Summary Of 1984 By George Orwell

History - as in His Story
Henry Kissinger published a book in 1954 about twenty years prior to becoming Richard Nixon’s secretary of state called, A World Restored. His work described nineteenth-century European history from the view of Austrian and English leaders and is famous for the quote, “History is the memory of states.” Kissinger’s disregard for the outlooks of the masses that were affected adversely by the leaders’ decisions supports the idea that history is truly subjective and can be seen in many different ways. This is also shown in George Orwell’s, 1984, in which an overpowering government rewrites history to weaken the people’s memories thus forcing them to believe what is written. History cannot exist independently of human
An account of the settlement of the United States by Europeans versus an account by Native Americans shows this. The fact of the situation as society recognizes it is that Europeans came to settle land that already belonged to an indigenous people. However, from the European perspective, with goals backed by the highly esteemed wishes for glory, God, and gold, they were rightly overtaking the land. Native Americans would disagree, stating that the Europeans had no right to throw them out of the land that their ancestors had settled long before. Although the facts of the historical event cannot be changed, the idea can be. Mankind remembers historical events by the ideas and personal opinions they form about them therefore, history is
One of the Party’s slogans is, “Ignorance is Strength,” because the peoples’ ignorance to the contradictions of history is what gives the government such power over them. By this strategy, paired with others including “War is Peace” and “Freedom is Slavery,” the Party disallows the public to think their own thoughts. The protagonist himself, Winston Smith, is revises and deletes evidence so that the “history” conforms to the Party’s changing desires. At one point Winston realizes the connection between a person’s memories of the past and their outlook on the present. “And when memory failed and written records were falsified…there …never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested” (Orwell 95). With altered historical records, people had no way to challenge the government’s claims but they also had nothing on which to base their memories. The changing of written documents does not change the actual happenings of the past, rather future people’s perception of