Julia

by Sandra Newman

“People say if you love sausage, you should never see it being made. It disgusts you after that. That’s me and books.”

Smith—Old

Not going to lie, when I read 1984 (George Orwell) I always envision Smith as a guy with lean gut

Julia thought: Nothing wrong with you a good shag wouldn’t fix!

If you hated the enemy, you could be loved. People smiled dopily at each other, and some eyes welled with tears. They had had a good Hate.

It was a way to get Party membership and be safe from the camps, so for them the long hours might seem a small price to pay.

If Atkins had a weakness, it was her love of talk.

Atkins ought to know you couldn’t help everyone, not when they wouldn’t help themselves.

Ownlife was a Newspeak word for time spent alone: going for long walks, staying up with a book, watching sunsets. It was always pejorative, used to remind comrades that time not spent on the good of the collective was wasted.

Might the girl truly not know what had happened? She imagined Vicky producing that in the toilet and not seeing it for what it was, perhaps not looking in the toilet at all.

“It’s murder. You do see that, don’t you?”

This is a bit awkward...

They talked as if talk were the real work of life, and the world’s problems would soon be resolved if it were only rightly done.

These books Julia remembered as utterly different from those she later knew at Fiction. They were lovely, heavy things, clad in cloth or leather, from which adults read bewitching tales of queens and chimeras and glass slippers, books redolent with a kindly scent that now existed nowhere on earth.

Then there was the night the exiles obediently brought those books to be burned.

A lot of Germany '

It’s Airstrip bloody One,

Today the poverty of the scene was rivaled by its hostility,

She loved him because she was forbidden to do it.

Bloodythinker or no, Smith wasn’t entirely wrong. Every Party member did repeat the same old rubbish. Smith’s difference was what made him piquant, for all his gloom and self-importance. And proles did have more freedom. It only made sense that any rebellion must originate there.

He earnestly assured her that this was not only a sexual feat but a revolutionary act. Well, let it be what he liked.

It struck Julia that luxury was as much the absence of things as their abundance.

At first, all Julia understood was that he didn’t want her. The humiliation struck her belatedly, as if he’d only now called her a whore. She was to be sent back into the street. The dream was over.

She said, “Can you tell me—what is hate?” He smiled. “Very good: you have begun.”

“It is they who gave me my orders. They planned this famine, and I helped execute it. You must remember that.”

“Truth Is Hate. Plenty Is Hate. Peace Is Hate. Love Is Hate.” The text then explained that the names of the four big Ministries were decoys for the ignorant. Truth was not truth, love was not love—the Party had never embraced such weak delusions. It was not even true, as the Outer Party was led to believe, that these concepts lived in a dialectical, doublethink relationship to their opposites. Oh, it was certainly the case that peace was war, as anyone could see from history—the point was so well understood by Party members as to need no explanation. But this was still to valorize “peace,” to justify war by saying it amounted to “peace.” The Party then was still holding up peace—that feeble idol of feeble races—as a principle.

“Only hate is good. That is the great revelation of Big Brother Thought. Perhaps future human beings will evolve some still higher faculty, purer and more ruthless. For now, this is the greatest of what is human: to hate and to be led by hate.”

She leaned against a wall and went into a reverie, in which she imagined a greater purpose that made what she was doing right. She remembered, as if it were a fact long known, that Big Brother loved her—only he. It was what she had been taught at school, and it was true in a way. It might be true.

I am the dead! They cannot frighten the dead!”

She recognized it: it was the list of crimes O’Brien had said the followers of truth would happily commit in its name. He had promised she would someday hear a Brother acquiesce to these crimes from his own mouth; here, then, was the fulfillment of that promise.

In Winston’s dream, his woman would agree to any moral enormity, if it was what he wished. For him, she would die any death and commit any crime, quite without any motive of her own. Would she bring about the death of hundreds of people? Would she burn off the face of a child? For him, readily. But to give up Winston Smith—oh, no, that was too great a sacrifice! That was the scene she had just played.

Proles generally despised the Party, but loved Big Brother without reserve, believing he was their only defense against the depredations of the “blues.”

Then she felt the reality of annoyance, which was nothing like love, not when one felt it.

“The birds sing, the proles sing, but Party members don’t sing. Did you ever think of that?”

noticed. It was so typical of him, it flooded her with a weak and wistful love. How could she have betrayed that child, who had never understood the world around him, who had looked to her for every practical thing?

Twenty-seven years it had taken her to learn what kind of smile was hidden behind the black moustache. But it was all right, everything was all right. She had won the victory over herself at last. She hated Big Brother.

All was false. It was known to be false, but everyone lied about the lies, until no one knew where the lies began and ended.

With a little shock, she realized what the questions were. It was the list of crimes O’Brien had said truth-followers would happily commit—the list he’d had Winston Smith agree to, when pretending to recruit him to the Brotherhood. “Wait, these are the real questions?” said Julia. “The things one accepts, when one joins the Brotherhood?” Reynolds made a little grimace. “It’s all rather cloak-and-dagger, I know. I certainly don’t blame you for thinking twice. But of course you would never really be asked to do these things. Can you imagine?” He laughed uncomfortably. “And is there really a Goldstein?” “Goldstein?” Reynolds frowned a little quizzically. “Well, there was. But he was never ours. Indeed, he was never much better than the rest of them. He only made the error of winning too much popularity, you see, and looking like he might oust Pease. Old Pease was too quick for him, though, and had him done away with.” “Is that it? I see.”

From here, Julia felt herself detach. It was almost the feeling she’d had at Love, when she’d fled from her body and floated to the ceiling. After all, she couldn’t stop what the Brotherhood would do, or make her do. Julia was a criminal. Worse, she was pregnant. She didn’t have the freedom to think of what was right. She must do what was safe. It was as Ampleforth had said: one had no choice, one must only live through it as if one had.