GirouxChapter4Reaction

Giroux1984Reactions

Amanda Giroux 1-27-10 Block 8 Chapter 4 Reaction   I think that chapter 4 was about two things. First, was why the government, Big Brother, is so powerful and second how easily you could be erased by the government. Big Brother has people working to rewrite the past to make it seem that he is always correct. “The reporting of Big Brother’s Order for the Day in the //Times// of December 3rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to nonexistent persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher authority before filing” (pg 44). This was one of Winston’s major tasks of the day and he completed it by creating a completely fictional character called Comrade Ogivly, as seen on page 46-47, without it seeming to even bother him. In fact, he was making it a small competition between him and a coworker. “Once again he glanced at his rival in the opposite cubicle. Something seemed to tell him with certainty that Tillotson was busy on the same job as himself. There was no way of knowing whose version would finally be adopted, but he felt a profound conviction that it would be his own” (pg 47). With workers that have such a high devotion, like Winston’s, comes power. One job that showed the simplicity of being erased was that of the sandy haired lady. She had to track down and delete from the press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered to never have existed (pg 42). She does this, even though her own husband was vaporized only a few years ago, with certain fitness. She seems totally unaware of how easily or how fast she can be replaced. Someone could have had that job before her and “gone missing” and been replaced. The workers don’t realize that they could be next.