No More Learning

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. '

'Yes,' said Winston.

O'Brien stood up with a satisfied air. Over to his left
Winston saw the man in the white coat break an ampoule
and draw back the plunger of a syringe. O'Brien turned to
Winston with a smile. In almost the old manner he resettled
his spectacles on his nose.

'Do you remember writing in your diary' he said, 'that
it did not matter whether I was a friend or an enemy, since
I was at least a person who understood you and could be
talked to? You were right. I enjoy talking to you. Your mind
appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you
happen to be insane. Before we bring the session to an end
you can ask me a few questions, if you choose. '

'Any question I like? '

'Anything. ' He saw that Winston's eyes were upon the
dial. 'It is switched off. What is your first question? '

'What have you done with Julia? ' said Winston.

O'Brien smiled again. 'She betrayed you, Winston. Im-
mediately — unreservedly. I have seldom seen anyone come
over to us so promptly. You would hardly recognize her if
you saw her. All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her
dirty- mindedness — everything has been burned out of her.

326 1984



It was a perfect conversion, a textbook case. '

'You tortured her? '

O'Brien left this unanswered. 'Next question,' he said.

'Does Big Brother exist? '

'Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the
embodiment of the Party. '

'Does he exist in the same way as I exist? '

'You do not exist,' said O'Brien.

Once again the sense of helplessness assailed him. He
knew, or he could imagine, the arguments which proved
his own nonexistence; but they were nonsense, they were
only a play on words. Did not the statement, 'You do not ex-
ist', contain a logical absurdity? But what use was it to say
so? His mind shrivelled as he thought of the unanswerable,
mad arguments with which O'Brien would demolish him.

'I think I exist,' he said wearily. 'I am conscious of my
own identity. I was born and I shall die. I have arms and
legs. I occupy a particular point in space. No other solid
object can occupy the same point simultaneously. In that
sense, does Big Brother exist? '

'It is of no importance. He exists. '

'Will Big Brother ever die? '

'Of course not. How could he die? Next question. '

'Does the Brotherhood exist? '

"That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set
you free when we have finished with you, and if you live to
be ninety years old, still you will never learn whether the
answer to that question is Yes or No. As long as you live it
will be an unsolved riddle in your mind. '



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Winston lay silent. His breast rose and fell a little faster.
He still had not asked the question that had come into his
mind the first. He had got to ask it, and yet it was as though
his tongue would not utter it. There was a trace of amuse-
ment in O'Brien's face. Even his spectacles seemed to wear
an ironical gleam. He knows, thought Winston suddenly,
he knows what I am going to ask! At the thought the words
burst out of him:

'What is in Room 101? '

The expression on O'Brien's face did not change. He an-
swered drily:

'You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone
knows what is in Room 101. '

He raised a finger to the man in the white coat. Evidently
the session was at an end. A needle jerked into Winston's
arm. He sank almost instantly into deep sleep.



1984



Chapter 3



^ There are three stages in your reintegration,' said O'Brien.
"There is learning, there is understanding, and there is ac-
ceptance. It is time for you to enter upon the second stage. '

As always, Winston was lying flat on his back. But of late
his bonds were looser. They still held him to the bed, but
he could move his knees a little and could turn his head
from side to side and raise his arms from the elbow. The
dial, also, had grown to be less of a terror. He could evade its
pangs if he was quick-witted enough: it was chiefly when he
showed stupidity that O'Brien pulled the lever. Sometimes
they got through a whole session without use of the dial.
He could not remember how many sessions there had been.
The whole process seemed to stretch out over a long, indefi-
nite time — weeks, possibly — and the intervals between the
sessions might sometimes have been days, sometimes only
an hour or two.

'As you lie there,' said O'Brien, 'y ou have often won-
dered — you have even asked me — why the Ministry of Love
should expend so much time and trouble on you. And when
you were free you were puzzled by what was essentially the
same question. You could grasp the mechanics of the So-
ciety you lived in, but not its underlying motives. Do you
remember writing in your diary, 'I understand HOW: I do
not understand WHY'? It was when you thought about



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'why' that you doubted your own sanity. You have read THE
BOOK, Goldstein's book, or parts of it, at least. Did it tell
you anything that you did not know already? '

'You have read it? ' said Winston.

