Torture In 1984

Winston is forced to undergo tortuous procedures and brainwashing. While incarcerated, Winston has terrible nightmares about rats, in which O’Brien uses to his advantage. Winston is forced to have a cage of rats strapped to his head and eventually these rats eat Winston’s face. After receiving such tremendous amounts of torture, Winston pleads with O’Brien to torture Julia instead of himself. This utter lack of hope and feeling of helplessness is what O’Brien desired from Winston the entire time.

I've got a wife and three children. The biggest of them isn't 6 years old. You can take a whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and watch it but not room 101" (Orwell 236-237)! This is one of Winston's first days in prison, and he is already dreading having to go to "room 101" because of what this skull-faced man just said. Room 101 is where you will be tortured by Big Brother until he gets what he wants out of you.

In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the overbearing government of Oceania, Big Brother, controls and monitors everything its citizens sees, hears, and believes. In order to gain absolute loyalty from its citizens, Big Brother has control over every aspect of their lives, prohibiting them from using their own minds and causing them to fully depend on Big Brother. Through the use of manipulation and fear, Big Brother and the Party are able to decide what is real and what is not real. Big Brother believes that in order to gain absolute loyalty from its citizens, it must control everything, from the spread of information to media.

Before reading 1984, I disagreed with number four “Torture of a person who is a threat to our country’s freedom is acceptable as long the person does not die.” After reading the book, it has persuaded me to changed my mind to think otherwise. O’Brien says “There are three stages in your reintegration” (O’Brien 215). If a person is a threat to them then they can torture to get the answers because as long as what they are doing is not said they are still a threat to them. “You must understand the construction of this cage.

Annotated Bibliography-“How effective is torture in obtaining information?” “Brown Note” Myth Busters. Discovery channel. Artarmon 16 Feb. 2005. Television.

In the novel “1984” by George Orwell, the Inner Party uses cruelty in a politically and socially effective way by using methods such as torture, starvation, imprisonment, and room 101 as crucial motivation for those being tortured to not only confess but repent of their sins against the party. Furthermore, the use of cruelty by the Inner Party unveils both the victim and perpetrator’s inner conscience. The use of cruelty throughout “1984” by the Inner Party and O’Brien reveals how cruelty functions in the work as a means of oppression and a catalyst of subservience.

In this text by Paul Lauritzen he spoke of ways we can torture a possible enemy of the country in a way that would not strip them of their basic human rights or that would alter their conception of reality, in order to get the information needed from them to save countless lives. Now I know that sounds petrifying, but as soon as you really get into the reading you'll understand why it's utterly captivating. Now let's get down to business, Paul gave many different definitions to dignity, he wanted to discover what dignity is exactly, he said that one of the forms of torture that strip a person of their dignity is when you make their life so horrible that they just don't want to live anymore. Another one was that dignity is the same as autonomy,

Winston was never a devoted follower, constantly questioning the world around him. Even when in custody, Winston continued questioning motives and denouncing the Party and Big Brother, despite the futility. He knew no societal changes would result from his actions, but desperately wanted to share his ideas with someone, and since he was already being tortured, he was capable of speaking freely in the jail area. The purpose was to rid him of his rebellious mindset, and to do so, O’Brien needed to know everything Winston honestly thought in order to ‘correct’ it fully. For example, O’Brien forced Winston to recognize that whatever the Party said was true by holding up four fingers and saying there were five, “But there had been a moment- of luminous certainty, where each new suggestion of O’Brien’s had filled up a patch of emptiness and had become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily five, if that were what was needed (Orwell 258).

O’Brien uses fear, scaring Winston into loving his government, Big Brother, and pushes him to break. In Orwell’s book, he states, “‘Room 101’ he said”... “‘Comrade! Officer!’ he cried.

Winston is then captured by the Thought Police and taken to the Ministry of Love. O’Brien then proceeds to torture Winston booth physically and mentally “ '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

O’brien enters the cell. Winston thinks that O’brien has been captured too, but soon learns that O’brien is a member of the party. Winston is tortured in all kinds of ways. He is kicked, beaten, forced to tears, and a man in a white coat connects him to a dial that has levels of pain. Winston is tortured until he is humiliated and his power to argue or reason is destroyed.

In the 1984 novel , Winston Smith is not like the rest of the people in his society. He hates Big brother . In book 3 of the novel Winston is put into the Ministry of love, Where there are four big telescreens monitoring his every move. Winston shares a cell with a few people including his neighbor Mr. Parson who was turned in for a thought crime. While winston shares a cell with a few people some of them get dragged to a horrifying room, room 101.

The struggle between O'Brien and Winston at the end. O'Brien is attempting to condition Winston into loving big brother but Winston's resistance lies in the fact that big brother may be able to control people but they cannot control his thoughts. For Example “He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently.

Test: Jordon Ponder “Who controls the past controls future. Who controls the present controls the past” Book 1, Chapter 3, Pg 34. This is a powerful quote in this book. Its entirety is really explaining the theme of this book. The people are brainwashed they don’t remember the past before big brother.

Torture is inherently evil and there is not place for torture or torture like techniques in this day and age amongst common people. No police force, military, or government entity should invoke torture as a method of interrogation or for any other common reason. Torture should not to be promoted. Yet, the survival of free innocent people must be protected. Information is crucial to this survival.