We (novel)

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We
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Cover of the Penguin Classics translation of We
Author Yevgeny Zamyatin
Original title (if not in English) Мы
Translator Clarence Brown
Cover Artist Georgii Petrusov, Caricature of Aleksander Rodchenko (1933-34)
Country Soviet Union
Language Russian
Genre(s) Dystopian novel
Publisher Penguin Books
Released 1920-1921 (written); 1988 (pub'd in USSR); 1993 (Penguin ed.)
Released in English 1924
Media Type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 226
ISBN 0-14-018585-2

We (Russian: Мы)[1] is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921.[2] It was written in response to the author's personal experiences with the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond and work in the Tyne shipyards at nearby Wallsend during the First World War. It was at Tyneside that he observed the rationalisation of labour on a large scale.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The story is told by the protagonist, "D-503", in his diary, which details both his work as a mathematician and his misadventures with a resistance group called the Mephi, who take their name from Mephistopheles.

D-503 lives in the One State,[3] an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, where everything is organized according to primitive mathematics. Sleep times are measured out for each day and each individual is given a certain number of other people to have intercourse with based on a system of coupons and scheduling. People move around according to special marches in-step with each other and wear special suits so there is hardly any way to differentiate between different people save by given numbers.

D-503 spends most of his time with O-90 and R-13, referring to their relationship as a “triangle.” He eventually falls in love with I-330 and the problems begin. He starts a diary as a testament to the happiness that the One State has discovered. He hopes to present it to the extraterrestrial civilisations which the spaceship he designed and oversaw the building of, the Integral, will visit. This ends up being all a part of the Great Benefactor’s plan so he could collect as many Mephi followers as possible.

As the novel progresses, D-503’s infatuation with I-330, a rebellious woman in league with Mephi, starts to take over his life. He starts to lose his initial dedication to the dystopian One State, and his ability to differentiate between reality and dreams starts to fade. He is permitted to take off work at one point to overcome his illness (the formation of a soul), but cannot seem to shake the strange and alien sensations he is experiencing.

By the end of his story, he has almost been driven to madness by inner conflicts between himself and his society, or imagination and mathematic truths. In addition, other members of the One State have fallen prey to higher math (obviously symbolizing love) and various forms of chaos begin to occur. The “Green Wall” that separates their world from the outside is destroyed, birds begin to populate the glass city, people start having intercourse with the blinds up without using coupons, and the Great Benefactor has to create a special field to keep out the Mephis and their followers.

At the end, D-503 is captured and taken for the Great Operation, where a “splinter” is removed from his brain (the soul he has formed) and he no longer loves, falling back into his previous existence.

Though the society appears to be containing the spread of the so-called illness, it is suggested at the end that perhaps the society itself will soon fall and the energy wall is only a temporary hindrance to the inevitable. Most literary critics are uncertain what Zamyatin was intending with his ending, whether the One State has won or whether love will eventually overcome the Great Benefactor and the remaining followers of order.

[edit] Major themes

[edit] Dystopian society

The dystopian society depicted in We is called the One State, a glass city led by the Benefactor (in some translations also known as The Well Doer) and surrounded by a giant Green Wall to separate the citizens from nature. The story takes place after the Two Hundred Year's War, a war that wiped out all but "0.2% of the earth's population".[4] The 200 Years War was a war over a rare substance never mentioned in the book, as all knowledge of the war comes from biblical metaphors; the objective of the war was a rare substance called "bread" as the "Christians gladiated over it" - as in countries fighting conventional wars. However, it is also revealed that the war only ended after the use of superweapons, after which came a time when grass grew over old streets and buildings crumbled.

[edit] Efficiency and mathematics

All human activities are reduced to mathematical equations, or at least attempted to. For sexual intercourse, numbers (people) receive a booklet of pink coupons which they fill out with the other number they'd like to use on a certain day. Intercourse is the only time shades are allowed to be lowered. It's believed pink coupons eliminate envy.

