Reaction Paper

在我们的日常生活中，有些人想追求幸福，而另一些人则认为自由比幸福更重要。每当谈到自由和幸福的重要性时，人们往往会有很多比较。乔治奥威尔说，幸福和自由是不相容的。就我个人而言，我赞成他的观点。 

In our daily life, some human beings would like to pursue happiness while others regard freedom as more important than happiness. Whenever it comes to the idea of the importance of freedom and happiness, human beings tend to have much to say. For example, George Orwell has said that the guiding principle of the State is that happiness and freedom are incompatible. Personally speaking, I am in favor of his point of view through the evidence being taken from the novel, as will be elaborately discussed in the below.

In the novel, it is described that coercion can unify all the ones in the society and such unity can bring happiness to all the ones within the society. The evidence can be found that “And happiness…what is it, after all? Desires are a torment, aren’t they? And it’s clear that happiness is when there are no longer any desire, not even one… What a mistake, what a stupid prejudice it’s been all these years to put a plus sign in front of happiness. Absolute happiness should of course have a minus sign, a divine minus.” In this novel, the concept of "I" means private, individual and personal. And the concept of "We" stands for collectivization. Everyone in the State has the same ideas, the same action and there is no difference throughout the whole society. People have two hours of personal time, no private space and private time. Everything is in standardized and unified order. Numbers are replaced by any personalized names, such as: D-503, I-330, and R-13...One State believes that this unity of the public is able to bring happiness - Digital happiness and to circulate such happiness to the entire universe. The realization of happiness is based on coercion to unify the whole society so that human beings within will not be tormented by desire. 

Furthermore, it is as well suggested that depriving human beings of their freedom can increase citizens’ happiness index and in the meantime decrease their opportunity to commit a crime. The author put it in this way that “Imagine a square, a splendid, living square. And he has to tell about himself, about his life. You see – the last thing on earth a square would think of telling about is that he has four equal angles. He simply does not see that, it’s so familiar to him, such an everyday thing. That’s me. I’m in the situation of that square all the time.” D-503 in the beginning of the novel strongly praised the One State he lived in and showed us how he is immersed in happiness without having any freedom. D-503 thinks that the only thing that can be called “beauty” is to have consciousness without freedom. People can obtain pure and non-evil thoughts only when they have no freedom. Freedom and crime are inseparable so when freedom is equal to zero, then people would not have a chance to commit a crime. The only way to maximize the happiness and minimize the tragedy and crime is to withdraw people from freedom and unify their thoughts. When another character shows up, everything changed. The novel follows the Adam and Eve story by developing the relationship between D-503 and I-330. The character I-330 is a traitor of One State and she represents the world of freedom. Her appearance made D-503 feel threatened to existing happiness. However he felt this threat has a strong temptation. 

Apart from the above, it has in the meanwhile suggested that freedom without happiness and happiness without freedom are both not good while the combination of freedom and happiness is preferred. “The old legend about Paradise – that was about us, about right now. Yes! Just think about it. Those two in Paradise, they were offered a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness, nothing else. Those idiots chose freedom. And then what? Then for centuries they were homesick for the chains.”  Later, he felt that he had been fascinated to love and struggled in the original happiness as well as the current fantasy of love. And he is one more step toward a real person, a person who has soul. 

However, D-503 is fragile, when he really faces the strong authoritarian, he felt fear. And He eventually betrayed I-330, which has led to I-330 being punished to death. He also lost his last humanity and become a machine.

Geroge Orwell in his review of We, wrote, “Guiding principle of the State is that happiness and freedom are incompatible. In the Garden of Eden man was happy, but in his folly he demanded freedom was driven out into wilderness. Now the Single State has restored his happiness by removing his freedom”. The reason why people will feel pains is because that they gain the freedom and they are at the same time suffered by too many feelings toward life. That everything is unified and brainwashed to the people can be seen as a gift for the governor and assimilation is considered to be the only source of public wealth and happiness. In the novel, art, poetry, thoughts, creativity and love do not exit. In a world of extreme happiness, there are no the existence of real happiness and freedom. When people had lost their personal feeling, pain, passion, freedom and when sex replaced love, there is no individual in the society but only a whole. Things will develop in the opposite direction when they became extreme. The perfect never exits. 

Reference
We, Zamayatin, Yevgeny. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print. Retrieved by 02/16/15



51Due网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文著作权归51Due所有；未经51Due官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯著作权现象，51Due保留一切法律追诉权。