These two chapters of 1984 disturbed me. Winston finally gets caught by the Thought Police and I can sense that he's done for. All the events in these chapters are disturbing: the prole woman in the holding cell who throws up on the floor, Parsons doing his business in the lavatory and stinking up the cell, the starving man who has the likeness of a skeleton, the hamster-looking man who gets beat up, Winston writhing on the floor after getting hit in the elbow, Winston being electrocuted by O'Brien, the way O'Brien seems to read Winston's thoughts, how Winston still had respect for O'Brien even though he was being tortured by him, how Winston was being brainwashed. The passage is creepy and depressing.
I can't understand why Winston continues to like O'Brien even though the man that he had trusted betrayed him and was responsible for bringing pain and despair to him. Winston contemplates that "one perhaps did not want to be loved so much as to be understood." In my mind, though, I'm thinking, "Does O'Brien really understand Winston? Maybe Winston just wants him to understand, but O'Brien has already been brainwashed." Yet, Winston continues to have a sort of respect for O'Brien, believing that they are "intimates" and have " a place where they could meet and talk." Perhaps Winston just has a whole lot of hope in him: hope for the future, for humanity, for life.
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