Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [279]

It had got to be written down, it had got to be confessed. What he had suddenly seen in the lamplight was that the woman was old. The paint was plastered so thick on her face that it looked as though it might crack like a cardboard mask. There were streaks of white in her hair; but the truly dreadful detail was that her mouth had fallen a little open, revealing nothing except a cavernous blackness. She had no teeth at all. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 279

Note

The repeated ‘it had got to be written down’ echoes the confessional imperative driving the diary itself, while the horror climaxes on a negative: the mouth revealing ‘nothing except a cavernous blackness.’ The face as cardboard mask returns the paint-as-mask image from the opening recollection.