Ministries in Nineteen Eighty-Four

These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.The use of contradictory names in this manner may have been inspired by the British and American governments; during the Second World War, the British Ministry of Food oversaw rationing (the name "Ministry of Food Control" was used in World War I) and the Ministry of Information restricted and controlled information, rather than supplying it; while, in the U.S., the War Department was abolished and replaced with the "National Military Establishment" in 1947 and then became the Department of Defense in 1949, right around the time that Nineteen Eighty-Four was published.

[5] It is an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete rising 300 m (980 ft) into the air, containing over 3000 rooms above ground.

There is also a large part underground, probably containing huge incinerators where documents are destroyed after they are put down memory holes.

Within the novel, Orwell elaborates that the deeper reason for its existence, the "why", is to maintain the illusion that the Party is absolutely infallible, and should be trusted without question.

As explained in Emmanuel Goldstein's book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, the Ministry of Peace revolves around the principle of perpetual war.

Perpetual war uses up all surplus resources, keeping most citizens in lives of constant hardship—and thus preventing them from learning enough to comprehend the true nature of their society.

Like the names of other ministries, it also has a literal application: Perpetual war is what keeps the "peace" (the status quo) in Oceania and the balance of power in the world, and since the other major powers also use perpetual warfare as a means of maintaining the status quo, the two concepts are functionally identical.

It enforces loyalty to Big Brother through fear, buttressed through a massive apparatus of security and repression, as well as systematic brainwashing.

The Ministry of Love building has no windows and is surrounded by barbed wire entanglements, steel doors, hidden machine-gun nests, and guards armed with "jointed truncheons".

This is typical of the language of Newspeak, in which words and names frequently contain both an idea and its opposite; the orthodox party member is nonetheless able to resolve these contradictions through the disciplined use of doublethink.

Room 101 (pronounced one-oh-one[7]), introduced in the climax of the novel, is the basement torture chamber in the Ministry of Love, in which the Party attempts to subject prisoners to their own worst nightmare, fear or phobia, with the objective of breaking down their final resistance.

This cage is fitted over Smith's face, but he saves himself by begging the authorities to subject his lover, Julia, to suffer this torture instead of him.

The intent of threatening Winston with the rats was to break his spirit by forcing him into betraying the only person he loved, thus eliciting his compliance.

As told in Goldstein's book, the economy of Oceania is very important, and it is necessary to have the public continually create useless and synthetic supplies or weapons for use in the war, while they have no access to the means of production.

This is the central theme of Oceania's idea that a poor, ignorant populace is easier to rule over than a wealthy, well-informed one.

There, Batman finds Commissioner Gordon tortured in a virtual reality simulator, and must solve riddles to free him.