Preface Chapter One: On Decency, Doubleness, and Updating Orwell Learning to Write about Orwell Orwell’s Double Consciousness Orwell and Race Orwell as “Elastic-Brow” Orwell’s Critical Sense Decency versus Hypocrisy in Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Animal Farm, and Nineteen Eighty-Four Chapter Two: Hardly Above Suspicion: Hypocrisy, Decency, and Sincerity in Burmese Days Flory as Ideal Candidate Hypocrisy Exposed Dr. Veraswami-Decency Personified Ellis and the Code of the Pukka Sahib Variations on a Theme Chapter Three: The Secret Art of Not Making Good: Gordon Comstock’s Childish Narrowness in Keep the Aspidistra Flying Gordon Comstock-The Triumph of Pettiness over Doubleness The Decency of Rosemary Waterlow and the Role of Gender Ravelston-Gordon’s Partner in Delusion Decency and Some Conclusions for the Individual Chapter Four: An Absence of Pampering: The Betrayal of the Rebellion and the End of Decency in Animal Farm From 1935 to Nineteen Eighty-Four: Concerns for the Part Become Concerns for the Whole The Rebellion-The Beginning of the End of Decency Consolidating Power and Enforcing the Rules of Indecency Boxer and Decency’s Final Demise Decency and Justice-Is Behaving Decently a Mark of Weakness? Chapter Five: The Heresy of Common Sense: The Prohibition of Decency in Nineteen Eighty-Four Winston Smith and the Desire for Decency Julia and the Citizens of Oceania O’Brien-Imposing the Party’s Final Vocabulary Optimism…After a Fashion Conclusion: Decency or Tolerance? Decency as Concrete Utopia