E. I. Zamyatin “We”: analysis of the novel

Zamyatin was far from the pioneer of the dystopian genre. He was preceded by Robert Hugh Benson, who published the book “Master of the World” in 1907. The book presents a model in which the Earth is ruled by the Antichrist, which itself carries shades of totalitarianism. Later, dystopias became even more political. In his 1984 novel, George Orwell showed a cold, merciless, party-dominant tyranny (1949). Aldous Huxley's Brave New World argued that through utopia society had been besotted (1932). People have become simply a passive, uninitiative mass that is happy with everything.

With all the love for the above, the dystopian novel is most appropriate for our time. Moreover, the novel “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which preceded the novels of Huxley and Orwell, obviously inspired the following authors to create their own dystopias. The novel was written in 1920 , just 3 years after the Russian Revolution. This is where the story of the novel “We” and the biography of Zamyatin begin.

“We” is a direct criticism of the situation in the USSR at that time, and therefore it is impossible. In 1924, the novel was first published in an American magazine. After this, Zamyatin was hysterically condemned by the Union of Soviet Writers. Zamyatin left the association, saying: “I consider it impossible to belong to a literary organization that, at least indirectly, takes part in the persecution of a colleague.” "We" was finally published in Russia in 1988.

History of creation

Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin thought about creating the novel “We” after returning from England to revolutionary Russia. The writer believed that the change of regime changed the lives of many people. He believed that it was necessary to follow the new literary trend of neorealism. In his work, Zamyatin showed how mechanization and the totalitarian regime destroy individual opinion and thinking, contributing to the collapse of human society.

A single mechanism is in charge, and people become weak-willed creatures who act on the basis of programs. Instead of names, they have numbers, and only the first letter indicates their gender. All life is subject to strict rules and the state controls everything, even intimate meetings.

It took Zamyatin little time to create the work. In 1920, he wrote the novel in its entirety. A year later he sent the manuscript to a Berlin publishing house. The book was translated into English and published in New York in 1924. It was later published in French and Czech.

The novel was written in the dystopian genre; it demonstrated the negative manifestations of utopia. The writer showed how a person would feel in a model society. In the USSR, Zamyatin's work was perceived very negatively. He was criticized, condemned and bullied. The Literaturnaya Gazeta openly said that the country does not need such writers, they interfere with the building of socialism.

Zamyatin himself did not seek to show the shortcomings of the political system. He only demonstrated cruel excesses and unhealthy tendencies. Evgeniy was deprived of the right to stage plays in the theater and was not allowed to work. Therefore, the writer asked permission to leave the USSR.

Disclosure of problems

The problems of the dystopian novel are diverse and relevant even today.

Zamyatin raises the following issues:

Tyranny is terrible because people themselves do not realize that they live in a tyrannical country. The person is quite happy with what is happening and cannot imagine how he can live differently.
Technocracy - the created society represents a world that has defeated rationalism. Here everything is calculated down to the minute, all the details are carefully adjusted, but the writer believes that it is impossible to build a world relying only on a soulless mind.
Oppression of individuality - Zamyatin shows that no matter how cruelly structured society is, it will not be able to deprive a person of free thinking. Human nature will constantly break through until people are completely turned into soulless machines.
Internal slavery - the fate of the main character shows the reader that people are often afraid of freedom. They do not have enough willpower to survive relying only on their own life principles. And this, according to Zamyatin, is a huge tragedy for humanity, since it will find happiness only when it frees itself from its wrong habits.
Mass consciousness - at first the numbers are described as an obedient gray mass, they do not know what doubt is. But by the end of the work, the reader understands that this is only an illusion, and some people are ready to renounce the orders of society and fight for a new world.
Moral choice - when faced with difficulties, people are often forced to make difficult choices, and in this case everything will depend only on them, and not on the opinions of others.
Total control of power - Zamyatin condemns government interference in people's personal lives, describing the absurdity of this order.

In his work, the author opposes the cult of technocracy and vulgar materialistic ideas; he defends the importance of spiritual free development, the value of a specific personality and non-material existence.

