Finding an Equal Balance: Comparing 1984 and The Blind Assassin Anonymous 10th Grade

As human beings, we are fascinated by our past. The past affects society in so many ways most don’t even notice the effect and humans accept that conclusion. Whether it be the language spoken or the city a person lives in, everything around us has history or some sort of meaning behind it. As a society, we have chosen to embrace and learn from our past. While this is one way of handling history, both George Orwell and Margaret Atwood make a statement about the role and power of the past in their respective novels, 1984 and The Blind Assassin. George Orwell's novel 1984 describes a dystopian world where “Big Brother” and the government controls everything its citizens do, say, and even think. One major aspect of Orwell’s society is the complete control and erasure of history. In Orwell’s novel, the government takes precautions to ensure that the history of their nation is hidden or completely rewritten. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood in contrast, tells the story of an elderly woman named Iris as she writes a novel of her entire past life to her granddaughter Sabrina. Atwood emphasizes, maybe even over emphasizes, the past. Orwell and Atwood both create storylines that describe the two extremes of ignoring the past and...