In keeping with
the grim, dystopian mood of , 's 1949 novel of a man living in a future
totalitarian state, descriptions of urban decay are peppered throughout the story.
On page six,gazes out at the landscape surrounding the Ministry of Truth, observing
"the bombed sites where the plaster dust swirled in the air and the willow-herb straggled
over the heaps of rubble."
On page twenty-six, Winston follows Mrs.
Parsons. Together, they advance to Victory Mansions. These aging houses are described with cold,
dilapidated .
Victory Mansions were old flats, built in
1930 or thereabouts, and were falling to pieces.
Later,
on page 105, Winston is approaching what was once Saint Pancras Station, and he offers the
following description:
a cobbled street of little
two-storey houses with battered doorways which gave straight on the pavement and which were
somehow curiously suggestive of ratholes.
In Airstrip
One, even the interiors seem to decay, as exemplified on page seventy-five, where Winston is in
the Canteen.describes the canteen as follows:
its walls
grimey from the contact of innumerable bodies; battered metal tables and chairs, placed so close
together that you sat with elbows touching; bent spoons, dented trays, coarse white mugs; all
surfaces greasy, grime in every crack . . .
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