Chapter 22 third chapter

"There are three stages to your transformation," said O'Brien. "Learning, understanding, and acceptance. Now it's time for you to enter the second stage." As usual, Winston lay face up.Recently, he has been tied less tightly, and although he is still tied to the bed, he can move his knees a little, turn his head to the side, and raise his forearms.The control panel wasn't so scary, and if he was smart enough, he'd be spared that kind of pain.O'Brien turned the lever only when he was acting stupid, and sometimes the dial didn't work even once during a whole session of their conversation.He couldn't remember how many sessions they had, and the whole thing seemed to drag on indefinitely--weeks, perhaps--and the gaps between sessions could sometimes be days, sometimes just an hour or two.

"While you lay," said O'Brien, "you often wondered—you even asked me—why the Ministry of Love took so much trouble with you. When you were released, you were still confused, basically for the sake of fellow One question. You can understand the social mechanics you live in, but you don't understand the underlying motivations. Do you remember writing in your journal 'I understand how, but I don't understand why'? You're just thinking Doubting your sanity when you ask 'why.' You've read 'that book,' Goldstein's book, or at least part of it. Does it tell you something you didn't know before?"

"Have you read it?" "I wrote it, which means I participated in the writing. You know, no book can be written by one person." "Is it right?" "True as the statement is, the plan it lays out is nonsense. The secret accumulation of knowledge—gradually expanding the scope of enlightenment—eventually leads to a rebellion among the masses—to overthrow the party. You know what to write, all It's bullshit. The masses will never revolt, and they won't for thousands of years, they won't be able to. I don't have to tell you why, because you already know. If you have any dreams of rioting, you better give it up Right. The party cannot be overthrown, and the party’s rule will last forever, so take this as the starting point for thinking.”

He moved closer to the bed. "Forever and ever!" he repeated. "Now let's get back to the 'how' and the 'why'. You have a solid understanding of what the party does to stay in power. Now you tell me why we Hold on to power. What are our motives? Why do we want to be in power? Tell me." Winston added, without speaking. But Winston was still without work for a while, and a wave of fatigue came over him.O'Brien's face vaguely showed that kind of fanaticism again, he knew in advance what O'Brien would say, that is, the Party's desire to gain power was not for its own sake, but for the benefit of the majority.It comes to power because the masses are weak-willed cowards, unable to endure liberty or face facts, bound to be ruled and systematically deceived by others stronger than themselves.Human beings have two choices, freedom and happiness, and for most people, it is better to choose happiness.And the party is always the protector of the weak, a group of dedicated people who do evil things for the sake of a better future and sacrifice their own happiness for the happiness of others.The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing was that O'Brien believed it in his heart when he said it, and it showed in his face.O'Brien knew everything, a thousand times more than Winston did, of the truth of things in the world, namely, how miserable large numbers of people were, and what lies and brutalities the Party resorted to to keep them that way.He knew it all, he had calculated it all, but it didn't matter, everything was justified by the ultimate purpose.What, thought Winston, could you take a madman who was smarter than you?He can fully listen to your argument, but just hang on to his madness.

"You rule us for our benefit," he said feebly, "you believe that human beings are not fit to govern themselves, so—" He almost screamed when he opened his mouth.A sharp pain shot through his body, and O'Brien turned the lever on the control panel to the thirty-five position. "That's stupid, Winston, stupid!" said he. "You know you shouldn't say it!" He pulled the lever back and continued: "Now let me tell you the answer to this question, it's this: the party wants to be in power, it's all about self-interest, we're not interested in other people's happiness, only in power. Not wealth, luxury, longevity, or happiness, just Power, pure power. What is pure power, you will soon see. We are different from all oligarchs of the past, the difference is that we know what we are doing. All other people, even people like us , are cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists were very similar in their means of governing, but they never had the courage to admit their own. They pretended—perhaps even believed—that they had gained a limited time against their will. In the near future, there will be a heavenly society where all people will be free and equal. We are not like them. We know that no one has ever gained power in order to give it up. Power is not a means, but an end .People don’t build dictatorships in defense of a revolution. Persecution is for persecution, power is for power. Are you beginning to understand my words now?”

As it had been before, Winston was struck by the tired look on O'Brien's face.It was a face strong, sensitive, and yet cruel, full of intelligence and a kind of restrained enthusiasm.He felt helpless before the face, but it was a tired face with bags under the eyes and sagging skin under the cheekbones.O'Brien leaned towards him, deliberately bringing his tired face closer to him. "You're thinking," he said, "that my face is old and tired, and you're thinking that while I'm talking about power, I can't even stop my own body from decaying. Winston, Don't you understand that a person is just a cell? Only when the cells are tired can the vitality of the organism come. Will you die if you cut your nails?"

