The pit and pendulum, and the room 101

In chapter 5 of “1984” written by George Orwell, it narrates the torture of Winston given by O’ Brien, while the story “The pit and the pendulum” of Edgar Allan Poe is focused on the feelings of the character and his different tortures given by the Inquisition. What Winston and the character of “The pit and the pendulum” feel –in the room 101 and the dungeon respectively– are comparable since the situations of both characters are similar.

To contextualize, Room 101 is a place which is feared by people in the novel “1984. However, people don’t know exactly what this room has, and the only thing that they know is that nobody wants to enter it. This room is placed in the Ministry of Love and it is where prisoners are tortured when they don’t obey the Party dictations. The room is different for every person, since the prisoners confront what they fear the most.

On the other hand, in “The pit and the pendulum”, the Inquisition dictates the verdict for the character whose name is not revealed it along the story. The verdict is death, not before the prisoner passing through different tortures. The story is narrated under the character’s perspective in order to the reader be aware of his feelings and thoughts during the events.

To start with, the first similarity that both stories have is that both O’ Brien and the Inquisition had no mercy. O’ Brien didn’t kill Winston at the beginning, he tortured him knowing that even if Winston was released, he knew that Winston was going to be someone soulless and at one point he was going to be killed anyway. Something similar happens in Poe’s story since the Inquisition before to kill the prisoner, he will be tortured, and the character explains very well in the next quote, where he refers that the Inquisition doesn’t care about people and their suffering:

“They appeared to me white—whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words—and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness—of immovable resolution—of stern contempt of human torture (Poe 1843, 3)”.

A second similarity is the way they are tortured. Both characters were private from food at first. In the case of Winston, O’ Brian let him dying of hungry and after a while, Winston could eat and he gained weight. On the other hand, Poe’s character was hungry but then, he received spicy food to he felt thirsty and he had to keep rats away from his food.

The third similarity has to with one word mentioned before: Rats. In both cases, rats appear. Rats are what Winston fears the most:

“'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 (Orwell 2001, 211)”.

At this point, he betrays Julia, since he says that he wants that the torture be done to Julia. Because of he says that, he is saved from the rats. He does the only thing that he is not supposed to do since he and Julia promised to not betray each other. So Winston knows that he not only betrays Julia, but he betrays himself up to the point to be corrupted. The torture presses Winston to do it.

In contrast, rats appear in the other story but only to join the place in which story is placed. However, this shows the condition in which the prisoner is. This means that the place is not hygienic up to the point that he has to battle with rats for food.

A fourth similarity is that both characters live under a system in which if you don’t believe what Christianity and the Party ideology promote, you are dead. Actually, both characters think they are already dead, since they know that at one point they inevitable are going to die, and they wait for it.

Another coincidence is that both are free at the end, the difference is that the character of Poe is free because he is saved by French Army, but Winston is released but he is not saved by anyone who defeat the system, he is free because O’ Brien wants it with a purpose. This purpose is to keep living in the society loving the Big Brother and the system in which he live, knowing that he is corrupted. It’s like to be died in life. O’ Brien not only wanted that Winston accepted the charges for what Winston was incriminated, but also, to change Winston’s mind, this means that Winston not only had to accept Big Brother, but loved him.

All in all, both stories have similarities that I explained before and one big difference which is salvation that make the resolution in both stories have a different end for both characters.

Have you know any other difference or any other similarity?

References

Orwell, George. 1984. A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook, 2001.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The pit and the pendulum. United States, 1843.