When the Ministry of Plenty incorrectly predicts and announces that no changes will be made to the chocolate ration in , the easy and obvious solution when chocolate supplies come up short is to pull a quiet mathematical retcon and edit the old articles. If anybody remembers the article differently, there is no written evidence to corroborate their memory—only hunger. Had food always tasted like this?
He starts an ill-fated affair with Julia, a young dissident from the Ministry of Truth who poses as a Party member. After their first rendezvous, she gives him a tiny piece of black market chocolate—something Winston has not tasted since he was a child, before Oceania and Big Brother. The 'strange evil tastes' of food become some of the only pieces of static, tangible proof that the government might not be acting in the best interest of its people.
As the myth of Big Brother breaks down, so does the myth of a functioning ration system. Winston begins to see evidence of dissidence and evidence of a black market everywhere he looks or smells. But the more they both sink into the hedonism of these illegal pleasures, the closer they get to betraying their disloyalty to the Party. For many who have grown up in non-fictional totalitarian governments, intricate systems of rationing, corruption, and black markets are a familiar reality.
In Cuba, beef is a huge part of the culinary tradition and the cornerstone of one of the most popular Cuban dishes; ropa vieja. But food is rationed and scarce, and it is almost impossible to find beef unless you accidentally run into a cow with a car or have connections to the black market , and restaurant owners can lose their businesses if they are found buying beef on the black market.
As a result, beef is often replaced by creative amalgamations of pork, chicken, and mutton. In the Soviet Union, which was widely regarded as the inspiration for the totalitarian communism depicted in , strict trade laws and closed borders made it almost impossible to buy many foreign products. My brother-in-law, Javid, who grew up in Azerbaijan during the Soviet Union, had only one ice cream product throughout his childhood— a small prepackaged ice cream cone called Plombir , filled with a perfectly molded, unadorned hemisphere of vanilla ice cream.
There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.
Winston turned round abruptly. He had set his features into the expression of quiet optimism which it was advisable to wear when facing the telescreen. He crossed the room into the tiny kitchen. By leaving the Ministry at this time of day he had sacrificed his lunch in the canteen, and he was aware that there was no food in the kitchen except a hunk of dark-coloured bread which had got to be saved for tomorrow's breakfast.
It gave off a sickly, oily smell, as of Chinese rice-spirit. Winston poured out nearly a teacupful, nerved himself for a shock, and gulped it down like a dose of medicine. Instantly his face turned scarlet and the water ran out of his eyes.
The stuff was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club.
The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful. With the next he was more successful. He went back to the living-room and sat down at a small table that stood to the left of the telescreen.
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