1984: Part 3, Chapter 2

Winston begins his torture with O’Brien. We learn that before this he was routinely beaten and questioned. We are shown how Winston is tortured with that machine thing. O’Brien then goes over all the things that Winston believes and destroys them with pain. O’Brien also goes deep into Party doctrine which slays - he literally tells Winston he doesn’t exist.

\ (276) ‘everyone had to confess as a matter of course’

• They aim to strip you of all your pride?

\ (277) ‘the aim of this was simply to humiliate him and destroy his power of arguing and reasoning’

• This interrogation serves to exhaust him in the same way that work did in order to make him easier to interrogate - maybe to feel like he’s already given up all his secrets to then he feels hopeless.

\ (276) ‘the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes’

• A Clockwork Orange

\ (277) ‘sometimes they would suddenly change their tune’

• Being unpredictable is a manipulation technique.

\ (278) ‘He became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed, whatever was demanded of him’

• First was he signing some kind of waver that justifies what they are doing?
• They managed to fully separate his “soul” from his body and mind - they like empty him out so they can fill him with Party ideas.

\ (278) ‘It was easier to confess everything and implicate everybody’

• (279) ‘Everything was alright, there was no more pain, the last detail of his life was laid bare, understood, forgiven’
• Winston just wants to clear his mind of all these thoughts he’s had to hold onto - even from Julia.

\ (282) ‘you are clinging to your disease under the impression that it is a virtue’

\ (285) ‘You would not make the act of submission, which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one.’

• They are trying to isolate him.
• The thing about endurance - he should have just resigned to the will of the Party like his mother.

\ (285) ‘Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal’

• Demonstrates that the Party really can manipulate reality and use time to help them do it - people who don’t comply will die someday anyways.

\ (287) ‘he clung to O’Brien like a baby’ ‘O’Brien was his protector’

• It feels like Winston can’t grasp that it’s O’Brien that’s torturing him, or perhaps it’s the comfort of the familiar?

\ (289) ‘He had never loved him so deeply as at this moment’ ‘O’Brien was a person who could be talked to’

• AWWWWW CUTE.
• Also the fact that all it takes for Winston to feel safe is to be talked to really demonstrates the isolation that the Party imposes on it’s citizens.
• ‘perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood’ - same page

\ (292) ‘When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will’

• idk if being threatened by rats is free will lmao.

\ (293) ‘We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves’

• Will you now? ;)

\ (293) ‘never again will you be capable of love’

• how is he supposed to live laugh love in these conditions.

\ (294) ‘keep your eyes fixed on mine’

• cute moments here.

\ (294) ‘somewhere or other there was a large patch of emptiness, as though piece had been taken out of his brain’

• Reminiscent of The Memory Police - except it takes the Party almost more effort to do things like this.

\ (295) ‘luminous certainty’

\ (298) ‘Everyone knows what is in Room 101’

• Deez

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