Room 101

From Freepedia

This page is about the room in Nineteen Eighty-Four; for information about the TV series of the same name, see Room 101 (TV series).

Room 101 comes from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.

Room 101 is a torture chamber in which a prisoner is subjected to his own worst nightmare. Such is the omniscience of the state in the totalitarian society of 1984 that even a citizen's nightmares are known to the authorities. The nightmare — and therefore the threatened punishment — of the protagonist Winston Smith is to have his face gnawed by rats. Smith saves himself by begging the authorities to let his girlfriend, Julia (he is married but has not seen his wife in years), have her face gnawed out by the ferocious rodents. The torture — and what Winston does to escape it — utterly crushes the feelings between Smith and Julia, destroying their youthful idealism, their dreams for the future, and their feelings for each other. It should be noted that the book never actually suggests Julia is subjected to the rat torture (though she could have been threatened with her worst nightmare), and the original intent of threatening Winston with the rats probably wasn't to actually go through with the act, but to force him into betraying the only person he loved and therefore break his spirit.

Room 101 is supposedly named after a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House where Orwell used to sit through tedious meetings. Broadcasting House certainly had a Room 101 - its door was at the far end of a long corridor on the east side of the building - and it's possible that Orwell's wartime work at the BBC was part of the inspiration for 1984's 'Ministry of Truth'.

Room 101, like Floor 13, is often used in popular culture to give a sinister meaning to what would otherwise be an unremarkable room. For example, at the beginning of the 1999 movie The Matrix, Neo lives in Room 101.

Room 101 is the name of a 2001 movie directed by Mark Sheppard and starring Vincent Castellanos

In the 2005 series of Big Brother (UK) a housemate was required to enter a Room 101 to complete tedious and unpleasant tasks, including sorting different breeds of maggots.