I did a number of 1984 paragraphs in a row. I read each aloud, paused, then spoke and recorded my paraphrase, then transcribed the recording of my paraphrase.
1984:
In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep underground, the lunch queue jerked slowly forward. The room was already very full and deafeningly noisy. From the grille at the counter the steam of stew came pouring forth, with a sour metallic smell which did not quite overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On the far side of the room there was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall, where gin could be bought at ten cents the large nip.
What I said:
Underground there was a cafeteria that sold stew and gin.
I think what I said was reasonably correct.
1984:
He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department. Perhaps ‘friend’ was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades: but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others. Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. He was a tiny creature, smaller than Winston, with dark hair and large, protuberant eyes, at once mournful and derisive, which seemed to search your face closely while he was speaking to you.
What I said:
Winston’s friend Syme interrupted him and said hello. Syme was a philologist working on the Newspeak dictionary.
I think what I said was reasonable.
1984:
Everyone kept asking you for razor blades. Actually he had two unused ones which he was hoarding up. There had been a famine of them for months past. At any given moment there was some necessary article which the Party shops were unable to supply. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was darning wool, sometimes it was shoelaces; at present it was razor blades. You could only get hold of them, if at all, by scrounging more or less furtively on the ‘free’ market.
What I said:
There was a shortage of razorblades. Winston had two saved.
Good I think.
1984:
His mocking eyes roved over Winston’s face. ‘I know you,’ the eyes seemed to say, ‘I see through you. I know very well why you didn’t go to see those prisoners hanged.’ In an intellectual way, Syme was venomously orthodox. He would talk with a disagreeable gloating satisfaction of helicopter raids on enemy villages, and trials and confessions of thought-criminals, the executions in the cellars of the Ministry of Love. Talking to him was largely a matter of getting him away from such subjects and entangling him, if possible, in the technicalities of Newspeak, on which he was authoritative and interesting. Winston turned his head a little aside to avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes.
What I said:
He could tell why Winston didn’t want to go to the hanging. Winston knew not to try to talk politics with him and to get him onto a topic for which he more interesting and authoritative like Newspeak. He was very politically orthodox.
It’s a bit rougher than I’d like, but I don’t think it’s awful. I’d forgotten Symes name.
1984:
The gin was served out to them in handleless china mugs. They threaded their way across the crowded room and unpacked their trays on to the metal-topped table, on one corner of which someone had left a pool of stew, a filthy liquid mess that had the appearance of vomit. Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the oilytasting stuff down. When he had winked the tears out of his eyes he suddenly discovered that he was hungry. He began swallowing spoonfuls of the stew, which, in among its general sloppiness, had cubes of spongy pinkish stuff which was probably a preparation of meat. Neither of them spoke again till they had emptied their pannikins. From the table at Winston’s left, a little behind his back, someone was talking rapidly and continuously, a harsh gabble almost like the quacking of a duck, which pierced the general uproar of the room.
What I said:
Winston and Syme took their meals and their drinks and sat down and began to eat. Someone talked loudly next to them.
I think this is reasonable.
I tried a longer one:
Winston and Syme took their gin and walked across the crowded room to a metal topped table. The table was dirty and had spilled stew on it. Winston drank his gin, blinked back the tears, and noticed he was hungry. They ate in silence while someone to Winstons left talked loudly.
1984:
Syme looked up. ‘Here comes Parsons,’ he said. Something in the tone of his voice seemed to add, ‘that bloody fool’. Parsons, Winston’s fellow-tenant at Victory Mansions, was in fact threading his way across the room— a tubby, middle-sized man with fair hair and a froglike face. At thirty-five he was already putting on rolls of fat at neck and waistline, but his movements were brisk and boyish. His whole appearance was that of a little boy grown large, so much so that although he was wearing the regulation overalls, it was almost impossible not to think of him as being dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirt, and red neckerchief of the Spies. In visualizing him one saw always a picture of dimpled knees and sleeves rolled back from pudgy forearms. Parsons did, indeed, invariably revert to shorts when a community hike or any other physical activity gave him an excuse for doing so. He greeted them both with a cheery ‘Hullo, hullo!’ and sat down at the table, giving off an intense smell of sweat. Beads of moisture stood out all over his pink face. His powers of sweating were extraordinary. At the Community Centre you could always tell when he had been playing table-tennis by the dampness of the bat handle. Syme had produced a strip of paper on which there was a long column of words, and was studying it with an ink-pencil between his fingers.
