Room 101 Reactions

Room 101 is an extreme place of interrogation. What makes it unusual is that it's different for everyone. What I found quite interesting is how people react to the mention of Room 101. As we saw in the back, most people stayed quiet and obeyed the guards, but we saw one man lose control of himself and break down. The skull-faced man flung himself to his knees and begged the officers to not take him to Room 101. He also mentioned that he had been starved for weeks, and told the guards everything he knows. It amazes me how the skull-faced man tells the guards to take his wife and three children and cut their throats in front of him and he will watch. It is as if the skull-faced man had stopped loving them. Even though Room 101 is different for everyone, you can can't even imagine what someone has for their Room 101 for them to beg for their family to be killed in front of them.

Is room 101 primarily to make the prisoners have no emoitions for anyone they could have cared for and have their only love be to Big Brother? When Winston was in room 101, he shouted "Do it to Julia, do it to Julia", at that point he had betrayed her and any emotional bond he once had with her was broken. Is that the purpose of room 101 for all prisoners or certain prisoners?

I think the only way to truly frighten them and it hurt them is with their own worst fear. When you have the worst fear of your life happening to you you will do anything to stop it even if it hurts your loved ones. So I think room 101 could be effective on all prisoners to take control of them.

What I would like to know is how the Party gets ahold of everyone's greatest fears. O'Brien could describe Winston's dream of the wall of darkness word for word, exactly as Winston was describing to himself about the shop. He never wrote in his diary about the dream, and he never told Julia.

The idea of room 101 is definitely an intimidating one. The fact that it is specific to each and every individual makes me curious as to how the Party goes about finding out peoples worst fears. Winston's fear was foreshadowed earlier in the book when he was with Julia and there was a rat in their room. He was petrified of the rat and Julia was the one who had to scare it away. As far as the Party knowing about this, I think that maybe one of the jobs of the though police is potentially to find out their prisoners worst fears. :idea: