Winston's greatest pleasure in life is his work. His job at the Ministry of Truth is to rewrite history, doctoring documents so that they correspond with Big Brother's version of the truth. Most of Winston's work is
"tedious routine, but included in it there (are) also jobs so difficult and intricate that you could lose yourself in them as in the depths of a mathematical problem - delicate pieces of forgery in which you had nothing to guide you except your knowledge of the principles of Ingsoc and your estimate of what the Party wanted you to say".
Winston likes his job because he is good at it, and he looks upon it as a challenge and a diversion in his drab life. He is so skilled at what he does that he has even on occasion been entrusted to rectify the Times leading articles. Winston no longer thinks of what he does as forgery - the materials he works with have so little connection "to anything in the real world, that to him, it is "merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another" (Part I, Chapter 4).
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