'How many fingers am I holding up,
Winston?
Orwell - 1984
YOUR truth.
Tell me what
you think you remember. '
'I remember that until only a week before I was arrested,
we were not at war with Eastasia at all. We were in alliance
with them. The war was against Eurasia. That had lasted for
four years. Before that '
O'Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand.
'Another example,' he said. 'Some years ago you had a
very serious delusion indeed. You believed that three men,
three one-time Party members named Jones, Aaronson,
and Rutherford — men who were executed for treachery
and sabotage after making the fullest possible confession —
were not guilty of the crimes they were charged with. You
believed that you had seen unmistakable documentary evi-
dence proving that their confessions were false. There was
a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination.
You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It
was a photograph something like this. '
An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between
O'Brien's fingers. For perhaps five seconds it was within the
angle of Winston's vision. It was a photograph, and there
was no question of its identity. It was THE photograph. It
was another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson,
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 311
and Rutherford at the party function in New York, which
he had chanced upon eleven years ago and promptly de-
stroyed. For only an instant it was before his eyes, then it
was out of sight again. But he had seen it, unquestionably he
had seen it! He made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench
the top half of his body free. It was impossible to move so
much as a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he
had even forgotten the dial. All he wanted was to hold the
photograph in his fingers again, or at least to see it.
'It exists! ' he cried.
'No,' said O'Brien.
He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole
in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the
frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm
air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away
from the wall.
'Ashes,' he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does
not exist. It never existed. '
'But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I re-
member it. You remember it. '
'I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.
Winston's heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a
feeling of deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain
that O'Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter.
But it was perfectly possible that O'Brien had really forgot-
ten the photograph. And if so, then already he would have
forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the
act of forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simple
trickery? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could
1984
really happen: that was the thought that defeated him.
O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More
than ever he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a
wayward but promising child.
"There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the
past,' he said. 'Repeat it, if you please. '
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls
the present controls the past," repeated Winston obedient-
"Who controls the present controls the past," said
O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your
opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence? '
Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Win-
ston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not
know whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save
him from pain; he did not even know which answer he be-
lieved to be the true one.
O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Win-
ston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered
what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does
the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or
other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still
happening? '
'No. '
"Then where does the past exist, if at all? '
'In records. It is written down. '
'In records. And ? '
'In the mind. In human memories. '
'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all
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records, and we control all memories. Then we control the
past, do we not? '
'But how can you stop people remembering things? ' cried
Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. 'It is invol-
untary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory?
You have not controlled mine! '
O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on
the dial.
'On the contrary' he said, 'YOU have not controlled it.
That is what has brought you here. You are here because
you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would
not make the act of submission which is the price of san-
ity You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only
the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe
that reality is something objective, external, existing in its
own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-
evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you
see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same
thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not ex-
ternal. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.
Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and
in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party,
which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds
to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except
by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact
that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-
destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself
before you can become sane. '
He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what
1984
he had been saying to sink in.
'Do you remember,' he went on, 'writing in your dia-
ry, 'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make
four'? '
'Yes,' said Winston.
O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston,
with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston? '
'Four. '
'And if the party says that it is not four but five — then
how many? '
'Four. '
The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial
had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over
Winston's body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again
in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could
not stop. O'Brien watched him, the four fingers still ex-
tended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only
slightly eased.
'How many fingers, Winston? '
'Four. '
The needle went up to sixty.
'How many fingers, Winston? '
'Four! Four! What else can I say? Four! '
The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at
it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision.
The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous,
blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.
'How many fingers, Winston? '
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 315
'Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four! '
'How many fingers, Winston? '
'Five! Five! Five! '
'No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think
there are four. How many fingers, please? '
'Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop
the pain! '
Abruptly he was sitting up with O'Brien's arm round his
shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few sec-
onds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened.
He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth
were chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For
a moment he clung to O'Brien like a baby, curiously com-
forted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the
feeling that O'Brien was his protector, that the pain was
something that came from outside, from some other source,
and that it was O'Brien who would save him from it.
'You are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.
'How can I help it? ' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing
what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four. '
Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Some-
times they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once.
