Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [725]

The thing that impressed Winston in looking back was that the speaker had switched from one line to the other actually in mid-sentence, not only without a pause, but without even breaking the syntax. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 725

Note

The horror is condensed into a purely grammatical observation — a political world-upheaval performed as mere syntax. Orwell’s choice to focalize through Winston’s tidy linguistic noticing makes the violation feel larger.