We

We, plain and simple, is a very peculiar novel. I can't fathom how all the people can have no objection to the overlord-like rule of The Benefactor. For a society so based in logic and math, I can see nothing logical behind being liquefied for breaking even just one rule. And also, even though people in OneState praise their way of life and their ruler, it is never quite explained exactly what he, or it, is. All that is mentioned is his hand and how they are like stone. Is he a man? Is he a robot? It is never quite explained. It intrigues me that a whole society can praise their leader without really knowing what he is.

A passage that I really like is the following:

“The cheerful little crystal in my headboard dings 7:00a.m.; time to get up. To the right and left through the glass walls I see something like my own self, my own room, my own clothes, my own movements, all repeated a thousand times. It cheers you up; you see yourself as part of an immense, powerful, single thing. And such a precise beauty it is: not wasted a gesture, bend, turn”(34).

This passage has stuck in my head sine reading the novel, and remains there to this day. It is such a powerful image, with everyone in OneState all getting up with the same exact movements at the same exact time and putting on the same exact clothes and doing everything exactly the same. It is a really unsettling thing to picture in the mind, and I find it very eerie. It’s as if everyone is a robot. This one paragraph of the novel really struck me and showed me how far OneState had gone in its mathematic and logic based society.

As for the book itself, I wasn’t exactly the biggest fan. Although I find the story itself interesting with the slow degradation of D-503’s train of thought and the events that follow, but at the same time I found it rather dry in some parts. I did however like the way Zamyatin decided to end the story.. It makes you really think about what could happen. Will the resistance in the streets get anywhere? Or would it be crushed by the power of the Benefactor? It is all left up to the reader to figure out.