You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane. '
He laid Winston down on the bed. The grip of his limbs
tightened again, but the pain had ebbed away and the
trembling had stopped, leaving him merely weak and cold.
O'Brien motioned with his head to the man in the white
coat, who had stood immobile throughout the proceedings.
The man in the white coat bent down and looked closely
316 1984
into Winston's eyes, felt his pulse, laid an ear against his
chest, tapped here and there, then he nodded to O'Brien.
'Again,' said O'Brien.
The pain flowed into Winston's body. The needle must be
at seventy, seventy-five. He had shut his eyes this time. He
knew that the fingers were still there, and still four. All that
mattered was somehow to stay alive until the spasm was
over. He had ceased to notice whether he was crying out or
not. The pain lessened again. He opened his eyes. O'Brien
had drawn back the lever.
'How many fingers, Winston? '
'Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could.
I am trying to see five. '
'Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or
really to see them? '
'Really to see them. '
Again,' said O'Brien.
Perhaps the needle was eighty — ninety. Winston could
not intermittently remember why the pain was happening.
Behind his screwed-up eyelids a forest of fingers seemed to
be moving in a sort of dance, weaving in and out, disap-
pearing behind one another and reappearing again. He was
trying to count them, he could not remember why. He knew
only that it was impossible to count them, and that this was
somehow due to the mysterious identity between five and
four. The pain died down again. When he opened his eyes
it was to find that he was still seeing the same thing. In-
numerable fingers, like moving trees, were still streaming
past in either direction, crossing and recrossing. He shut
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his eyes again.
'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston? '
'I don't know. I don't know. You will kill me if you do that
again. Four, five, six — in all honesty I don't know. '
'Better,' said O'Brien.
A needle slid into Winston's arm. Almost in the same in-
stant a blissful, healing warmth spread all through his body.
The pain was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes
and looked up gratefully at O'Brien. At sight of the heavy,
lined face, so ugly and so intelligent, his heart seemed to
turn over. If he could have moved he would have stretched
out a hand and laid it on O'Brien's arm. He had never loved
him so deeply as at this moment, and not merely because
he had stopped the pain. The old feeling, that at bottom it
did not matter whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy,
had come back. O'Brien was a person who could be talked
to. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be
understood. O'Brien had tortured him to the edge of luna-
cy, and in a little while, it was certain, he would send him
to his death. It made no difference. In some sense that went
deeper than friendship, they were intimates: somewhere or
other, although the actual words might never be spoken,
there was a place where they could meet and talk. O'Brien
was looking down at him with an expression which suggest-
ed that the same thought might be in his own mind. When
he spoke it was in an easy, conversational tone.
'Do you know where you are, Winston? ' he said.
'I don't know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love. '
'Do you know how long you have been here? '
318 1984
'I don't know. Days, weeks, months — I think it is
months. '
'And why do you imagine that we bring people to this
place? '
'To make them confess. '
'No, that is not the reason. Try again. '
'To punish them. '
'No! ' exclaimed O'Brien. His voice had changed extraor-
dinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern and
animated. 'No! Not merely to extract your confession, not to
punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here?
To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Win-
ston, that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves
our hands uncured? We are not interested in those stupid
crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested
in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not
merely destroy our enemies, we change them. Do you un-
derstand what I mean by that? '
He was bending over Winston. His face looked enormous
because of its nearness, and hideously ugly because it was
seen from below. Moreover it was filled with a sort of exal-
tation, a lunatic intensity. Again Winston's heart shrank. If
it had been possible he would have cowered deeper into the
bed. He felt certain that O'Brien was about to twist the dial
out of sheer wantonness. At this moment, however, O'Brien
turned away. He took a pace or two up and down. Then he
continued less vehemently:
'The first thing for you to understand is that in this place
there are no martyrdoms. You have read of the religious
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 319
persecutions of the past. In the Middle Ages there was the
Inquisition. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy, and
ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at the
stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because
the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed
them while they were still unrepentant: in fact, it killed
them because they were unrepentant. Men were dying be-
cause they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally
all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the
Inquisitor who burned him. Later, in the twentieth century,
there were the totalitarians, as they were called. There were
the German Nazis and the Russian Communists. The Rus-
sians persecuted heresy more cruelly than the Inquisition
had done. And they imagined that they had learned from
the mistakes of the past; they knew, at any rate, that one
must not make martyrs. Before they exposed their victims
to public trial, they deliberately set themselves to destroy
their dignity. They wore them down by torture and solitude
until they were despicable, cringing wretches, confessing
whatever was put into their mouths, covering themselves
with abuse, accusing and sheltering behind one another,
whimpering for mercy. And yet after only a few years the
same thing had happened over again. The dead men had
become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten. Once
again, why was it? In the first place, because the confessions
that they had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We
do not make mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that
are uttered here are true. We make them true. And above
all we do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You must
1984
stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston.
Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out
from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas and
pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you,
not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. You
will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You
will never have existed. '
Then why bother to torture me? thought Winston, with a
momentary bitterness. O'Brien checked his step as though
Winston had uttered the thought aloud. His large ugly face
came nearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.
'You are thinking,' he said, 'that since we intend to de-
stroy you utterly, so that nothing that you say or do can
make the smallest difference — in that case, why do we go to
the trouble of interrogating you first? That is what you were
thinking, was it not? '
'Yes,' said Winston.
O'Brien smiled slightly. 'You are a flaw in the pattern,
Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not
tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors
of the past? We are not content with negative obedience, nor
even with the most abject submission. When finally you
surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not
destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he re-
sists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture
his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all
illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in ap-
pearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one
of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that
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an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world,
however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant
of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the
heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his
heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges
could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked
down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the
brain perfect before we blow it out. The command of the old
despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The command of the total-
itarians was 'Thou shalt". Our command is 'THOU ART".
No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against
us. Everyone is washed clean. Even those three miserable
traitors in whose innocence you once believed — Jones, Aar-
onson, and Rutherford — in the end we broke them down. I
took part in their interrogation myself. I saw them gradu-
ally worn down, whimpering, grovelling, weeping — and in
the end it was not with pain or fear, only with penitence.
By the time we had finished with them they were only the
shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sor-
row for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was
touching to see how they loved him. They begged to be shot
quickly, so that they could die while their minds were still
clean. '
His voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation, the
lunatic enthusiasm, was still in his face. He is not pretend-
ing, thought Winston, he is not a hypocrite, he believes
every word he says. What most oppressed him was the con-
sciousness of his own intellectual inferiority. He watched
the heavy yet graceful form strolling to and fro, in and out
1984
of the range of his vision. O'Brien was a being in all ways
larger than himself. There was no idea that he had ever had,
or could have, that O'Brien had not long ago known, ex-
amined, and rejected. His mind CONTAINED Winston's
mind. But in that case how could it be true that O'Brien was
mad? It must be he, Winston, who was mad. O'Brien halted
and looked down at him. His voice had grown stern again.
'Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston,
however completely you surrender to us. No one who has
once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let
you live out the natural term of your life, still you would
never escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever.
Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to
the point from which there is no coming back. Things will
happen to you from which you could not recover, if you
lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of
ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside
you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship,
or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or in-
tegrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and
then we shall fill you with ourselves. '
He paused and signed to the man in the white coat.
Winston was aware of some heavy piece of apparatus being
pushed into place behind his head. O'Brien had sat down
beside the bed, so that his face was almost on a level with
Winston's.
'Three thousand,' he said, speaking over Winston's head
to the man in the white coat.
Two soft pads, which felt slightly moist, clamped them-
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selves against Winston's temples. He quailed. There was
pain coming, a new kind of pain. O'Brien laid a hand reas-
suringly, almost kindly, on his.
"This time it will not hurt,' he said. 'Keep your eyes fixed
on mine. '
At this moment there was a devastating explosion, or what
seemed like an explosion, though it was not certain whether
there was any noise. There was undoubtedly a blinding flash
of light. Winston was not hurt, only prostrated. Although
he had already been lying on his back when the thing hap-
pened, he had a curious feeling that he had been knocked
into that position. A terrific painless blow had flattened him
out. Also something had happened inside his head. As his
eyes regained their focus he remembered who he was, and
where he was, and recognized the face that was gazing into
his own; but somewhere or other there was a large patch
of emptiness, as though a piece had been taken out of his
brain.
