 Finally, Aristotle says that sometimes people do wrong actions “under pressure which overstrains human nature and which no one could withstand”, and such actions are forgiven (NE 3.1 1110a23–25). Unfortunately, he does not give an example or explain why such actions are pardoned. But a plausible example would be in the novel 1984, when Winston Smith betrays his lover Julia at the point where O’Brien threatens to have his face chewed off by rats, after months of torture in the bowels of the Ministry of Love. While the betrayal does have an “internal origin” in Smith’s terror of the rats and his belief that betraying Julia would spare him, almost any human being would have been broken under the circumstances. Therefore, when we wish to explain why Smith betrays Julia, it is not because of any character flaws or disordered desires particular to Smith—instead, we say that no matter whether a person was virtuous or vicious, they would have acted as Smith did in such a situation, so Smith’s betrayal doesn’t reflect badly on him.