1984 (Blog Three)

This section of the book shows that there is really no right or wrong side in this fight. Both sides are (hopefully) trying to make society better for the people. At least they are claiming that this is their ultimate goal. Both sides are willing to use horrible tactics to complete meet their ends.

The Party, most likely the more powerful of the two, tries to keep control by using misinformation to control the public opinion of them. They have countless workers dedicated to the single task of editing and rewriting the history. Part of their motto is completely dedicated to this, "Ignorance is Strength" (page 201). This shows that they are outright telling their citizens that 'you don't know the whole story'. This would seem very unsettling to anyone who heard their government say this. The proles seem to swallow it extremely easily since their concerns are far from the government. The government makes it look like they are right and have always been right even though any one who pays an ounce of attention to the information that is actually publicised could easily spot that it is frequently changing and being changed.

The Brotherhood pretty much just wants to tear down the Party. They plan on being incredibly violent, never seeing any results and they don't seem to have much of a plan if they ever get to the point where they could enforce it. Their questioning of Winston and Julia seems to suggest a lot of  horrible things they would be asked to do and the only thing they object to is being separated. For example one of the questions was, "If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child's face- are you prepared to do that?" (page 188). I think that this show that their only interest is defeating the Party and not improving the lives of society.

I have two theories about the Brotherhood. First that everyone is a part of it but everyone is unaware since they are only given the names of a few people to keep them from confessing the names of all the brotherhood members. Second, I think it's possible that the Brotherhood is made up by the Party to have people do the Parties dirty work. Both of these seem possible since the members of the Brotherhood are so poorly informed due to the death grip the Party has on everyone.