Historical Destruction - Rupturing from the Past

My previous blog post was about our utopian novels’ ideas of the future. Now let’s talk about the past!

One of the more striking comparisons between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four is both worlds’ abhorrence towards history.

In Brave New World, the world is completely ignorant of all things historical. “History is bunk,” says Mustapha Mond, quoting an actual saying from the real-life Henry Ford (Brave New World, 40).

The following is one of my favorite passages from Huxley’s novel, due to its bluntness, take-no-prisoners approach, and its excellent summary of Brave New World’s historiography:

Mond “waved his hand, and it was as though, with an invisible feather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk – and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk – and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome. Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom – all were gone. Whisk – the place where Italy had been war empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk. King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony…” (Brave New World 41).

The way the narrator shrugs away all major movements, empires, and people that shaped the entire world is chilling. Huxley’s universe would think the same for all things history. Not only does it not matter, it is absolutely repugnant.

Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four is no better, despite a different approach.

As you know, Oceania’s view of history is to completely revise it. To take one example (you can find many, many more within the entire book), political international alliances were altered to reflect the current treaties: “The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago” (Nineteen Eighty-Four 35).

So why does history frighten them?  Why would one want to irreparably rupture from the past?

Orwell’s work is easier to figure out, since it explicitly tells us. The Party’s slogan (“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past” (Nineteen Eighty-Four 35-36)). It is purely about control of the populous, brain washing for perpetual political gain.

For Brave New World, it can essentially be summarized as the following: suppressing history can control intellectual freedom. By learning historical events, one will realize how life was like in the past. Even if they see the past as horrible compared to the “utopian” World State, one still learning something they shouldn’t. What will simply be a look at a history book will become an obsession of the past, which will eventually lead to intellectual independence.

yahoo.com

 This is an actual response on Yahoo! Answers 

to the question "Why is history not important?"

As a medieval historian, I am absolutely horrified by people’s dismissal of this time period. I’m sure Dr. Mitchell-Buck will agree with me here, that medieval history is not the most important area of interest in the field of study (and that multiple misconceptions about the era still exist today). And I’m also more than certain that Sam will agree that history (in general) is much more than just learning facts and dates about dead people.

How much of our culture do we owe to medieval history? Answer: a whole lot. For example, did you know that the university system was designed during the medieval period, following cathedral schools (which themselves followed monastic communities)? That’s right – thank those “old” medieval intellectuals for giving us a solid education!

Okay…impromptu rant over. Needless to say, I could easily go on. History is essential to society; forget the whole adage “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” It’s more than that: it is society’s identity. What would the world be like if it weren’t for certain movements in history? Why would we possibly wish to demonize or revise it? If we do such things, then our identity in society is substantially lost.

This is what terrifies me the most about these two works: they lose their identity; instead of being on a continuum, they are forever isolated in time.