1984

"How could you tell how much of it was lies? It might  be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution. The only evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different. It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness." -pg.63           Oceania is governed as an exaggerated form Communism where everything that is said and done is monitored by The Party. Everything is done in a routine way and the citizens' thinking is manipulated by propaganda and slogans, essentially, no one is allowed to have their own conscious thoughts. Winston is dumbfounded at the fact that any announcement made by The Party is believed by the people even though they had contradicted them...

"But actually, he thought as he readjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another." -pg.37           In Winston Smith's job, he has to alter reports, newspapers or any written record that contradicted what Big Brother had said would happen. For example, Big Brother had said that the ration of chocolate would stay the same throughout the whole year and had paper work to prove it. However, they ended up reducing the actual amount so Winston altered what the newspaper said and replaced it for the old one. After he did that, he threw the old copy away. Although this act would be considered forgery today, it wasn't back then because it was nonsense in the first place. I personally agree because it is nonsense because no record of anything is created and even if they are created, they could be altered with ease. For example, when they were once allies with a country and at war wit...