In 1921, a work was written in Russian prose, one of the main characters of which was an intellectual - a mathematician. From his point of view, it is perceived the world future. D-503 experiences the highest bliss on the Day of Unanimity, which allows everyone to feel with special force that they are a small part of a huge “we”. It is noteworthy that, talking with admiration about this day, the hero reflects with bewilderment and irony on the elections of the ancients (that is, on the secret ballot). But in fact, elections without the right to choose are absurd, a society that has preferred unanimity to freedom of thought is absurd.

The protagonist merges with the mass, dissolves his "I" in it, subordinates his personal will to public interests. How does D-503 describe the achievement of universal happiness? Material problems had already been solved during the Bicentennial War. The victory over hunger was won due to the death of 0.8 of the population. Life has ceased to be considered the highest value: people have ceased to be considered people, they have become numbers. At the same time, the narrator calls the ten Numers who died during the test an infinite small of the third order.
D-503 says that the city conquers the village, a person is completely alienated from mother earth, content with oil food. The state completely suppresses the spiritual needs of its citizens, severely restricts them.

The first step towards this was the introduction of sexual restrictions, which takes main character. The great feeling of love was reduced to a "pleasant-useful function of the organism." Narrator D-503 puts it on a par with sleep, work, and eating. By reducing love to pure physiology, the United State deprived a person of personal attachments, a sense of kinship. After all, any connection with the United State is criminal.

The rooms are separated, so it is easy to manage. People have the illusion of happiness. The Green Wall plays a big role in this. In the image of the main character, we see that he is happy, shielded from the whole world, without the ability to compare and analyze. The state also subjugated the time of each number, creating the Hourly Tablet. The possibility of creativity was taken away from D-503, replacing it with a sense of belonging to the United State, its mechanical music, science, and poetry. The element of creativity is forcibly placed at the service of society. To suppress dissent, a whole Bureau of Guardians has been created (spies make sure that everyone is happy).
The protagonist is constantly looking for more and more confirmation of the correctness of the One State. He finds an excuse for unfreedom. An engineer, he looks at the dance from this point of view, the inspiration in the dance allows him to conclude only that the “instinct of unfreedom” has been inherent in man since ancient times. It is characterized by the language of the exact sciences: “Freedom and crime are as inextricably linked as ... well, like the movement of an aero and its speed, the speed of an aero = 0 and it does not move, the freedom of a person = 0 and he does not commit crimes. It is clear. The only way to save a person from crime is to deprive him of his freedom.” Hence - the distribution: a ton - rights, a gram - duties. The only way from nothingness to greatness: "forget that you are a gram and feel like a millionth of a ton."

The hero has developed a special type of consciousness, which is the main achievement and the main crime of the United State. In this consciousness there was a substitution of all human values. Here lack of freedom is happiness, cruelty is a manifestation of love, and human individuality is a crime. Naturally, the personality of the protagonist, formed in such conditions, feels like nothingness compared to the strength and power of the state. This is how the hero assesses his position at the beginning of the novel. But E. Zamyatin depicts the spiritual evolution of the hero: from the consciousness of himself as a microbe in this world, D-503 comes to the feeling of the universe within himself.

From the very beginning, the hero is not without doubts. A complete sense of happiness is hindered by the annoying flaws of this "ideal" world. The hero is haunted by noses, which, for all the same Numbers, have different forms, a personal watch that everyone winds in their own way. Although he drives away such thoughts, D-503 guesses that there is something else in the world that defies reason, logic. Keeping records, an attempt at self-consciousness, not encouraged by the state ideology, speaks of the unusualness of the hero. But turbulent changes begin to happen to him from the moment he met I-330. The first feeling of excitement comes to the hero when he listens to Scriabin in her performance. This is a symbol of irrationality, the ignorance of human nature. The feeling of loss of balance is aggravated after visiting Ancient House. Clouds, chaos inside the house lead the hero into confusion. The fact that he does not inform on I-330 speaks of the deep changes in his soul.

