----- Original Message ----- From: Natasa Tucev tucev@tesla.rcub.bg.ac.yu To: blakes7@lists.lysator.liu.se Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 5:03 PM Subject: Re: [B7L] Subtext vs Character, or would Mr Humphries have pushed the right buttons?
Fiona wrote:
Are you familiar with Lukacs' concept of abstract and concrete potentialities? Various thoughts and inclinations pass through your head, but in the end it's the concrete action in the real life situation that determines your character. Perhaps Goebbels's goodness is more in the
domain
of abstract potentialities - playing with his children, being tender to
his
wife, enjoying the role of 'good father and husband', while his concrete actions labelled him quite differently. Maybe he had an 'abstract potentiality' for being a good man, but in effect he wasn't. (I agree,
this
is not my discipline, and it's silly of me to make these assumptions.)
Not familliar with Lukacs, but I do agree with you on that-- after all, Goebbels did have affairs (with Lida Baarova among many others), and in the end he did kill his wife and children as well as himself.
Anyway, Blake didn't know what information they had on his family. It was that fact-- the mystery-- that ultimately lured him out.
The mystery about his family. In his state of mind, it is doubtful whether he would decide to leave the dome for any other mystery which did not involve him emotionally to that extent.
True. But of course, that's exactly why they used it...
Now you're missing the point. Of course Blake's family did not become
bogus
when they died. But the point is, the people he believed in and for whom
he
transgressed the law by leaving the dome were not in fact his family--
they
were a series of faked letters written by agents of the Federation in
order
to convince him he still had a family. Would he have left the dome if he
had
known they were dead?
The real question is, would he have left the dome if he hadn't loved them? Of course he couldn't know they were dead. They were killed by the Federation and this fact was concealed from him.
Of course he loved them, that's not in dispute. My point was, the Federation was using love to condition him, not trying to eradicate love in him.
No. What I'm saying is that, you appear to be saying that the Federation attempts to destroy love.
In a way, I think all totalitarian systems are trying to do this, perhaps indirectly, because your private loyalties compete with your loyalty to
the
state and the regime.
I do get your point, but I don't think that's trying to eradicate love but to *use* love, to encourage people to channel that love towards the regime. "He loved Big Brother." And, as I said, such regimes are also not above using people's love for their families etc. to secure power. For the children who turn in their parents, I would add people who rat on their neighbours to save their own families.
But I'll stop it now, because I think we've reached the point at which
we're
down to our respective theoretical stances, and I don't think we can reconcile those. You have your discipline, I have mine <respectful g>.
I return the same respectful g., and if you agree I suggest you conclude this discussion with your next post. Your understanding of culture(s) is professional and mine is far from that. Being a teacher of literature, I have scraps of knowledge in psychoanalysis, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, etc., which I cunningly apply to literary analysis. I'm like that Fool in The Keeper, I know everything and nothing.
I agree to do that, and I also concede *your* professional knowledge of literature. Your points have gotten me to thinking on a lot of issues, firstly about the proles' being protected from the regime by their ignorance, and secondly about what the response might have been had Winston said he would *not* throw acid in a child's face, etc. Would the state system have perhaps assimilated him to itself, containing the threat (from someone that bright and idealistic) by offering him, say, the chance to change things from within...?
I think the real comfort in *1984* lies in the glossary at the end, in
which
Oceania is referred to in the past tense, reminding us that such regimes
do
end, eventually.
An interesting point, which I will certainly mention to my students. Bear
in
mind, however, that writing in the past tense is a well-established
literary
convention.
Admittedly, the outcome is uncertain... but George Orwell is really an incredibly clever writer, and I've gotten to the point where I'm starting to look at every single nuance and word of his with that in mind. As I sincerely hope your students do :).
Fiona
The Posthumous Memoirs of Secretary Rontane Available for public perusal at http://nyder.r67.net
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