'I wrote it. That is to say, I collaborated in writing it. No
book is produced individually, as you know. '

'Is it true, what it says? '

'As description, yes. The programme it sets forth is non-
sense. The secret accumulation of knowledge — a gradual
spread of enlightenment — ultimately a proletarian rebel-
lion — the overthrow of the Party. You foresaw yourself that
that was what it would say. It is all nonsense. The proletar-
ians will never revolt, not in a thousand years or a million.
They cannot. I do not have to tell you the reason: you know
it already. If you have ever cherished any dreams of violent
insurrection, you must abandon them. There is no way in
which the Party can be overthrown. The rule of the Party is
for ever. Make that the starting-point of your thoughts. '

He came closer to the bed. 'For ever! ' he repeated. 'And
now let us get back to the question of 'how' and 'why". You
understand well enough HOW the Party maintains itself
in power. Now tell me WHY we cling to power. What is
our motive? Why should we want power? Go on, speak,' he
added as Winston remained silent.

Nevertheless Winston did not speak for another mo-
ment or two. A feeling of weariness had overwhelmed him.
The faint, mad gleam of enthusiasm had come back into
O'Brien's face. He knew in advance what O'Brien would say.
That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only



1984



for the good of the majority. That it sought power because
men in the mass were frail, cowardly creatures who could
not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over
and systematically deceived by others who were stronger
than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between
freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of man-
kind, happiness was better. That the party was the eternal
guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good
might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of oth-
ers. The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing
was that when O'Brien said this he would believe it. You
could see it in his face. O'Brien knew everything. A thou-
sand times better than Winston he knew what the world
was really like, in what degradation the mass of human be-
ings lived and by what lies and barbarities the Party kept
them there. He had understood it all, weighed it all, and it
made no difference: all was justified by the ultimate purpose.
What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who
is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments
a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

'You are ruling over us for our own good,' he said feebly.
You believe that human beings are not fit to govern them-
selves, and therefore '

He started and almost cried out. A pang of pain had shot
through his body. O'Brien had pushed the lever of the dial
up to thirty-five.

'That was stupid, Winston, stupid! ' he said. You should
know better than to say a thing like that. '

He pulled the lever back and continued:



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'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this.
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not
interested in the good of others; we are interested solely
in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness:
only power, pure power. What pure power means you will
understand presently. We are different from all the oligar-
chies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All
the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cow-
ards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian
Communists came very close to us in their methods, but
they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had
seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that
just round the corner there lay a paradise where human be-
ings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know
that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relin-
quishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not
establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution;
one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictator-
ship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of
torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you
begin to understand me? '

Winston was struck, as he had been struck before, by the
tiredness of O'Brien's face. It was strong and fleshy and bru-
tal, it was full of intelligence and a sort of controlled passion
before which he felt himself helpless; but it was tired. There
were pouches under the eyes, the skin sagged from the
cheekbones. O'Brien leaned over him, deliberately bringing
the worn face nearer.



1984



'You are thinking,' he said, 'that my face is old and tired.
You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even
able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not un-
derstand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The
weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism. Do you
die when you cut your fingernails? '

He turned away from the bed and began strolling up and
down again, one hand in his pocket.

'We are the priests of power,' he said. 'God is power. But
at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned.
It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means.
The first thing you must realize is that power is collective.
The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an
individual. You know the Party slogan: 'Freedom is Slavery".
Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is
freedom. Alone — free — the human being is always defeated.
It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die,
which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make com-
plete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity,
if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party,
then he is all-powerful and immortal. The second thing for
you to realize is that power is power over human beings.
Over the body — but, above all, over the mind. Power over
matter — external reality, as you would call it — is not impor-
tant. Already our control over matter is absolute. '

For a moment Winston ignored the dial. He made a vio-
lent effort to raise himself into a sitting position, and merely
succeeded in wrenching his body painfully.

