In Zamiatin’s novel “We” all human beings are referred to as “Respected numbers” (916) who are not supposed to love, have souls, or imagination. They are expected to be human machines, obedient and hard-working. Even the main character has only a number instead of a name, in order to maintain order and eliminate individuality.
The human being is reduced to a mere cog in the societal machine. But it doesn’t work like that. Just as in 1984 (Orwell, 1949) and Brave New World (Huxley 19XX), human beings turn out to be too deviant to become compliant automatons, as even the numbered humans of We find that they need more than safety to be happy. Sadly, in this dystopic novel, the machine wins and it ends on a pessimistic note as D-503, after he is cured, watches his lover being tortured and vaporized without any emotional reaction at all
All the numbered humans within the glass wall are dressed in similar plain uniforms which make distinguishing any individual very difficult. In order to deal with different physical characteristics, even the equalization of noses is earnestly proposed. The only difference made between males and females is that females are identified with a vowel and an even number on their drab grey uniforms, as opposed to males with consonants and an odd number. I thought this was a little strange since most societies would require more females in order to sustain the population. However, Zamyatin was from a very patriarchal society, so it was probably an oversight. If not, he might have chosen to identify males with consonants because they are stronger, though that does not fall in line with the idea of total equality within the novel.
Everything in the One State has been reduced to simple mathematics wherever possible. The purity of numbers and mathematics are seen as far superior to the biological functioning of human beings. Anything which promotes individuality is eliminated and such things as privacy and individual social activity are banned. All walls are made of transparent glass. One wonders why Zamyatin did not find some way to eliminate walls entirely. Humans could easily conduct all activities in a common space. Only sexual activity was seen to be disturbing. (Eliminating privacy both eliminates identity and allows the “machine” to monitor human activity.)
Emotions are seen as a flaw that poisons humans and makes them misbehave, thus corrupting the entire society and making the world an unhappy place. Happiness is actually defined as contentment with the status quo. Anything which disrupts the perfection of the societal machine is seen as unhealthy. Therefore, all real emotional response is suppressed and the perfect regimentation of the way of life in the One State is supposed to overcome this fatal human flaw.
In many ways, human society is understood to have “grown-up” from its primitive beginnings. The creation of the perfect human society is supposed to eliminate those no longer needed human traits which actually were responsible for the survival of man as a species in the first place. Man has changed the world, tamed it with machines, and now can live in peace and harmony within its creation. This state is seen as having been inevitable.
In an effort to homogenize society and eliminate dangerous free time, every single moment in one’s life is directed by “The Table,” Only two free hours for walking or other approved activity are allowed daily. 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 cataloged and choreographed. It is interesting that Zamyatin did not eliminate the pronoun “I”, though the title and the number of E 503’s lover hint at it.
Perhaps it was simply too cumbersome to use some other first-person pronoun. Russian is a beautiful, but very complicated language anyway. However, Zamyatin seems not to have meddled with language in any significant way, unlike the Newspeak of 1984. (Orwell 1949) Many scholars insist that these novelists, Orwell, Huxley, and Zamyatin, influenced each others’ work. However, it is just as possible that the political and sociological climate of the time was responsible for the similarities in their work.
Another thought on language and creativity centers around the state’s call for writers. It is interesting that the word writer has not been changed to documenters, and that poetry is included in the needs. The story begins with D-503 deciding to answer the One State’s call for all with a literary talent to “compose tracts, odes, manifestos, poems, or other works extolling the beauty and grandeur of the One State.” (9) These contributions will form the first cargo on the Integral, promoting efficiency and “un-freedom” to the populations of the universe beyond, who may still be living in a terrible state of freedom. However, the story shows us that writing is itself a dangerously creative activity. This actually creates faint hope for humanity in an otherwise dark tale.
Music, on the other hand, has been reduced to cranking out mathematical formulas. “‘By merely rotating this handle anyone is enabled to produce about three sonatas per hour. What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to attacks of inspiration, an extinct form of epilepsy’” (17) Of course, one has to ask if this is actually composition, any more than the wild brushwork of Chimpanzees is art.
