We are the images of Zamyatin's heroes. Characteristics of the main characters of the work We, Zamyatin. Their images and descriptions. The mystery of the hero's sexual attractiveness

Gultyaev Vadim

Research work based on E. Zamyatin’s novel “We” is relevant. The dystopian genre is widespread in literature and cinema of the 20th and 21st centuries. The student managed to show the development of this genre, the connection between literature of the early twentieth century and modern literature.

When analyzing the novel by E. Zamyatin, Gultyaev Vadim was able to explain the meaning of the title of the work, show artistic techniques, used by the author, to characterize some of the characters. Of particular interest is the protagonist’s psychologism, composed of quotes and reflections. It helps to understand the hero’s inner world, the dynamics of his soul.

The student managed to identify the main problems of the novel. A table showing the concepts of “I” and “we” helps to understand the main conflict of the work.

This research can be used as theoretical material when studying the novel by E. Zamyatin.

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Municipal educational budgetary institution

secondary educational school of the village of Amzya, Neftekamsk urban district

Analysis of E. Zamyatin’s novel “We”

(research work)

Completed by 11B class student Vadim Gultyaev

Head teacher of Russian language and literature

Fayzullina Gulnaz Mukhametzyanovna

2011-2012 academic year

Review

Research work based on E. Zamyatin’s novel “We” is relevant. The dystopian genre is widespread in literature and cinema of the 20th and 21st centuries. The student managed to show the development of this genre, the connection between literature of the early twentieth century and modern literature.

When analyzing the novel by E. Zamyatin, Gultyaev Vadim was able to explain the meaning of the title of the work, show the artistic techniques used by the author, and characterize some of the characters. Of particular interest is the protagonist’s psychologism, composed of quotes and reflections. It helps to understand the hero’s inner world, the dynamics of his soul.

The student managed to identify the main problems of the novel. A table showing the concepts of “I” and “we” helps to understand the main conflict of the work.

This research work can be used as theoretical material when studying the novel by E. Zamyatin.

1 . Genre of the work.

2. The meaning of the title of the novel

3. Conflict between society and the individual

4. The concept of happiness and freedom in the novel

5. The internal struggle of the main character.

6. Relevance of the work

7. Development of the dystopian genre in modern literature.

Since ancient times, people have dreamed that someday the time would come when there would be complete harmony between man and the world and everyone would be happy. This dream in literature was reflected in the genre of utopia (the founder of the genre is T. More). The authors of utopian works depicted life with an ideal government system, social justice (universal equality). Building a society of universal happiness seemed to be a simple matter. Philosophers argued that it is reasonable enough to structure an imperfect order, put everything in its place - and here you have an earthly paradise, which is more perfect than the heavenly one.

Dystopia is a logical development of utopia and formally can also be attributed to this direction. However, if classical utopia concentrates on demonstrating the positive features of the social order described in the work, then dystopia seeks to reveal its negative features. An important feature of utopia is its static nature, while dystopia is characterized by attempts to consider the possibilities of development of the described social structures (usually in the direction of increasing negative trends, which often leads to crisis and collapse). Thus, dystopia usually works with more complex social models.

Dystopia is a genre that is also called negative utopia. This is an image of such a possible future, which frightens the writer, makes him worry about the fate of humanity, about the soul of an individual person.The purpose of a utopia is, first of all, to show the world the path to perfection; the purpose of a dystopia is to warn the world about the dangers that await it along this path. Dystopia exposes the incompatibility of utopian projects with the interests of an individual, brings to the point of absurdity the contradictions inherent in utopia, clearly demonstrating how equality turns into equalization, reasonable government structure– violent regulation of human behavior, technological progress – the transformation of man into a mechanism.

Zamyatin's novel “We” became the first work in which the features of this genre are clearly embodied. And for the modern reader, E. Zamyatin is, first of all, the author of a fantastic dystopian novel, which raised a high wave in world literature of the twentieth century.

“The novel “We” is a protest against the dead end that the

European-American civilization, erasing, mechanizing,

machine-machining a person,” E. Zamyatin wrote about his work.
Zamyatin managed to write a book of a relevant and unique antithesis genre - a satirical dystopia, exposing sweet illusions that led people and society into dangerous misconceptions about the future, and were implanted quite often quite deliberately. A. Platonov and A. Chayanov followed in his footsteps in Russia, and in the West - O. Huxley and J. Orwell. These artists were given the opportunity to discern the great danger that the widely propagated myths about happiness carried with them through technological process and barracks socialism. With his novel “We,” Zamyatin laid the foundation for a new, dystopian tradition in the culture of the twentieth century.

E. Zamyatin is a writer who managed to quite accurately discern the signs of anti-progress in the surrounding reality of the first years of Soviet power. Of course, the subject of his reflections is not only technological progress, but also those social ideals that were put forward as indisputable truths.

Zamyatin worked on the novel during the Civil War. He was a very insightful person, with powerful logical thinking. In the process of work, he felt the need to expand the range of problems; he did not limit himself to the political satire of our time, but decided to use all observations for a higher purpose: forecasting the paths of human civilization. The writer had an engineering education, and this allowed him to successfully predict what kind of troubles technical progress and the triumph of technocratic consciousness could turn out to be for humanity. Zamyatin wrote a novel - a problem, a novel - a warning. Describing a society where the worship of everything technical and mathematical is brought to the point of absurdity, he seeks to warn people that technological progress without corresponding moral laws can bring terrible harm.

The story of the publication of the novel “We” is dramatic. The writer dreamed of publishing it in his homeland! But for censorship reasons the novel could not appear in Russia, since at that time it was perceived by many as a political pamphlet

to a socialist society. This point of view is most clearly expressed in A. Voronsky’s article about Zamyatin, who argued that the novel “is entirely imbued with genuine fear of socialism, which from an ideal becomes a practical, everyday problem.” M. Gorky also did not understand Zamyatin’s work, writing in one of his letters in 1929: “We” is a desperately bad, completely unfruitful thing. Her anger is cold and dry, like the anger of an old maid.” Critics Y. Braun and Y. Tynyanov responded sympathetically to the novel. But their opinion could not influence the overall situation.

Meanwhile, the writer read his novel at literary evenings in Moscow and Leningrad. He was recognized not only in Russia, but Zamyatin received an offer from a large company in New York to translate the novel into English, and he accepted this offer. In 1924, the novel was published in New York. Soon translations appeared into other languages ​​- Czech and French. Only in 1988, almost 70 years after it was written, the novel was published in Russia.

J. Orwell said: “It is quite likely that Zamyatin did not at all think of choosing the Soviet regime as the global target of his satire. He wrote under Lenin and could not help but have in mind the Stalinist dictatorship, and the conditions in Russia in 1923 were clearly not such that anyone would rebel and believe that life was becoming too calm and comfortable. Zamyatin’s goal, apparently, is not to depict a specific country, but to show what threatens machine civilization.”

According to Zamyatin, any artistic image is always autobiographical to one degree or another. In the case of the title of the novel “We” and the hero of the novel, this statement is especially true. The title of the novel also includes an autobiographical element. It is known that Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Bolshevik during the years of the first Russian revolution, enthusiastically welcomed the revolution of 1917 and, full of hope, returned from England to his homeland - revolutionary Russia. But he had to witness the tragedy of the revolution: the strengthening of the “Catholicism” of the authorities, the suppression of creative freedom, which should inevitably lead to stagnation, entropy (destruction). The novel “We” is partly a self-parody of his former missionary and educational revolutionary aspirations, ideals, testing their viability.

During the years of writing the novel, the question of the individual and the collective was very acute. The proletarian poet V. Kirillov has a poem with the same title - “We”:

We are countless, formidable legions of Labor.
We are the winners of the space of seas, oceans and land,
With the light of artificial suns we lit up the cities,
Our proud souls are burning with the fire of uprisings.

We are in the grip of a rebellious, passionate intoxication;
Let them shout to us: “You are the executioners of beauty,”
In the name of our Tomorrow, we will burn Raphael,
Let's destroy museums, trample flowers of art.

We have thrown off the weight of an oppressive legacy,
We rejected the chimeras of bloodless wisdom;
Girls in the bright kingdom of the Future
They will be more beautiful than the Venus of Milo...

Tears have dried up in our eyes, tenderness has been killed,
We have forgotten the smell of herbs and spring flowers.
We fell in love with the power of steam and the power of dynamite,
The sound of sirens and the movement of wheels and shafts...

Oh, poet-aesthetes, curse the Great Ham,
Kiss the wreckage of the past under our heel,
Wash the ruins of the broken temple with your tears.
We are free, we are brave, we breathe a different beauty.

The muscles of our hands thirst for gigantic work,
The collective chest burns with creative torment,
We will fill the honeycombs to the top with wonderful honey,
We will find a different, dazzling path for our planet.

