Notes on 1984 Book 2 Chapter 9

Overview

• Winston is now in possession of Goldstein's Manifesto.
• Oceania's enemy has changed from Eurasia to East Asia, but citizens are unaware due to the Party's manipulation of history.
• This change requires overtime work for Winston at the Ministry of Truth to alter historical records.
• After six days, the war with Eurasia is erased from records, and workers get an afternoon off.

Goldstein's Manifesto

• Structure and Operation of the Party:

  • Describes the Party’s structure and operations.
  • Discusses history's division into low, middle, and high classes.
  • Predicts that these divisions will remain unchanged.
  • Resembles Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.

• Key Points:

  • No hope for overthrowing the Party.
  • Class Struggle: Inevitable conflicts between classes.
  • Lives of the Low: Must be crushed to prevent awareness beyond daily life.
  • Continuous Warfare: Essential for consuming resources and maintaining class divisions.

Warfare and Society

• Warfare:

  • Uses resources that could otherwise improve lives.
  • Maintains the need for hierarchy and prevents power loss by the elite.

• Public Control:

  • Warfare raises public hatred and fear, increasing trust in leaders.
  • Maintaining fear prevents questioning of authority, keeping the high in power.

History Revision

• Omnipotence of the Party:

  • History revision needed to uphold the Party's perceived omnipotence.

• Doublethink:

  • Ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously.
  • Different from evaluating opposing viewpoints; requires acceptance of both.
  • Necessitates memory rearrangement and forgetting.

Winston's Realization

• Sanity:
  • Winston concludes that sanity is not statistical but based on individual truth recognition.
  • Even if one is the sole possessor of truth, that does not equate to madness.