The Declaration (2)

Peter looked at her then and took her wrists firmly in his hands. 'Your parents love you,' he said in a very low voice. 'You're not surplus to anything, you're Anna Covey, and you should never have been locked away here.Your Mrs Pincent is the person you should hate. She's the one who brainwashed you, the one who beat you and starved you, just like she tried to do to me. Just like she'll do again when she realises she hasn't won. We need to get out of here. We need to get back to London.' Anna stared at him, her mouth set crossly. 'Brainwash!' she said contemptuously. 'That isn't even a word.' Peter smile sarcastically. 'Not a word they'd teach you in Grange Hall, I suppose, but it is a word, Anna. It means to indoctrinate. To make you think things that aren't true, to make you believe that you don't deserve to live on the Outside, that you're lucky to live in this prison.' (pg. 66)

At this point in the book, Peter has been placed in the same orphanage as Anna, Grange Hall. Unlike the rest of the children in this institution, Peter sees right through Mrs. Pincent and the other dictators of the multiple institutions spread across the world. As a child coming from the “Outside”, he has seen things that children like Anna—who have never stepped foot out of the building—have never seen.

Peter is a unique character in the novel, The Declaration. His character is similar to that of Clarisse from the novel Fahrenheit 451. They both share the same quality of supporting the main protagonist of the story, in this case would be Anna Covey. Peter innocently tries to convince Anna that they live in a dystopian society where the government tells the people what and what not to think. He says that Mrs. Pincent is “the one who brainwashed [her]”. This sort of relationship Mrs. Pincent has with Anna resembles the kind of relationship the government has with their people. Both the government and Mrs. Pincent control their subordinates through confinement, labor, and starvation. Peter wants to put an end to this lifestyle, so he blatantly tells Anna about what is going on. He explains how her real parents love her because they gave her breath and the opportunity to live life and how Mrs. Pincent does not love her because she has made her suffer.

The reaction that Anna has to what Peter has told her symbolizes how naïve humans can be. All her life, Anna was told that her parents did not love her and they were the reason for her sufferings. She was easily manipulated and therefore never dreamt that her mind was being “brainwashed”. Humans can be told that a certain behavior is the right behavior multiple times. Many scientists have performed tests on this topic, especially after World War II. The result was that if a person is told that something is right but they disagree, then they will be punished. The punishment will be carried out until they learned to select the answer that matched with the ideas of others. In other words, the human mind can be manipulated through fear. Mrs. Pincent creates fear within the minds of the children. Anna always craved to be Mrs. Pincent’s right-hand girl because she did not want to be on her bad side. Anna did what Mrs. Pincent wanted to please her. Anna was being manipulated and brainwashed without even knowing it was happening.