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1984
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
O’Brien answers Winston’s claim to be better than the Party with a recording and a mirror. Is Winston still right to call himself better?
The tension “Yes, I consider myself superior,” Winston says; O’Brien plays back his vow to lie, steal, forge and murder for the Brotherhood, then stands him before the glass: “That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity.”
Notice each answer Winston tries against O’Brien, and what O’Brien uses to meet it.
O’Brien tells Winston there are three stages in his re-integration, learning, understanding and acceptance, and that it is time for the second. Winston’s bonds are looser now, and the dial comes chiefly when he is stupid. O’Brien recalls the line in Winston’s diary, that he understood how but not why, and says he helped write Goldstein’s book: its description is true, its programme nonsense, and the proles will never revolt. Then he asks why the Party wants power. Winston expects to hear that it rules for the good of the weak, and says so; O’Brien pushes the dial to thirty-five and calls the answer stupid. The Party, he says, seeks power entirely for its own sake: “The object of power is power.” When Winston notices how tired his face is, O’Brien says the individual is only a cell, and its weariness is the vigour of the organism. He explains that power is collective, so that a man who merges with the Party is all-powerful and immortal, and that it is power over minds above all. Winston objects with the climate and gravity, Eurasia and Eastasia, the bones of extinct animals and the far stars. O’Brien answers each: reality is inside the skull, he could float like a soap bubble, the bones were invented, the stars are near or far as the Party needs, though sailors and eclipse-watchers treat them as far. He supplies the word Winston cannot remember, solipsism, and calls the argument a digression. Power over a man, Winston answers, means making him suffer, and O’Brien describes the world the Party is building: fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement, no love but for Big Brother, a boot stamping on a human face for ever, with the heretic always there to be broken. Winston says such a world could not last. Without arguments, he says life will defeat them, and names the spirit of Man. O’Brien calls him the last man, and asks if he considers himself morally superior. Winston says yes. O’Brien plays a recording of Winston’s Brotherhood vow to lie, steal, forge and murder, and to throw vitriol in a young face. He orders Winston to undress and stands him before a three-sided mirror, where Winston sees a bowed, grey, skeleton-like body. O’Brien pulls out a tooth and says, “If you are human, that is humanity.” Dressing, Winston weeps from pity for his body. O’Brien says Winston reduced himself to this, and asks if any degradation has not happened to him. Winston says he has not betrayed Julia, and O’Brien agrees. Winston asks how soon they will shoot him. It might be a long time, O’Brien says: everyone is cured sooner or later, and “In the end we shall shoot you.”
Read the chapter in three stretches: O’Brien’s answer to “why”, from the three stages to the boot and the heretic who will always be there; Winston’s last arguments, from “You can’t!” to the sound-track; and the mirror, the tooth and Julia, to the end. The third stretch describes Winston’s starved body plainly. Read it once, without lingering, and keep the attention on what the mirror is meant to prove. As you go, keep a short list of each answer Winston tries against O’Brien and what O’Brien uses to meet it: an argument, a threat, the dial, a recording or the glass. Leave open what the chapter leaves open: what acceptance will require, whether O’Brien really helped write Goldstein’s book, whether the Party’s world will last, and when or whether Winston will be shot.
Retell The student retells the chapter in order: the three stages, Goldstein’s book, the answer Winston expected and the dial at thirty-five, power for its own sake, the tired face and the cell, power over matter and Winston’s objections (the climate, the bones, the stars), solipsism, the world of the boot, “Life will defeat you” and the spirit of Man, the recording, the mirror and the tooth, the tears on the stool, Julia, and the question about the shooting. Look for the recording and for Winston’s silence after it, which a hurried retelling runs past on the way to the mirror.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes a passage of their own in the same build, about a plan or a place they oppose. It opens with a sentence that names what it is against. Then comes a sentence with no main verb that repeats one phrase three times, each step longer than the last, with one “not less but more” turn. Next, a sentence that uses one word on both sides of the verb. Then an older claim set against a new one across two sentences, the second very short. Last, a list that ends on its heaviest word.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that Winston is no longer right to call himself better, and gathers the recorded vow, the answer Winston expected O’Brien to give, a Party “doing evil that good might come”, and his silence after the sound-track. The other argues that he still is, and gathers “The object of torture is torture.”, the difference between a means and an end, what the mirror can and cannot prove, and the loyalty to Julia O’Brien grants. Each side must answer the other’s best line, and both must deal with the vow to throw vitriol. Neither may say that Winston will betray Julia, what acceptance will require, or when he will be shot.
