Slavery at the Centre

Four times are the three slogans of the Party quoted in their entirety in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Why, then, when Emmanuel Goldstein refers to them, does he reverse their order?

In the first chapter of Nineteen Eighty-Four Winston Smith gazes at…

“the three slogans of the Party:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”

The Ministry of Love, imagined by the Wai Think Tank

Later he is given a book, which on opening he discovers is titled…

“THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF

OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM

by

Emmanuel Goldstein”

He opens the book and discovers the heading to…

“Chapter I

Ignorance is Strength”

Further on, he finds…

“Chapter III

War is Peace”

If he opens the book at Chapter II we are never told what he reads.

As the titles of Chapter I and Chapter III are taken from the slogans of the Party might Chapter II be called “Freedom is Slavery”? If so, what would be the title of Chapter IV? Or does the “heavy black volume” contain only three chapters?

The titles of the first and third chapters reverse the order of the slogans of the Party – is there any significance to this? If so, what is the significance of the reversal? With only three phrases to be reversed, one consequence is that “slavery” remains at the centre of both the Party’s slogans and of Goldstein’s analysis.

Of the three slogans one appears in its own right in Goldstein’s book (“Ignorance is Strength” receives no individual explanation, perhaps being self-evident in too many political movements), when the book explains:

“A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This –although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense– is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.”

Only the central slogan of the three receives an exposition from a human being (Goldstein possibly not existing). Syme explains to Winston:

“Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now.”

Even Syme, clever as he is, though, fails to realise the full significance of the phrase which O’Brien expounds to Winston:

“You know the Party slogan: ‘Freedom is Slavery’. Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone –free– the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.”

Consequently, there is just one of the three slogans that Winston writes when is in the Ministry of Love:

“The pencil felt thick and awkward in his fingers. He began to write down the thoughts that came into his head. He wrote first in large clumsy capitals:

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

Then almost without a pause he wrote beneath it:

TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE”.

But even then he did not love Big Brother.

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