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Big Brotherly Love. Most of the shooting warfare in 1984 is carried on by specialists in the remote borderlands of the superstates or around the Floating Fortresses which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes. Nonetheless, London life is inexpressibly vilea combination of super-Crippsian austerity and Dachau terrorism. To fall in love is a crime; all passion must be spent on nationalistic fervor and savage hatred of "Emmanuel Goldstein," the Trotzky-like leader of the anti-party underground. All adoration must be devoted to "Big Brother," the Stalinesque dictator whom no one has ever seen, but whose "black-haired, black-mustachio'd" visage, pregnant with "power and mysterious calm," stares from walls in the streets and living rooms. Oceania's ideal citizen is Comrade Ogilvy:
"At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum, a submachine gun, and a model helicopter. At sixa year early, by a special relaxation of the ruleshe had joined the Spies; at nine he had been a troop leader. At eleven he had denounced his uncle to the Thought Police after overhearing a conversation which appeared to him to have criminal tendencies ... At 19 he had designed a hand grenade which had been adopted by the Ministry of Peace and which, at its first trial, had killed 31 Eurasian prisoners in one burst. At 23 he had perished in action ... He was a total abstainer and a nonsmoker, had no recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy . . . He had no subjects of conversation except the principles of Ingsoc, and no aim in life except the defeat of the Eurasian enemy and the hunting-down of spies, saboteurs, thought-criminals, and traitors generally."
In Oceania only the poorly fed, beast-brained "proles" (proletariat) lead what might be called a natural lifein hideous slums. The rest of the population, comprising millions of abject party-members, live out their life-in-death under the all-seeing eye of the Ministry of Love, whose "telescreens" (which hear and see every move and sound and bark out harsh commands) are a fixture in every apartment. Each dreary day sees the disappearance of a colleague or relative into the Ministry's death-cellars. No one writes letters; no authentic records of the past are permitted; no memory is safe from the skilled glance of the Thought Police. Slowly but surely, the old English language, with its treasury of dangerous thoughts and mischievous expressions, is being steamrollered flat and converted into "Newspeak"a toneless, crimethink-less cablese.
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