[Way Back Jack[_3_]]

At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow,
rhythmical chant of 'B-B!....B-B!....' -- over and over again, very slowly,
with a long pause between the first 'B' and the second-a heavy, murmurous
sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of which one seemed to
hear the stamp of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as
much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often
heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to
the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of
self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic
noise. Winston's entrails seemed to grow cold. In the Two Minutes Hate he
could not help sharing in the general delirium, but this sub-human chanting
of 'B-B!....B-B!' always filled him with horror. Of course he chanted with
the rest: it was impossible to do otherwise. To dissemble your feelings, to
control your face, to do what everyone else was doing, was an instinctiv