When the government controls everything, what is considered truth and fiction? George Orwell’s 1984 is a captivating tale of government control. The ideal of totalitarianism, or total government control, is prevalent throughout the novel. A common Party slogan states, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell 30). The Party controls the media, the thoughts of its member, and even the lives of its members.
IngSoc, commonly referred to as the Party, has total control of the press. Winston works for the Records Department in the Ministry of Truth which constantly changes the names, dates, or an information that does not match current party statistics, and destroys any document that reflects previous statistics. Winston explains that,
As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of the Times had been assembled and collated, that the number would be reprinted, the original destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. The continuous alterations was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, soundtracks, cartoons, photographs – to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any …show more content…
This is also shown by Winston’s statement that, “Any number of the Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it” (35). This control exhibited by the government has become so commonplace to Winston, and other employees of the Ministry of Truth, that “with a movement which was as nearly a possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames”
IngSoc, commonly referred to as the Party, has total control of the press. Winston works for the Records Department in the Ministry of Truth which constantly changes the names, dates, or an information that does not match current party statistics, and destroys any document that reflects previous statistics. Winston explains that,
As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of the Times had been assembled and collated, that the number would be reprinted, the original destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. The continuous alterations was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, soundtracks, cartoons, photographs – to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any …show more content…
This is also shown by Winston’s statement that, “Any number of the Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it” (35). This control exhibited by the government has become so commonplace to Winston, and other employees of the Ministry of Truth, that “with a movement which was as nearly a possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames”