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The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Totalitarian Novels: History and Language in 1984
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- [00:09]
A
Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan.
- [00:13]
B
And I'm Juan Davalos. We are back with totalitarian novels lecture two today, 1984, history and language.
- [00:20]
A
As I mentioned in the preceding lecture, this course has a little bit of a different format. Dr. Arn does a textual analysis of the novel he's discussing. It gives you a plot summary and talks about some of the most important points. And then we shift to a conversation with Dr. Arn's real life students. These are students from the Totalitarian Novels class he taught on campus in spring of 2024. So today you'll hear their conversation and these students are bringing passages from the book. They'll read them out loud and they'll say, Dr. Arne, how do we analyze this thing? And Dr. Arne, being the good teacher that he is, will often ask them some questions and get them to think. So you need to be part of that today.
- [00:56]
B
And I mentioned it in last episode, but I want to reemphasize it today that this is really when you start learning a book, because if you just go through the narrative, sometimes you miss some of the important themes that the book is trying to address. And in this discussion that the students have with Dr. Arne, the importance of love and family and education in the regime come up in the discussion. And I love the last part. Dr. Arne summarizes succinctly. He says, yeah, it's a book about power, and it's power that is exercised against love, because love is what makes you resist that kind of totalitarian power. And so that kind of power needs to overcome or try to conquer love. And that's what the book is about.
- [01:47]
A
1984 paints a really good picture of what makes a totalitarian regime totalitarian. It means it tries to infiltrate every aspect of human life and then replace it. So when we're talking about love, when we think about the bonds of traditional love, that's between. Between husband and wife and mother and father and brother and sister, and even neighbors and relations. And this regime wants to replace that with love for the party. And it's really not even love. Dr. Arn talked about pain in the prior lecture. They want love transferred into fear and allegiance towards the party. So we get an interesting discussion of that with the students.
- [02:24]
B
Yeah, and Dr. Arne talks about this, which he says that this is probably the most grim of the four books that are discussed, because in the end, yes, the party and the state absolutely conquer Winston and essentially destroy him as a human being. And there is no redemption in the book itself.
- [02:42]
A
Literature has a powerful way of illustrating what could be, as Juan just said, a regime that totally conquers the spirit of a man. There's no redemption. There's only surrender. For an equally powerful take with the opposite conclusion, we have John Milton's poem Paradise Lost, in which great suffering, great sorrow, great sin is redeemed by God and redemption is possible. That's the theme of the end of the book. We made a course on this with Steve Smith. It's called paradise lost. And if 1984 gets you down a little bit and you could use some encouragement, go check out our course on Paradise Lost at Hillsdale. Edu course. That's Hillsdale Edu course. And remember, if you prefer to listen to our courses, you can just flip it over to the audio feature.
- [03:29]
B
Now let's turn to lecture two of totalitarian novels, 1984, history and language.
- [03:41]
C
Hello, my name is Larry Arne. I work at Hillsdale College. We're having an online course on totalitarian novels. I gave a big old complicated lecture about that. This is the. The second session on the novel 1984. And these are my kids, and their names are. I mean, when I say my kids. I have a lot of kids. They're students at Hillsdale College. They're all pretty smart. This is Katie, and this is Luke, and this is Eddie, and this is Jack, who just got into a fancy law school, and I'm not allowed to disclose the name of the law school. And we're going to talk about that book, 1984, and they're going to carry the day so you can see if Hillsdale College is, in fact, any good. Roll Em.
- [04:23]
D
I'll start. I would love to talk about love within this book. I want to know your thoughts on do Julia and Winston truly love each other? Because I tend to think that they don't. At least on Julia's side, I don't think that she truly loves Winston. And I wonder how that affects the end of the book.
- [04:39]
C
I think she does. Why do you think she does not?
- [04:41]
D
Well, to start off, I think when they first meet, he asks her if she's done this before, and she says yes, always with party members, but never with inner party members. And she seems to be in the relationship much more for the sexual aspect of it. And they spend time together and she dresses up and she becomes more feminine throughout the book. But then later, when they're about to get caught, it's Winston who is reading the material that o' Brien gave them. And Julia falls asleep and doesn't seem as interested in the revolutionary aspect of that. Winston does. Instead, she seems content with just the illicitness of their relationship and keeping it there.
- [05:18]
C
What do you guys think?
- [05:20]
E
I think, yeah, Addie has a compelling point when it comes to. At the beginning, it seems more of a physical thing with Julia. He doesn't like that. And she doesn't necessarily say that she loves him for some aspect of himself. She just says, you seem different. You seem like you don't kind of jive with the rest of the Party. And that's the reason that she loves him, which doesn't seem to me a compelling reason to love someone.
- [05:42]
C
Ah, okay. Well, you kids have an abstract view of love. I do not. I have a wife. So I think that the novel ascends. Now, you. By the way, C.S. lewis doesn't like that scene and thinks it's. Doesn't like that relationship and thinks it's artificial. I think it's not. I think that she discovers her love for him. I think that when they protest to each other that they will not betray each other, even if they say they do. Remember, that's the crucial test of the novel. The proof that Orwell offers that we are all malleable. We can all. There's nothing in us that the Party can't break. And I'm going to add, I don't think that that would prove that utter despotism is possible. I think it's impossible, it's weak, it's contradictory. It will die sooner or later. Remember, the Soviet Union died. But. So I think that she comes to that along the way. At first, they're both just in rebellion against the Party. They find they're each other in their little nest that they make. They understand that they're probably giving up their lives for that thing. And the fact that she fell asleep during that reading. It's probably true that I'm more interested in that kind of thing than is my wife, but I think I don't make the mistake of reading it to her in bed. But, you know, the love has to transcend all that, right? And transcending doesn't mean leave it behind. I can tell you from having a marriage for a long time, you will have an intellectual friendship with your spouse. And not only that. What I think is, I think that this artist, this poet, George Orwell, makes that love touching as the chief dramatic foil in the novel. That, finally, is the thing that is crushed.
- [08:01]
D
Is it because it is able to be crushed, though? Maybe. As an English major, I just read too much Romantic literature. And so it sort of offends my sensibilities, but because they're able to break down that union between the two. I mean, I think within most of Romantic literature, you're willing to die for that person you love. You're willing to sacrifice everything and go through great bodily harm for the person you love. And both of them, at the end, give up the other person. So is it true love if they're willing to give the other person up, even if it was at such an extreme occasion?
- [08:34]
C
I think that we're meant to think, by Orwell, that those two people found each other, and the peak of the novel is there, and the depth of the novel is the destruction of that. And, you know, we can, by our reflections and our will, we can shape our affections. That's one reason why the marriage ceremony commits us to that. CS Lewis makes a handsome point. He says he draws a conclusion from the fact that love poems, which apparently Eddie here likes a lot, they're always making eternal commitments to each other. Right?
- [09:17]
D
Right.
- [09:18]
C
Well, Julia and Winston make those commitments. It's just hard for Eddie to forgive them for not keeping them, but they make them, you know, and just remember, as a philosophic principle, the fact that a thing can be destroyed is not proof that it's not good. Now, here's another complicated thing a little bit. If a thing can be destroyed, then it's not an eternal thing. And things that have permanence are the highest things. Well, I'm actually arguing that this relationship between them has permanence, even if all we're left with is to grieve for the destruction of it. But we are left with that, right? That's its thing.
- [10:16]
E
So if the destruction of the thing doesn't remove its goodness, and you say there is some permanent aspect, do you think that this novel is hopeful in some way, then, even though it ends with Winston loving the party?
- [10:29]
C
Well, it has to be hopeful in intention, because you have to account for the fact that he wrote the novel, and we know that he saw something that horrified him. He wants us to see that thing without having to suffer that thing. Right. I think that's. I think Orwell wants us to see the awesome power of this kind of thing, and it is extremely powerful. Right. Tyranny is an awful, awful form of community and miserable for everyone subjected to it. This is not a novel about the defeat of all that. It's a novel about how hard it is to defeat.
- [11:18]
F
So something that really struck me in 1984 is the fact that they don't tear down the family unit. I think that's very interesting. And when Winston goes over to the Parsons house, we meet their children who seem to be terrors. But, Orwell writes, a handsome, tough looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister, about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood. Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, gray shirts and red neckerchiefs which were the uniforms of the spies. Winston raised his hands above his head, but an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy's demeanor, that it was not altogether a game. And then it goes on and the kids start yelling, why can't we go see the hanging? Roared the boy in a huge voice. Want to see the hanging? Want to see the hanging? Chanted the little girl, still capering around. And so I just think that's really interesting because I think that the family unit is in some way, the children are educating the parents about what the Party's goals and ultimate aims are. And so I wonder if that's why the family unit is kept in 1984, or if there's other reasons that the Party would keep the family unit instead of tearing it down.
- [12:34]
C
What do you think?
- [12:36]
G
I think there might be something to that. If they have children there, not only to enforce the pieties of the Party, but also to keep them and hold them accountable. But also I think there's a thwarting of nature there, because nature orders that parents have authority over kids, and this is like an inversion of that. So I think the tension that's brought there by this deliberate overthrowing of the natural order of things is also something that contributes to the dysfunction that you're just describing.
- [13:10]
D
Well, and I think too, it highlights the importance of education and the role that developing the future generation plays in a regime. Because if you can control the minds of these children at a young age, you won't have to have the thought police, because they will be indoctrinated into believing that the Party is always right. I think it also serves as a really effective tactic to remind people that they're always being watched, because the telescreens can do a lot of watching. But if your own kids are constantly threatening you with turning on you, and a little bit we see this in Darkness at Noon with the father who's afraid of his daughter, who wants the apartment. I think you see this danger of when you do subvert those roles of parents and children, it's a very effective Tool as a government for further terror, basically.
- [13:56]
C
Yeah.
- [13:56]
E
And I think that we should also not forget the purely practical point of it removes the joy from having a family and the happiness of having kids if they're always talking about seeing hangings and listening with little ear glasses when you're asleep and talking in your sleep. Because any joy that there was in procreation and having kids and being able to cultivate those relationships is removed when the kids are such terrors.
- [14:21]
D
I do want to push back on that a little bit, because I do think Parsons is proud of his children. They turned him in. He's literally going under torture. And yet he does have pride. Like there is some familial bond, there is some natural fatherly pride in him. And I'm not sure what to make of that.
- [14:36]
C
Well, it's distorted, right? He's lost control of his children long ago, Right. He's meant to be compliant and is. I mean, remember, o' Brien specifically imagines that the sexual practice is going to be removed from reproduction. Right? And so the family will disappear, function will disappear. And right now it's a tool. But. And remember how radical this novel is more than the others, because the idea is we still need the rebellion to keep up the activity of power that is our claim to divinity. But he does seem to believe that the rebellions of people like Winston are essential to the functioning of the regime. And since the regime is never to pass away, then that would never pass away. And there, you know, if you just think, here we're five of us, we get on well. We have a common aim. We all have our own lives to live, too. And as long as there are individual organisms, that will be true of all of them. But then if there are rational organisms who make choices, then the opportunity both for conflict and cooperation go up. So he does not imagine a world in which rebellion will go away. The regime needs it. That's one reason why this is the most radical statement of the purpose of communism that I know. It's, you know, because he even denounces o', Brien, denounces Marx and Marxism. Previous regimes look to a state beyond this. You know, Marxism is supposed to end in the leap, to leap into freedom, right? Everybody, after we, you know, pummeled the daylights out of you and distorted and disrupted everything about you and crippled you, then a really happy day is coming. We won't have to do that anymore. O' Brien treats that as a simple weakness. I don't know any account of anybody more ruthless than the account of o' Brien explaining to Winston why he's being tortured. So you could say they're keeping the family around. See, one of the rhetorical posture of o' Brien in the final scenes is he's untouchable. He's thought through everything. He knows Winston's thoughts as Winston has them, or before. He knows the course that things are going to take with Winston. He can control the past and foresee the future. And therefore, all this artfulness in turning the children into spies. Their power is so great that that can pass away and they'll still have it. I think that's the idea. And we'll see. In Brave New World, the family has passed away. But that's a regime with different purposes than this one. This one is so you can obey us. Totalitarian countries are very good at taking what you love and using them as a tool against you. See, those strengths that you have become a weakness. They exploit it. So that's certainly a very powerful theme. The other theme is about the destruction of rationality. They want to reinvent language, you see, because these two natural things in us, right? First of all, how we live as animals, including how we come to be what we eat, how we get our living, all that, right? That's one thing. But then this other thing is we can commune with the universe on a daily basis. And so Big Brother aims to destroy both those things. Make you deny your own inner sense and thoughts. And they want to make you do that, you see, as the utter exercise of power. I think that's one step more intrusive than interfering with the family. Jack, what have you got for us?
