Selfhood, Language, and Reality: George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

Author(s): Lillian Feder

Source: The Georgia Review , Summer 1983, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer 1983), pp. 392-409
Published by: Georgia Review

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41398529

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 Lillian Feder

Selfhood , Language, and Reality:

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

EARLY begins
beginsa aindiary
diary"for
Nineteen
the future,
"for Eighty
for thetheunborn."
future,AFlittle
our,1later,
for "the
ac- the last unborn." man," as A Orwell little calls later, him, ac-
knowledging that the diary will no doubt be "vaporized" along with
himself and that the time he addresses may be "imaginary," he nonethe-
less expands his potential audience " To the future or to the past, to a
time when thought is free. . . Although he writes in a panic, aware that
keeping a record of his thoughts and activities is an offense punishable by
death, Winston Smith is not yet conscious of the exact nature of the
most serious crime he is committing against the state of Oceania: the use
of language in the act of self-creation.
Nineteen Eighty-Four has been discussed from many points of
view: as an attack on Soviet communism (or, more specifically, on the
British Labour Party), as a defense of bourgeois society, as a revelation
of Orwell's paranoia, as a prophecy of worldwide totalitarianism through
absolute control of the human mind, and as a study of the psychology
of submission. Some of these interpretations now seem dated, either be-
cause they reflect political alliances of a certain period in history or be-
cause they convey a rather naïve approach to the connection between
an author's biography and his work; and even those which consider the
book on its own terms seem to miss its deepest revelations both for the
time in which it appeared and for the present. Nineteen Eighty-Four
does not simply satirize a totalitarian state forcing human beings to capit-
ulate to its demands through propaganda, deprivation, and torture. Its
continuous prophetic meaning lies in its revelation of the individual's

1 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty -Four (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1949).
All quotations from Nineteen Eighty -Four are from this edition.

[ З92 ]

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 LILLIAN FEDER 393

biological and psychological resistan

and social constraints. The major co
selfhood, the struggle over unconsc
between a solitary man and the united
Relying on the only resources he
love, and sorrow, and fragments of
prehend the intrinsic connection be
tive reality. It is an issue we are still
for selfhood is a prophetic illuminatio
lems of the present that are deeply r
precision and elegance of language
pression in speech and imaginative wr
of currently fashionable literary cr
from the reality that literature incor
ness, involuntary or contrived, indi
cultural history; deconstruction ass
Furthermore, both these products of
they may seem, reveal an inadequate
and psychological complexity of selfh
tion with and opposition to the politi
it is continually created. The distrus
psychic adventurism expressed in m
their critical counterpart in Roland
which is "outside criticism, unless it
bliss." The commentator on such a
perate plagiarism" with it, and thu
bliss."2
There is no need to summarize th
Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and their
are widely quoted as assumptions on t
tion of the self, and the autonomy
been ably countered by Denis Donog
no contemporary critic has demonst
predictions the dangers of any progr
from individual being, to deprive i
reread literary history as the dehu

2 The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard

p. 22.

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394 THE GEORGIA REVIEW

reinterpreted to fit a particular philosophic

tably political point of view.
In "Looking Back in the Spanish War" (
his fear that "the very concept of objective
world," that the lies of Fascist governmen
future as historical records. But the danger, as
sive. Referring to the fashionable view that "m
lies anyway," and conceding that "history is fo
and biased," he is disturbed by the current
that history could be truthfully written." D
representation, he insists, there is a "body of
human beings can agree. To refuse such part
conditions of the human species is to acquie
termined by an all-powerful ruler or cliq
against such a "shifting phantasmagoric wor
however much you deny the truth, the truth
behind your back" and the belief "that so long
remain unconquered, the liberal tradition c
years later, in Nineteen Eighty-Four , he im
second safeguard: no liberal tradition suppo
hension that, however denied, objective tru
awareness is produced by the processes of se
nition, the ego and superego, memory and d
drives- still operating within an environment
pervasive as to function like an organism in sy
individual.