Every single moment in one's life is directed by "The Table," a precursor to Nineteen Eighty-Four's telescreen. It is in every single residence, and directs their every waking instant. With it, every person eats the same way at the same time, wakes at the exact same time, goes to sleep at the exact same time, and works at the exact same time. The only exception are two required "Free Hours" in which a Number might go out and stroll down a street, or work, or write a diary or the like. According to D-503, he is proud to think that someday there will be a society in which the Free Hours have been eliminated, and every single moment is catalogued and choreographed.

[edit] Individualism

Society places no value on the individual. Names are replaced by numbers. In one instance, ten numbers are incinerated while standing too close to the rockets of the Integral during tests. With pride, D-503 writes that this did not slow down the test in any way.

[edit] Totalitarianism and Communism

The Benefactor is the equivalent of Big Brother, but unlike his Orwellian equivalent, the Benefactor is actually confirmed to exist when D-503 has an encounter with him. An "election" is held every year on Unanimity Day, but the outcome is always known beforehand, with the Benefactor unanimously being reelected each year.

The Integral, the One State's space ship has been designed by D-503 to bring efficiency of the One State to the rest of the universe. This is often seen as analogous to ideals of Global Communist State held by early Marxists.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Literary significance and influences

We is a futuristic dystopian satire, generally considered to be the grandfather of the genre. It takes the totalitarian and conformative aspects of modern industrial society to an extreme conclusion, depicting a state that believes that free will is the cause of unhappiness, and that citizens' lives should be controlled with mathematical precision based on the system of industrial efficiency created by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Among many other literary innovations, Zamyatin's futuristic vision includes houses, and indeed everything else, made of glass or other transparent materials, so that everyone is constantly visible. Zamyatin was very critical of communism in Russia and his work was repeatedly banned.

George Orwell was familiar with We, having read it in French and reviewed it in 1946; it influenced his Nineteen Eighty-Four. Aldous Huxley reportedly claimed that he did not read We before writing Brave New World, although Orwell himself believed that Huxley was lying. [5]

[edit] History

The novel was the first work banned by Glavlit, the new Soviet censorship bureau, in 1921, though the initial draft dates to 1919. [citation needed] In fact, a good deal of the basis of the novel is present in Zamyatin's novella 'Islanders', begun in Newcastle in 1916. Zamyatin's literary position deteriorated throughout the 1920s, and he was eventually allowed to emigrate to Paris in 1931, probably after the intercession of Maxim Gorky.

The novel was first published in English in 1924,[6] but its first publication in the Soviet Union had to wait until in 1988, [7] when glasnost resulted in it appearing alongside George Orwell's 1984. A year later We and Brave New World were published together in a combined edition. [8]

[edit] Allusions and references to other works

[edit] Saint Alexander Nevsky

The numbers of the main characters - O-90, D-503 and I-330 - are almost certainly derived from the specification of the Saint Alexander Nevsky, Zamyatin's favourite icebreaker, whose drawings he claimed to have signed with his own special stamp.[citation needed]

[edit] Dostoevsky

In his article Two Adams and Eve in the Crystal Palace: Dostoevsky, the Bible, and We, Richard Gregg draws attention to similarities between Fyodor Dostoevsky's work, particularly Notes from the Underground and The Brothers Karamazov.

[edit] Biblical references

Many comparisons to The Bible exist in We. Gregg points out similarities between Genesis Chapters 1-4 and We, where The One State is considered Paradise, D-503 is Adam, and I-330 is Eve. The snake in this piece is S-4711, who is described to have a bent and twisted form, with a "double-curved body".

References to Mephistopheles (in the Mephi) are seen as allusions to Satan and his rebellion against Heaven in the Bible. The Mephi are rebels against what is considered to be a perfect society. The novel itself could also be considered a criticism of organised religion given this interpretation.

