1984

"‘‘In your case,’ said O’Brien, ‘the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.’ ... ....’ Do you remember,’ said O’Brien, ‘the moment of panic that used to occur in your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in front of you, and a roaring sound in your ears. There was something terrible on the other side of the wall. You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it into the open. It was the rats that were on the other side of the wall.’" (Part 3, Chapter 5) After a series of torturing scenes by O'Brien, Winston is on the brink of converging back to The Party. Winston, in his resiliency, still admits hatred towards Big Brother and The Party. O'Brien sees this as an admission to the infamous Room 101 . In this room, prisoners of The Party are faced with their greatest fear, and Winston has been dealt rats, his most feared object. Author George Orwell may have used rats as a metaphor as a fear for Winston. To me, "rats" may be someone who be...

"The Party prisoners were always silent and terrified, but the ordinary criminals seemed to care nothing for anybody. They yelled insults at the guards, fought back fiercely when their belongings were impounded, wrote obscene words on the floor, ate smuggled food which they produced from mysterious hiding-places in their clothes, and even shouted down the telescreen when it tried to restore order. On the other hand some of them seemed to be on good terms with the guards, called them by nicknames, and tried to wheedle cigarettes through the spyhole in the door. The guards, too, treated the common criminals with a certain forbearance, even when they had to handle them roughly." This quote comes at the beginning of Part 3 Chapter 1. Winston has just awoken from an abduction by The Party and has been placed in a jail cell with other people that are deemed criminals. Winston notices that there seems to be a distinct division on how others have treated the situation they were in. ...