I cannot agree with Irving Howe's view th

a world in which the self, whatever subterran
eke out, is no longer a significant value, not ev
The seven years that O'Brien, a leading me
spends in surveillance of Smith and the time a
terrogating and torturing him until his ulti
indicate quite the opposite: the self is the gr
tarian regime's authorized versions of realit

8 The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of

and Ian Angus (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
4 1984: History as Nightmare," Twentieth-Century Int
tion of Critical Essays, ed. Samuel Hynes (Englewood C
P-43-

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 LILLIAN FEDER 395

only by imprisonment and physical

guage and culture into mental barr
psychological reactions of his protago
ance, conflict, expression of impulses
lute denial of the very processes of
In so doing, Orwell does not develop
Winston Smith is a prototype of m
litical and technological forces, the st
but human biology and psychology
Thus, whereas the reader does not r
individual, he does enter into his men
constitutes the self in its ultimate s
integration.
The opposition between the state
in the action of the novel and in st
and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivis
traitor Emmanuel Goldstein but p
book is produced individually," by o
lice. As Smith is aware and this bo
assertion of self is an attack on the
Oceania but of the other two supersta
gaged in perpetual warfare. The Ing
of Eurasia, and the "Death-Worship .
eration of the Self" of Eastasia "are
sent "social systems . . . not distingu
The hierarchical structure of Oce
from top to bottom, from the image
despised proles, but it is Party memb
for training in the correct "mental
doxy. A Party member must have the
inhibitions, the result of conditioning
of the many Newspeak words create
that prohibit feelings and thoughts w
policy. Crimestop, the development
ous thought presented itself," must b
for no questioning of the "mutability
tenet of Ingsoc," or of doublethink, t
The concept of doublethink, which "l
I believe, Orwell's most important c

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39<5 THE GEORGIA REVIEW

the ways in which the individual mind resists and succumbs

social, and cultural oppression.
The process of doublethink must be both "conscious" a
scious." Winston Smith perceives it as a "labyrinthine wor
and not know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness whi
fully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinio
celled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believi
them. . . ." It is "consciously to induce unconsciousness, a
again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you
formed."
There is little that is startling in the process itself. Doub
political appropriation of psychological defenses that hav
long as human beings have been socialized. It is a denial of
taking "account of the reality which one denies" and, in s
tifying with the aggressor one resists and to whom one yet
No human being who has grown up in a family and a soc
avoided some form of such compromise in adapting to aspect
would produce unbearable conflict perceived in their true
Personal, professional, religious, and political loyaliti
volve simultaneous awareness and denial of reservations a
tagonism. Denial itself ranges from a normal defense in
action against overwhelming consciousness of aggression,
trophe, and death to pathological exclusion of factual real
cho-political instrument, its operations can be traced thro
history, and literature. Although conscious lying cannot
denial, deceit has been used throughout history to induce
part of those ruled, even with their own consent; and l
Arendt suggests, "have always been regarded as necessary
tools not only of the politician's or the demagogue's but also
man's trade."6 But, as she and others have pointed out, th
new methods of mass communication by modern technolo
formed "political lies" into images "so big that they requ
rearrangement of the whole factual texture- the making

5 For the term and concept "identification with the aggressor" I am in

Freud, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense: The Writings of A
trans. Cecil Baines, 2nd ed. rev. (New York: International Universities
109-21. Her application of this concept, however, is restricted to individ
development and pathology.
6 "Truth and Politics," Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in P
(New York: Viking, 1968), p. 227.

