It was a cold sunny day in April and the clocks struck one in the afternoon. Winston Smith, with his chin pressed to his chest as he struggled to escape the miserable wind, hurriedly crossed the glass doors of Victory Mansions, although he was not quick enough – a swirl of coarse dust entered the building with him. The entrance smelled of boiled cabbage and stale rag mats. At one end, a colored poster, too large for indoor display, was stuck to the wall. It depicted only a huge face, over a meter wide: the face of a man about forty-five, with a thick black mustache and bold, attractive features. Winston headed towards the stairs. It made no sense to try the elevator. Even at its best it rarely worked, and at present the power was cut off during the day. It was part of the energy-saving initiative, in preparation for Hate Week. The apartment was on the seventh floor, and Winston, thirty-nine years old and with an ulcerated varicose vein above his right ankle, began to climb the stairs slowly, stopping several times along the way to rest.
On every landing, opposite the elevator shaft, the poster with the huge face nailed you to the wall with its gaze. It was one of those contrived paintings whose eyes follow you around the room. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption at the bottom read. In the apartment, a sweet voice was reading a list of numbers related to cast iron production. The voice came from a rectangular metal plate like a dim mirror, which was part of the surface of the right wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice lowered slightly, although the words it spoke were still audible. The device (called a telescreen) had the option to reduce the volume, but it was impossible to turn it off completely.