Purpose Close on the shape of the chapter. It begins with O’Brien’s ideas, power for its own sake and the individual as a cell, and Winston answers ideas with ideas: the bones, the stars, the spirit of Man. Then O’Brien stops arguing and turns to Winston himself, his recorded voice and his body in the glass. Ask why Orwell moves the contest from ideas to the man, and what is left standing when it ends on Julia. Keep the answer to what this chapter shows.
Easier Read the chapter aloud in its three stretches. Keep a list of each answer Winston tries against O’Brien and what O’Brien does in reply. Talk through the first and last discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud, using the list, before writing it.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions in order, then write both written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.
Harder Ask for one argued essay on the copied passage, read beside the recording and the mirror. Love is missing from O’Brien’s list of the feelings that will be left, and a loyalty is what Winston has left at the end. Does the chapter show the Party able to make the world the passage describes, or does it show the limit of that power? The essay should use “hedonistic”, “self-abasement” and “solipsism”, and should meet the objection that Winston is outtalked at every turn. It must not say what acceptance will require, that Winston will betray Julia, whether the Party’s world will last, or whether he will be shot.
1. Winston thinks “the terrible thing” would be O’Brien really believing that the Party rules for the good of the weak. Is the answer he gets worse than that, or easier to fight?Character
What it asks It asks the student to weigh the answer Winston feared against the one he gets. Before O’Brien speaks, Winston knows “in advance” what he will say: that the Party seeks power “only for the good of the majority”, because most people “could not endure liberty or face the truth”, and that it is “the eternal guardian of the weak”. The terrible thing, Winston thinks, is that O’Brien would believe it, and he asks himself what can be done “against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy”. He offers that answer “feebly”, the lever goes up to thirty-five, and O’Brien gives his own: “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.” The student says whether that answer is worse for Winston than the one he feared, or easier to fight. The card must not treat O’Brien’s account of the Party as the book’s verdict; it is what he says in this room.
Worse. A Party that claimed to serve the weak could at least be held to its claim: show it the misery it causes and the excuse fails. A Party that wants only power has no excuse to break, and O’Brien is proud of that. The others were “cowards and hypocrites”; this one knows what it is doing. Winston is left with nothing in the enemy to appeal to.
We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.
All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
Easier. The enemy Winston dreaded was a clever man who listens, weighs everything and still believes he does harm for a good end. That enemy can claim a moral side. O’Brien gives that claim up. A Party that says its aim is persecution for its own sake has left the moral ground to Winston, and he no longer has to wonder whether it might be right.
who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy
The object of persecution is persecution.
A strong answer A strong response says whether O’Brien’s answer is worse for Winston than the one he feared, or easier to fight, and argues from the paragraph before the dial and the speech after it. One reader says worse: a Party that claimed to serve the weak could be held to that claim, while a Party “interested solely in power” leaves nothing to appeal to. Another says easier: the enemy Winston dreaded could claim a moral side, and O’Brien gives it up, so the moral ground is left to Winston. The best answers weigh “feebly” and the dial at thirty-five, and keep O’Brien’s account as his claim, not the book’s verdict.
2. O’Brien admits that to steer a ship or predict an eclipse, the Party treats the stars as far away. Does that admission help Winston?Inference
What it asks It asks the student to weigh the one point O’Brien concedes in the argument about reality. Winston names things outside the Party: the climate and gravity, Eurasia and Eastasia, “the bones of extinct animals – mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles”, and the stars, “a million light-years away.” O’Brien answers each. The bones? “Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them.” The stars are “bits of fire a few kilometres away.” Winston makes “another convulsive movement” and says nothing, and O’Brien goes on “as though answering a spoken objection”: “For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres away.” Then: “Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy?” The student says whether the admission gives Winston anything to stand on. The card must keep to the bones, the stars and the soap bubble, not drift into a lecture on theories of knowledge.
Yes. A truth the Party needs in order to sail is not one the Party made. The ocean and the eclipse do not bend to doublethink: get the stars wrong and the ship is lost. O’Brien has granted, in his own words, that his claim about the stars is “not true” for some purposes. The world outside the skull pushes back, and that is all Winston was claiming.
