Winston
Smith llega a Victory
Mansions, donde debe subir al séptimo piso por las escaleras. El edificio
está en malas condiciones. En las paredes un poster lo recibe: es la imagen de
un hombre de cuarenta y cinco años. “Gran
Hermano te está vigilando”, se lee. Del clásico de George
Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four…
En vocabulario encontramos nuzzled, swirl, gritty, tacked, ruggedly, contrived, pig-iron, dulled, eddies.
Párrafos
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks
were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled
into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through
the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from
entering along with him. The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats.
At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face,
more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy
black moustache and ruggedly handsome
features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at
the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current
was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in
preparation for Hate Week. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was
thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly,
resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift-shaft, the
poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures
which are so contrived that the eyes follow you
about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.
Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a
list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the
right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though
the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was
called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. He
moved over to the window: a smallish, frail figure, the meagreness of his body
merely emphasized by the blue overalls which were the uniform of the party. His
hair was very fair, his face naturally sanguine, his skin roughened by coarse
soap and blunt razor blades and the cold of the winter that had just ended.
Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the
world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies
of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was
shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything,
except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-moustachio'd face
gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front
immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the
dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster,
torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and
uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed
down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted
away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into
people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police
mattered. … (Capitulo 1, Nineteen Eighty-Four,
de George Orwell)
Vocabulary
Nuzzled:
acercarse
Swirl: remolino
Gritty:
arenoso
Tacked:
clavado
Ruggedly:
fuerte, guapo
Contrived:
artificial
Pig-iron:
hierro en lingotes
Dulled:
opaco
Eddies:
remolinos
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