Hate As a Theme in 1984

          Hate is a strong theme in 1984.  There are many public displays of hate, tolerated and even supported by the Party, such as the Hate Week, the Two Minutes Hate, and the hate of their everyday lives.

          The Two Minutes Hate is a short daily period where the telescreens stoke the viewers to a raging, violet mass.  Participation is not only mandatory, it is also evaluated by the Thought Police.  To not have an instinctual reaction to pictures of Goldstein and the Enemy is a form of Thoughtcrime, and as Newspeak cancels out all other meaning of the word was just as bad as supporting them.

          Parsons turns the Hate Week into a sort of competition, and I think that the goal of the Party was achieved in that.  To turn hate into a positive emotion, to be able to create a celebration of hate would be one of the trickiest and most useful political strategies.  By changing hate, one of the two most powerful emotions, the Party is essentially halving all emotion.  By altering the meaning of love to the love of Big Brother, the Party has destroyed the other half of emotions, because no one really loves Big Brother, they just admire and covet his power.


          Because hate is such a strong emotion, it would be very difficult to change its meaning, but the Party has done just that. To normalise hate, to encourage it makes it more and more difficult to find the meaning of true feeling.  After many generations,  this lack would become impossible to reverse, creating a planet of sheep.