For certain purposes, of course, that is not true.
When we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of kilometres away.
No. O’Brien raises the point himself, before Winston can, and in the same breath turns it into one more Party tool. For a mind trained in doublethink, holding both pictures costs nothing. And Winston cannot use it. He says nothing about the stars again, and the answers crush him “like a bludgeon”.
Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy?
Whatever he said, the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon.
A strong answer A strong response says whether O’Brien’s admission about the ocean and the eclipse helps Winston, and argues from the exchange itself. One reader says it does: the Party must treat the stars as far away to sail, so the world outside the skull pushes back, and O’Brien grants that his own claim is “not true” for some purposes. Another says it does not: O’Brien raises the point himself and folds it into doublethink, “a dual system of astronomy” that costs him nothing, while Winston is crushed “like a bludgeon” and falls silent. The best answers use the bones and the soap bubble, and keep being outtalked apart from being wrong.
3. O’Brien says the heretic “will always be there”, to be beaten again and again. A little later he tells Winston, “Your kind is extinct”. What would have to be true for O’Brien to mean both?Theme
What it asks It asks the student to test two things O’Brien says a few minutes apart. In the speech that ends on the boot, he says: “The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again.” “Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever.” The heretic will end “utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord.” Then, when Winston names “The spirit of Man” and says he is a man: “If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man”, and “Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors.” The student says what would make both claims hold, or argues that nothing does. The card must not say the Party’s world will last for ever, or that it will fall; those are O’Brien’s and Winston’s claims, not the book’s.
Nothing, and the crack matters. The world O’Brien describes needs an enemy for ever: Goldstein’s heresies “will always survive”. A Party that must keep producing heretics keeps producing Winston’s kind, so he is not the last. O’Brien’s own picture of the future leaves room for Winston’s “Life will defeat you”, even if it does not prove it.
Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever.
Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon – and yet they will always survive.
Both hold, because they are two kinds of heretic. The heretic the Party keeps is one it stages and breaks: his story is a “drama” the Party plays out, and it ends with him crawling back “of his own accord”. The kind that is extinct is the man who stands outside that drama with a “spirit of Man” of his own. By O’Brien’s account, Winston has been inside the drama for seven years.
This drama that I have played out with you during seven years will be played out over and over again, generation after generation, always in subtler forms.
and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord
A strong answer A strong response says what would have to be true for O’Brien to mean both claims, or argues that nothing could. One reader finds a crack: a Party that must defeat heretics for ever must keep making them, so Winston’s kind is not extinct, and O’Brien’s picture leaves room for “Life will defeat you”. Another finds two kinds of heretic: the one the Party stages and breaks until he crawls back “of his own accord”, and the one who stands outside the drama, who is the kind O’Brien calls extinct. The best answers use “seven years” and the face that “will always be there”, and do not say whether the Party’s world will last.
4. Winston sees how tired O’Brien’s face is, and O’Brien asks, “Do you die when you cut your fingernails?” If “the individual is only a cell”, what does that make O’Brien himself?Character
What it asks It asks the student to turn O’Brien’s rule about the individual back on the man who states it. Just after “The object of power is power”, Winston is struck by “the tiredness of O’Brien’s face”: “There were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged from the cheekbones.” Winston says nothing. O’Brien leans in, “deliberately bringing the worn face nearer”, and answers the thought: “You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism. Do you die when you cut your fingernails?” Then he turns from “my face” to “We are the priests of power”, and explains that a man who can “merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party” becomes “all-powerful and immortal”. The student says what the rule makes of O’Brien: a spent part, or a man who has escaped the defeat he says waits for every man alone. It sets up the last question, since Winston’s claim to be better is the claim of one man against the organism. The card must keep O’Brien’s account of what the Party gives him as his claim, not the book’s verdict.
A fingernail. By his own rule O’Brien is a part the Party will cut away and not miss. His face sags, he cannot stop the decay of his body, and the rule only tells him his tiredness is someone else’s strength. The man at the dial is as used up as the man on the bed. The difference is that he has agreed to it.
You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body.
The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism.
