21
indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior, Anti-Sex
League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination artsem, it was
called in Newspeak and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow
it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and
dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Partys
efforts were largely successful.” 1984,1949: p.65
3.7 Control of Information and History
The Party controls every source of information, managing and rewriting the content of all newspapers and histories for its own ends. The Party does not
allow individuals to keep records of their past, such as photographs or documents. As a result, memories become fuzzy and unreliable, and citizens become perfectly
willing to believe whatever the Party tells them. By controlling the present, the Party is able to manipulate the past. And in controlling the past, the Party can
justify all of its actions in the present. He suddenly disappears from life and nothing more and no earlier. So this
person will be removed from the history. If for example in the Office, he is in a list of the names ofthe employees, so the person is evaporated, his name will
be removed from the list of that name.The people who vaporized usually was potentially a danger to the party. Although it looks are mediocre,
sometimes people are too smart to be vaporized. And then this case usually happened at night when people are sleeping.
This is illustrated by the following quote:
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“ It was always at night—the arrests invariably happened at night.The sudden jerk out of sleep,the rough hand shaking your shoulder,the
lights glaring in your eyes,the ring of hard faces round the bed.In the vast majority of cases there was no trial,no report of the arrest.People
simply disappeared,always during at night.Your name was removed from the registers,every record of everything you had ever done was
wiped out,your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten.You were abolished,annihilated: vaporized was the usual word”
1984,1949: p.19 “
Day by day,and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown
by documentary evidence to have been corect;nor was any item of news,or any expression of opinion,which conflicted with the needs
of moment,ever allowed to remain on record.All history was a palimpsest,scraped clean and reinscrabed exactly as often as was
necessary.In no case would it have been possible,once the deed was done,to prove that any falsification had taken place.” 1984,1949:
p.40
3.8 Doublethink
