It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal" (Orwell 310). The things contained in Room 101 are the worst thing in the world for the person that is being tortured, in Winston's case that was rats. .
The purpose of exposing Winston to his worst nightmare was to successfully convert him by making him betray his love, Julia. This shows dehumanization because the Ministry of Love got rid of the only piece of reality Winston could cling to, his love of Julia. Dehumanization in the form of torture can also be shown through the Rape of Nanking, when the Japanese army invaded Manchuria and destroyed everything and everyone in their path without a thought. They brutalized the Chinese citizens of Nanking to show their superiority over them. They needed to show their superiority because the Chinese vastly had a greater population than the Japanese and they needed to show their dominance in order to take over China. Some examples of how they brutalized the Chinese citizens are that, "Chinese men were used for bayonet practice and in decapitation contestsNot only did live burials, castration, the carving of organs, and the roasting of people become routine, but more diabolical tortures were practice" (Chang 419). They Japanese soldiers killed the defenseless citizens of Nanking for competition purposes and killed them in the most gruesome ways possible. .
The torture was so gruesome that even a Nazi soldier that was there said that it was the most horrific thing he ever saw. This can relate to the torture in Room 101 because in Room 101, the Ministry of Love tortured their victims in very gruesome ways and so did the Japanese soldiers in Nanking. The critic, Ralph Ranald, also relates to the topic of torture in 1984. He says, "Torture is communication. Worse, to be tortured is not the worst thing in the world, if only the victim is understood by his torturer, as Winston feels he is understood by O'Brien" (Ranald 251).
