1984

The Party has made it possible for Winston to be homesick for a place that does not exist. It exists solely in his memory. The Party can deny that things have ever existed because of its concept of “doublethink.”

            The Party’s use of doublethink enables Winston both to question that incidents in his memory ever happened, and also to assure him that they did happen. Both realities are not at odds with each other because the Party has made them the same object; they are products of the same thought process. The Party uses doublethink to keep themselves in power. It matters little if its bloodlines die off, because its ideology will not cease. They understand that memory is knowledge, and have attacked public’s memory to become in charge of the past. Controlling memory in that fashion allows them to remain in control as long as the present has always been the past. The past is constantly changing because the past has to be consistent with the present.  The continuous alteration of the past is the only standard of comparison, and is thus tolerated. The Party’s infallibility rests solely on the alteration of the past. Memory is questionable, and the past is alterable, but neither is ever fully distinct from the other.  Similarly paradoxical realities exist in the Party’s use of “blackwhite”,  meaning the ability to “believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary” (218). 

Written records can, as Orwell explains, be tampered with. Only through memory, then, can the past be remembered. This seems ridiculous. Of course memory is required to remember things. However, the Party is able to question even such given facts. Its mere social climate regulates crimes punishable by death that are not even illegal. Nothing is legal or illegal because there are no laws. Government does not exist here, but that is to say the so-called “nongovernment” is somehow still fully serviceable.  The lack of government present nevertheless is capable of asserting that reality is nothing but “inside the skull” (274).  So-called “external reality” does not exist, because the mind is the source of all power. Only in the mind, in the consciousness of humans, can the past exist, because only in the mind can anything exist. Contrary to Winston, however, I believe that the “immoral collective brain” (287) must be in the right, even though there is no external standard. It is by holding onto the individual thought, the idea that my single mind makes a difference, because my mind is my reality, that makes me human, that makes my reality real. Nothing can be real without a reference point. So, then, my reality is real because it is real to me. That is all the checking necessary. I have a past that exists because I can remember it. I remember that I am alive, and thus legitimize my reality.