something to think about

[mangamagna]

What do you think really happens to Winston at the end? I was talking to my English teacher and he said it was up for debate, no conclusive answer could be reached. If you think about it, what would be the point to kill him if he had abandoned those heretical ideas about the party? He was fully dedicated to the party now and was of no harm. The Party even gave him a good, easy job and a nice place to stay at. Why give him all that to then take it away for no valid reason? It doesn't even make doublethink sense as he would not be a martyr. I think he just lives on loving BB and the Party. What do you think?

[triangulese333]

i believe that the party end up killing Winston, this would be because the party could set an example of Winston showing what happens to people if they betray or hate big brother, btu thats just my thoery and yours is just as valid

[Reaper_ofall]

It is not conclusive, true, but as rebutle to him mearly living on because it makes sense... the party does not use sense, just force.

[Matt JOnes]

The ending of the book is very clear, Winston will be killed by the party. That is not the horror of the ending. The horror is that Winston is filled with such love for the party that when the time comes he will aquiesce completely, and offer no resistance. The party has entirely stripped him of his humanity, which was expressed in the free will to fight the party's indoctrination

[Boris239]

I agree wit Matt JOnes. Here, though it's clear that Winston will be killed, it doesn't really matter. His life is over, he is completely broken, he loves Big Brother. Even if he is spared he will become an integral part of the party.

[jtk6204]

Orwell does not explain entirely what happened to Winston at the end - but instead allows the reader to infer it and fill in some details on his or her own. For example, Orwell gives no information as to what happens to Winston between his ordeal in Room 101 and his release back into society, but, apparently, this was the most crucial part of his treatment. We are left only to speculate. Here is how I have seen it in the nearly thirty years I have had to consider this novel:

By the time Winston is brought to Room 101, he is indelibly traumatized from pain and torture, which was all experienced under the constant suggestion that it was his rebellion against the Party that had brought on these consequences. The pain and the depletion he endured made him unable even to marshal even his cognitive abilities against the Party. As the Party allowed some of his physical health to return, we see his mental processes are greatly changed. This apparently marked the completion of what O'Brien termed as the "understanding" phase of his "rehabilitation." Room 101 was apparently the beginning of the final stage - "acceptance." The Party's decision to grant him improved physical health as they prepared for this stage was likely for a variety of reasons - to see how well the trauma would contain his thoughts in a stronger body; to "reward" him for the progress he had made so far, hence reinforcing the associative links the Party wanted him to have as he became conformant; and to grant him the strength he would need to physically survive through the sheer Hell that was being planned for the poor man.

In Room 101, Winston confronted his worst, most primal fears in a basically defenseless state. He had no mental reference at all to what was sane or insane or what was real or not real, since the earlier torture had more or less vacated these abilities. As he betrayed his affection and love for Julia, which was the last vestige of his individuality, he lost what was remaining of his true identity, and was left with only emptiness, blinding fear, shame, and total confusion. I therefore imagine that the Party implemented his 'acceptance' phase with the demagoguery and manipulation that cults or religious persecutioners use. He was probably told reassuring words like: "Despite all your crimes, all your sins, Big Brother will take you back even now, and let you shine with him. Will you not come with us now, comrade, and leave all this horror behind you?"

Winston was, as O'Brien had earlier claimed he would become, a shell of a man. His body, mind, and soul all had become hopelessly subordinated to a fatal link between individual thought and unendurable pain, and he therefore could no longer think. Indeed, in a consistent effort to avoid confrontation with this pain, he willfully used alcohol to stymie what remained of his cognitive functions, and the Party supplied him all the gin he wanted. While I do not think he could have survived much longer in that state, he was, nevertheless, a totally conformant Party member, imprisoned by orthodoxy, and destroyed in every way but in body.

- Jim

[maristredfox]

Great reply and theory, Jim.
I'm hoping you (and everybody else) can help answer this question, which has been bugging me since I finished 1984:

What was Julia's ultimate torture in Room 101? Orwell never really makes it clear, and I tried to infer what her worst fear was from earlier clues, but I couldn't come to anything.