He considers everyone's right to freedom of judgment and individuality to be a mandatory requirement for a normal life. This is the meaning of the novel “We”.

Composition

The novel "We" is written in the style of a worker's note. In the work, Evgeny Zamyatin created two worlds and separated them with a color scheme. The unified state has a gray and blue palette, and the space behind the Green Wall is replete with an abundance of colors. The pink hue predominates, as if this is an illusory world. This precisely emphasizes the fact that there are much wider opportunities outside the framework than within them. Life seems to play with new colors and shine in all its manifestations.

If we talk about the genre uniqueness of the novel, then the work is considered a dystopian novel. The main idea of this genre is the dissolution of one’s own “I” for the sake of common interests. The novel is a dystopia in all its manifestations. The novel contains a love story. At the end of the work, the girl is executed in the Gas Bell, and the guy is deprived of his imagination by performing an operation. Zamyatin tried to clearly show life in such a closed state and beyond.

The heroes do not have names, surnames or nicknames. Each one is assigned its own number. This technique was created to show the totalitarian regime of their state. They are needed only for the common cause; no one considers the residents as individuals. This is a place where everyone is equal to each other.

State in dystopia

Only a few percent of the total mass of people live in the United State - in the revolution, the city won a victory over the countryside. The government provides them with housing, safety, and comfort. For ideal conditions, citizens are deprived of their individuality and given numbers instead of names.

Life in a state is a mechanism. Freedom and happiness are incompatible here. Ideal unfreedom is that all the needs and natural desires of citizens are satisfied according to a schedule, except that spiritual needs are not taken into account. Art is replaced by numbers, the state has a mathematical ethic: ten dead is nothing compared to the many.

The city itself is surrounded by a Green Wall made of glass, behind which there is a forest about which no one knows anything. The main character one day accidentally finds out that ancestors covered with wool live on the other side.

The rooms live in identical rooms with glass walls, as if to prove that the state regime is absolutely transparent. All the needs and natural desires of citizens are satisfied according to a schedule, the schedule is determined by the Tablet of Hours.

There is no love, since it gives rise to jealousy and envy, so there is a rule that each number has equal rights to the other number. For citizens, there are certain days on which you can make love, and you can do this exclusively with pink coupons, which are issued depending on physical needs.

In the United State there are Guardians who are responsible for ensuring security and enforcing the rules. It is an honor for citizens to report violations to the Guardian Bureau. Criminals are punished by being placed in the Benefactor Machine, where the number is split into atoms and turned into distilled water. Before execution, their number is taken away, which is the highest punishment for a citizen of the state.

The United State in Zamyatin’s novel “We”

A unified state means an absolutely safe existence with all the amenities of life. What's wrong then? For their equality and security, people paid a terrible price - the loss of individuality. That people are willing to incorporate such social paradigms (like fascism in Germany) is also fascinating food for thought. The book compares two parallels and asks the reader the question: are you ready to sacrifice your most intimate things in order to find stability ?

Direction and genre

“We” can be attributed to the literary movement of modernism. The author, using innovative tools, strives to reflect not reality itself, but to build the expected future of humanity, for which non-standard images and new forms of storytelling are actively used.

Zamyatin's work is a dystopian novel. The basis is the distant and unsightly future of humanity, the atmosphere of which is disassembled to the bones through numerous details and characters. The author strives to tell a full-fledged story unfolding against the backdrop of large-scale and important events.

The dystopian genre emerged as a polemical response from modernists to writers of the past. For a long time, humanity has known the genre of utopia - a sweet fairy tale where people finally united, fell in love with each other and began to live happily. A striking example is Voltaire's El Dorado, where jewels are scattered right under people's feet and everyone lives in wealth. But the 20th century, with its wars, crises and revolutions, showed the pittance of these dreams. Therefore, dystopia was born - a scenario of a dark future where changes for the better have led us to the worst of all possible things.

