What is the philosophical meaning of "We" by E. Zamyatin

"We"

Zamyatin was looking for new ways of creativity. He believed that after the revolution, life became different and should be portrayed differently. Neither Tolstoy's realism nor symbolism can adequately reflect the new reality - they must be replaced by neorealism.

E. Zamyatin argued with the theorists of the Proletcult, who argued that the “mechanization” of life also affects the psychology of the proletariat, that over time there will be no individuality, individual thinking, but there will be an “objective psychology of the whole class”. In many ways, the novel "We" is directed against such an interpretation. However, this work is not limited to political controversy. The novel "We" became a model of the dystopian genre.

Allegorical dystopias have existed in literature for a long time. In Russian literature, the novel by M. Kheraskov “Cadmus and Harmony” (1786) is called the first dystopia, the Legend of the Grand Inquisitor from the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov". It has something that is one of the hallmarks of this genre - the motif of imposed happiness, which is led to by force. At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, many works appeared in Russian literature that have signs - more at the level of socio-philosophical than artistic - of dystopia.

Dystopia is a refutation in an artistic form of faith in the achievement of a just world order in historical reality. If utopia depicts a perfect world, most often isolated, an “earthly paradise”, then dystopia debunks the principles of an ideal society, it traces the motif of “expulsion from paradise”. A utopian society is most often shown through the eyes of an outside observer who finds himself there and admires the new world order. The world of the future in anti-utopian works is shown from the inside, from the position of an inhabitant of this world who can learn all the principles of the structure of this society on own experience. Utopian works are fantastic works, since it is possible to demonstrate the structure of the new world only with the help of fantasy. Dystopia is also fantastic, the main techniques of this genre are parody and grotesque. It is no coincidence that the dystopian novel appeared at a time when a state arose that embodied the dreams of mankind about universal happiness.

In dystopian novels, two types of "ideal" society are clearly distinguished. In the novels "We" by E. Zamyatin and "Invitation to Execution" by V. Nabokov, the well-being of the state and citizens is based on the satisfaction of the most primitive needs.

This is “the prosperous non-existence of adult idols” (V. Nabokov). The later novels of the German writer G. Hesse "And the Grass in the Beads" and the American science fiction writer A. Asimov "The End of Eternity" offer a different principle of prosperity. However, the principle of the structure of society is the same: it is based on the spiritual! the lack of freedom of the people who inhabit it. The dystopian novel, however, is not only a social satire, but a philosophical genre, involving reflections on the principles of the organization of human society, on the inner freedom and lack of freedom of the individual.

The United State shown in the novel "We" is the realm of the victorious utopia. People in it do not think about housing, 111 years - the state provides them with the necessary level of comfort in life. Life in the United State is extremely mechanized. But for the convenience of existence, one had to pay with the loss of a name and individuality. The United State is not a parody of the Land of Soviets, because in 1920-1921 the Soviet state was just being created. However, the system that dominates the One State demonstrates what the violent movement towards happiness, general planning and "mechanization" leads to. The existence of numbers can be equated with the existence of people in the "golden age", at least, the citizens of the United State themselves think so.

The state is built on the principle of incompatibility of happiness and freedom. The concept of “ideal lack of freedom” seems to the citizens of the United State to be the only reasonable principle for building a society: rooms according to the schedule get the opportunity to satisfy all natural needs. The needs for food, love, and "spectacles" are satisfied. Humanity has been brought to happiness with an iron hand. Happiness has a formula: "Happiness is equal to bliss divided by envy." This formula does not take into account only the spiritual needs of man. Numbers do not know such words - their happiness remains in the field of physiology.

Development, movement forward in the United State is no longer possible. Numbers prosper, the state machine is debugged. But no movement means no progress. For Zamyatin, there were two most important states of society - entropy and revolution.

In the article “On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Things” (1923), he wrote: “When the fiery-boiling sphere (in the spider, religion, social life, art) cools down, fiery magma is covered with dogma - a hard, ossified, motionless crust.

Dogmatization in science, religion, social life, art is the entropy of thought; the dogmatized no longer burns, it warms, it is warm, it is cool. The process of dogmatization and subsequent revolutionary explosion, according to Zamyatin, is inevitable. By entropy, he meant "the desire of world energy to rest - to death." Entropy implies the absence of freedom, and freedom is what occupies the most important place in Zamyatin's concept of man. Moreover, for him the most valuable person who has inner freedom. Such freedom is impossible for one who is guided only by reason. The mind limits the person. Zamyatin always welcomed manifestations of everything irrational.

The ideal not only number, but also a person for Zamyatin is the number 1-330, in which reason and the irrational coexist. It is 1-330 that expresses the author's cherished thoughts: “And what kind of last revolution do you want? There is no last one, revolutions are endless. The latter is for children: children are afraid of infinity, but it is necessary that children sleep peacefully at night ... "; “To you, a mathematician, is it not clear that only differences - differences - temperatures, only thermal contrasts - only they have life. And if everywhere, but throughout the universe, equally warm - or equally cool bodies ... They must be pushed - so that fire, explosion, hell. And we will collide."

The central character of the novel D-503 is afraid of such thoughts of his beloved. He, following all the inhabitants of the United State, sings of the "divine-limiting wisdom of walls, barriers." The wall separates "the machine-made, perfect world from the unreasonable, ugly world of trees, birds, animals...". The natural principle is alien to the mechanized world of numbers. In general, in the novel "We" rational and virational are opposed at a completely material level. The natural beginning is expressed not only in speeches 1-330, but also in the Ancient House, its interior and utensils filling it, the heroine's old dresses, and finally, in what exists behind the Green Wall.

Color symbolism is very significant in the novel. The world of the United State is dominated by transparent, cool tones: unifs are gray-blue, the sky is “blue, not spoiled by a single cloud”, “sterile, immaculate”, eyes 0-90 are also blue, not overshadowed by a single cloud. This is a glass world, and its colors are shades of glass. Lack of freedom manifests itself even at the level of regulation of colors.

In the irrational world, everything is different. The Ancient House is dominated by "wild, unorganized, crazy - like the music of that time - the diversity of colors and forms." dominant color Ancient House, 1-330 is fiery, yellow-gold.

The poetics of numbers, which is very essential in the structure of the novel, is also subordinated to the intensification of the main conflict. Being a mathematician, Zamyatin sees the symbolism of numbers like no one else. The world of the United State is the world of the number line. Numbers for its citizens replace art.

The totalitarian system uses numbers to designate a person. A numerical designation can belong to any person or object, while a name is unique. This standardization was used in practice in relation to those who ceased to state system to be people, but became "camp dust", lost its value as a person, became an ideal cog in the state mechanism. In the novel "We" there are no camps, but the unification of all citizens is brought to perfection. Those concepts that cannot be expressed using numbers have a different variant of the name, which also depersonalizes: the Benefactor's Machine, the Ancient House, etc.

In a world where people are deprived of their usual names, the function of "speaking names" is performed by their numbers. So, about 0-90, the hero says this: “Darling Oh! - it always seemed to me - that she looks like her name: 10 centimeters below the Maternal Norm - and that's why she is all round-turned, and the pink O - mouth - is open to meet my every word. And one more thing: a round, plump fold on the wrist - such things happen in children. To the left of the D-503, 0-90 steps in the line, and to the right - 1-330, "thin, sharp, stubbornly flexible, like a whip." The hero's pursuer is "some kind of double-curved, like the letter S." Portrait characteristics are also inherent in the citizens of the United State, no matter how they strive for unification. And these portrait features are associated with the numbers that are assigned to them.

The rebels, who reject everything that forms the basis of the United State, nevertheless choose the mathematical symbol - y7! as their motto. But for a person from the world of mathematics, this sign is more revolutionary than many loud slogans. The fact is that in the history of mathematics there was a time when all operations were carried out on a number line. The involvement of "imaginary numbers" in mathematical operations led to the fact that it became possible mathematical analysis operating on the plane, since the axis of the "imaginary numbers" is perpendicular to the axis prime numbers. But when “complex numbers” entered into mathematical use, among which is y-1, it became a revolution in science, because it made it possible to operate in four-dimensional space.

