During the first part of Orwell’s 1984 Winston seems to be rather isolated, …show more content…
Charrington’s store Julia and Winston are caught and apprehended by the party, which leads to Winston's time spent held captive in the Ministry of Love. Winston’s time spent in incarceration is where the next and final character shift takes place for Winston. O’Brien, a revered and trusted figure by Winston, meets Winston in the Ministry of Love, but not as a savior sent by the brotherhood as hoped for, but a member of the Inner Party dedicated to “curing” Winston of himself. This relationship with O’Brien and procedure that Winston goes through alters Winston in the greatest way seen yet in 1984. O'Brien's method of curing Winston takes the form of lectures, question and answer segments, and a machine with a dial that sends surges of pain into Winston's body with the intention of correcting his out of line thought. Similar to the way a shock collar teaches a dog the limits of his exploration. At Winston's breaking point he exposes the beginnings of his final and most contrasting character change. During one of many fearful moments restrained in the room with O’Brien “Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston… He not only did not know whether ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one” (268). This excited thought of Winston speaks volumes about his next character change. The fact that his sole thought about answering the question posed by O’Brien is to avoid pain regardless of being correct in his own thought or not shows his weakened broken down character. In this final character change, Winston turns into a weak, spineless puppet-robot of the party as a result of the influence and methods of