Me: Explanation of terms, confinement, beatings, most effective form of torture, loss of ability to

think, illusion of happiness.

You: Historical influences, malnutrition and insalubrity, uncertainty, room 101, loss of sense of
loyalty and family, malleability

I) Introduction

A. Explanation of term
From latin, tortura: twisting and tormenting
The difference between pain and torture is that torture has to be inflicted
by someone else, and it has to serve a purpose

B. Historical influences for Orwells writing

White Terror during the Spanish Civil War. The Nationalists cleansed
the area by assassinating left ideologists.
During Stalinism, the Soviet secret police widely used to torture to extract
confessions from suspects often called enemies of the people

II) Physical torture

A. Confinement
Confined within the community and the grimy landscape, no freedom of
thought, even the canteen is dirty. No maintenance, everything is run
down
The Party is not interested in the over act: the thought is all we care
about p.265. They have no freedom to think for themselves. They are
confined to those few cubic inches of their brain where they are free.
No knowledge of time or space, only high-ceilinged windowless cells with
walls of glittering white porcelain p.237 Winston does not even know how
long he has been in the Ministry of Love, whether it has been days,
months or weeks.

B. Malnutrition, insalubrity
Throughout the whole novel WInston and most of the people in Oceania are poorly fed.
They are told their rations are going up when really they are brought down, the food is
tasteless and not very nutritious
While he is in the Ministry of Truth, conditions are even worse. He hardly gets fed
anything and his personal hygiene deteriorates rapidly.
OBrien makes him look in the mirror and says Can you think of a single degradation
that has not happened to you? (p 286)
This really shows how bad the conditions were for prisoners,in particular.
 But the truly frightening thing was the emaciation of his body. The barrel
of the ribs was as narrow as that of a skeleton: the legs had shrunk so
that the knees were thicker than the thighs
Complete lack of hygiene, everyone living in the same room
Winston thinking everyday about how starving he is and how he would
just rather die

C. Beatings
While in the Ministry of Love, Winston was beat to the edge of lunacy. He
was constantly tormented, most often by 5 or 6 men, and whenever he
could not answer a question properly he was beat or OBrien would turn
the dial which most likely electrocuted Winston.
Never, for any reason on Earth, could you wish for an increase of pain.
Of pain you could wish for only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in
the world was so bad as physical pain.
The confession was a formality, but the torture was real. How many
times he had been beaten, how long the beatings continued, he could not
remember. (p 252. There are lots of quotes on p 252 and 253.)
Eventually it became such a frequent occurrence that Winston lost track
of how many times he was physically tortured or even how long he was
tortured for.

III) Psychological torture

A. Uncertainty, fear
Winston never knows who he can trust, whether Big Brother or the
Brotherhood exist, he doesnt know whether to trust Julia, constant
uncertainty of whether you are being watched.
All the mental oppression and constant uncertainty is torture in itself. You
constantly have to be careful about what you do, who you talk to, what
you do alone . ..even to go for a walk by yourself was always slightly
dangerous. You spend so much time being careful of how you act, its
hard to think of anything else. The Party injects everybody with
uncertainty and fear so that its impossible to create relationships with
each other.
when there is constant surveillance, anything you say can be held against
you
Also there was the fear of living. While winston was in Miniluv he
constantly asked himself when he would just get shot in the hallway and
be done with all the torture. Knowing that it was unavoidable was torture
enough, but also not knowing when it was coming was driving Winston
insane.
 B. Questioning
Constant flow of pestering questions. He is punished when he did not answer properly
Merciless and lasted hours. Constant fear of not knowing what they will ask next or if
you will be able to answer
He is scared to betray Julia

"Their real weapon was the merciless questioning that went on and on,
hour after hour, tripping him up, laying traps for him, twisting every word
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"
p.254
The endless torture went on to the point where he was giving them
information, just screaming it out in the hallway.
Winston mentions that even things he was able to retain during the
questioning came out at his free will; there is no point in hiding anything.
As a repercussion of the constant pressing questions, he ends up
denouncing everything. It would come out one way or another, he would
rather it be by his free will rather than fearing more imminent torture.
Also Winston questions himself throughout the novel
When he wakes up next to Julia he says Do you know that until this
moment I believed I had murdered my mother torture over the course of
27 years, not knowing where his mother and sister are, and thinking that it
is his fault that they are gone.
Constantly questioning whether it was his fault or their, questioning if he
could have saved them
Small actions that he does remind him of his mother. when Winston
thinks back to his memory His mother drew her arm around the child and
pressed its face into her breast (p 170) -> goes back to the first
paragraph of the book where Winston says he nuzzled his chin into his
breast in an attempt to escape the vile wind.
This shows that everywhere he goes, even in his daily life, there are
things he does that remind him of his mother and daughter. It's like an
omnipresent guilt hanging over him and absolute mental torture.
What if he hadnt left that day? what if he hadnt stolen the chocolate from
his sister?

