1984: The Mutability Of The Past

1984: the Mutability of the Past

Our project symbolizes “the mutability of the past”, as seen in the novel 1984 by George Orwell. In the story, the Party is in control of all history books, media and external records. This makes it easy for them to mutilate the past and manipulate memories. Our past defines our identity: how we interpret and behave in certain situations. For this reason, manipulating the past gives the Party more power and control over how citizens act in the present. The typewriter, as a tool to edit and create documents, represents the idea of the Party rewriting history. The burnt pieces of paper represent the destroying of the truth and facts, and is seen historically in the mass book burnings that often happened

The picture of the man holding the puppets symbolizes the Party controlling the people, and that the people do not have a mind of their own. A puppeteer can control every aspect of its puppets: what it sees, what it says and its actions. Similarly, the Party had control of these things. Any information that was provided to the citizens was full of propaganda and false statements fabricated by the Party. “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right,” is one of our chosen quotes that further explains this idea. It can be seen from the image of Winston looking out the window that everything is under the control of Big Brother. The influence and power of the Party, represented by Big Brother, is widespread and dominant. The Party has complete control over Party members, meaning that they have control over the past, present and future.“The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever

This is especially prominent in totalitarian or dictatorship governments such as North Korea, and the former Soviet Union. Totalitarian governments today still have the need to mutilate the past to promote themselves and their ideologies in order to maintain control in a world where information is so easily shared and manipulated through relatively new kinds of media, ie. social media and the internet. We still do not known the full impact of information being so accessible, so we need to be all the more vigilant of the mutability of the past in historical records, and to a lesser extent, the bias, untruths and manipulation of the language we use. For example, according to rest of world, the Korean War ended in a stalemate and North Korea started the war. However, North Korea says it ended in a glorious victory and that the first attack came from the South, and that they were just defending themselves. This shows us that the message of the mutability of the past is still applicable today, and has validity because the human condition of believing convenient lies still