I Didn't Even Know Gators Had Wheels

still less an intelligent one; and yet she had possessed a kind of
nobility, a kind of purity, simply because the standards that she obeyed
were private ones. Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from
outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is
ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved
him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love. When
the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother had clasped the child in her
arms. It was no use, it changed nothing, it did not produce more chocolate,
it did not avert the child's death or her own; but it seemed natural to her
to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy
with her arm, which was no more use against the bullets than a sheet of
paper. The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that
mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time
robbing you of all power over the material world. When once you were in the
grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained
from doing, made literally no difference. Whatever happened you vanished,
and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted
clean out of the stream of history. And