We love life, its wild delight is intoxicating,
Our spirit has been tempered by terrible struggle and suffering.
Everything is us, in everything we are, we are the flame and the conquering light,
They are their own Godhead, Judge, and Law.

(1917)

The title of the novel reflects the main problem that concerns Zamyatin: what will happen to man and humanity if he is forcibly driven into a “happy future.” “We” can be understood as “me” and “others.” Or it can be like a faceless, solid, homogeneous something: a mass, a crowd, a herd. Zamyatin showed the tragedy of overcoming the human in a person, the loss of a name as the loss of one’s own “I”.

Throughout the novel there is a contrast between “we” and “I”. Conflict between society and the individual. “We” are the State, the authorities, the masses. Where “we” is, there is no place for individuality, personality, originality, creativity, uniqueness, fantasies, feelings, emotions.

We
Power of the One State Guardian Bureau Tablet of Hours Green Wall State newspaper Institute of State Poets and Writers Unified State Science Stability Intelligence Mathematically infallible happiness Music Factory Ideal unfreedom Child rearing Oil food Equality	State of freedom Love Emotions Fantasies Creation Art beauty Religion Soul, spirituality Family, parents, children Affections Disorganized music "Bread" Originality

It is very difficult to turn a person into a cog of the state machine, to take away his uniqueness, to take away from a person the desire to be free, to love, even if love brings suffering. And such a struggle goes on inside the hero throughout the novel. “I” and “we” coexist in it at the same time. At the beginning of the novel, the hero feels himself only part of “we” “... exactly like that: we, and let this “We” be the title of my notes.”

At the very beginning of the novel, we see how delighted the hero-narrator is by daily marching to the sounds of a music factory: he experiences absolute unity with others, feels solidarity with his own kind. “As always, the music factory sang the March of the United State with all its pipes. In measured rows, four at a time, enthusiastically beating time, there were numbers - hundreds, thousands of numbers, in bluish unifs, with gold plaques on the chest - the state number of each and every one. And I - We,

four, one of the countless waves in this mighty stream.” (entry 2).

Let us note that in the fictional country created by Zamyatin’s imagination, there live not people, but numbers, devoid of names, clothed in unifs. Outwardly similar, they are no different from each other and internally, it is no coincidence that the hero exclaims with such pride, admiring the transparency of the homes: “We have nothing to hide from each other.” “We are the happiest arithmetic mean,” echoes another hero, the state poet R-13.

All their life activity, signed by the Tablet of Hours, is distinguished by the sameness and mechanicalness. This character traits depicted world. To be deprived of the opportunity to perform the same functions day after day means to be deprived of happiness and doomed to suffering, as evidenced by the story of “The Three Freedmen.”

The symbolic expression of the protagonist’s life ideal is a straight line (how can one not recall Gloomy-Burcheev) and a plane, a mirror surface, be it a sky without a single cloud or a face “not clouded by crazy thoughts.” The straightforwardness, rationalism, and mechanical nature of the life structure of the United State explain why the number chooses the figure of Taylor as the object of worship.

The Taylor-Kant antithesis, which permeates the entire novel, is the opposition between the rationalistic system of thinking, where man is the means, and the humanistic system, where man is the goal.

Thus, the idea of ​​universal equality, the central idea of ​​any utopia, turns into universal sameness and averageness in a dystopia (“... to be original is to violate equality,” “to be banal is only to fulfill one’s duty”). The idea of ​​harmony between the personal and the general is replaced by the idea of ​​absolute subordination to the state of all spheres of human life. “Happiness lies in unfreedom,” say the heroes of the novel. “The slightest manifestation of freedom, individuality is considered a mistake, a voluntary renunciation of happiness, a crime, so execution becomes a holiday.”

Let's pay attention to how the author's sarcasm breaks through in the image of the condemned man, whose hands are tied with a purple ribbon. Supreme bliss

the hero experiences on the Day of Unanimity, which allows everyone with special strength to feel like a small particle of the huge “We”. Talking with admiration about this day, the hero reflects with bewilderment and irony about the elections of the ancients (that is, about secret voting). But his irony turns into the author’s sarcasm: “elections” without the right to choose are absurd, a society that prefers unanimity to freedom of expression is absurd.

The ideological center to which everything in the novel is drawn is freedom and happiness, the relationship between the interests of the collective and the individual in the activities of the state. The main problem is the search for human happiness. It is this search for happiness that leads society to the form of existence depicted in the novel. But even this form of universal happiness turns out to be imperfect, since this happiness is grown by incubation, contrary to the laws of organic development.

Already from the first pages of the novel, E. Zamyatin creates a model of an ideal, from the point of view of utopians, state, where the long-awaited harmony of public and personal is found, where all citizens have finally found the desired happiness. In any case, this is how it appears in the perception of the narrator - the builder of Integral, mathematician D-503. What is the happiness of the citizens of the United State? At what moments in their life do they feel happy?

The question arises: how is “Taylorized” happiness achieved in Zamyatin’s novel? How was the United State able to satisfy the material and spiritual needs of its citizens?

Material problems were resolved during the Bicentennial War. Victory over famine was achieved due to the death of 0.8 of the population. Life has ceased to be highest value: the ten numbers who died during the test are called by the narrator infinitesimal of the third order. But victory in the Bicentennial War has another important meaning. The city conquers the village, and man is completely alienated from mother earth, now content with oil food.

As for spiritual reserves, the state did not take the path of satisfying them, but along the path of their suppression, limitation, and strict regulation. The first step was the introduction of a law regarding the relationship between men and women, which reduced the great feeling of love to “pleasant

useful function of the body."

One can note the author's irony in relation to the narrator, who puts love on a par with sleep, work and eating. By reducing love to pure physiology, the United State deprived a person of personal attachments and a sense of kinship, for any connections other than connections with the United State are criminal. Despite the apparent solidity, the numbers are completely separate, alienated from each other, and therefore easy to manage.

Let us note what role the Green Wall plays in creating the illusion of happiness. It is easier to convince a person that he is happy by protecting him from the whole world, taking away the opportunity to compare and analyze. The state subjugated the time of each number, creating the Tablet of Hours. The United State took away from its citizens the opportunity for intellectual and artistic creativity, replacing it with the Unified State Science, mechanical music and state poetry. The element of creativity is forcibly tamed and put at the service of society. Let us pay attention to the title of the poetic books: “Flowers of Judicial Verdicts”, the tragedy “Late for Work”. However, even having adapted art, the United State does not feel completely safe. Therefore, a whole system of suppressing dissent has been created. This is the Bureau of Guardians (the spies make sure everyone is “happy”), and the operating room with its monstrous gas bell, and the Great Operation, and denunciation elevated to the rank of virtue (“They came to accomplish a feat,” the hero writes about the informers ).

So, this “ideal” social order was achieved through the violent abolition of freedom. Universal happiness here is the misfortune of every person, and its suppression, leveling, and even physical destruction.

But why does violence against a person delight people? The fact is that the United State has a weapon more terrible than the gas Bell. And this weapon is the word. It is the word that can not only subjugate a person to someone else’s will, but also justify violence and slavery, make one believe that lack of freedom is happiness. This aspect of the novel is especially important, since the problem of manipulating consciousness is relevant both at the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

What justifications and proofs of the truth of the lucky numbers are given in the novel?

Most often, Zamyatin puts them in the mouth of the protagonist, who is constantly looking for more and more confirmation of the rightness of the United State. He finds an aesthetic justification for lack of freedom: “Why is dance beautiful? Answer: because it is an unfree movement, because the whole deep meaning of dance is in absolute, aesthetic subordination, ideal unfreedom.” Inspiration in dance allows him to conclude that “the instinct of lack of freedom has been organically inherent in man since ancient times.”

But most often, legislation is based on the language of the exact sciences that is familiar 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, human freedom = 0 , and he commits no crimes. It is clear. The only way to save him from freedom.”

Confirmation of the ideas of the One State is also heard in the words of R-13. He finds it in the religion of the ancients, that is, in Christianity, interpreting it in his own way: “Those two in paradise were presented with a choice: either happiness without freedom - or freedom without happiness; there is no third option. They, fools, chose freedom - and what: it’s clear - then for centuries they yearned for shackles. and only we again figured out how to restore happiness... The benefactor, the machine, the cube, the gas bell, the Guardians - all this is good, all this is majestic, beautiful, noble, sublime, crystal clear. Because it protects our unfreedom – that is, our happiness.”

And finally, the monstrous logic of the United State is demonstrated by the Benefactor himself, drawing before the imagination of the trembling D-503 a picture of the crucifixion; he makes the main character of this “majestic tragedy” not the executed, but his executioner, correcting the mistakes of a criminal individual, crucifying a person in the name of general happiness.

