The Ending!

Going into this reading, I was getting kind of bored with 1984. After reading what seemed like the entirety of “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” (a fictional rebel book), I was frankly tired and all together not enjoying myself. I also was the last one in my group to actually finish the book, and, from talking to Ellie and Katie, I was not expecting anything fantastic.

But, much to my surprise, I loved the ending. It was action packed and filled with dialogue, making it a quicker and easier read.

As much as I would have loved a happy ending, I was completely satisfied with the way Orwell chose to wrap up Winston’s story. After capturing Winston and Julia in their rented room, the Thought Police bring Winston to the Ministry of Love where he is punished for his “thoughtcrimes” and “sexcrimes.” Punished is not really the right word to use here, but I cannot think of (nor find on Google) a suitable alternative. The process is not so much punishment as it is reintegration. Essentially, they are using torture to reshape Winston’s mind so that he will naturally comply with Big Brother’s orthodoxy. O’Brien describes the torture in three major stages: “there is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance” (260).

In the Ministry of Love, O’Brien uses physical torture to force Winston into learning the Party’s ideology. The best example of this is through O’Brien and Winston’s discussion of the sum of

2 + 2. As a senior in high school, I feel fairly confident saying that 2 and 2 make 4, as does Winston. O’Brien, however, tries to drill it into Winston’s head that 2 and 2 make whatever-the-heck the Party wants them to make. 2 + 2 can be 3 or 5 or not even a number.

Like Winston, I had a little trouble not seeing O’Brien’s logic as completely flawed. Regardless of how you view it, it seems to me that if you have two sets of two, you objectively have four. You can say you have five, and that may be true to you, but you’d be wrong.


It’s like when everyone believed that the sun revolved around the Earth back in the middle ages. Just because everyone believed it doesn’t make it anymore correct. At the same time, I only now believe that the Earth revolves around the sun because that is now what everyone believes. The data was presented to me by society, and it made sense to me, so I accepted it as fact. Have I observed the Earth revolving around the sun? No. So I can’t absolutely know that it is true, and for all I know it could be the opposite.

In that sense, 2 + 2 could equal 5.

O’Brien convinces Winston of this fallacy using physical pain-- pain so intense that his vision is compromised, and he can no longer see with any accuracy the number of fingers O’Brien is holding up.

After this exercise, O’Brien and Winston move on to the understanding part of fixing Winston’s mind. To be honest, I don’t feel like understanding is the right word, but it is what O’Brien calls it and he is the expert. While this section helped me better grasp O’Brien’s point of view, it also left me thoroughly confused and a little frustrated.

To sum it up, O’Brien makes the claim that as long as there is no evidence, there is absolutely no way to disprove a fundamentally incorrect idea. Let’s use the example of gravity. Yes, we all feel it and experience its effects everyday, but without Newton naming it and writing down its laws, gravity didn’t exist. By the Party’s logic, Newton did not discover gravity-- he invented it.

In 1984, Oceania (the nation-state-like structure that the Party rules) is at constant war with either Eastasia or Eurasia. In an objective reality, the enemy changes between the two other states. However, according to the Party, the enemy is and will always be Eastasia (or Eurasia). All records of war with the other state are destroyed. Because there is no existing proof that the enemy hasn’t always been the same, if you claim otherwise, you are making it up, essentially inventing your own now-false reality. The simple observation that who you’re fighting in a major war has shifted is invented completely by the individual, just how Newton invented the apple falling from the tree.

The third and final stage is still kind of foggy to me because it is difficult for me to identify exactly what triggered Winston’s “acceptance.” It was definitely more gradual with multiple events leading to his eventual love of Big Brother. After breaking down (or at least confusing) the mind with the learning and understanding, the Ministry of Love uses primal fear to break down the soul. Miniluv (as the Ministry is affectionately called in Newspeak) exposes you to whatever horrifying thing, rational or irrational, you fear most, relying on the fact that it is impossible to stand by your moral principles in the face of pure, unadulterated terror. In Winston’s case, O’Brien uses Winston’s fear of rats to force him to turn against Julia, whose love powered him through his rebellion.

Winston is successfully reintegrated into Oceanian society.

Orwell’s process of reintegration emphasizes his warning message, especially appropriate at the time he wrote this book: totalitarian propaganda is dangerous, and words are powerful. In the learning stage, Orwell shows the introduction of propaganda; in the understanding stage, Orwell shows the slow illogical-yet-logical methods that cause people to doubt; and in the stage of acceptance, Orwell illustrates the bleak reality through Winston’s sad and passionless existence after leaving the Ministry of Love.

Yes, the ending of 1984 was kind of a bummer. The hero abandons all of his principles and morals and lives out the rest of his life joylessly and loving the society that took his humanity. However, it clearly illustrates Orwell’s warning against such totalitarian societies in a way a happy ending would not.