'But how can you control matter? ' he burst out. 'You don't



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even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are
disease, pain, death '

O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. 'We
control matter because we control the mind. Reality is in-
side the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is
nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation — any-
thing. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish
to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You
must get rid of those nineteenth- century ideas about the
laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature. '

'But you do not! You are not even masters of this planet.
What about Eurasia and Eastasia? You have not conquered
them yet. '

'Unimportant. We shall conquer them when it suits us.
And if we did not, what difference would it make? We can
shut them out of existence. Oceania is the world. '

'But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is
tiny — helpless! How long has he been in existence? For mil-
lions of years the earth was uninhabited. '

'Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How
could it be older? Nothing exists except through human
consciousness. '

'But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals —
mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which
lived here long before man was ever heard of

'Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not.
Nineteenth- century biologists invented them. Before man
there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end,
there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing. '



1984



'But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars!
Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of
our reach for ever. '

'What are the stars? ' said O'Brien indifferently. 'They are
bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we
wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the cen-
tre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it. '

Winston made another convulsive movement. This time
he did not say anything. O'Brien continued as though an-
swering a spoken objection:

'For certain purposes, of course, that is not true. When
we navigate the ocean, or when we predict an eclipse, we of-
ten find it convenient to assume that the earth goes round
the sun and that the stars are millions upon millions of ki-
lometres away. But what of it? Do you suppose it is beyond
us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be
near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose
our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgot-
ten doublethink? '

Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said,
the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he
knew, he KNEW, that he was in the right. The belief that
nothing exists outside your own mind — surely there must
be some way of demonstrating that it was false? Had it not
been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name
for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the
corners of O'Brien's mouth as he looked down at him.

T told you, Winston,' he said, 'that metaphysics is not
your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is

FreeeBooksatPlaneteBook. com 335



solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Col-
lective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in
fact, the opposite thing. All this is a digression,' he added
in a different tone. 'The real power, the power we have to
fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over
men. ' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air
of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does
one man assert his power over another, Winston? '

Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.

'Exactly By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough.
Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obey-
ing your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain
and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces
and putting them together again in new shapes of your own
choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we
are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonis-
tic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear
and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being
trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE
merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be
progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed
that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded
upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions ex-
cept fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything
else we shall destroy — everything. Already we are break-
ing down the habits of thought which have survived from
before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child
and parent, and between man and man, and between man
and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend

336 1984



any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and
no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at
birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be
eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the
renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our
neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loy-
alty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love,
except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, ex-
cept the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will
be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipo-
tent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no
distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no
curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing
pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this,
Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power,
constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Al-
ways, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory,
the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If
you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping
on a human face — for ever. '

He paused as though he expected Winston to speak.
Winston had tried to shrink back into the surface of the bed
again. He could not say anything. His heart seemed to be
frozen. O'Brien went on:

And remember that it is for ever. The face will always
be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of so-
ciety, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and
humiliated over again. Everything that you have undergone
since you have been in our hands — all that will continue,



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and worse. The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tor-
tures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease.
It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph.
The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant:
the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Gold-
stein and his heresies will live for ever. Every day, at every
moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat
upon and yet they will always survive. This drama that I
have played out with you during seven years will be played
out over and over again generation after generation, always
in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here at our
mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible — and
in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to
our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are pre-
paring, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph
after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing,
pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I can
see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end
you will do more than understand it. You will accept it, wel-
come it, become part of it. '

Winston had recovered himself sufficiently to speak.
'You can't! ' he said weakly.

'What do you mean by that remark, Winston? '

'You could not create such a world as you have just de-
scribed. It is a dream. It is impossible. '

'Why? '

'It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred
and cruelty. It would never endure. '

'Why not? '

338 1984



'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would
commit suicide. '

'Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is
more exhausting than love. Why should it be? And if it were,
what difference would that make? Suppose that we choose
to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the
tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what
difference would it make? Can you not understand that the
death of the individual is not death? The party is immor-
tal. '

As usual, the voice had battered Winston into helpless-
ness. Moreover he was in dread that if he persisted in his
disagreement O'Brien would twist the dial again. And yet
he could not keep silent. Feebly, without arguments, with
nothing to support him except his inarticulate horror of
what O'Brien had said, he returned to the attack.

'I don't know — I don't care. Somehow you will fail. Some-
thing will defeat you. Life will defeat you. '

'We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imag-
ining that there is something called human nature which
will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But
we create human nature.