Part
Three
Chapter
2
He
was lying on something that felt like a camp bed, except that
it was higher off the ground and that he was fixed down in some
way so that he could not move. Light that seemed stronger than
usual was falling on his face. O'Brien was standing at his side,
looking down at him intently. At the other side of him stood a
man in a white coat, holding a hypodermic syringe.
Even after his eyes were open he took in his surroundings only
gradually. He had the impression of swimming up into this room
from some quite different world, a sort of underwater world far
beneath it. How long he had been down there he did not know. Since
the moment when they arrested him he had not seen darkness or
daylight. Besides, his memories were not continuous. There had
been times when consciousness, even the sort of consciousness
that one has in sleep, had stopped dead and started again after
a blank interval. But whether the intervals were of days or weeks
or only seconds, there was no way of knowing.
With that first blow on the elbow the nightmare had started. Later
he was to realize that all that then happened was merely a preliminary,
a routine interrogation to which nearly all prisoners were subjected.
There was a long range of crimes -- espionage, sabotage, and the
like -- to which everyone had to confess as a matter of course.
The confession was a formality, though the torture was real. How
many times he had been beaten, how long the beatings had continued,
he could not remember. Always there were five or six men in black
uniforms at him simultaneously. Sometimes it was fists, sometimes
it was truncheons, sometimes it was steel rods, sometimes it was
boots. There were times when he rolled about the floor, as shameless
as an animal, writhing his body this way and that in an endless,
hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply inviting more and
yet more kicks, in his ribs, in his belly, on his elbows, on his
shins, in his groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the base
of his spine. There were times when it went on and on until the
cruel, wicked, unforgivable thing seemed to him not that the guards
continued to beat him but that he could not force himself into
losing consciousness. There were times when his nerve so forsook
him that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began,
when 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.
There were other times when he started out with the resolve of
confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced out of him
between gasps of pain, and there were times when he feebly tried
to compromise, when he said to himself: 'I will confess, but not
yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes unbearable. Three more
kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell them what they want.'
Sometimes he was beaten till he could hardly stand, then flung
like a sack of potatoes on to the stone floor of a cell, left
to recuperate for a few hours, and then taken out and beaten again.
There were also longer periods of recovery. He remembered them
dimly, because they were spent chiefly in sleep or stupor. He
remembered a cell with a plank bed, a sort of shelf sticking out
from the wall, and a tin wash-basin, and meals of hot soup and
bread and sometimes coffee. He remembered a surly barber arriving
to scrape his chin and crop his hair, and businesslike, unsympathetic
men in white coats feeling his pulse, tapping his reflexes, turning
up his eyelids, running harsh fingers over him in search for broken
bones, and shooting needles into his arm to make him sleep.
The beatings grew less frequent, and became mainly a threat, a
horror to which he could be sent back at any moment when his answers
were unsatisfactory. His questioners now were not ruffians in
black uniforms but Party intellectuals, little rotund men with
quick movements and flashing spectacles, who worked on him in
relays over periods which lasted -- he thought, he could not be
sure -- ten or twelve hours at a stretch. These other questioners
saw to it that he was in constant slight pain, but it was not
chiefly pain that they relied on. They slapped his face, wrung
his ears, pulled his hair, made him stand on one leg, refused
him leave to urinate, shone glaring lights in his face until his
eyes ran with water; but the aim of this was simply to humiliate
him and destroy his power of arguing and reasoning. Their real
weapon was the merciless questioning that went on and on, hour
after hour, tripping him up, laying traps for him, twisting everything
that he said, convicting him at every step of lies and self-contradiction
until he began weeping as much from shame as from nervous fatigue.
Sometimes he would weep half a dozen times in a single session.
Most of the time they screamed abuse at him and threatened at
every hesitation to deliver him over to the guards again; but
sometimes they would suddenly change their tune, call him comrade,
appeal to him in the name of Ingsoc and Big Brother, and ask him
sorrowfully whether even now he had not enough loyalty to the
Party left to make him wish to undo the evil he had done. When
his nerves were in rags after hours of questioning, even this
appeal could reduce him to snivelling tears. In the end the nagging
voices broke him down more completely than the boots and fists
of the guards. He became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that
signed, whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to
find out what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it
quickly, before the bullying started anew. He confessed to the
assassination of eminent Party members, the distribution of seditious
pamphlets, embezzlement of public funds, sale of military secrets,
sabotage of every kind. He confessed that he had been a spy in
the pay of the Eastasian government as far back as 1968. He confessed
that he was a religious believer, an admirer of capitalism, and
a sexual pervert. He confessed that he had murdered his wife,
although he knew, and his questioners must have known, that his
wife was still alive. He confessed that for years he had been
in personal touch with Goldstein and had been a member of an underground
organization which had included almost every human being he had
ever known. It was easier to confess everything and implicate
everybody. Besides, in a sense it was all true. It was true that
he had been the enemy of the Party, and in the eyes of the Party
there was no distinction between the thought and the deed.
