“His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes.”

“As he watched the eyeless face with a jaw moving rapidly up and down, Winston had a curious feeling that this was not a real human being but some kind of dummy. It was not the man’s brain that was speaking, it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.”

“‘There is a word in Newspeak,’ said Syme, ‘I don’t know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.'”.

Nineteen Eighty Four is a dystopia set in a totalitarian future written by George Orwell in the 1940s. The system of the state is designed to make the people subservient to the total control that the ‘Party’ (the governing body) enforces over them. This submissive society, run by the Party’s absolute control of their lives, including even their thoughts, has become blind and oblivious to its own inferiority. This idea is presented to the readers in many different shapes and forms, such as symbolism.
“His head was thrown back a little, and because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes.”. This quote is Winston describing a man who is talking about the graciousness of the Party. Winston notices that the light makes his eyes appear to be “blank discs“. This symbolises how blind society is to its totalitarian government and how deeply ingrained their control is. “Unorthodoxy is unconsciousness“.