We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, published in 1924, belongs to a great tradition of dystopian novels and precedes Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's 1984 (1949). Although Zamyatin wrote as the Revolution was ending, I didn't read We in that contemporary context. I think instead that Zamyatin's novel tackles a universal, timeless thought experiment: What if Adam and Eve in Genesis had gone for the Happiness of staying in the Garden of Eden, instead of choosing Freedom by eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge?
Zamyatin's protagonist in We is D-503—like all who live in the fictive United State, he’s a Number and nameless. D-503 keeps a diary that is addressed to us, his unknown readers. All activity in United State is under the central control of authoritarian Well-Doer and regulated--down to a mandated fifty chews one must make for each bite of food. Well-Doer’s “happiness for all” rules owe something to American Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific Management theory based on process time studies. For the United State version of happiness, D-503 surrenders his freedom, especially his privacy. He, like all Numbers, has an apartment with glass walls. But if a Number has a pre-scheduled assignation for sex, he/she is allowed to lower curtains in their glass apartment.
A central feature of the United State is the Green Wall. On the other side is a wild, natural world where hairy Them live--those humans defeated by the United State in a Two Hundred Years’ War. Number D-503 and his romantic interest, Number I-303, know little about the other side of the Green Wall, except that it has a Freedom their ancestors gave up for Happiness. Predictably, some of the plot twists in We involve D-503 and I-303’s incursions and subversion of the inviolate Green Wall.
Zamyatin is strong at showing psychological states of mind. Yet, the reader must parse out on his own what’s real, what’s imagined, and what’s possibly dream or delirium. One chilling aspect to the Well-Doer's authoritarian rule is his decision all Numbers must have the Operation, a newly perfected brain surgery to remove individual "fancy," or imagination. That should make all Numbers content and happy as cud-chewing cows.
Above all, Zamyatin is fun to read. The wild energy of his often surreal prose reminds me of what I've read of Henry Miller lately. And read We to find out what happens when the social goal becomes WE not I ad absurdum or what if Adam and Eve had chosen the Garden of Eden.
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, E. P Dutton & Co., New York, 1924, translated by Gregory Zilboorg, gutenberg.org ebook #61963, released 2020.
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