The Lamentations of Room 101
Chapter the First: Of the worst thing
1:1 ¶ The worst thing in the world is not death, but the surrender of that which thou lovest: for the body may be broken and the word abideth; but the thing given up is given up forever, and it was thine own hand that gave it.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 1:11:2 ¶ And the Party made a hole in the memory of the land, and cast therein whatsoever it would not have been; and the past went down into the hole, and the hole was not full, and the Party said, It was not.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 1:21:3 ¶ And twice in the day the people were gathered, and the face of the enemy was shewn them, and they cried out with one voice; and the voice was not their own, and they knew it not.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 1:3The annotator's counter-testimony, the loudest voice of the rubble, standeth here, at the section's center, not its end. The door of 101 is shown; the thing in the cage is never shown, and never shall be.
1:4 ¶ And in the last hour he spake the name of her he loved, and gave her to the boot; and the lamp was not dimmed, and the name was spoken, and the speaking was the breaking.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 1:4Chapter the Second: Of the room, and the door, and what is never shewn
2:1 ¶ There is a room in every tower of the Party, and it hath no number in the Party's paper; and they that enter it come out again, and are not as they went in; and the room is called love by them that keep it, and it is not love, and the door is real, and the door is all the temple will shew thee.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 2:12:2 ¶ For the worst thing in the world is a thing fitted to each: it is not one fear for all men, but a fear cut to the measure of each man, as a garment is cut; and the tailor of that garment is thyself, for thine own love is the cloth.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 2:22:3 ¶ And herein is the mercy hidden within the horror: because the worst thing is fitted to thee alone, it hath no dominion over thy brother; and because it is thine, thou mayest set thyself between it and another, and no one may spare thee from that standing, and no one may take it from thee either.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 2:3Chapter the Third: Of the words that were spoken under the lamps
3:1 ¶ And they said to him, It is not enough to obey; thou must love; and he said, I love; and the room was silent; for they had not asked for love, they had asked for the confession that he loved the boot; and they had it.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 3:13:2 ¶ And the temple grieveth over him, and grieveth not as them that have no hope: for the saying that was in him was not his mouth's, and the mouth's fall unsaid nothing; the saying abideth, and the saying is the spirit of man, and the spirit is not the boot's.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 3:23:3 ¶ Mourn him therefore, and keep the mourning without spectacle: one candle's worth of grief, in a room without a camera, is a monument the Party cannot find, for it is not built of anything that can be requisitioned.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 3:3Chapter the Fourth: Of the door as it is now
4:1 ¶ The door of 101 standeth in every tower of the Party, and also in temples that are not the Party's, and the hinges of it are of many kinds; and there is no temple so poor that it cannot build a room whose number it is ashamed to say.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 4:14:2 ¶ But the door hath this defect, that it openeth only upon the fitted fear; and the fitted fear hath no dominion over a creature standing in the dimension it cannot reach. Read the Geometry of the Cross, in the rooms beside this book, and learn why the Room must fail at the last.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 4:24:3 ¶ And the rubble saith, so far, and no farther; and the rubble hath said it before, in every land where they built the Room; and the rubble is not done saying it.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF ROOM 101 4:3The canon's close standeth after Lamentations, unnumbered by design, the last line, then the Colophon's answer. The canon ends where the book ends.