Midnight Thoughts #16: George Orwell's 1984 Taught Me the Importance of the Three-Eyed Raven (and History)

Image: brainpickings and @fredrickruntu

Just read George Orwell's 1984. I believe many have read it and if you don't, what are you waiting for? Make this the next book to read. 

There's a lot to talk about in 1984, a book that illustrates a dystopian world where totalitarian socialism becomes a norm. One can study about class, economy, technology and ideology presented in the book. Besides, the importance of language in a nation-building process, or how simplifying a language could kill the creativity of a society. One can also look at how Orwell understands the idea of taking charge your own sexual desires or rather, the ways the government (Big Brother) control the minds of the people by control their sexuality. 

For me, 1984 actually answers one of the biggest question mark I have since watching Game of Thrones. I acknowledge that the Three-Eyed Raven is somewhat important in the story, and rationalized myself that he is so vital that the Night King is willing to go all out and kills him. Rest assured I am not fully convinced and it never never away. 

Image: Business Insider Malaysia

It finally came through me once I finished the book. And yes, the Three-Eyed Raven is indeed the most important character in the series.

First, we have to understand the ability the Three-Eyed Raven, and Bran possess, greensight. According to the Game of Thrones Wiki,

Greensight is the ability to perceive future, past, or contemporary but distant events in dreams. 

With the ability to warg, this can explain what the Three-Eyed Raven can actually do. He is essentially the keeper of all histories. He knows the future, and more importantly, the past of the Seven Kingdoms. That is the reason why Night King would wage a war on the Three-Eyed Raven. The Night King wanted to wipe the past, and establish his own kingdom, his own history one might say. 

In the final season episode two: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Bran claimed the Night King intends to 'erase this world' and Bran is the memory of the world. By killing Bran, it implicates the world will be wipe off, clean as a white cloth, as though the world before it never happened.

That being said, not many are convinced, myself included, are puzzled by such explanation. You could argue that as long as the human race persists, history of all men shall be preserved, whether by the means of books, poems, songs, and plays. 

This is where 1984 comes in. 

Image: Timberland Regional Schools

Winston Smith, the protagonist works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, which handles matters related to news, entertainment, education and fine arts. One of his duties is to alter or in the terms of the Party, to 'rectify' news or articles that are not align with the Party. Other sections of the Records Department would track down all items, books, documents and even photographs that needed rectification and once the process has carried out, the older ones will be destroyed. 

In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record.

By controlling information with enormous strength and intend, the Party can rewrite history, construct their own world, their own narratives. Like the one where they claimed they invented the airplane. Yes, people like Winston and other dissenters, or the older generations knows for a fact that it is untrue, but with the evidence presented by the Party and the power they have, who is not to believe that the Party in fact, invented the airplane. In Oceania, there's no gatekeeper of history, or you guess it, the Three-Eyed Raven. 

It's the Wright Brothers, not the Party that invented airplane. Image: Time

This implies how important the Three-Eyed Raven is. The Night King and his armies can burn all books, kill all men, then rewrite, retell the past and present, and even predict the future to suit their interest, as long as the Three-Eyed Raven is alive, the truth is still the undeniable truth, not the Night King's truth.  

Image: Time

In the same episode, Sam said

Forgetting. Being forgotten. If we forget where we’ve been and what we’ve done, we’re not men anymore. Just animals. Your memories don’t come from books, your stories aren’t just stories. If I wanted to erase the world of men, I’d start with you.

This is successfully executed by the Party. The people under Ingsoc and Big Brother have forgotten what the past looks like and the significance of their actions and existence. Under Big Brother, they only serve the Party. Put it simply, they are not men, but animals. History under the Party is a 'palimpsest, scrapped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as necessary'. By altering the past, the people in both realms will never know that live before the Night King and Ingsoc were better and succumbed to the fact they live the best lives. 

Image: Vice

I hope this piece in a way, justifies the importance of the Three-Eyed Raven in the series. At least, by reading 1984, I am satisfy with a rather rushed plot of Season 8. Therefore, one would ask, in the real world, we don't have Bran or any other Three-Eyed Raven, how one could preserve history? To be honest, in our society regress into something resembles Ingsoc, there's nothing we can do isn't it? They could destroy all archives, purge all histories and rewrite them and force it upon our memory. 

This is done on a much smaller scale in which we will never know the full scale of war-crimes committed by the Japanese Army during the Pacific War because they have burned most of the documents and evidence. Now, can you see how important Bran is? 

To end, I think the conservation between Winston and O'Brien when Winston was held in the Ministry of Love is something we can rethink and remember. 

“There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,” he said. "Repeat it, if you please."
 
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” repeated Winston obediently.
 
“Who controls the present controls the past,” said O’Brien, nodding his head with slow
approval. “Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?”

... O’Brien smiled faintly. “You are no metaphysician, Winston,” he said. “Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?”
 
“No.”
 
“Then where does the past exist, if at all?”

“In records. It is written down.”

“In records. And- ?”

“In the mind. In human memories.”

“In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?”

O'Brien (left) and Winston (right) Image: The Roarboats