Aesthetics have been reduced to monoclonal sound and graphics. There is no meaning in any of them either, since that would make them distinct and individual expressions. In fact, any emotion except enthrallment with the One State is seen as dangerous and repressed. Laughter, which is generally not controllable is controlled by regimenting its use to control society. I 330s inappropriate laughter is more disturbing because it is contagious. This is a tiny hint that there really is no way to ultimately control human beings.
This society is completely sterile in more than the biological sense. It is nightmarishly devoid of anything resembling creative art or music, and even the inborn biological differences among people are being looked at in consideration of eliminating them. It would begin with the noses and wind up possibly worse than in Huxley’s Brave New World where everyone chooses from a set of patterns for faces. The novel prompts thoughts of how far this might be carried in such a society.
It is, and the idea was used in the Soviet Union, that the poets and writers of any society are its voice, its identity. It was held that all such people should be converted to the state or eliminated if any state wished to take control of any other. The language was also a target. In Zamyatin’s time, native languages were prohibited in the member states of the USSR. Only Russian was allowed. Of course, little was known at the time about how the character of a language promotes creativity or not. Orwell limited the vocabulary of his people to try to reduce the possibility of creative individual thought. Intuitively, perhaps, he even changed the grammar, simplifying it. (Orwell 1945)
Zamyatin seems to have left language mostly alone. However, there was the equivalent of the gulags in WE. “The same evening I learned that they had led away three Numbers, although nobody speaks aloud about it, or about anything that happened….. Conversations deal chiefly with the quick fall of the barometer and the forthcoming change in the weather” (156-7). In other words, there is a silent warning to everyone that speaking out of dissident thoughts is dangerous. People disappear without any warning or explanation. Sometimes they reappear later (cured) and sometimes not. Nobody asks, even if they are inclined.
However, the suppressed humanity within people is not eliminated at all, and never will be, though this novel paints a darker picture. It is in the act of documenting the progress of the construction of the spaceship Integral, which D-503 designed, that the human creative spirit asserts itself in him.
He begins making notes in his diary in order to create an explanation for the anticipated contact with aliens, which they hope to convert and save, of how his society thinks and how happy the “one” state has made him and all others. “It transforms each one of us into a figure of steel, a six-wheeled hero of a mighty epic poem. Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour and the same moment, we-millions of us –get up as one”(12). D-503 has already shown far too much creativity in the design of the Integral. Now, in the process of examining his society in order to explain it, he begins to question it.
Interestingly, sex is mandated according to formula which calculates the individual needs of each citizen. Sexual activity is scheduled by the “Sexual Department” after an extensive study of an individual’s sexual hormonal levels to achieve the ‘correct’ number of ‘Sexual Days’ for that peron. For sexual intercourse, people receive a booklet of pink coupons, according to their identified needs, 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 in order that the disturbing images not be seen by the population not indulging in such activity at the time. It’s believed pink coupons eliminate envy. “It is clear that under such circumstances that there is no reason for envy or jealousy” (22). In this case, physical and biological difference is accommodated rather than eliminated. Sex is, of course, not supposed to require or produce love, but has become a clinical physical need on the level with exercise. It has been reduced from an expression of love to a mere biological function.
By removing the emotional component the society also removes damaging emotions, such as jealousy and envy. However, the main character discovers the beauty of sex when combined with love for himself when he meets and falls in love with the rebel infiltrator from outside, I-330, and they engage in illicit sexual activity. They live outside the glass wall and volunteers infiltrate in order to try to save those humans trapped inside. It is really quite simple to stimulate the suppressed human qualities in the citizens of the “one” state.
Regardless of the expectations of the Great Benefactor – the leader of One State country, who controls everyone and everything through his helpers- Guardians, humans still remain human. They need to love. They are jealous. They want to be happy on a higher level than mere lack of needs. Their imaginations make them recognize the emotional voids in their lives. Imagination causes questioning. Questioning is dangerous and leads to unhappy individuality as people begin to think and have opinions. Independent thought, opinions and individuality leads to competition and unhappiness, since it destroys equality. People simply are not meant to live in total perfect peaceful harmony.