The usual clarity of thought is lost. Clarity is replaced by uncertainty, wholeness is replaced by painful duality. The clear, cloudless sky gradually turns in the mind of the hero into something heavy, cast iron. The speech of the hero also changes. Usually logically built, it becomes confused, full of repetitions and reticence. The point here is not only confusion, extreme emotional stress, but also the fact that the main character is unfamiliar with jealousy and love. He was accustomed to relationships with women as a duty to the One State. The right of each number to any other number was for him proof of the equality, the sameness of people. Loving I-330 is something else entirely. The unimaginable happens to the main character: real, deep feelings embrace him, his soul awakens in him. The leveling, violent laws of the One State no longer have power over him.

D-503 falls into the insurgency, which seeks to open people's eyes, destroy illusions, break the Green Wall. The protagonist is surprised: he did not even suspect dissent in the state, to which he became completely alien, but he found like-minded people. So from the defender of the accepted foundations, the hero turned into their ardent opponent. He began to encroach on hitherto unshakable rules, even on the Benefactor himself.
But the rebellion of a small group of people against the whole system failed. I-330 was put to death, and D-503's mind was erased of all memories. But even returning to the usual indifferent state, the main character does not leave vague sensations. The evolution he went through was not in vain. His path symbolizes the natural aspirations of man, his spiritual contradictions, which are not subject to any violent principles.
It is in the idea of ​​exalting humanity that the main idea novel by E. Zamyatin.

Zamyatin studies have already noted “a special, Zamyatin psychologism. Unusual, masterful. Although at first glance - rude, straightforward, "non-psychological." At the heart of the author is not omniscience, but omniscience: the world is known to the extent that it is visible, objective. The inner world of the characters is also revealed only insofar as it has an external expression. An action, an act is preceded by an objective, spatial designation of character. The first impression - visual or auditory (the sound of the name) - does not deceive. It receives further confirmation and development” 1 . It was very important for Zamyatin to visualize the hero, his appearance, which largely determined inner world hero. The writer thought a lot about this, experimented, deduced a certain theory, which he applied in his artistic practice.

The experience of E. Zamyatin testifies that the writer masterfully masters not only the methods of sound, but also the visual characterization of characters. About the sound and visual associations caused by words and individual sounds (and what must be taken into account when creating artistic image), E. Zamyatin said: “Every sound of a human voice, every letter in itself evokes certain ideas in a person, creates sound images. I am far from ascribing a strictly defined semantic or color designation to each sound. But - R - clearly tells me something loud, bright, red, hot, fast. L - about something pale, blue, cold, smooth, light. The sound N is about something tender, about snow, sky, night... The sounds D and T are about something stuffy, heavy, about fog, about darkness, about musty. The sound M is about sweet, soft, about mother, about the sea. With A - latitude, distance, ocean, haze, scope are associated. C O - high, deep, sea, bosom. C I - close, low, squeezing, etc. ” 2.

One of E. Zamyatin's most characteristic methods of characterization is the exact choice of the hero's name, and both visual and auditory impressions are important. The novel "We" in this sense is a world classic: in the novel, the characters are deprived of traditional names and have numbers consisting of individual letters and numbers. Consonants are the equivalent of male names (D-503, R-13, S-4711), and the vowels are feminine (I-330, O-90, S): vowels, unlike consonants, are longer (less energetic and sharp) in sound and, accordingly, sound softer. Moreover, the letters chosen are both Latin and Russian, which indicates the universal, global nature of the described dystopia, the insignificance of national differences.

To designate male numbers are selected not even numbers, to designate women's - even as more calm, complete, harmonious. At one time, M. M. Bakhtin noted about the number 1311 in Francois Rabelais' novel "Gargantua and Pantagruel" that it is asymmetrical, open, incomplete in structure, if it were 1312 - the number would calm down, end, lose its grotesque character. It is even numbers that denote female numbers.