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 LILLIAN FEDER 397

ality" which both the projectors a

accept (pp. 253-55). All this was
Eighty-Four. Winston Smith cont
was to raise some years after the p
"What prevents these new stories, im
an adequate substitute for reality
posing political deceit and manipul
own internalization not only of the l
logical processes that produced the
Orwell's answer is more complex
garding the future more ambiguou
chances of factual truth surviving th
indeed; it is always in danger of be
only for a time but, potentially, f
faith in "facts" since they "are sup
(p. 259). But Arendt is involved wit
truth, and freedom, and these are th
warily approaches what in another
of "the human heart."7 When she
strategy. In other words, she does no
of conditioning in denial: the comple
cal lying, to distortion and reconstru
only by shadowy images, or, on the
ganda, to dreams and emotions tha

7 "What is Freedom," Between Past and Fu

8 Arendt seems to confuse deficiency in a
Origins of Totalitarianism (1951; 2nd ed.
turbing factor in the success of totalitarianis
and goes on to describe the utter commitm
ment even when it turns against them as in
and total conformism seem to have destroy
it be as extreme as torture or the fear of d
rather the subversion of one's own ego to th
requires a concept of a self that can cons
cause, or a person above individual satisfacti
for such experiences. Discussing "the psycho
of "the breakdown of class society," Arend
hand in hand with a decisive weakening of
in the sense that oneself does not matter, t
the expression of individual idealism but a
two very different psychic states under th
refers to only one of the conditions she dis
of language; Arendťs speculations regardin
book are entirely determined by politica

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 398 THE GEORGIA REVIEW

What Orwell perceives is the future of denial inhere

nicious operation in the totalitarian states of his own time
ment of enslavement, of ever-shifting, precarious adaptati
in hatred and contempt between oppressor and oppresse
extreme form produces identification with the manipulato
of his own omnipotent image and the administrator o
which combines both these processes. Yet even the oppr
istence apart from his image; as surely as his victims, he id
with the deceit it represents. Nineteen Eighty-Four p
namics of denial and "identification with the aggressor
processes used as instruments of the state, which has sy
prived individuals of the counteracting mental and psy
that throughout recorded history has created selfhood
the self employs to test not only reality but its own comp
threats are either mandated out of existence or converted into instru-
ments of doublethink. The calculated effect of such a national policy is
that "the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity." Re-
sistance is punishable by torture and death.
Under such constraints Orwell's hero seeks truth and sanity, his
only resources being the long denied and repressed processes of selfhood.
The representative figure of Winston Smith portrays the resilience of
biological and psychological individuality reasserting its demands against
organized suppression and denial, against even the advanced technology
of torture. As Orwell views human beings of the future, even those
reared in a society calculated to destroy the self continue to resist the
psychic compromises necessary for minimal survival. The processes of
self continue, forbidden and unbidden.
The first of these processes that stir Smith is his memory, which is
"not satisfactorily under control." He is introduced as a man with his
"back turned to the telescreen," trying to "squeeze out some childhood
memory that should tell him whether London had always been" the
bombed out, rotting, squalid city it has become. But he cannot remem-
ber: "nothing remained of his childhood except a series of bright-lit
tableaux, occurring against no background and mostly unintelligible."
The verb "squeeze out," seemingly inappropriate for the flow of memo-

vincing in her analyses of the appeal of totalitarianism to individualized, "unorganized"

intellectuals and to "the masses [that] grew out of the fragments of a highly atomized
society" (pp. 316-17), she provides little insight into the internalization of social and
political conditions that produces atomistic isolation.

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 LILLIAN FEDER 399

ry, conveys the inhibition of a bi

becomes an object of torture and
connected as it is to dream, art, an
aspect of himself and his society th
Despite official policy calculated
such means as omnipresent slogans
recent events, and the obliteration
remnants of the past do return. Sm
unconscious aims and stimulate deep
and yearnings that he has represse
about his dead mother and sister. In
mother's and sister's lives "had be
mother's death, nearly thirty year
in a way that was no longer possibl
sonal memory for historical know
longing "to the ancient time, to a
love, and friendship." Soon his drea
come prophecies based on present f
he envisions Julia, the young woman
her clothes and with that gesture
seeming "to annihilate a whole cul
'Shakespeare' on his lips."
Memory, the most essential activ
conscious mind, emerges from Smi
suing events of his life. His goals b
siders necessary for tragedy- "priv
knows, in the world of 1984 heroic
are no longer possible. Yet he cont
the past denied by his society but
which in any case must soon be ann
Throughout the novel, Smith is p
torical memories, which are intertw
to define and maintain. A rememb
child suggests that there must have
not remember. From such vague fr
some notion of the world of his chil
present one and deliberately erased
even yesterday's- are subject to the
particle of factual reality he must