- [19:42]
G
Okay, this passage gave me pause fairly early on. It says, always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Always asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed. No escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull. Do you even really have ownership of that? Of your own thoughts, of your cubic six centimeters between your skull?
- [20:08]
E
I think that he does have it, and he will always retain it. And even at the end, there's even some hint that maybe he still has it a little bit. And it's partly because of what you said in your lecture, Dr. Arn, about choice and how one of the worst things a totalitarian society can do is take away choice. And I think that Winston always, throughout, even the torture, had the choice to continue or to not continue the torture and to say, put her in my place. I give up, Julia. And so I think he does have it. And they just usurp it and try to control it as much as they can.
- [20:44]
F
But if they're usurping it and controlling it, then is it really his? That's what I think Jack is trying to make the point of. If at the end he looks up and he loves Big Brother, did he like, is that even still his? Because they've usurped it and controlled it so much that he doesn't even have those centimeters inside his brain.
- [21:03]
C
Right.
- [21:03]
G
My point was, although he may have his own thoughts, in the beginning and throughout most of the books, we learn that he is identified as an enemy of the party when he begins to have these thoughts. And he's been having them, presumably for seven years. And the only way that he can rectify himself with the party and the only way that he can go back to living is if he gives up that freedom, if he gives up that ability to think for himself.
- [21:29]
D
Well, and I think maybe a unification of these two points would be that every person does have ownership of those, but it's the party doesn't actually have to own them for them to make you think that they do. And so it's a lot less about who actually controls it and more about the image of who controls it. And so it does have to be this illusion. And I think the illusion can be very strong and very powerful and very convincing, because if you are led to believe that o' Brien can read your mind, now, part of it is probably because he's been asked those questions before by other people. He's tortured. And so it's not really that he's omniscient, he's just done it before. And so, and so he knows the questions in advance, but it makes Winston believe that he can read his mind. And so it's a very effective means of convincing, basically, but without any actual omniscience. Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale Eduardo, or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your audio.
- [23:04]
E
This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you like what you hear. Please subscribe to your favorite. You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device. And you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another another episode by going to podcast Hillsdale. Edu Subscribe. That's Podcast Hillsdale. Edu subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.
- [23:48]
C
So there's one person in the world of this novel who is omniscient. His name is George Orwell. And Jack puts a very stark point. How do you tell whether or not Winston has the cubic centimeters inside his mind to himself? The evidence that everybody else in the novel has is what Winston says. Well, here this question actually gets settled by the omniscient one in this novel. In the end, right, These are Winston's final thoughts. And see, you have to take them as authoritative, right, because that's how the novel's written. It's narrated. The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners in booty and slaughter. But the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters returning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. So now we've located Winston. This is his environment. Winston's sitting in a blissful dream. And remember, from the point of view of the novel, we have the same objective knowledge of Winston and what he's thinking as we have of what's going on in the room. That's what the novelist can do. Poetry is very powerful, paid no attention. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white tiled corridor with the feeling of walking in sunlight and an armed guard at his back. The long hoped for bullet was. Was entering his brain. He's imagining with pleasure his execution. His soul now white as snow. Now, you could say that in the beginning of this novel, in that passage that Jack read, George Orwell set himself an almost impossible task to take away from a human being those cubic centimeters and what he's doing at the end. But it was all right. Everything was all right. The struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother, you see. Only in a novel could there be a victory so complete. And that means you can read this novel as a way to get from that passage Jack read to this, where those cubic centimeters are utterly conquered. This is what it would take. But that's the fulfillment of o' Brien's purpose. Right. That's what he says he wanted to do. They don't want high thoughts. They don't want things that call you out of yourself, things that elevate you. This novel, by the way, is, in my opinion, elevating in its effect. Because if you look at it as a universe contained within the covers of this book, you remember that we and George Orwell both sit outside the book. And so he had a purpose and upon us we draw conclusions. It has an effect, not entirely what he says, because he doesn't control us, but he builds a world for us to look at so we can think about it. Right. And that means this would be a subversive book in Oceania. They would ban it for sure.