The letter and the number inside the “name” (number) enter into certain relations with each other: the letter embodies the individuality of the character, serves as a designation of his features, while the number expresses a unified, impersonal part of the resident of the United State, although E. Zamyatin’s numbers are not random and also have a certain symbolism.

D-503- the protagonist of the novel, the hero-narrator. In the sound [d], one can hear the certainty, unambiguity, rationality inherent in the protagonist. A high serial number indicates its “serialization”, such as it, at least 502. There are many numbers, and they level a person, while the letter gives a person individuality, external (portrait) and internal (psychological) uniqueness. The opposing letter and number express the conflict within the hero's consciousness, a deep psychological conflict between the living, human, and machine, mechanical. The thinking style of the numbers is logical, mathematical, not psychological, given the etymology of the word "psychology". The opposition of mind and soul, rational and sensual principles is the central opposition of the novel. The mind is trying to subdue the soul, but this is impossible, this is a utopia. Each room hides a soul - an ancient human principle. Reason cannot subdue love. The central conflict of the novel is emphasized by many details and symbols.

R-13- the number of the poet, and he conveys in the sound [R] the poetic emotionality, vibration and reflection of the character. “For example, the collective perception of the sound R receives the following meaningful characteristics: the sound R is perceived as something “big, rough, courageous, dark, active, strong, fast, rough, heavy, terrible, majestic, bright, angular, loud, evil, powerful, mobile” 3 . In addition, according to N. Struve, “Latin R is a graphically inverted Russian I. R-13 personifies the consciousness of a writer turned inside out, writing against his gut ... at the same time a bureaucratic piit and a secret conspirator” 4 .

The number 13 is a dramatic number, a harbinger tragic fate poet, which N. Struve drew attention to in the article "Symbolism of numbers in Zamyatin's novel "We"" 5 . N. Struve believes that the number 13 is the defining "key cipher" for the entire novel, in particular, as regards the numbers S-4711, D-503 (as well as others), each in total gives 13 (5 + 5 + 3, since, according to the location in the alphabet, the Russian D corresponds to the number 5), and the number 13, thus (hidden or clearly present in the novel), is evidence of the general trouble in the world of the One State. However, with the exception of the direct presence of this number in the number R-13, associations with the number 13 in other cases, proposed by N. Struve, are less transparent and therefore difficult for the reader to perceive.

On the associative connection with the sculptural image of Pushkin (in Ancient House) has already been mentioned.

S-4711- "name" of one of the guardians ( "double-curved, stooped and winged"), belonging to the sacred, mysterious caste of guardians ( guardian angels i.e. spies).

Read also other articles on the work of E.I. Zamyatin and analysis of the novel "We":

• 2.1. Visual or auditory associations associated with the name (number) of the character

The writing

In 1921, a work was written in Russian prose, one of the main characters of which was an intellectual - a mathematician. From his point of view, the surrounding world of the future is perceived. D-503 experiences the highest bliss on the Day of Unanimity, which allows everyone to feel with special force that they are a small part of a huge “we”. It is noteworthy that, talking with admiration about this day, the hero reflects with bewilderment and irony on the elections of the ancients (that is, on the secret ballot). But in fact, elections without the right to choose are absurd, a society that has preferred unanimity to freedom of thought is absurd.

The protagonist merges with the mass, dissolves his "I" in it, subordinates his personal will to public interests. How does D-503 describe the achievement of universal happiness? Material problems had already been solved during the Bicentennial War. The victory over hunger was won due to the death of 0.8 of the population. Life has ceased to be considered the highest value: people have ceased to be considered people, they have become numbers. At the same time, the narrator calls the ten Numers who died during the test an infinite small of the third order.

D-503 says that the city is conquering the village, a person is completely alienated from mother earth, content with oil food. The state completely suppresses the spiritual needs of its citizens, severely restricts them.

The first step towards this was the introduction of sexual restrictions, which the main character accepts. The great feeling of love was reduced to a "pleasant-useful function of the organism." Narrator D-503 puts it on a par with sleep, work, and eating. By reducing love to pure physiology, the United State deprived a person of personal attachments, a sense of kinship. After all, any connection with the United State is criminal.

