"We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin was an extreme Utopian novel. The setting is set in the twenty-sixth century. The novel is full of technology, math, and sameness, all ruled by one "Benefactor" who controls what you do and how you do it. The main character D-503 is only one of the mathematicians in his world, and builder of the Integral in his society, OneState. He is controlled just like everyone else by The Table of Hours. D-503 opens the novel by admiring OneState and its values. Though once he meets I-330, a defiant girl who is clandestinely using him to get the integral and escape passed the Green Wall, his entire life is flipped into something he has never felt before. I-330 takes D-503 out of his comfort zone and he isn't sure how to react to this. D-503 is consumed with love, or is it lust? The major controversy of the novel is the question: does I-330 love D-503 or is she merely using him? After dealing with the confusion and consumption of what to make of his own feelings, he reports his illness (soul). His imagination gets taken away from him as he watches I-330 die with no emotion at all, just a smirk on his face. Proving a Utopian society with always be doomed.
My favorite passage is on page 33. "The cheerful little crystal bell in my headboard dings 7:00 AM; time to get up. To the right and left through the glass walls i see something like my own self, my own room, my own clothes, my own movements, and all repeated a thousand times. It cheers you up: you see yourself as part of an immense, powerful, single thing. And such a precise beauty it is: not a wasted gesture, bend, turn." This excerpt creates the image of a hundred mirrors all reflecting D-503's room and movements when in fact it is glass, with everyone doing the exact same thing and looking identical. Not only is D-503 expressing this in a natural, easy-going tone but he states that it cheers him up. He states that it is comforting knowing he's apart of a powerful, single thing. In our society now one feels cheerful and powerful by independence. The contrast of this passage to now is what captures my attention so much.
For me, as well as others, the book was confusing at first but definitely cleared up after the first few chapters. However the blunt ending, i actually enjoyed a lot. I thought that it allowed the reader to absorb everything in the novel and realize how we spent hours reading a novel about D-503's life and in just a split second, it's all taken away, disappeared, as if we haven't read about it at all.
My favorite passage is on page 33. "The cheerful little crystal bell in my headboard dings 7:00 AM; time to get up. To the right and left through the glass walls i see something like my own self, my own room, my own clothes, my own movements, and all repeated a thousand times. It cheers you up: you see yourself as part of an immense, powerful, single thing. And such a precise beauty it is: not a wasted gesture, bend, turn." This excerpt creates the image of a hundred mirrors all reflecting D-503's room and movements when in fact it is glass, with everyone doing the exact same thing and looking identical. Not only is D-503 expressing this in a natural, easy-going tone but he states that it cheers him up. He states that it is comforting knowing he's apart of a powerful, single thing. In our society now one feels cheerful and powerful by independence. The contrast of this passage to now is what captures my attention so much.
For me, as well as others, the book was confusing at first but definitely cleared up after the first few chapters. However the blunt ending, i actually enjoyed a lot. I thought that it allowed the reader to absorb everything in the novel and realize how we spent hours reading a novel about D-503's life and in just a split second, it's all taken away, disappeared, as if we haven't read about it at all.
To answer your question, does I-330 love D-503 or is she merely using him, I do not believe that I-330 ever loved D-503. I think that she only used him to get to the Integral, which in the end didn't work out. She manipulated D-503 by using her sexuality to get him to do whatever she wanted.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed the ending, normally I prefer happier endings but for We it really worked. It really showed the power and control that OneState has over its citizens and the possibility that they may have to remove the imaginations of all of its citizens to gain true control over them.