In “1984” by George Orwell, the author utilizes metaphors to reveal that Big Brother manipulates members of the Party like Winston to maintain confusion and to deprive others of the truth. In Chapter 2, Winston was trying to forget about Julia giving him a secret message, so he begins to contemplate his complicated workload. Winston reflects by saying, “It consisted in falsifying a series of production reports of two years ago in such a way as to cast discredit on a prominent member of the Inner Party who was now under a cloud” (Orwell, 109) This is a metaphor because the inner party member in question was not literally under a cloud. This phrase means that the inner party member was in an unwanted situation where he or she was at fault. Winston’s job is to alter history, but he does not know the purpose of doing so. Winston can adjust this every time he wants to so keeping records is useless because it is not consistent. Big Brother has the power to control party members through their ability to modify records or history which denies members truthfulness. Through Big Brother’s alteration of memories, the party members are powerless because they can’t decide what is a fact and what is not. Therefore, Orwell’s tone is dark because he describes the exploitation of Winston and the manipulative power of the Party. Orwell’s message to the readers is that the truth is influenced by the motives of the person saying it so trust no one.Tags: 1984 memories truth
Trust No One by Mauro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.