11-25-2012, 08:36 AM | #16 |
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Yes, you're right. I have mixed this, sorry.
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11-25-2012, 10:08 AM | #17 |
o saeclum infacetum
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This is the problem with getting to the thread late; other posters have already commented much more congently and with more insight than I. I'll note especial points of agreement, not limited to these, in regard to the hard to believe lack of repercussions for D- earlier in the story and the difficulty in understanding the basis of D-'s mathematical and logical justification for United State. I also thought the action was a little jumpy. I wonder if later translations might tell a smoother story?
While I don't think the book is an entire success, I'm very glad to have read it and Orwell's fallen in my estimation. 1984 was never my favorite of his books (nor Animal Farm), but I didn’t know he had ripped off another work. I know there are only so many original plots, but the similarities are too great for me to credit Orwell with an original, much less seminal, work. While it was hard to credit that a scientist would swallow the gobbledygook that passed for reason and mathematics, I suppose the point was both that it had an inherent appeal to him and that it was a concrete example of what Orwell would term doublethink. One aspect I really liked was that while the original theory, as implied by D-‘s journal, was that resistance was limited and entirely aberrant, but once it became more widespread it was obvious that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The images of the hysterical crowd trying to escape being herded to the operation and the open and frenzied sexual couplings showed that the state based on logic had no solid grounding. Riffing a bit, the operation makes me wonder what was the point? We see in today’s society that there’s no limit to greed (just how well does one have to live, how many toys does one need to own), but the driving force behind the United State is sheer power. Yet once you’ve turned the populace into lobotomized automatons, surely that’s the end of the raw exercise of power. What next? |
11-25-2012, 04:35 PM | #18 | |
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11-25-2012, 06:41 PM | #19 | ||
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The remarks so far are very insightful and I find that I have little to add other than my whole-hearted concurrence with them. I would make just a few points:
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The attitude of the One State towards Art--specifically Literature is essentially a complete denial of the value of independent thinking:. D states: "Today poetry is no longer the idle, imprudent whistling of a nightingale; poetry is civic service, poetry is useful." and "Our poets no longer soar in the empyrean; they have come down to earth; they stride beside us to the stern mechanical March of the Music Plant. Their lyre encommpasses the morning scraping of electric toothbrushes and the dread crackle of the sparks in the Benefactor's Machine." Quote:
The "operation" carries horrifying overtones of the use of prefrontal lobotomy in 20th century United States to make people with "difficult" behavioral problems tractable--to the point of a vegetative existence. Personally, while I found the central character, D, to be rather annoying, unlikable and unsympathetic, there's certainly little doubt but that the dystopia created by the author is a powerful assault on the concept of a societal ideal which implicitly amounts to a Hive-mind. |
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11-25-2012, 08:42 PM | #20 | |
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And let's face it - if D- doesn't fit in, who really would? Oh OK - now it's opening up for me a bit. Perhaps the affair itself is a demonstration of how ill-suited we really are to such a regimented and totalitarian society. When someone so devout and fervent about the ideals of the society can ignore the obvious benefits of a safe and loving and productive relationship and instead pursue a dangerous and manipulative affair....? And the fact that pursuing the dangerous is often a behaviour mirrored in our own society, we start to fully appreciate just how ill-suited we are to our own version of the United State. And that's a quite important thing to understand - yes? |
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11-26-2012, 06:13 PM | #21 | |
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It ties in with the attitude of the United State about poetry. It is only "good" and valuable if it is also productive and supports the status quo. Of course, the greatest poetry is often that which interfaces with ideas that are uncomfortable, upsetting, even dangerous--in that they question an accepted convention In addition D has a kind of split personality. On one hand there is the purely ideological intellectual side of his mentality. But he also has these atavistic ape-like hairy hands. Thus, a part of him is drawn to danger and change while another part embraces the unchanging stasis of the Unitary State. The two loves, O and I, reflect this dualism in his emotional life. Last edited by fantasyfan; 11-26-2012 at 06:20 PM. |
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11-26-2012, 06:21 PM | #22 | |
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I'm glad I'm getting more out of this book through discussion. I might not have made some of the connections I'm now making. We are not an island. |
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11-27-2012, 03:50 AM | #23 |
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11-27-2012, 04:20 AM | #24 |
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11-29-2012, 08:06 PM | #25 |
o saeclum infacetum
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A trivial point that I forgot: what about women being only vowels? Does this mean that women are roughly only 20% of the population? It seems obvious that the women are sexually dominant--that they are the instigators/choosers and have multiple partners. We know that sex isn't for procreation, so what are the implications of these aspects of social engineering? Is it because in the 1920s, women were not assumed to be as productive, but that some women were deemed necessary to satisfy a vestigial sex drive? Or perhaps they wanted to keep some women as a fail-safe, in case of a widespread failure in the means of procreation?
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11-30-2012, 05:09 PM | #26 |
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^I'm reminded of a scene from Dr. Strangelove where the good doctor is telling us about the ratio of men to women which is directrly opposite to what you are describing here. It's an interesting point, but hard to correlate given how few characters (people and letters) that are named.
I ejoyed the book. I had read Brave New World earlier this year and 1984 a couple of decades ago. I liked this more than BNW. While it's hard to completely buy the rational over the emotional I did like the struggle put forth here within the mind. I was disappointed that the journal didn't succumb to being more mathematical in structure. 32 records would have been a great mirror to the story. |
11-30-2012, 07:00 PM | #27 |
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Given the letters are accompanied by numbers there still could have been a 50-50 balance between women and men.
I got the feeling that the United State wasn't actually that big by the way. Did anyone else get that impression? I always felt that movement was always too quick and there seemed to be no trouble seeing the glass walls from different locations and the volumes of people spoken about never really seemed to be in the millions. |
11-30-2012, 07:02 PM | #28 |
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Oh - the vowel significance - could it have been a crude reference to anatomical differences?
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12-01-2012, 03:31 PM | #29 | |||||
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This is a great discussion by everyone! Your insightful comments have helped me to understand the book better.
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http://georgeorwellnovels.com/journa...y-zamyatin-we/ Quote:
The translator of the book that I read said that it was clear irrational was used intentionally. After finishing the book I went back and re-read the first few chapters. It really highlighted the transition from D-503's rational to irrational state of mind, or clear thinking to driven by emotional thoughts due to his illness (developing a soul). After the Operation, D-503's emotions are gone has he appears to have no reaction to I-330's torture in the Bell Jar. Quote:
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I have some more thoughts that are floating around in my head so I'm going to think on this book a little while longer to see if they can become better organized to express in writing. |
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12-01-2012, 06:40 PM | #30 | |
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If women are "even numbers" it could symbolize that they represent the Yin principle--one aspect of which equates to stability through serenity. O wants to have a child. She also wants the stability that the feminine principle implies--she is the earth mother. In a sense, she is complete as a circle is complete. I, however, is different and her vowel is phallic in nature. So she is the Yin that requires the sexual complement of Yang to release her energy--though this may result in instability. Her archetype is Eve or Helen the passionate lover. Neither aspect of the Yin principle {relational stability and sexual dynamism}is satisfied by a society that puts its emphasis on total conformity rather than allowing the flexibility and independence of human interaction that the Yin/Yang Feminine/Masculine interaction requires. Again. Just a wild guess. Last edited by fantasyfan; 12-01-2012 at 06:51 PM. |
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