Adele Wiseman's Crackpot sets out to analyze the relationship between the self and society in terms of the language-learning (and, therefore, the morality-learning) process. The character of Hoda, lacking the usual moral or even social guidance, invents her own morality as dictated by her pleasures and by her environment. Yet it is not simple hedonism that occurs, because her beliefs encompass what she perceives as the relative happiness or unhappiness of others. Hoda's moral education or enlightenment comes as a result of her growing ability to use words properly -- thus conflating the apparently disparate notions of language and morality.
