We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin
translated by Clarence Brown
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Penguin: (first published in 1924) 1993. Trade paperback: 225 pages. ISBN-10: 0-14-018585-2 Suggested retail price: $12.95 (US) Tags: astronauts; conformity; Dystopia; kosmonauts; Political; rockets; Science Fiction Tactical strength: [7/10] |
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In the distant future, the totalitarian government of OneState has enclosed all of its citizens inside a glass city. The state controls every aspect of life and strives to achieve its citizens' happiness by having them surrender all freedoms to the state. Citizens no longer have names, but wear their designated number on their grey uniforms. OneState seeks to continually perfect the "happiness" of its citizens, and has developed the Operation, which removes any vestiges of imagination.
To spread the mathematical perfection of OneState through the universe, OneState has built the Integral. The state calls upon "everyone who feels himself capable of doing so . . . to compose treatises, epic poems, manifestos, odes, or other compositions dealing with the beauty and grandeur of OneState" (3). In the spirit of this proclamation, D-503, the First Builder of the Integral, decides to write a memoir that he will send with the ship on its journey. The memoir documents how revolutionaries court D-503 and his resulting confusion as he discovers his "soul."
Zamyatin's narrative often makes confusing jumps, but these parallel D-503's own vacillations between wanting to serve himself and wanting to do his duty to the state. In the midst of D-503's confusion and self-discovery, Zamyatin creates some beautiful metaphors relating mathematics to both OneState's control and D-503's new emotions.
Because We takes place so far in the future, you do not get the same stinging feeling you get from reading 1984. In 1984, you can see haunting similarities in our present governments to the ones Orwell describes. On the other hand, We more clearly demonstrates how totalitarian governments believe that people exist to serve the state, not that the state exists to serve the people. Where Orwell implies that human nature has the ability to triumph over a totalitarian state, Zamyatin implies that once you have given up too much freedom, you might never recover personal freedom, even if some individuals have a vision of life outside the state.
