The concept I found the most intriguing in 1984 is that the government controls all information regarding past events. Winston is a member of the department whose sole job is to destroy and rewrite history according to how the government wants it to be remembered. They go as far as creating new people, deleting others, creating false wars, and changing who they are allied with. They do all of this without society finding out bout what is going on and getting angry. They have completely brainwashed the population into believing everything they say, even if it contradicts what they have been saying for years prior. We know that Winston is conscious of what he is doing. He realizes that society is being controlled and brainwashed by what he is helping to do, and we know that he thinks it is wrong. What of his coworkers? Do they understand what they are doing?
If there is one way to completely dominate and control a group of people, it is to control how they remember the past. In 1984 it is accomplished, it seems, with ease. Nobody ever realizes that they are being lied to other than isolated people like Winston and Julia. The novel ends without anything changing. In reality I do not think that this could ever be accomplished. There are too many people who would realize what is happening, point it out and put a stop to it. For anything like this to actually happen, there would have to be a tremendous force ready and willing to support and back up who ever was controlling the rewrite of the past. I can't even imagine how one would go about creating a society like Oceania. What was it like in the beginning as history was just starting to change?
One difference between this text and, for example, The Handmaid's Tale, is that Oceania has been in existence much longer, and these members have grown within its parameters rather than in a previous version of a society. They seem unaware that other possible versions of the world exist, or did exist.
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