Big Brother has won in the sense of Winston's destroyed psyche, however, not rightfully so. Armed with Winston's intense fear of rats, O'Brien is able to utterly destroy Winston. O'Brien says "All the confessions are true. We make them true," showing Big Brother's manipulation (254). Of course, Big Brother wins in the sense of being able to eliminate enemies, but he is unable to claim complete victory because confessions are falsified. Instead, the Party slowly brainwashes Winston through an intricate process that O'Brien describes to Winston. They "convert [the heretic], ... capture his inner mind,... reshape him. [They] burn all evil and all illusion out of him; [they] bring him over to [their] side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. [They] make him one of [themselves] before [they] kill him," (255). This long winded process ending only with the death of the heretic shows the Party's fear of opposition. The Party refuses to accept submission, but would rather kill a person of free will in order to assert their power and greatness.
As Winston believed, One State could be brought down through the Proles. The Proles have the luxury of being seen as almost inhuman to the Party, so if they were to unitedly stand up against the Party, the Party would be unable to stop it at the roots because of the lack of concentration on the Proles.
I think that at the end of the novel, Winston was brainwashed through O'Brien's detailed plan as aforementioned. "[Winston] was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for-bullet was entering his brain," (297). O'Brien had said that the Party wants heretics to willingly turn themselves in, even begging to be killed. Going even further, I believe that Winston's dream of confessing and dying would have happened in the near future of the novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment