Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [1124]

Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 1124

Note

The chess problem becomes a perfect figure for the Party’s rigged cosmology — the inevitability the regime manufactures and then offers up as metaphysical truth. Orwell ties the mundane game to the ‘eternal, unvarying triumph’ in a single gesture.