Not a cell at all, in his own eyes. He has stopped speaking as one man: the next breath is “We are the priests of power”. A man merged with the Party, he says, shares its power and its long life, so his own decay costs him nothing. That is what the rule buys him. He can bring his worn face close to Winston’s without fear, and Winston, alone, cannot.
We are the priests of power
if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal
A strong answer A strong response says what O’Brien’s rule makes of O’Brien, and argues from the tired face and the speech that follows it. One reader says a fingernail: by his own account he is a part the Party will cut away, his tiredness only feeds the whole, and the man at the dial is as used up as the man on the bed, only willing. Another says he is no longer a cell in his own eyes: he turns from “my face” to “We are the priests of power”, and claims through the Party the power and long life that no single man has. The best answers notice that O’Brien answers a thought Winston never spoke, weigh “doomed to die”, and keep the Party’s gifts as O’Brien’s claim.
5. Winston has told the Party everything about Julia, but “in the sense in which he intended the word, he had not betrayed her.” Is that a fair way to use the word?Moral reasoning
What it asks It asks the student to decide what betrayal is, using the last thing Winston claims. O’Brien asks, “Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?” Winston answers, “I have not betrayed Julia,” and O’Brien says, “No,” and then, “no; that is perfectly true.” Then the page sets out what Winston has told: “her habits, her character, her past life”, their meetings “in the most trivial detail”, “their black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague plottings against the Party – everything.” “And yet, in the sense in which he intended the word, he had not betrayed her. He had not stopped loving her; his feeling towards her had remained the same.” The student says whether Winston’s sense of the word is a fair one. The card must not say that Winston will betray Julia; here he has not, and O’Brien grants it.
Yes. Betrayal is turning against someone, and his heart has not turned: “his feeling towards her had remained the same.” What he told came out under torture, which is not a choice in the sense that counts. Even O’Brien, who wants him broken, does not dispute it.
He had not stopped loving her; his feeling towards her had remained the same.
no; that is perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia.
No, or not in the sense that matters to her. Her habits, her past and their plottings are now in the Party’s hands, and a love kept only inside him protects her from nothing. The page marks the meaning as his own, and it is a narrow one: betrayal as a change of feeling, not as anything he has done. He has kept the word by narrowing it.
He had told them everything he knew about her, her habits, her character, her past life
their black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague plottings against the Party – everything.
A strong answer A strong response says whether Winston’s sense of “betrayed” is a fair one, and argues from the paragraph after “I have not betrayed Julia”. One reader says yes: betrayal is a turning of the heart, his feeling “had remained the same”, the telling was forced out of him, and even O’Brien grants it. Another says no, or not in her sense: everything about her is now in the Party’s hands, and the page marks the meaning as Winston’s own, a narrow one. The best answers notice that O’Brien has just said he has “betrayed everybody and everything”, that Winston answers a question about degradation with a loyalty, and do not say what happens to that loyalty later.
1. O’Brien pulls out one of Winston’s teeth with his own fingers. Later he tells him, “you reduced yourself to it.” Is there any truth in that?
What it asks It asks the student to judge who is answerable for the state Winston is in. At the mirror O’Brien counts the teeth, takes one between “his powerful thumb and forefinger”, wrenches it out “by the roots” and tosses it across the cell. Winston weeps on the stool. O’Brien says, “It will not last for ever,” and, “You can escape from it whenever you choose. Everything depends on yourself.” Winston sobs, “You did it!” and, “You reduced me to this state.” O’Brien answers: “No, Winston, you reduced yourself to it. This is what you accepted when you set yourself up against the Party. It was all contained in that first act. Nothing has happened that you did not foresee.” The student builds a thesis on whether there is any truth in O’Brien’s claim, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say what “acceptance”, the third stage, will require; the chapter names it but does not show it.
None. The hands are O’Brien’s: he works the dial and pulls the tooth. Blaming the victim is part of the method he has just described, power “in inflicting pain and humiliation”. “You did it!” is the plain fact, and O’Brien’s answer is one more humiliation.
O’Brien had wrenched the loose tooth out by the roots.
Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.
Some. Winston set himself against a Party whose methods he knew, and O’Brien says nothing has happened that he did not foresee. Accepting a risk is not the same as causing the harm. But the claim that it was “all contained in that first act” is not empty: a man who takes on this Party knows what it does to the people who take it on.
This is what you accepted when you set yourself up against the Party.
