Winston works at the Ministry of Truth which is responsible
for making the news, entertainment and education. His daily job involves him
rewriting history so that everything Big Brother says in the present matches up
with the past. Winston has to rewrite history. This is his favorite part of the
job. For example, in this chapter Winston fabricates a story about a comrade
Ogilvy who has unwavering faith for the party. Winston fabricates a man and
knows that this is impossible to do in his world: “It struck him as curious
that you could create dead men but not living ones” (47). In this quote Winston
states that he can fabricate a life from nothing, but he cannot create living
ones. The living people are so robotic and already dead through their
unwavering faith that life is gone from them.
By describing the Ministry of Truth Orwell critiques how the
dystopian society constantly lies to its people and that there is no truth to
be found: “Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection
with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is
contained in a direct lie” (41). The dystopian society has no truth to it
anymore. The party simply makes up facts and the people believe it. This
critiques how ignorant people will be likely to believe anything, even if that
thing is as far from the truth as possible.
In our own society there are many ignorant people who
believe anything that is told to them once. In political elections the
candidates take advantage of people’s ignorance and try to sway them one way or
another based on their opinions that they deliver as facts. The real truth does
not lie in one source. Orwell critiques
how people believe everything they hear if it is from a “reliable source”. Yet,
even reliable sources do not always contain the truth. Orwell believes that
people should be less ignorant and impressionable.
No comments:
Post a Comment