1984 Winston Smith

As Winston Smith entered his apartment building, he passed a familiar poster. "It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran." Then Winston opened the door to his flat to be greeted by a voice on his "telescreen" - a device he could dim, but never shut off completely. Telescreens broadcasted government propaganda and served as the eyes and ears of the Thought Police, who scrutinized everyone for any possible deviation from acceptable thought or action.

In the flat was a tiny alcove just out of sight from the telescreen's vision. Winston sat down to write in his diary, an act that was not officially illegal "but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death . . . " While he sat writing, a recent memory stirred in his mind; the "Two Minutes Hate," a government-sponsored work break in which every worker at the Ministry of Truth was required to participate, had consisted that day of an interlude when everyone raged and screamed as the telescreen alternately flashed images of enemy Eurasian soldiers and Goldstein, an abhorred traitor. That morning, Winston had noticed a "bold-looking girl of about twenty-six" who worked in the Fiction Department. This particular girl - wearing the bright scarlet sash of the official anti-sex league - gave him "the impression of being more dangerous than most," and Winston had that unnerving feeling that she was watching him.

A few days later, Winston walked through the working-class "prole" neighborhood to the antique shop where he had bought his diary. Though class barriers stood tensely in place throughout Oceania, Mr. Charrington, the shop owner, welcomed him and invited him upstairs to see other items. There wasn't much there, but Winston liked the old-fashioned room; it didn't even have a telescreen.

When Winston again slipped out onto the street, he passed the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department. Now he was sure she was an informant.

Back at work, as Winston walked toward the lavatory, the girl reappeared in the hall. Then, just a few feet in front of him, she stumbled and fell. When he offered his hand to help her up, she slipped him a scrap of paper. Shaken, Winston decided to open the paper later at the cubicle where he rewrote old newspaper articles, deleting any reference to persons who had deviated from orthodoxy.

Back at his desk, Winston opened the message and read: "I love you." Now he was intrigued - and terrified. Like writing in a diary, an affair between party members was "legal", but punishable by death.

Winston and the girl were finally able to arrange a rendezvous in the country. But even there, there was always the possibility of concealed microphones. So, after meeting at the selected spot, the pair walked on in silence until they found a remote, heavily forested area. Winston didn't even yet know the girl's name: "I'm thirty-nine years old," he began. "I've got a wife that I can't get rid of. I've got varicose veins. . . " The girl replied, "I couldn't care less." She shared some blackmarket chocolate with him, and then they made love. Afterwards, while the girl slept, Winston thought about what they had done. "You could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act."

Winston now saw the girl - Julia - whenever he could. She explained her survival philosophy: "I always carry one end of a banner in the processions. I always look cheerful and I never shirk anything. Always yell with the crowd, that's what I say. It's the only way to be safe." For their clandestine meetings, Winston hit upon the idea of renting Mr. Charrington's room above the antique shop. Although the room offered them privacy, "both of them knew it was lunacy;" in the end, they would be caught. Occasionally the lovers "talked of engaging in active rebellion against the Party, but with no notion of how to take the first step." They considered joining a mysterious subversive group called the "Brotherhood," but didn't know if this legendary underground cabal even existed.

Besides Julia, there was one person Winston felt he could trust. For months a "strange intimacy" had been ripening between himself and an Inner Party member named O'Brien, who worked at the Ministry of Truth. No words had passed between them; only glances that seemed to reflect the same brooding rebel spirit