Who Controls The Past Controls The Future In George Orwell's 1984

According to O’Brien in George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” (Orwell p.34) In the novel Orwell reveals that the citizens of Oceania have a very short memory, and are willing to believe anything that the Party tells them. The Party has complete control of everything in the present, enabling it to control the way people think about and determine the past. The art of brainwashing and mind games are common threads in the masterminds of evil and deceit in multiple periods of time during history, including the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966 when children were used as a weapon to control the future. There are parallels between the real life situation of the Cultural Revolution and the fictional Oceana in the novel, 1984, in which it is clear that big brother is watching. During the Cultural Revolution in China, Mao Zedong began a movement to transform Chinese culture from a …show more content…
In essence, Mao wanted to control the past by destroying the old ways, eradicating what people knew, changing the face of the country and also the people who clung to the old traditional ways. By doing so, he was able to control the future, using the youth as weapons to spread his ideals and promote change for an idealistic future.
In the book written by George Orwell, 1984, many parallels can be drawn to Mao and his idea of despotism. The book is a depiction of how power can dominate the lives of people through mind games and brainwashing and the use of cultural conditioning. In an article written by Michael Yeo, he states, “Orwell takes both propaganda and surveillance to the extreme limits: total surveillance and total propaganda.” (Yeo) In other words, this is a novel where the use of propaganda and surveillance is taken to a higher