"Do anything to me!" he yelled. "You've been starving me for weeks. Finish it off and let me die. Shoot me. Hang me. Sentence me to twenty-five years. Is there somebody else you want me to give away? Just say who it is and I’ll tell you anything you want. I don't care who it is or what you do to them. I've got a wife and three children. The biggest of them isn't six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and watch it. But not Room 101!" (Pg. 195)
Response:
Ah, room 101. I find a lot of irony in that. 101 is supposed to represent basics. But in this story it represents the intermediates, radicals and the most extreme. You might have expected when first reading about it that it would probably just warn people off and give an introduction to what would citizens are expected of. But it turns out to be a hell room. People of Oceania fear it so much. There are so much coersion, torture, force and persuasion invovled. Physical and mental pain is inevitable in that room. The existence of such a room makes the story even more enternaining and catches more attention from the audience. Although horrifying, I'm glad I discovered the existence of this type of room throughout the story.
I like how you talk about what 101 usually means and what it means in 1984. The room is so scary that people would rather die instead of going inside.
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