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And a few cubicles away a mild, ineffectual, dreamy creature named Ampleforth, with very hairy ears and a surprising talent for juggling with rhymes and metres, was engaged in producing garbled versions— definitive texts, they were called— of poems which had become ideologically offensive, but which for one reason or another were to be retained in the anthologies.

This passage introduces one of Winston’s coworkers at the Ministry of Truth, Ampleforth, and describes his job, which is to bowdlerize classic poems by removing and replacing aspects of them that are offensive to the Party. He represents the extreme measures the Party takes to assert full control over its citizens, but he also symbolizes a category of intellectuals (including Winston) who are engaged in work that they probably find repugnant and absurd, but which they are forced to do to make a living. That the Party has put people in this position is another aspect of its cruel control over the people.

Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready-made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances. . . . It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.

While Winston Smith is the face of resistance to the Party in 1984, in his job at the Ministry of Truth he is also a useful tool in the Party’s efforts to shape and invent information so that it better reflects their goals, as we see described here in his creation of a fictional war hero named Comrade Ogilvy in Book One, Chapter 4. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Theme: Control of Information and History (the second quote).

Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite towards him and began dictating in Big Brother’s familiar style: a style at once military and pedantic, and, because of a trick of asking questions and then promptly answering them (‘What lessons do we learn from this fact, comrades? The lesson— which is also one of the fundamental principles of Ingsoc— that,’ etc., etc.), easy to imitate.

Winston’s work at the Ministry of Truth helping the Party re-shape history to better suit the propaganda needs of the Party is further described in this passage from Book Two, Chapter 4 about Winston changing a speech that Big Brother supposedly made in the past. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Character: Big Brother (the third quote).

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