Meaning of the name

The title of the work “We” reflects Zamyatin’s main fear of the future - the question of the individual in human society. “We” of a single state are not people, but the mechanisms of one machine, which work synchronously for the same purpose and have the same role. Such a wild simplification of personality to a gear outrages the writer and is presented by him in a capacious but meaningful title.

The writer was extremely afraid that humanity, driven by the ideas of collectivism and the common good, would eventually destroy people’s awareness of the value of the individual. A person with a bright personality will be doomed to either merge with the general flow or perish.

The essence of the name

The title of the novel reflects the author's fear of the future - the problem of a specific person in the social order. “We” are not people, but parts of a single machine, working synchronously, having the same task, playing the same role. This terrible simplification of man to a gear outraged Zamyatin and gave him a short but meaningful title.

The author was very worried that people who are driven by the ideas of collectivism and general well-being will, as a result, destroy their own consciousness of values . A person with a pronounced individuality is doomed either to merge with the general flow or to death. The title of the work itself is polemical in nature regarding the Proletcult theory and practice of creative activity.

The main characters and their characteristics

The system of images in the dystopia “We” is distinguished by global simplification inherent in the author’s plan. All people are the same, they are distinguished from each other only by numbers and functions.

d-503 N

and an unremarkable number, the chief engineer at the construction of the “integral”. Throughout the entire narrative, he experiences a difficult internal struggle, which leads him to the brink of madness. This is a driven person, not endowed with a strong will, but not completely enslaved by the slavish concepts of the society where he lives. In the end, he resigns himself to his fate and allows himself to be deprived of his imagination without resistance.

I-330

An extremely attractive and different girl. Occupies one of the key positions in the Mefi organization. She has already left the city several times and established contacts with the creatures that live in the surrounding forests. In her struggle, she is ready to go to the end, even using the engines of a spaceship against the city. She has incredible willpower and did not break even under torture. Her lively mind captivates the protagonist and makes him strive for free-thinking.

0-90

Attractive plump woman. She was the main character’s long-time partner for “sex hours.” This is a mother woman, submissive, sweet and sensitive. She sincerely loved him, and despite the prohibitions, she wanted a child from D-503. She appeared before the court, which sentenced her to death. Apparently, at the end of the novel, she was able to escape with the child outside the city.

The bottom line: what is it about?

The distant future appears before us. Within the framework of a separate city, a United State was built - a society that raised the ideas of collectivism to the absolute. Identical clothes, identical houses, ideally calculated daily routine and even life itself, including satisfying the sexual desires of citizens, people’s names were abolished and replaced with a combination of letters and numbers, the word “person” was replaced with “number”.

The main character, D-503, holds the position of chief engineer at the construction of the INTEGRAL spacecraft, which must convey to other civilizations information about the ideal society built on Earth.

But one day he meets a certain woman at number I-330. She really stands out from those around her. D-503’s initial interest in this woman changes to irritation, then to anger, then to fear, and eventually the main character realizes that he is in love with I-330, which is unacceptable for the new society.

I-330 turns out to be one of the leaders of the uprising against the United State and attracts D-503 to his side. The rebels intend to seize INTEGRAL and use it as a weapon against the authorities, but the plan fails.

The One State Society is shaking to its core. Frightened by these grandiose events, D-503 is completely confused. He begins to doubt his sanity and the sincerity of I-330. His worries are stopped by the United State, which decides to take extreme measures - to deprive its citizens of imagination, killing the last remnants of free thought.

After the operation, D-503 gets rid of his doubts, surrenders all the rebels to the authorities and indifferently watches the torture to which I-330 is subjected. However, the hero’s mistress, O-90, being pregnant (which was also strictly controlled by the state), manages to escape outside the state - to where free people live.

Detailed summary of the novel We are Zamyatin

Written in the cold and hungry Petrograd of 1920, the novel “We” was published five years later abroad, and in the author’s homeland only in 1988. The main reason for the unspoken ban on the publication of the novel is a passionate protest against the “dehumanization” of a person, against turning him into a “number.” This is a warning about where science, divorced from moral principles, can lead. If a person is called a “prejudice” that must be overcome, this is a road to nowhere. Zamyatin's novel immerses any potential reader into the world of the so-called. One State.