The rooms are separated, so it is easy to manage. People have the illusion of happiness. The Green Wall plays a big role in this. In the image of the main character, we see that he is happy, shielded from the whole world, without the ability to compare and analyze. The state also subjugated the time of each number, creating the Hourly Tablet. The possibility of creativity was taken away from D-503, replacing it with a sense of belonging to the United State, its mechanical music, science, and poetry. The element of creativity is forcibly placed at the service of society. To suppress dissent, a whole Bureau of Guardians has been created (spies make sure that everyone is happy).

The protagonist is constantly looking for more and more confirmation of the correctness of the One State. He finds an excuse for unfreedom. An engineer, he looks at the dance from this point of view, the inspiration in the dance allows him to conclude only that the “instinct of unfreedom” has been inherent in man since ancient times. The language of the exact sciences is peculiar to him: “Freedom and crime are as inextricably linked as ... well, like the movement of an aero and its speed, the speed of an aero = 0 and it does not move, the freedom of a person = 0 and he does not commit crimes. It is clear. The only way to save a person from crime is to deprive him of his freedom. Hence - the distribution: a ton - rights, a gram - duties. The only way from insignificance to greatness: "forget that you are a gram and feel like a millionth of a ton."

The hero has developed a special type of consciousness, which is the main achievement and the main crime of the United State. In this consciousness there was a substitution of all human values. Here lack of freedom is happiness, cruelty is a manifestation of love, and human individuality is a crime. Naturally, the personality of the protagonist, formed in such conditions, feels like nothingness compared to the strength and power of the state. This is how the hero assesses his position at the beginning of the novel. But E. Zamyatin depicts the spiritual evolution of the hero: from the consciousness of himself as a microbe in this world, D-503 comes to the feeling of the universe within himself.

From the very beginning, the hero is not without doubts. A complete sense of happiness is hindered by the annoying flaws of this "ideal" world. The hero is haunted by noses, which, despite the similarity of the Numbers, have different shapes, a personal watch that everyone winds up in their own way. Although he drives away such thoughts, D-503 guesses that there is something else in the world that defies reason, logic. Keeping records, an attempt at self-consciousness, not encouraged by the state ideology, speaks of the unusualness of the hero. But turbulent changes begin to happen to him from the moment he met I-330. The first feeling of excitement comes to the hero when he listens to Scriabin in her performance. This is a symbol of irrationality, the ignorance of human nature. The feeling of loss of balance is aggravated after visiting the Ancient House. Clouds, chaos inside the house lead the hero into confusion. The fact that he does not inform on I-330 speaks of the deep changes in his soul.

The usual clarity of thought is lost. Clarity is replaced by uncertainty, wholeness is replaced by painful duality. The clear, cloudless sky gradually turns in the mind of the hero into something heavy, cast iron. The speech of the hero also changes. Usually logically built, it becomes confused, full of repetitions and reticence. The point here is not only confusion, extreme emotional stress, but also the fact that the main character is unfamiliar with jealousy and love. He was accustomed to relationships with women as a duty to the One State. The right of each number to any other number was for him proof of the equality, the sameness of people. Loving the I-330 is something else entirely. The unimaginable happens to the main character: real, deep feelings embrace him, his soul awakens in him. The leveling, violent laws of the One State no longer have power over him.

D-503 falls into the insurgency, which seeks to open people's eyes, destroy illusions, break the Green Wall. The protagonist is surprised: he did not even suspect dissent in the state, to which he became completely alien, but he found like-minded people. So from the defender of the accepted foundations, the hero turned into their ardent opponent. He began to encroach on hitherto unshakable rules, even on the Benefactor himself.

But the rebellion of a small group of people against the whole system failed. I-330 was put to death, and D-503's mind was erased of all memories. But even returning to the usual indifferent state, the main character does not leave vague sensations. The evolution he went through was not in vain. His path symbolizes the natural aspirations of man, his spiritual contradictions, which are not subject to any violent principles.

