Tangential: this seem to be an extremely minor opinion of mine, but does messaging from O'Brien to Winston not boil down to:

  - "for god's sake please play by the rules, get into the power, and only then and only by doing so join us the Miniluv equals IRA; do not try to walk through the front door and topple the building by hand"  
  - "I thought you were smart enough to understand the intricacy of this game, spared precious resources for you, and giving you multiple chances. Your undecided and uncultured reactions to my efforts are irritating"

Or am I absolutely hallucinating? Is O'Brien as a sad, captured, ex-revolutionist government torturer all there is to it?