{image source: BBC culture}

One of the most important themes of 1984 is reality control, where Oceania’s government exerts authority over its citizens to manipulate their perception of reality and match that with the Party’s doctrine. In order to brainwash the citizens into believing party’s ideology, party uses variety of techniques to suppress the reality suchas doublethink, newspeak, slogans of cult personality big brother, hate week, surveillance techniques using telescreens and thought police, rectifying historical records, changing news paper articles and even use to extreme physical torture and psychological manipulations of citizens into make them believe in whatever party sees befitting.

Protagonist Winston Smith works at “Ministry of Truth”. This name initially makes reader think of it, as an active organization, which is perhaps concerned with preserving the truth or records . However, in reality their function and purpose is in stark contrast to its name, This is because the Ministry of Truth actually is concerned with altering historical evidence. Ministry of Truth’s purpose is to create lies.

Winston Smith’s position in the Ministry of Truth is that of creating or forging the past into something unrecognizable to any person with an accurate memory so that each forgery "becomes" historic fact. One moment, Oceania is and always has been at war with one enemy, the next moment it is and has always been at war with another, and the people of Oceania accept the information as true.

In the Ministry of Truth, Winston relentlessly works to “rectify”, as the Party calls it, historical records and newspapers so that they match the Party’s version of the past. This further highlights the seemingly contradictory nature of the ministry’s name. The idea of performing historical revision matches with the Party slogan “who controls the past, controls the future” and “who controls the present controls the past”. Changing the past allows the Party to maintain the illusion that, Big Brother and the party are infallible and their actions are consistent with their “Categorical pledge”.

Winston fabricates the speeches of Oceania’s dictator Big Brother, changes the Ministry of Plenty’s official figures about the output of goods, and even creates a fictional martyred war hero by the name of Comrade Ogilvy, whose existence became as genuine as “Charlemagne or Julius Caesar”. Winston writes complete records of Ogilvy’s life including his childhood starting at age of three. The accuracy and precision with which Winston comes up with the details that it would be extremely difficult to even doubt Oglivy’s is just a figment of Winston’s imagination.

Changing the past allows the Party to maintain the illusion that, Big Brother and the party are infallible and their actions are consistent with their “Categorical pledge”. For Example, in the Ministry of Truth, Winston’s job is to falsify, or “rectify” as the Party calls it, historical records and newspapers so that they match the Party’s version of the past. This further highlights the seemingly contradictory nature of the ministry’s name, because the Ministry of Truth’s purpose is to create lies.

The idea of performing historical revision matches with the Party slogan “who controls the past, controls the future” and “who controls the present controls the past”. Winston fabricates the speeches of Oceania’s dictator Big Brother, changes the Ministry of Plenty’s official figures about the output of goods, and even creates a fictional martyred war hero by the name of Comrade Ogilvy, whose existence became as genuine as “Charlemagne or Julius Caesar”. Thus, by controlling all records of the past and having power over human memory, the Party is able to create its own version of the past, present and even the future, and hence are creating a false reality by abolishing truth.

In Oceania, thought criminals, people who held thoughts that violated the Party’s principles, frequently disappeared. What is most shocking to readers, is that the thought criminals were not only arrested, but they were “vaporized”. All records of their very existence were “wipedout”. Through doublethink, people accept that an individual who disappeared in the present, never existed in the past. Winston describes how the existence of a person “was denied and then forgotten” by people. This underscores that the Party could dictate what exists, and what never did through doublethink.

The Party’s power over reality is heightened by doublethink, the idea of having two contradictory ideas and accepting both of them to be true. The three main slogans of the Party are ultimate examples of doublethink such as, “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery”, “Ignorance is Strength”. They immediately seem paradoxical in nature to readers, but citizens of Oceania are brainwashed into thinking they are correct . This conveys extent of indoctrination by the party leading to citizen’s inability to differentiateusing logic, between the actual truth versus the Party’s imposed perception of it. Further, Winston’s home “VictoryMansions” gives an initial impression of a large, luxurious house to readers. However, it is revealed that “Victory Mansions” is a small apartment complex, whose hallways “smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats”.Thus, the name is inconsistent with the reality of the home.

