Sunday, March 15, 2026

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 18 (3.2)

 Orwell's writing is a little dry for a torture scene. Thematically it works:

O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed.


'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?'


'Yes.'


And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment -- he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps -- of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had faded but before O'Brien had dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some period of one's life when one was in effect a different person.

'You see now,' said O'Brien, 'that it is at any rate possible.'

'Yes,' said Winston.

The Party can make you not just "reject the evidence of your eyes and ears," but actually convince you that your reality is different.

There's plenty of fodder for the O'BrienXWinston shippers.

And it gives us this scene:


 

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Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 18 (3.2)

 Orwell's writing is a little dry for a torture scene. Thematically it works: O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the...