Columbus And Western Civilization Summary

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An Analysis of the Ruling Class’s Control of History in Howard Zinn’s "Columbus and Western Civilization" and George Orwell’s 1984

This historical study will define the ruling class’s control of history that is defined in Howard Zinn’s "Columbus and Western Civilization" and George Orwell’s 1984. Zinn’s historical commentary on Columbus Day defines the underlying power of an elitist Eurocentric view of the discovery of America, which had become a national holiday in the United States. Zinn (1997) defines the power of the dominant ruling classes that Orwell defines in this important statement: "Who controls the past controls the future. And who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell 35). Orwell’s novel, 1984, is a fictional framework …show more content…
Zinn (1997) begins the article by presenting George Orwell’s (1949) famous statement about the power of the ruling elite to control the past, present, and future of history as the dominant minority: "Who controls the past controls the future. And who controls the present controls the past” (Orwell 35). This statement defines the underlying distortions of history, which have been traditionally dictated by a minority of elites that control the historical narrative: “In other words, those who dominate our society are in a position to write our histories” (Zinn 479). This clarification of Orwell’s statement presents the power of the ruling classes to write history according to their own mythological interpretation of society, which is often not based on fact or reality. In this historical point of view, Zinn (1997) breaks down the myth of Columbus Day along the lines of Orwell’s understanding of history as being a series of distorted events, ideas, and motivations for a national holiday. More so, Zinn illustrates why Columbus Day should not be celebrated due to the true motives of Columbus’s voyage to the new World through the perspective of indigenous peoples and factual insight into financial motivations of the 1492 …show more content…
Big Brother’s control of the people is extremely dominant through the management of information through a political party called the Inner Party. The main protagonist, Winston Smith, is victim of the ruling classes, which is similar to the victimization of the non-ruling classes in Zinn’s depiction of indigenous people’s of the New World. Orwell (1949) defines the control of historical information as a way to control the minds of the people, which is part of Winston’s understanding of the world in the present tense:
Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it; in Newspeak, “doublethink.” (Orwell
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