Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [1143]

The movement of the armies was a diagram: a black arrow tearing vertically southward, and a white arrow tearing horizontally eastward, across the tail of the first. As though for reassurance he looked up at the imperturbable face in the portrait. Was it conceivable that the second arrow did not even exist? — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 1143

Note

The battle abstracted into a chess-diagram, with the nagging doubt — ‘was it conceivable that the second arrow did not even exist?’ — that the official narrative might be invented. The question is left unanswered even at the end, swallowed by the victory bulletin.