1984 Part III Chapters 1-2

Chapter 1

1. Describe Winston’s surroundings in the Ministry of Love.

Winston is in a holding cell, in which everything is a bright white. (white room torture)
2. Discuss how and why political prisoners are treated differently from common criminals.
The political prisoners are treated more harshly and sternly than are common criminals because
they have had access to more privilege and more information when they were out in society.
3. Contrast how Winston and O’Brien perceived their meeting in “the place with no darkness.”
Winston: A place where darkness (the Party) is absent – a Brotherhood rendezvous
O’Brien: The holding cell, in which the light is always on.
4. Examine why Ampleforth is imprisoned, and what his arrest conveys about the Oceanic legal
system.
He refused to take the word “God” out of one of his poems because it was the only word that
rhymed with “rod”. His case exemplifies the undocumented nature of Oceanic legislature, due
to which the Party can bring a charge against someone upon free will.
5. Explain why Parsons, Winston’s neighbour is arrested.
He was denounced by his daughter, who heard him say “down with Big Brother” in his sleep.
6. Formulate the difference between Winston and Parson’s opinions of their government.
Parsons was glad he was arrested so that he could reform himself for the party, whereas
Winston wasn’t fond of being arrested and terrified because he was still holding the thought of
overthrowing the Party.
7. Evaluate what the starving man in the cell represents to Winston.
The starving man represents the meaning of being broken; he has been broken into obedience,
and thus, becomes compliant. He foreshadows Winston’s forthcoming experience of “re-
integration” with O’Brien and room 101.
8. Predict what occurs in Room 101.
He will experience the worst torture conceivable to him and will eventually accept what the
Party requires of him.
9. Describe Winston’s first thought when O’Brien comes into the cell.
He thinks that O’Brien is also under arrest, meaning that Winston has not grasped that O’Brien,
when meeting Julia and him, had only pretended to be opposed to the Party.
10. Interpret O’Brien’s response to Winston, “They got me a long time ago.”
O’Brien really was a former dissident who had been completely turned to the Party.

Chapter 2

1. Tell why Winston is not killed each time he is tortured.

He is strategically tortured until his limit, left to recuperate, and then tortured again in a cyclical
pattern; he is tortured just enough so that he won’t die, and the Party aims to prolong his pain
as long as possible.
2. Summarize the actual role that O’Brien plays in Winston’s torture.
O’Brien plays both roles of torturer and saviour. At times, Winston is screaming in pain and at
times Winston is sobbing in O’Brien’s arms. O’Brien conditions Winston in the most brutal ways
 and is the only person Winston can look to. O’Brien thus becomes a god of sorts, a man with the
power to both destroy and save.
3. Examine how Winston views O’Brien’s role in his torture.
O’Brien is directing everything from capturing him, torturing him, to saving him from dying.
4. Analyze how O’Brien exhibits doublethink to Winston.
O’Brien burns the picture that Winston once believed to be concrete evidence of the Party’s
falsification of history and tells him that the picture never existed, thereby causing Winston to
doubt his thinking and memory of having viewed the picture a long time ago.
5. Generalize how O’Brien reasons that the Party’s memory is always correct.
An individual’s thought is flawed because each person thinks in a singular fashion, whereas the
Party thinks collectively and is therefore ideal and immortal.
6. Explain what O’Brien means when he tells Winston, “It is not easy to become sane.”
Becoming “sane,” in O’Brien’s view, is to accept “truth” as it is dictated by the Party. The
challenge of becoming “sane” is rejecting what one’s own eyes and mind see as false and to
accept whole-heartedly what the Party tells one to believe.
7. Tell how O’Brien portrays himself as a person who wants to help Winston.
O’Brien tells Winston that he exists as to “fix” Winston’s deranged mind into sanity.
8. Describe why the Party chooses to torture political prisoners rather than just kill them.
They want to edify them into loyal members of the Party before killing them as to disallow the
possibility of them being extolled as martyrs of any cause, for they are killed when they are at
the apex of their loyalty to the Party.
9. Examine the Party’s meaning of “We are the dead.”
No true life/happiness exists in the current world of Airstrip One.
10. Analyze O’Brien’s responses to Winston’s inquiries about Big Brother and the Brotherhood.
Winston asks if Big Brother exists, and O’Brien answers that he does, in the way that the Party
does, but that he will never die. Winston asks if the Brotherhood exists, and O’Brien says that
Winston will never know the answer to that question.