Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [593]

The new tune which was to be the theme-song of Hate Week (the Hate Song, it was called) had already been composed and was being endlessly plugged on the telescreens. It had a savage, barking rhythm which could not exactly be called music, but resembled the beating of a drum. Roared out by hundreds of voices to the tramp of marching feet, it was terrifying. The proles had taken a fancy to it, and in the midnight streets it competed with the still-popular ‘It was only a hopeless fancy’. The Parsons children played it at all hours of the night and day, unbearably, on a comb and a piece of toilet paper. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 593

Note

The Hate Song’s deliberate un-musicality—‘savage, barking rhythm… resembled the beating of a drum’—paired against the domestic absurdity of Parsons children ‘unbearably’ rendering it on a comb and toilet paper. The juxtaposition of terror and banality is the Orwell signature.