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400 THE GEORGIA REVIEW

full power of the Party, which controls Ocea

against knowledge: "Who controls the past c
controls the present controls the past."
Smith's job in the Records Department of
which involves altering records and forecasts of
difficulty of his aim. For the most part, the m
false. New fabrications are exchanged for old
away into a shadow-world. . . ." Thus, his in
their insistent physiological and psychologica
avenue to the past and his entire background
of [his] senses." Memory provides the only
only valid psychological preparation for appr
and for experiencing his own existence as authe
Consciously, and in more threatening ways u
from the beginning that his effort to assert hi
that impels him to seek O'Brien's friendship
prophesies this man's role as his destroyer. In a
nightmare in which he stands before "a wall of
prevents his recognizing the prophetic symbo
when it becomes literal before his eyes: O'Br
durable" behind the wall, rats ready to devou
"he did in fact know what was behind the w
deadly effort, like wrenching a piece out of his
have dragged the thing into the open." But h
discovering what it was." Denial operates in
prevent him from facing the specific outcom
knows he cannot win, but he cannot yet let
delays knowing as long as possible, the part
finally to be defeated, the ultimate torture
render of the last remnant of selfhood. He has
denial into a shield, a protection against kno
struggle before it has really begun. Whatever
experience of himself in friendship, privacy
sciously accepting his premonitions, he know
will turn out to be his enemy, his privacy will
betrayed. His margin of victory exists only in t
emotional resources to oppose doublethink wi
instinctual needs to love, and to respond to
which he experiences as political rebellion. H

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 LILLIAN FEDER 4OI

rimate defeat this nightmare prophes

facing its physical and psychologica
Other dreams and memories and th
physiologically express impulses he
sort of protest" in his stomach and h
Oceania. Since he has never known
asks himself if his bodily reactions d
memory that things had once been di
alone "beside an open fire" in a comfo
a sort of ancestral memory." Bodily f
ings convey a sense of one's individ
factions and values.
But such feelings are dangerous:
own nervous system. At any mome
to translate itself into some visible sy
"spasm" of a man he once passed o
scious," and thus, like talking in one's
Yet memories, the feelings they ev
uncomfortable and even painful thou
doublethink. When Smith begins to w
date- April 4th, 1984- is enough to
act expresses. The name of a month
ferable to any accepted reality. As h
create history, he feels trapped on
what comes next to his mind is the
ing his intellectual and emotional imp
bering and writing, the impossibility
arrest the infection of his mental pr
of past and present events as a claim
film he saw the previous evening, he
ganda with apparent approval. This
"Two Minute Hate" session and his own emotional reactions. He re-
members that despite his secret reservations he joined in the ritual of
hatred. His conditioning had made such a response "instinctive," but his
ambivalence had persisted, transferring the feeling from Goldstein, the
focus of the mass frenzy, to Big Brother, to Julia, as yet a stranger. There
is, however, no ambivalence in what he has written "as though by auto-
matic action" while remembering this episode. In large letters he has
filled half a page with "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER." The act of

