Memory

Remembering something in 1984 is practically impossible. What you think is true, could end up being false. In 1984, all the texts are rewritten over and over again. Speeches made by Big Brother are rewritten to make it seem like everything that comes out of his mouth is true. Because all the texts are rewritten, there really is no truth in 1984. Wilson tries to convince O'Brien that the Earth is older than man kind and O'Brien won't hear it because all his life he has been force feed the Party's lies.

"We can shut them out of existence. Oceania is the world.'

'But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny-helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited.'

Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness." (Orwell, 218).

O'Brien can't fathom that anything existed before humans. That shows how powerful having a past is. How the past is written and passed down can change our perspective of everything. In our world most people believe that evolution happened and that dinosaurs roamed the earth, while in 1984, humans have always existed and there was never a time when they weren't there. Dinosaur bones were created by scientist according to the people in the Party.

All of our history books are written over and over again, it seems likely that eventually people will leave things out or rephrase a sentence that completely changes history. Does that surprise you, to know that everything in your history book could be a lie that we all just believe? Do you think that there's a way to come up with a way to record history accurately? If so, how? Do you think that the truth actually exists or is it how we perceive the truth?

Language in 1984

     The language in 1984 took me sometime to get use to. There were multiple times in which the word "proles" was used. It took to the part when Winston slept with the prostitute for me to understand that proles were prostitutes. Or did I get that wrong and a prole is anybody who's not part of the Party?

      Wilson was given instructions on what to do for his rewrite,

"times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusgood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise unsub antefiling.

In Oldspeak (or standard English) this might be rendered:

 The reporting of Big Brother's Order for the Day in the Times of December 3rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to nonexistent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing." (Orwell, 40).

     Wilsons coworker, Syme, said that Oceania was the only language in the world that got smaller every year (Orwell, 46). I can understand using double speak to make things sound better than they are but I don't understand why they get rid of most of the language. They take out a word when double and un can be used, but what's the point of shortening Big Brother to bb? When I was reading the Newspeak words I could pick out what went where (after reading the translated version). Something I noticed was that the structure of the sentence was different. If they went in the same order shouldn't it go something like this

"times reporting bb doubleplus dayorder 3.18.83 refs unpersons rewirte fullwise unsub antefiling."

     Double speak can actually be really useful in life. I would rather someone tell me that I'm going to the making of a better child room than going to detention. The use of double speak in our language is already a thing, so I think it's only a matter of time before we start using language like they do in 1984. I don't think it will be as drastic but we already use acronyms in every life, it wouldn't be hard to change the language. Do you ever think that we could completely change our language to look like how it does in 1984 or do you think that that's to much of a drastic change? By making the language into a couple simple words, do you think that the Party is brainwashing it's citizens?

 

Why/ how do we dehumanize the enemy?

       Humans can do many things that we really do not want to. We can drop a bomb on a country and kill thousands of people. We can issue an airstrike knowing that it will kill 40 elementary students. But we can't seem to see a single person die. If we never meet the person that was murdered, then it's almost like they never existed. We would rather pretend that it never happened, then find out the murdered persons name.
       By dehumanizing the enemy we no longer need to worry about who we killed. They are just a face in the crowd that doesn't matter to you. You don't have to look into their face and see that they're the one you killed. In 1984 during the Two Minutes Hate Winston talks about Oceania's enemy's.

"-row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar." (Orwell, 14-15).



      In 1984, the people in Oceania think that killing is perfectly fine because they think the enemy deserves to die. They view the enemy as nothing more than animals, so that makes it much easier to kill. By dehumanizing the enemy you no longer have to worry about if they die or not because in the end you think that they probably deserve it. Do you think that by seeing the enemy as nothing that it would be easier to kill them? If you never met the person that was killed would  you remember them after some time goes by or would you rather just forget about them?