Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [435]

A long line of trucks, with wooden-faced guards armed with sub-machine-guns standing upright in each corner, was passing slowly down the street. In the trucks little yellow men in shabby greenish uniforms were squatting, jammed close together. Their sad Mongolian faces gazed out over the sides of the trucks, utterly incurious. Occasionally when a truck jolted there was a clank-clank of metal: all the prisoners were wearing leg-irons. Truck-load after truck-load of the sad faces passed. Winston knew they were there, but he saw them only intermittently. The girl’s shoulder, and her arm right down to the elbow, were pressed against his. Her cheek was almost near enough for him to feel its warmth. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 435

Note

The prisoners are reduced to scenery against which the lovers’ contact registers; Winston ‘saw them only intermittently’ because the girl’s nearness crowds out even a mass of men in leg-irons. The contrast between the chained, de-individualized faces and the single warm cheek against his own makes both more vivid — the horror is what the lovers ignore, and their ignoring is the cost of any private feeling.