-
The “Dark Power of Destiny” in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature
- Mosaic, an interdisciplinary critical journal
- Volume 47, Number 1, March 2014
- pp. 179-194
- 10.1353/mos.2014.0010
- Article
- Additional Information
Applying a Lacanian approach to Orwell’s narrative strategies in Nineteen Eighty-Four, this essay analyzes the protagonist’s attempt to evade the Symbolic by resurrecting archaic memories of preoedipal union through a repetitive triadic play of signifiers. Engaging Freud and Deleuze, the essay views his masochistic behaviour as a challenge to patriarchy via identification with the feminized position.