Furthermore, the Two-Minutes Hate stimulates anger and hatred in the citizens of Oceania, evident as Winston describes that the people gain a desire to “kill”, “torture”, and even “smash faces with a sledgehammer”. This violent anger would come across as quite unnerving and frightening to readers. The hatred is mainly directed against the image of Emmanuel Goldstein, “The Enemy of the People” as the Party describes him. What seems most strange to readers is that the people hate Goldstein for betraying the Party, by advocating for freedom of speech, freedom of press, “freedom of thought”, denouncing the Ingsoc Party’s “dictatorship”, and having “peace with Eurasia”. This conveys how the Party’s influence over people’s reality results in them believing that peace, freedom, and truth are horrible and will undermine society instead of benefitting it.

Newspeak, the official language of Oceania is designed by the Party to lack words that are considered unnecessary or dangerous. The language with the range of vocabulary can powerfully and distinctly expresses instincts, impulses, and emotions with its finer nuances, and more ideas and thoughts can be formed and communicated effectively. But, the aim of Newspeak is to “narrow” the vocabulary and thus ultimately the rangeof thoughts, such that all thoughts that the Party does not approve will not have adequate words to express and such idea will be inexpressible. This is to make human consciousness to become smaller and more aligned to what the Party wants.

A photograph on the newspaper showing Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford the revolutionist from sixties were at a “Party function in New York”, at the same time when they confessed to be in Eurasia was a piece of evidence that would prove their “confessions were lies” and that would shed light on Party’s overtly obvious “act of falsification” . Clearly the confessions werenot only lies, but the wounded faces of the “relics” confirmed the confessions were coerced. This demonstrates, Physical torture is one of the instruments with which party ensures that there is no contradictory version of truth exists. Further, the possession of such a piece or even having a memory of its existence is itself a thoughtcrime. Winston’s possession of a diary where he documents his feelings and records his thoughts is also a thoughtcrime, because it can become a contradictory record in future.

O'Brien , Winston’s tormentor and educator uses two tactics one is psychological manipulation using doublethink and physical torture to make Winston see what party wants him to believe. When Winston refuses to give up his memory of a photograph that proves the innocence of “Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford” who were executed for treachery, O’Briens makes Winston believe that Winston were delusional and such a photo never existed to begin with. It was doublethink where Obrien first showed him the photograph and the next moment claimed it was never there to begin with. Further, Referring to what Winston wrote in his diary “2+2 = 4” long ago, O'Brien holds up four fingers and asks Winston how many fingers he is holding up. Winston answers four, and O'Brien using the electrical machine to shock his body repeats the same question over and over again, asking Winston to truly believe the answer he is giving. He turns up the machine's dial each time to increase the intensity of pain. Ultimately Winston truly sees “2+2=5” as the pain becomes unbearable.

Party demands to reject individual perception of reality based on human senses or consciousness and the very thought of it, such as the basic right to use logic and claim the obvious truths is denied by the Party. The truth, as humans know it, is based on a person’s viewpoint of reality, which is subjective to senses, consciousness but party wants to eradicate the very common sense and liberty to think anything other than what party wants citizens to believe even to an extent that “law of nature such as gravity does not exist” if party think so. This is later confirmed when Obrien during Winston’s indoctrination sessions, tells Winston [book 3 chapter 7], “You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature. “ even the very theory of evolution is rejected as evident in Obrien’s line “Before man there was nothing.” And “earth is flat”.

In my view, George Orwell, argues, that reality exists in individual’s consciousness and not in the collective perception of people. by exerting physical and psychological control on its citizens through various means, the totalitarian regimes manipulate the people’s understanding of the real world, and hence has power over reality itself by controlling history , memory, and thoughts even at subconscious level.