Control In The Book 1984 By George Orwell

Who controls your memory you or the government? In the novel 1984, written by George

Orwell, the main character Winston Smith lives in a totalitarian controlled country with strict

unwritten rules about showing emotion or thought. He starts a rebeling love affair with Julia, a

highly sexual being with a cunning spirit, that leads him to O'Brien who reveals secrets of The

Brotherhood. Throughout his story history is manipulated to suit the present and destroy the

past. All reasons are to make the government have more control over their citizens of Oceania.

From the ministry of truth, whose job is changing facts in documents, to the way humans are

forced to doublethink, and even the concept of time passing with an apparent

This is the job of workers in

the ministry of truth to make sure “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has

been rewritten, every picture has been repainted”(195). Thus, the past is bluffed in order to

control the present, but even Winston explores his memory in an attempt to reconnect with the

past. He in fact believes the past holds the answers to the Party’s rise. Their ongoing theory is

that the only way to control the past is to control the future. To erase time itself the operation of

statues, streets and buildings are being renamed or altered. Including dates and information from

the day before to suit the current news, essentially history has stopped because the people are

under strict influence to accept everything the Party says. Even if they change it the next day and the people know that what they are is saying is not true. For if a person voices an opinion of

disagreement the Party will lash back and make them in the mind's eye, disappear.

Employing the concept of doublethink, Indeed, no thought can be had without the right

words with which to express it. Then the possibility of rebellion or disobedience would