OH MY GOODNESS. Last time I spoke about a potential revolt! Then about ten pages later… that dream got crushed. Not only did Winston get caught for Thoughtcrime, he got sent to prison, whereupon he waited, and waited, and waited to be interrogated. It may have been hours, days, months… there was no way of knowing since Winston had no access to daylight. Finally, O’Brien was hurled into the same cell as Winston. Only, as Winston soon discovered, O’Brien wasn’t there for a crime; he was there to punish Winston. Winston had been watched for seven years—every thought Winston had against the party, every word written in his journal, every visit paid to the proles, every evening spent with Julia—the Party had watched. Winston was not simply a Thoughtcriminal. Winston was what the Party called “a lunatic.” But the Party didn’t just want to kill or torture Winston for his crime. They wanted to “cure” him, to transform him into a brand new man who wouldn’t ever have the kind of thoughts Winston had. O’Brien kept mentioning something along the lines of, “we don’t let heretics die.” To the Party, letting heretics die means they’ve let someone slip passed them that doesn’t agree with their beliefs.” As such, the Party chooses to cure Winston in a three-step treatment process: 1. Learning 2. Understanding 3. Acceptance. Winston struggles to change, even after what is essentially a lobotomy is performed on him. His brain now is one with the Party and can no longer perform doublethink, but his heart is still his own heart. The entire time Winston spends in “rehab” I kept thinking: “Shutter Island much?” There’s one distinct line at the end of Shutter Island; Leonardo DiCaprio asks, “Which would be worse, to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?” In the movie, this refers to why Teddy, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, makes up his alter-ego (SPOILER ALERT: he killed and regrets it so he goes psycho and makes up a whole new identity for himself). I was reminded of this line while reading 1984. In this case, the Party wants Winston to die a good man. But I kept wondering, if they eventually will kill Winston, why waste the effort to “cure” him? They want to lobotomize him so they can eliminate all martyrs; they want all men to die “good.” In the eyes of the Party, good essentially means lacking personality and not straying from positive thoughts of the Party. The flaw in the party, then, comes from failing to recognize the power of Winston’s heart. They break him down, then build him back up with the prospect of building him to be a perfect party member. Due to the power in Winston’s heart, though, he is able to still remember bits and pieces of his old mind, and builds his mind back up as he builds his body back up. He ultimately has no will to do anything with this power, because he knows there’s no use in trying to revolt because the Party could never be broken.
Great connection to Shutter Island! When we think about what makes someone a "lunatic," we are playing a game of sorts: whatever story has the most believers on its side is labeled "truth" or "orthodoxy," while those stories with less believers become associated with heretics. In Winston's case, the pressure to conform is so great that he comes to believe what he knew to be a lie. True, most of us aren't tortured into belief, but we are prone to a number of social/ideological pressures. In this sense, Orwell's narrative holds deep significance regardless of how one interprets the "prophetic" novel.
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