Both the video shown in class and the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell show history being erased and changed. The government monitors the citizens in the country they live in, and if necessary erases a real person from their history. In the case of Tiananmen Square, the massacre did happen but the government just erased it from history textbooks as if the massacre did not happen. Moreover, key figures like Wu’er KaiXi was one of the student leaders of the protest. He spent time in “exile” in Taiwan and was erased from Chinese history as well. On the other hand, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, the three former Party leaders; Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford once lived in Oceania but after they were “executed after spectacular public trials at which they made confession of their crimes” (Orwell 78), they were erased from Oceania’s history. So, the same purpose serves to control future generations’ information and ideas. In the video, the image shows a young man standing in front of the tanks to prevent them from advancing. Louisa Lim, who was explaining to the audience about the event, had gone around and asked 100 students to see who knew about the image and only 15 out of 100 knew about the image and the rest had never seen the image. The Chinese government successfully hid this iconic picture from much of the population. In the video, after the massacre happened, no one dared speak openly about the incident. This limits the citizens’ freedom to think and if they make a small mistake, they will have consequences for their mistakes. Who would dare speak about the massacre if the government did not even bring this event up for 30 years? No one. What proof do they have if they do speak of it? None. Not just because the government is pretending that the event did not happen, but because they are afraid to speak about the massacre since they are being monitored no matter where they are. That is why they do not speak about it and keep their own thoughts to themselves. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, we see the same thing about Oceania where the citizens in Oceania are being monitored in their own homes, at bars, out in the streets, everywhere. Put a foot out of line and you get taken away by the Thought Police to be vapourized and cease to exist.
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December 2022
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