christmas soon...

his mind, ready made as
it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in
battle, in heroic circumstances. There were occasions when Big Brother
devoted his Order for the Day to commemorating some humble, rank-and-file
Party member whose life and death he held up as an example worthy to be
followed. Today he should commemorate Comrade Ogilvy. It was true that
there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a
couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.
Winston thought for a moment, then pulled the speakwrite towards him
and began dictating in Big Brother's familiar style: a style at once
military and pedantic, and, because of a trick of asking questions and then
promptly answering them ('What lessons do we learn from this fact,
comrades? The lesson -- which is also one of the fundamental principles of
Ingsoc -- that,' etc., etc.), easy to imitate.
At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum,
a sub-machine gun, and a model helicopter. At six -- a year early, by a
special relaxation of the rules -- he had joined the Spies, at nine he had
been a troop leader. At eleven he had denounced his uncle to the Thought
Police after overhearing a conversation which appeared to him to have
criminal tendencies. 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 h