So we open this grim tale with Winston coming home. Winston lives in Air Strip One, or London, a province of Oceania. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth. Winston is a member of the ruling Party. We meet the caricature of Big Brother whose posters are everywhere and whom is either the leader or merely a symbol of the Party. Winston's world is a total world of lies as we see from Doublethink, and the contradictory nature of the four Ministries he briefly details. Everywhere people live in Victory Mansions, but from Orwell's description we can tell it is a total slum. Winston as a Party Member and elite of the society is despairingly poor having only a small ration of bread, Victory gin and Victory cigarettes. The Party provides and takes care of the people bringing them victory. Party members are discouraged to buy from the "free market" but have no other choice but to do so for basic amenities.
Winston had bought a diary and a pen from the free market, which he takes great care in concealing from an apparatus in his apartment that is always watching him and always propagandizing to him. It is not illegal to own diary because there are no laws in this society, but Winston knows that if he is caught writing a diary there will be dire consequences. Winston with trepidation begins writing in his diary despite his fears. Winston is a flawed narrator and character because Winston can't fully remember the truth, in fact Winston isn't even sure how old he really is or what year it really is, but he supposes it to be 1984.
Winston's first entry is about a movie he saw. The movie is violent, and supposedly real. The Party members loved the movie for depicting a fat man being shot to death in the ocean and a raft of refugees being blown up by a helicopter. This triggers a prole woman's emotions and he notes she is removed from the theater, but her outburst is of no consequence because it is considered typical prole behavior. The proles are the underclass in this society, while the proles are disregarded one can see that the proles have more freedom than the elite members of the Party.
This triggers in Winston another memory of earlier that day. Winston encountered a woman that worked for the Fiction Department. She is also a member of the Anti-Sex League, a group of hot young women. Winston doesn't trust the hot young women because they are the most zealous for Party orthodoxy and are used as spies and informants. Winston felt fearful of her simply for a look she gave him, fearing her to be a member of the Thought Police. Winston also introduces us to O'Brien whom is a member of the Inner Party, an elite and secretive faction of the elite Party. Winston likes O'Brien because he does not think O'Brien is as rigidly orthodox.
We then see the Two Minute Hate which is ushered in with a jarring noise. The Two Minute hate always features Emmanuel Goldstein. Emmanuel Goldstein is not a foreign enemy, Emmanuel Goldstein is a renegade a leader of the Brotherhood. Goldstein was once a leader in the Party, or so we're told. Goldstein is even the equivalent to Big Brother. Just like Big Brother, Goldstein is everywhere and is always watching and conspiring against the Party. He is everything that is wrong with the Party. He is always plotting just like Big Brother. We are also introduced to Eastasia and Eurasia whom Oceania is always at war with or at peace with and whom Goldstein is always in league with.
Anthony Goldstein and the Two Minute Hate is the catharsis for the inner hatred against the Party that its members feel allowing them to safely vent their frustrations with the Party, with each other, and with themselves and at the same time makes them more loyal to the Party reinforcing their notions that the Party is correct.
As the Two Minute Hate ended with Big Brother saving them from Goldstein on the telescreen and the crowd chanting B-B, Winston and O'Brien's eyes caught each other, and Winston felt a bond with O'Brien though he cannot confirm it. Winston shows in his thoughts he is beginning to be disillusioned and to hate the Party. Winston comes back to his thoughts and notices he has been writing in the diary while recalling these events. Winston has been writing subversive thoughts "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!" Winston now feels a little fear and considers destroying the diary, but he doesn't do so because now Winston realizes he is committed to being against the Party and so he introduces us to the Thought Police and Thought Crimes. Thoughtcrimes are thoughts against the Party and against the Party's orthodoxy and this is where all crimes come from in this universe and is itself the biggest crime of all. The Thought Police are a secret police that arrest, abduct, and "vaporize" subversives to the Party.
We end the chapter with Winston in great fear, but still he scrawls out his subversive thoughts committing himself against the Party when suddenly there is a knock at the door.