Sheep Mentality

So you've asked "how do people not know?" Well, how do troops not know that the "friendly fire" they're firing is killing Iraqi children and grandmothers? They don't, until they examine the bullet-riddled corpses only to find that they have not killed "Osama". The government likes to portray things in a very positive way, so as to convey to the general population, 33% people who haven't gotten past their GED, that what they're doing is right, and okay, and nationalistic. It's only way, way after the fact that the people finally wake up from a dazed stupor and say, "Hey, wait, wait, wait a minute. They've got us by the balls. Omigod. We're screwed." And they think about doing something, but apathy is a staple of human nature, and like the famous case of Kitty Genovese, people always assume that someone else will fix all the problems.

In 1984, the people are kept captive in their own minds with realism- things are plainly stated that you will die if you're caught doing this, this, and this, and they keep enticement in place with the guise that, "there are no rules", and the average person thinks, "hey, that's okay," but doesn't really know that if there are no rules, anyone can decide what's right and what's wrong. In Fahrenheit, things are kept positively, with pro-government propaganda plastered unconsciously everywhere, and real events in history are "kept", but in a watered-down, slanted version. WE has a slightly in-between version, with all actions and methods kept time by The Table, and similar techniques to those illustrated in 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, with devices that are able to listen in, and government checkups and crowd control.

And yet, there is the seemingly benign guise that the author feeds reluctantly to its followers- a human. Not a human robot, but an actual human with feelings who seems to think, "something is not quite right," and actually sets about to do something about it. But when things boil down, the tale is that of a cautionary one- Cassandra is killed by the government, Montag is lauded like Jesus for being such a good little pawn, Winston ends up being a devoted follower to Big Brother, selling out his girlfriend, The Savage leaves the world forever, and D-503 gets his splinter removed. The tale is that of a modernized, twisted children's fable- Be careful what you wish for, for it just might come true.

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PS- If I ruined the endings of these books for anyone, deal with it. :)