"His mind grew more active. He sat down on the plank bed, his back against the wall and the slate on his kneed, and set to work deliberately at the task of re-educating himself" (276).
As I was reading this part of the chapter I started to realize how little by little Winston started to give up on himself. After every few passages you can see how Winston is starting to give in and love Big Brother. It made me feel kind of bad, knowing that Winston always had this view in his mind where he would change and rebel towards the type of system that they live in. I think that this specific passage relates to the story because it shows that no matter what thought crime you have done, the party and the thought police will always find a way to make you "sane" again.
"Anything could be true. The so-called laws of nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. "If I wished," O'Brien had said, "I could float off this floor like a soap bubble" (278).
At this part of the chapter, I was just feeling like Winston is now gone. He has been brainwashed by O'Brien and that the Winston we knew in the beginning of the story has vanished and been taken place by this person who admires and loves his party, as well as Big Brother. I think that by reading this passage we now know the power and determinacy that the thought police hold. We can tell that they will hold you inside of those rooms for as long as it takes for you to be "cured" and all the stuff that they keep telling you inside of those rooms are clearly very effective with torture being involved. This passage relates to the story because we now see why there was so little rebel within the party, we know that those people who even had the slightest idea of rebel would be caught by the thought police, cured, and then killed.
"Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother" (298).
It was kind of sad knowing that Winston felt some sort of hope on rebelling against the party with the help of O'Brien, but then he ends up getting nothing done, except getting himself killed. This last passage of the chapter shows how O'Brien successfully "cured" Winston and had him killed once he realized that Winston loved Big Brother and no longer had any hate towards him. Before this passage it showed how he would put those thoughts that he used to have away and learn how to ignore them and not make them relevant to his life. It seems that once his thinking was taken care of, O'Brien made him live a part of his life where he loved Big Brother and then killed him once his love for Big Brother was confirmed.
Your first quote talks about how Winston started to give up on himself little by little. When O'Brien was first torturing Winston, Winston believed that he could withstand anything they could throw at him. He thought that the physical torture was going to break him. But in reality, the biggest factor that broke Winston was the isolation. As he sat there in his cell like the quote stated, his willpower started to slowly deteriorate.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the first quote does not really correlate to your interpretation. You state the quote where Winston is healing from being tortured by O'Brien, but you talk about Winston breaking little by little. I think that in this chapter you definitely see this breaking of spirit,but I don't think that this is the best quote for the job of this interpretation. However, the rest of the quotes I agree with; I really do feel bad for Winston.
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