Mathematics D-503 is most frightening, but also most convincing is the mathematical symbol of the revolution - y-1: “A curve or a body corresponds to any equation, any formula in the surface world. For irrational formulas, for my d / -1, we do not know the corresponding bodies, we have never seen them ... But the horror is that these bodies - invisible - exist, they must certainly, inevitably exist: because in mathematics, as on a screen, their bizarre, prickly shadows pass before us - irrational formulas; both mathematics and death are never wrong. And if we do not see these bodies in our world, on the surface, for them there is - inevitably there must be - a whole huge world there, beyond the surface ... "

The mathematical sign of the revolutionaries becomes for the D-503 the designation of everything unusual, it even symbolizes the soul of the hero. In the United State, "soul" is a concept from the distant past, but in the present it is heavy, dangerous disease. The builder of the "Integral" is afraid of the changes that are happening to him, but does not refuse them. He gradually begins to combine mind and soul in himself, that is, there is a restoration of the personality, which has always been in the center of attention of Russian literature. The heroes of the works of L. Tolstoy and F. Dostoevsky are painfully looking for an answer to the eternal question about the destiny of a person in life and find it in the Christian faith. Zamyatin rejects religion. In his opinion, there is no ultimate truth, and therefore a religion that declares that it owns such a truth is no less absurd than a state machine. For him, the Church is one of the instruments of subjugation of man, and hence of entropy. Zamyatin's rebels take the name Mephi, derived from Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is one of the greatest revolutionaries in their opinion. They call themselves "anti-Christians" through the lips of 1-330.

In general, in the poetics of the novel are quite significant biblical motifs. The Day of Unanimity is called Easter. The hero says that all the torments that he endured and “brought here as a feat - all this is only ridiculous, like an ancient anecdote about Abraham and Isaac.

Abraham - covered in a cold sweat - had already brandished a knife over his son - over himself - suddenly a voice from above: “Don't be! I was kidding..."". Appeal to Christian vocabulary and even biblical traditions on the pages of the novel occurs quite often. So, “guardian angels” appear here, D-503 calls numers gods: “... the gods have become like us: ergo - we have become like gods.” The supreme deity for the inhabitants of the United State is, of course, the Benefactor, although in fact he is not at all as powerful and great as it is declared. In a conversation with the builder of the Integral, the Benefactor cites a biblical example to prove his innocence: “Remember: a blue hill, a cross, a crowd. Some - at the top, spattered with blood, nail the body to the cross; others below, splashed with tears, look. Don't you think that the role of those at the top is the most difficult, the most important. If it weren’t for them, would all this majestic tragedy have been staged? He compares the United State with paradise: “...there are blessed, with an operated fantasy (only for this reason they are blessed) - angels, servants of God ...” At the end of the novel, 1-330 goes back to the modern analogue of Golgotha ​​- the Benefactor's Machine. In the life of the United State, in general, an important role is played by rituals that are no longer similar to Christian, but to pagan cults.

Moreover, biblical motifs are embodied in the poetics of numbers. The number three, sacred to Christians because it is associated with the Holy Trinity, permeates the entire novel. Each entry consists of three parts, the Benefactor appears three times, they torture 1-330 three times, and her name itself consists of two triples (in addition, there is a parallel with the age of Christ - 33 years).

In the center of the author's attention in the novel "We" are human personalities. But the action is largely centered around Integral. It is not simple spaceship, it is called upon to bring the ideology of the One State to other planets. But what will happen after he takes off, no one knows: neither the ordinary numbers, nor Mephi, nor his Builder. "Integral" becomes simply an object of worship. Whoever owns it will win. The characters of the novel associate the resolution of all problems with the "Integral", whose purpose is unclear to them. But there is a person who knows what the "Integral" is for - ego Benefactor. He knows everything. It was he who tied the numbers "hand and foot with beneficent chains of happiness." He created the United State, embodying a utopia on earth. But, having performed a good deed, he inevitably becomes an executioner, begins to perform a punitive function.

