In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the torture room Winston fears most is Room 101.
Room 101 is located in the Ministry of Love, the government department responsible for imprisonment, interrogation, and punishment. The room is designed around each prisoner's deepest personal fear rather than a standard procedure. Winston's greatest terror is rats, so the Party threatens him with a cage of starving rats attached to his face.
The number 101 has become a widely recognized cultural symbol of personalized psychological torture. It is not the same as the Ministry of Truth, where Winston works, or the Thought Police, who arrest suspected dissidents. Orwell's novel presents Room 101 as the final stage of the Party's effort to destroy independent thought and force total loyalty to Big Brother.