The experienced pleasures in all utopian novels usually devolve to undermining human desires for the sake of everyone self. The obvious winners in BNW were the alphas and betas. In Metropolis the ruler has the privileges as did the mayor in Erewhon. Humans believe someone must be superior in some way to the rest of the citizens; even Lenin's communism considers the need for a ruling group until the society had progressed enough for everyone to recognize everyone else's needs. Not so strangely this ideal was never approached.

Involved deeply in human nature is the need to strive for what we consider better than what we have. Accompanying this striving which relies on our sensory information and its interpretation of what we think others possess is a desire to have what others have. The ruled want to rule; the rulers maintain only they know how to solve the problems; the ruled don't know enough to realize what laws are the the best. These adversary positions have been on earth for as long as there have been human beings.

For all those who wish that the world could live in peace or that the government, even of a small place, could just understand what each citizen needs, Brave New World may come as close as possible to the results of a mandated, ordered society in which every individual is happy. But that society is hardly humane. The genetic problems of controlled populations were clearly offered in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled "The Masterpiece Society." Nor is the society George Orwell offers in 1984, one of happiness. As pleasant as BNW seems, 1984 is as oppressive. Long has this novel been used to exemplify the conditions in Russia under the communistic regimes. Perhaps it could be considered an hypothetical condition before a Brave New World was created.

Orwell offers us a most unpleasant view of life: a constant war-ravaged city, little available food, rationing, poor quality production, fear of the enemy, fear of the government, no repair of anything, no luxury, no freedom, no leisure. The citizens of Oceania have been cowed into their life by a party obsessed with power, unwilling to share or relinquish any of it. People (ordinaries of the party) are watched--or at least threatened with being watched--constantly. The others, who exist without acceptance by society, are called Proles. They are not members of the party and appear to have a humdrum existence; but, according to Winston Smith the quasi-hero, although they have no more goods, or services than regular party members, they are not compelled to any actions by the ruling party and so they have something of their humanity left, of which the ordinary party members have nothing.

The chief characteristic of 1984 is its gloom and despair. The government is a dictatorship with the ruling members engorging themselves with all the amenities they wish at the expense of the regular party members. The party workers are at the whim of the government; they have, practically, no time of their own; they are lied to constantly by the government and always believe what they are told, because they believe the government tells the truth.

The government is bent on removing all vestiges of humanity from its citizens and does so through psychological games and fear and threat of death. Thus the reader is offered an example of what is called dystopia or negative utopia. The positive utopia helps or intends to uplift the human spirit. Dystopia intends to destroy that spirit.

The government of Oceania has absolute control; and by the end of the novel, which is the adventure of one individual who attempts to wrest some of his humanity from the oppressiveness of the government, we discover that, as O'Brien says, the individual cannot succeed. Big Brother will win.

Whenever any sane thinking person should read the book or watch the movie, the reaction should be the same: despair that Winston did not hold out, that he didn't offer his life for the sake of humanity. Of course that would have been foolish under the circumstances. As readers progress through 1984 they become aware that all those things humans must do to remain human have been eliminated. No one plays or loves or has fun. No one thinks; the only "learning" is brainwashing provided by Big Brother. There is no TV except what the government wishes presented, no books for pleasure or education, no gatherings, no assemblies, no demonstrations--except what Big Brother allows its citizens to access.

Work is drudgery-repetitious and without merit. London, as described by Orwell, more closely resembles a huge prison with guards, narcs, subversion, and a token black market controlled by in-house mafia (the inner party).