1984

Author: (English) Orwell
Translator: Dong Leshan
Country: United Kingdom
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1998-03-01
Features: "The New Century Universal Library" is a key book launched by Liaoning Education Press. The entire series focuses on the popularization and dissemination of culture, adhering to the principles of being essential, practical, durable, and easily stored. Under the guidance of experts from various disciplines at home and abroad, the library selects and includes rare and excellent editions of Chinese and foreign classics. From 1996 to 2005, the plan was to publish 100 books annually, accumulating to 1,000 volumes, aiming to reflect the general outline of human cultural development and to select a basic reading list for modern families in the 21st century.
Traditional Culture Series: Collects classic works of traditional Chinese culture, which are verified and collated by version experts and arranged in simplified-character horizontal layout.
Modern Culture Series: Focuses on the works of academic giants during the Republican era, collecting, organizing, and arranging rare and well-known but hard-to-find or long-lost works into simplified-character editions.
Foreign Culture Series: Collects the finest treasures from the world's cultural heritage outside China, with the theme of cultural research and introduction. The writing style is light and elegant, the tone fresh and lively, making it highly readable, belonging to the category of "small works by great writers."
The overarching purpose of the entire series is to provide readers seeking knowledge with books that are long-lasting and useful, demonstrating the necessity of reading activities in modern society and promoting the formation of a reading culture in society, creating a realm where book lovers can feel like they own a library.
"The New Century Universal Library" is a key book launched by Liaoning Education Press. The entire series focuses on the popularization and dissemination of culture, adhering to the principles of being essential, practical, durable, and easily stored. Under the guidance of experts from various disciplines at home and abroad, the library selects and includes rare and excellent editions of Chinese and foreign classics. From 1996 to 2005, the plan was to publish 100 books annually, accumulating to 1,000 volumes, aiming to reflect the general outline of human cultural development and to select a basic reading list for modern families in the 21st century.
Traditional Culture Series: Collects classic works of traditional Chinese culture, which are verified and collated by version experts and arranged in simplified-character horizontal layout.
Modern Culture Series: Focuses on the works of academic giants during the Republican era, collecting, organizing, and arranging rare and well-known but hard-to-find or long-lost works into simplified-character editions.
Foreign Culture Series: Collects the finest treasures from the world's cultural heritage outside China, with the theme of cultural research and introduction. The writing style is light and elegant, the tone fresh and lively, making it highly readable, belonging to the category of "small works by great writers."
The overarching purpose of the entire series is to provide readers seeking knowledge with books that are long-lasting and useful, demonstrating the necessity of reading activities in modern society and promoting the formation of a reading culture in society, creating a realm where book lovers can feel like they own a library.
In April, the weather was cold and clear, and the clock struck thirteen. Winston Smith, hunching his shoulders to shield himself from the wind, quickly slipped into the glass door of Victory Tower, but his movements were not quick enough to prevent a gust of sand and dust from following him in. The lobby had the smell of boiled cabbage and old mats. At one end of the lobby, a colorful poster was nailed to the wall, slightly too large for indoor display. It depicted a large face over a meter wide: the face of a man in his early fifties, with thick black hair and rugged, handsome features. Winston walked toward the stairs. There was no need to use the elevator. Even on smooth days, the elevator was rarely used, and now, with the power out during the daytime, it was even more so. This was to save energy for the Hate Week. Winston's apartment was on the seventh floor. He was thirty-nine years old, with varicose veins in his right ankle, so he climbed slowly, resting several times along the way. On each floor, the large face on the wall opposite the elevator door stared down at him. These were the kinds of posters where, no matter where you went, the eyes in the painting seemed to follow you. The caption below read: "Big Brother is watching you." Inside his apartment, a round voice recited a series of numbers related to iron production. The sound came from an oval metal plate, resembling frosted glass, which formed part of the right wall. Winston switched on a switch, and the voice became quieter, though the words were still clearly audible. This device (called the telescreen) could lower the volume but could not be completely turned off. He walked to the window. His figure was thin and frail, and his blue work uniform—worn by Party members—made his thinness even more pronounced. His hair was very light, and his face had a natural redness. His skin, roughened by harsh soap and blunt razors, as well as the recent harsh winter, looked a bit coarse. Outside, even through the closed glass window, it looked cold. In the street below, small whirlwinds swept up dust and scraps of paper. Although the sun was bright and the sky blue, everything seemed colorless except for the posters everywhere. The face with the black beard looked down from every key point. On the front of the opposite building, there was another poster with the caption: "Big Brother is watching you." The black eyes stared intently at Winston's eyes. On the street below, another poster had a corner torn off, fluttering in the wind, occasionally covering and revealing the single word "Ministry of Truth" at a time. In the distance, a helicopter hovered above the rooftops like a green fly for a while before turning and flying away. This was the police patrol, watching people's windows. However, the patrol was not scary; only the Thought Police were. Behind Winston, the telescreen continued to chatter endlessly about iron production and the overachievement of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen could receive and transmit simultaneously. Any sound Winston made, as long as it was louder than a whisper, could be picked up; and as long as he remained within the field of view of the metal plate, he could not only hear his own voice but also see his actions. Of course, there was no way to know, at any given time, whether your every word and action was being monitored. The exact frequency at which the Thought Police monitored someone or the schedule for receiving their signals was something you could only guess. It was even possible to imagine that they were watching everyone from start to finish. In any case, whenever they pleased, they could connect to your line. You could only live under the assumption—long since ingrained as a habit—that every sound you made was heard, and every action you took, unless in the dark, was closely observed.
