1984 and Altering the Past

The people in power at the present control the past. They make the past what they want it to be. They are the ones who keep the record and write the history books. How many history books are there about the history of Carthage? How many are on the subject of the Roman Empire’s history? There are many more books about the Roman Empire. Around 200BC the Romans crushed Carthage and showed that they were in power. They destroyed Carthage’s history, and could write in their records whatever they wanted about Carthage’s history. In this way they controlled the past after it had already happened.

George Orwell’s book 1984 follows much the same idea. In his book he describes that “the Party is in full control of all recordsâÂ?¦” The Party are the people in power, and they control all the records of the past and past events. They use these records for their own means, and tell the people through altering news events and reports, what happened. What their version of the past is. This then becomes the new past, because the people hearing this altered news know no other past. The people in power therefore control the past, and the past changes and becomes a different past. Whoever is writing the records has control over what is written in them, and the writer’s opinions and own versions of stories will often end up written into the records. This will also change the past for the people reading the records.

Orwell refers to what really happened in the past as ‘absolute truth’. He says that if the people have no knowledge of ‘absolute truth’, the altered past they read or hear about will become the real past to them. In this way, the ‘absolute truth’ is forgotten, and replaced in the minds of the majority, with a new past that their leaders have created. This is the way the new, altered past becomes the real past. Past is memories. If there are no memories of the past except for created memories people must accept the created memories because they know nothing else.

This is how the Romans created the past of Carthage. They destroyed Carthage’s records of the ‘absolute truth’. Biased, victorious Romans wrote many of the records left of Carthage’s past. Because this is all we have to base the past on, we must accept this past. The people in power create ‘new’ pasts this way.