Book Two, chapters nine and ten, and Book Three, chapters
one through three
In this section Winston and Julia are captured. It is
revealed that their safe room is equipped with a tele-screen. Armed enforcement
officers flood the building and Mr. Charrington enters the room, but this time
with a different air: he is a Thought Police.
The majority of this section is taken up with the time
Winston spends under torture. Chapter nine of Book Two begins with the end
of Hate Week and a shift in Oceania’s
alliances and enemies, forcing Winston and his co-workers to work nonstop to
re-adjust the records. At the end of this effort, Winston, who during the
flurry of Hate Week and shifting war patterns was handed the Brotherhood’s
book, goes to the safe house to begin to read and meet with Julia.
This section of the text is full particularly full of
political and philosophical ideas. On one side of the belief spectrum, in this
section, the novel contains a full chapter and a half of the Brotherhood’s
book. On the other side, it is in this section that O’Brien feeds Winston all
of the underlying principles of the Party (does what he say contradict what
“Goldstein” writes in the book? E.g., regarding the Party’s motivation of
power).
Both discourses present principles about how history has
played out and will play out.
Moments in the text that stand out to me include:
-
Winston tells O’Brien that he has not betrayed
Julia; O’Brien agrees
-
The ‘true’ nature of O’Brien reinforces my
original concern about why Winston turns himself over to the Brotherhood in the
first place
-
It is so obvious at that moment that O’Brien
knows too much when he asks if they have a safe house
-
Winston claims to be morally superior. Is he?
O’Brien makes a good case that Winston is not when he plays back the tape of
Winston’s acceptance of the Brotherhood’s commission.
-
O’Brien reaffirms the Party’s definition of
humanity, which excludes proles
-
O’Brien tells Winston that Goldstein’s book
suggests that the proletariat will rise up, affirming Winston’s thought, but we
don’t necessarily know if that is true.
-
O’Brien claims to have participated in the
writing of the book, which may or may not be true considering that the Party
claims to have control of everything that ever existed.
-
O’Brien represents the Party’s prime objective
as power, not freedom or happiness; he represents that the Party rejects love
and justice (and a slew of good values) in favor of hate, fear, control and
suffering, stating that these are the principles that will establish an everlasting
power
-
O’Brien’s mind is greater and encompasses
Winston’s mind.
-
Both Winston and O’Brien appreciate being able
to speak with some as aware as each other, even if they are enemies. They feel
intimacy and reverence solely for the awareness they share. This shared
awareness offers an affirmation of identity much like the affirmation that
reading the book offers Winston.
-
The physical torture that Winston goes through
is intense; the process degrades his body, though his resolve remains unshaken.
Does the torture, the physical pain and suffering in the text serve as a
metaphor for the suffering one undergoes when trying to keep one’s ideas when
surrounded by so many systems and beliefs that seek to manipulate your mind?
-
Solipsism vs. collective solipsism
-
Eternal power versus the human weakness and
mortality of the individual
-
Repeated historical references, especially to
Nazi Germany, Communist Russia totalitarian states.
-
Controlling one’s mind as discipline, as
humility, as Party duty: O’Brien needs Winston to perform double-think;
controlling reality (climate, gravity, stars, fossil record) by controlling
one’s thoughts; reality as the reality one constructs in his or her own head; told
to give up nineteenth century ideas about empirical study; slow ending of
science
-
Party’s objective to squash natural affection,
caring, relationships between individuals
-
Using the paradox in the statement “You do not
exist” as the linguistic form that metonymically structures the texts argument;
statement cannot be accurate because of subject/predicate rules. a
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