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 402 THE GEORGIA REVIEW

writing releases his feelings and defines the ex

rebellion; it is a means of preserving his sanity
heritage."
Conditioned to and skillful at falsifying history, Smith is now ob-
sessed by a need to rediscover factual truth. Ten or eleven years before
he had destroyed a "fragment of the abolished past," a photograph of
three alleged traitors taken in New York on a day when in their forced
confessions they had admitted to being in Eurasia. Now he feels he prob-
ably would have held on to it. But what good would that have done?
The essential issue the photograph raises is not the value of his one piece
of evidence but the nature of reality itself: "If both the past and the
external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is con-
trollable-what then?" Alone in his struggle against such control, in his
reliance on his own cognitive processes in opposition to the Party's denial
of external reality, Smith marshals whatever resources he has to combat
his internalization of its imposed logic, his terror that the ruling powers
"might be right." He takes courage from the very distorted perception
his conditioning has led to: his projection of his need for a powerful
leader onto O'Brien, a substitute for Big Brother, on whose presence,
glances, and gestures he builds his alternate fantasy. It is his image of
O'Brien that seems to give him permission to accept the most obvious
truths about external nature and the laws of the universe. As in his night-
mare, he uses the only means available to him, the very adaptive processes
that deny reality, as defenses in his effort to break through inner and
external barriers to perception. He uses Charrington, the proprietor of
the junk shop, in the same way as his guide to history. Knowing that
"suicidal impulses" lead him back to the shop, he goes nonetheless to dis-
cover fragments of the past which stimulate his memory and his desires.
But Charrington and O'Brien, he will learn soon enough, are part of
his society's organized deception. Only his own dreams and memories
do not lie. Although he cannot always accept the full consequences of
their revelations, they are finally his only authentic sources for estab-
lishing a sense of himself within history. One of these dreams evokes "a
gesture of the arm" his mother had made many years before, which he
now connects with one just like it made by a Jewish woman vainly try-
ing to protect her child from bullets in the film he had summarized in the
first entry of his diary. The dream reveals his unconscious motivation for
recording, seemingly with approval but actually with dismay- indeed
with a lifetime of repressed pain- the vicious propaganda offered as en-

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 LILLIAN FEDER 4O3

tertainment in Oceania. The memorie

dreary, terrifying circumstances of
his mother before she disappeared, im
been earlier) by the Party. The histo
personal memories and alleviate his gu
greed, to which he had, for all these
mother. In this dream, as in others, hi
cal and social history and seems larg
over which he has no control. Yet l
guilt, and sorrow provide a reserve of
need surviving imposed repression. Th
tory that Smith seeks to recover. In o
feelings history is continually altered
of communication and bonding amon
Erotic feelings and acts are also fo
manifestations of the individual self
the young woman with whom Smith h
expression are a secret defiance. She
me," she tells him, "this is my hand
I'm alive." Julia manages to live by s
conflict by conforming politically a
stinctual satisfaction. But for Smith l
entire structure of political repression
the climax a victory. It was a blow
political act." It is an act symbolizin
ruling powers of Oceania but agains
1984. Like dreams and memories, lo
apprehension of reality.
It is in the room that Smith had ren
Julia that they are captured. His loy
his selfhood to capitulate to torture
destruction of the self is unquestion
impossible to see reality except by loo
That is the fact that you have got to
self-destruction, an effort of the will
you can become sane." It is not "Tho
but " Thou art."
Since Smith and the reader know alm
novel that he is "dead" even as he begi

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404 THE GEORGIA REVIEW

capitulation is expected. What creates the dr

section of Nineteen Eighty-Four is his struggle
of his identity despite sensory deprivation, t
feelings, memories, and dreams and their rep
(he must even learn to "dream right"), humiliat
tion involving doublethink and other method
reality, and physical torture by beating and
sentative of the last man, he enacts the phys
resistance human identity can summon for w
period of assault.
The opposing forces are represented in O'B
torturer and ally. O'Brien, whom "they got ... a
remade, emerging with a sole distinguishing
standing of the motivations for and the futi
Brother in the flesh, hovering over Smith's e
reservation or capitulation, knowing all, reward
totally dehumanized prison, reduced to a skeleto
teeth, deprived of all psychological and phys
only his reverence for O'Brien as a focus of
hostile dependency becomes his only means of r
under the most extreme coercion. Thus, even a
can serve as a vehicle on which to project h
more important, his need to believe that his
responds to his struggle. Even as O'Brien tortur
in the contest for Smith's identity.
Smith counters O'Brien's slogans, summoni
dispute claims that only the Party determines t
ality. "I am conscious of my own identity," he i
of his own and the world's physical reality
dictum that nothing exists except as a construc
of the Party. But O'Brien scorns traditional m
moded. Minds are to be changed not by logic
that destroys rational thought, instinct, emo
places them with automatic obedience. It is
gradually submits.
Yet even after it is agreed that he has cap
has consciously "accepted everything," his un
tinues. Despite his efforts to surrender and to r
turer's specifications, he cannot entirely cont

