That's kind of a grandiose comparison don't you think? 1984 is a cautionary (prescient?) fable about a totalitarianistic dystopia and the other is a tedious rant about consumer electronics in a shopping mall.
I think that comparison is somewhat flawed. 1984 is a fictional novel, not a real political movement or historical event. No real people were harmed by the events in 1984.
Yes, I just found it slightly ridiculous. I think comparisons to 1984 are grossly overused, but especially when the point of books like 1984 is the exploration of complete oppression of society through government control - not that obtuse bureaucracy is kind of frustrating.
1984 is a great cautionary tale of fiction. I think it’s a misapplication of the medium to place the themes of a fictional narrative on top of reality though. Reality is way more complex than these broad stroke rebukes of intellectuals.
If you mention 1984 at all today, the anti-1984 police will come and complain that you'd dare compare anything in modern society to the dystopia in the book, even though I wasn't implying there was any repression. To me it's just an interesting similarity.
That's the thing: 1984 is North Korea, while Brave New World is the entire Western world. The latter was always scarier to me because someone will eventually rebel against a dictatorship of fear (it'll happen in NK someday), but no-one will ever defeat a dictatorship of mindless pleasure.
I strongly disagree with this. 1984 fits much better and is much less far-fetched. The society in 1984 is very similar to real-world society at the time; the only real differences are the ubiquity of government propaganda, rationing of resources, the state-sanctioned class system, and telescreens, and even all of these are already present in lesser ways and could conceivably be intensified to 1984 levels in five or ten years. I frequently experience things that are virtually identical to events in 1984 (e.g. government lies that society immediately accepts, people regurgitating pro-government phrases that are hammered into children's brains in public school, justifications for war and militarism, demonization of political dissidents, the newly-prominent surveillance, etc.).
The society in A Brave New World is a dystopian science fiction fantasy world that is a far cry from any society that has ever existed.
I think both books are good and offer important warnings to society, but 1984 is simply a much more grounded and realistic view of a conceivable totalitarian state in the near future.
Agreed about the contents, but an important difference ist that 1984 is incredibly well written and gripping while Brave New World is a dull read - IMO.
I think comparing Brave New World to 1984 misses a bit of the point. The books came out near each other and deal with similar themes, so they very often get compared to each other. But they are also significant and important books in isolation.
Yes, BNW is a better dystopia to live in than 1984. But... it's still a dystopia. Free thinkers are socially ostracized, personal preferences (outside a certain set) are ignored, personal destiny is decided at conception (one case where the world of 1984 is preferable). It's a shocking world, and one that I wouldn't want to live in.
And inevitably, the discussion revolves around the fact that it's not as bad as 1984. As if "actually only the second-worst dystopia in classic fiction" is anything but damning.
Having a dystopia-off distracts from a significant part of the value that these works have to us as members of a society: There is more than one road to hell (and more than one hell to reach). 1984 shows an example of a possible future, why it is bad, and how it got that way. BNW shows an example of a very different future, why it is bad, and (less clearly) how it got that way. They give useful common ideas for possible outcomes of current actions. While BNW is preferable to 1984, it still shows that avoiding a 1984 outcome as hard as you can is not enough because there are other ways that freedom can be destroyed. To simply say "I would prefer my freedom be destroyed in one of these two ways" is not the most useful thing one can take away from reading these two books.
My experience is that 1984 is much more re-readable. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, except that perhaps Orwell created a world that is more mentally inhabitable despite its grim nature. The little room above the shop is a respite we can all dream of.
There's nothing like that in Brave New World, though I think it's the wiser book.
Yes I've read 1984. It's a parody of socialism and totalitarianism. It has nothing to do with modern democracies, or drones. Its also entirely a work of fiction.
I’ve read many books in my time and I liked 1984 both for its entertainment value and as a warning about government power and limiting free speech. What is wrong with 1984? Is there a similar but better book I should read?
1984 specifically has not aged well to the point of its predictions becoming both trite and easily dismissible in a corporate setting. Its sort of exaggerated misery and book burning was so on-the-nose that society of course knee-jerk rejects anything associated with it. I think the lesser understood brother, A Brave New World, better illustrated how we arrived at these forms of control because we prefer them in the pursuit of happiness. Its this difficult trade-off which is inherently post-capitalistic, convenience for control, that we seem to not have a clear way to have a dialog around.
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