We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (book review).
I was recently offered an anthology of short stories based on We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I accepted the book but felt obliged to read the original work for context. We is famous for supposedly influencing George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Having read both, I thought reading We would be a good idea, and the eBook version was very cheap. You can get it free on Project Gutenberg, but I went for one-click convenience. Coincidentally, one of the principles espoused in the book is Taylorism, which was new to me but surely isn’t to Jeff Bezos.
Some background first: We was written in the Soviet Union in 1921 by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a pre-revolutionary Bolshevik who was often arrested, beaten, and tortured by Tsarist police. After the revolution, he disliked the totalitarian regime imposed by the Communist Party. He wrote We, the first novel that imagined a future dystopia, and it was the first work banned by Soviet censors. Zamyatin smuggled a copy out of the country, which was translated into English and published by E.P. Dutton in New York in 1924. Zamyatin eventually managed to get exiled from Russia and died poor in Paris, France, in 1937.
We is definitely science fiction. Our hero, D-503, lives in the United State. After the Two Hundred Years War, humankind has settled into a society founded on reason. It’s an urban nation built entirely of glass so that everyone can be watched and watch each other. Guardians are mixed in with the citizens, who are expected to report each other for any misbehavior. A wall keeps nature out, so there is no grass, animals, or even birds, but thanks to the development of Petroleum Food, there’s plenty to eat. Sounds yummy. The sky overhead is always blue, as clouds can provoke the imagination, which is considered unnecessary in this new world.
D-503 is happy with his lot and believes the United State to be the ultimate perfect government because it’s based on scientific principles and everyone knows what they should be doing. In their glass towers, they can all see each other all the time, except during impersonal sex visits when a curtain may be lowered. The state raises children. Every morning, D-503 and his neighbors get up, eat breakfast, chewing each bite fifty times as per regulations, and march off to work in ranks of four, in perfect step, all wearing the same uniform. There is no choice, no freedom, and therefore no unhappiness.
D-503 states in his journal that it is like the Garden of Eden before Eve introduced the choice of the apple and ruined everything. Man must choose between freedom and happiness. In the perfect state, he chooses happiness. D-503 is a very important engineer building the rocket ship Integral, which will spread the way of the United State to other planets and then the stars so that the whole universe can be as happy as him. Then he meets a woman.
He already has one woman. 0-90 is his assigned sex visitor and wants his babies, but the state has decided she is too short to have children. On an assigned walk with 0-90, D-503 meets another woman called I-330, who smokes, drinks, and flirts with him. D-503 is fascinated with this sinful female and finds her irresistible. She takes him to the Ancient House, where objects of aesthetic and historical importance are kept. It’s the only opaque building in the city. Little by little, she leads him astray and slowly, as recorded in his journal, he discovers a secret resistance movement in the United State. He is torn between his old, perfect life and the exciting possibilities of a new one.
The novel is narrated in the first person and gets very deep, emotional, and sometimes irritating, but it draws you into the narrative. Even though it was annoying at times, I couldn’t put it down. I had to see what happened next.
I can even see the attraction of the United State. It’s the oneness, the loss of individuality, the feeling of being part of something greater than yourself, of being a cog in a machine with all the big questions answered for you, so you just have to get on with your work and be happy. It’s the attraction of certain cults and the Nazi party. Too much freedom, like we have in the West, causes anguish and mental health problems. Perhaps we instinctively realize this, and that’s why parties of the right with strong leaders are winning elections everywhere, and once they have won, there’s no need for any more elections. That’s just plain foolishness. Forward, humanity!
Do I recommend this book? Yes! Or, as they say in France, We.
Eamonn Murphy
July 2024
(pub: Diamond Books, 2023. 135 page e-book. Price: ebook: £0.46. ASIN: B0BWTXDDQV).
Diamond Book’s paper edition is sold out but looking on-line, there are at least two other editions
