Winston starts off at his work inside the Records Department, a department of the Ministry of Truth. In his cubicle there were 3 parts: a pneumatic tube for receiving instructions, a slightly larger pneumatic tube for receiving newspapers and other media to edit and finally a tube that led to a furnace. These furnace slits were called memory holes and any piece of instruction or scraps were to be destroyed in them.
His first job was to edit a newspaper called the Times, in the original copy it quoted Big Brother stating that the South Indian front would remain quiet and that there would be an attack in North Africa. However it turned out that the opposite happened and Winston needed to rewrite the original article with what had actually happened.
His second job was to change a "promise" made by the Ministry of Plenty that stated there would be no reduction in the chocolate ration. Winston changed this to say "it would be necessary to reduce the chocolate ration at some point". Once finished "rectifying" the article, Winston crumpled up the original instructions and threw them in the memory hole for destruction.
Inside the Records Department whenever an edit would need to be made, corrections would be made and then assembled together for one more re-write and then the new copy would be printed the exact number of times the original had been. After this the department would then find all original copies and destroy them. This process would be applied to any form of media and expression that could contain any form of political or ideological significant. Winston did not think he was performing forgery, instead he thought he was replacing one lie with another. Every statistic printed by the Ministry of Plenty had no connection to the outside world, like the Minsitry of Plenty would report 145 million boots being produced during one quarter then the Minsistry would say the production was 60 million boots and then Winston would go back and change the original statement to 75 million boots were predicted to be produced that quarter BUT in reality 0 boots were every produced at all and no cared about any of the numbers made by the government as 1/2 of Oceania went bare-foot.
Across the Hall, Winston saw Tillotson, a worker in the same department but Winston had no idea what he did. As a matter of fact, he wasn't really sure what anyone else did except himself. He didn't even know the names of some people even though he would see them every day. He knew there was a lady next to him whose only job was to delete people names from newspapers that were vaporized, ironic that her husband was vaporized too by the government a few years ago.
Winston loved rewriting the main articles of the Times, he considered it close to a math problem. His assignment was to rewrite the entire front article of the Times in Newspeak but he needed to remove all the "nonexistent" people referenced in the original paper.
The article in question was about Big Brother praising the FFCC, a government branch that supplied luxury goods to sailors on floating fortresses. However a month later the FFCC was dissolved for an unknown reason and the head of the FFCC, Comrade Withers a member of the inner party, was to be deleted from history. Winston did not know what Withers did but most likely there was no reason at all and Winston says, "Vaporizations and purges were necessary in the mechanisms of government". The instructions defined Winston as refs unpersons (references to nonexistent persons) which means he was considered to be dead by the government. Although considered dead Winston might have a year or even 2 before actually getting killed. An unperson is someone who does not exist and someone who has never existed.
In order to fix this article Winston made up some war hero called Comrade Ogilvy, who died heroically in battle. Although, Ogilvy never existed and is completely made up but can easily be created with false records, fake photos, and fake articles about him. Big Brother then took this article and wrote that Ogilvy was devoted to his duty and had no time for a wife and family. His only principles in life were that of Ingsoc. Winston was sure that his version would be adopted as fact and not Tillotson's. Winston was quite happy with himself for creating a man who never existed in the present but did in the past, now Comrade Ogilvy was considered equals with Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.
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