Breaking through ideology: deconstructing "I" and the "me" who is not "myself"

This thesis project focuses on the tension between empirical reality, fiction, and the self while addressing the following question: what is being organized and made orderly in the structure of the narrative form (the novel)? Within its own superstructure of practical consciousness, the novel, through language, actively criticizes the meanings, representations, and ideologies of the ever-changing, disorderly world external of bodily experience. Bringing critics and theorists into conversation, this project explores two theoretical concepts, the materialist conception of fiction and the mind-forged manacle, and their application to certain novels. Despite representing different genres, historical significances, geographical locations, and sociopolitical contexts, these novels represent the politics of the English language and its demand to possess the self.