1984 Loyalty Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #19

"Do anything to me!" he yelled. "You've been starving me for weeks. Finish it off and let me die. Shoot me. Hang me. Sentence me to twenty-five years. Is there somebody else you want me to give away? Just say who it is and I'll tell you anything you want. I don't care who it is or what you do to them. I've got a wife and three children. The biggest of them isn't six years old. You can take the whole lot of them and cut their throats in front of my eyes, and I'll stand by and watch it. But not Room 101!" (3.1.71, the old tortured man at the Ministry of Love)

The type of torture the Party employs is so intense that the people subject to it are ready to betray anything and anyone in order to avoid it. No private loyalty can be said to exist after the threat of this pain.

Quote #20

"What have you done with Julia?" said Winston.

O'Brien smiled again. "She betrayed you, Winston. Immediately-unreservedly. I have seldom seen anyone come over to us so promptly. You would hardly recognize her if you saw her. All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her dirty-mindedness – everything has been burned out of her. It was a perfect conversion, a textbook case." "You tortured her?" (3.2.32-34)

Upon hearing of Julia’s betrayal, Winston is certain that she was subject to torture, just as he was. Loyalty is easy to breach in the face of torture.

Quote #21

"That's a first-rate training they give them in the Spies nowadays – better than in my day, even. What d'you think's the latest thing they’ve served them out with? Ear trumpets for listening through keyholes! My little girl brought one home the other night – tried it out on our sitting-room door, and reckoned she could hear twice as much as with her ear to the hole." (1.5.67, Parson)

Its reach not limited to technology, the Party employs children against their parents as another way of behavior surveillance. There is simply no loyalty to speak of.