One of the most important themes of 1984 is governmental use of psychological manipulation and physical control as a means of maintaining its power. This theme is present in Chapter I, as Winston's grasping at freedom illustrates the terrifying extent to which citizens are not in control of their own minds. The telescreens in their homes blare out a constant stream of propaganda, touting the greatness of Oceania and the success of the Party in ruling it. Each day citizens are required to attend the Two Minutes Hate, an intense mass rally in which they are primed with fury and hatred for Oceania's rival nations, venting their own pent-up emotions in the process. The government, meanwhile, expresses its role in outlandishly dishonest fashion, as seen in the stark contradiction between the name and function of each of its ministries. The net effect of this psychological manipulation is a complete breakdown of the independence of an individual's mind. Independence and will are replaced by a fear of, and faith in, the Party; indeed, individual thought has become so alien the population accepts that the Party has made it a crime.
Winston's fatalism is a central component of his character. He has been fearing the power of the Party for decades, and the guilt he feels after having committed a crime against the Party overwhelms him, rendering him absolutely certain that he will be caught and punished. Winston only occasionally allows himself to feel any hope for the future. His general pessimism not only reflects the social conditioning against which Orwell hopes to warn his readers, but also casts a general gloom on the novel's atmosphere; it makes a dark world seem even darker.
The opening of Book Two, in which Winston meets Julia and begins the erotic affair he has so deeply desired, commences the main section of the novel and strikes an immediate contrast between the two lovers. Unlike Winston, Julia is neither overly speculative about, nor troubled by, the Party. Rather, she possesses a mix of sensuality and practicality that enables her to plan their affair with ruthless efficiency and then enjoy it with abandon. Julia also lacks Winston's fatalism. When he tells her, "We are the dead," she replies calmly, "We're not dead yet." Julia is more optimistic than Winston, and uses her body to remind him that he is alive. She accepts the Party and her life for what it is, and tries to make the best of a situation that cannot be greatly improved.
Book Two saw Winston's love affair with Julia begin and end. Book Three begins his punishment and "correction." Winston's torture reemphasizes the book's theme of the fundamental horror of physical pain—Winston cannot stop the torture or prevent the psychological control O'Brien gains from torturing him, and when the guard smashes his elbow, he thinks that nothing in the world is worse than physical pain. Though the Party's ability to manipulate the minds of its subjects is the key to the breadth of its power, its ability to control their bodies is what makes it finally impossible to resist.
Up to this point, O'Brien has remained an enigma to the reader, but his arrival toward the beginning of Winston's prison term places him firmly on the side of the Party. O'Brien seems to have been a rebel like Winston at one point —when Winston asks if he too has been taken prisoner, O'Brien replies, "They got me a long time ago." O'Brien adds insult to Winston's imprisonment by claiming that Winston knew all along that he was affiliated with the Party—and Winston knows he is right. This section seems to imply that Winston's fatalism stems as much from his understanding of his own fatalistic motives as from his belief in the power of the Party. In other words, Winston's belief that he would ultimately be caught no matter what he did enabled him to convince himself to trust O'Brien. He knew that he would be caught whether he trusted O'Brien or not, and so he let himself trust O'Brien simply because he deeply wanted to do so.
Winston's obsession with O'Brien, which began with the dream about the place where there is no darkness, was the source of his undoing, and it undoes him now as well. Orwell explores the theme of how physical pain affects the human mind, and arrives at the conclusion that it grants extraordinary emotional power to the person capable of inflicting the pain. Because O'Brien tortures him, Winston perversely comes to love O’Brien and believes anything O’Brien tells him.
Though his stay at the Ministry of Love has broken his mind and will and though his love for Big Brother precludes the need to think for himself, Winston still envisions the day that the Party will shoot him. This apparent death wish has led to some speculation that the key to Winston's character is his fatalism, that he rebels against the Party not because he desires freedom, but because he wants the Party to kill him. Given Orwell's political aspirations for 1984, this consideration seems to diminish the intent of the work. 1984 may include psychological imbalance among its list of ill effects of totalitarian government, but it seems clear that it is not primarily about psychological imbalance. The main purpose of the novel is to chronicle the workings of the Party's control over the minds of its subjects in order to warn readers of the dangers of totalitarianism. If all of Winston's problems were caused by an innate, unusual psychological disorder, then this overriding theme would become irrelevant.
Many consider 1984's pivotal scene—in which O'Brien threatens to release the cage of rats on Winston's face—an anticlimax. It has been argued that the cage of rats is not horrible enough to make the reader feel Winston's torment, and that it is an arbitrary device, unrelated to the powerful, sophisticated workings of the Party. At first glance, these criticisms seem valid. Winston's collapse does follow hard upon his passionate restatement of his love for Julia and hatred for Big Brother in Chapter IV. However, it is important to remember the theme of physical control, which manifests itself in the Party's manipulation of the body: Orwell consistently argues that physical pain and the sense of physical danger can override human reason. Winston, facing a writhing swarm of rats prepared to devour his face, cannot act rationally. That his betrayal of Julia occurs so soon after he restates his love for her is precisely the point, as physical pain eliminates the possibility of defending emotional conviction. As Winston notes earlier in the novel, he is a prisoner of his own nervous system. Turning against Julia is an instinctive lunge for self-preservation. Rather than the rats themselves, it is the awareness, foisted upon him by the Party, that he is a prisoner of his own body that ultimately breaks Winston. Once he believes that he is limited by his body he has no reason to think act or rebel.
