---
title: "Nineteen Eighty-Four"
author: "George Orwell"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Literature"
section: 20 of 25
url: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-nineteen-eighty-four-fp20120511/20/
cite: "George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, section 20. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-nineteen-eighty-four-fp20120511/20/"
---

# Nineteen Eighty-Four

*George Orwell*

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> Title: 1984 [Nineteen Eighty-Four]
Date of first publication: 1949
Author: Eric Arthur Blair (as George Orwell) (1903-1950)
Date first posted: May 17, 2012
Date last updated: June 26, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20120511

> This eBook was produced by: David T. Jones, Mary Meehan, Al Haines
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

> NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

> A NOVEL BY

> George Orwell

> SECKER & WARBURG                         LONDON

> S. J. REGINALD SAUNDERS & CO. LTD.      TORONTO

> COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1949
    S. J. REGINALD SAUNDERS AND COMPANY LIMITED

> _All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
    this book or portions thereof in any form._

> _first Canadian edition_

> PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
    BY THE HADDON CRAFTSMEN, SCRANTON, PA.

> *       *       *       *       *

> _Books by George Orwell_

> NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
    ANIMAL FARM
    DICKENS, DALI AND OTHERS
    COMING UP FOR AIR
    BURMESE DAYS
    DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON
    HOMAGE TO CATALONIA
    THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER

> [The end of _1984 [Nineteen Eighty-Four]_ by Eric Arthur Blair (as George Orwell)]

## 20. II

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-nineteen-eighty-four-fp20120511/20/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/orwell-nineteen-eighty-four-fp20120511/20/#p-N

[¶0] 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.

[¶1] 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.

[¶2] 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 onto 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
washbasin, 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 of broken bones, and shooting needles into his arm to make
him sleep.

[¶3] 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 sniveling 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.

[¶4] There were also memories of another kind. They stood out in his mind
disconnectedly, like pictures with blackness all round them.

[¶5] 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.

[¶6] 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 waxen-faced officer marched
in, followed by two guards.

[¶7] "Room 101," said the officer.

[¶8] The man in the white coat did not turn round. He did not look at Winston
either; he was looking only at the dials.

[¶9] He was rolling down a mighty corridor, a kilometer 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.

[¶10] 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 onto 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.

[¶11] 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.

[¶12] "I told you," said O'Brien, "that if we met again it would be here."

[¶13] "Yes," said Winston.

[¶14] 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.

[¶15] "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?"

[¶16] 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.

[¶17] "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?"

[¶18] "Yes," said Winston.

[¶19] 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.

[¶20] "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?"

[¶21] "When I was arrested, Oceania was at war with Eastasia."

[¶22] "With Eastasia. Good. And Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia,
has it not?"

[¶23] 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.

[¶24] "The truth, please, Winston. _Your_ truth. Tell me what you think you
remember."

[¶25] "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--"

[¶26] O'Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand.

[¶27] "Another example," he said. "Some years ago you had a very serious
delusion indeed. You believed that three men, three one-time 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."

[¶28] 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 centimeter 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.

[¶29] "It exists!" he cried.

[¶30] "No," said O'Brien.

[¶31] 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.

[¶32] "Ashes," he said. "Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist.
It never existed."

[¶33] "But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it.
You remember it."

[¶34] "I do not remember it," said O'Brien.

[¶35] 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 simply trickery?
Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could really happen: that
was the thought that defeated him.

[¶36] 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.

[¶37] "There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past," he said.
"Repeat it, if you please."

[¶38] "'Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present
controls the past,'" repeated Winston obediently.

[¶39] "'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?"

[¶40] Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes
flitted toward 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.

[¶41] 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?"

[¶42] "No."

[¶43] "Then where does the past exist, if at all?"

[¶44] "In records. It is written down."

[¶45] "In records. And--?"

[¶46] "In the mind. In human memories."

[¶47] "In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we
control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?"

[¶48] "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!"

[¶49] O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial.

[¶50] "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 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."

[¶51] He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what he had been saying
to sink in.

[¶52] "Do you remember," he went on, "writing in your diary, 'Freedom is the
freedom to say that two plus two make four'?"

[¶53] "Yes," said Winston.

