Literary Trope

[porphyry]

Solipsism is the idea that a single individual is all that exists and that the perceived world is a creation of that individual's fantasy.

An idea that is nearly the opposite--that the world as the individual perceives it is an illusion created by an evil power for the purpose of deceiving the individual--is implicit in Descartes' fear that reality is the deception of an evil genius, against which he can at least prove his own existence by ergo cogito, ergo sum, in the teaching of O'Brien in 1984 that reality is what the party says it is, in the Prisoner where false realities are being constantly created to deceive No. 6 and it eventually seems that the reality he knew in London before coming to the village was just another such illusion, in Carperter's perhaps underrated film, They live, where the reality we see all around us is determined by alien mind control machines, and--so I am told--in the Matrix.

What is the name of this trope for the purposes of literary criticism?

Comments

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

There isn't one. You could call it bureaucratic gnosticism, or the Kafka demiurge, I guess.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

That's just the point, it so widespread, it ought to have a name.

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

Seize the opportunity! You don't have to credit me if you use those.

However note that in the popular imagination it does have a name; everyone calls it the Matrix.

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

I thought of another one: cosmic gaslighting.

[benicek.livejournal.com]

...and let us not forget 'The Truman Show'. Good question. The belief that the entire world is a construction designed to deceive the individual is not an uncommon delusion in people suffering from psychotic illness. Psychologists must have a succinct term for it.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

The same thought had occurred to; but the internet ought to be more useful in tracking it down.

[gislebertus.livejournal.com]

Well, here's the pop culture version.

[filialucis]

The paranoid entitlement fallacy.