Book 1 Chapter 4: Totalitarianism and its reality control

            A process called "rectifying" is used by the Totalitarian government in chapter four. The process of "rectifying" is called so to hide all of the barbaric practices of the government. The government hides, modifies, and adjusts everything before it can may be released to the people. This way the government seems as if it is always correct and never had any issues with the people. Through this the language is deteriorated which Orwell seemed to relate to the decay of moral values. By controlling all of what they read, see and speak the government can control how the people think and how they will respond to the government. Jobs in the process of "rectifying" consisted of eliminating the names and records of those whom have been vaporized, altering poems to make them comply with party ideology, even propaganda as well as the creation of pornography to entertain and distract the lower classes to maintain them unaware that they are victims of oppression. The party does the later to assure that the lower class never becomes aware of how poor and powerless they are; tis way they can prevent the lower class from reacting in any way that may cause further problems for the government. There are many ways in which the government assures that people do not realize they position in comparison to the government such as drinking, gambling, and even fornication. Winston's job in the process of "rectifying" consist of rewriting articles of which in this occasion is about an inner party member whom was vaporized named Comrade Withers. The article spoke greatly of Comrade Withers on his loyalty as a party member, but that was unacceptable because he was executed as an enemy of the party. Therefore Winston made up a name, Comrade Ogilvy, who replaced Comrade Withers. Comrade Ogilvy is an ideal party member who apposes sex, is suspicious of everyone and devotes his live to hunting down thought criminals. Winston realizes though that someone else is covering the same article as him and that his story will be the version that becomes recorded in history. This shows how serious the government takes the process of "rectifying" and how important it is to them. In most marxist governments this is how the government functions. In order to control everything they must make themselves seen as superiors and make the people not see how powerless and poor they are as a result of this form of government. Sadly in todays society not only marxist governments seek to control what media is released or how much knowledge the people have, this occurs in the majority if not all forms of government in most countries if not every single country.