History provides us with many examples of the great lengths that the government or the society is willing to traverse to suppress or censor what they consider dissentious or “incorrect” ideas and values. When Knowledge becomes a weapon against the totalitarian authority, and History becomes the evidence, a rewriting of historical facts is required to curb the people witnessing the ‘change’. The authority therefore constantly refines and alters History, through the medium of language, with the ultimate goal that no one will be able to conceptualise anything that might question the authority’s absolute power. Winston Churchill aptly said in his speech ‘The Defence of Freedom and Peace (The Lights are Going Out)’, “… how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge?” Hence, complete complacency and ignorance from the people is what the authority requires, both of them shown at their extremes in two dystopian novels, George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. If a trend is not questioned and allowed to grow its roots, then it grows into something that is beyond the control of the masses, or worse still, beyond the awareness. …show more content…
In Orwell’s 1984, the ruling Party edits and revises literature until the original content is far from recognisable, if not completely rewritten while in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the system destroys literature by fire, a highly visible and noticeable method, to eradicate all traces of a past way of