It arose as a result of the Two Hundred Years' War, which was fought between the city and the countryside. As a result, only 0.2% of the population survived. Largely because oil-based food was invented, which did not benefit everyone. But the authorities have learned to control all spheres of life. Natural disasters are completely excluded. All material human requests have been resolved. As for Happiness, it is subsumed under mathematical formulas, sterile and immaculate.

No one in this world is alone, because he is part of a single whole. The novel opens with another parade of “numbers”. The mood is high, enthusiastic, the uniform is standard, the same. And this is repeated every morning. Here it is - the “factory of happiness”.

Zamyatin depicts a gendarmerie, thoroughly totalitarian state, at the top of which is the Benefactor, and a certain Bureau of Guardians is in charge of all affairs. Vigilant police control over all “numbers” reigns here, all deviations from official rituals are suppressed, the system of surveillance, detection and denunciation functions properly. The dwellings of the “numbers” are deliberately made of glass - it is believed that no one has anything to hide. Hidden membranes are installed on all city avenues, capable of recording all street conversations and then transmitting them wherever necessary. The norm is to illustrate letters. One of the most powerful scenes in the book is the execution of the disobedient man by the Benefactor himself. This is how the United State accustoms people to everyday cruelty and mutual responsibility. It is important that everyone feels their involvement, complicity, involvement in the forced execution. The sense of duty must be separated from conscience and compassion. The highest degree of fanaticism is that women and children should be in the first rows at the place of execution.

Science in the United State has been elevated to the rank of an infallible substance. A space supermachine called Integral was invented. Its global goal is to spread forced collective happiness further throughout the Universe. Art is also introduced into strict government frameworks. The Institute of State Poets and Writers was established.

The election of a Benefactor in the United State is pure fiction, the appearance of popular support and unanimity. Here everything is predetermined in advance and there can be no force majeure situations.

The main “weapon” of the United State is standardization and equalization. “Numbers” are the most reliable personnel. Any individual, personal consciousness is declared a “disease”, and the soul must be cut out urgently. Any manifestations of personality are interpreted as a crime, as a manifestation of pride. To meet state standards, one must step over conscience, honor, memory, and oneself. The main civic virtue is controlled impersonality. Living human existence is harmful, so ideally it should be replaced by the production of robots from test tubes.

But you can fence yourself off from wild nature with a Green Wall, but how can you fence off a person from what’s going on inside him? The main character of Zamyatin’s book, the builder of the Integral D-503, is an emotional person from birth, sensitive to classical music. A turning point in his consciousness comes after visiting the so-called. Ancient House and meeting members of MEFI, an anti-government organization. Only in this circle is he free and intoxicated by this freedom.

It would seem that the ice in the soul has been broken, a spring revival has arrived, and a balanced existence has been disrupted. But D-503 experiences rejection from the usual climate, from the state as a “disease”. He experiences a painful split: the delight of self-discovery, readiness for heroism for the sake of freedom, and almost immediately a slide into betrayal. This duality leads the hero to the brink of spiritual suicide. He decides to confess and pays a visit to the Guardian Bureau, but he is simply incredibly lucky that the one to whom he confesses is one of the conspirators, MEFI agents among the Guardians.

The MEFIs still rebel, breaking the Green Wall. The authorities of the United State decide to subject everyone who still has a soul to the Great Fantasy Removal Operation. D-503 is also subjected to this operation. His final words: “Reason must prevail” are deeply tragic. Indeed, for the victory of such reason, an individual, like all of humanity, will be forced to pay too high a price. You can conquer a person only by destroying him, but by destroying a person, the United State jeopardizes its own existence. This is the main conclusion from Zamyatin’s book.

