The Ministry of Love
After reading chapters 1 and 2 of part three, I'm left with curiosity as to where Orwell will take the story in the last few chapters, as well as some confusion regarding what it is I just read. 1984's torture sequence is by far one of the most memorable I have come across in a long time. In general, the concept of being confined within a place that strips you of your sense of time and location is frightening to me, but the horrors of these chapters go far beyond that. While torturing Winston, O'Brien managed to change the way Winston's mind worked with pain and reasoning alone. I say "reasoning" as O'Brien does provide Winston with logic to alter the way he thinks, but anyone could read this passage and know that his argument is idiotic and nonsensical. Four fingers is just four fingers, nothing more and nothing less, and yet, through the turn of a knob, O'Brien was able to change this indisputable fact in Winston's eyes and mind. I can't and would not like to image how much pain it would take to change one's perception of reality to that degree. To go through this torture for presumably days, weeks, or even months is a horrific thought. What makes this even more scary though, is the pointlessness and triviality of it all. As Winston thinks himself, why bother torture him for months on end only to kill him and erase his existence in the party's records? O'Brien "explained" why, if you could even call it an explanation, but much like almost everything else he says, it failed to make sense of anything. He says that they want to convert him before they kill him, make him one of them first, but why? O'Brien himself will have to forget about Winston once they kill him. Nobody will know about or care about Winston from the moment of his death onward so why bother? To me this torture is pure evil and nothing more.
The other thing is, outside of the moral aspect, why expend the resources and time to maintain a facility like the Ministry of Love that tortures people for extended people of time for pretty much no reason? Like, you have to hire laborers to construct the building, people to work in it, pay for electricity, pay for whatever it is that keeps the prisoners alive, as well as water and stuff for employee bathrooms (assuming they have them), for zero monetary, or any other type of gain.
Nothing from these chapters made sense to me, but maybe it did for some of you. Feel free to share your thoughts on these chapters, and let me know whether or not you think guards at the ministry have fun lunch breaks or something.
O'Brien makes the "martyr" comments about how they can't have anyone die hating the Party, but come on, man, you're making them disappear so no one can know they died hating the Party. And it's not like the "martyrs" get some sort of satisfaction after death, cause...they're DEAD. So they really doing too much
ReplyDeleteI COMMENTED AS MY BROTHER IM DUMB
DeleteAAHHAAHHAHH LMFAOOOOO
DeleteI was wondering who Lyle was. :D
DeleteExcellent points. Yes, the torture scenes are truly harrowing. I also admit that I wondered about the practical aspects of this dystopia. They would need tech people to keep the telescreens going all the time, wouldn't they? Don't they have to sit around waiting for updates?
ReplyDeleteI think its nice that you brought a view of practicality into this dystopian society. Now that I think about it, I also see that it could easily be a waste of resources to try to brainwash people when you could just get rid of them. Then again, having people who previously were doubtful of the Party come around and say they wholeheartedly believe in the Party could make others believe in the Party more. That could make it worthwhile to spend all these resources in areas such as the Ministry of Love.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jake, the party is scarily smart in the idea of shutting down rebellion by converting the "martyrs" before they are dead. In all honesty though, I think theres a lot of impracticality in 1984 probably because of when it was written.
ReplyDeleteYes, the torture seems really unpractical but I think it's more there to remind people that they will never have control over the Party. For example, Room 101 has a reputation in the prison for being horrific place that no one wants to go to which could possibly lead some prisoners to convert before they go to the place Winston is in. If they are ever released, they would forever live in fear of the Party.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how the torture helps anything in the long run but I feel that part of the reason they did it was just to prove to Winston in that moment that they could. Make Winston realize that there is nothing that the party can't control, even your own mind.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, they're already giving tedious and impractical jobs to Outer Party members. Take, for example, the switch from the war in Eurasia to Eastasia and back again, plus Julia's "conspiracy theory" (which I think is very much correct) that the war is fake and the Party just plays it up to stir up the populace's loyalty and keep them rationed and controlled--the Party had no "real" reason to switch up the location of the war, but it still meant a week of brutal work for Winston and many of his colleagues. By that standard, hiring people to clean their big torture chambers isn't *so* impractical. I do agree, though, that none of this makes much sense, and the Inner Party members really don't gain much of anything from doing this...
ReplyDeleteI was also confused by the purpose of the torture, because it seems extremely impractical and obviously also immoral. I think practically, the party might almost have to convert people and reintroduce them to society, because if they didn't, wouldn't they just end up killing everyone? I also wonder if they do it just because they worship their belief system so much that having an entire society who also loves big brother as much as them is worth the resources they spend on it.
ReplyDeleteThis part of 1984 reminded me of BNW in its dystopian fantastical elements. There were many parts of BNW that I felt like were so improbable, and their usage of many resources just to "change" someones mind before they kill them came off that way to me. After all, if they are dead, no one knows what they died believing.
ReplyDeleteI get the feeling that they have a lot of pointless inefficient things in their society. For example it seems like they just create pointless jobs so the people will have stuff to do like at Winston's new job they hardly do any work and when they try to they don't even know what they are working on.
ReplyDeleteGoldstein's book says that if Oceania's citizens are given access to too many luxury products, they will get too comfortable and disrupt the social order. Perhaps the Party puts so much effort into torturing thought criminals and maintaining the Ministry of Love to use up the resources and products created by its factories, ensuring that people can't become comfortable.
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