1984 #11

This chapter of Orwell's 1984 ultimately deals with Winston's torture, the development of a cure for Winston, and doublethink. Winston has undergone endless hours of torture, only to awake to find O'Brien staring back at him. O'Brien tells Winston that he is mentally deranged, and that he has been held under close supervision to cure him. Since O'Brien is a member of the Inner Party, he is not pleased with the fact that Winston can remember the past, before the Party took over the government. Toward the end of Winston's torture, O'Brien says to him, "'What happens to you here is forever...We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back...Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you...You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves'" (256). This quote shows us that it is possible for the Party to rid someone of their memories and thoughts, and to fill it with events and occurrences pertaining to the Party. O'Brien has posed as a friend and leader to Winston throughout the Brotherhood process, where in fact, he wanted to see if Winston was loyal to the Party, which he is not. The fact that Winston does not believe everything the Party says and does upsets O'Brien, which is why he is trying to "cure" Winston to make him sane.