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 hirnself 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
Inquisitlon. 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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