O’Brien motionedwith his head to the man in the white coat, who had stoodimmobile throughout the proceedings. The man in the white coatbent down and looked closely into Winston’s eyes, felt his pulse,laid an ear against his chest, tapped here and there, then he noddedto O’Brien.‘Again,’ said O’Brien.The pain flowed into Winston’s body. The needle must be atseventy, seventy-five. He had shut his eyes this time. He knew thatthe fingers were still there, and still four. All that mattered wassomehow to stay alive until the spasm was over. He had ceased tonotice whether he was crying out or not. The pain lessened again.He opened his eyes. O’Brien had drawn back the lever.‘How many fingers, Winston?’‘Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could. I amtrying to see five.’‘Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or really to see them?’‘Really to see them.’‘Again,’ said O’Brien.Perhaps the needle was eighty — ninety. Winston could notintermittently remember why the pain was happening. Behind hisscrewed-up eyelids a forest of fingers seemed to be moving in asort of dance, weaving in and out, disappearing behind one anotherand reappearing again. He was trying to count them, he could notremember why. He knew only that it was impossible to countthem, and that this was somehow due to the mysterious identitybetween five and four. The pain died down again. When he openedhis eyes it was to find that he was still seeing the same thing.Innumerable fingers, like moving trees, were still streaming past ineither direction, crossing and recrossing. He shut his eyes again.‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’‘I don’t know. I don’t know. You will kill me if you do thatagain. Four, five, six — in all honesty I don’t know.’‘Better,’ said O’Brien.A needle slid into Winston’s arm. Almost in the same instant ablissful, healing warmth spread all through his body. The pain wasalready half-forgotten. He opened his eyes and looked up gratefullyat O’Brien. At sight of the heavy, lined face, so ugly and sointelligent, his heart seemed to turn over. If he could have movedhe would have stretched out a hand and laid it on O’Brien’s arm.He had never loved him so deeply as at this moment, and notmerely because he had stopped the pain. The old feeling, that atbottom it did not matter whether O’Brien was a friend or anenemy, had come back. O’Brien was a person who could be talkedto. Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to beunderstood. O’Brien had tortured him to the edge of lunacy, and in a little while, it was certain, he would send him to his death. Itmade no difference. In some sense that went deeper thanfriendship, they were intimates: somewhere or other, although theactual words might never be spoken, there was a place where theycould meet and talk. O’Brien was looking down at him with anexpression which suggested that the same thought might be in hisown mind. When he spoke it was in an easy, conversational tone.‘Do you know where you are, Winston?’ he said.‘I don’t know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love.’‘Do you know how long you have been here?’‘I don’t know. Days, weeks, months — I think it is months.’‘And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?’‘To make them confess.’‘No, that is not the reason. Try again.’‘To punish them.’‘No!’ exclaimed O’Brien. His voice had changedextraordinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern andanimated. ‘No! Not merely to extract your confession, not topunish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cureyou! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no onewhom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? Weare not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed.The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all wecare about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we changethem. Do you understand what I mean by that?’He was bending over Winston. His face looked enormousbecause of its nearness, and hideously ugly because it was seenfrom below. Moreover it was filled with a sort of exaltation, alunatic intensity. Again Winston’s heart shrank. If it had been possible he would have cowered deeper into the bed. He felt certainthat O’Brien was about to twist the dial out of sheer wantonness.At this moment, however, O’Brien turned away. He took a pace ortwo up and down. Then he continued less vehemently:‘The first thing for you to understand is that in this place thereare no martyrdoms. You have read of the religious persecutions ofthe past. In the Middle Ages there was the Inquisition. It was afailure. It set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it.For every heretic it burned at the stake, thousands of others roseup. Why was that? Because the Inquisition killed its enemies in theopen, and killed them while they were still unrepentant: in fact, itkilled them because they were unrepentant. Men were dyingbecause they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally all theglory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the Inquisitorwho burned him. Later, in the twentieth century, there were thetotalitarians, as they were called. There were the German Nazis andthe Russian Communists. The Russians persecuted heresy morecruelly than the Inquisition had done. And they imagined that theyhad learned from the mistakes of the past; they knew, at any rate,that one must not make martyrs. Before they exposed their victimsto public trial, they deliberately set themselves to destroy theirdignity. They wore them down by torture and solitude until theywere despicable, cringing wretches, confessing whatever was putinto