He turned away from the bed and began pacing up and down again, one hand in his pocket. "We are priests of power," he said, "power is God, but right now power is just a word to you, and it's time for you to grasp a little of its meaning. The first thing you must understand It's that power is collective and the individual has power only if he is not an individual. You know the party slogan: 'Freedom is slavery'. Did it ever occur to you that the other way around? Slavery is freedom. The individual The man who is not restrained will always be defeated. People must be restrained because everyone must die. Omnipotence and Immortality. The second thing you need to understand is that power is power over people, based on the body, but above all, the mind. For the entity - you will call it For the external reality—the power is not important. Our control over the entity is already absolute."

For a moment Winston, ignoring the controls, made a sudden effort to sit up, but could only writhe painfully. "But how can you control entities?" he blurted out. "You can't even control climate or the laws of gravity, and disease, pain, death—" O'Brien motioned him to stop talking. "We control entities because we control minds. Reality is in the head, you'll come to realize, Winston. There's nothing we can't do, invisibility, lift--anything. If I imagine Float off the floor like a soap bubble, and I can do it, but I don't want to because the Party doesn't want to. You gotta get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature, which we make up."

"But you don't! You're not even masters of our planet. What about Eurasia and Eastasia? You haven't conquered it yet." "That doesn't matter. We'll conquer them as we see fit. What does it matter if we don't? We can let them not exist, and Oceania is the world." "But the world itself is just a speck of dust, and man is small—impotent! How long has man existed? For millions of years, no man has lived on the earth." "Nonsense, the earth is as old as us humans, no older. How can it be older? Nothing exists unless it is reflected through human consciousness."

"But the rocks are filled with the bones of extinct animals—mammoths, mastodons, and giant reptiles that lived on Earth long before humans existed." "Have you seen those bones, Winston? Of course you haven't, they were invented by archaeologists in the nineteenth century. There was nothing before man, and after man - if he ever comes to an end - there will be Nothing. Nothing but human beings." "But the whole universe is beyond us. Look at the stars! Some are millions of light-years away, never to be reached." "What is a star?" said O'Brien indifferently. "It's just a fire light a few kilometers away. We can reach there if we want, or we can obliterate it. The earth is the center of the universe, and the sun and stars revolve around it." It turns."

