Quotation analysis - 1984

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

This quotation presents one of the parties slogans and is a perfect example as to how the party controls its citizens. The party being conniving and strategic, forbids memories. Over time, these human memories cannot fully be trusted upon without proof and records which the government also forbids unless in the hand of the higher power. In bureaus, the party then continuously alters these records and continuously changes the past. Big Brother can in result always be looked upon in a good light by its citizens. However this is dishonest, and Winston is in complete confusion when he wants to reveal this lie.


I chose this quotation because as i re-read this sentence, I realised how applicable it is to the real world. History is a very important part of a country's governance and the elite few hold every piece of a country's historic record as well as have the power to manage that information however they please (strategically the government will share specific pieces of information) . In consequence common society does not have a full knowledge of their country's history or do not hold importance or much sensibility to specific important events that took place as only certain parts of history are highlighted. Obviously, this is in order to keep the country running in the government's favour and put up a certain image for nations abroad. Canada is a very privileged country in terms of freedom, however this quotation really made me made think about how much we are really being manipulated by the government. The society in 1984 complied with Big brothers views by the use of certain methods so what proves that we haven’t with our own government.

This is a really interesting quote. I like how you talked about the memories of the citizens.

The Party has this much control over everything because they are able to brainwash the citizens. Take Winston for instance, he was completely against the Party and even had a memory of seeing a picture of the three men in the Chestnut Tree cafe. However, once the Party got a hold of Winston, O’Brien tortured him so much that Winston began to believe everything O’Brien was telling him and, therefore, all his past memories were “erased” including his memory of the three men in the Chestnut Tree cafe.

This is the slogan of the party, out of the 3, that I found to be the most relevant to our world. We believe that because of the freedom we have reached in Canada, we learn history mostly as it is. However, the history books that we are tought in school could still be either ignoring certain events or alternating the importance of them. For example, we are tought more about the 1929 economic crash than the 2007-2008 one, but which really affects today's world with more significance... However, because of a brilliant invention called the Internet, everybody can access their own version of history and so we think that we are free to learn what we want. In fact, there are of course exceptions, but most people who find something on the Internet that explains something differently than history books will often disavow that information and say the website is not a «reliable source». It is normal to act as such: what we are tought as kids sticks with us for the rest of our life. But then can we really say that we have control over our education of history?