- [27:33]
F
Does having elevating thoughts is part of the reason that needs to go away, is because everyone has their own individual ideas. And so having a place to think about those higher things is too individual for the Party, and that the Party needs to take away that individual aspect of literature. So it's just an imperative lecturing.
- [27:53]
C
Yeah. I don't. So I rebel. As you all know. I don't like thinking about our own ideas. Because when we're thinking about our own ideas, we're thinking about ourselves. But the source of knowledge is in the thing that known. Right now, the reason thoughts can elevate us is we look up towards something high, and we won't regard it as high if we think it's just our own contrivance. Right? Like, on the one hand, George Orwell created this book right here. On the other hand, the book has to make sense, we often say, or nobody will read it. Doesn't work. Right. And around here at the college, we say write a sentence on a page starting a paper. You don't own the paper anymore. Every sentence that comes after it's got to make sense in relation to that sentence. You can start over and get rid of the sentence, but you're trying to build a consistency, and the fact that you think it so does not make it so. Right. In other words, you must conform. Right. And that means that Orwell is the creator of this, but also it created him too. We each have our own thoughts. Are they good ones? Are they true? You know, that's human activity. That's what the tyrant wants rid of. Luke, you're up.
- [29:27]
E
All right, so my passage comes from Goldstein's book, or what we thought was Goldstein's book, where he's talking about the key behind the Party. He says this from the point of view of our present rulers, therefore, the only genuine dangers are the splitting off of a new group of able, underemployed, power hungry people and the growth of liberalism and skepticism in their own ranks. The problem that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously molding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way. This spoke to the education not just of the proles, but also of the outer party, and it seems, even of the inner party. And I just. I wanted to ask your thoughts on education in this novel more broadly, but also the education of o'. Brien. In contradiction to education as we would normally define it, it seems like he knows a lot of things, but that knowledge doesn't, you know, enable him to see objective reality. And so what is this conception of education? And how would you say it's different from what we would say education is?
- [30:39]
C
Well, first of all, so education is interesting in this novel because it's not elaborated. Now, education, as we all know, is a mess, right? You got to grow up, you learn, Everybody disagrees. It's a constant process of growth and struggle, and it's imperfect. And I will tell you, in our society what we thought of education was, let's help them grow and then they can be full citizens, independent, think things through, know the ends, be good at calculating means, and then they can rule themselves and participate in self government. And what they need to know is not just political doctrines, they need to know political arguments for sure, and principles and all that. But they need poetry, they need everything. They need physics. Well, that's the old view, the more modern view, and it crosses party lines in America, has been we have to make the schools uniform so that we can make the future the way we want it to be. But that's the core, isn't it? You equip them to be self governing. And these regimes, that's not their object. And they don't do that. It's not education, it's conditioning.
- [32:17]
F
So what is the point of Newspeak? Because there's a moment in the canteen and Sime's talking about the new edition of the dictionary. He says, don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thought crime, literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.
- [32:37]
C
Is that the editor of the dictionary talking? See, so that's earlier in the novel, right? And I don't remember what o' Brien says about that. If it were true, that they could create a perfectly harmonious society. By the way, that's implausible, isn't it? I mean, if we took this cup, quite a nice little Hillsdale cup here. If we took this cup and smashed it and there was no word to describe that, wouldn't we still see the smashing and think of a word to describe it? That part of it seems less realistic than o' Brien's statement. We need you to differ from us so we can hurt you and make you conform. That's the eternal activity in this novel. And I don't think Newspeak is meant to bring it to a halt. I think it would be a feeling in the novel if o' Brien had said that at the end.
