Rereading Nineteen Eighty Four – Part III Chap 3 (16)

Winston then heard voices, two voices.  He recognised one of them as his own. It was a recording of the conversation he had had with O’Brien,  the night 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.

He had said it.  Then  O’Brien orders Winston to stand, and he does so  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.   His body was looped with filthy yellowish rags,  the remnants of underclothes.

There was a three-sided mirror.  

A bowed, grey coloured, skeleton-like thing was coming towards him… himself.

His face protruded, because of its bent carriage,  a bald scalp, a crooked nose, and battered-looking cheekbones

The truly frightening thing was the emaciation of his body and curvature of the spine.

He looked so old.

‘