Technically, there is one chapter remaining . In my book at least, there is an appendix the talks about ‘Newspeak’ as well as an afterward which is someone else’s opinion. I think I will probably skip talking about those things unless a bombshell comes up. For now, I am not reading ahead so that my thoughts are not influenced unduly by someone else.

These two chapters are more rehabilitation. Winston still knows everything is wrong on a subconscious level but has accepted that there is nothing that he can do about it. He is able to repeat the ‘facts’ as truth but still balks at believing those facts.

We finally got to the answer of what happens in Room 101. It seems that this is the final stage in rehabilitation. When Obrien says you know what Room 101 is he means that you know your greatest fear. Apparently, so does Obrien.

I think that I will skip the concepts today. Partly because I could try to make a thinly veiled comparison between your greatest fear and compliance. But also partly because I really don’t buy it. I believe what I said previously that torture could elicit any kind of answer be it true or false. I am not sure why this particular method or encounter would be any different.

The second reason is that I really didn’t see anything new. Maybe I should have combined the last three chapters together… moving on. I did see one thing that I thought stuck out. Winston is re-enforcing what he knows as facts on a tablet. The last thing that he wrote was “God is Power”.

That was puzzling to me. I thought that this world like most totalitarian regimes was agnostic. In fact in the last chapter, Winston proclaimed that he believed in the spirit of man and not in God. I suppose that this statement was written to prove that he has accepted the facts. But why choose that particular statement when there are so many others throughout the book?

I do not want to speculate why Orwell chose this phrase at this point, but my opinion is that it was deliberate. I think that we will possibly come back to this in the overall analysis of the book.

End Your Programming Routine: As we are nearly to the end of the book, I find myself less dogmatic on the world of 1984. I am struggling with where the ending is going in context of Parts One and Two. It very well be that the message is the game is rigged and individualism cannot coexist with power. But if that were really the case, then why even have a Part 3? This seems to suggest that once we accept the reality then things will better. I guess I will continue to try and reconcile in the next couple of weeks.