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. Neither of them spoke again till they had emptied their pannikins. 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. When he had winked the tears out of his eyes he suddenly discovered that he was hungry. Winston took up his mug of gin, paused for an instant to collect his nerve, and gulped the oily-tasting stuff down. 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. The gin was served out to them in handleless china mugs. 'There's a table over there, under that telescreen,' said Syme. On to each was dumped swiftly the regulation lunch - a metal pannikin of pinkish-grey stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and one saccharine tablet. Winston and Syme pushed their trays beneath the grille. 'Nex', please!' yelled the white-aproned prole with the ladle. And above all, at the end, the tongue sticking right out, and blue a quite bright blue.
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'I think it spoils it when they tie their feet together. 'It was a good hanging,' said Syme reminiscently. Winston turned his head a little aside to avoid the scrutiny of the large dark eyes. 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. 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. I know very well why you didn't go to see those prisoners hanged.' In an intellectual way, Syme was venomously orthodox. 'I know you,' the eyes seemed to say, 'I see through you. His mocking eyes roved over Winston's face. 'A very inadequate substitute,' said Syme. 'I shall see it on the flicks, I suppose.' 'I was working,' said Winston indifferently. 'Did you go and see the prisoners hanged yesterday?' said Syme. Each of them took a greasy metal tray from a pile at the end of the counter. As they halted he turned and faced Syme again. 'I've been using the same blade for six weeks,' he added untruthfully. You could only get hold of them, if at all, by scrounging more or less furtively on the 'free' market. Sometimes it was buttons, sometimes it was darning wool, sometimes it was shoelaces at present it was razor blades. At any given moment there was some necessary article which the Party shops were unable to supply. There had been a famine of them for months past. Actually he had two unused ones which he was hoarding up. They don't exist any longer.'Įveryone kept asking you for razor blades. 'Not one!' said Winston with a sort of guilty haste.
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'I wanted to ask you whether you'd got any razor blades,' he said. 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. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades: but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others. Perhaps 'friend' was not exactly the right word. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department.
![the hanging george orwell works cited the hanging george orwell works cited](https://s3.studylib.net/store/data/009613231_1-1930c49ceabb7d60bf3c610b9435fbb4.png)
'Just the man I was looking for,' said a voice at Winston's back. 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. 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.
THE HANGING GEORGE ORWELL WORKS CITED FULL
The room was already very full and deafeningly noisy. In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep underground, the lunch queue jerked slowly forward.