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Title: We |
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Review of We
Before Brave New World...
Before 1984...There was...WE
In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier -- and whatever alien species are to be found there -- will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason.
One number, D-503, chief architect of the Integral, decides to record his thoughts in the final days before the launch for the benefit of less advanced societies. But a chance meeting with the beautiful 1-330 results in an unexpected discovery that threatens everything D-503 believes about himself and the One State. The discovery -- or rediscovery -- of inner space...and that disease the ancients called the soul.
A page-turning SF adventure, a masterpiece of wit and black humor that accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism, We is the classic dystopian novel. Its message of hope and warning is as timely at the end of the twentieth century as it was at the beginning.
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Comments for We
- Posted on 2008-05-19
Forget 1984 or Brave New World
No need for Orwell or Huxley. If you're interested in dystopian science fiction, then this is your bag. It predates those other classic novels, for it was released in 1924, but was subject to much censorship within the Russian realm in which it was rendered. This book is a lot of fun, and carries a lot of the weight those other novels had, but with an extremely fantastic poetic prose, greatly translated by Clarence Brown. You will get a kick out the "Benefactor", "OneState", the "Greenwall", the savages beyond the wall, their glass city in which they live, The "Ancienthouse", etc. You will see how much was actually lifted from this novel by other more credited authors. Don't miss it!
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-05-03
The square root of negative one
I have the square root of negative one tattooed on my shoulder because of this book.
We" was a predecessor to George Orwell's dysotopic novel "1984". "We" tells the story of "D-503", a mathematician and engineer living in a society where everything a person did, down to the number of times a person brushed their teeth, was controlled by a master plan and a central authority. D-503 began the novel a perfect subject of the central authority. For him, the power and organization of central authority was synonymous with the power of the rules of mathematics. Both were absolute. When he first encountered the square root of negative one though, D-503 became frustrated, because there was something that mathematics couldn't answer: a limit to knowledge, a limit to what the rules could do. In the totalitarian world that D-503 lived in, it meant that there were things that the central authority would never be able to control or understand. By the end of the novel, D-503 had come to embrace the square root of negative one. He learned that the unknown and the unknowable are as important to existence as the known and the knowable.
"We" was written by Yevgeny Zamiatin at the time of the Communist Revolution in Russia. It was the first book banned in the Soviet Union, and it remained banned until 1988. The square root of negative one means that there will always be things beyond the rules. It means there are the things that will always elude control and remain wild, and there are no final revolutions.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-05-03
Minimalist masterpiece of real genius
Genius is an overworked term and should be used discriminately but We is truly the masterpiece of a real genius. Zamyatin was certainly well qualified to write this parable of a totalitarian dystopia, given his creative repression by Soviet censors during the time of Stalin. Zamyatin must be given credit for his courage to write Stalin and request self-exile since publication was impossible inside Communist Russia. And Stalin was wise to grant it because this novel is a powerhouse as a diatribe against dehumanizing government, portrayed here as OneState. One can feel the expression of the soul in the heat of the storyline and in the characters yearning for freedom despite the all-encompassing control exercised in their daily lives by OneState: "The only means to rid man of crime is to rid him of freedom." The citizens have numbers rather than names and are ruled by the Benefactor, a leader who is above the law. The hero, D-503, is the builder of a great space craft and discovers that he has become sick: "You're in bad shape. It looks like you're developing a soul." D-503 considers the unknown the enemy of man and "Homo sapiens is not fully man until his grammar is absolutely rid of question marks, leaving but exclamation points, commas and periods." The hero is a bewildered genius, like Zamyatin, whose brilliance OneState needs but whose intellect also poses a threat to OneState. "Who knows who you really are? A person is like a novel: up to the very last page you don't know how it's going to end." What is the role of the individual talent within the context of the controlling power of OneState? How does the I fit into the We? Or as Zamyatin asks: "Who is this 'we'? Who am I?" The problem for OneState is this: "The mechanism has no imagination." So does OneState value imagination among its citizens as much as it needs it? It turns out that D-503's illness is "imagination." And the cure for imagination is... well, you'll just have to read the novel to find out. The translation by Clarence Brown of Princeton is incredibly lucid, natural and inspired in leaving the careful minimalism of the novelist to understatement which has the effect of empowering the language. Lately, I've been reading the 20th century Russians who were so repressed in their time that their novels simmer and seethe with brilliance. Orwell was inspired by Zamyatin and I promise you that so will you. This novel has rare, raw power, which shouldn't be overlooked: read the genius of Zamyatin in We.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-03-31
We All Live in a Glasshouse
Peering into the omniscient mind of Yevgeny Zamyatin I discovered an incurable Dystopia, a dormant civilization and an almost mirror image of our American society today. Zamyatin's strikingly modern novel seems to be more poignant and reflective of the world in which we live in now, than the early 20h century Russian oppressive government that inspired this work. When I read We the first time the characters (who were named with a letter followed by a number) seemed robotic and emotionless just as their names allowed. The protagonist D-503, however, slowly reveals his primal urges as he depicts the life he leads in this world. The obstruction to an unknown world within himself, (as well as in the physical world) which he must penetrate with deep introspection, is the barrier that he ultimately defeats. However, as the story unravels, the consequences of this come to fruition. Zamyatin's ability to not only use perfect plot devices (i.e love triangles and the heroes journey) but to relate everything in this cold and sterile mechanistic society to mathematics opens up an entirely different read. Upon my second reading I reveled in the subtleties of these numerical correlations as it began to morph into an entirely different book. Out of any science fiction novel, this book is by far my favorite. It poses the most valid and relevant questions that can be applied to any discourse regarding modern society on the cusp of dystopia. In my reading I found that the greatest question the novel will ultimately pose for the reader is: Must we sacrifice our human nature for a "utopian" world?
Score: 5 - Posted on 2008-03-16
Strange...
I found this story very strange and uncomfortable... depressing even. However, the work does provoke thought and inspires an appreciation for freedom, personal independence, and privacy.
Score: 3