Reading Orwell’s 1984
60: Part 6 of 6
Welcome back to The FLARE, a call out to the hearts of readers everywhere. We are at the final part of our 1984 read! It’s one that’s worth a reread and further study since threads stretch to the present. It is a dystopian novel but Winston says hope lies with us. I believe that.
Links to parts one to five are below.
We pick up where Winston is being interrogated and fiercely lectured by O’Brien.
Chapters’ Summary
Pages 260-298 or 9:57:10 to 10:52:07 in the audiobook.
O’Brien tells Winston about the three stages to his reintegration: learning, understanding, and acceptance. The first stage was the physical torture and this stage is where O’Brien intends to instruct Winston to mentally covert him. He reveals that he wrote Goldstein’s book or rather the Party did, since they are a collective and anything done is by the Party.
He tells Winston that everything he read was nonsense and that the Party will never be overthrown. The proles, he says, will never revolt and cannot. Winston doubts his own intelligence, surmising that O’Brien has superior wit and must be in the right. He is dumbstruck when asked why the Party desires power and electrocuted when he says it’s for the people’s own good.
O’Brien is frustrated with Winston and tells him the actions of the Party are for their own sake. Previous regimes were cowardly and hypocritical and did not stand firmly on their principles. They believed their rule to be temporary and therefore did not last.
Power is not a means, it’s an end… The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
O’Brien
O’Brien espouses further on the purpose of a collective and calls upon the slogan “freedom is slavery” to explain that a lone man is defeated while a collective is all-power and immortal. Each member is part of a larger organism and inconsequential to its survival. He again seems to read Winston’s mind. He argues absurdities about the nature of reality with staunch conviction, even claiming that he could levitate if he wished. He goes on to describe the perfect society according to the Party which includes abolishing human relationships and wedging hate between people. Loyalty and love will be reserved for Big Brother alone.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
O’Brien
Winston continues to battle back with the assertion that the Party’s future vision is impossible to achieve and that humanity will resist. He is again rendered silent by O’Brien’s debate of facts. Winston is then humiliated when O’Brien points out his emaciated condition and even extracts a tooth by hand. Winston sobs.
Winston is taken to a cell where he slowly heals from his ordeal. He is fed regularly, sleeps well, and becomes strong enough to exercise. He begins to practice doublethink and when given a tablet, writes “Two and Two Make Five”. He has however reserved a small place in his heart for the truth that he intends to hide even from himself.
Winston is finally taken to room 101 where someone’s greatest fear is realized. O’Brien gives him a clue, recounting Winston’s dream where a horror hides just beyond his perception. He told Julia about his fear of rats in Charington’s room when one appeared. The rats in London were vicious and even babies could not be left unattended. O’Brien brings out a cage with rats inside that is made to fit over someone’s head. There is a door separating two chambers. He applies the cage to Winston’s head and teases him with letting the trap door go. Winston relents, pleading for O’Brien to torture Julia and not him. He has betrayed her.
Winston is released and living a monotonous life drinking gin at the Chestnut Tree Cafe and working for the Ministry of Truth bickering over issues with the new edition of the Newspeak dictionary. He spends his evenings get his cup refilled without prompt at the cafe and listening to news reports.
Winston sees Julia again and likens her stiff body to a dead body. They have both been tortured and share a painful truth about their reality: Everyone betrays someone when pushed. They resolve to meet again but he is eager to get away from her and return to the cafe.
Winston has some memories of playing chutes and ladders with his mother one afternoon as a boy. They were laughing and happy. His dismisses the memory as false just as a trumpet sounds for a special bulletin. As the Ministry of Peace announces stunning victories, Winston is overcome with emotion and finally relents completely.
My thoughts:
I was very affected by these chapters. Being beaten down physically is one thing and in some respects, I think I could stand it. What I can’t abide is the dismantling of Winston’s mental state. He is so thoroughly crushed by O’Brien with cultivated insanity that he must make a space inside where they cannot touch. All the same, he is playing the mental games of doublethink to survive.
Winston’s captivity is an embodiment of the third slogan we have not explored: freedom is slavery. When you set your mind onto the principles of Ingsoc, love Big Brother, and believe everything the Party says, you can operate within their constraints with a perverse sense of freedom. It is the freedom of not knowing and accepting. The cogent, the determined, and rebellious will always feel the walls closing in, always feel eyes on them.
