One major theme that is predominantly shown in chapters two and three of Nineteen Eighty-Four is that individuals do not have any control over their own destinies as they are being oppressed by a totalitarian party. This theme is clearly demonstrated when Winston can hardly recall anything of his childhood: “…he was struggling to think his way backward into the dim period of his early childhood…. When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness” (32). This quotation displays that due to the Party’s control over its citizens and its law to erase all physical documents from the past, none of the individuals can remember anything of their histories and therefore, believe in everything
