Week 7!

It would not matter if it killed you at once. To be killed was what you expected. But before death (nobody spoke of such things, yet everyone knew of them) there was the routine of confession that had to be gone through: the groveling on the floor, and screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth and bloody clots of hair. Why did you have to endure it, since the end was always the same? Why was it not possible to cut a few days or weeks out of your life? Nobody ever escaped detection, and nobody ever failed to confess. (pg 103)

This passage is filled with rhetorical devices. To start, the imagery that Orwell creates is so intense it makes the reader cringe. "The crack of broken bones," and "bloody clots of hair," are sounds and images that no one wants to experience. It also proves that the government during this time was allowed to torture innocent people. Next, the rhetorical questions leave the reader hanging. They are deep questions, with really no response, and they make the reader reminisce on their past, and wonder why they can't live it over again. Finally the overall dark tone of the passage conveys the meaning of the novel, that life in the future will not behold great things. That every person ever found completing a task that was not approved by the government, would not escape, and would have to confess, whether innocent or guilty.