their mouths, covering themselves with abuse, accusing andsheltering behind one another, whimpering for mercy. And yetafter only a few years the same thing had happened over again. Thedead men had become martyrs and their degradation wasforgotten. Once again, why was it? In the first place, because theconfessions that they had made were obviously extorted anduntrue. We do not make mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them true. And above allwe do not allow the dead to rise up against us. You must stopimagining that posterity will vindicate you, Winston. Posterity willnever hear of you. You will be lifted clean out from the stream ofhistory. We shall turn you into gas and pour you into thestratosphere. Nothing will remain of you, not a name in a register,not a memory in a living brain. You will be annihilated in the pastas well as in the future. You will never have existed.’Then why bother to torture me? thought Winston, with amomentary bitterness. O’Brien checked his step as thoughWinston had uttered the thought aloud. His large ugly face camenearer, with the eyes a little narrowed.‘You are thinking,’ he said, ‘that since we intend to destroy youutterly, so that nothing that you say or do can make the smallestdifference — in that case, why do we go to the trouble ofinterrogating you first? That is what you were thinking, was it not?’‘Yes,’ said Winston.O’Brien smiled slightly. ‘You are a flaw in the pattern,Winston. You are a stain that must be wiped out. Did I not tell youjust now that we are different from the persecutors of the past? Weare not content with negative obedience, nor even with the mostabject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be ofyour own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resistsus: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him,we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and allillusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not inappearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one ofourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that anerroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, howeversecret and powerless it may be. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation. In the old days the heretic walked tothe stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, exulting in it. Eventhe victim of the Russian purges could carry rebellion locked up inhis skull as he walked down the passage waiting for the bullet. Butwe make the brain perfect before we blow it out. The command ofthe old despotisms was “Thou shalt not”. The command of thetotalitarians was “Thou shalt”. Our command is “THOU ART”. Noone whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us.Everyone is washed clean. Even those three miserable traitors inwhose innocence you once believed — Jones, Aaronson, andRutherford — in the end we broke them down. I took part in theirinterrogation myself. I saw them gradually worn down,whimpering, grovelling, weeping — and in the end it was not withpain or fear, only with penitence. By the time we had finished withthem they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left inthem except sorrow for what they had done, and love of BigBrother. It was touching to see how they loved him. They begged tobe shot quickly, so that they could die while their minds were stillclean.’His voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation, thelunatic enthusiasm, was still in his face. He is not pretending,thought Winston, he is not a hypocrite, he believes every word hesays. What most oppressed him was the consciousness of his ownintellectual inferiority. He watched the heavy yet graceful formstrolling to and fro, in and out of the range of his vision. O’Brienwas a being in all ways larger than himself. There was no idea thathe had ever had, or could have, that O’Brien had not long agoknown, examined, and rejected. His mind CONTAINED Winston’smind. But in that case how could it be true that O’Brien was mad?It must be he, Winston, who was mad. O’Brien halted and looked down at him. His voice had grown stern again.‘Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, howevercompletely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astrayis ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the naturalterm of your life, still you would never escape from us. Whathappens to you here is for ever. Understand that in advance. Weshall crush you down to the point from which there is no comingback. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover,if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable ofordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Neveragain will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, orlaughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow.We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you withourselves.’He paused and signed to the man in the white coat. Winstonwas aware of some heavy piece of apparatus being pushed intoplace behind his head. O’Brien had sat down beside the bed, so thathis face was almost on a level with Winston’s.‘Three thousand,’ he said, speaking over Winston’s head to theman in the white coat.Two soft pads, which felt slightly moist, clamped themselvesagainst Winston’s temples. He quailed. There was pain coming, anew kind of pain. O’Brien laid a hand reassuringly, almost kindly,on his.