A Philosophy Study of Sally Rooney's Intermezzo

On language games in Intermezzo...

Intermezzo isn’t a book about chess—not really. Yes, one of the protagonists is a chess player, but the real game unfolding isn't on the board; it’s a language game. Wittgenstein's philosophy permeates the novel, and the chess analogy echoes his ideas on communication. Rooney didn’t just drop a Wittgenstein epigraph for fun—she’s offering a lens through which to read the entire narrative:

“Aren’t you feeling grief now, but aren’t you now playing chess?”

I’ll admit, I didn’t catch on at first. I thought it was just a clever quote Rooney found that was both intellectual and about chess. Likewise, I wasn't particularly hooked in the early pages, struggling to find engagement with the story.

But slowly, the philosophical threads started making sense, and I realised I was wrapped up in Rooney's own language game. 

So now I’m inviting you to join the game as I unpack the philosophical musings in what I believe is Rooney's most sophisticated novel yet (I will have a full review coming at the end of the month, this is just a philosophical deep dive). And I feel justified in diving deep here, as someone who’s long studied the interplay between literature and philosophy.

Wittgenstein and Language Games

Chess sits at the heart of the novel. It's on the cover, our main character Ivan is a chess player, and his brother sees him as nothing more than a “chess freak.” They can't communicate, not even in the most basic brotherly way. 

At one point, Sylvia suggests to Peter that he text his brother. Peter’s response?

‘In what language. 1. E4.’

Despite being brothers, Peter and Ivan can’t communicate. Sure, they’re separated by an age gap and distinct life experiences, but the real chasm between them is their languages. They're playing different games. And as Wittgenstein argued, you can only play a game if you know its rules. 

It’s both ignorance and arrogance not to try and meet someone halfway in their own language—or at least accommodate them.

This brings us to the core of the novel: it’s a language game. At one moment, Ivan speaks chess; at another, Peter does not. But Ivan isn’t the one failing to communicate. Ivan's awkwardness aside, he communicates quite well. The problem lies with Peter’s arrogance, his refusal to bridge the gap. Margaret, who’s Peter’s age, can communicate with Ivan perfectly fine. She doesn’t know chess, but she listens and learns. The communication between Ivan and Margaret is healthy.

Peter, on the other hand, struggles in his relationships with Sylvia and Naomi. He can’t articulate what he wants, and eventually loses both women. Ivan may not be a flawless communicator, but Peter’s stubborn refusal to play any kind of language game makes him, in my view, the novel’s villain.

It’s through Wittgenstein’s concept of language games that we can better understand these dynamics. Wittgenstein’s chess analogy in Philosophical Investigations is a perfect framework for analysing this.

 (By the way, I plan on writing a guide to Wittgenstein’s philosophy soon, but for now, here's a brief explanation.)

Language games, at their core, show us that the meaning of words shifts based on the context they’re used in. Wittgenstein argued that instead of chasing a fixed definition of language, we should look at how it functions in different situations.

Think of chess: just as players follow rules, we navigate social conventions in communication. Each chess move has meaning within the game’s structure, just as a word or phrase derives its meaning from the situation in which it's spoken. For instance, “check” is a specific move that alters the course of the game, just as a well-placed statement in conversation can shift a discussion. Ivan and Peter are speaking past each other, each holding onto their own meanings without making an effort to understand the other's.

Wittgenstein also emphasised that language is fluid. No two chess games are the same, each is influenced by the players’ strategies. Evidently in the novel Peter and Ivan have different lifestyles — one a lawyer and another struggling chess player. Similarly, language evolves depending on social context and the relationship between speakers. Both in chess and communication, you express your intentions through moves or words, influenced by a shared understanding. Engaging in a language game requires a mutual understanding of the rules for effective communication. You can't fully read or appreciate my writing if you don't agree to follow the framework I’ve set.

The novel also touches on the idea of naming something, and the power giving something a name holds. Rooney goes as far to portray it as a violent action — something set in stone that solidifies the language game. Rooney quotes Wittgenstein here: 

‘The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, says Wittgenstein, and it was the very one that we thought quite innocent. Because the name you give to a presumed relation between a man and woman may be both correct and incorrect at once’ 

She also writes: 

‘An act of naming which stands open to correction, but correct only in the form of replacement: that is, the replacement of one existing name for another’ 

Wittgenstein’s point about the "decisive movement in the conjuring trick" speaks to how language often tricks us. We think we’re just naming or describing something simple—like a relationship between a man and a woman—but the words we use are far from innocent. Even Rooney’s choice of words hope to sway in some way. Naming shapes how we see and interpret reality, often in ways we don’t fully grasp. What feels like a straightforward description can carry all sorts of hidden assumptions, altering our understanding without us even realising it.

 Likewise, naming isn’t a fixed or final act—it’s always up for debate and revision. A name might seem "correct" in one moment, but it's always open to being corrected or replaced by another name as new insights come to light. It’s not just a swap of words; it's a shift in how we perceive the entire relationship or concept. This is how language games can also persist, rules are adjusted and changed — for both better and worse.

I think what Rooney is trying to portray is that language isn’t static. As alluded to in my article about classics, words change and take on new meanings depending on the reader. Once again readers are playing in some form of language game reading a book — depending on their culture and literary lens. 

Language is fluid, constantly evolving, and the way we name things plays a huge role in how we understand the world. There’s always room for correction and reinterpretation, which keeps communication—and meaning—constantly in flux.