However, the utopia is not yet complete. Even a law-abiding number can become infected with revolutionary sentiments. Even 0-90 does not want to obey the rules of the One State and give up his child. Everything is hindered by fantasy, the soul. But the state has found a solution to this problem. Separation of soul and body occurs through surgery. The separation of the soul from the body has always meant death. After the Great Operation, the spiritual death of D-503 begins. In the novel “We”, the process, which was always mysterious, incomprehensible, acquires quite specific features, but this does not make it any less terrible. On the contrary, it is worse than natural death. Yes, and death itself becomes visible - a person turns into a puddle of chemically pure water. Now death is "a sign of the inhuman power of the Benefactor."

So, the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" is a dystopia. Dystopia is possible where there is opposition to any ideological dogma. It primarily implements warning and warning functions. A dystopian conflict is a conflict between a totalitarian regime and the hero's personality.

Despite the active rejection of the ideological orientation of the novel "We", many contemporaries noted its indisputable artistic merits (K. Fedin, M. Gorky), thanks to which it became a significant phenomenon in the literature of the 20th century.

The ideological and artistic content of the novel was largely in the plane of Zamyatin's creative and philosophical searches of that time. In the field of philosophy, Zamyatin is captivated by the idea of ​​the entropy of the processes occurring in the universe. The main idea of ​​human existence and creativity, as the quintessence of this existence, is, according to Zamyatin, in opposition to entropy (natural decay, energy degradation of the universe). These ideas were expressed in such articles as "Robert Mayer" (about the philosopher who proposed the idea of ​​entropy), "On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Others", etc.

In the field of literary creativity, Zamyatin hatches the idea of ​​​​artistic re-equipment of contemporary art, naming it « synthetism” (the essence of this concept is also revealed in a number of articles of that time). For example, in one of them, Zamyatin writes that the world saw realism with a simple eye. A skeleton flashed across the surface of the world to symbolism - and it turned away from the surrounding world. This, according to Zamyatin, is the thesis and antithesis. The task is to combine them in a new "synthesis" in which there will simultaneously be a microscope characteristic of realism, and glasses of symbolism, leading, like a telescope, to infinity.

In the article “New Russian Prose”, Zamyatin, referring to the experience of V. Kaverin, L. Leonov, I. Ehrenburg, N. Ognev, L. Lund and other “serapion brothers”, assessed “alloys from fantasy and reality” as promising general trend new literature. It was in "fantastic realism", as Dostoevsky called his art, that he saw the true way to comprehend this troubled time. “Fantastic realism” came to young Soviet literature in completely different, new and different forms, but with a similar inner aspiration. The most profound and organic embodiment of it was precisely the work of Zamyatin, M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov.

The most "fantastic" was the novel "We", Zamyatin's largest creation of the October period. This novel was written in 1921. It is the first creation of its kind in Soviet literature. It is generally accepted that "We" Zamyatin largely predetermined the development in various foreign literatures genre of "dystopia", its main problem - the dramatic fate of an individual under totalitarianism.

In this row, in addition to Zamyatin, the names of the author of the novel called "The Beautiful new world" O. Huxley, as well as D. Orwell ("1984") and some others. Zamyatin himself turned out to be the first who spoke with extreme precision about the "dystopia" of the 20th century and its "pioneer". In his work on H. Wells, he contrasted the classical utopias whose authors (T. Campanella, T. Mohr, W. Morris and others) provide a structure of society that seems ideal to them. Zamyatin noted that science fiction has a minus sign, and utopia has a plus sign. The novels of H. G. Wells are aimed at practically solely to reveal the existing social order defects, and not to give a picture of the coming paradise.

According to Zamyatin, Wells' work opens up one of the most promising trends in the literature of our century. In a long list of names and titles, designed to confirm this, he also introduces his novel "We". It includes the full signs of "dystopia" listed in the article.

Many readers perceived the novel as a satire on modern reality, but considering the novel only in the plane of social satire, which has specific temporal and national references, in many respects impoverished the ideological and artistic content of the work, which was in many respects wider than such an understanding. “A warning about the double danger threatening humanity: the hypertrophied power of machines and the hypertrophied power of the state,” Zamyatin called his novel. It was this threat that first of all frightened the authors of subsequent Western "dystopias". So in Huxley's Brave New World (1932) World State"of the future, where the chronology is conducted" from Ford "and in whose motto the word "Uniformity" is inscribed, reigns supreme and vigilantly over the lives of all members of society - with the help of perfect technology and the vigilant eye of the "Supreme Controllers" (Zamiatin - Guardians ). He rules from birth (in incubators) to death, completely depersonalizing the bulk and cruelly cutting off "all those who ... turned out to be too bright ... who are not satisfied with the standards of orthodoxy ...".

