Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [133]

The sun had shifted round, and the myriad windows of the Ministry of Truth, with the light no longer shining on them, looked grim as the loopholes of a fortress. His heart quailed before the enormous pyramidal shape. It was too strong, it could not be stormed. A thousand rocket bombs would not batter it down. He wondered again for whom he was writing the diary. For the future, for the past – for an age that might be imaginary. And in front of him there lay not death but annihilation. The diary would be reduced to ashes and himself to vapour. Only the Thought Police would read what he had written, before they wiped it out of existence and out of memory. How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive? — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 133

Note

The distinction between death and annihilation is the chapter’s conceptual core: death leaves a trace, annihilation erases the trace. ‘The diary would be reduced to ashes and himself to vapour’ — the parallel makes writing and self equivalent stakes. The fortress/loopholes image and the pyramidal Ministry facing Winston across the street spatialize the power his diary tries to defy.