Miles Question

through vague rumours. Neither the Brotherhood
nor the book was a subject that any ordinary Party member would mention if
there was a way of avoiding it.
In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up
and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an
effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The
little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening
and shutting like that of a landed fish. Even O'Brien's heavy face was
flushed. He was sitting very straight in his chair, his powerful chest
swelling and quivering as though he were standing up to the assault of a
wave. The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out 'Swine!
Swine! Swine!' and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and
flung it at the screen. It struck Goldstein's nose and bounced off; the
voice continued inexorably. In a lucid moment Winston found that he was
shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of
his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one
was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to
avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always
unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to
kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow
through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one
even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the
rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be
switched