Fiona wrote:

I'd agree mostly but take issue with the word "good." You can love your family and not necessarily be good, or even ethical. Goebbels was a family man.

So I've heard, and I must admit it has always bothered me. 'Than one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.'

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.)

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.

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.

On the Liberator, it is not the fact that he loves his

family that saves him, but the fact that he knows what he was told about them was a lie. By contrast, Jenna and Avon are trapped by their love for

their families.

I have a feeling that this statement of yours is purposefully vague. It was a lie that his family was alive. His feelings for them weren't a lie. He doesn't have to stop loving them to beat the trapping device on the Liberator. He just has to resist the delusion that they're alive.

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. What was it king Creont says in the 'Antigone'? 'If someone has a friend whom he suspects is plotting against the City, let him not tarry but report this friend immediately to the authorities.' Remember the kid-spies in '1984' who are encouraged to report close members of their families to the Thought Police if they say or do anything subversive? Why does the novel end with 'He loved Big Brother'? Remember the movie 'Killing Fields' in which a little girl is encouraged to erase mum and dad from the drawing on the blackboard which represents a family? I think that the Federation also tried to condition Blake to feel complete loyalty to the regime. They expected it would be stronger that any private loyalty he might have - but it wasn't.

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.

...

You've forgotten that she also appears in Winston's dream, where Julia and Shakespeare also appear. Dreams, to quote Jung (him again!) can be compensatory to our conscious attitude, they can bring a one-sided state

But in that case it's not the mother herself, it's what she symbolises for Winston, because she's appearing in *his* subconscious.

We are talking about a work of fiction. Winston's dream is fiction within fiction. Therefore I observe both the original Mrs. Smith, and the one in Wiston's dream, within the context of the novel, to find out what the author wants to say through her character. (I tend to agree with Neil in this respect. Although I admit that my fascination with Blake's character is something completely different.)

...

I have to go, before my kids start eating marbles in the other room.

Oh dear-- are they OK :)?

Of course they are, thank you for asking. I was just joking.

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.

N.