torturing is love?

[angel_eyez20081]

I dont understand why after winston was tourtured that he "loved" big brother. It seems like his disstention for big brother would be even greater, or so i thought. help me to understand this.
Thank You.

[dramasnot6]

I understand that it would seem strange that torturing Winston would have persuaded him to support Big Brother, a strange contradiction of the expression "It is better to catch flies with honey then vinegar". But, as the novel said at several points, by torturing Winston they were psychologically breaking him down in order to build him up with new conformist tendencies so that he would conform to the value and belief system expected of him. I will outline a few reasons why the "torturing" worked in doing this.
1) Fear- Torture installed a fear of being tortured further in Winston, by loving Big Brother he would not be tortured further. Basically, his fear of torture overtook his hate and disstention.
2) Comfort and lack of other love- After being betrayed by O'Brien and learning there was no alternative to his oppresive society(no secret underground rebellion) and that conforming was his only option, he preferred the comfort of being like everyone else instead of being alone is his struggles. Also, since Julia was taken away from him, he had no other way to love then if he loved Big Brother.

Hope that was of some help!

[seattlegrace90]

My opinion is that O'Brien is torturing Winston to make Winston think what him and Big Brother think. Because everybody has to love Big Brother, and believe what he believes to be true. And
if you dont you will get captured or vaporized.:)

[blondie_1218]

It is not that Winston "loves" Big Brother now. Big Brother put him through pain and then stoppped the pain to make it look like he was the "good guy." Therefore Winston believes that Big Brother is there to help him.:eek:

[AimusSage]

I dont understand why after winston was tourtured that he "loved" big brother. It seems like his disstention for big brother would be even greater, or so i thought. help me to understand this.
Thank You.
Torture is just a tool, a mean to an end. In the hands of a master, torture is a very powerful tool. The real torture is not the violence, it's the manipulation of his mind. It's a long process, and in the novel they use things like elektroshock thereapy. Eventually, Winston's and Julia's fysical and, more importantly, mental conditions are weak enough to make them succeptible to the suggestion offered by O'brien, including the 'fact' they love big brother and not each other. The cage filled with rats functions as trigger for Winston, when he finally accepts the new ideas put into his mind.

[ski4fun]

I think the reason that they torchered Winson instead of just killing him in the first place was because they wanted to hear Winston say he loved Big Brother before he died.(and they wanted him to die loving Big Brother.) I definitely would not want to be tortured like Winston was.

[x894565256]

if you don't understand the psychology behind it, I highly reccomend the documentary Invisible Children.
the basic idea is that there are children inUganda who are kidnapped and forced into a sort of slavery as soldiers.
they talk rather briefly about the tactics of violence used to make the children obey their leader, and moreover the brainwashing to the point that the children only exist as soldiers.
they also talk about just life in uganda, and its a great pressing social issue...
this is, in a way, what orwell wrote about.

[Shady1503]

I was thinking maybe it was a sort of Stolkholm syndrome? and Winston created an emotional attachment to Big Brother and almost grew to identify with him. O'Brien mentioned that Winston was no better than the party as he was willing to do all those things in order to overrule them.

[seg]

i think the torture that was the worst, in room 101 was an emotional tortue- touching fear which is such a strong feeling in man it cen empty out any other feeling he had before, and at the same time very sensitive to any suggested feeling given to him. by making him totally empty of feeling OwBrien truly made a new man out of him by refilling his feelings with the ingso feelings and erasing all feelings he had before. Such a powerful feel of fear can really create changes like that as seen in psychology experiements with rats- their whole neural brain system was changed.

[Adudaewen]

I think that it is a defense mechanism for Winston. A survival tool. I think that he represses everything he knows about Big Brother, like repressed memories. Also I agree with Shady that it is a kind of Stolkholm syndrom. O'brien is his torturer, but he is also his provider (of medical attention, of food, of pain/lack of pain). And there was an imense attatchment to O'brien throughout the story, Winston feels akin to him in a way.

[DrCherry]

To understand 1984, I think it's very important to understand the nature of torture, specifically torture which includes psychological regression techniques.

It's troubling yet fascinating reading. Very little overt violence is required. A combination of stress positions, sensory deprivation, and sensations associated with drowning are all that are required to send the subject into psychological regression, in which coping mechanisms might make them more like a 5-year-old child.

It's important to note that these techniques have lasting, if not permanent effects on people to which they're applied.

I suggest gaining an understanding about the science of torture and mind control, specifically a technique known as "the vietnam" (which includes waterboarding). Also helpful are articles written on the symbionese liberation army / Patty Hearst case.

