1984 #3

The Party that rules the world of 1984 attempts to convince the reader that “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”, which is one of the Party’s three major slogans (4).  Winston’s first personal encounter with ignorance is with the family of a fat and boyish Parsons.  He speaks proudly of his two children who have recently had a man killed because “he was wearing a funny kind of shoes” (57).  Since the Party keeps children like these in ignorance, they remain fiercely loyal to Big Brother; they have become the Party’s single most abundant and most useful domestic fighting force.  If anyone thought to question what Big Brother asked of the Children of Oceania, the force of young Spies would not be nearly as powerful or as threatening to the generation above it because the entire nation would not be united.  Similarly, the Party controls the memories of his subjects, which allows it to control the thoughts and emotions of everyone in Oceania.  The Party encourages celebration when they “raise” the ration of chocolate to twenty grams, when in objective reality they have just lowered it to twenty grams from thirty (58).  Since no one knows any better, this history-changing announcement joyfully brings the nation together.  If one person decides what an entire nation does and does not know, then ignorance is strength because ignorance is union.