Karleen

“Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of or- thodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird. Chapter It had happened at last. The expected message had come. All his life, it seemed to him, he had been waiting for this to happen. He was walking down the long corridor at the Minis-try and he was almost at the spot where Julia had slipped the note into his hand when he became aware that some - one larger than himself was walking just behind him. The person, whoever it was, gave a small cough, evidently as a prelude to speaking.”
― George Orwell, 1984