The idea of ​​exalting humanity is the main idea of ​​E. Zamyatin's novel.

Other writings on this work

"without action there is no life..." VG Belinsky. (According to one of the works of Russian literature. - E.I. Zamyatin. "We".) “The great happiness of freedom should not be overshadowed by crimes against the individual, otherwise we will kill freedom with our own hands ...” (M. Gorky). (Based on one or more works of Russian literature of the 20th century.) "We" and they (E. Zamyatin) Is happiness possible without freedom? (based on the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We") “We” is a dystopian novel by E. I. Zamyatin. "Society of the Future" and the Present in E. Zamyatin's Novel "We" Dystopia for anti-humanity (Based on the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We") The future of humanity The dramatic fate of the individual in a totalitarian social order (based on the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin) E.I. Zamyatin. "We". The ideological meaning of the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" The ideological meaning of Zamyatin's novel "We" Personality and totalitarianism (based on the novel by E. Zamyatin "We") Moral problems of modern prose. According to one of the works of your choice (E.I. Zamyatin "We"). Society of the future in the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We" Why is E. Zamyatin's novel called "We"? Predictions in the works "The Pit" by Platonov and "We" by Zamyatin Predictions and warnings of the works of Zamyatin and Platonov ("We" and "The Pit"). The problems of the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" The problems of the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We" Roman "We" E. Zamyatina's novel "We" as a dystopian novel E. I. Zamyatin’s novel “We” is a dystopian novel, a warning novel A dystopian novel by E. Zamyatin "We" The meaning of the title of the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We" Social forecast in E. Zamyatin's novel "We" E. Zamyatin's social forecast and the reality of the 20th century (based on the novel "We") Composition based on the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" Happiness of the "number" and the happiness of a person (based on the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin) The theme of Stalinism in literature (based on the novels by Rybakov "Children of the Arbat" and Zamyatin "We") What brings together Zamyatin's novel "We" and Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel "The History of a City"? I-330 - characteristics of a literary hero D-503 (Second Option) - characterization of a literary hero O-90 - characterization of a literary hero The main motive of Zamyatin's novel "We" The central conflict, problems and the system of images in the novel "We" by E. I. Zamyatin "Personality and the State" in Zamyatin's work "We". A dystopian novel in Russian literature (based on the works of E. Zamyatin and A. Platonov) Unification, leveling, regulation in the novel "We"

Evgenia Zamyatina and his dystopia "We" are usually held in the 11th grade at school, but they focus on it mainly those who pass literature on the exam. However, this work deserves to be read by each of us.

Evgeny Zamyatin believed that the revolution changed the lives of many people, and therefore it is now necessary to write about them differently. What was written before tells about those times that have already passed, now realism and symbolism should be replaced by a new literary trend - neo-realism. Zamyatin in his work tried to explain that the mechanization of life and the totalitarian regime lead to the depersonalization of everyone, to the unification of individual opinion and thinking, which, ultimately, will lead to the destruction of human society as such. Him on change will come a single mechanism, and people will be only its faceless and weak-willed components, acting on the basis of automatism and a built-in program.

The novel "We" Evgeny Zamyatin wrote in 1920, a year later he sent the manuscript to a Berlin publishing house, as he could not be published in his homeland, in Russia. The dystopia was translated into English and published in 1924 in New York. In the native language of the author, the work was published only in 1952 in the same city, Russia got to know him closer to the end of the century in two editions of the Znamya edition.

Due to the fact that the dystopia “We” saw the light, even if it was abroad, the writer began to be persecuted, they refused to publish it, and they did not allow plays to be staged until Zamyatin went abroad with Stalin’s permission.

Genre

The genre of the novel "We" is a social dystopia. She gave a foothold for the birth of a new layer of fantastic literature of the twentieth century, which was devoted to gloomy predictions for the future. The main problem in these books is totalitarianism in the state and the place of man in it. Among them, such masterpieces as novels stand out, and with which Zamyatin's novel is often compared.