A part of him is learning to adapt, to create spaces in his mind to hide from himself or protect the parts he cannot resolve. It’s disheartening to see how he has given in but understandable. We always imagine resistance as iron will but we cannot fathom what it takes to maintain it.
At the end of his torture, where he finally betrayed Julia, I felt sad for him. He had been stripped of everything and it was only if he surrendered that last part of himself that he would ever leave. He would never recover, however, because his psychological scars were innumerable, but he would at least be out.
I don’t know what would be in my room 101. I can’t say I have a tangible, mortal fear but what is frightening is knowing that someone like O’Brien would figure it out and use it against me. That type of cruel, individualized torture takes an enormous amount of resources to create. To know that the whole point is to torture people is chilling.
Winston gets ushered to the Chestnut Tree Tavern, where he saw Rutherford, Aronsen, and Jones before they were executed. It’s a place for traitors. He is following the same path toward the same conclusion.
Like everything else, no detail has been overlooked and he is being lubed up with gin and continuously monitored to track the changes. Also, since O’Brien has such a keen insight into his mind, he would likely know when the reformation would take hold. Parts of the reformation did take hold and I believe Winston might have finally been walking down a lit corridor and anticipating his execution.
It wouldn’t make any difference.
One major takeaway from the book was the downplay of an individual’s impact. All along the book, Winston says one thing or another wouldn’t make a difference, which is a sly thread in the tapestry of oppression. We believe in the power of the individual to turn a tide, to collapse a system, to change a generation. What a cunning piece of planted deception. Beat into a population over time, even tiny rebellions are quelled by self-doubt and indecision. It’s one of that age’s major tragedies.
There is so much more to glean from the book, from faked lottery and our collective gullibility to how semantics are used to change not only perspective but thought. Another that stands out are principles of doublethink and how they are employed in the political sphere. I discussed this in a previous newsletter but when we speak of mental gymnastics and self deception, this is the pinnacle. In a strange way, one must be skilled to be a practitioner of doublethink and I’m often reminded that we underestimate political figures we think are dimwitted but that’s a mistake. We are looking for logic where there is none. We are looking for reasons why when the act is the reason. The purpose of torture is torture. Revolutionaries would be well served by studying doublethink and understanding it in order to create an antidote.
Extra Credit: Principles of Newspeak
Pages 299 to 312 or 10:52:08 to 11:22:59 in the audiobook
For the intrepid among us who’d like to discuss the future of language, want to open a chat?
What’s unresolved:
I’m still itching to know what the rest of Goldstein’s book contained and if anyone ever finished it all. It’s one of the great books within books which can be a text unto itself. I would have really wanted to know the why, even if it was a lie. We have a hunger to know and to fight against all that defiles our liberty.
How I feel about the ending:
It is so hard to swim against the tide and keep fighting. To hold tight against who you are in the face of such a crushing world is nearly impossible. I imagine there are Winstons everywhere, who have been taken down to the depths of despair only to rise changed and broken apart. It’s a bitter feeling to know he has been remade and that there is no place those devils can’t touch. They cannot remake or destroy everyone but if we see through their eyes, it is certain by a Party member’s body that their power is real. It is absolute power over minds, power over the past, what has existed and what will be, what will endure and what will be destroyed.
In the end, a human is nothing alone but if he can never be in a collective outside the Party, then he must be the Party. He is the Party. He has always been the Party. So his freedom binds him completely in places where there is no peace and no darkness.
What’s next?
Leaning toward a personal update
Poetry for paid subscribers
Connect: Notes • Medium • Twitter • Instagram • Threads
Support: PayPal • Ko-fi
Parts one through five of the 1984 read:
This was such a morbid closing to the book. I watched the movie right after finishing the book and the descriptions and visuals of Winston's body made me think of what became of the characters in the final moments of Requiem for a Dream. Pure mental and physical agony.
I was sad that Winston was broken after all but him betraying Julia and them having a seemingly lifeless conversation after was even worse. Their moments together had a certain peacefulness to them and I thought their "secret" ways of communicating in public where they would communicate in "segments" was such a realistic thing to do.
After some Reddit reading, I realized that the "bullet that entered his brain" was a symbolic one because his mental state had died with him fully loving Big Brother. I remembered O'Brien saying he would be shot once the process ended so I thought that's what happened. But, I should have known it was symbolic.
In conclusion, I'm glad I finally read this book and I was fortunate enough to be able to discuss it with you and exchange perspectives and observations.
A good book by Orwell. And a Veggie Delite.