Comprehending the monstrous logic, or rather the ideology of the United State, let us listen to its official language. From the very first pages of the novel, an abundance of oxymorons strikes the eye: “the beneficial yoke of reason,” “the wild state of freedom,” “our duty to make them be happy,” “the most difficult and high love- this is cruelty”, “The benefactor who wisely tied us hand and foot with beneficent snares of happiness”, “faces unclouded by thoughts of madness”, “Inspiration is an unknown form of epilepsy”, “the soul is a serious illness”.

Naturally, a personality formed by such social

way of life, feels insignificant compared to the strength and power

states. This is exactly how the main character assesses his position at the beginning of the novel. But Zamyatin depicts the spiritual evolution of the hero: from realizing himself as a microbe in this world, D-503 comes to the feeling of the whole universe within himself. I note that from the very beginning the hero, absolutely “We,” is not without doubts. A complete feeling of happiness is hampered by annoying flaws - the root of minus one, which irritates him by being outside the ratio. And although the hero strives to drive away these inappropriate thoughts, in the depths of his consciousness he realizes that there is something in the world that defies logic and reasoning. Moreover, in the very appearance of D-503 there is something that prevents you from feeling like an ideal number - hairy arms, “a drop of forest blood.” And the fact of keeping notes, an attempt at reflection, not encouraged by state ideologies, also testifies to the unusual nature of the central character. Thus, tiny rudiments of human nature remained in D-503, not subject to the One State.

However, rapid changes begin to happen to him from the moment I-330 enters his life. The first feeling of illness of the soul comes to the hero when he listened to the music of Scriabin performed by her. Probably, this music was for Zamyatin not only a symbol of spirituality, but also a symbol of irrationality, the unknowability of human nature, the embodiment of harmony, unverifiable algebra, the power that makes the most secret strings of the soul sound.

The feeling of loss of balance is further aggravated in the hero of the novel in connection with a visit to the Ancient House. And the cloud on the surface of the sky, and the opaque doors, and the chaos inside the house, which the hero can barely endure - all this leads him into confusion, makes him think about what never occurred to him: “... after all, man is built just as wildly, like these ridiculous “apartments” - human heads are opaque; and only tiny windows inside: the eyes.” The profound changes taking place in the hero are evidenced by the fact that he does not report to I-330. True, with his characteristic logic, he tries to justify his action.

The main detail of I-330 in the perception of the hero is the x formed by the folds near the mouth and eyebrows; X for mathematicians is a symbol of the unknown. Thus, personality is replaced by uncertainty, joyful convention is replaced by painful duality (“There were two me. One me – the former

D-503, number D-503, and the other... Previously, he only stuck out his shaggy

the paws came out of the shell, and now the whole thing was coming out, the shell was cracking, now it would fly into pieces and... and then what?”). The hero’s perception of the world also develops, and his speech also changes. Usually logically structured, it becomes confusing, full of repetitions and omissions. A radical change occurs in the hero’s worldview. The doctor diagnoses him: “Apparently, you have formed a soul.” The flat, mirror surface becomes three-dimensional. The familiar world is collapsing.

Thus, the hero enters into an irreconcilable conflict not only with the United State, but also with himself. The feeling of illness fights against the reluctance to recover, the awareness of duty to society - with love for I-330, reason - with the soul, dry mathematical logic - with unpredictable human nature. Zamyatin masterfully showed how the hero’s inner world changes. And if at the beginning of the novel he considered himself part of “we,” then towards the end of the work he acquires his “I.” This “I” has always been in him, I-330 tells him about this. “I knew you...” Together with the “I,” the hero acquires a soul and begins to believe in God. But “we” wins both within the hero and within the state.

“I, D-503, the builder of the Integral - I am only one of the mathematicians of the United State.

I defeated the old God and the old life.

This woman had the same unpleasant effect on me as an indecomposable irrational term accidentally inserted into an equation.

An idea came to me: after all, man is designed just as wildly... - human heads are opaque, and only tiny windows inside: eyes.

I felt afraid, I felt trapped.

I unfastened myself from the earth and, like an independent planet, spinning furiously, rushed down...

I became glass. I saw - in myself, inside.

There were two of me. One is the former me, D-503, and the other... Previously, he was only

stuck his shaggy paws out of the shell. And now the whole thing came out... And this one

the other one suddenly jumped out...

It’s so nice to feel someone’s watchful eye, lovingly protecting you from the slightest mistake.

We walked two - one. The whole world is one immense woman, and we are in her very womb, we have not yet been born, we are joyfully maturing... everything is for me.

Ripe. And inevitably, like iron and a magnet, with sweet submission to the exact immutable law - I poured into it... I am the universe. ...How full I am!

After all, I now live not in our reasonable world, but in an ancient, delusional one.

Yes, and the fog...I love everything, and everything is elastic, new, amazing.

I know that I have it - that I am sick. And I also know that I don’t want to get better.

Soul? This is a strange, ancient, long-forgotten word... Why doesn’t anyone have it, but I have...

I want her to be with me every minute, every minute - only with me.

...a holiday - only with her, only if she is nearby, shoulder to shoulder.

And I picked up I. I pressed her tightly to me and carried her. My heart was beating - huge, and with every beat it was pouring out such a violent, hot, such a joyful wave. And even if something shatters there, it’s all the same! If only I could carry her like this, carry her, carry her...

…Who are they"? And who am I: “they” or “we” - do I know?

I am dissolved, I am infinitesimal, I am a point...

There was a terrible dream, and it ended. And I, cowardly, I, an unbeliever, - I was already thinking about self-willed death.

It was clear to me: everyone is saved, but there is no salvation for me, I don’t want salvation...

“You probably have a drop of forest blood in you... Maybe that’s why I love you...”

No one hears me scream: save me from this - save me! If you

I had a mother - like the ancients: mine - that’s exactly the mother. And so that for her – I don’t

The builder of “Integral”, and not the number D-503, and not the molecule of the United State, but a simple human piece - a piece of itself - trampled, crushed, thrown away... And let me nail or be nailed - maybe it’s the same - so that her old lady's wrinkled lips - -

It seems to me that I always hated her, from the very beginning. I fought... But no, no, don’t believe me: I could have saved myself, I didn’t want to, I wanted to die, that was what was dearest to me... that is, not to die, but so that she...

…and where does your finite Universe end? What's next?

Have I ever felt - or imagined that I felt - this? No nonsense, no ridiculous metaphors, no feelings: just facts. Because I'm healthy, I'm completely, completely healthy. I smile - I can’t help but smile: they pulled some kind of splinter out of my head, my head is light, empty.

The next day, I, D-503, appeared to the Benefactor and told him everything I knew about the enemies of happiness. Why might this have seemed difficult to me before? Unclear. The only explanation: my previous illness (soul).

...at the same table with Him, with the Benefactor, - I sat in the famous Gas room. They brought that woman. She had to testify in my presence. This woman remained stubbornly silent and smiled. I noticed that her teeth were sharp and very white and that it was beautiful.

She looked at me... looked until her eyes were completely closed.

And I hope we will win. More: I am sure we will win. Because reason must win."

The world in Zamyatin's novel is given through the perception of a person with an awakening soul. And if at the beginning of the book the author, trusting the narration to his character, still looks at him with a detached gaze and sneers at him, then gradually their positions come closer: the moral values ​​that the author himself professes become more and more dear to the hero.

And the hero is not alone. It is no coincidence that the doctor speaks of an “epidemic of the soul.” But male images are more rational and law-abiding. They are easier to manage. Female images have a stronger character. To everyone

behavior challenges the One State of I-330. Not accepting

universal, “rich” happiness, she declares: “... I don’t want others to want for me, I want to want myself.” Not only D-503 falls under her influence, but also the loyal poet R-13, and the doctor issuing fake certificates, and one of the guardians, and even O-90, so weak and defenseless, suddenly felt the need for simple human happiness, for the happiness of motherhood.

And how many more there are! And that woman who rushed across the line to one of those arrested, and those thousands who tried to vote “no” on the Day of Unanimity, and those who tried to seize Integral, and those who blew up the Wall, those wild ones who survived the Two Hundred Years' War, calling themselves Mefi.

Zamyatin endows each of these heroes with some expressive feature: splashing lips and scissor lips, a doubly curved back, an irritating X. A whole chain of associations is evoked by the epithet “round”, associated with the image of O-90: there is a feeling of something homely, calm, peaceful, the circle is repeated twice even in her room.

So, the One State, its absurd logic in the novel is opposed by the awakening soul, that is, the ability to feel, love, suffer. The soul that makes a person a person, a person. The United State could not kill the spiritual, emotional beginning in a person. Why didn't this happen?

Unlike the heroes of Huxley's novel "O Wonderful new world", programmed at the genetic level, Zamyatin's numbers are still living people, born by father and mother and only raised by the state. When dealing with living people, the United State cannot rely only on slavish obedience. The key to stability is for citizens to be “ignited” with faith and love for the state. The happiness of numbers is ugly, but the feeling of happiness must be true.

