Julia

by Sandra Newman

Another thought had been correctly thought, another feeling rightly felt. One saw how little the Party asked, after all. You needn’t know all the latest Newspeak words or struggle to believe contradictory things. 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.

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.

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

“In the place of the voluptuousness of plenty, the cowardice of peace, the dependency of love, the empty sanctimony of truth, we place hate. Hate is the highest capacity of mankind. Every other sentiment we share with the animal kingdom—anger, greed, mother love, fear, curiosity. Only hate is human. No lower animal can access its mysteries. A beast can feel transient rage, but never hate. That is why he is morally null; there can be no goodness without hate. One hates when the good within one identifies evil. Hate is goodness in operation. And without operation, without action, goodness is the mere corpse of goodness. “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.”

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.

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.