Themes

The future - the novel is filled with the writer’s fear of the future. For him, the future of humanity is filled with fear and despair. However, at the same time, there remains hope that there will be those who will not allow humanity to completely lose itself.
Love - love in the novel is shown as the brightest and most beautiful feeling, but at the same time it is shown that not every person is able to withstand it, because in addition to happiness, love carries the deepest doubts and tests us every day.
Family - Zamyatin denies the society of the United State due to the lack of a family. The writer extols the desire for family happiness, gaining greater intimacy with the one you love, which O-90 demonstrated.
Creativity - against the backdrop of the monotonous, so ideal, but dead city of the United State, we understand how important it is that in the future people continue to create and imagine.
Historical memory - the numbers of the United State have completely forgotten about their past, living only in the present and the future. It is people's ignorance of alternative models of society that existed in the past that makes the One State, which has all the information, so powerful. People simply do not know and cannot imagine how they can live differently from what the authorities tell them.
Nature - the United State was completely closed from the outside world. It fenced off its citizens from living nature, giving them a soulless surrogate. People who don't know how the world works are very easy to control.

Main topics

The theme of dystopia for various writers has always been interesting for thinking people.

In his novel, Zamyatin raises the following topics:

Love - it is described in the work as the brightest and highest feeling, but at the same time the author points out that not all people can withstand it, since in addition to happiness, it also carries deep doubts and tests a person every day.
The Future - the work is filled with Zamyatin’s fear of the future. For the author, it is filled with hopelessness. But at the same time, there is hope that people will be found who will not allow people to completely lose themselves.
Creativity - against the backdrop of a monotonous, ideally created but dead society, the reader realizes how important it is that in the future a person continues to create and think freely.
Family - the writer denies the society of an ideal city, since there is no family in it. Zamyatin glorifies the attempt to find family happiness, which O-90 showed.
Nature - the city is completely closed from the outside world. He blocked people from nature and gave them a soulless surrogate in return. Citizens who do not know how the world works are easier to control.
Historical memory - numbers have completely forgotten about their own past, they live only in the present. It was human ignorance about other possible models of society that existed in the past that made the United State. Citizens simply do not know how to live differently.

Problems

Technocracy - One State represents the world of victorious rationalism. Everything is calculated down to the second, all the details are chosen perfectly, but the world created on the basis of reason alone looks more like a caricature than a working social model. According to Zamyatin, one cannot build a world based on soulless reason alone.
Tyranny - the tyranny depicted in the novel is terrible because the citizens themselves do not understand that they live in a tyrannical state. They are quite happy with the current state of things and simply do not dare to imagine that they can live any other way.
Mass consciousness - at the beginning, the numbers of the United State are shown as an obedient gray mass that is not aware of doubts. However, by the end of the novel we understand that all this was just an illusion, and many numbers are ready to reject the orders of the United State and fight for a new world.
The disappearance of individuality - the writer showed that no matter how rigid the social structure is, it will not be able to deprive people of their individuality. Human nature will always make its way out until a person is physically turned into a soulless robot.
Total state control over the individual - the writer strongly condemns state intervention in a person’s personal space, showing the absurdity of this order of things.
Moral choice - when faced with difficulties, a person is often forced to make a difficult choice, and in this situation everything depends only on him, and not on external forces.
Internal slavery - the fate of D-503 shows us that a person is often afraid of freedom. He may not have enough willpower to live based only on his own guidelines. And this, according to the writer, is a great tragedy for all humanity, which can find happiness only after freeing itself from its own bad habits.

Evgeniy Zamyatin “We”

Described by Zamyatin, or rather by his hero D-503, take place centuries later, where our times are succinctly called “ancient”. It took centuries for people to realize that one person is a gram on the scale, if society is on the other scale. This is how the United State appeared, surrounded by a Green Wall from the wild world - a society completely separated from the nature from which it came. For society to live, an individual must have only responsibilities; his life belongs to society and spending it on something else is a crime. Step to the side - and the Guardians will make sure that a failed screw does not damage the mechanism. To achieve this, diseases must be prevented in advance. The manifestation of feelings here is generally considered an illness that needs to be fought. However, external idealism is not at all like that in reality. As D-503 himself states, their society is not ideal, but it has approached the ideal like no other. People still have feelings, nothing has been done with them, they have only introduced such a morality that their manifestation should be at the level of physiological needs, without disturbing the way of life. Sexual relationships take a specific form, and unlike socialists or communists, Zamyatin sees the essence of the problem - in order to create a society of equality and prosperity, it is necessary that no one lay claim to anyone. However, the sense of ownership remains in people, but they do not talk about it when its very manifestation is criminal and the illusion is created that it does not exist. In the end, if you persist and convince everyone that working for the benefit of the United State is the highest happiness, then it will be so.