There were also memories of another kind. They stood out in his
mind disconnectedly, like pictures with blackness all round them.
He was in a cell which might have been either dark or light, because
he could see nothing except a pair of eyes. Near at hand some
kind of instrument was ticking slowly and regularly. The eyes
grew larger and more luminous. Suddenly he floated out of his
seat, dived into the eyes, and was swallowed up.
He was strapped into a chair surrounded by dials, under dazzling
lights. A man in a white coat was reading the dials. There was
a tramp of heavy boots outside. The door clanged open. The waxed-faced
officer marched in, followed by two guards.
'Room 101,' said the officer.
The man in the white coat did not turn round. He did not look
at Winston either; he was looking only at the dials.
He was rolling down a mighty corridor, a kilometre wide, full
of glorious, golden light, roaring with laughter and shouting
out confessions at the top of his voice. He was confessing everything,
even the things he had succeeded in holding back under the torture.
He was relating the entire history of his life to an audience
who knew it already. With him were the guards, the other questioners,
the men in white coats, O'Brien, Julia, Mr Charrington, all rolling
down the corridor together and shouting with laughter. Some dreadful
thing which had lain embedded in the future had somehow been skipped
over and had not happened. Everything was all right, there was
no more pain, the last detail of his life was laid bare, understood,
forgiven.
He was starting up from the plank bed in the half-certainty that
he had heard O'Brien's voice. All through his interrogation, although
he had never seen him, he had had the feeling that O'Brien was
at his elbow, just out of sight. It was O'Brien who was directing
everything. It was he who set the guards on to Winston and who
prevented them from killing him. It was he who decided when Winston
should scream with pain, when he should have a respite, when he
should be fed, when he should sleep, when the drugs should be
pumped into his arm. It was he who asked the questions and suggested
the answers. He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was
the inquisitor, he was the friend. And once -- Winston could not
remember whether it was in drugged sleep, or in normal sleep,
or even in a moment of wakefulness -- a voice murmured in his
ear: 'Don't worry, Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years
I have watched over you. Now the turning-point has come. I shall
save you, I shall make you perfect.' He was not sure whether it
was O'Brien's voice; but it was the same voice that had said to
him, 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,'
in that other dream, seven years ago.
He did not remember any ending to his interrogation. There was
a period of blackness and then the cell, or room, in which he
now was had gradually materialized round him. He was almost flat
on his back, and unable to move. His body was held down at every
essential point. Even the back of his head was gripped in some
manner. O'Brien was looking down at him gravely and rather sadly.
His face, seen from below, looked coarse and worn, with pouches
under the eyes and tired lines from nose to chin. He was older
than Winston had thought him; he was perhaps forty-eight or fifty.
Under his hand there was a dial with a lever on top and figures
running round the face.
'I told you,' said O'Brien, 'that if we met again it would be
here.'
'Yes,' said Winston.
Without any warning except a slight movement of O'Brien's hand,
a wave of pain flooded his body. It was a frightening pain, because
he could not see what was happening, and he had the feeling that
some mortal injury was being done to him. He did not know whether
the thing was really happening, or whether the effect was electrically
produced; but his body was being wrenched out of shape, the joints
were being slowly torn apart. Although the pain had brought the
sweat out on his forehead, the worst of all was the fear that
his backbone was about to snap. He set his teeth and breathed
hard through his nose, trying to keep silent as long as possible.
'You are afraid,' said O'Brien, watching his face, 'that in another
moment something is going to break. Your especial fear is that
it will be your backbone. You have a vivid mental picture of the
vertebrae snapping apart and the spinal fluid dripping out of
them. That is what you are thinking, is it not, Winston?'
Winston did not answer. O'Brien drew back the lever on the dial.
The wave of pain receded almost as quickly as it had come.