Dystopia is a reaction to changes in society and a kind of response to utopian biographies, where the authors talk about imaginary countries like Voltaire's Eldorado, where everything is perfect. It often happens that writers foresee yet unformed social relations. But it cannot be said that Zamyatin foresaw something; for the basis of his novel, he took ideas from the works of Bogdanov, Gastev and Mohr, who advocated the mechanization of life and thought. Such were the ideals of the representatives of the proletarian cult. In addition to them, he ironically played up the statements of Khlebnikov, Chernyshevsky, Mayakovsky, Platonov.

Zamyatin ridicules their belief that science is omnipotent and unlimited in possibilities, and that everything in the world can be conquered by communist and socialist ideas. "We" is the reduction of the idea of ​​socialism to the grotesque in order to make people think about what the blind worship of ideology leads to.

About what?

The work describes what is happening a thousand years after the end of the two hundred year war, which was the most recent revolution in the world. The story is told in the first person. The protagonist is an engineer by profession of "Integral" - a mechanism that is set to popularize the ideas of the United State, the integration of the universe and its depersonalization, deprivation of individuality. The essence of the novel lies in the gradual enlightenment of D-503. More and more doubts arise in him, he discovers flaws in the system, the soul wakes up in him and takes him out of the general mechanism. But at the end of the work, the operation turns it again into an insensitive number, devoid of individuality.

The entire novel is forty entries in the diary of the protagonist, which begin with the glorification of the State, and end with truthful descriptions of oppression. Citizens do not have names and surnames, but there are numbers and letters - women have vowels, men have consonants. They have the same glass-walled rooms and the same clothes.

All needs and natural desires of citizens are satisfied according to the schedule, and the schedule is determined by the Tablet of Hours. There are two hours in it, allotted specifically for personal pastime: you can take walks, work at a desk, or engage in “pleasantly useful body function.”

The world of Integral is fenced off from the wild lands by the Green Wall, behind which the natural people, whose free way of life is opposed to the harsh rules of the United State.

Main characters and their characteristics

Zamyatin considers number I-330 to be the ideal person, which demonstrates the author’s philosophy: revolutions are endless, life is differences, and if they don’t exist, then someone will definitely create them.

The main character is an engineer of "Integral", D-503. He is thirty-two years old, and what we are reading are his diary entries, in which he either supports the ideas of the United State, or opposes them. His life consists of mathematics, calculations and formulas, which is very close to the writer. But he is not devoid of imagination and notices that many numbers also do not carve out this skill for themselves - which means that even a thousand years of such a regime has not defeated the primacy of the soul in a person. He is sincere and able to feel, but comes to the betrayal of love because of the operation, which deprived him of his fantasy.

There are two main female images in the work. O-90, whose soul blossoms and lives, she is pink and round, she lacks ten centimeters from the Maternal Norm, but, nevertheless, she asks the protagonist to give her a child. At the end of the novel, O-90 and the child find themselves on the other side of the wall, and this child symbolizes a glimmer of hope. Second female image— I-330. This is a sharp and flexible girl with white teeth who loves secrets and trials, violates regimes and settings, and who later dies defending the ideas of fighting the United State.

Basically, the numbers are faithful to the regime of the State. Number Yu, for example, accompanies the pupils on operations, reports misconduct D to the guardians - remains true to her duty.

State in a dystopia

Only a few percent of the total mass of people live in the One State - in the revolution, the city won a victory over the countryside. The government provides them with housing, security, comfort. Per ideal conditions citizens lose their individuality, get numbers instead of names.

Life in the state is a mechanism. Freedom and happiness are incompatible here. Ideal lack of freedom lies in the fact that all the needs and natural desires of citizens are satisfied according to the schedule, except that spiritual needs are not taken into account. Art is replaced by numbers, mathematical ethics operate in the state: ten dead are nothing compared to many.