In 1923, Zamyatin said about accusations of individual writers from the Serapion Brothers group of being anti-revolutionary that there are no writers hostile to the revolution in Russia now. They were invented so that it would not be boring. The reason for this is that they do not believe that the revolution is a "consumptive young lady" that needs to be protected from any draft.

The author of "We" was influenced by the ideas of Dostoevsky, the creator of "Notes from the Underground", "Demons" and "The Legend of the Belin Inquisitor" (from "The Brothers Karamazov"). In the literature on Zamyatin, this has been noted for a very long time.

In Zamyatin's "dystopia" there are direct associations with Dostoevsky - for example, the arguments of the Benefactor (entry 36th), so close to the philosophy of the Grand Inquisitor, about "love for humanity", which is "certainly inhuman", and about people who dream that someone somehow "chained them ... to a chain" to their "happiness." (Later, Huxley, drawing on the same source, would put into the mouth of the Supreme Controller from the Brave New World about people weary of their freedom turned into anarchy, eager to submit to power, "to put even their appetite under control.") Another example: Zamyatin’s constant irony about the “glass paradise”, in which among the “transparent, as if woven from sparkling air walls” live, “always in sight”, people-numbers” of the United State (in “Notes from the Underground "- irony about the "crystal palace" - a society of the future in the spirit of utopian socialists (for example, N. Chernyshevsky), where "all human actions ... will be calculated ... mathematically," as commanded by "reason and profit ").

Provided for the centralization in the country of economic and political life, a number of restrictive (including egalitarian) tough measures, revolutionary policy seemed to Zamyatin the only model for further movement - a new, along with the bourgeois, version of totalitarianism. Already in 1918, he believes that the liberating element choked (the article "Are the Scythians?").

Opens a book symbolic image"fire-breathing INTEGRAL", which is a miracle of technical thought and, at the same time, an instrument of the most cruel enslavement. Despotic power and soulless technology have turned man into a machine function. They took away his freedom, raising him in voluntary slavery. It was instilled into this nameless "man-number" that "happiness" consists in the renunciation of one's own "I" and dissolution in "WE", since personal consciousness is only a disease. Man was inspired that creativity - " public service", and not a "nightingale whistle." And intimate life is also a state duty, which is performed according to the "Table of Sexual Days."

In the novel, Zamyatin opposed, first of all, the fetishization of collectivity and the fetishization of technology (which were obviously observed in revolutionary ideology). Throughout the book, one can find confirmation of this: for example, the mention of “our poets”, who “walk with us to the strict mechanical march of the Musical Factory”, calls like this: “forget that you are a gram and feel one millionth of a ton...” (almost an explicit quote from Mayakovsky), etc.

Nevertheless, the writer's favorite area remains "eternal questions". The central one is: how do the natural properties of the soul, human nature, striving for free self-discovery, and the artificial conditions of its existence — social, everyday, psychological, created by man himself — correlate? One of the leitmotifs of the novel is rationalism as a crime against humanity that destroys a living soul. Another leitmotif, especially relevant today, is the "anti-society" that is depicted in the novel. It brings destruction to the very nature of life, isolating man from nature. The image of the Green Wall, which tightly separated the perfect (machine) world of the Green Wall from the unreasonable world of animals, birds and trees, is one of the most sinister in the work. It is necessary to expel people who are "overgrown with numbers" naked into the forests so that they can learn from the sun, flowers, birds. At the same time, the novel is not about the notorious “naked man on bare earth”, not about the “Rousseauist” escape from civilization, but about the restoration of the integral essence of man.

The meaning of the super-task expressed by Zamyatin in the novel is simple: you cannot put an end to where there is no end to movement. The condition of the living life of the world is its unceasing renewal. In Zamyatin's articles, this is called "an endless revolution."

/ / / Analysis of Zamyatin's novel "We"

The pinnacle of Yevgeny Zamyatin's work is considered to be his dystopian novel We. He served as a model for many other authors writing in the fantasy genre.

The novel is dated 1920. As you know, it was a difficult post-revolutionary time. Zamyatin is going through a crisis of his ideas related to the revolution. He believed in a happy communist future, but when he saw how this idea was embodied in life, he was disappointed.

The work consists of 40 entries of the protagonist. The events in these records take place in the distant future, in the 26th century. The world has changed a lot, has reached the so-called arithmetic average happiness. Main character leads a summary in which he tells his unknown reader about the harmony of the One State, about how it works. The hero has no name, like all other people. Numbers are used instead of names. Thus, the personality of a person is leveled, a separate “I” turns into a common “we”. The only difference is initial in front of the number.

The main character is identified as D-503. He is not a simple resident, but the builder of Integral. Being a mathematician, the hero is more accustomed to numbers than to words. Therefore, he warns readers that he will simply write down what he sees and thinks, without going into lyricism. Just as significant is his clarification - "I think" to "we think".

What is life like in Zamyatin's alternate future? After the Great Bicentennial War, the United State is being built. His goal was to overcome the two main natural forces - Hunger and Love. They “successfully” defeated the first force by creating artificial food. As a result of the transition to petroleum products, only 0.2 percent of the world's population survived. But, as the protagonist notes, the planet has been cleansed and is now shining.

The second force of the authorities also took control. Now each number could sign up for any other, who was notified in writing about this. Thus, at the legislative level, the sexual life of citizens was arranged. D-503 sincerely wonders why the state of ancient people did not control the sexual life of the population. After all, because of love, various tragedies occurred. The absence of love and marriage in the One State ruled out such tragedies, according to the narrator of the novel.

All residents of the State live in glass houses where everything is glass: both walls and furniture. This facilitates the "hard" work of the Guardians (guardians of order). People wake up, eat, work, go to bed at exactly the same time. set time. All of them are cogs of one big car. The protagonist admires the organization of their lives. He believes that a person does not need freedom to be happy. Moreover, it was freedom that led ancient people to chaos.

The author himself guesses. He also initially believed in the ideas of the revolution, praised and supported the new structure of society. However, gradually Yevgeny Zamyatin realized that instead of the common good, people received only total control from the side of the new authorities. The same fate and the main character of the novel. The first records of D-503 are full of enthusiasm and faith in the United State, but gradually, under the influence of rebels and various contradictory situations, he will feel the awakening of his "I".

The novel was banned at the time Soviet Union, since the author's criticism of communism was guessed in it.

It is a great example of dystopia. This is a novel that contains a protest against European society, an unwillingness to reach a dead end. In terms of significance, this book is on a par with such cult dystopias as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's. In this article we will conduct a small analysis of the novel "We" by Zamyatin.

History of the creation of the novel

Zamyatin returned from England and, under the impression, began to write his novel. In 1920 the work was completed. Abroad, the novel was published in 1924, and in Russia only in 1988 in the Znamya magazine. This late release is due to censorship. It was believed that the novel was contrary to the political interests of the country. In the USSR, a real flurry of criticism from government officials and literary circles hit Zamyatin.

Analysis of the composition of the novel "We" by Zamyatin

The novel "We" is written in the style of a worker's abstract. In the work, Evgeny Zamyatin created two worlds and separated them colors. The unified state has a gray and blue palette, and the space behind the Green Wall is replete with an abundance of colors. A pink tint prevails, as if it is an illusory world. This just emphasizes that outside the scope of the possibility is much wider than in them. Life seems to play with new colors and shine in all its manifestations.

If we talk about genre originality novel, then the work is considered a dystopian novel. The main idea of ​​this genre is the dissolution of one's own "I" for the sake of common interests. The novel is dystopian in all its manifestations. The novel contains a love line. At the end of the work, the girl is executed in the Gas Bell, and the guy is deprived of his fantasy by performing an operation. Zamyatin tried to clearly show life in such a closed state and beyond. You can get to know the plot in more detail by reading the summary of the novel "We".

The heroes do not have names, surnames or nicknames. Each is assigned a number. This approach was created to show totalitarian regime their states. They are needed only for a common cause, no one considers residents as individuals. This is a place where everyone is equal.

Analysis of the problems of the novel "We"

The main problem of the novel is the search for human happiness. What such searches lead to can be read in the novel. The world is shown as a huge mechanism compared to a perpetual motion machine, and each person in it is a working link, without which full functioning is impossible.

Analyzing the novel “We”, one can see that Zamyatin in his novel showed the world of the future, full of soullessness and conventions. To get out of such a state, it is enough to get Y and be expelled behind the Green Wall. This world is completely controlled by a person, he has nothing of his own: no opinion, no vote, no rights. Fantasy and inspiration of the population, they consider diseases, their whole life is mathematics.

The idea of ​​the protagonist that "Reason is above all" came to him after the operation to remove inspiration, because it was it that made him a man, and not a soulless device for performing technical tasks.

The meaning of the name is what will happen to people if the future is artificially created.

Summing up our brief analysis novel "We" by Zamyatin, it is worth noting that this is really a book that deserves our attention. The author raised serious questions, which must be answered first of all by a person to himself.

We invite you to read the book "We" in its entirety. We will be glad if after reading you share your thoughts and leave a review on our website.

03.06.2017

The novel “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin can be perceived as an amazing social foresight, but on the other hand, as an active satirical criticism of the Bolshevik regime. Because of this, the book was not allowed to be published, and its author was actively persecuted by both critics and the authorities.

A bit of history

Zamyatin's life came to an end, and the life of the novel had just begun - he began to wander from one country to another, was quickly translated into European (and not only) languages ​​and laid the foundation for the dystopian genre in the history of world literature. Then this genre developed in the works of such famous American writers as Bradbury, Huxley. Later, in the 60s and 70s, the traditions of Bradbury began to be developed by the Soviet science fiction writers, the Strugatsky brothers. So the anti-utopia returned to Russia again, having gone through such a large time circle.

Therefore, when the book “We” was first published in 1988, it was wonderful, but also strange, because the world had already mastered that part of Russian literature that turned out to be rejected and trampled on in their historical homeland.

Later, several bright anti-utopias will appear in Russia, for example, A. Kabakov’s “Defector”, V. Voinovich’s “Moscow 2042”, etc.

What is the genre of dystopia?

Before Zamyatin, the history of world literature knew only the genre of utopia. Its bright classical representatives are the works "City of the Sun" by T. Campanella, "Utopia" by T. Mora. The main semantic task of this genre is to show the ideal society of the future. It is a social fiction built on a foundation of historical optimism.

Dystopia merges with utopia only in the sense that it is also a fantasy. Everything else will be the opposite. It affirms the idea of ​​what society should not be, and it is a satirical denial of those thoughts and concepts that are given by the author. Dystopia is closely connected with modernity; as a rule, it checks some political concept, idea.

Analysis of the work "We" Zamyatin

In the novel "We" Zamyatin tested one of the main ideas of Bolshevism - the idea of ​​the priority of the collective over the individual. He tried to create a model of the state, where the priority of the social is so high that the individual essentially ceases to be such and dissolves in the team. The heroes of the novel have no names, no clothes of their own, houses, families, even children. No problem, all issues are decided by the state. People are dressed alike, they think in the same way. They live on a single signal from the government: they receive letters, go to work, and even make love. And since these individuals do not have problems, they do not stop talking about being happy.

As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that existence in impersonality is an absurd happiness. It's a way to not feel human. It is a triumph of thoughtlessness and insensitivity. And only one heroine, faced with an ancient book, finds a description of another happiness. Happiness individual, on the basis of another, not state love on a pink coupon.

She becomes a person who doubts the rationality of their well-being. Her doubts make the other hero look at his life differently. A very special feeling of love for this woman wakes up in him. It is with the need for individual love that the rebelliousness of the heroes begins. And everything ends with the process of their pacification, during which the heroes are forcibly deprived of their minds.

It turns out that you can dress, comb your hair and even make a huge mass of people think the same way, but the feeling resists violent depersonalization longer. It cannot be depersonalized, it can only be killed.

So the title of the novel becomes emphatically symbolic and ominous. “We” is what destroys individuality, personality, what stifles the development of society. This is something that will inevitably lead to a tragic end.

The work was analyzed by Elena Antonova.