The Party's Methods
The Party uses very specific methods (torture) in order to make sure that no one disagrees with their viewpoints. We can see that the party inflicts intense pain on their prisoners whose thinking is not in line with what the party wants. O'Brien even compares what they are doing to the inquisition and the Nazis, explain why the Party is succeeding where they failed. He explains that the inquisition created martyrs by persecuting the heretics, however since they kept their beliefs to the end, they just created more heretics. The Nazis took it further. They forced fake confessions out of their "heretics", however, since they were obviously fake they essentially accomplished the same thing as the inquisition. The Party on the other hand truly makes their "heretics" believe in their confessions, using various means of torture and forced submission. In the end, we see that even Wilson, the staunchest of opponents to the Party's ideals, in the end, submits to the torture, and truly believes that O'Briens 4 fingers are 5. So it's proven these methods work, at least in universe.
The real question is how these methods work long-term? Are they even used long-term? Or does the Party just use these methods short-term in order to prop up fake enemies? And in the end, is the Brotherhood real, or another tactic to support these methods?
They alluded in the book to the fact that O'Brien might have been caught from the thought police a "long time ago", which could be evidence that it lasts quite a long time if tortured long enough. I also feel like the Brotherhood can't be real and might just be another thing to hate- if Big Brother is God then Goldstein is the devil to some extent, both are more conceptual than rooted in reality.
ReplyDeleteYes, there is the distinct possibility that even the Brotherhood is fake -- that even Goldstein isn't a real person but a creation by the Party to be a scapegoat.
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