We (novel)
We (Russian: Мы, romanized: My) is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, written in 1920–1921.[1] It was first published as an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York, with the original Russian text first published in 1952. The novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. It influenced the emergence of dystopia as a literary genre. George Orwell said that Aldous Huxley's 1931 Brave New World must be partly derived from We,[2] although Huxley denied this. Orwell's own Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) was also inspired by We.[3]
Author
Мы
Various (list)
George Petrusov, Caricature of Aleksander Rodchenko (1933–1934)
Russian
1924
Print (hardback & paperback)
226 pages
62,579 words
891.73/42 20
PG3476.Z34 M913 1993
Setting[edit]
We is set in the future. D-503 (Russian: Д-503), a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State,[4] an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-like. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society.[5][6] The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulae and equations outlined by the One State.[7]
Plot[edit]
A few hundred years after the One State's conquest of the entire world, the spaceship INTEGRAL is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. The project's chief engineer, D-503, begins a journal that he intends to be carried upon the completed spaceship.
Like all other citizens of the One State, D-503 lives in a glass apartment building and is carefully watched by the secret police, or Bureau of Guardians. D-503's lover, O-90, has been assigned by the One State to visit him on certain nights. She is considered too short to bear children and is deeply grieved by that status. O-90's other lover and D-503's best friend is R-13, a State poet who reads his verse at public executions.
While on an assigned walk with O-90, D-503 meets a woman named I-330. I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal sex visit; all of these are illegal according to the laws of the One State.
Repelled and fascinated, D-503 struggles to overcome his attraction to I-330. She invites him to visit the Ancient House, notable for being the only opaque building in the One State, except for windows. Objects of aesthetic and historical importance dug up from around the city are stored there. There, I-330 offers him the services of a corrupt doctor to explain his absence from work. Leaving in horror, D-503 vows to denounce her to the Bureau of Guardians but finds that he cannot.
D-503 begins to have dreams, which disturb him, as dreams are thought to be a symptom of mental illness. Slowly, I-330 reveals to D-503 that she is involved with the Mephi, an organization plotting to bring down the One State. She takes him through secret tunnels inside the Ancient House to the world outside the Green Wall, which surrounds the city-state. There, D-503 meets the inhabitants of the outside world: humans whose bodies are covered with animal fur. The aims of the Mephi are to destroy the Green Wall and reunite the citizens of the One State with the outside world.
Despite the recent rift between them, O-90 pleads with D-503 to impregnate her illegally. After O-90 insists that she will obey the law by turning over their child to be raised by the One State, D-503 obliges. During the pregnancy, O-90 realizes that she cannot bear to be parted from her baby. At D-503's request, I-330 arranges for O-90 to be smuggled outside the Green Wall.
The Mephi uprising gathers strength; parts of the Green Wall have been destroyed, birds are repopulating the city and people start committing acts of social rebellion. Although D-503 expresses hope that the Benefactor shall restore "reason", the novel ends with the One State's survival in doubt. I-330's mantra is that, just as there is no highest number, there can be no final revolution.
In his last journal entry, D-503 indifferently relates that he has been forcibly tied to a table and subjected to the "Great Operation", which has recently been mandated for all citizens of the One State to prevent possible riots; having been psycho-surgically refashioned into a state of mechanical "reliability", they would now function as "tractors in human form".[8][9] This operation removes the imagination and emotions by targeting parts of the brain with X-rays. After this operation, D-503 willingly informed the Benefactor, the dictator of the One State, about the inner workings of the Mephi. D-503 expresses surprise that even torture could not induce I-330 to denounce her comrades. Despite her refusal, I-330 and those arrested with her have been sentenced to death, "under the Benefactor's Machine".
Major themes[edit]
Dystopian society[edit]
The dystopian society depicted in We is presided over by the Benefactor and is surrounded by a giant Green Wall to separate the citizens from primitive untamed nature.[10] All citizens are known as "numbers".[11] Every hour in one's life is directed by the "Table of Hours". The action of We is set at some time after the Two Hundred Years' War, which has wiped out all but "0.2 percent of the earth's population".[12] The war was over a rare substance only mentioned in the book through a metaphor; the substance was called "bread" as the "Christians gladiated over it"—as in Christians killed for sport in Roman gladiator games as a form of entertainment, "bread and circuses", suggesting a war that was meant to distract the population from a power grab by the government. The war only ended after the use of weapons of mass destruction, so that the One State is surrounded with a post-apocalyptic landscape.
Adaptations[edit]
Films[edit]
The German TV network ZDF adapted the novel for a TV movie in 1982, under the German title Wir (English: We).[42]
We is heavily referenced in the 2023 sci-fi feature film 1984.
The novel has also been adapted, by Alain Bourret, a French director, into a short film called The Glass Fortress (2016).[43] The Glass Fortress is an experimental film that employs a technique known as still image film, and is shot in black-and-white, which help support the grim atmosphere of the story's dystopian society.[44] The film is technically similar to La Jetée (1962), directed by Chris Marker, and refers somewhat to THX 1138 (1971), by George Lucas, in the "religious appearance of the Well Doer".[45] According to film critic Isabelle Arnaud, The Glass Fortress has a special atmosphere underlining a story of thwarted love that will be long remembered.[46]
A Russian film adaptation, directed by Hamlet Dulyan and starring Egor Koreshkov was initially supposed to be released in 2021.[47] As of 2024 the film still has not been released.
Radio[edit]
A two-part adaptation by Sean O'Brien and directed by Jim Poyser was broadcast on 18 and 25 April 2004 on BBC Radio 4's Classic Serial.[48] The cast included Anton Lesser as D-503, Joanna Riding as I-330, Julia Routhwaite as O-90, Brigit Forsyth as U, Patrick Bridgeman as S and Don Warrington as R-13.
Theatre[edit]
The Montreal company Théâtre Deuxième Réalité produced an adaptation of the novel in 1996, adapted and directed by Alexandre Marine, under the title Nous Autres.[49]
Music[edit]
Released in 2015, The Glass Fortress[50] is a musical and narrative adaptation of the novel by Rémi Orts Project and Alan B.
In 2022, the Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire released We, an album whose title was inspired by the novel.[51]
Other[edit]
In 2022, independent creator Doug Strain produced Beyond the Green Wall, a Dungeons and Dragons adventure based on the novel.
We directly inspired:
Notes
Bibliography
