In Russian: Мы
By Yevgeny Zamyatin.
Begun 01 Sep 2007; finished 07 Sep.
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, was a book high on my 2007 reading list. So it’s unfortunate that I don’t recall much of its details, except that it seemed like a restless, vivid dream.
George Orwell says that We was his prime inspiration for Nineteen Eighty-Four. Zamyatin, a Russian, wrote his book at the turn of the 20th century, and given the prevalence of 1984, We remains a most underrated and unappreciated novel, even moreso that it is astoundingly visionary and futuristic for its time. The parallels between the two books are quite clear: a future dystopia with an autocratic government (Zamyatin’s supreme ruler is called the Benefactor); where people’s identities have been reduced to limit free thought, and lives are regimented to the minutiae; where government ideology and propaganda saturate every part of life and drown out any dissenting thought. Then the protagonist learns of the dissenting underground and is gradually swayed towards their ideology, but that small spark ignited is certainly (if not quickly) stifled by the overwhelming force of the state.
Essentially, We (and 1984) examines an ideologically homogeneous society, where individuality, creativity, and independent thought are suppressed and eradicated in the name of preserving social safety, conformity and efficiency. In We, this is taken to the absolute extreme. Read the rest of this entry »