Part I — Chapter I

On a cold April day in London, Winston Smith slips into Victory Mansions beneath omnipresent Big Brother posters and a relentless telescreen. He contemplates the Ministries that govern Oceania and the constant risk of surveillance by the Thought Police. Hungry and weary, he drinks Victory Gin and notices an alcove that hides him from the telescreen’s gaze.

Compelled by the beauty of a contraband blank book, Winston decides to start a diary, a perilous act tantamount to thoughtcrime. He struggles to begin, then scribbles about a brutal war film that delighted Party viewers but disturbed a prole woman. A clearer memory surfaces: that morning’s Two Minutes Hate at the Ministry of Truth.

At the Hate, Winston notes a dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department, whom he distrusts, and O’Brien, an Inner Party member who fascinates him. The telescreen displays Emmanuel Goldstein as the enemy, stoking a frenzy. Winston is swept into the ritual’s violent fervor, even turning his loathing toward the dark-haired girl, before the image shifts to Big Brother and the crowd chants.

Winston briefly catches O’Brien’s eye and believes they share silent dissent, though he doubts it afterward. Back at home, he discovers he has written “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER” repeatedly. He recognizes he has crossed into irrevocable thoughtcrime and reflects that eventual arrest and vaporization are inevitable.

Resigned and panicked, Winston scrawls a fatalistic confession, imagining a bullet to the back of the neck. As he lays down his pen, a knock at the door jolts him, heightening his fear that the Thought Police have come.