dave AKA vwdoc1
December 25th 07, 08:15 PM
Nearly all children nowadays were
horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as
the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages,
and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the
discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and
everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the
hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship
of Big Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their
ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against
foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal
for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with
good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a
paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak -- 'child hero'
was the phrase generally used -- had overheard some compromising remark and
denounced its parents to the Thought Police.
The sting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked up his pen
half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find something more to write in
the diary. Suddenly he began thinking of O'Brien again.
Years ago -- how long was it? Seven years it must be -- he had dreamed
that he was walking through a pitch-dark room. And someone sitting to one
side of him had said as he passed: 'We shall meet in the place where there
is no darkness.' It was said very quietly, almost casually -- a statemen
horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as
the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages,
and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the
discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and
everything connected with it. The songs, the processions, the banners, the
hiking, the drilling with dummy rifles, the yelling of slogans, the worship
of Big Brother -- it was all a sort of glorious game to them. All their
ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against
foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal
for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with
good reason, for hardly a week passed in which the Times did not carry a
paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak -- 'child hero'
was the phrase generally used -- had overheard some compromising remark and
denounced its parents to the Thought Police.
The sting of the catapult bullet had worn off. He picked up his pen
half-heartedly, wondering whether he could find something more to write in
the diary. Suddenly he began thinking of O'Brien again.
Years ago -- how long was it? Seven years it must be -- he had dreamed
that he was walking through a pitch-dark room. And someone sitting to one
side of him had said as he passed: 'We shall meet in the place where there
is no darkness.' It was said very quietly, almost casually -- a statemen