I highly agree with and appreciate what Cimamanda Adichie had to say. If you have only one example of a group of people then that is how you will perceive them. Therefore it is dangerous to close your mind to the possibility that there is more to that group of people than you originally perceived. Stereotypes become rampant in a society where only one story is given for a population. Negative stereotypes become hate and that continues to become racism and so-on until people can be controlled through their hate of one another. This is how it relates to what we have been learning in class, control of another person's reality.
If the government only gives one point of view and the people simply believe without seeking other points of view then the citizens are allowing the government over control over reality. After I read 1984 I did not believe that our government was using similar techniques to control us. I now believe that if the government keeps anything from the people then they are practicing the control over reality. This also relates to the textbook issue. If anything is left out or filtered it is altering the past. Therefore a textbook cannot be impartial unless everything that happened during that time is included, point of view is removed, and every event is stated without emphasis. I feel that this is quite hard to do, if not impossible. Due to the fact that history is altered by perspective, an individual cannot form their own opinions based on the history books in use today. History is defined as a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc., usually written as a chronological account. This is no longer the case; history has become filled with the writer's opinions.
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