A person who is not completely killed is trying to break out of the established framework and, perhaps, will find a place for himself in the vastness of the Universe. But the protagonist's neighbor seeks to prove that the Universe is finite. The United State Science wants to fence the Universe with a Green Wall. This is where the hero asks his main question: “Listen,” I tugged at my neighbor. - Listen, I’m telling you! You must, you must answer me, but where does your final Universe end? What's next?
16

Throughout the novel, the hero rushes between human feeling and duty to the United State, between internal freedom and the happiness of unfreedom. Love awakened his soul, his imagination. A fanatic of the United State, he freed himself from its shackles, looked beyond what was permitted: “What’s next?”

The novel is remarkable not only because the author, already in 1920, was able to predict the global catastrophes of the 20th century. The main question that he poses in his work: will a person withstand his ever-increasing violence against his conscience, soul, will?

I will consider how the attempt to resist violence ends in the novel.

The riot failed, I-330 falls into the gas Bell, the main character undergoes the Great Operation and coolly watches the death of his former lover. The ending of the novel is tragic, but does this mean that the writer does not leave us hope? Let me note: I-330 does not give up until the very end, D-503 is forcibly operated on, O-90 goes beyond the Green Wall to give birth to her own child, and not a state number.

The novel “We” is an innovative and highly artistic work. Having created a grotesque model of the United State, where the idea of ​​a common life was embodied in “ideal unfreedom”, and the idea of ​​equality - a universal leveling, where the right to be well-fed required the renunciation of personal freedom, Zamyatin denounced those who, ignoring the real complexity of the world, tried to artificially “Make people happy”. of people".

The novel “We” is a prophetic, philosophical novel. He is full of anxiety for the future. The problem of happiness and freedom is acute in it.

As J. Orwell said: “... this novel is a signal of the danger that threatens man, humanity from the hypertrophied power of machines and the power of the state - no matter what.”

This work will always be relevant - as a warning about how totalitarianism destroys the natural harmony of the world and the individual. Such works as “We” squeeze slavery out of a person, make him an individual, and warn that one should not bow to “we,” no matter how lofty words surround this “we.” No one has the right to decide for us what our happiness is, no one has the right to deprive us of political, spiritual and creative freedom. And therefore we, today, decide what in our lives

the main thing will be “I” or “We”.

Many writers of the twentieth century turned to the dystopian genre. The dystopian genre flourished after the First World War, when, in the wake of revolutionary changes, some countries tried to translate utopian ideals into reality. The main one turned out to be Bolshevik Russia, so it is not surprising that the first great dystopia appeared here. In the 1920s, “Leningrad” by Mikhail Kozyrev, “Chevengur” and “The Pit” by Andrei Platonov. Among foreign anti-socialist works, “The Future is Tomorrow” by John Kendell (1933) and “Anthem” by Ayn Rand (1938) stand out.

Another widespread theme of dystopias of those years was anti-fascist, directed primarily against Germany. Already in 1920, the American Milo Hastings published the novel “The City of Eternal Night”: Germany is fenced off from the whole world in an underground city near Berlin, where a “Nazi utopia” is established, populated by genetically bred races of supermen and their slaves. But the NSDAP arose only a year before! Interesting anti-fascist books were written by H.G. Wells (The Autocracy of Mr. Parham, 1930), Karel Capek (War with the Newts, 1936), Murray Constantine (Night of the Swastika, 1937).

However, traditional capitalism also suffered. One of the pinnacles of dystopia is the novel by the British Aldous Huxley “Brave New World” (1932), which depicts a technocratic “ideal” caste state based on the achievements of genetic engineering. In order to suppress social discontent, people are processed in special entertainment centers or with the active use of the drug “soma”. A variety of sex is encouraged in every possible way, but such concepts as “mother”, “father”, “love” are considered obscene. Human history replaced with a fake: the calendar is calculated from the birth of the American automobile magnate Henry Ford. In general, capitalism taken to the point of absurdity...

Attempts to build a “new society” were mercilessly ridiculed in the classic dystopias of another Briton, George Orwell. The setting of the story “Animal Farm” (1945) is a farm where “oppressed” animals, led by pigs, drive out their owners. The result is that after the inevitable collapse, power passes to a brutal dictator. The novel 1984 (1948) depicts a near-future world divided by three totalitarian empires that are in a very unstable relationship with each other. The hero of the novel is an inhabitant of Oceania, where

English socialism has triumphed and the residents are under vigilant

control of special services. Of particular importance is the artificially created “newspeak”, which instills absolute conformism in people. Any party directive is considered the ultimate truth, even if it contradicts common sense: “War is peace”, “Freedom is slavery”, “Ignorance is strength”. Orwell’s novel has not lost its relevance even now: the “politically correct dictatorship” of a society of victorious globalism, ideologically, is not so different from the picture painted here.

Closer to Orwell's ideas are the later Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (both 1953). Dystopias were composed by Soviet dissident writers: “Lyubimov” by Andrei Sinyavsky (1964), “Nikolai Nikolaevich” by Yuz Aleshkovsky (1980), “Moscow 2042” by Vladimir Voinovich (1986), “Defector” by Alexander Kabakov (1989). A modernized version of dystopia has become classic cyberpunk, whose heroes are trying to survive in a soulless information technocracy.

Nowadays, dystopia continues to be a popular direction, in many ways close to political fiction. After all, Western society, despite its glossy brilliance, is far from perfect, and the prospects for its development cause reasonable concern (“Battle Royale” by Koushun Takami, “Accelerando” by Charles Stross). In Scott Westerfeld's Freaks trilogy, the future world is steeped in glamor: flawless beauty is a cult, and anyone who tries to maintain their individuality becomes a pariah. Max Barry's anti-globalization fantasy Jennifer's Government depicts a world almost entirely under US control. Do you think democracy has flourished? Pipes!

In America, a special surge of interest in dystopias came after the events of September 11, when, under the pretext of fighting terrorists, the government launched an attack on the rights of citizens. For five years now, books by Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, and Burgess have not disappeared from the American bestseller lists. Their fears turned out to be unfounded...

What does the future hold for us? Which path will humanity take? Maybe,

people will finally learn from the mistakes of past generations and build a perfect society. Or they will choose a disastrous path, making the life of an individual absolutely unbearable. These questions will always be relevant.

Conclusion

This research work is an analysis of E. Zamyatin’s novel “We”. It also includes a description of the genres of utopia and dystopia. You can conduct a comparative analysis of the novel with other works of this genre.

References:

1. Wikipedia. Utopia. Dystopia.
2. Rudenko Oksana “Happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness – is there no third option?”
3. Tuzovsky I. D. Bright tomorrow? Dystopia of futurologies or futurology of dystopias. Chelyabinsk Academy of Culture and Arts. 2009

Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “WE” still occupies the minds of readers and interests critics, causing a strong reaction and a flurry of emotions, both positive and negative; it surprises and leaves you bewildered, but there is no doubt that, having read it once, you cannot remain indifferent to it due to its complexity and uniqueness; the novel is not required to be studied in school, but is obviously a worthy work and deserves the attention of a curious reader; The author’s language and his “word game” are no less worthy of study.
Purpose of the lesson: to attract the attention of schoolchildren and students to Russian prose.

Tasks:

• read E. Zamyatin’s novel “WE”; analyze the reality created by E. Zamyatin;
• give a detailed assessment of E. Zamyatin’s heroes;
• analyze the novel by E. Zamyatin from the point of view of syntax, vocabulary, principles of text construction;
• introduce pupils (students) to basic linguistic phenomena and concepts (definitions): synesthesia, metaphor, epithet, neologisms, synonyms, archaisms and historicisms, etc.;
• introduce students to the basics of linguistic text analysis.

Reality in E. Zamyatin’s novel “WE” is subject to strict logic, terminology, mathematical precision, and precision. People are no longer people, people are not people, but numbers. And each number has its own alphanumeric designation, which is a name.

All numbers are a monochromatic, faceless mass, without a name, without individuality, and even their numbers, with the exception of six, are not revealed in any way in the novel. In total, in the novel we find 6 “names”: D-503, O-90, S, R-13, I-330, Yu. What can they mean and why were these letters chosen by the author?

So, for example, V. Nabokov also distinguished between the colors of the sounds of letters in different languages: “The black-brown group consists of: thick, without Gallic gloss, A; quite smooth compared to the torn R, P; strong rubber G; Zh, different from French J, like dark chocolate from milk chocolate; dark brown, polished I. In the whitish group, the letters L, N, O, X, E represent, in that order, a rather pale diet of noodles, Smolensk porridge, almond milk, dry rolls and Swedish bread. A group of cloudy intermediate shades is formed by clysteric Ch, fluffy-gray Sh and the same, but with yellow Shch.” V.V. Nabokov endowed letters not only with color, but also with taste, using phenomenal, detailed comparisons based on his gastronomic experience; all this is synesthesia, widespread in fiction and closely related to the individual experience of the writer, his subjective worldview.

