In her discussion of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian story We, Priya Jain describes the novel — that’s all novels — as “rebellion against scientific progress,” citing “its low-tech paper-and-ink delivery system.” Of course, what Jain is describing here is actually the medium of paper and ink, not the genre or form that is the novel. (Some novels can, for instance, be read entirely online nowadays.) And she also ignores the fact that the novel, or more accurately the printed word, was at one point the very height of scientific progress. The printing press may seem low-tech by today’s standards — may even have seemed low-tech by Zamyatin’s own post-Industrial Revolution standards — but that’s hardly a convincing case that the novel, by its nature, constitutes a rebellious act against progress, or even just a throwback to simpler times.
Of the more famous dystopian novels — Orwell, Huxley, et cetera — Jain goes on to write:
Now that we know that the biggest utopian ideas of the 20th century — communism, fascism, the perfectibility of mankind through technology — were not only insane but also destined to fail, the classics of the genre can seem a little outdated.
Frankly, though, I’m not convinced we know anything of the sort. The communism of the twentieth century certainly appears in hindsight to have been flawed and, in its execution, prone to massive failure. But I don’t know that the underlying idea of it qualifies as insane — or, more importantly, that we’ve washed our hands of it entirely. (Last I checked, the world did still have a few Communist countries left in it.) For my money, Jain has a much better case for the insanity of fascism or that which underlies the belief in the perfectibility of man. But I also think it’s safe to say that those two ugly heads haven’t reared their last just yet either.
I haven’t read We, so it’s difficult to comment on the rest of Jain’s article. The book she describes sounds an awful lot like George Lucas’ film THX-1138, and so it’s a little surprising that Jain doesn’t herself make that connection — especially after she compares Huxley’s Brave New World (somewhat unfavorably) to the film Gattaca. Jain’s basic premise is that while most dystopian novels now read as somehow quaint or out-dated, We has lost none of its staying power over the years. I can’t comment on the latter half of that, but the former does seem a little suspect. It’s true we don’t live in the future worlds that Orwell or Huxley envisioned, but I don’t think those visions have been proven any less plausible or frightening.
Still, Jain’s closing point is worth noting:
Orwell’s dystopian tyrants rewrote books, and Huxley’s simply destroyed them, because they feared such things might awaken the humanity in their citizens. The real-life tyrants under whom Zamyatin lived feared art’s power as well. There’s something comforting in that thought — that as long as we have books and music, religion and history, humanity can be brought back to itself. And yet Zamyatin gets at a scarier idea: For people without humanity, art has no effect.
As for Jain’s own idea, that “the dystopian novel has to be the greatest act of rebellion in existence”…well, I’m not so sure that’s the case. But I think I may give We a chance.