1984: Manipulation of the Past and Thought Control
Chapter 8: In principle, a Party member had no spare time and was never alone except in bed. It was assumed that, if he was not working, eating, or sleeping, he would be taking part in some collective recreation. Doing anything that implied a tendency to solitude, even taking a walk alone, was always a bit dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, meaning individualism and eccentricity.
“Steamer” was the nickname that, for some reason, the proles gave to rocket bombs. Winston quickly threw himself to the ground. The proles were almost always right when they gave a warning of this kind. They seemed to possess a kind of instinct that warned them several seconds in advance of the arrival of a rocket, although the rockets were supposed to travel faster than sound.
And when memory failed and written records were falsified, the Party’s claims of having improved the conditions of human life had to be necessarily accepted because there was not, nor would there ever be, a standard of living against which they could be compared.
The hunting down and destruction of books had been carried out as thoroughly in the proles’ neighborhoods as in the Party’s houses and everywhere else. It was almost impossible for a copy of a book printed before 1960 to exist anywhere in Oceania.
The Manipulation of History in 1984
The relationship between the passage used by Adolf Hitler in his book and the depiction of the past in Orwell’s novel describes how a government maintains a dictatorial regime, erasing and manipulating past events to control citizens. In both historical and fictional contexts, it shows how the manipulation of the past puts an end to dissidence to avoid contradiction to the regime.
Furthermore, the only past that existed was the one that the government invented, and anyone who tried to modify it was “vaporized.” In the end, the past had to be completely eliminated until it no longer existed.
As the author states: “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell, George, p. 89). This quote represents the idea that the future will be controlled by those who change the past, making people believe in a new reality.
Doublethink and the Repression of Freedom
To sum up, the thoughtcrime opposed to doublethink and the Party’s directives lead to the repression of freedom. The power to alter reality just because the government wants it is known as doublethink, and that is what Winston’s work consists of. In other words, when news disappears from the press, it can be said that it has never existed.
Information Control and Thoughtcrime
The control of information is used to dominate societies, so the government tries to ensure that thoughtcrime does not occur. This manipulation shapes and controls the future by acquiring the mental ability necessary to convince oneself, but according to Winston, it is time to take action. And this is reflected when he begins to write his diary, telling anecdotes from the past. Because although he works for the Ministry of Truth, we know that he is against the government and hides his thoughts to avoid committing a mental crime.