when he had enrolled
himself in the Brotherhood. He heard himself promising to lie, to steal, to
forge, to murder, to encourage drug-taking and prostitution, to disseminate
venereal diseases, to throw vitriol in a child's face. O'Brien made a small
impatient gesture, as though to say that the demonstration was hardly worth
making. Then he turned a switch and the voices stopped.
'Get up from that bed,' he said.
The bonds had loosened themselves. Winston lowered himself to the
floor and stood up unsteadily.
'You are the last man,' said O'Brien. 'You are the guardian of the
human spirit. You shall see yourself as you are. Take off your clothes.'
Winston undid the bit of string that held his overalls together. The
zip fastener had long since been wrenched out of them. He could not
remember whether at any time since his arrest he had taken off all his
clothes at one time. Beneath the overalls his body was looped with filthy
yellowish rags, just recognizable as the remnants of underclothes. As he
slid them to the ground he saw that there was a three-sided mirror at the
far end of the room. He approached it, then stopped short. An involuntary
cry had broken out of him.
'Go on,' said O'Brien. 'Stand between the wings of the mirror. You