Torture in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

Whenever we study the history of a culture, torture seems to be present in one way or another; either to punish an individual for doing something unacceptable for the group they form part of, to obtain information about the enemy in a context of war, or even to obtain the confession of an allegedly traitor.

For example, probably the most well-known instances of torture in history occurred during the middle ages, so we will revise the definition of torture in that context. The author of the website Medieval Life and Times defines it as:  

"The deliberate, systematic, cruel and wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering (...) in an attempt to force another person to yield information, to make a confession, as part of a punishment, or for any other reason. (...) The objectives of torture were to intimidate, deter, revenge or punish. Or as a tool or method for the extraction of information or confessions."

 As observed in the previous paragraph, there are several reason that would lead to torture, from mere intimidation to revenge, and it has for a long time been part of society in a regulatory fashion. That is probably the reason why several authors decide to include torture in their literary productions, it is powerful and it can resembles reality in a terrifyingly accurate way.   
In the following paragraphs I will be discussing the presence of torture in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and I will present some similar ideas that appear in other works like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and A Clockwork Orange.

Regarding the object of torture in a very general way, Mack, (2011) states that

“The end of torture is to test the universal verifiability of a given doctrine. Torture perpetrated its violence to enforce its version of reality upon those who question it. (...) mentally and physically it imposes its version of the world upon those who are seen to pose a challenge to this version.”

In Nineteen Eighty Four, however, the torture performed on the prisoners, that we observe through Winston’s experience, is not exactly intended to obtain information nor confession; even though it looks like it because the victims are expected to confess to several crimes, in the novel confession is described as mere formality, for instance at the beginning of Winston’s torture, we learn that “There was a long range of crimes--espionage, sabotage, and the like--to which everyone had to confess” Orwell, (2003), so in fact, we are not looking at torture as a means anymore, torture becomes the end, concept that is revisited later in the next chapter when O’Brien tells Winston that “the object of torture is torture” and similar to the idea of  violence for violence sake presented by Burgess in A Clockwork Orange, which also happens to be part of the ‘dystopian fiction.’

To continue with the idea, another novel that is considered part of the dystopian fiction is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In Huxley’s novel, there is no torture performed on the citizens, but just like Winston is forced to love the party and Big Brother, the citizens are brainwashed to be ok with the totalitarian regime that rules their lives and that determines their places in society. “You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him” O’Brien tells Winston  near the end of the novel; in a similar way, Huxley states that  “Under a scientific dictator education will really work - with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”

An aspect of torture presented in Nineteen Eighty Four that might rather surprise the reader is when it is not anymore presented as the stereotypical medieval procedure in which the victim would suffer agonising pain, but a different kind of torture; this can be observed when Winston is not being beaten anymore--at least not so much--and he starts to be questioned by a different kind of torturer, in the novel they are described as being more intellectual, and they would make Winston undergo mostly humiliating situations, they would not let him go urinate or they would make him stand on one leg and the explanation for this aim of this treatment is explained as “simply to humiliate him and destroy his power of arguing and reasoning”, much like they do with Alex in A Clockwork Orange when he receives the aversion therapy called Ludovico Technique which deprives him of the exerting of free will, Alex does not have a choice to be violent and Winston does not have a choice to rebel against the party, not even in thought.

When thinking about torture in literature, one cannot help to think about Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum”, since it is, indeed, one of the most well-known literary works that include the explicit description of torture and in fact the whole story revolves around the torture inflicted on the nameless protagonist. Besides, the context in which the story is set provides the reader with a sense of realism, which gives great power to the narration because the reader can easily recognise in the short story an allusion to the Spanish inquisition: black-robed judges are mentioned, seven candles, inquisitorial voices, but most importantly, in the last lines of the story: “The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies” Poe, (2011).

In that sense, we can observe that both Orwell and Poe present torture in a political context. The latter of course is more connected to religious matters, but we must not forget that at the time (1478-1614) politics and religion were blended and consequently being at fault with one meant some sort of punishment just the same.  

I consider that there are some less obvious types of torture present both in Nineteen Eighty Four and “The Pit and the Pendulum”. For instance, all the food that the characters were provided with was either not enough and not exactly appetising; in the former, lunch is described as “a metal pannikin of pinkish-grey stew, a hunk of bread, a cube of cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and one saccharine tablet” and in the latter the protagonist tells us that he was given “a loaf and a pitcher with water” in both cases hunger leads them to avidly eat without giving much thought to the whole situation.

Another example and probably more evident is the disorientation that the torturers cause in the protagonists. Winston on the one hand, when he is caught and taking to a sort of prison, is  greatly concerned with time and place:

“he wondered where he was, and what time of day it was. At one moment he felt certain that it was broad daylight outside, and at the next equally certain that it was pitch darkness. In this place, he knew instinctively, the lights would never be turned out. It was the place with no darkness”

In this sense, I would say that the mere fact of not knowing when one is, or the time, or for how long one has been trapped, constitutes of itself a sort of torture, and it can be observed similarly--maybe even more evidently--in Poe’s short story, the nameless narrator shows us what he sees--or rather does not--”The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me.” The protagonist  tells us about eternal night, a context in which he could not possibly tell whether it was day or night, just like Winston in the place with no darkness. “The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets in the hope of catching some faint ray of light.” Here the tortuous nature of the situation is still more noticeable, words like ‘agony’ and ‘intolerable’  suggest that it was much more than mere bother, the disorientation was in fact excruciating.

Now, going back to the more explicit ways of torture, we must take into consideration the true type of torture that led Winston to betray Julia; it was not the pain inflicted over him, it was the psychological torture elicited by his fear of rats that led him to his great betrayal, as noted by Gleason, Goldsmith and Nussbaum, (2010), “The rats seem on the verge of eating his face, the fear that ultimately breaks him, have a power that is closely connected to a horror of his own capacity for betrayal and destructiveness.” In that sense, the great power of psychological torture is that it not only focuses on the present moment but is able to extend to the expectations and possibilities that the victim imagines for the future, the uncertainty of his own reaction causes this great fear in Winston.

Again, there is a sort of parallel for us to compare Winston’s torture to the one presented by Poe in “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the greatest torture suffered by the protagonist occurs when he is tied and observing the pendulum slowly descending towards him, more than plain physical pain he imagines the pain that he is bound to feel when the pendulum is close enough to begin slowly piercing his skin. I would say that in both cases the psychological torture is far more powerful than possible physical torture because it plays with the expectations of the victim and consequently has the potentiality to appeal to their most concealed fears.  

Bonus Track: One of the most famous devices of torture is The Breaking Wheel, after all, even here in Chile we say things like morir en la rueda when we talk about keeping something secret.

I think that the image is quite self-explanatory but if you want to read more about it, I invite you to check this link.  

Thanks for reading!

Bibliography

Burgess, A. (2011). A clockwork orange. London: Penguin.

Gleason, A., Goldsmith, J., Nussbaum, M. (2010). On “Nineteen Eighty-Four”: Orwell and Our Future. Princeton University Press.

Huxley, A. (2008). Brave New World Revisited. Random House.

Mack, M. (2011). How Literature Changes the Way We Think. A&C Black.

Medieval Torture and Punishment. (n.d.). Retrieved December 10, 2015, from http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-torture-and-punishment.

Orwell, G. (2003). Nineteen Eighty Four. St Ives: Penguin Books.

Poe, E. A. (2011). Tales of mystery and imagination. London: HarperPress.