Who Controls The Past In George Orwell's 1984

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The Party in Orwell’s 1984 strives to control absolutely everything, be it past, present or future. Its primary method of manipulating the past is to revise every source of historical information and news of the bygone years for its own advantage. The totalitarian state is totally against its members keeping written interpretations of their day-to-day lives and persists that any photographs that defy this policy should be destroyed through memory holes, a common sight which can be noticed around the state of Oceania. Because of these factors, people’s recollections become increasingly unreliable and distorted, with reality sometimes becoming indistinct, too. For instance, when Winston begins writing his diary, he is not wholly sure “that this was 1984” because “It was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two”. Consequently, the inhabitants of Oceania are, before long, prepared to believe whatever the party tries to drill in to them. The slogan “Who controls the past controls the future” appears twice in 1984, once in the first…show more content…
In this instance, the Handmaids are forbidden from talking to each other, which immediately causes the past to be slowly forgotten, slowly but surely; as without repetition, there will inevitably be no recollection. Many of the Handmaids are brainwashed into thinking (similarly to 1984) that times of the past were hostile, and they had in fact been saved. Women of the past are branded as sluts, and this is highlighted when Aunt Lydia shows a group of them an old pornographic video from before the revolution. However, the “brainwashing” is not effective on all of the handmaids, as Offred highlights, “I want everything back, the way it was. But there is no point to it, this wanting.” Offred knows that there is no point in yearning; the state is under full control by the commanders, it’s a patriarchal society in which most women are

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