'It will not last,' said O'Brien. 'Look me in the eyes. What
country is Oceania at war with? '
Winston thought. He knew what was meant by Oceania
and that he himself was a citizen of Oceania. He also re-
membered Eurasia and Eastasia; but who was at war with
whom he did not know. In fact he had not been aware that
there was any war.
'I don't remember. '
'Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that
now? '
'Yes. '
1984
'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the
beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party,
since the beginning of history, the war has continued with-
out a break, always the same war. Do you remember that? '
'Yes. '
'Eleven years ago you created a legend about three men
who had been condemned to death for treachery. You pre-
tended that you had seen a piece of paper which proved
them innocent. No such piece of paper ever existed. You in-
vented it, and later you grew to believe in it. You remember
now the very moment at which you first invented it. Do you
remember that? '
'Yes. '
'Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw
five fingers. Do you remember that? '
'Yes. '
O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the
thumb concealed.
'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers? '
'Yes. '
And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the
scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there
was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and
the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowd-
ing back again. But there had been a moment — he did not
know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps — of luminous cer-
tainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up
a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when
two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that
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were what was needed. It had faded but before O'Brien had
dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he
could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at
some period of one's life when one was in effect a different
person.
'You see now,' said O'Brien, 'that it is at any rate possi-
ble.
you think you remember. '
'I remember that until only a week before I was arrested,
we were not at war with Eastasia at all. We were in alliance
with them. The war was against Eurasia. That had lasted for
four years. Before that '
O'Brien stopped him with a movement of the hand.
'Another example,' he said. 'Some years ago you had a
very serious delusion indeed. You believed that three men,
three one-time Party members named Jones, Aaronson,
and Rutherford — men who were executed for treachery
and sabotage after making the fullest possible confession —
were not guilty of the crimes they were charged with. You
believed that you had seen unmistakable documentary evi-
dence proving that their confessions were false. There was
a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination.
You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It
was a photograph something like this. '
An oblong slip of newspaper had appeared between
O'Brien's fingers. For perhaps five seconds it was within the
angle of Winston's vision. It was a photograph, and there
was no question of its identity. It was THE photograph. It
was another copy of the photograph of Jones, Aaronson,
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 311
and Rutherford at the party function in New York, which
he had chanced upon eleven years ago and promptly de-
stroyed. For only an instant it was before his eyes, then it
was out of sight again. But he had seen it, unquestionably he
had seen it! He made a desperate, agonizing effort to wrench
the top half of his body free. It was impossible to move so
much as a centimetre in any direction. For the moment he
had even forgotten the dial. All he wanted was to hold the
photograph in his fingers again, or at least to see it.
'It exists! ' he cried.
'No,' said O'Brien.
He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole
in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the
frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm
air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away
from the wall.
'Ashes,' he said. 'Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does
not exist. It never existed. '
'But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I re-
member it. You remember it. '
'I do not remember it,' said O'Brien.
Winston's heart sank. That was doublethink. He had a
feeling of deadly helplessness. If he could have been certain
that O'Brien was lying, it would not have seemed to matter.
But it was perfectly possible that O'Brien had really forgot-
ten the photograph. And if so, then already he would have
forgotten his denial of remembering it, and forgotten the
act of forgetting. How could one be sure that it was simple
trickery? Perhaps that lunatic dislocation in the mind could
1984
really happen: that was the thought that defeated him.
O'Brien was looking down at him speculatively. More
than ever he had the air of a teacher taking pains with a
wayward but promising child.
"There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the
past,' he said. 'Repeat it, if you please. '
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls
the present controls the past," repeated Winston obedient-
"Who controls the present controls the past," said
O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your
opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence? '
Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Win-
ston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not
know whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save
him from pain; he did not even know which answer he be-
lieved to be the true one.
O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Win-
ston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered
what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does
the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or
other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still
happening? '
'No. '
"Then where does the past exist, if at all? '
'In records. It is written down. '
'In records. And ? '
'In the mind. In human memories. '
'In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all
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records, and we control all memories. Then we control the
past, do we not? '
'But how can you stop people remembering things? ' cried
Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. 'It is invol-
untary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory?
