Normally if I ever consider how the past could be changed, I immediately think time machine. Without magic, how can anyone truly erase the past? A major motif in 1984 is how important the past is, even though most people take it for granted. One of The Party’s slogans is “He who controls the past controls the future,” and Winston begins to realize that “if both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?” (Page 69). Winston’s job in Oceania is to change every document of the past so that it agrees with the future and with everything the party says. Thinking about how easy it is for the Party to erase the past is scary; for, how do we know what really happened in the past? The past is extremely important because it controls the future, but if the past is a lie because the documentation is a lie, the only way to know the truth is pure memory, and is reliability in that alone safe?
Lostpedia: an explanation of time travel according to the show Lost (very difficult to understand), but maybe changing the past is possible?
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you had me at Lostpedia!
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