How many fingers am I holding up?

So O'Brien's a bad guy. I didn't expect that. 

It sort of makes me wonder if the Brotherhood is a figment created by the Party to weed out those who might stand against it. Since they already have so much control and already instill fear in everyone so that they don't rise up, it might be unlikely. But they certainly seem paranoid to do something like that. The Party already embraces the suspected existence of Goldstein and the Brotherhood for its two minutes Hate. Just like the constant warfare against Eur/Eastasia, having a set enemy of the state helps to exert control. He is another enemy to use in order to bring people together in support of Big Brother. I wouldn't put it past the Party to have O'Brian's job be to find "heretics" and lull them in so that they can be persecuted as we saw with Winston and Julia. I guess this is what Orwell is trying to do to the reader. We have no concrete knowledge of what is going on in society. It is all so ambiguous.

Also, the torture scene in which O'Brian is asking how many fingers he's holding up reminded me of a very similar scene from an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation. I knew it seemed familiar, but it took a while to figure from where. In the episode, Patrick Stewart's character Captain Picard is captured by an alien race called Cardassians. One of the means of torture he has to endure is when his captor shows 4 lights. He continually asks Picard how many there are, adamant that there are actually 5. Much like Winston, Picard continually answers 4 and is subjected to severe pain for each "incorrect" answer. As we see with Winston, each captor is trying to convince the prisoner that they actually believe that there are 4 lights/fingers, rather than just stating it in self-preservation. As we see with Winston, just saying that there are 5 fingers, rather than truly believing it, elicits the same response as a wrong answer. In both cases, there is psychological torture in which the main character is driven to the point in which they are nearly willing to see what they are told to see. 

Clips from that episode if anyone is interested:

https://youtu.be/fFDOeuLM3m0?t=229 (3:49-4:22)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjKQQpPVifY 

Comments

  1. L. MoffittMarch 1, 2021 at 8:06 AM

    YES! This scene in Star Trek is definitely homage to 1984. Picard, awesome guy that he is, comes out of it still insisting that 2+2=4. Winston isn't Captain of the Enterprise, though -- will he do as well?

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