| Nineteen Eighty-Four | Sources |
|---|---|
|
page 356: "In this place, he (Winston) knew instinctively, the lights would never be turned out. It was the place with no darkness: he saw now why O'Brien had seemed to recognize the allusion". |
"This trip was a failure, as the object of it was
to get into prison, and I did not, in fact, get more than
forty-eight hours in custody; however, I am recording it, as the
procedure in the police court etc. was fairly interesting.(...)(In
the prison cell) There was a tiny barred window high up near the roof,
and an electric bulb behind a guard of thick glass was kept burning
all night." Orwell: "Clink" (1932), CE I, p. 109ff. |
| page 370f. "When he (O'Brien) spoke his voice was gentle and patient. He had the air of a doctor, a teacher, even a priest, anxious to explain and persuade rather than to punish." |
The Japanese 'thought procurators' - in charge of thought criminals, i. e. political offenders, were instructed "never to laugh or ridicule suspects, to use a direct and friendly approach, never to employ threats or lies, to be kind, to be a good listener, and to be persistent." Mitchell, Thought Control in Prewar Japan, 115f. |
| page 371: (O'Brien said:) "You are mentally deranged... Fortunately it is curable." | "If thought criminals were 'cured' without 'de-escalating their dangerousness', they remained a danger to society." Mitchell, p. 122. |
| page 379: (O'Brien said:) "We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him." |
"One startling result of the trial was the sensational 'conversion' (tenko) by Sano and Nabeyama. Because of their prestige, the party received a mortal wound at their conversion, and hundreds of other imprisoned communists followed their lead. The term tenko began to have a special ideological meaning in the late Taisho period, when the proletarian parties were debating a change in ideological position on the part of former antigovernment radicals who had undergone self-criticism and who had returned to the ideological position supported by the state." Mitchell, p. 109f. |
| page 387: "'We are the priests of power', he (O'Brien) said." | "The greatness of every mighty organisation embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism, and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others." Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 318. |
| page 389: (O'Brien said:) "Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation." |
"If in the Nazi faith the Jew is the archenemy, then the Nazi methods of Jew baiting must be regarded as the incarnation of the Nazi Spirit. And that spirit is one of sadistic torture of helpless and innocent victims." Franz Borkenau, The Totalitarian Enemy. Orwell reviewed the book in 1940. |
| page 390: (O'Brien said:) "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." |
"Re cynicism, you'd be cynical yourself if you were in this job. However I am definitely leaving it (the BBC) in abt 3 months. Then by some time in 1944 I might be near-human again & able tho write something serious. At present I'm just an orange that's been trodden on by a very dirty boot". Letter to Rayner Heppenstall, 24 August 1943, CE II, p. 349. More possible sources cited by Crick, footnote 96 to Nineteen Eighty-Four, p. 448. |