Returning to the novel by E. Zamyatin, it should be noted that male names are indicated by consonants, and female ones by vowels. Most likely, this is explained by the fact that consonant letters produce hard, loud, sharp, growling, sometimes aggressive sounds, in contrast to vowels - singing, sonorous, “crystal,” soft and smooth.
So, for example, R–13 is the poet of the United State. English r, Russian r – sharp, growling, noisy, rough sounds. “R-13 speaks chokingly, words pour out of him, splashes from his thick lips; each “p” is a fountain, “poets” is a fountain”, “... the words splashed, whipped...”. “Words splashed” is an example of synesthesia.

Or the double-curved S that accompanied I-330. The letter S, until the early 19th century, had an alternative form ſ and was called a "long" or "median" s. Sometimes s was denoted by a small integral symbol, which is where it came from. This is especially important in view of the fact that it is precisely this (double-curved) feature of S’s appearance that D-503 pays attention to, instinctively feeling what is wrong, irrational, X, √ –1 in both characters in both S and I.

So, the main character of the novel is the number under the “name” or alphanumeric designation D-503. D-503 is the Builder of the Integral, making notes that form the content of the novel.

D is the fifth consonant letter of almost all Slavic Cyrillic alphabets, in the Old and Church Slavonic alphabets it was called “good”. Let us pay attention to the fact that Zamyatin in the novel “WE”, according to critics, represents the Russia of the future - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), one of the symbols of which, along with the hammer and sickle, was the five-pointed star.

How does the D-503 appear to us? D – 503 himself sees himself as a creator, a good genius, bringing the light of science to the masses, through the infinity of the Universe. In essence, this is what he is: he believes in the Benefactor, in the construction of the Integral, in universal happiness... until I-330 appears in his life.

I-9 letter of the Latin alphabet, in English. language – personal pronoun of the 1st person, singular – “I”, in the Roman numeral system – 1 (unit), i.e. the only one, the first. It is I-330 who is shown in the novel as an extraordinary brave person, aware of his individuality, his “I”, having his own opinion, striving to change reality, and if this is impossible, to break out of it. I strives to be the first, to stand out from the crowd. She is akin to a prophet.

I-330 embodies the characteristics of a True New Man. She is: confident; free; independent; bold (“She was wearing a light saffron-yellow dress of an ancient design,” moreover, she drinks liquor and smokes); adamant; true to her principles to the end.

Zamyatin paints I as a revolutionary, a Prophet, because it is thanks to I that D-503 thinks about who he is and who all those around him are. He begins to dream about his mother - like the ancients - and that for her he would be “not the Builder of the Integral and not the number D-503 and not the molecule of the United State, but just a human piece - a piece of herself - trampled, crushed, thrown away...”. I-330 speaks his, D-503, language, pronounces his unspoken thoughts about paradise, about happiness, about dreams.

I – 330 also acts as a provocateur, a criminal: after all, before accepting the philosophy and attitude of I-330, D-503 becomes, first of all, her accomplice: she makes him experience the fear of exposure and punishment. To do this, I leads him to the Ancient House, then beyond the Wall, where another world of wild but free people opens up to him. Already at the end of the novel I - 330 appears before the reader as a stoic: “...she was brought under the Bell (..they began to pump out air from under the Bell..)...this was repeated three times - she still didn’t say a word,” “...she had to give her testimony. This woman stubbornly remained silent and smiled.” It is a woman, not a number. She considered herself a woman and convinced D-503 of this. Whether he wanted it or not, even after the great operation, in the depths of his suppressed “I” there remained the memory of I-330 and another free, happy, wild, not emasculated society.

I-330 was a free person, as a free person she made her choice - she betrayed the ideals of the United State, transported the pregnant O-90 beyond the Wall - and bore responsibility for her choice: there is no doubt that after the cruel torture of her, in the end, executed. The execution of I-330 perhaps suggests that the time for people like her has not yet come, their successes are insignificant, and their dreams ordinary person are insignificant and imaginary, it is not for nothing that the symbol i in mathematics denotes an imaginary quantity.

What about D-503? Through the character of I-330, he himself is revealed, appearing as a driven, fearful, cautious, doubtful, indecisive person. He underwent the Great Operation, was made a happy man and told the Benefactor about the enemies of happiness. But after him there will remain a New Man, his and O-90’s as yet unborn child, whom I-330 nevertheless transported over the wall.

O-90. “... all round turned... a round, plump fold on the wrist - these happen in children”, “sweet O”, “O opened her mouth joyfully pink” (“O opened her mouth pink” - synesthesia), “O pink, laughed roundly” (another example of synesthesia ). O appears as affectionate, humane, trusting, and at first glance somewhat superficial. Her name is a complete reflection of her character. She is madly in love and wants to have children. And so, despite her apparent submission and acceptance of state regulations (child rearing, Maternal and Paternal norms), she decides to give birth to a child. Her child, who will undoubtedly be born behind the Wall, becomes, on the one hand, a symbol, a hope for the collapse of the all-encompassing crude immoral power of Zamyatin’s mathematized society, and, on the other hand, contrasts one person with the whole society and compares the strength and capabilities of one and the mass happens not in favor of one: one runs behind the wall. One retreats and hides...

Along with the terms that in E. Zamyatin’s novel no longer appear as terms in the usual sense of the word, alphanumeric designations instead of names comprehensively reveal the problem of unification of the individual and the subordination of its interests to the mass, universal. This is achieved by:

• introducing unusual names into the text;
• wide use of terms in order to express the idea of ​​​​subordinating everyone and everything to the strictest laws of logic and mathematics;
• rejection of the traditional understanding and construction of the text.

E. Zamyatin’s novel WE is of interest not only as a philosophical, historical novel, it is also interesting from the point of view of the semantic development of words, “their individual creative application and transformation, since the individual use of a word can be associated with its performance of characterological functions in language fiction." Zamyatin E.’s terms no longer act as terms in the usual sense of the word: they acquire an emotional connotation, become stylistically justified and create unique images due to the new properties they have acquired. So, for example: “... one is a benefactor, the other is a criminal, one with a plus sign, the other with a minus sign”; “√– 1 stalled, did not move” or “... √– 1 began to stir again,” and here’s another example: “And there are no happier numbers that live according to the harmonious eternal laws of the multiplication table. No hesitation, no delusion.” These examples clearly show that E. Zamyatin’s mathematical terms perform a certain stylistic function and are contextual synonyms for words already existing in the literary language:

Positive, kind, decent, benefactor = plus
Negative, dishonest, evil, criminal = minus
Incomprehensible, unknown, irrational, unknown, transcendental = √– 1
Delusions, doubts, wanderings = hesitations.

In these examples, the terms did not lose their original basic (denotative) meaning, but acquired an additional, more emotive (connotative) meaning due to their use in a new, unusual environment for them - a literary text.

“Moreover, one term can be synonymous with another, for example: “... all the time I was breathing the purest mountain air of thought, - and inside it was somehow cloudy, cobwebby and some kind of four-legged X with a cross”, where X acts as a contextual synonym for √– 1 , denoting the same thing - a state of confusion, uncertainty, expectation of something unusual, incredible and inexplicable by logic."

Terms are actively involved in the creation of such expressive and stylistic means as: synesthesia, for example: square harmony; asymmetrical silence; colorful noise; metaphor and personification, for example: he started tossing around again √– 1 and others.

Replacing the name with an alphanumeric designation also helps to reveal the theme of a “mathematized” verified world, where everything is subject to the laws of logic, where everything is linear, predictable and constant.

The synaestheticism and terminology of E. Zamyatin’s narrative make it possible to create images that are unique in their expressiveness, enrich the texts with individual metaphors and comparisons, and sharpen the reader’s feelings, bringing him closer to the author’s worldview. The study of the mechanisms of synesthesia, the interaction of terms with each other and with common vocabulary displayed in texts, deepens the understanding of artistic creativity, its connection with the cognitive abilities and linguistic competence of the author.

Tasks for working with text

The tasks and questions for discussion proposed below can be used by a literature teacher in any convenient order, and can be supplemented with other tasks.

1. Provide a biography of E. Zamyatin and a list with disclosure summary the most significant works.

2. Find distinctive features the novel “WE” as an example of modern prose. Describe the novel at the following level:

• building hypertext
• length of time of the story (linear/non-linear story)
• syntax
• vocabulary
• morphology

3. Describe the characters of the main characters D-503 and I-330 (at least 20-25 epithets) and try to “draw” their appearance. Find the definition of the word “name”, who gives a name to a person? Why don't the main characters have names?

4. Visualize the stages of development of D-503 (beginning of journaling as a starting point; introduction to I-330; all intermediate stages (if any); the stage of self-awareness or “I feel like myself”; others), using a broken line. Can one and the same stage of D-503’s life be considered both a rise and a fall? If yes, from what point of view? If not, why not? Describe each stage of D-503’s development using its “language.”