The city itself is surrounded by a Green Wall of glass, behind which is a forest, about which no one knows anything. The protagonist once accidentally learns that on the other side live ancestors covered with wool.

The rooms live in the same rooms with glass walls, as if to prove that the regime of the state is absolutely transparent. All needs and natural desires of citizens are satisfied according to the schedule, the schedule is determined by the Tablet of the Hour.

There is no love, because it breeds jealousy and envy, so there is a rule that each number has equal rights to another number. For citizens, there are certain days on which you can make love, and you can do it only on pink coupons, which are issued depending on physical needs.

The One State has Guardians who are responsible for ensuring security and following the rules. It is an honor for the citizens to report violations to the Guardian's Bureau. Criminals are punished by being placed in the Benefactor Machine, where the number is split into atoms and turned into distilled water. Before execution, their number is taken away, which is the highest punishment for a citizen of the state.

Problems

The problematic of the novel "We" is connected with the fact that freedom in the United State is equated with torment and the inability to live happily, it hurts. Accordingly, a lot of problems arise due to the fact that a person, along with freedom of choice, loses his essence and turns into a biorobot designed for a certain functionality. Yes, his life is indeed becoming calmer, but the word “happiness” is no longer applicable to him, because it is an emotion, and their numbers are deprived.

Therefore, a person, as a rule, like the protagonist of the work, chooses pain, feelings and independence instead of an idealized system of coercion. And his private problem is the confrontation with the totalitarian government, the rebellion against it. But behind this conflict lies something more, global and related to all of us: the problems of happiness, freedom, moral choice, etc.

The novel describes a social problem: a person who turns into only one of the parts of the system of a totalitarian state depreciates. No one puts a penny on his rights, feelings and opinions. For example, the heroine O loves one man, but she has to "belong" to anyone who wants to. We are talking about the depreciation of the individual to the impossible: in the work, the numbers die either physically, punished by the Machine, or morally, losing their souls.

The meaning of the novel

Dystopia "We" - confrontation between ideology and reality. Zamyatin portrays people who deny with all their might that they are people. They decided to get rid of all the problems by getting rid of themselves. Everything that is dear to us, that makes up and shapes us, is taken away from the heroes of the book. In fact, they would never allow themselves to be issued coupons, would not agree to live in glass houses, and would not give up individuality. But now they critically assessed this reality, full of contradictions due to diversity and abundance, and went against it, against their nature, against the world of nature, fenced off by a wall of illusions. They came up with an abstract meaning of being (the construction of the Integral, as once the construction of socialism), absurd laws and rules that contradict morality and feelings, and a new person - a number devoid of his "I". Their script is not life at all, this is the largest theatrical production in which everyone characters they pretend that there are no problems, but a desire to behave differently. But inequality is inescapable, it will always be, because man is different from man from birth. Someone sincerely and blindly believes in propaganda and plays its part without thinking about its artificiality. Someone begins to think and reason, sees or feels the falsity and pretense of what is happening. This is how execution victims or cowardly hypocrites appear, trying to slowly break the established order and steal a piece of individuality from it for themselves. Already in their presence, the collapse of the system of the United State is obvious: it is impossible to equalize people, they still differ from each other, and this is their humanity. They cannot be just a wheel in the car, they are individual.

The author argues with the Soviet ideology of "freedom, equality and fraternity", which turned into slavery, strict social hierarchy and enmity, since these lofty principles do not correspond to human nature.

Criticism

Yu. Annenkov writes that Yevgeny Zamyatin is guilty before the regime only because he knew how to think differently and did not equal society with the same brush. According to him, the ideas inscribed in his dystopia were his own ideas - that it is impossible to artificially fit a person into the system, because, among other things, there is an irrational beginning in him.

J. Orwell compares Zamyatin's work with Aldous Huxley's novel "O wonderful new world". Both novels speak of nature's protest against mechanization in the future. The Russian author, according to the writer, more clearly reads the political subtext, but the book itself is built unsuccessfully. Orwell criticizes the weak and sketchy plot, which can not be said in a few sentences.

