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[deleted user]
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Nov 25, 2007 07:03PM
I've yet to read , but I'm told that Orwell was directly influenced by it. That is, <1984> is a kind of reaction to or response to Zamyatin. Any information on this?
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I am afraid I know very little about Russian literature and I hope your book will fill up some of the many gaps in my knowledge. It has already roused my interest in Zamyatin’s “We”, which I had not heard of before. I am interested in that kind of book, and even keep making notes for one myself that may get written sooner or later.
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And I disagree with the poster above that said that it was the "same plot, similar characters". Not at all. There are simularities, yes, but "1984" is far more than a mere "rip-off" of "We".

I mean we have the word "Orwellian" for a reason.
They're both good, We has so much psychology in it, so much mystery, so many unanswered questions. The journey D makes is really easy to understand, the things he goes through as his belief system is destroyed are really familiar.
1984 made me think for a long time, as Orwell did, that love was an illusion, but then I realized he was wrong about Room 101 because I've been there and I didn't wish the thing on my worst enemy at the time, let alone the people I loved. I think that Orwell's own limitations as by then a very bitter and loveless person (nicely demonstrated in Coming Up for Air) twisted the book.
I think I prefer We.. I think.. I don't know, I'd have to read them both again within a few weeks of each other.


"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.'


I think Orwell, in a way, "Westernized" "We" - improvement or not, I think it resonates better emotionally ("under the spreading Chestnut tree / I sold you, and you sold me" - you don't have that kind of dystopian sentimentality in We, if I recall correctly, and it adds a poignancy to '1984' that I found lacking in 'We.')
Orwell was definitely one of the top writers of his, or any other, generation. His ability to create such deep and rich parables was marvelous. I don't think any other book does what things like 'Animal Farm' did, with so many layers, in such a compelling way. I am a fan of all the "classic" dystopian fiction of the era (We, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World), but I think 1984 really was a cut above the rest. Not necessarily for the expansiveness of its vision, but precisely for its practicality and how easy it would be to imagine slipping into a world of such totalitarian control (e.g., doubleplusungood and the parallels with all the euphemistic, politically-correct terminology we so blithely accept even today).
Orwell didn't just describe in great detail a vision of a dystopian future, he really got down into the nitty gritty of *how* such a system could arise and function in a deeper way than the other books did.