Room 101 and O'Brien

    When Room 101 was first mentioned it intrigued me. What goes on in that room that is worse than being shot or having your children’s throats slit in front of you? It seems like something that the government would create just to stir fear in the prisoners but have it be entirely manipulated and just a show that the Party puts on to keep everyone in line. I don’t really know why I thought that, it just seems like in these dystopias, the government hides everything from the common people. In Chapter 2, however, it turned out to be the real deal with an electric torture device. 

    O’Brien controlling the device in Room 101 was an even bigger surprise to me. He never seemed fully trustworthy to me before and was kind of suspicious, but Julia and Winston trusted him so I was kind of led on to trust him too. This shows how psychologically controlling the members of the Party are that even I was convinced that he was on Winston’s side. It is kind of like we are in Winston’s shoes when O’Brien is interrogating him. All of these questions are being answered in such an absurd way and it kind of makes us as the reader frustrated too. At the same time, I’m also frustrated with Winston. How can Winston still see O’Brien as an almost friend and trust him even though O’Brien almost killed him?

    These two thoughts are not the most connected, but I just wanted to write my thoughts while I was reading. Some questions I have for you: Why do you think Room 101 exists? What did you think happened in Room 101 before the author showed us? What is the relationship dynamic between O’Brien and Winston?

Comments

  1. L. MoffittMarch 2, 2021 at 7:26 AM

    Room 101 strikes me as a fiction-writer's creation. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense as far as the world of 1984 goes (like you say, what could be worse than what people have already gone through in this book?) but it's VERY dramatic.

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  2. Olivia TaylorMarch 2, 2021 at 7:57 AM

    I also thought that room 101 was a made up room meant to scare people, it seems like fear might be a more effective torture than pain in some cases. The dynamic between O'Brien and Winston also confused me, but I kind of interpreted it as Winston being delirious and so desperate to trust someone that he turned to O'Brien.

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