'That was forty,' said O'Brien. 'You can see that the numbers
on this dial run up to a hundred. Will you please remember, throughout
our conversation, that I have it in my power to inflict pain on
you at any moment and to whatever degree I choose? If you tell
me any lies, or attempt to prevaricate in any way, or even fall
below your usual level of intelligence, you will cry out with
pain, instantly. Do you understand that?'
'Yes,' said Winston.
O'Brien's manner became less severe. He resettled his spectacles
thoughtfully, and took a pace or two up and down. When he spoke
his voice was gentle and patient. He had the air of a doctor,
a teacher, even a priest, anxious to explain and persuade rather
than to punish.
'I am taking trouble with you, Winston,' he said, 'because you
are worth trouble. You know perfectly well what is the matter
with you. You have known it for years, though you have fought
against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged. You suffer from
a defective memory. You are unable to remember real events and
you persuade yourself that you remember other events which never
happened. Fortunately it is curable. You have never cured yourself
of it, because you did not choose to. There was a small effort
of the will that you were not ready to make. Even now, I am well
aware, you are clinging to your disease under the impression that
it is a virtue. Now we will take an example. At this moment, which
power is Oceania at war with?'
'When I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia.'
'With Eastasia. Good. And Oceania has always been at war with
Eastasia, has it not?'
Winston drew in his breath. He opened his mouth to speak and then
did not speak. He could not take his eyes away from the dial.
'The truth, please, Winston. Your truth. Tell me what you
think you remember.'
'I remember that until only a week before I was arrested, we were
not at war with Eastasia at all. We were in alliance with them.
The war was against Eurasia. That had lasted for four years. Before
that --'
O'Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand.
'Another example,' he said. 'Some years ago you had a very serious
delusion indeed. You believed that three men, three onetime Party
members named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford men who were executed
for treachery and sabotage after making the fullest possible confession
-- were not guilty of the crimes they were charged with. You believed
that you had seen unmistakable documentary evidence proving that
their confessions were false. There was a certain photograph about
which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually
held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.'
An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between O'Brien's fingers.
For perhaps five seconds it was within the angle of Winston's
vision. It was a photograph, and there was no question of its
identity. It was the photograph. It was another copy of
the photograph of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford at the party
function in New York, which he had chanced upon eleven years ago
and promptly destroyed. For only an instant it was before his
eyes, then it was out of sight again. But he had seen it, unquestionably
he had seen it! He made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench
the top half of his body free. It was impossible to move so much
as a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he had even forgotten
the dial. All he wanted was to hold the photograph in his fingers
again, or at least to see it.
'It exists!' he cried.
'No,' said O'Brien.
He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite
wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper
was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing
in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.
'Ashes,' he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does
not exist. It never existed.'
'But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember
it. You remember it.'
'I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.
Winston's heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a feeling of
deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain that O'Brien
was lying, it would not have seemed to matter. But it was perfectly
possible that O'Brien had really forgotten the photograph. And
if so, then already he would have forgotten his denial of remembering
it, and forgotten the act of forgetting. How could one be sure
that it was simple trickery? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation
in the mind could really happen: that was the thought that defeated
him.
O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More than ever
he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a wayward but promising
child.
'There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,'
he said. 'Repeat it, if you please.'
'"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the
present controls the past,"' repeated Winston obediently.
'"Who controls the present controls the past,"' said O'Brien,
nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your opinion, Winston,
that the past has real existence?'
Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His
eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether
'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save him from pain; he
did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.
O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Winston,' he
said. 'Until this moment you had never considered what is meant
by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist
concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world
of solid objects, where the past is still happening?'
'No.'
'Then where does the past exist, if at all?'
'In records. It is written down.'
'In records. And --?'
'In the mind. In human memories.'
'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records,
and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?'
'But how can you stop people remembering things?' cried Winston
again momentarily forgetting the dial. 'It is involuntary. It
is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled
mine!'
O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.
'On the contrary,' he said, 'you have not controlled it.
That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have
failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the
act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred
to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind
can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something
objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe
that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself
into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone
else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that
reality is not external. 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. Whatever the Party holds to
be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality
except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact
that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction,
an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can
become sane.'
He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been
saying to sink in.
'Do you remember,' he went on, 'writing in your diary, "Freedom
is the freedom to say that two plus two make four"?'
'Yes,' said Winston.
O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with
the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'
'Four.'
'And if the party says that it is not four but five -- then how
many?'
'Four.'
