So you think there's nothing, as it were, nineteeneightyfourish about Nineteen EightyFour? That it was all there waiting in 1948?
Yes, in a sense. What was merely in the newspapers or the official records - like torture and concentration camps - had to be imported into Britain. The intellectual totalitarianism had to be fictionally realized. But novels are really made out of day-to-day experience, and Winston Smith's frustrations were ours too - dirty streets, decaying buildings, sickening food in factory canteens, the government slogans on the walls -
Slogans? Like FREEDOM IS SLAVERY and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH?
Not quite like those. Those are pure Nazi Germany. But I remember when I came home from overseas army service that the first peace-time government poster I saw showed a haggard sorrowing woman in black, with the legend KEEP DEATH OFF THE ROADS. Naturally, somebody had crossed that out and substituted SHE VOTED SOCIALIST. We were used to posters put out by the Ministry of Information, mostly ham-handed, not subtly ambiguous like the Ingsoc ones, YOUR FORTITUDE, YOUR PATIENCE, YOUR ENDURANCE WILL BRING US VICTORY. You and us, you see. No wonder we all became bloody purple, BE LIKE DAD, KEEP MUM. That nearly provoked a riot among wage-earning mothers. Slogans had become part of the British way of life. Orwell gave us nothing new.
- 1985 by Anthong Burgess
I don't understand the word "purple" (emphasis mine) and the slogan "Be like dad, keep mum".
The word purple has a meaning like a color between red and blue in US politics. I hope that there the word is in this meaning but I don't know what a term in US politics has to do with old times UK.
Does "MUM" mean mother? I know that "Keep mum" means "Keep silent" but what does it have to do with being "between red and blue" if it does not mean mother? Also the following sentence is talking about wage-earning mothers. What does "BE LIKE DAD, KEEP MUM" (emphasis in text is mine) mean?