Ninenteen Eighty Four - the origins of torture literature

[Burgesski]

Once again forgive me of this is silly or obvious question/point but I've been reading the recent Naomi Klein book "The Shock Doctrine", in which she describes torture in Pinochet's Chile. Apparently it has emerged through the investigations of Chile's Truth Commission that the point of much torture conducted by the regime was not to extract information but rather to break the spirit of the victims and to suppress the resistance to Pinochet's regime.

All of which is scarily reminiscent of the torture scenes in "Nineteen Eighty Four". The point of Winston's torture, if I understand correctly, was never to obtain information, but rather to break his spirit by forcing him to betray his most cherished beliefs, to betray Julia, and thus to learn to love Big Brother, maybe because that was all that was left?

So, my question, prompted by the parallels with the descriptions in Klein's book, is this - was Orwell the first person to write about torture, and specifically torture for this purpose? I guess torture of this kind had been practised for a long time, for example by the Catholic church against its various opponents, but was there and is there any such thing as torture literature before and after Orwell? I'm guessing that there must be, but offhand I can think of no examples...

A very grim topic I know, and sorry for that, but old George/Eric was never afraid of confronting our dark side, and personally I think he was right - understand it to better resist it.

And incidentally, by torture literature I don't mean books by Dan Brown, Jeffrey Archer or JK Rowling, though all might qualify in terms of both content and style ;-)

[Ron Bateman]

Before addressing the question of whether Orwell was indeed the first to write about torture for any particular purpose we need to first establish what the purpose of the torture scene in 'Nineteen Eighty Four' actually was. For me there exists a common failure among critics to grasp the author’s intentions in this section of the book and of a mistaken tendency to always identify Orwell with Winston. For example, in his essay 'The Strangled Cry' John Strachey believed that the torture scene failed because "the subject of physical torture was not one with which Orwell was equipped to deal. He was never tortured any more than the rest of us have been."
What is often neglected when discussing the last third of "Nineteen Eighty Four" is that the section is about O’Brien rather than Winston – about torturing, not about being tortured. The sadistic content in those torture scenes can be viewed as representing Orwell’s attempt to go beyond the physical and psychological pain that breaks Winston; and illustrating an inevitability that the demagogues who ‘crave power for its own sake’ will resort to sadism. The party has aspired to the level of sadism is by itself sufficient to sustain that society upon an equilibrium of suffering. The torturing of Winston was not merely to bring him into line with the party philosophy; rather he was tortured for the purpose of causing him physical pain. O’Brien makes this clear to him – "the object of torture is torture". One might easily argue that this belief is unsound and that there is no historical experience that could support Orwell on this point. In his essay 'The Road to Nineteen Eighty Four' George Ketab asks this very question "Can sadism sustain millions of men for a lifetime, generation after generation"? He answers this by inferring that it was Orwell’s intention to induce fierce hatred on the part of the reader as his libertarian fervour carried him away, and that by sketching such a horrific possibility he could, in the long run, help defeat that possibility.

Having said all that, I’m tempted to say to Burgesski that I believe Orwell was the first to write of torture for this purpose, mainly because I belong in that camp that firmly believes that Orwell borrowed the plot of Nineteen Eighty Four from "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin and, for me, it is on this very point that the similarities in the two novels diverge. Although both novels end in defeat for the rebel, their ‘punishments,’ although in accordance with the spirit of the societies within which they are enslaved, serve different purposes. The hero in "We" undergoes his spiritual de-briefing willingly after his betrayal of I-330 and that betrayal is not as a result of prolonged torture. He knows that his operation will spare him from ‘the dichotomy of pity, love etc and rejoices’. The torture of Winston and Julia in "Nineteen Eighty Four" is so brutal that Winston’s betrayal of Julia cannot be regarded as similar. In fact, the real rebel in "We" is I-330 who is not broken at the end of the novel, rebuffs any demands to surrender and ultimately mounts the staircase that leads to The Benefactor to be vaporized accordingly. The executions in Zamyatin's "OneState" serve as public rituals aimed at strengthening the sense of solidarity; in Orwell’s Oceania, the endless sadistic torture serves no other purpose than self-verification; a constant reminder to themselves that they are, indeed, the ‘priests of power.’

[Douglas Kerr]

This is indeed a grim topic. I understand that torture is in fact an inefficient way of extracting information from prisoners. A few people will say nothing, whatever the circumstances. Most people will say anything at all under torture, mostly what they believe the torturer wants to hear, and so the quality of information that torture makes available is very poor and unreliable as intelligence.

Torture is an assertion of power over someone. In this sense I think it is indeed sadistic, but also tautological. The torturer tortures to show that he can. (It’s significant I think that the torturers who humiliated the Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib took photographs of what they were doing as a trophy, or souvenir.)

O’Brien doesn’t need any information from Winston. He already knows everything. Rather, he is making a point, and waiting patiently for Winston to understand it.
You could describe it as “a situation of enactment”. I take that phrase from Paul Scott’s novel The Day of the Scorpion (part of the Raj Quartet), with its horrible description of the interrogation and torture of Hari Kumar by the policeman Ronald Merrick. Merrick wants information from Kumar, about the rape of Daphne Manners. (Kumar keeps silent about this.) But beyond this, he wants to make a demonstration of what he sees as the truth about the British and the Indians, the rulers and the ruled, and he wants Kumar to acknowledge it. At one point, as Kumar narrates it, this happens:

“He pulled my head back again and put the cup close to my lips. Even while I was telling myself I’d never drink it and never say thank you I felt the water in my mouth. I heard myself swallow. He put the cup down and used both hands to turn my head to face him. He put his own head very close. We stared at each other.” A pause. “After a bit I heard myself say it.”
[Paul Scott, The Day of the Scorpion 1968 (London: Pan, 1988) p. 361.]

Scott and Orwell were very different writers, but I have always felt that this scene was written by someone who, consciously or not, was remembering Nineteen Eighty Four.