At seventeen he had been a district organizer of the
Junior Anti-Sex League. At nine teen he had designed a hand-grenade which
had been adopted by the Ministry of Peace and which, at its first trial,
had killed thirty-one Eurasian prisoners in one burst. At twenty-three he
had perished in action. Pursued by enemy jet planes while flying over the
Indian Ocean with important despatches, he had weighted his body with his
machine gun and leapt out of the helicopter into deep water, despatches and
all -- an end, said Big Brother, which it was impossible to contemplate
without feelings of envy. Big Brother added a few remarks on the purity and
single-mindedness of Comrade Ogilvy's life. He was a total abstainer and a
nonsmoker, had no recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium, and had
taken a vow of celibacy, believing marriage and the care of a family to be
incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day devotion to duty. He had no
subjects of conversation except the principles of Ingsoc, and no aim in
life except the defeat of the Eurasian enemy and the hunting-down of spies,
saboteurs, thoughtcriminals, and traitors generally.
Winston debated with himself whether to award Comrade Ogilvy the Order
of Conspicuous Merit: in the end he decided against it because of the
unnecessary cross-referencing that it would entail.
Once again he glanced at his rival in the opposite cubicle. Something
seemed to tell him with certainty that Tillotson
.
|