The Great Benefactor has mistaken non-functionality for happiness. Man would never have survived and become the dominant species on the planet without those faults which prevent the construction and maintenance of the “perfect society”. This “perfect” society echoes of the communist ideal of Zamyatin’s time, and we can see that he was critical of the ideas of equality taken to extremes.
In the novel, some humans question their place in society. One state considers humans to be human only when they are free of question marks and maintaining their status-quo. The writer D-503 is a voice of the One State, working on writing a book about the happy, perfect society of One State model to illustrate this beginning for the subsequent generations and for other worlds existing in the universe. He is also a designer and builder of the spacecraft “Integral” that is supposed to deliver his novel and its model society to other civilizations in space. However, the very acts of the creative activities he has engaged in for the state have stirred feelings in him that need creative expression, and that alone sets him apart from his peers.
D 503 also suffers with horrible diseases: he has — a soul and an imagination. Affected by these unhappy diseases, D 503 questions the perfection of One State, the definition of One State, the definition of happiness and its mathematical infallibility. Through a long process of self torment, D 503 realizes that imagination can be dangerous, for it questions the ordinary and celebrates difference and individuality; the One State turns people into heretics and even sparks the Revolution.
Questioning the past turns him into a true philosopher of his time who is trying to find the answers to the questions that cannot be answered through mathematical equations, because they deal with hard to grasp concepts, intangibles— human soul and imagination. ”Building a state on entirely unpredictable eventualities, blindly – what can be more senseless?”(137) Concentrating on his inner thoughts and memories, constantly analyzing the past and life of the ancient civilization, D 503 becomes a paranoid person who rarely finishes his sentences leaving them open ended, with dots and blank space. “There were two of me. The former one, D 503, number D-503, and the other …” (56) “I am imprudent, I am sick, I have a soul, I am microbe” (131) D 503’s diminishing of his persona helps us to better understand the mentality of One State society. The person is a sick microbe if he happens to have a soul.
The prominent novels of sociological dystopia, including WE, set up a state that molds the population to its needs, while in reality, it is the population that molds the state to its needs. We have seen this over and over again as dysfunctional states either fail (USSR centralize communist authority), or change, (China’s multilevel democratic totalitarianism). Functionalists believe that all states will eventually be modified to suit the needs of their people, as human populations exert power to create the institutions that they need to keep things running smoothly.
People are not supposed to have independent thought, and only very sick parts of the society are self-aware. Even though the society is highly structured; the imagination of D 503 makes him question his identity, which is supposed to have actually been eliminated. Working in unison, having special hours for walking, eating, sleeping and making love with the permission of guardians and approval signed on the pink slips, does not prevent D 503 from dreaming and self analyzing. “Is it possible that all this madness – love, jealousy- exists not only in those idiotic ancient books?…..Who am I? What am I like?”
D 503’s inner monologues unfold the very essence of One State that defines happiness in unfreedom. “The Benefactor, the machine, the Guardians, all this is good because it protects our unfreedom-that is our happiness.”(62) D However, at the same time as he is explaining and extolling the virtues of the One State, D 503 begins to examine these and question them all. 503 considers the nagging questions: what if unfreedom is not a true happiness but an illusion forcefully imposed to millions of people? What if (the human) living behind the glass walls, filthy mound of leaves, in his uncomputed life, is happier than we are?”(93)
These kinds of thoughts begin to multiply and trouble him deeply. Unlike the other “happy” members of the One State, he is questioning his existence and his identity, which is supposed to be totally in harmony with the One State, part of WE.
D 503’s imagination takes him beyond the wall of the Petri dish he lives in and makes him see life and, perhaps, happiness in the outside, forbidden world. Going through emotional crises, being in love and yet constantly adjusting his life according to the Time Table, D 503 is just about to lose his mind. He realizes there is life outside of the glass city, there are people out there too, and there are so many simple things, trees, leaves, grass, bright sky that are so beautiful. He loses control over his emotions and yells:” And every one must lose his mind, everyone must!” The sooner the better! (158) He is overwhelmed with long repressed emotions boiling deep inside of him, forcing their way out and unsettling the human being part of him, leaving D503 restless.
