Room 101 is a terrible room. The victim, or "insane" person, is strapped onto a bed, incapable of moving. A person would ask questions to the strapped person, and if he/she answers incorrectly, he/she is sent an electric shock. The voltage is higher every time. The person asking questions knows when his "patient" is lying, or doesn't believe what he/she says. So he/she is shocked. That shocking routine continues until the "patient" gives a right answer. Then he/she gets a needle to release the pain. When Winston gets it, he feels a lot of warmth in his body, and he feels love for O'Brian, even if he is the one shocking Winston. Now, you may be wondering what type of monster does this, but wait 'till you hear the perfectly reasonable speech that justifies everything (note the sarcasm). "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." (page 265) Now everything makes a lot more sense. On the back cover of the book, it said that their is Room 101 for those with "original" thoughts. "Original" is just a nicer way of saying "crazy", or "insane". The Party thinks that those who commit thoughtcrime are victims of hallucination and delusions, and that they must be cured. In Winston's case, he was said to be hallucinating that Oceania was at war with Eurasia, while it was always at war with Eastasia. O'Brian also showed Winston a photograph that said that three men were not responsible for the crimes they had been accused of. He said the photograph never existed.
O'Brian says that he is curing Winston because he had never decided to take his thoughts into his own hands and cure himself. The two men also have a short discussion about one of the Party's slogans. "Who controls the present controls the past"... O'Brian asks Winston if the past is a place where people can live, where it is filled with concrete objects that can be touched... It isn't. Winston says that the past only exists in records and in memory. The Party controls all the records, we know that. After all, wasn't every record rewritten and rewritten until it no longer makes sense. But memories? "But how can yo stop people from remembering things? How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!" (Winston, page 261). "On the contrary you have not controlled it. That is why we have brought you here" (O'Brian, page 261). Because Winston did not control his own thoughts and memories, he was brought to Room 101 so that someone else can do the job. But possibly the most frighting event was when O'Brian told Winston about a line he has written in his diary: "Freedom is the freedom to say that 2 + 2 = 4". This line may not seem like much, but it is very symbolic. For almost every citizen in Oceania, if the Party says that 2 + 2 = 5, then 2 + 2 = 5. No one will question it, everyone will believe it. Of course that is absurd, but it is just a symbol of all the lies the Party have told... all the lies that have been unquestioned and believed. But then again, the Party is perfectly capable of making people believe that the sum of two and two is five. O'Brian then held up four fingers to Winston and asked him how many. He answered four. Now, if the Party said that 2 + 2 = 5, how many fingers are there? Still four, eh? That's what Winston said, and he got shocked. Every time he was asked the question, he would answer four, and he would get shocked. Then he screamed five, but O'Brian knew that he didn't believe it, so Winston was shocked again. This continued until Winston no longer saw four fingers, but rather a bunch of them criss crossing, impossible to count. So he shouted "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." (page 264) That was when the shocks ceased. That answer seemed to please O'Brian. Because after all, "ignorance is strength"...
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
April 2015
Categories |