"CIA torture manual" is a search string that will bring many articles outlining the use of these techniques on people.

No person is immune to these techniques and after reading about them it becomes apparent that this is exactly what the US was up to at abu ghraib.

Finally, the point of room 101 is to control the most significant and enduring quality of being human; Love.

[braniac2read]

I think the reason that they torchered Winson instead of just killing him in the first place was because they wanted to hear Winston say he loved Big Brother before he died.(and they wanted him to die loving Big Brother.) I definitely would not want to be tortured like Winston was.

there fore o'brien hates big brother..............

[billyjack]

To understand 1984, I think it's very important to understand the nature of torture, specifically torture which includes psychological regression techniques.

It's troubling yet fascinating reading. Very little overt violence is required. A combination of stress positions, sensory deprivation, and sensations associated with drowning are all that are required to send the subject into psychological regression, in which coping mechanisms might make them more like a 5-year-old child.

It's important to note that these techniques have lasting, if not permanent effects on people to which they're applied.

I suggest gaining an understanding about the science of torture and mind control, specifically a technique known as "the vietnam" (which includes waterboarding). Also helpful are articles written on the symbionese liberation army / Patty Hearst case.

"CIA torture manual" is a search string that will bring many articles outlining the use of these techniques on people.

No person is immune to these techniques and after reading about them it becomes apparent that this is exactly what the US was up to at abu ghraib.

Finally, the point of room 101 is to control the most significant and enduring quality of being human; Love.

jeez. so the wu-tang clan wasn't messing around in there skit, "torture." anyways--torture to control love...so orwellian, so simple.

winson's love couldn't just be tortured out of him though, it had to be reasoned out as well. winston could not be tortured eneogh believe that which he knew to be false (his intellect was too strong to give in). his intellect had to be picked apart, and his reasoning had to be shown to be wrong. basically, winston had to be convinced of big brother's all encompassing power--winston needed to be convinced of big brother as the controller of everything (not only for winston, but for big brothers pride as well). o'brien is up there with socrates, as far as i am concerned, when it comes to logically making people believe the opposite of what is known to be "true." so, the rat torture is used as a device to trigger the intellect to put its guard down, and once that guard is down, the intellect is attacked and rewritten in accordance with Ingsoc.

[SheykAbdullah]

The torture in 1984 was a very important part of the integration process and operates in a fundamentally different way than just interrogation. O'Brien's goal was not just to get Wilson to admit something, but to FEEL something, so O'Brien had to break him down to his most basic, elementary levels, and torturing accomplished just that. He literally beat Wilson down to the point where he was no longer a human being (similiar to what happens in a military training camp, but less drastic, obviously), so that he could he rebuilt into the 'accepted' image. Through the process and through the pain Wilson looses all of his self-identity and is no longer capable of distinguishing the cause of his pain from its basic fact, and therefore is no longer capable of percieving Big Brother as its source. He basically looses all cognitive awareness of reality. It is this loss of perception that O'Brien channels and allows him to make Wilson love Big Brother because he is no longer aware BB caused the pain in the first place, only aware that he made it stop. He is reduced so far below what we would consider human that rational and logical thought no longer matter, all that matter is escape. He is ultimately conditioned like a animal.

[billyjack]

The torture in 1984 was a very important part of the integration process and operates in a fundamentally different way than just interrogation. O'Brien's goal was not just to get Wilson to admit something, but to FEEL something, so O'Brien had to break him down to his most basic, elementary levels, and torturing accomplished just that. He literally beat Wilson down to the point where he was no longer a human being (similiar to what happens in a military training camp, but less drastic, obviously), so that he could he rebuilt into the 'accepted' image. Through the process and through the pain Wilson looses all of his self-identity and is no longer capable of distinguishing the cause of his pain from its basic fact, and therefore is no longer capable of percieving Big Brother as its source. He basically looses all cognitive awareness of reality. It is this loss of perception that O'Brien channels and allows him to make Wilson love Big Brother because he is no longer aware BB caused the pain in the first place, only aware that he made it stop. He is reduced so far below what we would consider human that rational and logical thought no longer matter, all that matter is escape. He is ultimately conditioned like a animal.

a good synopsis. one thing left out though, well two: its winston (no biggee) and the other--- you left out o'briens explanations saying why the party was right and winston was wrong (orwell's explanation of power through analogies here is brilliant and suprisingly simple). o'briens explanations made this book! por exemplo, the analogy to the death of party members being like the clipping of INGSOC's fingernails...the party lives on, its eternal. good explanation, but i thought o'brien deserved some daps.