- [33:50]
D
So is the implication then, almost, that the Party does things in order to generate rebellion to it? It's why they have people actively going through and editing history. It's why they actively are changing which side of the war they're on and all these different things. Because they're trying to create citizens who will start to question, who will have these thought crimes that they can then try and put out.
- [34:11]
C
Well, they need to know everything. And to do that, everything has to be an extension of their will. What if the whole past is whatever you think it is? Then you're like God. So I think that's the positive reason they're rewriting history. We have a few minutes left. What's the most important thing?
- [34:32]
E
O' Brien says it's power, right? He says that the Party, their goal is it's the end, not even the means. It's just power for power's sake.
- [34:41]
C
What do you think, Jack?
- [34:45]
G
Via negation.
- [34:46]
C
Love via negation. You have to explain that.
- [34:50]
G
What I mean is the goal of the Party, at least as it pertains to the Inner Party and the Outer Party, is to strip the human person of all of his natural loves and channel them to the love of Big Brother, the love of the Party agenda. And that, above all, seems to be the means by which they wish to assert their powers by destroying this love and destroying this sense of hope. That's why I think, in part, the interrogation, the torture of Winston ends once he gives an indication that his love for Julia has a certain limit.
- [35:25]
E
And that's true. The last line of the novel is, he loves Big Brother.
- [35:28]
G
He loves Big Brother.
- [35:29]
C
Yeah.
- [35:31]
D
I would argue that a little bit more aligned to yours. But I think that the most important takeaway from this novel is Hopeful. And even in a moment that seems so hopeless, like you talked about the beginning, there is a reason that he wrote this book. There's a reason that he wanted us to take away. And I think Winston, even though he sort of loses his hope at the end. And the last line is, you know, he loves Big Brother. And it's this very crumbling moment for everyone. I think hope is what we're left with, of we have the power to prevent something like this from coming. Or even if it comes, there will be more Winstons that rise up, and maybe one of them can defeat. But to push back on that a.
- [36:03]
F
Little bit, isn't that the whole point is that there is no hope? Like, Winston has these big dreams and these big goals of taking down the Party, and he has his own revolution with Julia. And then he talks to o', Brien, who is the most educated person, the person he looked up to, and that all comes crumbling down. And so he just gives into the Party. Because there isn't any hope that that.
- [36:26]
C
Would keep going, I think so. First of all, I agree with the point that the book is about power. A perfect exercise of power would destroy over you, right? Because remember, power is power over something in the mind of the tyrant, right? It isn't power to help something except oneself, right? And so what you have to overcome in people is what they love. So this is Jack. Jack's going to be a lawyer. So he's using a little via negation thing.
- [37:11]
D
I was impressed. It sounded pretty good.
- [37:14]
C
Jack is very smart, I happen to know. But I have to assert that to you if. But you have to think, remember, this is. Aristotle says that poetry is superior to history. The great admirer of history was Aristotle. What can he mean by that? The answer is in the hands of a great poet. You can see things that otherwise you'd never be able to observe. And so you have to remember this is a work of art and all of it is relevant. But also the artist knows that we're not going to be living in Oceania under the conditions of 1984 when we read this. We are not going to be defeated by this, as Winston is. We are going to see that, right? And we are going to be disappointed when we see that. You see, we're going to think he couldn't stand up to it. That is the effect of the book he's calling to us. He specifically, o' Brien specifically addresses the hope in the prose that Winston has and dismisses it. And that means that the hope is outside the novel. The hope is in us, we get to see the whole novel without having to live in the regime. Here's another way to alter the point. O' Brien's speech to Winston they don't broadcast that over the telescreen. I'm only here to hurt you, and you are to suffer so that I can be God. They don't say that to everybody. They would only say that in a small room. Only a novelist could take you into that room, you see. So, in other words, it's in one sense a perfection over history. I've enjoyed the conversation very much, and I think that we have rightly identified the correct themes. It is a book about power, but it has to be a book about love, because it's about power, because that's what power exercises itself upon and where it meets the most resistance.
- [40:01]
B
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