Winston made another jerk, and this time he said nothing more.O'Brien continued as if hearing a voiced objection: "Of course, this is not the case in certain cases. When sailing on the seas or predicting solar and lunar eclipses, we often find it convenient to assume that the earth revolves around the sun and the stars are hundreds of millions of kilometers away, but so what ?Do you think it is impossible for us to create two systems of astronomy? The stars can be as far or near as we want, and you think our mathematicians are not up to it? Have you forgotten doublethink?" Winston curled up on the bed.No matter what he said, the quick answer would knock him down like a bludgeon.But he still knew, knew he was right.The belief that nothing exists outside of your own head - surely there must be a way to be proven wrong?Wasn't that revealed a long time ago to be a fallacy?It even had a name, he forgot what it was.O'Brien looked down at him, a faint smile on his lips. "I told you, Winston," he said, "that metaphysics is not your specialty. The word you were looking for was solipsism, but you were wrong. It's not solipsism, call it if you like." Collective solipsism. But it’s not the same thing, quite the opposite. These are digressions,” he said again, “Real power—the power we must strive for day and night—is not power over objects. Power over people, not over people." He paused, and for a moment he was in the same way as when the teacher was questioning a promising student. "How does one exercise power over another, Winston?" Winston thought for a moment. "By making him suffer," he said. "Exactly, by making him suffer. Obedience is not enough, unless he is being tortured, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power consists in inflicting pain and humiliation on others. Power is tearing people's minds to shreds and putting them back together in new shapes as you decide. Do you ever begin to see what kind of world we are creating? It's not the same stupid, hedonistic world that previous reformers envisioned The exact opposite of Utopia, a world of fear, betrayal, and pain, a world of trampled and trampled, a world that becomes not less cruel but more cruel as it perfects itself. The progress of our world will be Progress towards more suffering. The old civilization claimed to be based on benevolence or fairness, ours is based on hatred. We have no emotions in this world but fear, anger, ecstasy and self-deprecation We will destroy all emotions. We are already breaking the habits of thought inherited from before the revolution. We have cut off the bonds of connection between children and parents, between men and between men and women, and no one will dare to trust wife, child or friend anymore , but there will be no wives and friends either. Babies will be taken from their mothers at birth, like eggs from a hen. Sexual instincts will be eradicated. Birth will be an annual routine, It's like renewing a quota card. We're going to kill orgasm, our neuroscientists are working on right now. There will be no allegiance but to the Party; no love but Big Brother; no love except Laughing at the defeat of the enemy, there will be no other laughter. There will be no art, literature, or science. If we are omnipotent, there will be no need for science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness, there will be no more Curiosity and joy in the course of life, all other kinds of pleasure will be destroyed. But there is always—must not forget this, Winston—always there is the intoxication of power, always intensified, always Becoming more sensitive. Every moment, there is always the excitement of victory and the thrill of trampling a defenseless man. If you want to imagine what the future will be like, imagine boots trampling on a How it feels on people's faces—that's for ever and ever." He paused, as if expecting Winston to speak.Once again Winston tried to curl up more tightly on the bed, but could not say anything, and his heart seemed to freeze.O'Brien continued: "Remember it's forever and ever. There's always a face to trample on, and heretics and enemies of society are always there, so they can be beaten and humiliated again and again. Everything that's passed since you fell into our hands— —these will go on and on and on. Reconnaissance, betrayal, arrests, torture, executions, disappearances, it will never stop. It is a world of terror as well as a world of carnival. The stronger the party, the more it The less tolerance there is; the weaker the resistance, the more tyrannical it is. Goldstein and his heresy will live on, every day, every moment, they will be smashed, doubted, ridiculed, spurned, but always There will be. The drama that you and I have played out for the past seven years will be played out over and over again, generation after generation, in ever more subtle forms. There will always be heretics at our mercy. He will die of pain. Screaming, breaking down, becoming contemptible - until finally he was utterly repentant, rescued from himself, and voluntarily crawled to our feet. This is the world we are building, Winston. It is one victory after another. A world of victories, triumphs after triumphs, endless worlds that press the nerves of power. I can see that you're beginning to understand what that world is like. But in the end, it's enough that you don't just understand it, you And accept it, welcome it, and be a part of it." Winston regained strength to speak. "You can't," he said weakly. "What do you mean by that, Winston?" "You can't create the world you just described, it's a dream, it's impossible." "why?" "Because it is impossible to build a civilization based on fear, hatred and cruelty, it will never last long." "Why is it impossible?" "It won't be alive, it will disintegrate, it will destroy itself." "Nonsense. How come you have the impression that hate is more consuming than love? Even so, what does it matter? Suppose we decide to age ourselves faster, suppose we speed up human life, to thirty What does it matter if you grow old at the age of one, and the same problem? Don't you understand that the death of an individual is not death? The Party is immortal." Again, the voice struck Winston again, leaving him helpless.Furthermore, he was afraid that if he persisted in disagreeing, O'Brien would pull the lever again, yet he could not keep silent.Weakly, he began to fight back again, not arguing, supported by nothing but an indescribably extreme distaste for what O'Brien had said. "I don't know—I don't care. Either way, you're going to fail, something's going to beat you, life's going to beat you." "We control life, Winston, on all levels. You're imagining that there's something called humanity that is irritated by what we do, and therefore rebels against us, but humanity that we've created. Humans have Infinite plasticity, if you're going back to your old idea that the masses or slaves are going to rise up and overthrow us, you'd better forget that idea, they're powerless, like animals. Humanity is the party and everything else External—irrelevant." "I don't care, in the end they'll beat you. Sooner or later, they'll see you for what you are, and they'll tear you apart." "Have you seen any evidence that that's happening? Or any reason why that would be?" "No, I believe so. I know you will lose, and there is something in the universe—some spirit or some law, I don't know—that you can never defeat." "Do you believe in God, Winston?" "No." "Then