Rate my essay...Also need help with 3rd argument
The essay topic is: "What is the author trying to say about the significance of the past?"
Here's my essay(Yes, i used some of your ideas for my conclusion...Thank you!):
“Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.” This is a quotation from the novel 1984 by George Orwell. This book shows what the world might be like under a totalitarian regime, where the government controls every aspect of its citizens. George Orwell lets us imagine this world through a character named Winston Smith. Winston is an average man that works for the government, by changing the history and replacing it with what The Party wants. The Party is the name of the government and there leader is Big Brother. The Party attempts to control the people’s minds by getting them to love Big Brother. The warmth of the name “Big Brother” suggests a caring, and protective leader. The people of Oceania are under the impression that the past was a terrible place full of slavery and oppression, and The Party had made their lives easier. With The Party in control of the present, they can alter the past to justify their actions. Orwell is simply warning his readers, that the past is significant, and we must always keep the memories stored to stop future mistakes from recurring; and we cannot let any other information, such as the media, alter our perception on what has happened.
Throughout the book, Winston struggles to recover his own memories, and attempt to imagine what the world in the past was like before the rise of The Party and Big Brother. Winston questions many elderly people, and visits an antique store in an attempt to do so. The glass paper weight that he buys symbolizes his challenge to try and connect with his past, and the history of the world. When the Thought Police come in and finally arrest Winston, the glass paper weight is shattered into many pieces. This symbolizes Winston’s lost hope for finding out, and connecting with the past. This task is easier said than done, because The Party prohibits keeping any pictures or documents that you may have from the past. This weakens the citizen’s minds, and creates a blurry memory of the past, which The Party replaces with their version. Throughout the book, The Party is constantly changing who they have been at war with, and who has been their ally, between Eastasia and Eurasia. On page 148, suddenly The Party claims that the war is against Eastasia, and they have never been at war with Eurasia. The citizens immediately believe this with no questions, and no one involved in the protest had doubted any of it. This shows that The Party has complete control of the people’s minds, and how blind the citizens are because of the history that The Party altered. In our world today, the media can alter our view on how we look at things; it is important that we recognise this kind of brain washing, and not believe everything we hear.
Winston begins to realize that The Party controls the past, and thus controls the ability to say that “2+2=5”. He understands now that since The Party controls the peoples mind, and he is told that the Universe exists only in the mind, therefore The Party controls the Universe. Winston knows that since The Party controls the people’s minds, and has weakened their memory; there is no way of proving that The Party has failed in providing for the people. But with The Party controlling the present, they adjust the history and these false statements confirm The Party changing the world for the better. The ultimate goal of The Party is power, and they believe by converting everyone’s perception of the past to theirs they will have ultimate control over their people. Winston begins to understand this when O’Brian tells him that the past only exists in peoples minds, and since there is no actual evidence of the past, The Party’s version then becomes the truth. People in this day and age often say, “Forget about it, that’s in the past.” But Orwell pleads to us to grip onto the past, and not let go, by showing us what can happen if we let the past memories depart.
(3rd argument goes here)
Our history creates our identity, and that's why it's so important. If our history stops existing as our own, and becomes a universal truth, we lose every sense of individual existence, in a way, and become nothing more than mindless drones. Memories can be false and implanting them through The Party news broadcasts makes the past fluid. Clearly, there are no historians in 1984 as we know them. The Party ultimately attempts to control people by changing the past, and forces them to live a life of terror and fear. Orwell would have been fascinated by movements like Holocaust denial - where mountains of evidence are ignored and eyewitnesses become fewer. We know for a fact what happened, but people still try to change the truth. How much easier this becomes when one organization has control of all the information is what Orwell is conveying. Without physical reference points - like the ornament - memories are just that, memories, with no value at all.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Give me some feedback, and also try to help me think of some ideas for the 3rd argument.
Thanks guys/gals.