D 503 talks in his notes even about his doubts as to their value. He seems to be going down that long corridor of investigation of reality and its value. He even considers the values and social state of his audience. “But then, if this world is mine alone, why does it go into these notes? Why record all these absurd “dreams,” closets, endless corridors? I am saddened to see that, instead of a harmonious and strict mathematical poem in honor of the One State, I am producing some sort of fantastic adventure novel. Ah, if it were really nothing but a novel, and not my present life, filled with X’s, the sign for irrational number, and falls.” (102)
However, perhaps it is all for the best. You, my unknown readers, are most probably children compared to us, for we have been brought up by the One State and hence have reached the highest summits for man. And, like children, you will swallow without protest everything bitter I shall give you only when it is carefully coated with the thick syrup of adventure. (102-3)
After meeting and becoming infatuated with I 330, D 503 is desperate for contact with I 330, and he helps some revolutionaries get onboard The Integral, and with other dangerous actions, all so he can see more of her. Meanwhile, the woman who handles the paperwork for the assignations in D 503’s building, has fallen in love with him (or fallen into infatuation). At one point, she even helps him escape a trip to the Machine of the Well-Doer for treatment of his disease. But D 503 is still in love with I 330! So we can see that sexual attraction and even deviance are seen by the author as a catalyst for change and one of the hopes of mankind.
D 503 questions even his existence and doubts the wisdom of the Benefactor. “Who can tell? A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don’t know how it will end.”(162) The Benefactor- the God of One State actually had realized the potential threat of the imagination that could lead to the Revolution, and so did the writer. ”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 Benefactor had developed the idea of Paradise and happy people, who are just like obedient Angels. They should be accepting and quiet but not have imagination, because it’s easy to control and manipulate the obedient people: ”There are only the blessed , with their imaginations excised”(214) The only way to free “numbers” of imagination was to perform a special medical procedure. The procedure freed people of imagination turning them into machine-like beings, and it did work: “These are not people – they are humanoid tractors” (189)
D 503 is nearly saved when I 330 corrupts him, and involves him in a plan to destroy the power plant which maintains the One State. The Green Wall is destroyed and bird actually invade the city. People everywhere begin to carry on sexual activity without using coupons and with the blinds up! Everything is chaos! For a brief time it seems as if the humans in the One State will be saved, until the Great Benefactor creates a special field to keep out the Mephis and their followers, of which his lover, I 330 is a member. It is interesting to note that the author chose a very romantic name for the “bad guys” outside the wall. D 503 has been driven nearly insane by this time, questioning everything.
It is interesting that the Great Benefactor sacrifices his own “happiness” by remaining individual in order to help others.
Finally, D 503 and I 330 are caught and “disappeared”. D 503 is offered the cure for his disease. After first resisting the idea of this cure, which is similar to a lobotomy, D 503 agrees to have his imagination removed. It seems a choice between this and physical death. It is interesting that they required his permission, but that they tortured and killed I 330. D 503 compares the procedure to the death and resurrection. He became cured and free of soul tormenting.” am well; I am entirely, absolutely well.”(231)”The only explanation I can think of is my former sickness (the soul).”(232) D 503 became a different kind of human, who is no longer questioning the reality, past or emotions.
D 503 is tested after his “cure” and he watched as his former lover is tortured and then vaporized without any emotional reaction. That the state used her life to test him is one of the scariest things in this novel. She was simply trash, uncurable and so to be used to benefit society in the only way possible, to test the cure of D 503. He is proven cured. He has become just what the One State Benefactor wanted him; deprived of name, love, desires, imagination and dreams. He is happy. He is back to his old style of life; the Tables, restrictions and specific hours. He is now an obedient “number”, a part of one big system, a human machine, an obedient angel living in the One State society.
References
Aldous Huxley; Brave New World. 1952, Perennial, Reprint edition, 1998; ISBN 0-06-092987-1.
Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel. London: Secker & Warburg.
Zamiatin , Evgenii Ivanovich, 1922, Web.