I said:
Parson’s approached Winston and Syme at their table. He was a large man but he moved quite quickly. His ability to sweat was extraordinary. He said hullo lightly.
I think this was reasonable.
1984:
He looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone was ugly, and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than in the uniform blue overalls. On the far side of the room, sitting at a table alone, a small, curiously beetle-like man was drinking a cup of coffee, his little eyes darting suspicious glances from side to side. How easy it was, thought Winston, if you did not look about you, to believe that the physical type set up by the Party as an ideal—tall muscular youths and deep-bosomed maidens, blond-haired, vital, sunburnt, carefree—existed and even predominated. Actually, so far as he could judge, the majority of people in Airstrip One were small, dark, and ill-favoured. It was curious how that beetle-like type proliferated in the Ministries: little dumpy men, growing stout very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes. It was the type that seemed to flourish best under the dominion of the Party.
What I said:
Winston looks around the cafeteria and notices a small beady eyed man sitting at a table whose eyes are darting around. He notices that the people devoted to the party, the kind of people he sees, are not the kinds of people in the party’s propaganda films that are like, carefree and strong and beautiful, but they’re actually fat little goblin-type bureaucrats.
I think this was okay. I think the main point was the difference between the Party’s physical ideal and the kind of people who flourished under the party.
1984:
The quacking voice from the next table, temporarily silenced during the Ministry’s announcement, had started up again, as loud as ever. For some reason Winston suddenly found himself thinking of Mrs Parsons, with her wispy hair and the dust in the creases of her face. Within two years those children would be denouncing her to the Thought Police. Mrs Parsons would be vaporized. Syme would be vaporized. Winston would be vaporized. O’Brien would be vaporized. Parsons, on the other hand, would never be vaporized. The eyeless creature with the quacking voice would never be vaporized. The little beetle-like men who scuttle so nimbly through the labyrinthine corridors of Ministries they, too, would never be vaporized. And the girl with dark hair, the girl from the Fiction Department —she would never be vaporized either. It seemed to him that he knew instinctively who would survive and who would perish: though just what it was that made for survival, it was not easy to say.
I said:
Winston thought of Mrs Parsons and the people around him. He somehow knew instinctively who would be vaporised and who wouldn’t.
Not awful.
1984:
At this moment he was dragged out of his reverie with a violent jerk. The girl at the next table had turned partly round and was looking at him. It was the girl with dark hair. She was looking at him in a sidelong way, but with curious intensity. The instant she caught his eye she looked away again.
I said:
The girl who was listening to the man that was talking loudly turned around and looked at Winston. Once Winston caught her eye she quickly turn back again.
Not awful.
1984:
The sweat started out on Winston’s backbone. A horrible pang of terror went through him. It was gone almost at once, but it left a sort of nagging uneasiness behind. Why was she watching him? Why did she keep following him about? Unfortunately he could not remember whether she had already been at the table when he arrived, or had come there afterwards. But yesterday, at any rate, during the Two Minutes Hate, she had sat immediately behind him when there was no apparent need to do so. Quite likely her real object had been to listen to him and make sure whether he was shouting loudly enough.
I said:
Winston had a pang of terror and began to consider why she might’ve been near him on two occasions recently. He thought it could only be to investigate him.
Reasonable, not awful.
1984:
His earlier thought returned to him: probably she was not actually a member of the Thought Police, but then it was precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all. He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in New-speak: FACECRIME, it was called.
I said:
He wondered how long she had been looking at him and whether any of his facial expressions had given away something about his thoughts. One’s facial expressions needed to be under strict control in order to not make others think you had something to hide.
1984:
For the moment it was too difficult to go on. He shut his eyes and pressed his fingers against them, trying to squeeze out the vision that kept recurring. He had an almost overwhelming temptation to shout a string of filthy words at the top of his voice. Or to bang his head against the wall, to kick over the table, and hurl the inkpot through the window—to do any violent or noisy or painful thing that might black out the memory that was tormenting him.
I said:
Winston pushed his fingers against his eyes and tried violently to withhold a memory.
