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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—A Skeletonlike Thing:
During months of torture, Winston has not laid eyes on his body in its entirety. As part of the psychological torture to which he subjects Winston, O'Brien brings a three-sided mirror into the cell to expose Winston to his reflection. Taking place in the third chapter of the third book, this part is rich with both similes and imagery, as the narrator recounts Winston's horror at discovering his mirror image.
A bowed, gray-colored, skeletonlike thing was coming toward him. Its actual appearance was frightening, and not merely the fact that he knew it to be himself. He moved closer to the glass. The creature’s face seemed to be protruded, because of its bent carriage. A forlorn, jailbird’s face with a nobby forehead running back into a bald scalp, a crooked nose and battered-looking cheekbones above which the eyes were fierce and watchful. The cheeks were seamed, the mouth had a drawn-in look.
In this part, Winston balances the knowledge that he is gazing at himself with an absolute sense of alienation. The narrator captures this through the impersonal diction of "a thing," "a creature," and "a face." The indefinite articles convey that he is not yet ready to claim what he sees as himself. Over the course of the passage, the narrator seems to be describing an animal skeleton or a ragged doll.
As the passage continues, the narrator narrows in on Winston's filthiness:
Except for his hands and a circle of his face, his body was gray all over with ancient, ingrained dirt. Here and there under the dirt there were the red scars of wounds, and near the ankle the varicose ulcer was an inflamed mass with flakes of skin peeling off it. But the truly frightening thing was the emaciation of his body. The barrel of the ribs was as narrow as that of a skeleton; the legs had shrunk so that the knees were thicker than the thighs.
For the reader, the grayness and grittiness of Winston's skin give it a tactile quality, which combines with the visual imagery of his splotchy scars. The disconcerting tactile and visual imagery is combined with similes to give the reader a fully fledged picture of what Winston looks like. His ribs are like that of a skeleton.
This passage marks a turning point for Winston, especially in his mental state. Although the long-term torture has been breaking him down, he has managed to retain a sense of himself. Once he sees what he looks like, he begins to fully comprehend what he has gone through—and will continue to go through—at the hands of the Party. O'Brien uses this tactic to show how degraded Winston is, after he claims that he is superior to the Party. He shows Winston what he sees when he looks at him, pointing out his grime, dirt, stink, emaciation, baldness, and tooth loss. He tells Winston that he is nothing but a bag of filth, at which point Winston collapses and begins to weep.
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