Winston almost got his eyes eaten by rats

In the haunting, futuristic, sci-fi 1984, George Orwell gives us a warning against despotism and tyranny. Published just five years after the end of WWII, we can expect most of his original readers knew what totalitarian governments consisted in and why they were to be resisted at all cost, or even abolished. So, his primary aim is not convincing us of their illegitimacy, nor is he arguing why this or that type of governance is better than another. His main purpose is to expose these governments as surprisingly more insidious than we have imagined by telling a story of a nation, called Oceana, whose unfettered despotism invades every human element including the soul. Imagine if Nazi Germany had convinced the Soviets to ally and together continued Hitler's empire for another thirty years. It is also worth discussing how these governments arise in the first place. If we know that a government is tyrannical, then of course we may easily reject it in principle. Even though real resistance may be very difficult; the decision to reject it is more or less straightforward and simple. But if we're caught up in the process of becoming a nation which is gradually demanding more and more of its citizens, then the question of national support is much more difficult, as I suspect it could have been for many Germans in the early 30s.
Winston, Orwell's protagonist, resists the political leaders of Oceana, simply named, "The Party", as best he can but ultimately fails; at the end of the novel we are left assuming the party is stronger than ever on its way to forcing everyone into total submission. Winston works for the party in the "Ministry of Truth" as a newspaper writer who is ironically also responsible for erasing and modifying historic records, newspaper articles, radio programs, magazines, books, etc in order to allow the party the pretense of always being correct. But it doesn't stop there. The party mutilates novels and screenplays from all the great writers so that their work will appear to coincide with The party's agenda, which is summed up in three contradictions: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. Several times during his role at the ministry, his superiors remind him of a tenent of their ideology: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." The common sense view of the past and the view held by Winston is that it is unchangeable, set in place, permanent, so to "control the past" seems absurd.
The party is obsessed with monitoring the people; with video cameras and hidden microphones at every street corner, restaurant, store, hotel, bank, transport station, everyone is continuously under survelience. Even in the solitude of one's home, privacy is never guaranteed because the "thought police" can detect mere whispers of dissent in the minds of the people. By meddling with historic records and by censoring every word, thought and deed, the party has an impressive grip on society. If our attitudes and consciences are in part formed by what we read and who we talk to, then censorship may be one of the most powerful weapons of a tyrant. By changing what all the history books say, the party believes the past retroactively changes with it. Winston's personal struggle which eventually incriminates him into captivity essentially rests on the distinction between the permanence of the past and the subjective rewriting of the past.
After his capture, Winston is severely tortured to the point of being unrecognizable. He looses track of time and betrays everyone he has ever known, including his best friend, Julia. But by this time he can hardly be culpable for anything because his tormentors have cleared every thought from his mind except the awareness of pain and every desire from his body except the end of that pain. By allowing the party to prevail, Orwell is saying if a nation gets to this point then its people are hopelessly depraved. Hopefully we will never know if this is true, but we ought to guard against even the miniscule tendencies toward Oceana.