[edit] Mathematical references

Furthermore, in the novel, D-503 mentions how the irrationality of square root -1 bothers him greatly. It is known that in math, this number is represented by the letter i. But, the most ironic and one of the greatest satirical symbols in the novel is the fact that the One State thinks it is perfect because it bases its system on math even though math itself has irrationality in it. The point that Zamyatin tries to get across to the Communist leaders is that it is impossible to remove all the rebels against a system and he even says this through (ironically) I-330: "There is no one final revolution. Revolutions are infinite."[citation needed]

[edit] Trivia

  • The names are related to characters' genders. Males' names begin with consonants and end with odd numbers, females' with vowels and even numbers.
  • The letters corresponding to the numbers are directly related to various characteristics of that specific character. For example, the character O-90, D-503's most common sexual partner and female friend in the beginning portion of the novel, has very round and simple physical and mental characteristics. Such relationships between name letter and character exist throughout the novel. S-4711 is described as "double-curved", and I-330 is tall and thin. In the Russian version, all of the letters that comprise the characters' names use the Latin alphabet, except for D-503 and U, which are in Cyrillic, but these too correspond to the characteristics of each of these characters. For example, D in the Cyrillic alphabet corresponds to the letter Д, which can be argued to resemble a space ship, and thus allude to the Integral. Likewise, U in Cyrillic corresponds to the letter Ю, which many believe resembles a fish, thus linking her name to the fishlike appearance that both D-503 and her students ascribe to her.
  • "Auditorium 112" refers to cell number 112, where Zamyatin was twice imprisoned.[9]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The title Мы (IPA: [mɨ]) is the Russian first person plural personal pronoun. It is usually romanized as My by transliterating the Russian letter ы (Yery) as the English letter y. However, the romanization My is not a translation or a pronunciation and should not be confused with the English word my.
  2. ^ Brown translation, p. xi.
  3. ^ Ginsburg and Randall use "One State". Brown uses the single word "OneState", and Zilboorg uses "United State".
  4. ^ Fifth Entry (Ginsburg translation, p. 21).
  5. ^ "Leonard Lopate Show", WNYC, August 18, 2006. (radio interview with We translator Natasha Randall)
  6. ^ In a translation by Zilboorg.
  7. ^ Brown translation, p. xiv. Tall notes that glasnost resulted in many other literary classics being published in the USSR during 1988-1989.
  8. ^ Tall, footnote 1.
  9. ^ Randall, p. xvii.

[edit] References

[edit] Translations

  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1924). We, Gregory Zilboorg (trans.), New York: Dutton. [1]
  • Zamjatin, Jevgenij Ivanovič (1927). My, Václav Koenig (trans.), Prague (Praha): Štorch-Marien. (Czech) [2]
  • Zamâtin, Evgenij Ivanovic (1929). Nous autres, B. Cauvet-Duhamel (trans.), Paris: Gallimard. (French) [3]
  • Zamjàtin, Evgenij (1955). Noi, Ettore Lo Gatto (trans.), Bergamo (Italy): Minerva Italica. (Italian)
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1972 repr. 1999). We, Mirra Ginsburg (trans.), New York: EOS HarperCollins. ISBN 0-380-63313-2.
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1972). We, Bernard Guilbert Guerney (trans.), UK: Penguin Books.
  • Zamjàtin, Evgenij (1990). Noi, Ettore Lo Gatto (trans.), Milano (Italy): Feltrinelli. ISBN 88-07-80412-3. (Italian)
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1993). We, Clarence Brown (trans.), New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-018585-2.
  • Zamiatin, Eugene (2000). We, Gregory Zilboorg (trans.), USA: Transaction Large Print. ISBN 1-56000-477-0. (author photo on cover)
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (2006). We, Natasha Randall (trans.), USA: Random House. ISBN 0-8129-7462-X.

[edit] Russian language editions

  • Zamiatin, Evgenii Ivanovich (1988). Selections, sostaviteli T.V. Gromova, M.O. Chudakova, avtor stati M.O. Chudakova, kommentarii Evg. Barabanova, Moskva: Kniga. ISBN 5-212-00084-X. (Russian) [4] [5]
We was first published in the USSR in this collection of Zamyatin's works. (Brown, p. xiv, xxx)
Catalog card image from the National Library of Russia showing ISBN 5-212-0084-X (sic). (Russian)

[edit] Online texts

[edit] Reviews

[edit] Books

  • Shane, Alex M. (1968). The life and works of Evgenij Zamjatin. University of California Press.
  • Zamyatin, Yevgeny (1994). A Soviet heretic : essays, Mirra Ginsburg (editor and translator), Quartet Books Ltd.

[edit] Journal articles

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