1984 Summaries - Chapter Summaries

**Summary: Chapter III** After weeks of interrogation and torture, O'Brien tells Winston about the Party's motives. Winston speculates that the Party rules the proles for their own good. O'Brien tortures him for this answer, saying that the Party's only goal is absolute, endless, and limitless powe...

**Summary: Chapter III** After weeks of interrogation and torture, O'Brien tells Winston about the Party's motives. Winston speculates that the Party rules the proles for their own good. O'Brien tortures him for this answer, saying that the Party's only goal is absolute, endless, and limitless power. Winston argues that the Party cannot alter the stars or the universe; O'Brien answers that it could if it needed to because the only reality that matters is in the human mind, which the Party controls. O'Brien forces Winston to look in a mirror; he has completely deteriorated and looks gray and skeletal. Winston begins to weep and blames O'Brien for his condition. O'Brien replies that Winston knew what would happen the moment he began his diary. O'Brien acknowledges that Winston has held out by not betraying Julia, and Winston feels overwhelmed with love and gratitude toward O'Brien for recognizing his strength. However, O'Brien tells Winston not to worry, as he will soon be cured. O'Brien then notes that it doesn't matter, since, in the end, everyone is shot anyhow. **Analysis: Chapters I--III** Book Two saw Winston's love affair with Julia begin and end. Book Three begins his punishment and "correction." Winston's torture reemphasizes the book's theme of the fundamental horror of physical pain---Winston cannot stop the torture or prevent the psychological control O'Brien gains from torturing him, and when the guard smashes his elbow, he thinks that nothing in the world is worse than physical pain. Though the Party's ability to manipulate the minds of its subjects is the key to the breadth of its power, its ability to control their bodies is what makes it finally impossible to resist. Up to this point, O'Brien has remained an enigma to the reader, but his arrival toward the beginning of Winston's prison term places him firmly on the side of the Party. O'Brien seems to have been a rebel like Winston at one point---when Winston asks if he too has been taken prisoner, O'Brien replies, "They got me a long time ago." O'Brien adds insult to Winston's imprisonment by claiming that Winston knew all along that he was affiliated with the Party---and Winston knows he is right. This section seems to imply that Winston's fatalism stems as much from his understanding of his own fatalistic motives as from his belief in the power of the Party. In other words, Winston's belief that he would ultimately be caught no matter what he did enabled him to convince himself to trust O'Brien. He knew that he would be caught whether he trusted O'Brien or not, and so he let himself trust O'Brien simply because he deeply wanted to do so. Winston's obsession with O'Brien, which began with the dream about the place where there is no darkness, was the source of his undoing, and it undoes him now as well. Orwell explores the theme of how physical pain affects the human mind and arrives at the conclusion that it grants extraordinary emotional power to the person capable of inflicting the pain. Because O'Brien tortures him, Winston perversely comes to love O'Brien. Throughout the torture sessions, Winston becomes increasingly eager to believe anything O'Brien tells him---even Party slogans and rhetoric. In the next section of the novel, Winston even begins to dream about O'Brien in the same way that he now dreams about his mother and Julia. **Summary: Chapter IV** After some time, [Winston](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/character/winston-smith/) is transferred to a more comfortable room and the torture eases. He dreams contently of [Julia](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/character/julia/), his mother, and [O'Brien](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/character/obrien/) in the Golden Country. He gains weight and is allowed to write on a small slate. He comes to the conclusion that he was foolish to oppose the Party alone and tries to make himself believe in Party slogans. He writes on his slate "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY," "TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE," and "GOD IS POWER." One day, in a sudden, passionate fit of misery, Winston screams out Julia's name many times, terrifying himself. Though he knows that crying out in this way will lead O'Brien to torture him, he realizes his deep desire to continue hating the Party. He tries to bottle up his hatred so that even he will not recognize it. Therefore, when the Party kills him, he will die hating [Big Brother](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/character/big-brother/)---a personal victory. But he cannot hide his feelings. When O'Brien arrives with the guards, Winston tells him that he hates Big Brother. O'Brien replies that obeying Big Brother is not sufficient---Winston must learn to love him. O'Brien then instructs the guards to take Winston to Room 101. **Summary: Chapter V** In Room 101, O'Brien straps Winston to a chair, then clamps Winston's head so that he cannot move. He tells Winston that Room 101 contains "the worst thing in the world." He reminds Winston of his worst nightmare---the dream of being in a dark place with something terrible on the other side of the wall---and informs him that rats are on the other side of the wall. O'Brien picks up a cage full of enormous, squirming rats and places it near Winston. He says that when he presses a lever, the door will slide up and the rats will leap onto Winston's face and eat it. With the writhing, starving rats just inches away, Winston cracks. He screams that he wants O'Brien to subject Julia to this torture instead of him. O'Brien, satisfied by this betrayal, removes the cage. **Summary: Chapter VI** Winston, now free, sits at the Chestnut Tree Café, where dismissed Party members go to drink. He enjoys a glass of Victory Gin and watches the telescreen. He accepts everything the Party says and does. Without acknowledging it to himself, he can still smell the rats. On the table, Winston traces "2 + 2 = 5" in the dust. He remembers seeing Julia on a bitter-cold day that March. She had thickened and stiffened, and he now found the thought of sex with her repulsive. They acknowledged that they had betrayed one another, and agreed to meet again, though neither is truly interested in continuing their relationship. Winston thinks he hears the song lyrics "Under the spreading chestnut tree / I sold you and you sold me," which he heard when he saw the political prisoners there many years earlier. He begins to cry. He remembers a moment of happiness with his mother and sister, but thinks it must be a false memory. He looks up and sees a picture of Big Brother on the telescreen, making him feel happy and safe. As he listens to the war news, he reassures himself of both the great victory he has won over himself and his newfound love for Big Brother. **And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true.** **Analysis: Chapters IV--VI** Though his stay at the Ministry of Love has broken his mind and will, and though his love for Big Brother precludes the need to think for himself, Winston still envisions the day that the Party will shoot him. This apparent death wish has led some readers to speculate that the key to Winston's character is his fatalism, that he rebels against the Party not because he desires freedom, but because he wants the Party to kill him. Given Orwell's political aspirations for *1984*, this consideration seems to diminish the intent of the work. *1984 *may include psychological imbalance among its list of ill effects of totalitarian government, but it seems clear that it is not primarily about psychological imbalance. The main purpose of the novel is to chronicle the workings of the Party's control over the minds of its subjects in order to warn readers of the dangers of totalitarianism. If all of Winston's problems were caused by an innate, unusual psychological disorder, then this overriding theme would become irrelevant. [\ ](https://playwire.com/?utm_source=pw_ad_container)