The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial had shot
up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over Winston's
body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again in deep groans
which even by clenching his teeth he could not stop. O'Brien watched
him, the four fingers still extended. He drew back the lever.
This time the pain was only slightly eased.
'How many fingers, Winston?'
'Four.'
The needle went up to sixty.
'How many fingers, Winston?'
'Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!'
The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at it. The
heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision. The
fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous, blurry,
and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.
'How many fingers, Winston?'
'Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!'
'How many fingers, Winston?'
'Five! Five! Five!'
'No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there
are four. How many fingers, please?'
'Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!'
Abruptly he was sitting up with O'Brien's arm round his shoulders.
He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few seconds. The bonds
that had held his body down were loosened. He felt very cold,
he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth were chattering, the
tears were rolling down his cheeks. For a moment he clung to O'Brien
like a baby, curiously comforted by the heavy arm round his shoulders.
He had the feeling that O'Brien was his protector, that the pain
was something that came from outside, from some other source,
and that it was O'Brien who would save him from it.
'You are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.
'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what
is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.'
'Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are
three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder.
It is not easy to become sane.'
He laid Winston down on the bed. The grip of his limbs tightened
again, but the pain had ebbed away and the trembling had stopped,
leaving him merely weak and cold. O'Brien motioned with his head
to the man in the white coat, who had stood immobile throughout
the proceedings. The man in the white coat bent down and looked
closely into Winston's eyes, felt his pulse, laid an ear against
his chest, tapped here and there, then he nodded to O'Brien.
'Again,' said O'Brien.
The pain flowed into Winston's body. The needle must be at seventy,
seventy-five. He had shut his eyes this time. He knew that the
fingers were still there, and still four. All that mattered was
somehow to stay alive until the spasm was over. He had ceased
to notice whether he was crying out or not. The pain lessened
again. He opened his eyes. O'Brien had drawn back the lever.
'How many fingers, Winston?'
'Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could.
I am trying to see five.'
'Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or really
to see them?'
'Really to see them.'
'Again,' said O'Brien.
Perhaps the needle was eighty -- ninety. Winston could not intermittently
remember why the pain was happening. Behind his screwed-up eyelids
a forest of fingers seemed to be moving in a sort of dance, weaving
in and out, disappearing behind one another and reappearing again.
He was trying to count them, he could not remember why. He knew
only that it was impossible to count them, and that this was somehow
due to the mysterious identity between five and four. The pain
died down again. When he opened his eyes it was to find that he
was still seeing the same thing. Innumerable fingers, like moving
trees, were still streaming past in either direction, crossing
and recrossing. He shut his eyes again.
'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?'
'I don't know. I don't know. You will kill me if you do that again.
Four, five, six -- in all honesty I don't know.'
'Better,' said O'Brien.
A needle slid into Winston's arm. Almost in the same instant a
blissful, healing warmth spread all through his body. The pain
was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes and looked up gratefully
at O'Brien. At sight of the heavy, lined face, so ugly and so
intelligent, his heart seemed to turn over. If he could have moved
he would have stretched out a hand and laid it on O'Brien arm.
He had never loved him so deeply as at this moment, and not merely
because he had stopped the pain. The old feeling, that it bottom
it did not matter whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy, had
come back. O'Brien was a person who could be talked to. Perhaps
one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. O'Brien
had tortured him to the edge of lunacy, and in a little while,
it was certain, he would send him to his death. It made no difference.
In some sense that went deeper than friendship, they were intimates:
somewhere or other, although the actual words might never be spoken,
there was a place where they could meet and talk. O'Brien was
looking down at him with an expression which suggested that the
same thought might be in his own mind. When he spoke it was in
an easy, conversational tone.
'Do you know where you are, Winston?' he said.
'I don't know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love.'
'Do you know how long you have been here?'
'I don't know. Days, weeks, months -- I think it is months.'
'And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?'
'To make them confess.'
'No, that is not the reason. Try again.'
'To punish them.'
'No!' exclaimed O'Brien. His voice had changed extraordinarily,
and his face had suddenly become both stern and animated. 'No!
Not merely to extract your confession, not to punish you. Shall
I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make
you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one whom we bring
to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested
in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not
interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about.
We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them. Do you understand
what I mean by that?'
He was bending over Winston. His face looked enormous because
of its nearness, and hideously ugly because it was seen from below.
Moreover it was filled with a sort of exaltation, a lunatic intensity.
Again Winston's heart shrank. If it had been possible he would
have cowered deeper into the bed. He felt certain that O'Brien
was about to twist the dial out of sheer wantonness. At this moment,
however, O'Brien turned away. He took a pace or two up and down.
Then he continued less vehemently:
'The first thing for you to understand is that in this place there
are no martyrdoms. You have read of the religious persecutions
of the past. In the Middle Ages there was the Inquisition. It
was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating
it. For every heretic it burned at the stake, thousands of others
rose up. Why was that? Because the Inquisition killed its enemies
in the open, and killed them while they were still unrepentant:
in fact, it killed them because they were unrepentant. Men were
dying because they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally
all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the
Inquisitor who burned him. Later, in the twentieth century, there
were the totalitarians, as they were called. There were the German
Nazis and the Russian Communists. The Russians persecuted heresy
more cruelly than the Inquisition had done. And they imagined
that they had learned from the mistakes of the past; they knew,
at any rate, that one must not make martyrs. Before they exposed
their victims to public trial, they deliberately set themselves
to destroy their dignity. They wore them down by torture and solitude
until they were despicable, cringing wretches, confessing whatever
was put into their mouths, covering themselves with abuse, accusing
and sheltering behind one another, whimpering for mercy. And yet
after only a few years the same thing had happened over again.
The dead men had become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten.
Once again, why was it? In the first place, because the confessions
that they had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not
make mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that are uttered
here are true. We make them true. And above all we do not allow
the dead to rise up against us. You must stop imagining that posterity
will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity will never hear of you.
You will be lifted clean out from the stream of history. We shall
turn you into gas and pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing
will remain of you, not a name in a register, not a memory in
a living brain. You will be annihilated in the past as well as
in the future. You will never have existed.'
Then why bother to torture me? thought Winston, with a momentary
bitterness. O'Brien checked his step as though Winston had uttered
the thought aloud. His large ugly face came nearer, with the eyes
a little narrowed.
'You are thinking,' he said, 'that since we intend to destroy
you utterly, so that nothing that you say or do can make the smallest
difference -- in that case, why do we go to the trouble of interrogating
you first? That is what you were thinking, was it not?'
'Yes,' said Winston.
O'Brien smiled slightly. 'You are a flaw in the pattern, Winston.
You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not tell you just
now that we are different from the persecutors of the past? We
are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most
abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be
of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he
resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We
convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn
all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our
side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make
him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to
us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world,
however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of
death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic
walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting
in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion
locked up in his skull as he walked down the passage waiting for
the bullet. But we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.
The command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The command
of the totalitarians was "Thou shalt". Our command is "Thou
art". No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against
us. Everyone is washed clean. Even those three miserable traitors
in whose innocence you once believed -- Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford
-- in the end we broke them down. I took part in their interrogation
myself. I saw them gradually worn down, whimpering, grovelling,
weeping -- and in the end it was not with pain or fear, only with
penitence. By the time we had finished with them they were only
the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow
for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching
to see how they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so
that they could die while their minds were still clean.'
His voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation, the lunatic
enthusiasm, was still in his face. He is not pretending, thought
Winston, he is not a hypocrite, he believes every word he says.
What most oppressed him was the consciousness of his own intellectual
inferiority. He watched the heavy yet graceful form strolling
to and fro, in and out of the range of his vision. O'Brien was
a being in all ways larger than himself. There was no idea that
he had ever had, or could have, that O'Brien had not long ago
known, examined, and rejected. His mind contained Winston's
mind. But in that case how could it be true that O'Brien was mad?
It must be he, Winston, who was mad. O'Brien halted and looked
down at him. His voice had grown stern again.
'Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however
completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray
is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural
term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What
happens to you here is for ever. Understand that in advance. We
shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming
back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover,
if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable
of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you.
Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy
of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity.
You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall
fill you with ourselves.'
He paused and signed to the man in the white coat. Winston was
aware of some heavy piece of apparatus being pushed into place
behind his head. O'Brien had sat down beside the bed, so that
his face was almost on a level with Winston's.
'Three thousand,' he said, speaking over Winston's head to the
man in the white coat.
Two soft pads, which felt slightly moist, clamped themselves against
Winston's temples. He quailed. There was pain coming, a new kind
of pain. O'Brien laid a hand reassuringly, almost kindly, on his.
'This time it will not hurt,' he said. 'Keep your eyes fixed on
mine.'