C. Room 101
The question about Room 101 is does it even exist
As O'Brien says The worst thing in the world varies from individual to
individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by
impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite
trivial thing, not even fatal p.296
 But how can it be possible to have one room that is adaptable to all these
situations? How does Room 101 exist if people's fears vary from
drowning to death by fire? The room would have to be adaptable to any
situation every day, to change in order to contain people's worst fears.
Is room 101 possible ? Do the events ever happen? Or is Room 101 not a
concrete room, but more of a concept.
There is also uncertainty in this. Whenever Winston sees someone being
condemned to Room 101, he is unsure what it is, if it exists and if so,
what is in it that can be so terrible?
IV) Which form of torture was more effective in the novel?
Physical torture played a huge role towards the end of the book. Winston constantly says
how physical pain was the worst thing on Earth. He was beat to the edge of lunacy,
electrocuted and physical inflictions were used whenever an answer was not
satisfactory.
Although It was extremely prominent in the Ministry of Love and Part 3 of the novel, but it
doesnt play such a big role in the rest.

Psychological torture was present throughout the entire novel

Winston is under constant mental oppression in his daily life, and psychological torture
takes in the shape of the telescreens, the constant inability to trust the people around
you, the 2 Minute Hate, all the oppression and the fact that you cant even think about
revolution, or have an original thought without being caught by the thought police.
There was no proof of any physical affliction or pain during the last chapter of the novel.
Winston is in better shape than he has been in a long time, physically, whereas due to
the constant psychological torture, he is broken.
The concluding words of the novel ..the struggle was finished. He had won the victory
over himself. He loved Big Brother (p. 311) shows that everything he believed in is
gone. He has been mentally destroyed and injected with lies and corruption and
betrayal. He has a lasting psychological mark that will never go away. We believe
because of this, psychological torture was the most effective form of torture used in the
novel.

V) Effects of torture on characters

A. Loss of sense of loyalty, family relations

Despite everything that Julia and Winston said to each other throughout the book, they
still end up selling each other out.
Julia and Winston betray each other because the physical and
psychological torture was just too frequent, too hard to withstand and it
became impossible to retain information especially, when they were both
slowly losing their minds.
In the Ministry of Love, WInston watches another man being sentenced
to Room 101 and the man says to the guard I've got a wife and three
 children. The biggest of them isn't six years old. You can take the whole
lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and
watch it. p.249
The effects that all the oppression and torture has had on them made
them completely lose everything they stood for.
The power of the Party is too strong to withstand and eventually you
become so wrapped up in saving your own life that you don't care what
the casualties are.

B. Loss of ability to think

He had only six thoughts. The pain in his belly; a piece of bread; the
blood and the screaming; OBrien; Julia; the razor blade. p.244

VI) Use of torture to the Party

A. Malleability, devotion of prisoners
The Party uses physical torture just to keep everyone in line. when
winston was in the Ministry of Love he said that eventually The beating
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
(p 253).
Shows that the physical torture was all just a threat to show that whats
happening to him is real. Once he feel threatened and knows there is no
getting out of this, they can start to really torture him psychologically.
Once you are beaten too many times, you start to take it for granted and
think that at least they arent taking my identity or murdering my family in
front of me.
"Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will
and not his own ?" p.279
The Party can use this to their advantage to make people grateful for their
generosity

B. Creates illusion of happiness

For Epicurus (341-270 B.C., Athens), Pleasure is the absence or the
avoidance of pain rather than a positive satisfaction.
By inflicting pain and withdrawing it, the Party creates a satisfied
population.
A happy population doesnt rebel.
"Merely to be alone, not to beaten or questioned, to have enough to eat,
and to be clean all over, was completely satisfying" p.288
Corrupt and perverse way to create a fabricated happiness