5. Based on the text, formulate the basic rules by which the society presented in the novel “WE” lives. Which of these rules do you consider acceptable/unacceptable? Why?

6. Find the definitions of the following terms and learn them. Illustrate with examples from the novel:

• synesthesia
• metaphor
• metonymy
• synecdoche
• occasionalism
• antithesis
• hyperbola
• ellipsis
• parcellation
• asyndeton
• comparison
• zeugma
• mindflow
• epithet
• archaisms
• neologisms
• historicisms
• synonym, contextual synonyms
• antonym, contextual antonyms

7. What words of the modern Russian language have become archaisms and historicisms in this novel? What effect is achieved by the author?

8. Comment on the following expressions, select synonymous phrases from the modern Russian language for them:

• she grinned at me
• dotted breathing
• vertical wrinkles
• “inspiration” – an unknown form of epilepsy
• always in a square position
• human heads are opaque, with only tiny windows inside: the eyes
• √– 1 stalled, did not move
• lose digital sense
• choreograph the sentence
• think about freedom - think about error
• cold water logic
• you are overgrown with numbers, numbers crawl on you like lice
• children are the only brave philosophers
• molecular tremor

9. Read J. Orwell's novel "1984". What are the similarities and differences between these novels? (compile the data in a table). Which depiction of a totalitarian society seems more realistic to you, why?

10. Write a review of E. Zamyatin’s novel “WE”.

11. Prepare a linguistic analysis of the text.

1. Abramov N. Dictionary of Russian synonyms and similar expressions. - 7th ed., stereotype. - Moscow: Russian dictionaries, 1999;
2. Arnold I.V. Stylistics of the modern Russian language. – M., 1990;
3. Vinogradov V.V. Basic types of lexical meanings of a word. Selected works. Lexicology and lexicography. – M., 1977;
4. Galperin I. R. Text as an object of linguistic research. – Moscow, 1981
5. Grafsky V.G. History of political and legal doctrines - M.: Prospekt Publishing House, 2005;
6. Glazkova V.S. Functional and stylistic features of terms in fiction (using the example of E. Zamyatin’s novel “WE”) // Festival of Pedagogical Ideas “Open Lesson”, M.: Publishing House “First of September”, 2007-2008;
7. Zamyatin E. We. – Ekaterinburg, 2002;
8. Kolshansky G.V. On the linguistic mechanism of text generation // Questions of linguistics. – 1983
9. Ozhegov S.I., Shvedova N.Yu. Dictionary of the Russian language - M., 1990;
10. Orwell J. 1984 – M.: AST publishing house, 2008;
11. Galperin I.R. Stylistics, M., 1989;
12. Turaeva Z.Ya. Linguistics of text: (Text: structure and semantics). – Moscow, 1986.
13. Nabokov V. Other shores / V. Nabokov. – M.: Book Chamber, 1989. – 288 p.

I sent the manuscript to Berlin to the Grzhebin publishing house, with which I had a contractual relationship. In 1923, the publisher sent a copy for translation into English. The novel was first published in New York in 1924 on English language. Perhaps this is why he influenced the English-language dystopias of Huxley and Orwell.

Due to the publication of the novel abroad in 1929, a campaign of persecution against Zamyatin began; his works were not published, and his plays were removed from the repertoire and banned from production. The persecution ended with Zamyatin’s departure abroad after his written appeal to Stalin.

Literary direction and genre

The novel belongs to the genre of social dystopia. It marked the beginning of the flowering of dystopias of the 20th century, describing human life in a totalitarian state: “Chevengur” by Platonov, “1984” by Orwell, “Brave New World” by Huxley. Despite the fantastic plot, the novel is closest to the direction of realism. It is a social critique of existing ideas and social changes.

Dystopia is always a reaction to social transformations and polemics with already existing utopias. Dystopias are called social predictions because the authors describe social relations that have not yet formed, guessing events very accurately.

But Zamyatin, possessing, like his hero, engineering thinking, did not guess anything. It was based not so much on the rationalistic utopias of modern times (T. More), but on those existing and very popular in the 20th century. socialist utopias of the proletkultists, in particular Bogdanov and Gastev. They believed that the entire life and thinking of the proletariat should be machined. Gastev even proposed assigning numbers or letters to people in order to eliminate individual thinking.

The idea of ​​a global transformation of the world and the destruction of the human soul and love, which could interfere with utopia, was also born among the ideologists of proletcult. Zamyatin's parody was subjected to the ideas of the Proletkultists about the limitless possibilities of science, about the conquest of the universe and its subordination to the ideas of socialism and communism.

Zamyatin was based not only on the ideas of Proletcult. Houses made of glass and concrete resemble those described in the novel “What is to be done?” Chernyshevsky, as well as cities of the future, invented by futurists (Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh). The United State has arisen more than once in urban utopias. And the image of a technically perfect machine (“Integral”) is described in the works of contemporaries (Platonov, Mayakovsky).

Zamyatin's novel, unknown in the USSR, was subjected to sharp criticism. He was called an evil pamphlet, and Zamyatin himself was considered afraid of the coming of socialism. Zamyatin remained faithful to the ideas of socialism until the end of his life, but his novel is a logical extension of these ideas to an absurd limit.

Issues and conflict

The United State sets itself the task of making happy not only its citizens, but also the inhabitants of other planets. The problem is that only an unfree person can be happy, and freedom is painful. Leads to pain. But it is freedom and pain that a person chooses every time.

Social problem. which rises in the novel is the interaction of the individual, who becomes the cog and wheel of the totalitarian state, and this state itself. Personality is devalued to the point of complete disappearance: either physically, like those killed in the Benefactor’s Machine, or morally, like people without a soul, like those who undergo surgery in the novel.

The external conflict between the United State and Mefi’s supporters intensifies towards the end of the novel, as does the internal conflict of the hero, who, on the one hand, feels like a number, and on the other, increasingly strives for freedom.

Plot and composition

The novel takes place 1000 years after the Bicentennial War - the last revolution on earth. The reader might have caught a hint of a recent revolution. Thus, the novel describes approximately the 32nd century in human history.

The action of the novel begins in the spring and ends in the fall, during the collapse of hopes.

The novel is written in the first person by the main character, a mathematician, a civil engineer of “Integral” - a perfect mechanism that should bring the ideas of the One State into the universe, integrate it, make it the same everywhere.

The novel is a summary of 40 entries, which the hero begins in order to glorify the United State and its idea of ​​​​universal happiness in the universe, and continues to reliably describe events for the inhabitants of other planets. He speaks about the structure of the State as something self-evident. Therefore, this information is scattered across different records, interspersed with reports of events and the logical reasoning of the hero.

The United State was created 1000 years ago after the victory in the Great Bicentennial War. In the war between city and countryside, the city won, only 0.2% of the population survived. The city is fenced with a glass Green Wall, behind which there is a wild forest. The townspeople don’t know what’s going on there. The hero miraculously learns of the existence on the other side of the Green Wall of fur-covered people, the ancestors of those who survived the war and the fight against famine. The City switched to oil-based food long ago. The city is very technological: people use the subway and air.

Residents of the United State are equal in everything. They do not have names, but only letters (men's numbers have consonants, women's numbers have vowels) and numbers. Numbers live in identical rooms in houses with glass walls, wear the same uniform - unifs, and must engage in both intellectual and physical labor.

In the United State, everything is strictly regulated. The schedule of life is determined by the Tablet of Hours; everyone gets up, eats, works and goes to bed at the same time. There are 2 personal hours left in the schedule: from 16 to 17 and from 21 to 22. At this time, numbers can walk along the avenues (in a row of 4), sit at desk or making love - “a pleasant and useful function of the body.”

300 years before the events described, love was defeated. To prevent envy or jealousy from arising, it was declared that each number had the right to another number as a sexual product. To use the number you like, you just need to write an application for it and receive a book of pink coupons. Having marked the pink coupon with the house attendant, you can lower the curtains on your sex day (their frequency is determined based on the needs of the body) and connect with another number.

The most important part of the United State is its ideology. The title of the novel explains it. In the State, each individual person is subordinate to society, “we”. Therefore, the numbers did not even stop working when, during the test of the Integral, about a dozen numbers died under the engine pipes. After all, ten is infinitesimal compared to everyone else. Thus, to create laws, the One State uses the so-called mathematical ethics.

The United State replaced the concepts of love, happiness, duty, dignity that existed among the “ancients” (that is, us). There are Guardians in society who are looking for enemies of the United State. It is a great honor to go to the Guardian Bureau and talk about treason. When a “criminal” who disagrees is found, a “celebration” is held at which he is executed in a perfect manner, in the Benefactor’s Machine, split into atoms, turning into pure distilled water.

But before that, badges with numbers are torn off from the criminals. There is nothing worse for a member of such a society than to cease to be a number. Literary works in the United State are indicative. There is a whole State Institute poetry, which should praise the One State and the Benefactor.

Other works are instructive: “Stanzas on sexual hygiene” or the story of three freedmen who were freed from all work, and after 10 days they drowned themselves out of grief.

The entire plot of the dystopia “We,” like any dystopia, is built on the gradual insight of the hero, who first has vague doubts about the correctness of his actions, then a “soul” appears that prevents him from being a “cog and a wheel.” The operation to remove the fantasy turns the hero into a happy mechanism, calmly watching as his beloved is tortured under the Gas Bell.

Heroes of the novel

Main character- Integral builder, 32-year-old D-503. He experiences constant fluctuations from enthusiastic acceptance of the United State to rebellion. In D’s life, everything is turned into formulas or logical arguments. But he sees the world figuratively, giving people clear characteristics instead of names (R - black-lipped, O - round, pink). The main character is sincere, he strives for happiness, but abandons it for the sake of love, he unwittingly betrays his beloved, because after the Operation he ceases to be human. Based on the fact that numbers are in no hurry to carve out their imagination, D concludes that even 1000 years of unfreedom could not destroy his essence in a person - the soul.

Female characters in the novel are presented in two types. O-90 is round, pink, communication with her does not go beyond limited limits. Her soul has already awakened, she expects love from D, and when she discovers that he is in love with I, risking his life, she asks to give her a child. Society does not allow O to have a child because she is 10 cm short of the Maternal Norm.

Children born in society are still selected and raised according to the science of child rearing. At the end of the novel, O survives, and ends up behind the wall, so his and D’s child is hope for a change in the situation.

I-330 – sharp, flexible, with white teeth, associated with a whip and a bite that draws blood. D still doesn’t understand, she chooses him because she loves him, or because he is the builder of Integral. This is a woman of mystery who enjoys understatements, challenges, lack of clarity, breaking rules and playing with fate. She is obsessed with the idea of ​​Mefi - fighters against the United State - and dies for it.

By the end of the novel, D is surprised to realize that almost all the male numbers around him are connected with Mephi: friend D and State Poet R; double-curved S, Guardian watching D with gimlet eyes; the finest doctor who writes out fictitious medical certificates.

Other numbers remain true to the idea of ​​the One State. For example, Yu, who takes her students to an operation to destroy fantasy and even ties them up, denounces D to the Guardians, fulfilling her duty.

At the end of the novel, D meets the Benefactor and suddenly sees in him not a number of numbers with cast-iron hands, but a tired man with beads of sweat glistening on his bald head (wasn’t Lenin his prototype), the same victim of the Unified State system.

Stylistic features

The novel is the notes of a mathematician, a logical person. It was not difficult for Zamyatin to convey the way of thinking of such a person; he wrote D from himself.
Despite D’s desire to explain the situation in the United State as accurately as possible, the events are presented chaotically, there are many sentences with ellipses, the hero himself cannot always understand what is happening to him and in the world.

Brief, one or two word, characteristics of each hero given by D indicate that a person cannot do without a name, naming, and labels.
The novel contains many aphorisms reflecting the point of view of an unfree consciousness: “The wall is the foundation of every human being,” “The shackles are what the world’s sorrow is about”...

Characteristics of the literary hero D-503 is the hero of E.I. Zamyatin’s novel “We” (1920). A resident of a fantastic state of the future, which embodies the technocratic utopia of a mechanized and totally organized society, where all connections and relationships between people are “integrated,” D-503 (the inhabitants of this state are deprived of proper names and exist under “numbers”) is the first incarnation of a type that later became traditional hero of a dystopian novel (or dystopia). Like Winston Smith (“1984” by D. Orwell), whose image arose under the direct influence of Zamyatin, like the heroes of the novels “Brave New World” by O. Huxley, “Fahrenheit 451” by R. Bradbury, D-503 violates the laws of utopian society , the justice of which he had never doubted before, goes through trials and ultimately capitulates, surrendering himself (morally and physically) to the mercy of the winner - the United State. Despite the novelty of the image created by Zamyatin, it imprinted the “archetype” of the hero-traveler, leading the reader through the described events, of which he is a witness and participant. (Among the literary predecessors of the hero, Gulliver and Candide are sometimes called.) On the one hand, D-503 is objectified in what is happening; on the other hand, he acts as a chronicler of events shown through the prism of his subjective perception. The entire text of the novel is a summary of a poem conceived for the glory of the State, this “single powerful million-celled organism” - a task that the hero, as it later turns out, failed to cope with. By occupation, D-503 is a mathematician, the creator of the interplanetary spacecraft “Integral”, designed to subjugate the entire universe to the “beneficent yoke of reason”; by nature he is a philosopher, prone to reflection. “Brought up by the Taylor system since childhood,” he enters the plot as an optant “we,” convinced of the expediency of an organized society, for which “only the rational and useful is beautiful: cars, boots, formulas, food.” The hero sincerely does not understand how in the ancient 20th century people lived in a “wild state of freedom,” slept and ate whenever they wanted, and walked anywhere. Love for a woman changes the hero's whole life. The awakened feeling takes him out of the state of totalitarian eudaimonism, makes him an apostate, a “fallen angel” and pushes him to commit a crime. D-503 penetrates behind the Green Wall, which encircles the United State, and discovers that there, behind the wall, another life flows, inhabited by wild and free people. Having experienced love, the hero discovers that he “has ceased to be a component”; he realizes himself as a person (“I – was I, separate, world”) and comes to the “criminal” conclusion that “we” are not necessary. Now he is not a “number” or a “molecule,” but a “simple human piece.” However, this “human piece” has a soul, which number D-503 was deprived of. The presence of a soul in the system of concepts of “Taylorism” is a serious illness. The hero’s illness is cured by brain surgery, to which he was subjected along with other inhabitants of this State. At the end of the novel, D-503 watches indifferently as his lover is tortured in a gas chamber. Now he is completely healthy. It seems to him that “some kind of splinter has been pulled out of his head, his head is light, empty,” there are no fantasies - just cold reason and the belief that “reason must win.” Zamyatin’s novel was a direct response to the ideas of “mathematical civilization” that were floating in futurist circles: V. Khlebnikov’s “constructed humanity” inhabiting the city of Solntstan, where people have a measure instead of faith, where “only numbers remain.” (From this point of view, it is noteworthy that D-503 is a mathematician.) However, over time, the novel acquired allusions not intended by the author (for example, the Green Wall was associated either with the “Iron Curtain” or with the “Berlin Wall”), and became that mirror , in which the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century were mercilessly reflected. In this context, Zamyatin’s hero, described rather schematically, became a vitally recognizable character.

Essay on literature on the topic: D-503 (We are Zamyatin)

Other writings:

1. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We” was written in last years The Civil War, when it was already clear that power would remain in the hands of the Bolsheviks. At this time, society was worried about the question of what future awaits Russia, and many writers and public figures tried Read More......
2. E. And Zamyatin did not intend to write a parody of communism; he drew the final development of any social system, which is based on the idea of ​​violence against a person. Thus, the main theme in the novel “We” is the theme of individual freedom. This topic is revealed with the help of a parody Read More......
3. As is known, the censorship of the 20s was distinguished by its keen “diagnostic” instinct. Rare works whose authors ignored the class approach to literature were published in a timely manner. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We” was delayed for almost seventy years. This indicates that the writer’s satire “hit Read More......
4. “The novel “We” is the horror of socialism being realized... This novel is an evil utopian pamphlet about the kingdom of communism, where everything is equalized, emasculated...” wrote Dm. Furmanov. We have been told for so long about freedom, which, by the way, for the majority today has turned into “freedom to die of hunger,” Read More ......
5. As is known, the censorship of the 20s was distinguished by its keen “diagnostic” instinct. Rare works whose authors ignored the class approach to literature were published in a timely manner. The novel “We” was delayed for almost seventy years. This indicates that the writer’s satire “hit the mark.” Read More......
6. Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin, who eventually became very original writer, also started as a Remizovite. He was born in 1884 in Lebedyan (Tambov province, Central Russia), studied shipbuilding at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute. In 1908, he received a diploma as a shipbuilding engineer and an offer to prepare for Read More......
7. Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin ZAMYATIN, EVGENY IVANOVICH (1884−1937), Russian writer. Born on January 20 (February 1), 1884 in the city of Lebedyan, Tambov province. (now Lipetsk region) in the family of a poor nobleman. In addition to impressions from the nature of those places with which they were somehow connected Read More......
8. The personality feature of E.I. Zamyatin can be characterized as follows: he was a very Russian person. His attitude towards the country varied from adoration to hatred, which indicated that the writer deeply understood his contemporary reality. In 1917 Zamyatin returned from England Read More ......

D-503 (We are Zamyatin)

“We” Zamyatina E.I.

Here the distant future is depicted, the XXXI century. Universal “mathematically infallible happiness” reigned on Earth. It is provided by the United State. But the happiness that it gives people is only material, and most importantly - in general, identical and obligatory forms for all. Everyone receives satiety, peace, occupation according to his abilities, complete satisfaction of all physical needs - and for this he must give up everything that distinguishes him from others: living feelings, his own aspirations, natural affections and impulses. In a word, from one’s own personality. The very concept of “person” is replaced by the concept of “number”, and everyone wears gold plaques with an assigned number on their chest.

Everyone lives according to the laws of the Tablet of Hours: they get up and lie down at the same time, at the same time they bring spoons to their mouths; all together, four numbers in a row, go out for a walk. They love each other strictly on certain days. The love of each and every one is a subject accessible to all; it is regulated by “pink coupons” from the doctor for sexual sessions with you. Any personal feelings and preferences are forbidden.

All this is called a state of “ideal unfreedom” in contrast to the “wild freedom” of previous centuries.

However, human nature cannot tolerate such a prosperous, but impersonal existence. Despite the impeccably organized structure of life, living human emotions and passions make their way and make themselves felt. Hero-narrator, D-503, mathematician public service, enthusiastically admiring the United State and its reason, begins to feel these feelings in himself. He falls in love and is troubled by dreams and strange thoughts. And the same thing - unclear aspirations for something, unexpected emotions - is found in thousands of “numbers”. The culmination of this resistance of human nature to mechanical prosperity is a conspiracy against the One State and a rebellion. They are led by I-330 - the woman whom the hero fell in love with. This is a rebellion in the name of love, in the name of the right to one’s own feelings and passions, in the name of a return to natural life.

The novel is structured as a first-person narrative - in the form of the main character's diary entries. But this is not a diary in the usual sense - it is an artistic imitation of a diary. A significant place in it is occupied by what is commonly called the stream of consciousness - the direct reproduction of a person’s mental life, his internal reactions to the phenomena of the surrounding world. The stream of consciousness as a method of depiction was just entering world literature in those years, and Zamyatin, following M. Proust and along with D. Joyce, gave its first examples. In the records of D-503rd, a person’s position in the society of the future is conveyed through the flow of his inner speech, an internal monologue.

E. Zamyatin constructs this monologue with great skill, tracing day after day how a living person awakens in one of the units of the mechanical multitude, the life of the soul, the world of feelings and drives, the voice of passions awaken. The writer portrays this as a painful spiritual drama of the hero, as his discord with himself. This is a discord between the secret existence of the personality in D-503 and the impersonal existence of the “number”.

The love story of D-503rd for I-ZZO-th may seem purely personal, private against the backdrop of collisions full of significance in the state of the future - the construction of the Integral and the conspiracy against it. But it is no coincidence that it permeates the entire narrative. It is in it, this authentic human drama, that Zamyatin’s main idea finds figurative embodiment - his anxiety about man, his hopes and doubts about a bright future.

In fact, what happens to Zamyatin’s hero is something that is eternally repeated on Earth and has been repeated many times in literature: a beautiful, alluring woman pushes him out of the usual rut of conventional life into another reality, into a circle of unknown joys and anxieties, which appears dangerous and attractive at the same time . However, for the world in which Zamyatin’s heroes exist, this is not just another drama of the meeting of a man and a woman - it is a shock to its very foundations, a refutation of its fundamental prohibitions on the personal life of “numbers”. And ordinary earthly history is filled with ontological meaning by Zamyatin. The love of two people for each other, regardless of the “pink coupons” and the Table of sexual days, is a manifestation of true existence in a world organized and emasculated by the “beneficent yoke of reason”; this is the news that human existence irrevocably exists outside the boundaries of the United State and will never will be defeated.

Scenes of love encounters, key to the narrative, combine emotional, sensual intensity and a clear, as if graphically verified drawing: “She was in a light, saffron-yellow, ancient dress. It was a thousand times angrier than if she had been without everything. Two sharp points - through thin fabric, smoldering pink - two coals through the ashes. Two softly round knees...” This is not eroticism - this is ever-living human nature appearing in its bodily fullness.

The nervous, excited story about the love experiences of D-503 is constantly intersected by the story about the construction of the Integral, about the everyday life and celebrations of the world ruled by the United State with its merciless logic of mathematical equations, physical constants, proven theorems. All this is presented in the dry and strict language of a report, a report. The very verbal fabric here conveys an atmosphere of an almost mechanical existence devoid of joys and passions. And at the same time, the author’s irony is discernible here, a hidden mockery of the social structure that makes people simply functional units of the work collective. This is the smile of an artist who values ​​a living person above the interests of any state.

But the ending of the novel is gloomy. The rational and soulless machine of the United State overcomes the resistance. An operation has been developed and is being carried out to remove a person’s fantasy, and with it everything human - dissatisfaction, living experiences, imagination. This is how the personality in People is destroyed, and the uprising is doomed to defeat. And the hero, in whom individuality has awakened, is subjected to an operation and thus again depersonalized, again faithfully serves the soullessness of the United State and betrays his beloved.

Zamyatinsky’s “We” can be called a cautionary novel. A warning against the kind of future it would become if things continued as they had begun. These fears of the writer were well founded. The revolutionary society was indeed ready to reject all universal human culture, morality and psychology precisely as individualistic. And the new, “proletarian” culture, new morality and psychology were presented as entirely collectivist, completely unrelated to the world of the individual. And the “new” proletarian mass itself was presented as impersonal, devoid of individual experiences, knowing only class feelings. Researchers have already drawn a parallel between Zamyatin’s “We” and the judgments of one of the theorists of proletarian culture A. Gastev, who found in “...proletarian psychology an amazing anonymity, which allows one to qualify an individual proletarian unit as A, B, C or as 375, 075, 0 and so on.". Gastev predicted in the near future the emergence of such working “collective complexes”, “in which it is as if there is no longer a human individual face, but there are... faces without expression, a soul devoid of lyrics, an emotion measured not by screaming, not by laughter, but by a pressure gauge "

It is possible that Zamyatin directly parodied these Gastev ideas. But it's not just them. Born as a warning against social and ideological extremes, the novel “We” is important not only for its criticism of these extremes; it has not just historical and literary significance. He continues to live, because he is involved in the most acute, never-losing problems of the century.

We now know how Zamyatin’s futurological fantasies responded to very specific historical practice. The author of the novel “We” has been reproached more than once for distorting the socialist future. One of the best Soviet critics, Alexander Voronsky, passionately polemicized with him. He condemned the writer precisely because he “portrayed communism in the form of some kind of super-barracks.” “...The pamphlet misses the target,” Voronsky asserted. Alas, this turned out not to be the case. The reality in our country for a certain time surpassed even Zamyatin’s worst fears: in the 30s and 40s. millions of people were turned into “numbers,” but these numbers were not written on gold plaques, but on camp pea coats. And A.K. Voronsky was among those who were shot under one of these nameless numbers.

Written in 1920, Zamyatin’s novel received wide circulation in manuscript copies from 1921 - so wide that literary criticism of the 20s sometimes debated this not yet published novel on the magazine pages. In 1924-1925 the novel “We” was published abroad in translations into Czech, English and French, and in 1927 it appeared in Russian in the Prague magazine “The Will of Russia” (in excerpts and in reverse translation from Czech). It is one of the first among the dystopias of the 20th century. These are works about the future that depict it as by no means ideal and bright. They predict a structure of society in which human personality will be devalued, suppressed by the power of machines or political dictatorship. “Brave New World” by O. Huxley (1932) and “1984” (1948) by J. Orwell are considered classic examples of dystopias. One could talk about Zamyatin's influence on these authors. George Orwell's novel seems especially close to Zamyatin's We. However, the author of “1984” himself claimed that he became acquainted with Zamyatin’s book after he wrote his own. Apparently, this is indeed the case and testifies, first of all, to how sensitively and accurately the free writer’s thought responded to the danger lurking in socialist utopias about the ideal structure of human society.

There is a point of view that Zamyatin’s novel was inspired not only by the realities of post-October Russia, that Zamyatin warned not only and not so much about the danger of impending totalitarianism, but even more about the danger of the growing power of things, technology, and progress. There is no point in arguing about this. Zamyatin really saw the downsides of Western civilization. Evidence can serve, for example, in the story “The Islanders” (1917), full of irony, written in England and about England. And yet, in 1920, in Russia tormented by military communism, Zamyatin was worried, presumably, not by the future power of things and machines over people, but already in those days by the power of a totalitarian state that was advancing on man. He understood that she was a more real and more dangerous threat to the human future. AND main meaning his warnings are directed specifically against any form of dictatorship. Machines, the world of things in his dystopia are only a tool for the United State. Zamyatin imagined, of course, that they themselves do not pose a danger: what matters is what they serve.