Here Orwell is creating suspense and fear with the short sentences almost making you hold your breathe between sentences, worrying what comes next.
O’Brian repeats ‘the worse thing in the world’ several times to Winston trying to imprint it into his brain brainwashing him into believing the worst, it is almost like psychological warfare, he is making Winston his own worst enemy, he knows he can bring Winston to breaking point where self-preservation overrides any sort of conscious thought.
The paragraph starting “he moved a little…” works towards the climax in a way by sounding sinister the way O’Brian moves a little just to let Winston see what was on the table, it was studied cruelty knowing what he did about Winston’s greatest fear, the reader knows after this paragraph just what will be the outcome if Winston doesn’t acquiesce to O’Brian’s demands or questionings. With the short sentence structure you can feel the anxiety building up inside you as you read, you know this thing is going to be an instrument of terror and torture to Winston, you can almost feel it in your bones, and with the last sentence “They were rats” the reader can almost identify with Winston’s fear of rats since I don’t know many people who would think “ahhh how cute” faced with snarling starved vicious rats.
I think “fixed to the front of it was something that looked like a fencing mask” was an appropriate simile in as much as it is close fitting and cage like, also O’Brian could have been said to have been fencing with Winston, also Winston hid behind a mask much of his adult working life hiding his thoughts from the party, showing a different face to the party members and Thought Police, we all use a mask to hide our real thoughts as people don’t like laying themselves open to other people’s cruelties and ridicule. Another simile used “His bowels seemed to turn to water” was effective in a way that it showed Winston’s depth of despair and utter fright and panic when he realised exactly what the meaning of the mask like attachment was. It meant the rats would eat their way through his face.
Winston is a minor member of the ruling Party in a futuristic London, Winston is a thin, frail, contemplative, intellectual, and fatalistic thirty-nine-year-old. Winston hates the totalitarian control and enforced repression that are characteristic of his government. He harbours revolutionary dreams.(spark notes- 1984) In the excerpt that we read Winston comes across as a near broken man and by the time O’Brian finishes with him he is totally broken. I do not think Winston was a coward for trying to get the punishment put on Julia it was self preservation, I think we all would do the same if faced with our greatest fear, as mankind is only human we are not unthinking machines nor are we unfeeling.
Winston’s main attributes are his rebelliousness and his fatalism. O’Brian divest’s Winston of his rebelliousness and his manhood even when he finally realised what O’Brian wanted of him, Winston screams “Do it to Julia!”
O’Brien is described as a mysterious, powerful, and sophisticated member of the Inner Party whom Winston believes is also a member of the Brotherhood, the legendary group of anti-Party rebels. (Spark notes -1984) O’Brian is a very clever man, he was a cruel man who would use any means to an end, he knew all along which buttons to press, which he shows in the paragraph starting “ By itself” , he said “Pain is not always enough”. He knows when to remain silent and when to speak, everything he said and did was calculated to drive Winston closer and closer to the edge of reason, he was practiced in the art of manipulation and mind control.
O’Brian uses language as mind control, psychological and physical intimidation and manipulation, he is clever and mysterious a frightening figure, he seems to know and understand Winston very well, well enough to know and understand his greatest fear, the worst thing in the world for him, so he has well and truly gotten into Winston’s mind, even to the parts that are hidden even from ourselves. I think O’Brian is the stronger and cleverer character, perhaps through self preservation he know which side to be on, Winston was to fatalistic and knows in the end the Party will get him and find out his act of rebellion, his thoughts his love of Julia etc.
In the exposition we have Winston thinking of places /rooms he had been in previously within the place called “The Ministry of love” which is ironic in itself since nothing lovely was going on there, exactly the opposite as in pain, torture, and mind control. The setting is in place since the narrator (3rd person) describes the room, table and Winston’s restraints. We know there is conflict between O’Brian and Winston with Winston portrayed as the poor victim of the Party and O’Brian the cruel, very clever and manipulative torturer of Winston. Then we have the rising action from the paragraph “The worst thing in the world” said O’Brian when he lets Winston see the cage and mask with the rats in. This heightens the tension when O’Brian reveals the worst thing in the world for Winston involves rats. He uses words such as ‘deep down’, ‘buried alive’, ‘death by fire’, ‘premonitory fear’, ‘high cracked voice’ which all paint an image of fear, death, burial which sets a mood for the reader, we can feel where Winston is in his mind right then. The climax is when “The mask was closing on his face” Winston was mindless in his absolute fear and despair, then a tiny fragment of hope glimmered into his mind, he was frantic to push the punishment anywhere but onto himself, he finally realised the only thing was his denouncement of Julia, to pass the punishment on to herself, forgotten was the love the passion they had shared, self preservation finally kicked in, every man for himself in the end, as well we all know very few people would be willing to suffer endless torture and die for us, we do what it necessary to survive which is what Winston finally does. The Party had won in the end, he was a broken man.
The point of view expressed in this story is a third person point of view the narrator is not part of the story but in the minds of the characters like the all seeing eye or an omniscient presence overlooking the proceedings.
