“All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.”
The main character Winston from george orwells book 1948 themes in Chapter 4 in a quote how the population gets manipulated by the leaders.
Winston clarifies not just the significant fraud, he also states his opinion about the system he is living in.
Choosing the example of boots is a sign for how obvious the population gets manipulated because it just takes a little bit of intellect to notice the wrong numbers of produced boots if most of the people dont have shoes at all.
The last sentence of his quote makes clear that the system manipulates the people in multiple things and they dont even stop before changing the date of the year.
After looking closer on the language used by George Orwell in the quote it appears to me, he used the symbolic of a shadow to led up to the dark side of the human nature, emphasising the dystopia of the future.
A shadow world can be also an sign for a future without happiness and sun. It would be cold and odd. The reason he used a shadow world to express his feelings shows how much he fears it.
He used a strong impression which everybody can emphasise with. Shadows are normally linked to bad happenings without sunlight and related to bleakness.
This is a good explanation of the semantics (meaning) for the well-selected quotation you’re expanding on. I would direct you now to look at Orwell’s use of language. He’s known for saying that he is against the unnecessary elaboration of language, which means to me that whenever he uses imagery, he must be doing so for a deliberate purpose.
Try to explore the impact of the imagery in “Everything faded away into a shadow-world”. What does a shadow world evoke in you? What are shadows? What do they tend to reflect?
(Also, when quoting from the text, always put it within quotation marks – (or use the block quote option in your editor bar))