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 LILLIAN FEDER 405

memories, and dreams. The very nerv

the assault on their biological function o
to inner and external reality.
He can consciously dismiss rebellious t
he cannot control his response in drea
hears himself cry aloud his love for her
hatred he feels for his oppressors, no m
As O'Brien tells him just before he is
durable" torture: "Intellectually there
is only emotionally that you have failed
Finally, of course, he gives in entir
her any effort to maintain a sense of se
an ancient civilization (an image Orw
unconscious vestiges remain. Half-dru
with "violent emotion" to the news th
Some instinct remains that makes him
Party. It is a "spasm" that passes, and he
false a memory of love and laughter i
ends when he identifies himself total
that it has lasted so long, that feeling
after selfhood has been "burnt out, ca
human mind, so long as it retains any
the falsification it ostensibly accepts.
Indeed, Smith's defeat does not end
has been criticized as split off from the
related to it and should be considered
story. It is 1984's vision of its own fu
method of destroying the self en mas
is to be accomplished before the year
make speech, and especially speech on
tral, as nearly as possible independent
press forbidden ideas and concepts are
names abbreviated in order to preven
"to make articulate speech issue from
higher brain centers at all." The detail
revelation of the connections betwee

9 Alex Zwerdling, "Orwell and the Techniqu

Century Interpretations of 1984, p. 99.

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40 6 THE GEORGIA REVIEW

The very possibility of a scientific "habit of mind," of insti

ure, or independent feeling and thought of any kind is to
from consciousness, since there will be no language in which
them. Newspeak and its principles, as outlined in the appe
a method of altering the very function of the brain, the ve
instinct, so that selfhood is no longer intrinsic to human de
The appendix extends the implications of Winston Smith'
his effort to reclaim vestiges of his individuality, for it
with the contemporary issue I raised at the beginning of
increasing evidence of the devaluation of selfhood in the det
language. Electronic monitoring and torture, which have
weapons of control in more extensive areas of the worl
likely in the 1940's, no longer shock the reader of Nineteen
But victims of unjustified surveillance and inhuman assault h
asserting their individual survival against such brutality
even against brainwashing and their most potent weapon
guage as silent conception, as speech, as writing. Yet in th
when language remains the defense and preserve of selfho
ples of Newspeak have a disquieting familiarity. It is not me
obvious barbarities Orwell describes have increased in jo
technical writing: the interchange of parts of speech and th
of adverbs by the addition of the suffix -wise, of abbrev
hand and hybrid cant on the other. Newspeak now perme
tion systems, the jargon of management, and the rhetoric o
But even more alarming is the inadvertent participatio
and critics in the fulfillment of Orwell's prophecies. The
ticulateness of popular and even a good deal of serious lit
attributed, at least in part, to a distrust of the word as an in
political and economic manipulation. But such imitations o
a defense or a purification are ultimately spurious. Sloven
writing- ungrammatical, imprecise, replete with jargon
powers of observation, discrimination, and reasoning are
that feelings are shallow and their symbolic transference pr
the very processes of selfhood have been arrested.
Concurrently, a large and influential body of literary crit
objecting to the traditional distinction between imaginative
criticism, seems increasingly distant from the works that are
subject. It uses its own jargon to reduce the allusive and
language of a text to a purely graphic function, illustrating