The failure of the mind

The mind-body problem has been a point of philosophical debate since ancient times, and it’s a theme Rooney explores through her characters, particularly Ivan. Ivan grapples with the disconnect between mind and body, highlighting how the two often seem at odds. There’s no denying that the mind can be both cruel and deceptive, a fact Ivan’s anxiety around chess tournaments painfully underscores:

“The physical anxiety that accompanies chess events—exhibitions, games, tournaments—does not bear any meaningful relationship to the events themselves, except a chronological one: it arrives beforehand and goes away afterwards. His mind knows this, but his body does not. For this and other reasons, Ivan considers the body a fundamentally primitive object, a vestige of involuntary processes superseded.”

Ivan’s body betrays him, reacting with a primal anxiety that defies logic. His mind understands that there’s no real threat in a chess game, but his body clings to this irrational fear, responding as if it were facing something far more dangerous. We’ve all been through this feeling I’m sure. This is a familiar experience for many of us—our minds might know better, but our bodies refuse to listen. Anxiety, after all, often feels senseless, an irrational force that we struggle to explain or control. 

The mind and body, instead of working in harmony, act like two separate entities, each pulling in opposite directions. For Ivan, and for many of us, this disconnect makes navigating the world that much more challenging.

Again Rooney critiques the mind, for making life so difficult.

‘Rapidly and it seems illogically with strange disjointed connections, thoughts go on moving through Ivan’s brain: memories of feelings, or feelings about memories. In other words, nothing real. How can it be real to think of these things, this forcefield sensation, this desire to hurt or protect? Things that are real belong to the material world. Feelings, memories, ideas, dreams: these things are outside the realm of objective reality, that perfect self-contained realm, like a snow globe, with everything real inside it.’

Ivan's internal monologue captures a chaotic stream of thoughts—disjointed, fragmented, and often illogical. His mind jumps rapidly from one feeling to another, from memories to emotions tied to those memories, none of which feel grounded in anything concrete. He wrestles with the idea that these thoughts, these feelings, aren't "real" in the way the material world is real. How can they be, when they exist only in the mind?

Ivan’s struggle to reconcile the tangible, physical world with the abstract world of emotions and memories. He sees "real" things as belonging to the material world—solid, measurable, objective. But feelings, memories, ideas, and dreams? These belong to a different realm, one that's messy, elusive, and outside what we might call "objective reality." Ivan likens the material world to a snow globe—perfect, self-contained, everything in place. But the world of his thoughts? It exists outside of that clear, fixed reality, in a place where things are far less certain.

This disconnect is central to Ivan’s inner conflict: how do we make sense of the intangible, when it feels so disconnected from the physical world we inhabit? And how do we live with the knowledge that so much of what we feel, think, and remember doesn't fit neatly into that snow globe of "reality"? It's as though Ivan’s trapped in the tension between these two worlds, one he can touch and one he can only experience internally, with no clear way to reconcile the two.

So how can we expect others to comply with these language games if we cannot even understand the language, or the patterns of our thoughts! 

And Rooney goes on debating the mind/body problem throughout the novel — through the existential angst of Ivan: 

‘It just does things: no one knows why. It begins for some reason to attack itself or to proliferate cells where they don’t belong. No explanation. Does the mind do that? No. Well, in the case of mental illness, he thinks, okay, sure, it can do similar things, but that’s different. Is it different?’

‘The human mind, for all the credit he was just giving it a minute ago, is often repetitive, often trapped in a familiar cycle of unproductive thoughts, which in Ivan’s case are usually regretful in nature’ 

‘I couldn’t give myself a new personality out of nothing?’ 

Rooney undoubtedly believes the mind is a powerful instrument, but it causes a lot of problems and contradictions with the material world. Through Ivan, Rooney also alludes to the mind potentially dying with the body — not wholly subscribing to mind/body dualism. 

‘Because a living person has their own reality, he says. The person who’s gone has no reality anymore, except in thoughts, they actually are completely gone. If I don’t think about him, literally, I’m ending his existence’ 

There is an unsettling tension between memory and reality—how the dead cease to exist in any tangible sense, except through the thoughts of the living. When my grandad passed away I wanted to think about him everyday, to keep him alive and vivid in my memory. But this wasn’t sustainable. Life had to go on — I didn’t think about him everyday — and he became less colourful, my memories fragmented. I failed to keep him alive. 

It’s a stark and painful truth. When a person dies, their physical presence is gone entirely, leaving only the shadow of them in the memories of those who knew them. For Ivan, this means the only way to keep the dead "alive" is through active remembrance. If he stops thinking about the person who’s gone, their existence, even in memory, fades away.

Memory becomes the last tether to a person's existence, and once that fades, they’re truly gone, erased. Ivan’s reflection taps into a deep anxiety about the fragility of memory and the weight of responsibility that comes with it. In a way, he feels like the custodian of the deceased’s existence. If he forgets them, it’s as if he’s complicit in their complete erasure. It’s an all-consuming power for the mind to hold. 

Ultimately, Rooney invites us to embrace the fluidity of language and the ambiguities of our experiences, urging us to engage more deeply with both literature and life. The richness of our connections lies not in rigid definitions but in the shared understanding and willingness to adapt—an essential lesson in an increasingly fragmented world. 

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Rooney explores various philosophical ideas in this novel, but I'll focus on these two for now. As I mentioned earlier, a full review will be available next week. In a couple of weeks, I plan to discuss Rooney's portrayal of social class, particularly my frustration with those from privileged backgrounds who dismiss the novel as boring without considering its commentary on class. In some ways reading is becoming a status thing (oh I read the new sally rooney book) rather than a critical thing.