Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [1095]

‘You asked me once,’ said O’Brien, ‘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.’ … ‘The worst thing in the world,’ said O’Brien, ‘varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal.’ — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 1095

Note

O’Brien articulates the party’s central doctrine of total individualization: the torture is engineered to exploit each person’s single unique unbearable point, extending the panoptic control of thought into the most private recesses of the self.