The only clue I remember clearly (I don't have the book in front of me) is that when Winston sees her again, she has a scar on her face and neck.

Any guesses??

Jonathan

[PadreMellyrn]

is to make a person face their utmost fears, and break them. I don't think we have enough knowledge of Julia to make a determination as to what her "worst fear" is. In fact, in doing research, Julia herself is actually the "Socialist Party", Winston is the "common man" - not the Proles but the middle class. The scar is obviously from the physical abuse the party would have heaped on her; though if we wish to delve in symbolism, the scar could be part of her 'breaking', the idea that she is no longer "young and pretty" but "scarred for life".

But in answer to the Question of Winston. yes he is going to be killed - look at the dialogue between Winston and O' Brian - the object of the party is to hold power, and all people will be vaporized in the end. The point of the ending is to show the insidiousness of the brainwashing. Winston was going to hold out, and he did, for many years. But as O' Brian points out:


We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him.

So once he "loves Big Brother" he must be eliminated to ensure that he doesn't revert back to his Heretical ways; A practice not uncommon in the middle ages, where you converted you enemy to your side, and then killed him to make sure he didn't backslide. Thus you were saving him from damnation.

[jtk6204]

Jonathan,

What happened to Julia is also vague, and cannot be answered definitively. Again, Orwell leaves this matter up to the reader's imagination.

The presence of scars on her head may imply that some sort of lobotomy was attempted. Yet, given the technology available in Oceania, it is doubtful they would have been able to do that sort of operation and had her functioning as well afterward. Plus, the Party clearly knew how to "get inside" of someone without actually having to cut into the body, as they did with Winston. The narrative indicates that Julia was placed into the same impossible state of torture and was forced to make that brutal "bargain" by suggesting to her captors that Winston, not she, should suffer whatever punishment she was enduring. In the end, the scars could have come from anywhere, but were not necessarily integral to the reconditioning.

However it happened, it is clear the Party achieved the same goal with her that they had with Winston: an all but complete destruction of the personality by inflicting unspeakable pain and trauma. As has been proven by tolitarian regimes, both before and since Orwell's writing, such brainwashing is possible, and it has been practiced for a long time.

Yes, the ego is mortal and finite, and this works to the advantage of oppressive regimes. As the Party understands that their overthrow would come from dissent, and that dissent comes from individual thought, their strategy is to "nip it at the bud" by destroying any personality that might originate its own thinking. This is achieved in the proles through the imposition of constant misery, and in Party members who are controlled through constant manipulation, and when these methods fail, dissenters are "corrected" by the policies implemented in the Ministry of Love. With no real thought permitted in Oceania, and the only other allowed mental activities being absolutely reflective of the Party's agenda, the regime sustains itself utterly. O'Brien declares that the "rule of the Party is forever," and under this system, it seems plausible.

Note here the symbolism of when Winston met Julia at the end, to discover they were both in the same, horrible state:

It was by chance that they had met. It was in the Park, on a vile, biting day in March, when the earth was like iron and all the grass seemed dead and there was not a bud anywhere except a few crocuses which had pushed themselves up to be dismembered by the wind.

Truly, Winston and Julia were those crocuses - somehow growing and finding each other in the hostile, hateful environment, only to have themselves eliminated as impersonally and arbitrarily as a couple of unwanted weeds.

- Jim


Great reply and theory, Jim.
I'm hoping you (and everybody else) can help answer this question, which has been bugging me since I finished 1984:

What was Julia's ultimate torture in Room 101? Orwell never really makes it clear, and I tried to infer what her worst fear was from earlier clues, but I couldn't come to anything.

The only clue I remember clearly (I don't have the book in front of me) is that when Winston sees her again, she has a scar on her face and neck.

Any guesses??

Jonathan

[gtambourines]

It's irrelevant what Julia's form of torture was. That's why it wasn't included in the book. It just doesn't matter. Also, I don't think that the end of the book is up for debate. They killed Winston because he betrayed the party. They don't wan't to create martyrs so they convert the betrayer before they kill him. In order the know for sure that the betrayer has been truely converted, he must turn himself in. He turns himself in because he is ashamed that he ever betrayed the party.