My Thoughts on “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin
“Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.”
– Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
I love this novel. It was such a pleasure to read and contained so much creativity. The writing style of Zamyatin in “We” is truly like no other. The world is portrayed as cold and purely rational. Everything is made out of glass, literally. The book is inspired by many ideas in Zamyatin’s time that still apply today.
1. Taylorism, also known as scientific management, is a management theory and practice developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It aims to improve productivity and efficiency in industrial and organizational settings by applying scientific principles to various aspects of work. This concept is so emphasized in the novel; for example, the main character’s name is D-503 and everyone else in society is identified by a string of letters and numbers. Males are identified with first a consonant and then an odd number, while female are a vowel then an even number. In taylorism this computer like identification is a key feature; it supposedly keeps workers united as one enormous “machine.” The reason Zamyatin made this ideology so prevalent in his novel is because Vladimir Lenin loved it. “We” is largely a critique of communism, totalitarianism, absolute rationality, and government as a whole. And for that reason, “We” gained the prestigious honour of being the first book to be banned by the Soviet Union.
2. In the novel, D-503 lives a good life. He is the chief engineer building the spaceship which will expand the control of the state to the rest of the universe. He is proud of his position. Until slowly his state propaganda mindset begins to change, he begins to see the truth. His rationality decreases and D-503 finds himself succeeding to his human desires. All of his “logic” which is really just state propaganda can not compute what is happening. He is slowly converted and eventually completely diverges from his old ways. He joins the underground revolution and wants to topple the government. So he plans to crash the spaceship and destroy the city. Long story short, he fails, his fellow engineers report him and he is turned in to the authorities. He is given the new drug the state has released which takes away freedom of thought from people. And in the end, the state wins. No more revolutions, no more freedom, no more hope. D-503 is a mindless drone who is dictated by the state’s every command.
3. The themes brought up in this novel are truly astounding. The critique of totalitarianism is honest and realistic. Give anyone enough power, and the world is at their command. The portrayal of everything being glass is also quite intriguing. In complete authoritarianism, they control everything, and see everything. This is very applicable to the modern age. We may not have glass floors and walls, but in everyone of our pockets, on everyone of our desks; we have a piece of “glass.” It can see into our lives and a government can see through it. There is no possibility for us to remove the glass, as much like the novel, it is impossible to live without.
I very much appreciated this book, it is deeply insightful and honestly I cannot write enough about it. Whether Zamyatin knew it or not, he sparked something, a distrust in authority, an enlightenment on the effects of power, or something much more simple: the human desire to be free. This work was truly influential, and it revealed to many people that they were being manipulated. But was it too late?
Some more quotes from the novel that I could not skip over in good conscience:
“You’re in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul.”
“…Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative…”
“Here I saw, with my own eyes, that laughter was the most terrible weapon: you can kill anything with laughter – even murder itself.”
“knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith”
“We comes from God, I from the Devil.”
AI art showing the transparent city of the state
Eternity on Trial 
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