it by. Fixed to the front of it was something that looked like
a fencing mask, with the concave side outwards. Although it was three or
four metres away from him, he could see that the cage was divided
lengthways into two compartments, and that there was some kind of creature
in each. They were rats.
'In your case,' said O'Brien, 'the worst thing in the world happens to
be rats.'
A sort of premonitory tremor, a fear of he was not certain what, had
passed through Winston as soon as he caught his first glimpse of the cage.
But at this moment the meaning of the mask-like attachment in front of it
suddenly sank into him. His bowels seemed to turn to water.
'You can't do that!' he cried out in a high cracked voice. 'You
couldn't, you couldn't! It's impossible.'
'Do you remember,' said O'Brien, 'the moment of panic that used to
occur in your dreams? There was a wall of blackness in front of you, and a
roaring sound in your ears. There was something terrible on the other side
of the wall. You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it
into the open. It was the rats that were on the other side of the wall.'
'O'Brien!' said Winston, making an effort to control his voice. 'You
know this is not necessary. What is it that you want me to do?'
O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the
schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully
into the distance, as though he were addressing an audience somewhere
behind Winston's back.
'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There are occasions
when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death.
But for everyone there is something unendurable -- something that cannot