You have not controlled mine! '
O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on
the dial.
'On the contrary' he said, 'YOU have not controlled it.
That is what has brought you here. You are here because
you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would
not make the act of submission which is the price of san-
ity You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only
the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe
that reality is something objective, external, existing in its
own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-
evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you
see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same
thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not ex-
ternal. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.
Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and
in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party,
which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds
to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except
by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact
that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-
destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself
before you can become sane. '
He paused for a few moments, as though to allow what
1984
he had been saying to sink in.
'Do you remember,' he went on, 'writing in your dia-
ry, 'Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make
four'? '
'Yes,' said Winston.
O'Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston,
with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston? '
'Four. '
'And if the party says that it is not four but five — then
how many? '
'Four. '
The word ended in a gasp of pain. The needle of the dial
had shot up to fifty-five. The sweat had sprung out all over
Winston's body. The air tore into his lungs and issued again
in deep groans which even by clenching his teeth he could
not stop. O'Brien watched him, the four fingers still ex-
tended. He drew back the lever. This time the pain was only
slightly eased.
'How many fingers, Winston? '
'Four. '
The needle went up to sixty.
'How many fingers, Winston? '
'Four! Four! What else can I say? Four! '
The needle must have risen again, but he did not look at
it. The heavy, stern face and the four fingers filled his vision.
The fingers stood up before his eyes like pillars, enormous,
blurry, and seeming to vibrate, but unmistakably four.
'How many fingers, Winston? '
FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 315
'Four! Stop it, stop it! How can you go on? Four! Four! '
'How many fingers, Winston? '
'Five! Five! Five! '
'No, Winston, that is no use. You are lying. You still think
there are four. How many fingers, please? '
'Four! five! Four! Anything you like. Only stop it, stop
the pain! '
Abruptly he was sitting up with O'Brien's arm round his
shoulders. He had perhaps lost consciousness for a few sec-
onds. The bonds that had held his body down were loosened.
He felt very cold, he was shaking uncontrollably, his teeth
were chattering, the tears were rolling down his cheeks. For
a moment he clung to O'Brien like a baby, curiously com-
forted by the heavy arm round his shoulders. He had the
feeling that O'Brien was his protector, that the pain was
something that came from outside, from some other source,
and that it was O'Brien who would save him from it.
'You are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.
'How can I help it? ' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing
what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four. '
Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Some-
times they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once.
You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane. '
He laid Winston down on the bed. The grip of his limbs
tightened again, but the pain had ebbed away and the
trembling had stopped, leaving him merely weak and cold.
O'Brien motioned with his head to the man in the white
coat, who had stood immobile throughout the proceedings.
The man in the white coat bent down and looked closely
316 1984
into Winston's eyes, felt his pulse, laid an ear against his
chest, tapped here and there, then he nodded to O'Brien.
'Again,' said O'Brien.
The pain flowed into Winston's body. The needle must be
at seventy, seventy-five. He had shut his eyes this time. He
knew that the fingers were still there, and still four. All that
mattered was somehow to stay alive until the spasm was
over. He had ceased to notice whether he was crying out or
not. The pain lessened again. He opened his eyes. O'Brien
had drawn back the lever.
'How many fingers, Winston? '
'Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could.
I am trying to see five. '
'Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or
really to see them? '
'Really to see them. '
Again,' said O'Brien.
Perhaps the needle was eighty — ninety. Winston could
not intermittently remember why the pain was happening.
Behind his screwed-up eyelids a forest of fingers seemed to
be moving in a sort of dance, weaving in and out, disap-
pearing behind one another and reappearing again. He was
trying to count them, he could not remember why. He knew
only that it was impossible to count them, and that this was
somehow due to the mysterious identity between five and
four. The pain died down again. When he opened his eyes
it was to find that he was still seeing the same thing. In-
numerable fingers, like moving trees, were still streaming
past in either direction, crossing and recrossing. He shut
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his eyes again.
'How many fingers am I holding up, Winston? '
'I don't know. I don't know. You will kill me if you do that
again. Four, five, six — in all honesty I don't know. '
'Better,' said O'Brien.
A needle slid into Winston's arm. Almost in the same in-
stant a blissful, healing warmth spread all through his body.
The pain was already half-forgotten. He opened his eyes
and looked up gratefully at O'Brien. At sight of the heavy,
lined face, so ugly and so intelligent, his heart seemed to
turn over. If he could have moved he would have stretched
out a hand and laid it on O'Brien's arm. He had never loved
him so deeply as at this moment, and not merely because
he had stopped the pain. The old feeling, that at bottom it
did not matter whether O'Brien was a friend or an enemy,
had come back. O'Brien was a person who could be talked
to. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be
understood. O'Brien had tortured him to the edge of luna-
cy, and in a little while, it was certain, he would send him
to his death. It made no difference. In some sense that went
deeper than friendship, they were intimates: somewhere or
other, although the actual words might never be spoken,
there was a place where they could meet and talk. O'Brien
was looking down at him with an expression which suggest-
ed that the same thought might be in his own mind. When
he spoke it was in an easy, conversational tone.
'Do you know where you are, Winston? ' he said.
'I don't know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love. '
'Do you know how long you have been here? '
318 1984
'I don't know. Days, weeks, months — I think it is
months. '
'And why do you imagine that we bring people to this
place? '
'To make them confess. '
'No, that is not the reason. Try again. '
'To punish them. '
'No! ' exclaimed O'Brien. His voice had changed extraor-
dinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern and
animated. 'No! Not merely to extract your confession, not to
punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here?
To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Win-
ston, that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves
our hands uncured? We are not interested in those stupid
crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested
in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not
merely destroy our enemies, we change them. Do you un-
derstand what I mean by that? '
He was bending over Winston. His face looked enormous
because of its nearness, and hideously ugly because it was
seen from below. Moreover it was filled with a sort of exal-
tation, a lunatic intensity. Again Winston's heart shrank. If
it had been possible he would have cowered deeper into the
bed. He felt certain that O'Brien was about to twist the dial
out of sheer wantonness. At this moment, however, O'Brien
turned away. He took a pace or two up and down. Then he
continued less vehemently:
'The first thing for you to understand is that in this place
there are no martyrdoms. You have read of the religious
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persecutions of the past. In the Middle Ages there was the
Inquisition. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy, and
ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at the
stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because
the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed
them while they were still unrepentant: in fact, it killed
them because they were unrepentant. Men were dying be-
cause they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally
all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the
Inquisitor who burned him. Later, in the twentieth century,
there were the totalitarians, as they were called. There were
the German Nazis and the Russian Communists. The Rus-
sians persecuted heresy more cruelly than the Inquisition
had done. And they imagined that they had learned from
the mistakes of the past; they knew, at any rate, that one
must not make martyrs. Before they exposed their victims
to public trial, they deliberately set themselves to destroy
their dignity. They wore them down by torture and solitude
until they were despicable, cringing wretches, confessing
whatever was put into their mouths, covering themselves
with abuse, accusing and sheltering behind one another,
whimpering for mercy. And yet after only a few years the
same thing had happened over again. The dead men had
become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten. Once
again, why was it? In the first place, because the confessions
that they had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We
do not make mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that
are uttered here are true. We make them true. And above
all we do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You must
1984
stop imagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston.
Posterity will never hear of you. You will be lifted clean out
from the stream of history. We shall turn you into gas and
pour you into the stratosphere. Nothing will remain of you,
not a name in a register, not a memory in a living brain. You
will be annihilated in the past as well as in the future. You
will never have existed. '
Then why bother to torture me? thought Winston, with a
momentary bitterness. O'Brien checked his step as though
Winston had uttered the thought aloud. His large ugly face
came nearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.
'You are thinking,' he said, 'that since we intend to de-
stroy you utterly, so that nothing that you say or do can
make the smallest difference — in that case, why do we go to
the trouble of interrogating you first? That is what you were
thinking, was it not? '
'Yes,' said Winston.
O'Brien smiled slightly. 'You are a flaw in the pattern,
Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not
tell you just now that we are different from the persecutors
of the past? We are not content with negative obedience, nor
even with the most abject submission. When finally you
surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not
destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he re-
sists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture
his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all
illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in ap-
pearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one
of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that
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an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world,
however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant
of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the
heretic walked to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his
heresy, exulting in it. Even the victim of the Russian purges
could carry rebellion locked up in his skull as he walked
down the passage waiting for the bullet. But we make the
brain perfect before we blow it out. The command of the old
despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The command of the total-
itarians was 'Thou shalt". Our command is 'THOU ART".
