Book 1 Ch 2-6

                          

"Books, also, were rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made." "And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain."

 

In chapter 4, Winston describes his job in Minitrue, where he aids in the “rectification” of all Oceania records. Rectification is a form of the word rectify, which means to correct or make right. The use of this word insinuates that the Party is doing what they feel is right; this goes with the theme of manipulation. The Party controls everything that citizens consume; all dictionaries or records are changed in order to keep up with what the Party wants them to believe. The inclusion of memory holes furthers this. Even food wrappers and small, unimportant garbage have to be incinerated, causing the lives of Oceanians to become fuzzy. The strategic placement and overwhelming amount of memory holes—somewhere in the thousands to tens of thousands—implies that all things should be burned so that nothing is remembered for certain. This quote only shows the severity of the manipulation: even the date of the year wasn't undeniable in the minds of those living under the Party.