1984: Book 3 Chapters 1-3

Passage:
"Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is forever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves." (Book 3 Chapter 3 Page 256)

Response:
I chose this quote due to the fact that it hits home to me since it is sort of a summary of partly the whole book as of now. This quote is as significant representation of how the book is going along in the lines of being controlled by the Party. I feel that this quote is special due to the fact that O'Brien is now explaining the dystopian society that they live in Winston is in captivity due to Mr. Charrington acting as a normal citizen, but in reality he is a Thought Police member. O'Brien explains explicitly that Winston should have no more hopes, dreams, and aspirations since the Party controls everybody especially if you are arrested. Also, O'Brien then explains to Winston that the past is not ever present anymore only the present is, due to the fact that the government has there ways to manipulate not only thoughts but also records from the Records Department. The government has the ability to write their own history at all times. The government has so much power over everything that nobody can basically do anything since to them anything is seen to be a crime.

In this quote O'Brien explicitly explains to Winston that once he has been arrested, Winston cannot do anything to help others or even help himself. This is due to the fact that even though the government has such control over their citizens, they have much more control over their prisoners as well. As O'Brien describes to Winston, he is basically worthless now since any rebellion or any hope for joy is impossible to receive from now on. This to me is related to modern-day prisoners especially those in solitary confinement. There is a common relationship with prisons in Oceania and today's world since when one is in prison, they have no control over themselves, that they are only filled by the governments perspective on them. This entails that prisoners both in Ocean and today, all feel that they are worthless and have no right for anything possible.


Also, as this quote sort of explains a summary of the whole book. We can see that the government of Oceania have total control over their citizens. Also, Party members such as O'Brien have much more power than any normal citizen in Oceania. The part in which explains that: "Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity" shows the factors that the citizens of Oceania live by. It is sad that these factors in our modern world are commonly abused in our society. It is sad that the citizens of Oceania don't have the ability to live a free life, which entails the quote presented before of "Freedom of Slavery." The citizens of Oceania don't have the ability to live a totally free life since it is completely not possible due to all the constraints they have on themselves.  It is sad that we can connect to this freedom of slavery in our modern world since it is true that advancements of our technology put us at risk to become slaves for our own freedom. Also, we are "currency slaves" due to the fact that we must have a suitable job that is good enough for us to pay all our bills and live comfortably. This entails that from this quote freedom is definitely slavery.
Questions for Winston:
1) Are you going to try to escape the prison?
2) Do you think that you have the ability to still rebel against the party?
3) Do you believe everything that O'Brien is telling you?
4) Will you allow for them to squeeze everything out of you and have them fill yourself with themselves?
5) Don't you just hate people from the Party that abuse their power such as O'Brien?
Questions for the Party/ O'Brien:
1) Why do you guys want to squeeze every criminal out of all their powers and fill them with yourselves?
2) Why do people have to suffer from just committing a crime that is not a crime anywhere else except Oceania?
3) Do you realize that you guys are abusing your power as a party member?
4) In your opinion, do you believe in Freedom is Slavery?
5) Why doesn't the government just have everybody be equal so nobody rebels and everybody abides to all rules?