We - Yevgeny Zamyatin

   1921; 252 (includes a 20-page Introduction).  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Dystopian Fiction; Russian Lit; Banned Books.  Laurels : Prometheus Award, “Hall of Fame” category (1994).  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    It took them a millennium, along with a 200-year war that wiped out most of humanity, but civilization finally achieved the perfect society.

    There is the great Green Wall to keep the local citizens from being corrupted by nature.  Vices such as cigarettes, booze, flirting, and impersonal (and unauthorized) sex are all taboo and those caught engaging in such habits face severe punishment.  One can have multiple lovers (because, after all, everyone is equal to everyone else), but you have to register your desired partners with the authorities, and the state assigns you the nights and hours to come together.

     All citizens are required to be happy and productive, and this is primarily a fusing of perfect harmony and absolute conformity.  There is no place in society for anyone with imagination.  Every citizen has a uniform to wear, and all are assigned identifying numbers, not names.  Marching in step with other happy citizens as often as possible is strongly encouraged.

    Everyone lives in glass houses or apartments, so The Benefactor and his “Guardians” can closely monitor all the aspects of one’s daily life.  The only exception is the one hour for authorized love-making, when one is allowed to close the curtains for the specified time and not a minute longer.

    We are all so lucky to live in paradise!  And now we’re about to launch a spaceship, so that we can bring such exquisite happiness to other worlds in the universe.

What’s To Like...

    Written in 1921, We is one of the founding dystopian novels, although it is by no means the first.  Wikipedia gives that honor to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726, and which I never regarded as dystopian.  I may have to reread that one.  Wikipedia lists another 10 or so dystopian novels that preceded We, the most famous of which is H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, published in 1895.

    Our main protagonist is D-503, who is also the chief engineer for the rocket ship project.  The reader meets less than 10 other characters, the most notable of which are O-90 (D-503’s lover), I-330, the woman who causes him to stray from his path of happiness, and of course, The Benefactor.  O-90 is a sweet and loving character, but is forbidden to bear children because she is isn't tall enough.  Genetic optimizing, and all that.

     The book is structured as a journal that D-503 keeps.  He promises to record all of his thoughts and feelings as he prepares to embark upon the great spaceflight, not realizing that his words will betray him once he starts to deviate from the collective thinking.   It is therefore told entirely from a first-person POV.  D-503 records 40 entries in all, so these “chapters” average out to be about 5 or 6 pages in length.

    I was pleasantly surprised by how powerful the writing was, particularly since the book’s original language was Russian, and something is always lost in translation.  Hats off to the translator, Mirra Ginsberg; this could not have been an easy task.  D-503 is convinced that every human situation can be examined, explained, and solved by applying mathematics to it (he’s quite enamored by the square root of minus one), and I’m sure this was a challenge to render into English.

    I was impressed by how closely a novel that was written in 1921 visualizes how a space flight will be carried out.  I also liked the brief nod to synesthesia on page 220 (“Laughter can be of different colors”), and the operation that can rid you of imagination.  The public execution carried out on pages 40-49 chilled me to the bone.  The “Hymn of the One State” reminded me of both the mandatory reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance when I was in grade school, and the Walmart company song that its employees used to have to sing at the start of each day back in the 1980’s.

    The ending is goosebumpily satisfying, although I would also add that it is the plot resolution utilized by a majority of the dystopian novels I’ve read.  This is a standalone novel, although a number of questions remain about “what happens next” at the book’s end.  I don’t believe a sequel was ever penned, either by Yevgeny Zamyatin or anyone else.

Kewlest New Word ...

Infusoria (n., plural) : minute aquatic, single-celled organisms.

Others : Plashed (v.); Antipodally (adv.).

Excerpts...

    The scissor-lips gleamed, smiled.

    “You’re in a bad way!  Apparently, you have developed a soul.”

    A soul?  That strange, ancient, long-forgotten word.  We sometimes use the words “soul-stirring”, “soulless”, but “soul”…?

    “Is it … very dangerous?” I muttered.

    “Incurable,” the scissors snapped.  (pg. 89)

    “My dear – you are a mathematician.  More – you are a philosopher, a mathematical philosopher.  Well then: name me the final number.”

    “What do you mean?  I … I don’t understand: what final number?”

    “Well, the final, the ultimate, the largest.”

    “But that’s preposterous!  If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number?”

    “Then how can there be a final revolution?  There is no final one: revolutions are infinite.  The final one is for children: children are frightened by infinity, and it’s important that children sleep peacefully at night.”  (pg. 174)

Humility is a virtue, and pride is a vice; “We” is from God, and “I” from the devil.  (pg. 128 )

     The book opens with a 20-page introduction, which gives both a short biography of Yevgeny Zamyatin (yay!) and a couple of spoilers (boo!).  I recommend taking the time to read this section, but if that’s not your reading style, then the Wikipedia bio of the author is very similar in content.

    Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884-1937) was a true revolutionary idealist, protesting and running afoul of first the Czarist regime, then the Bolshevik bigwigs when that revolution failed to live up to its promises.

    We was banned by the Communists almost as soon as it came out, and Zamyatin was essentially living under a death sentence in 1931 when somehow Stalin was persuaded to let him go into exile instead of executing him or deporting him to Siberia.

    Zamyatin relocated in France, where loneliness and privation eventually led to his death from a heart attack in 1937.  Only a handful of friends showed up for his funeral.  Perhaps Stalin “won” after all, since it is better to turn dissidents into nobodies than into martyrs.

    8½ Stars.  We was a short-but-daunting read for me, which is exactly what I was expecting.  I don’t think I can count it as a “highbrow” novel, but the fact that I read a book banned by the Soviet authorities for many years somehow makes me feel quite proud.