable ofbecoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinatethem with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable