We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The inspiration for Orwell’s 1984, Ayn Rand’s Anthem, Huxley’s Brave New World, this is a mind-boggling book in its prescience – a totalitarian state with a ‘benevolent’ but tyrannical ruler (aptly named Benefactor) suffering from delusions of grandeur, with the proposed launch of a space ship to colonize the rest of the Universe. People wear a common dull unisex uniform (yunis) and are dehumanized to the extent of being called Numbers with an alpha-numeric appellation – consonants for males and vowels for females – the protagonist is D-503 and his illicit love interest I-330. Even the sex is controlled – the recipients are allotted matching pink-slips and the day and time of their copulation decided in advance by the powers that be

…isn’t it absurd that a government could let sexual life proceed without the slightest control? Who, when, however much you wanted . . . Completely unscientific, like animals. And blindly, like animals, they produced young. Isn’t it funny – to know horticulture, poultry keeping, fish farming and not be able to reach the last rung of this logical ladder: child production. Not to come up with something like our Maternal and Paternal Norms.

The biggest threat perceived by dictators is free will and independent thinking on the part of the populace. This has to be curbed to keep the despot in power

‘Have you heard about this new operation they’re supposed to have developed – the one where they cut out the imagination?’ The remotest hint that he might have an imagination was quite insulting to him.

Anything with the faintest suggestion of autonomy is anathema to OneState (the precursor of NewSpeak!). Here is a ‘doctor’

‘You’re in bad shape. It looks like you’re developing a soul.’ A soul? A strange, ancient, long-forgotten word. We sometimes used expressions like ‘soul-mate,’ ‘body and soul,’ ‘soul destroying,’ and so on, but soul . . .

This extract from the mouthpiece of OneState

But you are not to blame. You are sick. The name of your illness is: IMAGINATION… The latest discovery of State Science: The imagination is centred in a wretched little brain node in the region of the pons Varolii. Expose this node to three doses of X rays – and you are cured of imagination.

Once the ‘cure’ is instituted, the results are an army of zombies, lobotomized robots, reminding the reader of McMurhpy (Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) after his dose electro-convulsive therapy.

…a slow heavy column of about fifty men. Or rather, not ‘men’ – that isn’t the word. Those weren’t feet but some kind of heavy, forged wheels, drawn by some invisible drive mechanism. Not men but some kind of tractors in human form.
You’ll be cured there – they’ll stuff you tight with good rich happiness and when you’re full, you’ll dream peaceful organized dreams, snoring in time with everyone – can’t you hear that great symphony of snores?

There are some lovely lyrical passages, especially rhapsodizing about the beauty of mathematics

If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically infallible happiness, we shall be obliged to force them to be happy...
Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is nonfree movement, because all the fundamental significance of the dance lies precisely in its aesthetic subjugation, its ideal nonfreedom…
And mathematics and death never make a mistake…
I feel myself. But it’s only the eye with a lash in int, the swollen finger, the infected tooth that feels itself, is conscious of its own individual being. The healthy eye or finger or tooth doesn’t seem to exist. So it’s clear, isn’t it? Self-consciousness is just a disease…
Because that’s exactly what death is – the fullest possible dissolving of myself into the universe. Hence, if we let L stand for love and D for death, then L=f(D), i.e., love and death. . .

Epic! The baap of 1984.

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