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Reading this we find it is not just an inspiration for Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, in many ways the later is a rip off on Zamyatin.
Do we need to give spoiler alerts for such classics? If so, you are warned…
The world that rationalises happiness entirely in terms of the absence of desire. Doing so it becomes logical to remove the imagination because without imagination you can not picture a better world that the one you currently encounter, and without that picture you can not desire and so instead you will be content, happy, with your current lot. It is a caricature that we find easy to ridicule but maybe we need to be more careful that the seeds of this logic aren’t around us.
The spaceship, the Integral, felt like an unresolved part of the plot – I was never sure what the role of this was or, indeed, how the rebels were going to use it against the regime – it could have been entirely removed from the plot without seeming to diminish the narrative at all.
The point of greatest affinity between We and Nineteen Eighty-Four is the ending – there is no “happy” ending – the State prevails – and the central character betrays themselves and those they love. This is the deeply uncomfortable truth in both books – the weakness and lack of human courage on display are a mirror held a little to close. In the face of this what is the value of resistance? Are these books of hope or despair?
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