| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"19RICHARDS" |
| Date: |
25 Dec 2007 03:26:55 PM |
| Object: |
Re: Cards ending soon... |
in front of you, and a
roaring sound in your ears. There was something terrible on the other side
of the wall. You knew that you knew what it was, but you dared not drag it
into the open. It was the rats that were on the other side of the wall.'
'O'Brien!' said Winston, making an effort to control his voice. 'You
know this is not necessary. What is it that you want me to do?'
O'Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the
schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully
into the distance, as though he were addressing an audience somewhere
behind Winston's back.
'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough. There are occasions
when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death.
But for everyone there is something unendurable -- something that cannot be
contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling
from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up
from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is
merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed. It is the same with the rats.
For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot
withstand. even if you wished to. You will do what is required of you.
'But what is it, what is it? How can I do it if I don't know what it
is?'
O'Brien picked up the cage and brought it across to the nearer table.
He set it down carefully on the baize cloth. Winston could hear the blood
singing in his ears. He had the feeling of sitting in utter loneliness. He
was in the middle of a great empty plain, a flat desert drenched with
sunlight, across which all sounds came to him out of immense distances. Yet
the cage with the rats was not two metres away from him. They were e
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