1984 Blog 3

In the second half of book one, the concept of controlling the past is presented to its readers. This concept means that the past is controlled such that it can be altered without objection and no one will take any notice. It is used as a means for control of the citizens of 1984 by the Party. The Party uses the past in order to convince its civilians that they are always right. History is constantly changing in order to fit the future that the Party wants. In order to maintain the society that they have strove so hard to create, the Party has to make sure that no one remembers, if only vaguely, how the world used to be. This way they will think that their present state of living is normal and is a lot better than in the past. This makes it seem like the Party is providing for their people in every best way possible. The Party erases the past by recreating/rewriting it in the history books in the way that they want everyone to believe thins happened. Another mechanism for controlling the past, is to get rid of the people from the past who might cause trouble. The Though Police can take people away in the dead of night and no one will ever really know what will happen, all of their records will be destroyed and in a short time no one will care about what happened to them because history is always changing and the missing person will have become old news.