[¶54] O'Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the thumb
hidden and the four fingers extended.

[¶55] "How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"

[¶56] "Four."

[¶57] "And if the Party says that it is not four but five--then how many?"

[¶58] "Four."

[¶59] 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.

[¶60] "How many fingers, Winston?"

[¶61] "Four."

[¶62] The needle went up to sixty.

[¶63] "How many fingers, Winston?"

[¶64] "Four! Four! What else can I say? Four!"

[¶65] 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.

[¶66] "How many fingers, Winston?"

[¶67] "Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four!"

[¶68] "How many fingers, Winston?"

[¶69] "Five! Five! Five!"

[¶70] "No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think there are
four. How many fingers, please?"

[¶71] "Four! Five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop the pain!"

[¶72] 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.

[¶73] "You are a slow learner, Winston," said O'Brien gently.

[¶74] "How can I help it?" he blubbered. "How can I help seeing what is in
front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

[¶75] "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."

[¶76] He laid Winston down on the bed. The grip on 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.

[¶77] "Again," said O'Brien.

[¶78] 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.

[¶79] "How many fingers, Winston?"

[¶80] "Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could. I am
trying to see five."

[¶81] "Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or really to see
them?"

[¶82] "Really to see them."

[¶83] "Again," said O'Brien.

[¶84] Perhaps the needle was at eighty--ninety. Winston could only
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.

[¶85] "How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"

[¶86] "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."

[¶87] "Better," said O'Brien.

[¶88] 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's 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 at 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.

[¶89] "Do you know where you are, Winston?" he said.

[¶90] "I don't know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love."

[¶91] "Do you know how long you have been here?"

[¶92] "I don't know. Days, weeks, months--I think it is months."

[¶93] "And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?"

[¶94] "To make them confess."

[¶95] "No, that is not the reason. Try again."

[¶96] "To punish them."

[¶97] "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, nor 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?"

[¶98] 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:

[¶99] "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."

[¶100] 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.

[¶101] "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?"

[¶102] "Yes," said Winston.

[¶103] 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,
groveling, 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."

[¶104] 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.

[¶105] "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
forever. 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."

[¶106] 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.

[¶107] "Three thousand," he said, speaking over Winston's head to the man in
the white coat.

[¶108] 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.

[¶109] "This time it will not hurt," he said. "Keep your eyes fixed on mine."

[¶110] 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.

[¶111] "It will not last," said O'Brien. "Look me in the eyes. What country is
Oceania at war with?"

[¶112] 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.

[¶113] "I don't remember."

[¶114] "Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that now?"

[¶115] "Yes."

[¶116] "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?"

[¶117] "Yes."

[¶118] "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?"

[¶119] "Yes."

[¶120] "Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five fingers.
Do you remember that?"

[¶121] "Yes."

[¶122] O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.

[¶123] "There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?"

[¶124] "Yes."

[¶125] 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 out 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 remote
period of one's life when one was in effect a different person.

[¶126] "You see now," said O'Brien, "that it is at any rate possible."

[¶127] "Yes," said Winston.

[¶128] 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.

[¶129] "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."

[¶130] "Any question I like?"

[¶131] "Anything." He saw that Winston's eyes were upon the dial. "It is
switched off. What is your first question?"

[¶132] "What have you done with Julia?" said Winston.

[¶133] 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."

[¶134] "You tortured her."

[¶135] O'Brien left this unanswered. "Next question," he said.

[¶136] "Does Big Brother exist?"

[¶137] "Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of
the Party."

[¶138] "Does he exist in the same way as I exist?"

[¶139] "You do not exist," said O'Brien.

[¶140] 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 shriveled as he thought of the unanswerable, mad arguments with
which O'Brien would demolish him.

[¶141] "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?"

[¶142] "It is of no importance. He exists?"

[¶143] "Will Big Brother ever die?"

[¶144] "Of course not. How could he die? Next question."

[¶145] "Does the Brotherhood exist?"

[¶146] "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."

[¶147] 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:

[¶148] "What is in Room 101?"

[¶149] The expression on O'Brien's face did not change. He answered drily:

[¶150] "You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knows what is in Room
101."

[¶151] 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.