Though H.G. Wells and others—Margaret Atwood more recently—wrote dystopian novels and stories of some significance, I think the three major 20th Century dystopian novels are generally considered to be We, Brave New World, and 1984, with 1984 being the best known.
We, from the 1920s, was the first (though I read it third), then Brave New World, from the 1930s, then 1984, from the 1940s.
I remember Brave New World less well than 1984, in part because it was really a long time ago that I read it. What I recall of it is that it is set several centuries in the future, as opposed to 1984’s several decades, and thus is technologically and socially more remote from us, whereas 1984 is considerably closer to real life examples such as Stalinism and Nazism, or later East Germany and its Stasi.
I recall the society of Brave New World feeling to me somewhat more like what contemporary “free” capitalist societies are evolving toward, in that rather than being straightforwardly and brutally oppressive (recall the line from 1984, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever”), the oppression is more subtle and more voluntarily accepted in a sense, as most people are stoned most of the time, and reasonably content with the various superficial distractions available to them. Like today the way most people will conform to the system and do what’s expected of them, and not really step back from life and think critically about it and about alternatives because they’re using those brain cells on celebrity gossip, the most superficial and addictive activities of social media, their pursuit of the latest consumer goods that have been aggressively marketed to them, etc. Brave New World also parallels, in comedy form, Woody Allen’s Sleeper, where the inhabitants are too busy enjoying the latest blessings of technology such as the orgasmatron and the orb to think to object to anything going on around them.
I also remember thinking that, while the society depicted in Brave New World is far, far from ideal, it’s also not all that horrible. I mean, in the sense that what you typically get in these dystopias is that humanity has in effect traded freedom, unpredictability, risk, challenge, etc. for a kind of perpetual sameness, conformity, and stability, at least in Brave New World, it sounds like people traded in all the sources of the extreme misery and conflict that has afflicted the race for all or most of human history for an existence where most people most of the time have a somewhat comfortable, somewhat happy life. So I thought of it as somewhere between a utopia and a dystopia, with maybe elements of both.
Whereas 1984, which I remember significantly better, is just an intensely dark, terrible, nightmarish story from start to finish, an unmitigated dystopia. It’s one of the most gripping books I’ve ever read, and plenty of the details have stayed with me ever since.
If Brave New World is a bland Limbo, 1984 is Hell all the way.
We I experienced as closer to Brave New World in some ways, and closer to 1984 in some ways.
It’s similar to Brave New World in being set centuries into the future, and feeling very remote from anything in human history or anything I’ve ever experienced—more clearly a science fiction, futuristic kind of tale. Granted, it can be seen as being based on what the author experienced of “scientific” socialism in the very early days of the Soviet Union, but only in the most surreal, fantastical kind of way that would take hundreds of years of massive changes to potentially come about, whereas, like I say, 1984 isn’t all that far removed from the Stasi and any number of real life evil totalitarian systems.
On the other hand, the world depicted in We is probably closer to that of 1984 in its ugly and depressing character.
That is, on a scale of 1-10, if 1 is the purest, worst possible dystopia, 10, is the purest, best possible utopia, and, say, we assign 5 to the real world that we live in, Brave New World felt like about a 4.5 to me, 1984 a 1.1, and We somewhere around a 2.
So even if it’s not quite to the extreme of 1984, it’s clearly dystopian.
Though, then again, there’s the question of what you’re trading for what. In We, the society described came about after some sort of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction were used in a 200 year long war, killing 99.8% of the human population. If you ask me if I prefer the one-world dictatorship of We to life in contemporary America, my answer is an unhesitating no. If you ask me if I prefer its bland stability to generation after generation of people living their entire short, miserable lives in permanent wartime conditions before being snuffed out by gruesome biological weapons or nukes or something, it’s a lot less of a no-brainer.
On a subjective level, I thought We was closer to Brave New World in the sense of the details of the story fading more quickly than with 1984. 1984, like I say, is just a really intense novel, with vivid characters, vivid and horrible scenes of torture, etc. that are hard to get out of one’s mind even if one wants to. I didn’t have that extreme visceral reaction to We or Brave New World, that same sense that these nightmarish details are being seared into my consciousness at a deep level.
I don’t remember the narrative style of Brave New World, but We is like 1984 in that it is written in the first person as a kind of journal by a narrator who comes to be disillusioned with the totalitarian world and rebels against it. So in both we’re limited in our knowledge to what the narrator happens to know at any given time (and to choose to put in writing). I found that more obscure and limiting in the case of We. The narrator in 1984 is a high enough party official to have a pretty good sense of what’s going on and how things work, perhaps more so than the narrator of We, or maybe Orwell just chooses to have his narrator reveal more. In We, the reader is able to piece together a decent amount about what the world is like, but in 1984 I think it’s described more thoroughly and straightforwardly.