E. Brown wrote that “We” is one of the most daring and promising modern utopias because it is more fun. Yu. N. Tynyanov in the article "Literary Today" considered Zamyatin's fantastic plot convincing, because he himself went to the writer because of his style. The inertia of style and caused fantasy. In the end, Tynyanov calls the novel a success, a work oscillating between utopia and Petersburg of that time.

Interesting? Save it on your wall!

D-503 admires the Hourly Tablet, which regulates all life in the One State:

The tablet... Right now, from the wall in my room, her purple figures on a golden field look sternly and tenderly into my eyes. Involuntarily, I recall what the ancients called an "icon", and I feel like composing poems or prayers (which are one and the same). Ah, why am I not a poet to sing worthily of you, O Tablet, O heart and pulse of the One State.

All of us ... as children, at school, read this greatest monument of ancient literature that has come down to us - "Schedule railways". But even put it next to the Tablet - and you will see graphite and diamond side by side: in both the same thing - C, carbon - but how eternal, transparent, how the diamond shines ... The Tablet of the Hour - turns each of us into a six-wheeled steel hero in reality great poem. Every morning, with six-wheel precision, at the same hour and at the same minute, we, millions, get up as one. At the same hour, we start work for one million, we finish work for one million. And, merging into a single, million-handed body, into one and the same second, appointed by the Tablet, - we bring spoons to our mouths - and at the same second we go for a walk and go to the auditorium, to the hall of Taylor's exercises, we go to sleep...

However, in such a state there is still no absolute solution to the problem of universal happiness, the personal has not yet been completely overcome: twice a day - from 16 to 17 hours and from 21 to 22 "a single powerful mechanism crumbles into separate cells" - a personal watch.

D-503 - the same screw, number, like the others, which is a product of a rationalized state, with straightened, mathematically verified feelings, which is emphasized by a speaking portrait detail: "drawn straight eyebrows". However, the planar, “rectified” dimension is not its only dimension, it has something that potentially distinguishes it from others, it contains something special, poetic a beginning that is already contained in his poeticization of the Tablet of the Hour, inspired admiration for its mathematical perfection and harmony. It is no coincidence that the emotional R-13 invites the main character to "arrange" him into a poet:

You, my dear, should not be a mathematician, but a poet, a poet, yes! Hey, go to us - in the Poets, huh? Well, if you want, I'll arrange it in a moment, huh?

Something must happen to such a person in the United State, he is marked, doomed to stand out from the crowd. And indeed, D-503 becomes a dissident, a criminal - from the point of view of the United State. The change in the psychological state of the hero of the novel is manifested in his behavior: at the beginning of the novel, D-503 is a respectable, that is, a unified number. A drop of wild blood that speaks in the hero pushes him to rash acts, seditious thoughts in relation to the United State. In the novel there is actually a novel, love line. Love for D-503 turns from a medically useful procedure for a pink coupon into a passion that captured and revived him:

Instead of a harmonious and strict mathematical poem in honor of the united State, I have some kind of fantastic adventure novel coming out.

Moreover, the motives that were decisive in this transformation were not political, but personal: psychological, emotional and sensual. So, D-503 has an innate emotionality, the Hourly Tablet reminds him of a poem, he listens to Scriabin's music performed by I-330 and for the first time feels "slow, sweet pain" feeling the burn in your blood "wild, rushing, scorching sun". Decisive in the history of the state fall of D-503 was his love for I-330, the experience of a stunning shock from this love.

D-503 becomes one of the conspirators - MEFI 9, he takes part in an attempt to capture the "Integral" in order to break out of the United State, but the plot was revealed. D-503 again becomes an obedient executor of the will of the Benefactor, and I-330 is destroyed, since the state is powerless to overcome its resistance.

Read also other articles on the work of E.I. Zamyatin and analysis of the novel "We":

• 1.5. Image D-503. Characteristics of the main character