Down the Memory Hole (Flashback)

“But this was concrete evidence; it was a fragment of the abolished past…it was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have been published to the world and its significance made known. He had gone straight on working….Then, without uncovering it again, he dropped the photograph into the memory hole, along with some other waste papers. Within another minute, perhaps, it would have crumbled into ashes. That was ten—eleven years ago. Today, probably, he would have kept that photograph.”

--p 79

Over the course of his writing, Orwell includes several flashbacks from earlier in Winston’s life. These flashbacks often reveal some aspect of Big Brother’s society which Winston struggles to accept. Winston is able to remember limitedly a time different from the present, or memories which contradict his current situation. Yet while he may briefly use these memories to fuel his temporary hatred for Big Brother, these memories inevitably fade back into memory. Like the photograph in his flashback, these flashbacks and memories are unable to convince Winston to act progressively, even in the face of such contradiction and oppression. These flashbacks only emphasize the fact that Winston is unwilling to take the risk in standing up to Big Brother. Sure, he walks in the bad part of town; yet that hardly makes him a hardened rebel. In reality, Winston is little more than a spineless subject to the Party like all the other mindless citizens of Oceania.

This Is Heavy, Doc

Well, William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is a bit odd, no? While this story was certainly the most dramatically interesting, it also was most definitely the most bizarre. Faulkner establishes this quirkiness by writing with an extremely convoluted chronology. The story opens with the present time of Emily Grierson's death and funeral. The narrator then recounts an altercation between Miss Emily and the Board of Alderman over taxes which occurred several years beforehand. Immediately afterward, the narrator employs flashback even further by taking the plot thirty years earlier. This scene, which describes how the city dealt with a "smell" about Miss Emily's house, creates a bit of confusion and suspense as the reader is unsure and curious of the source of the smell. Upon completion of this tale, however, the narrator goes back two years further to Miss Emily's father's death and the subsequent arrival of Homer. We then learn of Miss Emily's purchase of arsenic, followed by a seemingly abrupt topic shift to Homer's departure and ensuing return to the house.

After that, the narrator fast-forwards back to the present. It is here, in the present, that the jumbled events of the past are finally explained as the narrator and the other men discover Homer's skeleton where he had poisoned with the purchased arsenic. Instead of simply starting from the chronological beginning, Faulkner employed a series of flashbacks in order to increase the level of suspense of the story. By slowly feeding the reader individual clues, Faulkner leads the reader to finally discover the truth of Miss Emily's past in a more dramatic and exciting fashion.