Room 101 - Definition

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 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.

Room 101 is supposedly named after a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House where Orwell used to sit through tedious meetings.

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, Neo lives in Room 101 at the beginning of the 1999 movie The Matrix.