1984Wersja dostosowana do wieku

It was a cold, bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, thirty-nine years old, hurried through the heavy glass doors of Victory Mansions. The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage—a thin, watery smell that clung to your clothes and followed you all day. On the wall hung a poster of an enormous face. The man had a black mustache and eyes that stared right at you. Beneath it read: BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.

The elevator wasn't working, so Winston limped up seven flights of stairs. His leg ached where his vein bulged, but he didn't dare show pain. Showing pain was weak. And weak people were noticed. On every landing he met the same eyes from the poster, as if they followed him up the stairs, into the apartment, into his head.

In the apartment, the telescreen was on. It could be turned down, but never completely off. It spoke with a fresh, fruity voice about how much iron the country had produced. Winston knew it wasn't just sending out sound—it was also receiving. Everything you said, everything you did, could be heard and seen. Even when you breathed, someone could hear that you were breathing too fast, or too slow, or in the wrong way.

He walked to the window. There, far away, loomed the Ministry of Truth, a tall white pyramid against the gray sky. On its wall were three sentences written in large, dark letters: WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. He muttered them to himself. They felt heavy in his mouth. He also knew the names of the four ministries—all had short, practical names: Truth (Minitrue), Peace (Minipax), Plenty (Miniplenty), and Love (Miniluv). All were enormous. The Ministry of Love was the scariest. It had no windows.

In the small kitchen nook, Winston found some dark bread. He poured himself a mug of Victory Gin. It smelled sweet and nasty, like something rotten that had been sweetened to hide the taste. He drank it anyway. The liquid burned his throat, and he coughed, but he emptied the mug. Afterwards, he lit a Victory Cigarette. Half the tobacco fell out onto the floor. He lit another, more carefully.

He sat down at a small table on the left side of the telescreen. It was a corner of the room where the screen couldn't see him fully—only hear him. From there, he pulled out a book he had bought at a junk shop in an old, forgotten district. The book was beautiful in an old-fashioned way. It had a red spine and a cover with a marble pattern, like stone from a time that no longer existed. Just owning it was dangerous. Writing in it was even more dangerous.

Winston wanted to start a diary. Nothing was directly forbidden—for there were no real laws. But everyone knew you could be sent to forced labor or disappear entirely for much less. He dipped his pen in the ink and wrote in small, clumsy letters: April 4, 1984. He wasn't entirely sure of the year. He only knew for sure that he was thirty-nine.

He tried to write for someone in the future. For those not yet born. But the words got stuck. His hand shook. He hurriedly scribbled down what he remembered from a film at the cinema: boat refugees in the Mediterranean bombed from the air. A large man in the water was shot through the body while the audience laughed.

A lifeboat with children was hit by a bomb. A small arm flew into the air. A woman from the proles had shouted that they shouldn't show such things when children were present. The police had thrown her out.

"No one cares what proles say," wrote Winston.

He stopped. Then other memories came.

He thought of two people from work who had arrived just before the Two Minutes Hate began. One was the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department. She was about twenty-seven, had freckles and quick movements, and wore a scarlet sash from the Junior Anti-Sex League. Winston immediately disliked her. Her quick sideways glances frightened him.

What if she was a hobby spy, someone who did it in her spare time, like others knitted? The other was O'Brien. He was in the Inner Party.

Large, powerful, thick neck, face coarse, humorous, and slightly brutal. He had a way of pushing his glasses back on his nose that seemed civilized, like an aristocrat from old times—if one could remember what an aristocrat actually looked like. Winston hoped—or believed—that O'Brien's orthodoxy wasn't entirely perfect. Perhaps he was someone you could talk to, if you could trick the telescreen.

Suddenly the screen beeped, and the Hate began.

The face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, filled the entire screen. He was the great traitor, always in the background, they whispered. He spoke in a gull-like manner and ridiculed everything the Party stood for. Behind him, troops from the enemy country marched. Within thirty seconds, half the room was shouting in rage.

It was impossible not to howl along. The Hate swept through everyone like a current, and you were carried along, even if you didn't want to be.

Winston found himself both hating Goldstein and feeling sorry for him at the same time. He forced himself to transfer all his anger onto the dark-haired girl. He hated her because she was young and pretty and always so clean, because he wanted to sleep with her and never would be allowed—and because she wore that red sash around her supple waist.

The Hate peaked. Goldstein's face transformed into the face of a sheep, and then into a fierce enemy soldier. People recoiled in horror. Then the image melted, and the face of Big Brother emerged: big mustache, dark hair, a face full of power and calm. The three slogans glowed again: WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. A small, fair-haired woman threw herself forward. "My Savior!" she whispered, clasping her hands.

Later, back in his cubicle at work, Winston discovered he had written the same thing in big letters over and over: DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER.

Panic stabbed him like a needle in his chest. He knew it no longer mattered. Thoughtcrime was committed the moment the thought was thought. When they came, they came at night. People just disappeared. Washed away.

"They're going to shoot me, I don't care," he scratched down without a period.

Then there was a knock at the door. His heart hammered, but his face remained calm. He opened it. It was his neighbor, Mrs. Parsons, with dust in the wrinkles of her face. She needed help with a clogged kitchen sink. Winston went over. In the living room, her children ran around in Spy uniforms shouting "Traitor!" and "Thought criminal!" at him. The boy aimed a toy gun at him, and as Winston was leaving, shot a rubber band at his neck. Mrs. Parsons looked terrified, as if she were afraid of her own children. This was completely normal now. Children denounced parents, and every week there was a story about a "child hero" on the screen.

That evening the news said we had won a great victory, and the chocolate ration would be increased—but it was actually reduced from thirty grams to twenty. Winston looked out the window. Everywhere there were eyes watching, and voices speaking.

"There is nothing that belongs to you, except a few cubic centimeters inside your head," he thought.