room 101 v/s room 327

                               Room 101 v/s room 327

When I was reading the book 1984 by George Orwell the element that most called my attention was the existence of room 101, which is a torture chamber that aims to make prisioners to confront their worst fears and phobias with the object of breaking down their resistance. In the book we can appreciate the power that this room possess when O´Brien said "You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world". Winston reflects over this sentence and thinks about his worst fear which are rats. He fears rats so much that when he sees a rat in the room, he shudders in terror. His worst nightmare involves rats in a mysterious way that he cannot explain. Additionally,at the end of the book when O’Brien tortures Winston in the Ministry of Love, he uses a cage of rats to break Winston’s spirit. The torture consists of confronting Smith with a wire cage that contains two large rats. The front of the cage is shaped so that it can pu over a person's face. A trap-door is then opened, allowing the rats to eat little by little the victim's face. This cage is put over Smith's face, but he saves himself by begging the authorities to let his lover, Julia, suffers this torture instead of him. The threatened torture, and what Winston does to escape it, breaks his last promise to himself and to Julia: never to betray her emotionally. The original purpose of threatening Winston with the rats was not the act itself, but to force him into betraying the only person he loved and therefore break his spirit, to make him abandon what he only has for his own, what makes him different,human,and individual.

As the bigbrother can see everything you do and is able to know even your nightmares,fears,and phobias uses this knowledge to break Winston´s will and make him betrayed his own convictions as he already knew about Winston´s fears.

Consequently,I was able to appreciate that this fateful chamber 101 on Orwell´s book works differently for each prisioners´ fears,therefore we can not know for sure what it contains as it depends on each person nightmares.So "the worst thing in the world" can vary from one person to another, from one person can be "X" and for another can be "y" or even for both can be the same,but as we do not have the power of bigbrother we will nerver know, just a person with such a power is able to know even your worst fears,desires and depth thoghts in order to use them to his own convenience,to destroy what you are.

In The Shining by Kubrick, the room 237 functions in a similar manner, because what the room cantains is never revealed as the fears that it will have will totally depends on those who dear to go inside, for instance, when Jack returns to a nervous Wendy after having been investigating the room because his son Danny appeared with a injury,Jack can not say to Wendy what he has encountered in the room, he tells her that "there is nothing in the room" ,"absolutely nothing" and this means both, a secret of his experience in the room and a sentence that highlight the unspeakability of what he experimented when he was in the room. What he room contains is full of terror,tabu,obsessions,fears,etc.But Jack can not tell to Wendy what the room contains because he will reveal the most mostruos part of himself.

what your room 101/ 237 contains?

references:

Kubrick, S. (Director). (1980). The Shining [Motion picture]. United States: Warner Brothers.

Orwell.G.(1967).1984.Mondadori,Milano

http://books.google.cl/books?id=Rf7eAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA10&dq=the+unnameable+monster+in+literature+and+film:+the+thing+as+itself&hl=es&sa=X&ei=Pw9wVNvIB5fGsQTYnICwDg&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=the%20unnameable%20monster%20in%20literature%20and%20film%3A%20the%20thing%20as%20itself&f=false