Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [1021]

Winston shrank back upon the bed. Whatever he said, the swift answer crushed him like a bludgeon. And yet he knew, he knew, that he was in the right. The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind – surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false? Had it not been exposed long ago as a fallacy? There was even a name for it, which he had forgotten. A faint smile twitched the corners of O’Brien’s mouth as he looked down at him. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 1021

Note

Winston’s helplessness rendered exactly: he knows he is right but cannot marshal the demonstration, and the forgotten word ‘solipsism’ becomes a small emblem of how the Party strips even the vocabulary of dissent. The faint smile of O’Brien completes the power asymmetry.