‘This time it will not hurt,’ he said. ‘Keep your eyes fixed onmine.’At this moment there was a devastating explosion, or whatseemed like an explosion, though it was not certain whether therewas any noise. There was undoubtedly a blinding flash of light.Winston was not hurt, only prostrated. Although he had already been lying on his back when the thing happened, he had a curiousfeeling that he had been knocked into that position. A terrificpainless blow had flattened him out. Also something had happenedinside his head. As his eyes regained their focus he rememberedwho he was, and where he was, and recognized the face that wasgazing into his own; but somewhere or other there was a largepatch of emptiness, as though a piece had been taken out of hisbrain.‘It will not last,’ said O’Brien. ‘Look me in the eyes. Whatcountry is Oceania at war with?’Winston thought. He knew what was meant by Oceania andthat he himself was a citizen of Oceania. He also rememberedEurasia and Eastasia; but who was at war with whom he did notknow. In fact he had not been aware that there was any war.‘I don’t remember.’‘Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that now?’‘Yes.’‘Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since thebeginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since thebeginning of history, the war has continued without a break,always the same war. Do you remember that?’‘Yes.’‘Eleven years ago you created a legend about three men whohad been condemned to death for treachery. You pretended thatyou had seen a piece of paper which proved them innocent. Nosuch piece of paper ever existed. You invented it, and later yougrew to believe in it. You remember now the very moment at whichyou first invented it. Do you remember that?’‘Yes.’ ‘Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw fivefingers. Do you remember that?’‘Yes.’O’Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumbconcealed.‘There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?’‘Yes.’And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the sceneryof his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was nodeformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, thehatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But therehad been a moment — he did not know how long, thirty seconds,perhaps — of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion ofO’Brien’s had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolutetruth, and when two and two could have been three as easily asfive, if that were what was needed. It had faded but before O’Brienhad dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, hecould remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at someperiod 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.O’Brien stood up with a satisfied air. Over to his left Winstonsaw the man in the white coat break an ampoule and draw back theplunger of a syringe. O’Brien turned to Winston with a smile. Inalmost the old manner he resettled his spectacles on his nose.‘Do you remember writing in your diary,’ he said, ‘that it didnot matter whether I was a friend or an enemy, since I was at leasta person who understood you and could be talked to? You wereright. I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane. Before we bringthe session to an end you can ask me a few questions, if youchoose.’‘Any question I like?’‘Anything.’ He saw that Winston’s eyes were upon the dial. ‘Itis switched off. What is your first question?’‘What have you done with Julia?’ said Winston.O’Brien smiled again. ‘She betrayed you, Winston.Immediately — unreservedly. I have seldom seen anyone comeover to us so promptly. You would hardly recognize her if you sawher. All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her dirtymindedness — everything has been burned out of her. It was aperfect conversion, a textbook case.’‘You tortured her?’O’Brien left this unanswered. ‘Next question,’ he said.‘Does Big Brother exist?’‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is theembodiment of the Party.’‘Does he exist in the same way as I exist?’‘You do not exist,’ said O’Brien.Once again the sense of helplessness assailed him. He knew,or he could imagine, the arguments which proved his ownnonexistence; but they were nonsense, they were only a play onwords. Did not the statement, ‘You do not exist’, contain a logicalabsurdity? But what use was it to say so? His mind shrivelled as hethought of the unanswerable, mad arguments with which O’Brienwould demolish him.‘I think I exist,’ he said wearily. ‘I am conscious of my ownidentity. I was born and I shall die. I have arms and legs. I occupy a particular point in space. No other solid object can occupy the samepoint simultaneously. In that sense, does Big Brother exist?’‘It is of no importance. He exists.’‘Will Big Brother ever die?’‘Of course not. How could he die? Next question.’‘Does the Brotherhood exist?’‘That, Winston, you will never know. If we choose to set youfree when we have finished with you, and if you live to be ninetyyears old, still you will never learn whether the answer to thatquestion is Yes or No. As long as you live it will be an unsolvedriddle in your mind.’Winston lay silent. His breast rose and fell a little faster. Hestill had not asked the question that had come into his mind thefirst. He had got to ask it, and yet it was as though his tonguewould not utter it. There was a trace of amusement in O’Brien’sface. Even his spectacles seemed to wear an ironical gleam. Heknows, thought Winston suddenly, he knows what I am going toask! At the thought the words burst out of him:‘What is in Room 101?’The expression on O’Brien’s face did not change. He answereddrily:‘You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knowswhat is in Room 101.’He raised a finger to the man in the white coat. Evidently thesession was at an end. A needle jerked into Winston’s arm. He sankalmost instantly into deep sleep.