Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [167]

This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, where-upon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 167

Note

The ‘memory hole’ crystallizes the whole apparatus of managed history in a single domestic, almost trivial object — a slot in the wall like a letterbox, nicknamed with casual irony. The phrase ‘it was an automatic action’ quietly collapses deliberate falsification into reflex, which is the book’s whole argument about internalized control. The warm air and hidden furnaces make destruction feel almost cozy.