Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [663]

As O’Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped. … ‘Yes,’ said O’Brien, ‘we can turn it off. We have that privilege.’ — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 663

Note

The flick of a switch silencing the telescreen performs the chapter’s central reversal: the panoptic apparatus that supposedly watches everything has thresholds the Inner Party controls. The telling detail is the ‘sharp snap’—a sound the reader immediately recognizes as impossible/illegal—made ordinary by O’Brien’s casual ‘we have that privilege.’