The main bearer of the idea in the book is the Benefactor. However, until the only dialogue with D-503 at the end, he is not revealed as a character. The benefactor is deified here. “His huge, cast-iron hands are on his knees. These hands crushed Him, bending His knees. (...) The face is somewhere in the fog, above, and it’s as if just because His voice reached me from such a height, it didn’t thunder like thunder, didn’t deafen me, but still looked like an ordinary human voice.” . The image of the Benefactor is undoubtedly important; his appearance is an ideological culmination, where he descends to his child to explain the entire system. There is a comparison with the biblical “hierarchy”, where God is cruel - he burns those who disobey him in the flames of hell. And this God has been glorified for centuries as the god of love. The idea of the United State is built on this contradiction - “love for humanity is certainly inhuman,” and “in paradise they no longer know desires, they do not know pity, they do not know love, there are the blessed.” The path to heaven, to universal happiness for the Benefactor, lies through the removal of human fantasy (soul), the purpose of which is to destroy the individual forever. Thus, human heroes are faced with a choice - to come to happiness and forget about desires forever, or to continue to fight for personality. It's a double-edged sword—in the end, people with their fantasy removed found happiness.

Each character in the book is assigned a number-letter value. From the position of the State, this is how people will lose their personality, but Zamyatin shows that even one letter can say enough about a person and influence his character. From a psychological point of view, he correctly arranged the characters in accordance with their names, which once again proves that personality lives in everyone, no matter how much they convince him otherwise. In addition, D-503, a convinced fanatic of the United State, notices funny features in people, like the round mouth of O, or the hunched position of Guardian S. So even the awarding of a serial number is not a complete loss of individuality.

It must be said that Zamyatin chose a very correct position to describe the future - “nothing concrete.” The reader will not learn detailed descriptions of the current world, nor the level of technology used, nor the exact date of what is happening. The newest transport here is called aero; it flies and does so in a spiral. And the aero also has a window. All. Surprisingly, after almost a century, the work does not seem technologically backward, although some moments could not be avoided. What are the ink blots worth? And yet you can close your eyes to this, because the author made the wisest move - instead of delving into details, he put pressure on the reader’s fantasy and imagination, so everyone will see something of their own in the world from clearly verified mathematical values. The work itself is not related to science fiction in any way - it is a social parable, or better yet, a treatise. The history of the world, from the perspective of its average person, traditionally thinking, and even a little doubting. The only thing that raises doubts is the purpose of this treatise - D-503 writes it for descendants, but descendants who will be like their ancestors, because time moves in a spiral, and what the people of the future understand will also be understandable to distant ancestors. This theory about the development of society is very doubtful, but Zamyatin uses it only as an excuse to write a book on behalf of a resident of the United State, and does not prove the final correctness.

In his own style, the author diverged especially in comparison with his earlier works. The style is good, one might say, too good to understand right away. Numerous metaphors, overwhelming imagery, dozens of other literary devices that are not very popular in modern literature. And not without reason - you can get a lot of aesthetic pleasure from reading Zamyatin, but the book may seem crazy to the average reader.

The result: the undisputed founder of the genre of both utopia and dystopia, and dozens of subgenres, which has not lost its relevance almost a century after it was written. This is a story about a world where the individual loses importance in front of the masses, “I” means nothing in the face of the state, but it is the people who are responsible for this who allowed this to happen to themselves. That’s why they don’t say “I” here—only “we.”