“Nineteen Eighty-Four” by George Orwell (post 5): Society’s posttraumatic multiple personality after trauma of nuclear war, not just totalitarian mind control.

Most interpretations of Nineteen Eighty-Four jump to the conclusion that it is basically an extrapolation from Nazi and Communist totalitarianism. However, the novel itself is about the double-thinking multiple personality developed by society after the trauma of nuclear war. (Real multiple personality is a posttraumatic condition.)

Toward the end of the novel, O’Brien pauses in his torture of Winston to say, “And now let us get back to the question of ‘how’ and ‘why.’ You understand well enough how the Party maintains itself in power. Now tell me why we cling to power…

“You are ruling over us for our own good,” [Winston] said feebly…

“That was stupid, Winston, stupid!…Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake…The object of power is power…It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual…if he can escape his identity…” (1, pp. 174-175).

And when Winston objects that there are certain objective realities that the Party cannot control, O’Brien explains that “Reality is inside the skull…We make the laws of nature…Do you suppose it is beyond us to produce a dual system of astronomy? The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them…Have you forgotten doublethink?” (1, pp. 176-177).

Thus, Big Brother and the Party are not eating power food while they feed totalitarian poison to everyone else. Leaders of the Party like O’Brien are eating their own cooking: They, too, lose their individual identities and engage in doublethink (double consciousness, multiple personality).

(Search previous post on Orwell’s “doublethink.” And past posts on “double consciousness,” “double,” and “theme of the double.”)

1. George Orwell. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four [1949]: Text, Sources, Criticism. Edited by Irving Howe. New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1963/1982.