1984: Part 3, Chapter 3

Winston is slowly adjusting to his torture. O’Brien reinforces the power of the Party and the longevity of their regime. He also explains why the Party actually wants power in the first place, what they do with it and how they manage to keep it for so long. He delves further into the iron grip that the Party has on reality. Winston sees his emaciated body and O’Brien pulls his tooth out.

(299) ‘There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance’

• Reminiscent of stages of grief

(302) ‘Power is not a means, it is an end’ ‘the object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.’

• Explains the Party doctrine in a way we’ve never had before, Winston could not understand why because he was still naïve about how cruel the Party can be?

(302) ‘the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism’

(303) ‘if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party’

• The best way to endure a regime is through resignation.

(304) ‘Nothing exists except through human consciousness’

(304) ‘The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and stars go round it’

• Think he might have failed his physics GCSE…

(305) ‘The real power, the power he have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men’

• (305) ‘Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?’

(306) ‘Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together in new shapes of your own choosing’

• O’Brien repeats this notion of emptying the mind and body and then reforming people into Party citizens. Do people have to rebel and be punished for it in order to really become indoctrinated?

(307) ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, for ever’

• Crushing Winston’s hopes that one day the Proles will rebel - they are humans just the same and him and are under just as much control.

(307) ‘the enemy of society will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again’

(307) ’endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power’

(309) ‘we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable’

• Conditioning - the Parson’s children.
• (309) ‘If you are a man Winston, you are the last man’