Comparing Orwell's 1984 And The NCAA

History tells many stories, such as important events, victories, failures, and mistakes that should not be repeated. In George Orwell’s novel 1984, Winston Smith, a man who is 39 years old, lives in a totalitarian state called Oceania, where he is forced to erase the past from his memory and believe what he is told by an unjust leader named Big Brother. Similar to Winston’s situation, the Penn’s State football team was stripped of their past wins and forced to give up their future wins to their opposing team by the NCAA in the New York Times article, George Orwell and the NCAA by Gary Alan Fine. In both stories, the past was forced to be forgotten for punishment and control. The NCAA was wrong in discrediting the Penn State football team’s successes, and Big Brother was wrong in rewriting history for the citizens of Oceania because changing the past can completely change the future. …show more content…
When the NCAA disregarded all of Penn State’s victories for two years, Fine said “Building a false history is the wrong way to recall the past” (Fine). Specifically, forgetting most of the university’s major triumphs would be similar to deleting parts of history that could never be found again. Furthermore, Penn State’s wins took many years to acquire, and eradicating them completely would overlook two years of achievements that would have definitely made a positive impact on the college’s history. The dangers of deleting the past is not a new concept, as demonstrated in novels such as