Winston hardly knew Tillotson， and had no idea what work he was employed on. People in the Records Department did not readily talk about their jobs. In the long， windowless hall， with its double row of cubicles and its endless rustle of papers and hum of voices murmuring into speakwrites， there were quite a dozen people whom Winston did not even know by name， though he daily saw them hurrying to and fro in the corridors or gesticulating in the Two Minutes Hate. He knew that in the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out， simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. There was a certain fitness in this， since her own husband had been vaporized a couple of years earlier. And a few cubicles away a mild， ineffectual， dreamy creature named Ampleforth， with very hairy ears and a surprising talent for juggling with rhymes and metres， was engaged in producing garbled versions — definitive texts， they were called — of poems which had become ideologically offensive， but which for one reason or another were to be retained in the anthologies. And this hall， with its fifty workers or thereabouts， was only one sub-section， a single cell， as it were， in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond， above， below， were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs. There were the huge printing-shops with their sub-editors， their typography experts， and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers， its producers， and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices. There were the armies of reference clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall. There were the vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored， and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed. And somewhere or other， quite anonymous， there were the directing brains who coordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved， that one falsified， and the other rubbed out of existence.
And the Records Department， after all， was itself only a single branch of the Ministry of Truth， whose primary job was not to reconstruct the past but to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers， films， textbooks， telescreen programmes， plays， novels — with every conceivable kind of information， instruction， or entertainment， from a statue to a slogan， from a lyric poem to a biological treatise， and from a child’s spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary. And the Ministry had not only to supply the multifarious needs of the party， but also to repeat the whole operation at a lower level for the benefit of the proletariat. There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature， music， drama， and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport， crime and astrology， sensational five-cent novelettes， films oozing with sex， and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator. There was even a whole sub-section — Pornosec， it was called in Newspeak — engaged in producing the lowest kind of pornography， which was sent out in sealed packets and which no Party member， other than those who worked on it， was permitted to look at.
Three messages had slid out of the pneumatic tube while Winston was working， but they were simple matters， and he had disposed of them before the Two Minutes Hate interrupted him. When the Hate was over he returned to his cubicle， took the Newspeak dictionary from the shelf， pushed the speakwrite to one side， cleaned his spectacles， and settled down to his main job of the morning.
Winston’s greatest pleasure in life was in his work. Most of it was a tedious routine， but included in it there were also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem — delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of what the Party wanted you to say. Winston was good at this kind of thing. On occasion he had even been entrusted with the rectification of leading articles， which were written entirely in Newspeak. He unrolled the message that he had set aside earlier. It ran：
In Oldspeak （or standard English） this might be rendered：
Winston read through the offending article. Big Brother’s Order for the Day， it seemed， had been chiefly devoted to praising the work of an organization known as FFCC， which supplied cigarettes and other comforts to the sailors in the Floating Fortresses. A certain Comrade Withers， a prominent member of the Inner Party， had been singled out for special mention and awarded a decoration， the Order of Conspicuous Merit， Second Class.
Three months later FFCC had suddenly been dissolved with no reasons given. One could assume that Withers and his associates were now in disgrace， but there had been no report of the matter in the Press or on the telescreen. That was to be expected， since it was unusual for political offenders to be put on trial or even publicly denounced. The great purges involving thousands of people， with public trials of traitors and thought-criminals who made abject confession of their crimes and were afterwards executed， were special show-pieces not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years. More commonly， people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them. In some cases they might not even be dead. Perhaps thirty people personally known to Winston， not counting his parents， had disappeared at one time or another.
