1984-Motif

"The past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting." page 34

The idea of an alterable past appears often in the novel. Winston's job is to change people's memories of the past. He alters the way that people see the past so that the Party always tells the truth. People always assume that the past is done and gone. "What's done is done," people say. In the world of the Party, this is not the case. The past is done, but memories of the past are not. The tiniest sliver of doubt can send those memories out of someone's mind and change them into something entirely different. The Party uses this to "change the past" several times in the novel, and it shows that the past is only what we remember.