Control of the Present and Past: Chapters 2-6

Many dystopian novels have something against books, writing, or anything in that general area. For example we can take BNW and Fahrenheit 451 as examples. All of these societies ban books and creativity in general to stop ideas of another way of life/freedom from spreading. We can also very prominently see the common theme of whoever controls the present, controls the past. Winston clearly doesn't remember his childhood well, and there is a severe lack of physical records that show anything from the past. We also know that a lot of documents have been altered by the current government. I find this fact particularly interesting about the society in 1984 because other dystopian novels tend to simply destroy historical records instead of completely changing it, but the society in 1984 seems to drastically change documents to tell completely different stories. I would think this is a bit risky on the part of the government because then it would make obvious the deceit of the government to people who have memories telling them otherwise of an event. Then again, the citizens are under such close surveillance that they don't get a chance to go a hair astray. My question is: is it better to simply destroy historical records or to fabricate them as well?

Comments

  1. L. MoffittFebruary 9, 2021 at 7:36 AM

    Fabrication seems much worse because it might be impossible to destroy every remnant of history. Replacing people's memories would be far more insidious because they'd think they still have "history."

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  2. ZoeyFebruary 9, 2021 at 7:48 AM

    The government in 1984 fabricates these new records so thoroughly that they leave no evidence of the past being fabricated or even existing as anything else. Sure a few people might have the same memory of an event but if they have no way to communicate to each other about it or even write it down, does that memory even exist? It does feel a little weird that everyone goes along with the government blatantly changing the past, seemingly forgetting their own memories right after they happened, but, like you said, they don't really have the choice to do anything else.

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