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 LILLIAN FEDER 407

the external reality and the human

cannot be represented. Few people,
view that language cannot offer "a
thoughts that occasioned its utterance
James described some of the ways in
perception of the truth. We name o
thing, as if each knew its own thin
knows is clearly the thing it is named
other things. It ought to be named af
Still, the fact that spoken and writ
tirety of the human experience to wh
not prove that language is utterly d
Orwell is aware that the limitation
proximate and ambiguous character,
tural assumptions, can be used as b
perception and expression. In Nine
flects and reveals human tendencie
internalize stock responses to autho
images of power and aggression. But
still available, human beings have th
severe constraints, of exceeding these
to their own aims. That is why Newsp
language, spoken and written, into
I do not, of course, claim that de
are mere exemplifications of the pr
of Orwell's satire lies partly in an
intentionally distort by magnifyin
of his prophecies. Furthermore, wh
individual voice of speaker or write
language, deconstruction denies th
considers writing "the endless disp
governs language and places it for
self -authenticating knowledge." 12 N
capable: by eliminating the concept
systems reduce the issue of objectiv

10 Christopher Nor ris, Deconstruction : T

1982), p. 46.
11 The Principles of Psychology (1890; New York: Dover, 1950), 1, 241.
12 Norris, p. 29.

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408 THE GEORGIA REVIEW

assumption that, if one rejects the obvious fallacy that th

static order enshrined as reality, one must necessarily a
that language refers to nothing but itself, as Big Broth
on the telescreen represent only their own images. O
point out that reality is a conception, inevitably an interp
human mind.13 Language, moreover, does indeed refer to
and operations. But perception and knowledge of indi
and history depend on processes of body and mind that
the authenticity of language as a vehicle of expression
points out, "that language is always referring to itself doe
is all it refers to."14

The fact is there can be no conception of reality wi

perience of selfhood, and language is the most basic of
diating between individual biological and psychological
internalization of external nature and society. Life in
for all, from Party members to proles, is arranged so tha
and desires are denied any individual language and are
state operations. Libido is directed entirely at Big Brother
Goldstein and at any individual expression of feeling, a
sive symbol of chastity" that young female Party mem
their waists (a vivid example of the denial of the eroti
conversion into hostility). The rigid limitations placed
for instinctual aims denies the possibility of their reco
vents the very process of mediation that language perform
tion of the self. In the struggle over selfhood in Ninet
the major battle is over two concepts of language: the
plicit in Oldspeak that language expresses individual des
assimilation, and response, referable to actual sources, and
of Newspeak that language creates biological, psycholog
cal reality.
On the telescreen, in the Two Minute Hate sessions,
ings and every other organized activity, Newspeak is a me
the individual to subvert his own perceptions and feelings
of doublethink. As all experience becomes amorphous, t
is language referable to psychic, biological, and histor

13 See Gerald Graff's discussion of Kant's work on this issue as w

philosophical and aesthetic developments in Literature Against Itse
Modern Society (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1070), dd. iodff.
14 Graff, p. 196.

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 LILLIAN FEDER 409

Smith first takes up his pen, he seems

of the film he summarizes. But put
mulas of repression- stimulates memo
itself, a repressed hunger to experi
individual and social history that h
tarianism.
His own voice emerges, first unco
slogans of his time as his automa
imitates the repetitive exhortations t
subject for so long, but the referen
ings defying the images constructed
on- in his diary, in his personal lif
Smith uses the language of memor
create a frame of reference for his
writing his own slogan, he continues
psychological means available to hi
his society's instruments of repressio
tain the lens of selfhood, however clo
His unconscious knowledge in his
his destroyer and his conscious decisio
constitute his most critical experien
what is real. Yet, given the extreme l
what he knows in this case promote
ultimate test of his concept of hims
forces engaged to annihilate his id
latent threat and an indictment of
depends on the destruction of a ref
can deny that this fictive future r
present?

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