Chapter 3
The narrative opens with a broad description of the four Ministries that dominate London: the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue) handling news, entertainment, education and the arts; the Ministry of Peace (Minipax) overseeing war; the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) enforcing law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty (Miniplenty) managing the economy. Their massive pyramidal buildings dwarf the city, and the text highlights the particularly terrifying Ministry of Love—windowless, surrounded by barbed‑wire, steel doors, machine‑gun nests and gorilla‑faced black‑uniformed guards, a place Winston has never entered.
Back in his Victory Mansions flat, Winston skips the canteen lunch, goes to the tiny kitchen, and drinks a bottle of “Victory Gin.” The gin burns his throat like nitric acid, then eases, leaving him slightly intoxicated. He smokes a Victory cigarette, attempts to light it, and then returns to the living‑room. He notes the unusual placement of the telescreen on the long wall opposite the window, which allows him to sit in a shallow alcove where he cannot be seen, only heard.
From a drawer he retrieves a penholder, ink, and a thick, red‑backed blank book—an old‑style diary he bought illicitly from a junk‑shop for two dollars fifty. Although possessing a diary is not illegal, being caught with it would likely mean death or a long term labour camp sentence. He prepares the pen, dips it, and, after a moment’s tremor, writes the date “April 4th, 1984.” He pauses, reflecting on his age, the impossibility of knowing the exact year, and the futility of writing for a future that may not exist. Overwhelmed, he begins to scribble hurriedly, recording a fragmented, panicked recollection of a recent war film and its grotesque scenes.
While he writes, a memory of that morning’s Two Minutes Hate surfaces. In the Records Department, chairs are being clustered for the Hate. Winston takes his seat among the crowd. Two strangers enter: a dark‑haired girl from the Fiction Department, about twenty‑seven, with a scarlet Junior Anti‑Sex League sash, who Winston instantly distrusts and finds frightening; and O’Brien, a large Inner Party member with a charismatic yet brutal demeanor, who pauses to sit a few seats away from Winston. A sandy‑haired woman sits between them.
The telescreen erupts with a harsh, mechanical chant as the Two Minutes Hate begins. Emmanuel Goldstein’s face appears; the crowd erupts in hisses and screams. The narrator details Goldstein’s alleged history as a former Party leader turned traitor, the perpetual rumors of his underground Brotherhood, and the imagined book of heresies he supposedly authored. The Hate intensifies: people shout “Swine!” loudly, a woman throws a Newspeak dictionary at the screen, Winston kicks his chair, and a collective, almost electric, fury spreads. Winston’s emotions swing wildly—first hatred of Goldstein, then an involuntary surge of sympathy for the “heretic,” then a sudden, violent hatred redirected at the dark‑haired girl behind him, conjuring vivid fantasies of torturing and raping her.
The Hate reaches a climax when Goldstein’s face morphs into a sheep, then into a Eurasian soldier, and finally into Big Brother, whose silent, reassuring image is overlaid with the Party slogans “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.” The crowd’s emotions settle back into adulation of Big Brother. Winston’s diary entry ends with the chaotic mixture of thoughts, his physical discomfort (a varicose ulcer itching), the lingering military music, and the knowledge that he has just begun a forbidden act of self‑expression.