1984 famously has the shadowy dictator, who may or may not be real, Big Brother. We has a similar mystery figure at the top, the Benefactor.
Anyway, in We, the protagonist is some kind of engineer or rocket scientist, working on a major government project for space travel (and conquest, if I understood it correctly). All the people living under this one-world government have numbers rather than names; the narrator is D-503.
Though some people, like D-503, have specialized skills, specialized roles, the goal is for people to be as identical and interchangeable as realistically possible. Life is extremely regimented. Every hour of every day of everyone’s life is meticulously scheduled by the state. All buildings are made entirely of glass and everyone is under constant surveillance.
Imagination, dreams, desire for individuality are all considered signs of mental illness, if not crimes. When D-503 discovers any hint of such things in himself—like when he wakes up one morning and realizes he has been dreaming—he is terrified and guilty over such a transgression.
The whole society is supposed to run according to pure logical, rational principles. (Pseudo-rational, I’d say. I think purely rational beings would live by ethical rules of roughly the type Kant devised; they wouldn’t create and sustain a hellish totalitarianism.)
The state has lessened but not completely eliminated the difference between the sexes, and still allows a certain amount of sexual relationships and sexual reproduction (babies being taken immediately at birth to be properly raised by the state). D-503, for instance, has been granted a lover, O-90, who visits him at certain times predetermined by the state. They are allowed certain activities together, such as walks at times and places designated by the state.
Individual attachment and monogamy are discouraged through a system whereby people submit pink forms specifying who they want as a lover next, and pairings are constantly shuffled.
D-503 starts to “go bad” under the influence of a woman, I-330, he meets who somehow seems to have evaded a lot of the state’s controls, both mentally and behaviorally. That is, she expresses contempt for the state, and she engages in forbidden activities like drinking and smoking.
Again, the details of the story didn’t come alive for me as much as with 1984, but if I have it straight, when D-503 proves unable to snitch on I-330, even though he very much feels like he should and is distraught and physically ill over his failure to do his duty, she gradually opens up more to him, revealing that she is part of a rebel group headquartered outside the society. (There is a big wall around this fully urbanized world. Outside it, evidently at least a smattering of some form of fur-bearing humanoid creatures have survived and live in primitive tribal fashion.)
She recruits him into the rebel cause. Eventually O-90 wants in as well, because after D-503 gets her pregnant, she realizes she will do anything to avoid relinquishing her baby to the state.
In 1984, it was never clear whether the rebel forces even existed in any meaningful way, or whether they were a fiction sustained by the state as another hated enemy to be used to bind people closer together and make them more dependent on Big Brother. Maybe the threat was real but exaggerated (like 9/11 and the subsequent restrictions on civil liberties and the launching of multiple wars) or maybe there was no threat at all. Winston Smith was recruited into the supposed rebels, but that turned out to be a ruse to get him to show his true colors as disloyal to the state.
In We, the rebel forces more unambiguously exist, and do seem to represent a major threat to the totalitarian order. Late in the novel, the big wall around the society has been breached in multiple places, and evidently there have been a growing number of acts of protest or sabotage within. Whereas 1984 ends in utter hopelessness, with the sense that totalitarianism has been perfected to where it can never end (until the species goes extinct, I suppose), We leaves it open whether the totalitarian state will be overthrown, and what will replace it if it is.
Whatever happens, though, will be too late for D-503. The state, alarmed by recent developments, has instituted an emergency policy to make slavish obedience and conformity even more automatic than has already occurred through its policies of social engineering, permanent surveillance, etc. Everyone is to be given some kind of lobotomy-style brain operation to eliminate imagination and troublesome emotions. D-503 is captured and forcibly given the surgery, after which he unhesitatingly reveals all he knows about the rebels.
In the concluding chapter, the concluding journal entry, D-503 has been transformed as much as post-torture Winston Smith. He reads his earlier entries and cannot even recognize that person. He takes it as self-evident that the state represents reason and the good, and that anything opposing it must be annihilated. He is able to watch I-330 tortured in front of him with no emotional reaction whatsoever, other than some surprise that in spite of multiple sessions of such torture she never does “the right thing” and give up all the knowledge she has about her rebel allies.
Philo on Books 