Fear

The book, 1984 is about a place in the future where the town is ran by, “The Party” and the head of this government is Big Brother. The novel’s protagonist is Winston a 39-year old man who falls in love with a woman named Julia. Emotions and feelings toward people are not always promoted in the party. Winston, Julia, along with the rest of Oceania has to avoid getting charged with “thought crime.” It was hard to avoid sometimes because the party watched everyone closely with cameras and picked up every sound. This is the world that George Orwell has predicted of the future. In chapter four of part three, we find Winston in his solitary confined room after he has been tortured. He has gotten much better. He has gotten fatter, he’s been working out, and the features of his body are getting back to normal. Then, Winston has a hallucination of Julia’s presence and heard him yell out her name. He knew that this would cause some damage to him and would make O’Brien torture him again. A short while after, O’Brien entered his room and directed him to “Room 101.”

In this room Winston was tormented with his worst fear, rats. O’Brien held the cage of rats so close to Winston’s face that Winston felt the cool wires on his cheeks. He smelled the musty smell of the rodents and began to get nauseous, so much that he felt he was about to pass out. Winston felt trapped and was willing to do anything to escape from where he was at that moment. He was even willing to escape and let a loved one get this punishment rather than himself. He began to say, “Do it to Julia not me.” He was willing to let Julia get injured by the rats than him. This is how fearful Winston was of rats.
As I reflect on the novel, I realize that my fear is not so different from Winston’s. I have a fear of any small animal that isn’t a dog. Cats, rodents, squirrels, you name it. One time, I was walking down the street. As I was walking, a squirrel raced down the tree. My body froze with fear. I felt that it impossible for me to just walk past it. I frantically rushed to the other side of the street. I have never been faced with or in the same room with a rat. I have seen a movie that showed how vicious and disease-causing rats can be. I don’t blame Winston for being afraid.  Everyone as a fear and in the book, 1984, Winston’s fear is rats.