It was all contained in that first act.
A strong answer A strong response states whether there is any truth in “you reduced yourself to it”, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says none: O’Brien works the dial and pulls the tooth, and shifting the blame is one more humiliation of the kind he has just praised. The strongest objection is that Winston set himself against a Party whose methods he knew, so “all contained in that first act” is not empty. A good revision separates accepting a risk from causing a harm, weighs “Nothing has happened that you did not foresee”, and does not say what acceptance will require.
2. O’Brien answers Winston’s claim to be better than the Party with a recording and a mirror. Is Winston still right to call himself better?
What it asks It asks the student to judge Winston’s claim after the evidence O’Brien brings against it. O’Brien asks, “more harshly”, “And you consider yourself morally superior to us, with our lies and our cruelty?” Winston answers, “Yes, I consider myself superior.” O’Brien says nothing. A sound-track plays the night Winston joined the Brotherhood, and “He heard himself promising to lie, to steal, to forge, to murder”, and on down the list to throwing vitriol in a young face. O’Brien makes “a small impatient gesture”. Then he stands Winston before the three-sided mirror: “That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity.” At the end, one thing is left that O’Brien agrees is true: “You have not betrayed Julia.” The student builds a thesis on whether Winston is still right to call himself better than the Party, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say that Winston will betray Julia, what acceptance will require, or when or whether he will be shot.
No, or no longer simply. The recording is real evidence, and it is Winston’s own voice. He swore to the Party’s methods: lies, forgery, murder, and vitriol thrown in a young face. Before O’Brien answered “why”, Winston expected to hear the Party called “a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come”. That is what his own vow made him. He says nothing to the recording; the tears come later, from pity for his body.
He heard himself promising to lie, to steal, to forge, to murder, to encourage drug-taking and prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases, to throw vitriol in a child’s face.
a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come
Yes. O’Brien himself draws the line that saves Winston: for the Party, “The object of torture is torture.” Winston promised cruelty as a means to end a cruelty; the Party chooses it as the end. The mirror proves only what was done to him, not what he is. And the one loyalty the Party says it will abolish is still standing in him, and O’Brien grants it.
The object of torture is torture.
There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party.
A strong answer A strong response states whether Winston is still right to call himself better than the Party, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says no, or not simply: the recording is his own voice swearing to the Party’s methods, and the answer he expected O’Brien to give, a Party “doing evil that good might come”, fits his own vow. The strongest objection is O’Brien’s own line, “The object of torture is torture”: Winston accepted cruelty as a means, the Party chooses it as the end, the mirror shows only what was done to him, and the loyalty the Party means to abolish still stands. A good revision weighs which of the recording and the mirror bears on the claim, and does not say what happens to Winston or Julia next.
The word you are trying to think of is solipsism.The belief that nothing is real except your own mind (Latin solus, alone, and ipse, self). Winston cannot find the word for the idea he is fighting, and O’Brien hands it to him, then says the Party’s view is not that but “Collective solipsism”: the Party’s shared mind in place of one man’s.
All this is a digression,’ he added in a different tone.A turn away from the main subject onto a side track (Latin digredi, to step aside). O’Brien uses it to wave away the whole argument about the stars and the bones; for him the real subject is power over people, and power over things is the side track.
It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined.Living for pleasure and treating pleasure as the highest good (Greek hēdonē, pleasure). O’Brien sneers at the old dreams of a happy future as hedonistic, and offers instead a world in which every pleasure but the thrill of power will be destroyed.
In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement.Making yourself low, humbling or shaming yourself before someone stronger (abase, from Old French abaissier, to lower). In O’Brien’s list it stands last, just after “triumph”, its opposite.
He heard himself promising to lie, to steal, to forge, to murder, to encourage drug-taking and prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases, to throw vitriol in a child’s face.An old name for sulphuric acid, which burns flesh (Latin vitrum, glass, for its glassy look); later, any bitter, burning speech. Here it is the literal acid, and the last item in the vow Winston hears in his own voice.
But the truly frightening thing was the emaciation of his body.Extreme thinness from hunger or illness, the body wasted to the bone (Latin macies, leanness). The narrator ranks it above the dirt and the sores as “the truly frightening thing”, and O’Brien repeats the word as an order: “Look at your emaciation.”