Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [297]

There was a chessboard on the table beside them, with the pieces set out but no game started. And then, for perhaps half a minute in all, something happened to the telescreens. The tune that they were playing changed, and the tone of the music changed too. There came into it – but it was something hard to describe. It was a peculiar, cracked, braying, jeering note: in his mind Winston called it a yellow note. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 297

Note

The unused chessboard—pieces set but no game played—is a quiet image of the three broken men whose fates are already decided. ‘A yellow note’ is a strange synesthetic coinage that captures something uncrackable and jeering in the telescreen’s music.