The Proles, Memories, and Giving Up
Throughout the novel, Winston is aware of the inevitability of being caught by the Thought Police, though this doesn’t seem to affect him as much as I thought it would.
His hope lies in the proles. It was almost as if Winston had already given up, and he was ready to pass his desire for freedom to the only people that weren’t being monitored.
However, unfortunately for Winston, Orwell implies that the proles probably won’t be able to overthrow the Party. Those who have a memory prior to the Revolution are quickly fading away. We see how Orwell characterizes the old man Winston was talking to: his memory is fragmented, his nervous system no more intricate than bits of thread hastily tied together, but even then, he isn’t really able to recall anything particularly relevant to Winston’s questions.
Does he simply exist as a sum of random impressions? Do we know that what he’s saying is even real? To me, this is Orwell’s hopelessness. Is there really a future for the proles? Is the lottery enough to placate them—to absolve them from forming the thoughts and recreating the memories necessary to overthrow the Party?
From this, I see this motif of memory being subjective recurring throughout the novel. Because of this, I want to ask the following questions: If we know the past has been falsified and erased, does an event only exist if someone has a memory of it? How does this play into the malleability of human memory? And furthermore, what would happen if an authoritarian government dared to manipulate our memories?
I think the event doesn't even exist if you have the memory of it. If everyone around you is conditioned to believe otherwise then eventually you will assume you were wrong and go with the crowd, go with big brother.
ReplyDeleteI think what causes hopelessness in 1984 is that the population has already reached a turning point, where there are more "false" memories than real ones. The Party has pretty much dedicated most of its energy towards wiping out the past and planting consistent lies.
ReplyDeleteAn event exists even if no one remembers it, but it has no impact. Technically, we could probably function fine without our episodic memory (this is memory of our own life experiences, so to speak) but I think most of us wouldn't feel like ourselves without it. So if a government tried to manipulate (and they could), they would have to reach the same turning point as 1984 did, otherwise the people would probably realize. Or they could just kill everyone that opposed it until people gave up.
The idea of memory has always been super scary to me, and honestly I think its an impossible force to truly fight against. By writing his Diary, Winston is doing one of the only possible acts to fight against the fallibility of his memory and the tampering of the Ministry of Truth. By writing out his own truth he is able to truly regulate his memory, and have at least one reliable source.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, the winners write history. Although usually that is used in the case of who is the bad guy and who is the good guy, This book pushes it a little further, to the point of rewriting every event they don't like. And while I would say no matter how much covering up you do, if an event happens, it happens, if no one knows about the event that no one can do anything about it and nothing changes. So because of the power of the Party they truly can just rewrite history. I would hope we as a people would rise up against an authoritarian government in any form, especially one that manipulated our memories, but we would have to find out about the manipulation first. So we can only hope.
ReplyDeleteI think that an important takeaway from the proles is that history does really feel like history when you're living through it. I believe that facts always remain facts despite us knowing them or not, but our biggest strength would be piecing our own personal histories together to create an overarching conclusion, a power through large numbers of people that the proles simply do not have access to it seems, as they are constantly systematically killed off for just having information.
ReplyDeleteI think it's Mr. Butler who really likes saying "if you tell a lie enough times, it becomes reality," and for the most part I think he's right. These people have been told *many* different lies for decades now. At that point, who knows what really happened at any certain point in time? Compounding this onto other aspects of the party's control, like not being allowed to have photographs or a diary, memory really becomes untrustworthy.
ReplyDeleteBig questions. I had to think a lot about this. I suppose the bad news is that memory is VERY easily manipulated, as a lot of research has shown -- and ruthless people can and do exploit that. The good news is human beings can't control everything, and the external world can always leave us clues as to what really happened -- we just have to realize the clues are there.
ReplyDeleteI think it's no coincident that the old man Winston talked to didn't have any big picture memories of the time before the revolution, as anyone that was suspected to be dangerous or intellegent was killed during the purges. Regardless, I do think the human memory is malleable and subjective, and an authoritarian regime could easily (are easily???) alter our ideas of the past if they wanted to.
ReplyDeleteThe first question is really interesting. The events did still happen, but since no one remembers it fades away just like the disappearing people in the society, so in this case I'd say that they don't exist. In the current world there's media manipulation and censorship in certain countries which can act to block certain memories. By destroying all of history and memory, it would make it much easier for people to blindly follow the government who say that they are there to help, even though you can't remember if anything they say is true.
ReplyDeleteI think the fact that events have happened is irrelevant to the current state of the world. There have been countless genocides that no one remembers anymore and they simply don't effect the current state of the world. We can think of the future as a function of the present, and therefore only events in the past that are recorded in the present matter at all for the future.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad to say, but I believe that this individual has realized that he cannot cause a massive change in his world. I think that is why there has never been a prole revolt. None of them believe that they have the ability or power to change anything, despite their numbers. If the proles become aware of how big of an impact they could make, something could definitely happen. But, sadly, I do not think that they will ever realize that.
ReplyDeleteBig Brother's goal doesn't seem to be to remove events from society's memory outright - this would be impossible, because there will always be people like Winston that are slightly discontent. The way that the Party changes the past isn't by making it so nobody remembers an event, but rather by making it so nobody is willing to admit the event happened. In my opinion, that is even more disturbing, because instead of controlling what information people are given, the Party controls what thoughts people are able to have.
ReplyDeleteOops this is Henry ^^
DeleteI think if enough people remember an event, then it exists, whether you're the winner or the loser, or telling lies or being truthful. There are many instances of people who are seen as the winners being exposed of horrible stuff they did.
ReplyDeleteI like the first question. Memory is such an interesting phenomenon. I think even if you have the memory, it doesn't mean it exists. Sure, keep believing what you want to, but if everyone else thinks the opposite, you might switch after giving into herd mentality.
ReplyDeleteWinston is in a unique position because of his job, which is changing historical records to fit the interests of the Party. I think that having this insider information about how the government is altering people's memories is what made Winston wonder whether life was better before the Party.
ReplyDeleteI think it's also worth noting that it must be so hard to be in a situation where you're constantly doubting the reality around you-- Winston KNOWS what he's being told isn't true but there's nowhere he can go to find out what really happened.
ReplyDeleteWe see that the job of some party members is to erase history. As history is rapidly being erased, in this case I don't think the event matters or is viewed as existing if someone doesn't have a memory of it. The proles have been so brainwashed that they can barely even discern right from wrong, and their blind trust in the falsified evidence of the Party is apart of that.
ReplyDelete