Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:27:36 -0700
Subject: We vs. 1984
To: Bill Nericcio
I've always been enchanted by and drawn to dystopian themed novels. The most canonical works like Huxley's Brave New World, Orwell's 1984, Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, various works by Kurt Vonnegut and several others, are usually at the forefront of the futuristic dystopia discussion and class reading lists. Yet, all these works owe a nod to Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, published several years before all of them. Further still, Zamyatin gives credit to his contemporary, H.G. Wells, for inspiring much of the setting and circumstances within We. This blog from the Guardian (UK) compares We to 1984 and discusses the issue of creative "borrowing" by later authors.
Sophia
Thanks Sophia, that was a very interesting blog! I personally do not think it lessens Orwell's triumphs that he borrowed heavily from his Russian counterpart, but I do think it is interesting how such different nations in everything, especially government systems, could produce such startling depictions of the future, with such chilling foresight. If you are looking for some other dystopian novels I would take a gander at The Hunger Games!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in Gr.12, in 1963, I had to do a novel comparison study. My choices? Brave New World. 1984. We. If it has been around, Handmaid's Tale would have been included.
ReplyDeleteMy father used to lecture me for my attitude saying that I figured I could get away with murder because of some "ridiculous fear of an A-bomb".
Well, here we are, 49 years later, the world is being destroyed by those bombs and their fallout. And those novels are mixed into one more or less in the world around us....
The result of studying those books, btw, and knowing everyone else thought me strange, let alone to do something like that, left me "apart" for my adult life...
Think I need to go back and read "We" again. Heck, maybe not. All I need to do is go out into the world and just experience our modern reality...
Interesting that these authors and HG Wells were all of the elite, is it not?