Winston continued to face away from the telescreen. This was safer; but he was also very aware that even his back could sometimes betray him. A kilometer away, his workplace, the Ministry of Truth, loomed over the gloomy cityscape. The building was tall and white. He thought, with a vague sense of revulsion—this was London, the main city of Zone One Airfield, which was the third most populous province in Oceania. He tried to recall some memories from his childhood to tell him if London had always been like this. Whether there had always been scenes like: dilapidated houses from the 19th century, with walls propped up by timber, windows boarded up, roofs covered with corrugated iron, and collapsed garden walls leaning at odd angles; or the dust-choked, rubble-strewn sites of air raids, overgrown with wild grass; or the places where bombs had cleared large patches of land, suddenly revealing many dirty wooden houses like chicken coops. But it was useless; he couldn't remember. His childhood left little memory behind, except for a series of faceless, indistinct, and brightly lit scenes.
The Ministry of Truth—the New Speak term for "Truth"—was strikingly different from anything else in sight. It was a vast pyramid-shaped building made of white cement, glistening under the sun, rising layer by layer to a height of 300 meters. From where Winston stood, he could see the Party's three slogans written in elegant letters on the white walls: "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength."
It was said that the Ministry of Truth had 3,000 rooms on the ground floor, equal to the structure below. In other parts of London, there were three other buildings identical in appearance and size. They made the surrounding buildings seem like dwarfs, so from the roof of Victory Tower, you could see all four at once. They were the headquarters of the four ministries of the entire government: the Ministry of Truth was responsible for news, entertainment, education, and arts; the Ministry of Peace for war; the Ministry of Love for law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty for economic affairs. In New Speak, they were called the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty.
By the second minute, hatred had reached a fever pitch. Everyone jumped up and shouted loudly, trying to drown out the unbearable, sheep-like voice coming from the telescreen. The little woman with light-brown hair had a flushed face, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. Even O'Brien's rugged face was flushed. He sat straight in his chair, his broad chest swelling, trembling uncontrollably as if struck by an electric current. The black-haired girl behind Winston began shouting "Pig! Pig! Pig!" Suddenly, she picked up a thick New Speak dictionary and threw it at the telescreen. It hit Goldstein's nose and bounced away, but he continued speaking without a change in tone. Winston had a moment of clarity and realized he was shouting along with everyone, kicking the leg of his chair hard with his heel. The two-minute hate was terrifying not because you had to participate in the performance, but because it was impossible to avoid. Within half a minute, all restraint was unnecessary. A kind of pleasure mixed with fear and revenge, a desire to kill, torture, and hammer someone's face with a heavy iron hammer, seemed to spread through the group like an electric current, making you involuntarily become a madman shouting loudly. However, the kind of fervor you felt was an abstract, aimless emotion, like the flame of a blowtorch, capable of shifting from one object to another. Therefore, for a while, Winston's hatred was not directed at Goldstein but rather turned against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police. At such times, he genuinely sympathized with the lonely, mocked heretic on the telescreen, the only guardian of truth and reason in a world of lies. But a moment later, he stood with the others, feeling that everything said against Goldstein was right. At such moments, his hatred for Big Brother turned into adoration, and Big Brother's image grew ever larger, appearing as an invincible, fearless protector, standing like a giant rock before the swarming masses from Asia. Goldstein, though isolated and even suspected of not existing, seemed like a cunning demon, whose mere voice could destroy the fabric of civilization.
Sometimes, you could even consciously shift your target of hatred. Winston suddenly turned his hatred from the face on the telescreen to the black-haired girl behind him, the change as rapid as sitting bolt upright from a nightmare. Vivid, beautiful illusions flashed through his mind. He imagined beating her to death with a rubber stick, then tying her naked to a stake like St. Sebastian, pierced with arrows. At the climax, he degraded her, cutting her throat. And he understood even more clearly why he hated her. He hated her because she was young and beautiful but lacked sensuality. He hated her because he wanted to sleep with her but would never succeed. He hated her slender waist, which seemed to invite him to embrace her, yet was wrapped in that repulsive scarlet ribbon, a symbol of aggressive chastity.
Hatred reached its peak. Goldstein's voice really sounded like a sheep, and for a moment, his face even turned into a sheep's face. Then the sheep's face transformed into a soldier from Eurasia, tall and frightening, appearing to advance in large steps. His light machine gun barked, as if ready to burst out, scaring some people in the ranks to jump up from their seats without time to stand. But at that very moment, the enemy on the telescreen had turned into Big Brother's face—black hair, black beard, full of strength, calm and composed, his face so large that it almost filled the entire screen. His appearance brought a reassuring sigh of relief. No one heard what Big Brother was saying. He spoke only encouraging words, the kind usually said in the midst of battle, too loud to hear word for word but capable of restoring confidence.
Then Big Brother's face disappeared, and the telescreen showed the Party's three slogans written in bold capital letters: "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength." But Big Brother's face lingered on the telescreen for several seconds, as if the impression it left on everyone's retinas was too deep to disappear immediately. The little woman with light-brown hair threw herself onto the back of the chair in front of her. She trembled and whispered something like "My savior!" as she reached out her arms to the telescreen. Then she covered her face with both hands. It was clear she was praying.