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
memory because people convey information from stories based on their memories, each person placing different emphasis on different ideas.
History particularly shows itself as dependent on human memory when spoken from different points of view.
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
changeable.
Point of view bias is intricately interwoven throughout historical writings. Winston Churchill is popularly thought to have said, “History is written by the victors.” In the case of the American Revolution, during the Boston Massacre only five colonists had been killed but it was recorded as a massacre. This encouraged people to think that the British were setting out to kill the colonists, making the British out to be more of an enemy than they most likely were. Since the United States eventually won the Revolution, this part and other parts of the war are embellished to display America as more of a victim, putting them in a better place to fight against British control. If five British soldiers were killed, American students today would not recognize the event as being important to the nation’s history. History exists on paper and in memories, and because the written stories are taken from remembered information, it can be altered for the benefit of the people in power.
The people controlling society in Orwell’s 1984, called the Party constantly alter history to their advantage.
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
it.
History is information told by point of view, subject to interpretation. It is not completely unchangeable because as historical stories are passed on, peoples’ different points of views give way to differing “evidence”. Looking back into our own country’s history, times of settlement and times of war, it is evident that who tells the story plays a major role in what the story is. The fact that details and truths can be changed and embellished can really make a person wonder if history really ever existed in its purest form completely based on actual happenings.