Chapter THREE

O'Brien continues to interrogate Winston and seems to contradict what he had said before. He says that "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake." The Party, unlike a democracy, is not made up of the people living within the area. Therefore, the Party has little to no interest in who lives within their territory or what happens to them. The only thing that they are interested in is power, and they want their people to only care about that. This is the reason that they take away all of the pleasures and fun in the people's lives.
Winston then looks at O'Brien's tired face; and O'Brien realizes what Winston is thinking. How does O'Brien read Winston's mind? He brings his face closer to Winston's and says, "You are thinking that my face is old and tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body..." This is foreshadowing what Winston's body actually looks like. O'Brien purposely brings his face closer toward Winston, making him think that he is decayed looking, but actually Winston is the gaunt one.
O'Brien influences Winston's mind and complete thought processes just like the Party does to everyone else. He slowly changes Winston so that he begins to understand what the Party is and what it stands for. He finally disintegrates Winston by telling him to take off his clothes. Winston removes his clothes and looks into a three-sided mirror. He sees himself as a gray skeletal figure. It was frightening to him. He had a bald scalp, drawn-in cheeks, a crooked nose, and his legs had shrunk so that the knees were thicker than his thighs. O'Brien was telling him that he was what a man looked like and that he was the last man. Before looking at himself in the mirror, Winston saw himself as superior. So it was degrading to look at himself in the mirror as a skeletal figure. O'Brien meant to show Winston that that is what he was doing to himself by being against the Party. Winston was doing it to himself. At the end of this, O'Brien asks Winston, "Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?" And Winston replies with some hope, "I have not betrayed Julia." By saying this, Winston set him up to the torture that is experienced in Room 101. If he had not said this, I believe that O'Brien would not have realized this, and he would not have entered Room 101.
Winston finally begins getting fed regularly, and his strength starts coming back. By doing this, O'Brien reveals himself as Winston's savior, and Winston begins to accept O'Brien view on the world. He understands that the Party is everything. Winston was unable to overcome his physical and psychological torture. By himself, as a lone man, he could not defeat the thought that had been embedded within his consciousness. Upon a blank sheet of paper, Winston writes his thought freely... "Freedom is slavery. Two and two make five. God is power." Even though he had been defeated, he still could not help to think and wonder when he would be shot. O'Brien finally asks, in Winston's final steps toward his "cleansing," "... what are your true feels toward Big Brother?" Winston replies, "I hate him." This reveals that Winston still has his own thought process left. He is not completely overcome yet....
Winston then shouts out Julia's name in his sleep, revealing that his conversion is incomplete. O'Brien sets him up with his greatest fear in Room 101. Within Room 101, O'Brien stretches Winston to his breaking point with his greatest fear that we saw earlier in the book, rats. Therefore, it was foreshadowing when Winston was afraid of rats in the room above Mr. Charrington's apartment. The author did not merely just have the rats appear there for conflict, but also to develop Winston's character and that he apparently hated and abhorred rats. O'Brien places two rats within a wire cage that would go around his head and eat of his face; and as he brings the cage closer to Winston's face, he knows what he must do to stop this. He must betray Julia, and by betraying Julia, the Party and O'Brien have proven to Winston that they can take away love, they can take away everything.
When Winston is let free, he is no longer the same person. He finds his life running on gin. Then when he meets Julia, he also finds that he no longer loves her. He says that he wants to meet her again, but this meeting never occurrs. Winston finally comes to love Big Brother and is thankful for his long-wished-for bullet to his head. By this, the reader can conclude that rebellion against the Party was impossible. Winston was the closest it had come to rebelling successfully, but it never happened. Everyone was always overcome by the Party. There was no hope. Winston as an individual ceased to exist.