At this moment there was a devastating explosion, or what seemed
like an explosion, though it was not certain whether there was
any noise. There was undoubtedly a blinding flash of light. Winston
was not hurt, only prostrated. Although he had already been lying
on his back when the thing happened, he had a curious feeling
that he had been knocked into that position. A terrific painless
blow had flattened him out. Also something had happened inside
his head. As his eyes regained their focus he remembered who he
was, and where he was, and recognized the face that was gazing
into his own; but somewhere or other there was a large patch of
emptiness, as though a piece had been taken out of his brain.
'It will not last,' said O'Brien. 'Look me in the eyes. What country
is Oceania at war with?'
Winston thought. He knew what was meant by Oceania and that he
himself was a citizen of Oceania. He also remembered Eurasia and
Eastasia; but who was at war with whom he did not know. In fact
he had not been aware that there was any war.
'I don't remember.'
'Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that now?'
'Yes.'
'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the beginning
of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since the beginning
of history, the war has continued without a break, always the
same war. Do you remember that?'
'Yes.'
'Eleven years ago you created a legend about three men who had
been condemned to death for treachery. You pretended that you
had seen a piece of paper which proved them innocent. No such
piece of paper ever existed. You invented it, and later you grew
to believe in it. You remember now the very moment at which you
first invented it. Do you remember that?'
'Yes.'
'Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five
fingers. Do you remember that?'
'Yes.'
O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.
'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?'
'Yes.'
And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery
of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity.
Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred,
and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been
a moment -- he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps
-- of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's
had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth,
and when two and two could have been three as easily as five,
if that were what was needed. It had faded but before O'Brien
had dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he
could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some
period of one's life when one was in effect a different person.
'You see now,' said O'Brien, 'that it is at any rate possible.'
'Yes,' said Winston.
O'Brien stood up with a satisfied air. Over to his left Winston
saw the man in the white coat break an ampoule and draw back the
plunger of a syringe. O'Brien turned to Winston with a smile.
In almost the old manner he resettled his spectacles on his nose.
'Do you remember writing in your diary,' he said, 'that it did
not matter whether I was a friend or an enemy, since I was at
least a person who understood you and could be talked to? You
were right. I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It
resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane. Before
we bring the session to an end you can ask me a few questions,
if you choose.'
'Any question I like?'
'Anything.' He saw that Winston's eyes were upon the dial. 'It
is switched off. What is your first question?'
'What have you done with Julia?' said Winston.
O'Brien smiled again. 'She betrayed you, Winston. Immediately
-- unreservedly. I have seldom seen anyone come over to us so
promptly. You would hardly recognize her if you saw her. All her
rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her dirty-mindedness --
everything has been burned out of her. It was a perfect conversion,
a textbook case.'
'You tortured her?'
O'Brien left this unanswered. 'Next question,' he said.
'Does Big Brother exist?'
'Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment
of the Party.'
'Does he exist in the same way as I exist?'
'You do not exist,' said O'Brien.
Once again the sense of helplessness assailed him. He knew, or
he could imagine, the arguments which proved his own nonexistence;
but they were nonsense, they were only a play on words. Did not
the statement, 'You do not exist', contain a logical absurdity?
But what use was it to say so? His mind shrivelled as he thought
of the unanswerable, mad arguments with which O'Brien would demolish
him.
'I think I exist,' he said wearily. 'I am conscious of my own
identity. I was born and I shall die. I have arms and legs. I
occupy a particular point in space. No other solid object can
occupy the same point simultaneously. In that sense, does Big
Brother exist?'
'It is of no importance. He exists.'
'Will Big Brother ever die?'
'Of course not. How could he die? Next question.'
'Does the Brotherhood exist?'
'That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set you free
when we have finished with you, and if you live to be ninety years
old, still you will never learn whether the answer to that question
is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be an unsolved riddle
in your mind.'
Winston lay silent. His breast rose and fell a little faster.
He still had not asked the question that had come into his mind
the first. He had got to ask it, and yet it was as though his
tongue would not utter it. There was a trace of amusement in O'Brien's
face. Even his spectacles seemed to wear an ironical gleam. He
knows, thought Winston suddenly, he knows what I am going to ask!
At the thought the words burst out of him:
'What is in Room 101?'
The expression on O'Brien's face did not change. He answered drily:
'You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knows what is
in Room 101.'
He raised a finger to the man in the white coat. Evidently the
session was at an end. A needle jerked into Winston's arm. He
sank almost instantly into deep sleep.
.. .... ..
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