Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [698]

However much in earnest he might be, he had nothing of the single-mindedness that belongs to a fanatic. When he spoke of murder, suicide, venereal disease, amputated limbs and altered faces, it was with a faint air of persiflage. ‘This is unavoidable,’ his voice seemed to say; ‘this is what we have got to do, unflinchingly. But this is not what we shall be doing when life is worth living again.’ A wave of admiration, almost of worship, flowed out from Winston towards O’Brien. For the moment he had forgotten the shadowy figure of Goldstein. When you looked at O’Brien’s powerful shoulders and his blunt-featured face, so ugly and yet so civilised, it was impossible to believe that he could be defeated. There was no stratagem that he was not equal to, no danger that he could not foresee. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 698

Note

The narrator reads O’Brien’s tone as persiflage—a double irony that lets the same speech be both grim necessity and a promise of a better end. The counterpoint between ‘no stratagem that he was not equal to’ and the book’s ending quietly foreshadows the betrayal, visible only on re-reading.