what would it be, what would be this law that would defeat us?" "I don't know, it's the human spirit." "Do you consider yourself a human being?" "right." "Winston, if you were human, you would be the last. But your species is extinct, and we are the heirs. Do you understand that you are unique? You are outside history, you do not exist." He His demeanor changed and his tone became harsher, "Because we lie and are cruel, do you think you are morally superior to us?" "Yes, I consider myself superior." O'Brien said nothing.At this moment, two voices were heard speaking, and after a while Winston recognized one of the voices as his own. It was a recording of his conversation with O'Brien the night he signed up for the Brotherhood. Lies, steals, fakes, kills, instigates drug use and prostitution, spreads sexually transmitted diseases, throws acid on children's faces, etc.O'Brien made a gesture of impatience, as though the demonstration were hardly worth it.He turned a button and the sound stopped. "Get up and get out of bed," he said. The restraints on him loosened of their own accord, and Winston got out of bed by himself, and stood staggeringly on the floor. "You are the last man," said O'Brien. "You are the guardian of the human spirit, and you will see yourself as you really are. Take your clothes off." Winston undid the thin straps holding the overalls together; the zipper buttons had long since been torn off.He couldn't remember ever taking off his clothes since his arrest.Under the work clothes, he was covered with dirty, slightly yellowish rags, which he could barely recognize as the remnants of underwear.After taking off his clothes on the floor, he saw a mirror divided into three sides across the room.He walked towards the mirror, then stopped suddenly, and burst into tears uncontrollably. "Further on," said O'Brien, "stand by the mirror, and you can see the profile." He stopped because he was terrified.A hunchbacked, pale, skeletal-looking object was walking towards him, and what frightened him was its actual appearance, not just the fact that it was himself.He moved closer to the glass mirror, and the monster's face seemed to protrude forward because of its bent posture.It was the face of a hopeless prisoner, with a broad forehead blended with baldness, an aquiline nose, and battered cheekbones above which were fierce, watchful eyes.The cheeks are lined and the mouth has a sunken look.It was doubtless his own face, but it seemed to him that his face had changed more than his heart, and showed different emotions than he felt.He is already partially bald.He thought he had turned pale at first, but it was only his scalp that had turned pale.Except for his hands and face, his whole body was pale and covered with old dirt, and there were red scars everywhere under the dirt.The varicose ulcer near the ankle was red and swollen, and the skin was flaking.But what was really frightening was the degree of emaciation of his body: his rib cage was as narrow as that of a skeleton, and his legs were so thin that his knees were thicker than his thighs.At this moment he also understood what O'Brien meant by asking him to look sideways.The curvature of his spine was startling, his thin shoulders hunched forward to preserve his ribcage, his bony neck seemed to fold in half under the weight of his skull.If he was asked to guess, he would think that it was the body of a sixty-year-old man suffering from some incurable disease. "You sometimes think," said O'Brien, "that my face—the face of an Inner Party member—looks old and tired. What do you think of your own face?" He grabbed Winston by the shoulders and turned him so that he faced him. "Look at you now!" he said. "Look at the filth all over you, look at the dust under your toes, look at the disgusting ulcers on your legs. Do you know that you stink so badly?" Like a goat? Maybe you've stopped paying attention. Look at how skinny you look, see? I can squeeze your arm with one hand and snap it like a carrot. You know Didn't know you've lost twenty-five kilograms since you fell into our hands? Even your hair is falling out in handfuls, look!" He yanked Winston's head Take a handful. "Open your mouth, nine, ten, eleven, eleven teeth left. How many did you have when you got here? Even the few you have left are about to fall out. Look!" He grasped Winston's remaining front tooth between his strong thumb and forefinger, and a piercing pain passed through Winston's jaw.O'Brien pulled out the loose tooth and threw it across the cell. "You're rotting," he said, "falling apart. What are you? A bag of trash. Now turn around and look in the mirror, do you see what's facing you? That's the last person. If you It's human, that's human. Now put your clothes on." Winston began to dress with slow, stiff movements.Until now, he didn't seem to notice how thin and frail he was.There was only one thought in his mind: he must have been here longer than he thought.He lapsed into pity for his ruined body as he wrapped the filthy rags around him.Before he understood what he was doing, he fell down on a small stool by the bed, tears streaming from his eyes.He was aware of how ugly and unsightly he was, a bundle of bones in dirty clothes, weeping in the blinding white light, but he couldn't stop.O'Brien put a hand on his shoulder almost benevolently. "It won't be like this forever," he said. "Whenever you decide, you can avoid it. It's all up to you." "You did it!" whimpered Winston. "You made me like this!" "No, Winston, it is you who have made yourself that way, which you accepted when you decided against the Party, and it was all contained in the first act. Nothing that happened was yours." Unforeseen." He paused, then continued: "We've got you down, Winston, we've got you down. You've seen what your body is like, your mind is in the same state, and I don't think you have any self-respect left. You've You've been punched and kicked, you've been abused; you've screamed in pain, you've rolled on the floor in your own blood and vomit, you've begged for forgiveness, you've betrayed everyone and everything. What else can you think of? Have you ever done anything embarrassing?" Winston stopped sobbing, but the tears were still welling from his eyes.He looked up at O'Brien. "I didn't betray Julia," he said. O'Brien looked down at Winston thoughtfully. "Yes," he said, "yes, exactly, you did not betray Julia." The strange respect for O'Brien welled up in Winston again, and nothing seemed to be able to destroy it.How wise, he thought, how wise!There was not a time when O'Brien did not understand what was being said to him, and anyone else in the world would immediately say that he had betrayed Julia, for what was there that he had not confessed, under the torture?He told everything he knew about her: her habits, her personality, her previous life, and he confessed in detail everything that happened every time they met, including all the conversations they had, the food they ate on the black market Meals, adultery, vague plans for the party—everything.However, from the original intention of his words, he did not betray her.He did not stop loving her, his affection for her remained unchanged.O'Brien understood what he meant without explaining. "Tell me," he asked, "how long before they shoot me?" "It may be a long time," said O'Brien. "Your case is more difficult, but don't give up hope. Everyone will be cured sooner or later. At last we will shoot you."