We- A Dystopian Novel
by Yevgeny Zamyatin
“Because, you know, all human history, as far back
as we know it, is the history of moving from a nomadic
life to a more settled way of life. So, doesn’t it follow
that the most settled forof life (ours) is by the
same token the most perfect form of life (ours)?”
Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1905
as we know it, is the history of moving from a nomadic
life to a more settled way of life. So, doesn’t it follow
that the most settled forof life (ours) is by the
same token the most perfect form of life (ours)?”
Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1905
Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We may be the first literary expression of the social turmoil that the industrial revolution created. Without even considering the extra implications of the Russian social structure and chaos during his writing, Zamyatin’s piece highlights the general early 20th-century’s concern over technological supremacy. We is the first globally scaled Dystopia to emerge. The vast sweeping nature of the technological age, changing the majority of the civilized world in the same period, unlike histories more slow-going, organic changes, allowed Zamyatin, and others, to view the future as a “One-State”.
Zamyatin’s “One-State” is a world apart, separated from the natural world by the Wall. In this enclosed world, Zamyatin created a society modeled on the standardization and machinery of industry. Zamyatin’s main objective in this society is to create “a mathematically infallible happiness” (We). To perform this task, freedom must be eliminated. By modeling society on the “nonfree movement” or “ideal unfreedom” involved in the machinery of industry, Zamyatin displays a world in which the humanity factor is lost. The loss of humanity, for OneState, resolves all the problems of society. Without emotion, without ideas, without choices, Zamyatin’s “numbers”—people—are unable to make wrong choices, or have bad ideas.
While Zamyatin’s world is functional. It comes at a cost. Losing the human element, the capabilities that set us apart from machines and the rest of the natural world, changes our role in it. If we separate ourselves from the issues of humanity that we cannot solve through societal structuring, government, and other institutions designed for these purposes, we are not resolving them, as OneState believes but instead ignoring them. Ultimately, Zamyatin addresses the problems of a mechanical society. Undermining the happiness of OneState, a group of revolutionaries serves as the catalyst for action against OneState’s governance. Zamyatin’s protagonist, D-503, comments—having experienced individuality for the first time—“for the very first time in my life, I get a clear, distinct, conscious look at myself and I’m astonished, like I’m looking at some ‘him’. There I am—or rather there he is” (We).
Zamyatin’s story in We shows that no matter how structured, or for what reasons, the singularity of humanity cannot be contained or ignored. This text served to warn against the possibilities of changes that industrialism may have induced in society. While many thinkers have considered a lack of freedoms as potentially beneficial in some aspects, it is generally agreed that “it is necessary for man’s life to retain some [freedoms], as right to govern their own bodies; enjoy air, water, motion, ways to go from place to place, and all other things else, without which a man cannot live, or cannot live well” (Hobbes 17). Contemporary Utopianism also agrees that there is an “importance of freedom of the will in individual choice” (Goodwin and Taylor 154).
It is not essential that freedom exist in a form of anarchy where all are free to do as they list but that a moral and internal freedom exist within individuals. If there are no choices to make, if there are no other options, how can those choices be viewed as good? They are merely standardized, formulated interactions that are dictated and not true. OneState showed that a Utopia of this type was no Utopia at all but instead the first work among a new genre of Utopianism. Dystopias that follow Zamyatin’s work would also attempt to expose the possible failures of political and social systems favoring too much the fields of hard sciences and not enough the realities of humanity.
Zamyatin’s “One-State” is a world apart, separated from the natural world by the Wall. In this enclosed world, Zamyatin created a society modeled on the standardization and machinery of industry. Zamyatin’s main objective in this society is to create “a mathematically infallible happiness” (We). To perform this task, freedom must be eliminated. By modeling society on the “nonfree movement” or “ideal unfreedom” involved in the machinery of industry, Zamyatin displays a world in which the humanity factor is lost. The loss of humanity, for OneState, resolves all the problems of society. Without emotion, without ideas, without choices, Zamyatin’s “numbers”—people—are unable to make wrong choices, or have bad ideas.
While Zamyatin’s world is functional. It comes at a cost. Losing the human element, the capabilities that set us apart from machines and the rest of the natural world, changes our role in it. If we separate ourselves from the issues of humanity that we cannot solve through societal structuring, government, and other institutions designed for these purposes, we are not resolving them, as OneState believes but instead ignoring them. Ultimately, Zamyatin addresses the problems of a mechanical society. Undermining the happiness of OneState, a group of revolutionaries serves as the catalyst for action against OneState’s governance. Zamyatin’s protagonist, D-503, comments—having experienced individuality for the first time—“for the very first time in my life, I get a clear, distinct, conscious look at myself and I’m astonished, like I’m looking at some ‘him’. There I am—or rather there he is” (We).
Zamyatin’s story in We shows that no matter how structured, or for what reasons, the singularity of humanity cannot be contained or ignored. This text served to warn against the possibilities of changes that industrialism may have induced in society. While many thinkers have considered a lack of freedoms as potentially beneficial in some aspects, it is generally agreed that “it is necessary for man’s life to retain some [freedoms], as right to govern their own bodies; enjoy air, water, motion, ways to go from place to place, and all other things else, without which a man cannot live, or cannot live well” (Hobbes 17). Contemporary Utopianism also agrees that there is an “importance of freedom of the will in individual choice” (Goodwin and Taylor 154).
It is not essential that freedom exist in a form of anarchy where all are free to do as they list but that a moral and internal freedom exist within individuals. If there are no choices to make, if there are no other options, how can those choices be viewed as good? They are merely standardized, formulated interactions that are dictated and not true. OneState showed that a Utopia of this type was no Utopia at all but instead the first work among a new genre of Utopianism. Dystopias that follow Zamyatin’s work would also attempt to expose the possible failures of political and social systems favoring too much the fields of hard sciences and not enough the realities of humanity.