No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against
us. Everyone is washed clean. Even those three miserable
traitors in whose innocence you once believed — Jones, Aar-
onson, and Rutherford — in the end we broke them down. I
took part in their interrogation myself. I saw them gradu-
ally worn down, whimpering, grovelling, weeping — and in
the end it was not with pain or fear, only with penitence.
By the time we had finished with them they were only the
shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sor-
row for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was
touching to see how they loved him. They begged to be shot
quickly, so that they could die while their minds were still
clean. '
His voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation, the
lunatic enthusiasm, was still in his face. He is not pretend-
ing, thought Winston, he is not a hypocrite, he believes
every word he says. What most oppressed him was the con-
sciousness of his own intellectual inferiority. He watched
the heavy yet graceful form strolling to and fro, in and out
1984
of the range of his vision. O'Brien was a being in all ways
larger than himself. There was no idea that he had ever had,
or could have, that O'Brien had not long ago known, ex-
amined, and rejected. His mind CONTAINED Winston's
mind. But in that case how could it be true that O'Brien was
mad? It must be he, Winston, who was mad. O'Brien halted
and looked down at him. His voice had grown stern again.
'Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston,
however completely you surrender to us. No one who has
once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let
you live out the natural term of your life, still you would
never escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever.
Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to
the point from which there is no coming back. Things will
happen to you from which you could not recover, if you
lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of
ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside
you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship,
or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or in-
tegrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and
then we shall fill you with ourselves. '
He paused and signed to the man in the white coat.
Winston was aware of some heavy piece of apparatus being
pushed into place behind his head. O'Brien had sat down
beside the bed, so that his face was almost on a level with
Winston's.
'Three thousand,' he said, speaking over Winston's head
to the man in the white coat.
Two soft pads, which felt slightly moist, clamped them-
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selves against Winston's temples. He quailed. There was
pain coming, a new kind of pain. O'Brien laid a hand reas-
suringly, almost kindly, on his.
"This time it will not hurt,' he said. 'Keep your eyes fixed
on mine. '
At this moment there was a devastating explosion, or what
seemed like an explosion, though it was not certain whether
there was any noise. There was undoubtedly a blinding flash
of light. Winston was not hurt, only prostrated. Although
he had already been lying on his back when the thing hap-
pened, he had a curious feeling that he had been knocked
into that position. A terrific painless blow had flattened him
out. Also something had happened inside his head. As his
eyes regained their focus he remembered who he was, and
where he was, and recognized the face that was gazing into
his own; but somewhere or other there was a large patch
of emptiness, as though a piece had been taken out of his
brain.
'It will not last,' said O'Brien. 'Look me in the eyes. What
country is Oceania at war with? '
Winston thought. He knew what was meant by Oceania
and that he himself was a citizen of Oceania. He also re-
membered Eurasia and Eastasia; but who was at war with
whom he did not know. In fact he had not been aware that
there was any war.
'I don't remember. '
'Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that
now? '
'Yes. '
1984
'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the
beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party,
since the beginning of history, the war has continued with-
out a break, always the same war. Do you remember that? '
'Yes. '
'Eleven years ago you created a legend about three men
who had been condemned to death for treachery. You pre-
tended that you had seen a piece of paper which proved
them innocent. No such piece of paper ever existed. You in-
vented it, and later you grew to believe in it. You remember
now the very moment at which you first invented it. Do you
remember that? '
'Yes. '
'Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw
five fingers. Do you remember that? '
'Yes. '
O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the
thumb concealed.
'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers? '
'Yes. '
And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the
scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there
was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and
the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowd-
ing back again. But there had been a moment — he did not
know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps — of luminous cer-
tainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up
a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when
two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that
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were what was needed. It had faded but before O'Brien had
dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he
could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at
some period of one's life when one was in effect a different
person.
'You see now,' said O'Brien, 'that it is at any rate possi-
ble.
