What does everyone thingk of We?

[Ignoramus]

I just read the book We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Maybe you will want to stop reading now, if you haven't read the book and are planning to.

I found it oddly worded (reading an English translation of the Russian book). The wording was so flowery regarding mundane details that I often wasn't sure what scenario was being described.

I wanted to read it because it's said to have been an inspiration behind 1984. I've read a description of it as being a description of a distopia (Incidentally, I am irked when I read descriptions of books as being "a description of a distopia", because I think it dismisses the book as being something banal. It's like saying say, "it's a negative book".)

I couldn't get a good sense of what the place looked like. Things are made of glass but the outerwall is green. The INTEGRAL is able to fly, so is there just a green wall surrounding the place? If that's the case, wouldn't they have birds flying in?

There is a casualness to things. I couldn't tell if was intentional or not. I mean, there isn't a sense of vivid fear of an oppressive force. No sense that people are anxious that they might accidentally do the wrong thing and instantly be punished for it.

The narrator meets with the benefactor and leaves without being snuffed out. The rebellion takes multiple days, meanwhile people are more or less casually walking about. Was there a demoralized stupor that was supposed to be implied by this?

The story seemed like it was going to question the notion of happiness, but it didn't really do it. Or I misunderstood it.

[jafap]

1. I read "We" a long time ago

Kurt Vonnegut said it was an inspiration for Orwell's "1984" and for his own "Player Piano".

It has been too long, and I cannot remember details (something about a spaceship?) I find Utopias to be more inspiring than dystopias. If you have not read them I would suggest - Herland; Looking Backward; and News from Nowhere.

[pnorman]

2. That was the freely acknowledged inspiration for 1984.

I have it myself, but haven't really read it yet. But here's what greeted me on page one:
"It is for you to place the beneficial yoke of reason round the necks of the unknown beings who inhabit other planets-still living, it may be, in the primitive state known as freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically infallible happiness, we shall be obliged to force them to be happy".

In the Orwell Commemorative on Democracy Now! several months ago, Amy Goodman likened the two Georges (Orwell and Bush). If you replace "mathematically infallible happiness" in the above with "theologically infallible happiness", the comparison will make a lot of sense. Here's what I mean: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1075950,00.html