Visual or auditory associations associated with the name (number) of the character. Characteristics of the main characters of the work We, Zamyatin. Their images and description Zamyatin we are the main characters

Gultyaev Vadim

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

When analyzing the novel by E. Zamyatin, Gultyaev Vadim managed to explain the meaning of the title of the work, to show artistic techniques used by the author to characterize some of the characters. Of particular interest is the psychologism of the protagonist, composed of quotations-reflections. It helps to understand the inner world of the hero, 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 a theoretical material in the study of the novel by E. Zamyatin.

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Municipal educational budgetary institution

average educational school Amzya village, Neftekamsk urban district

Analysis of the novel by E. Zamyatin "We"

(research)

Completed by a student of class 11 B Gultyaev Vadim

Head teacher of Russian language and literature

Fayzullina Gulnaz Mukhametzyanovna

2011-2012 academic year

Review

When analyzing the novel by E. Zamyatin, Gultyaev Vadim managed 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 psychologism of the protagonist, composed of quotations-reflections. It helps to understand the inner world of the hero, 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 a theoretical material in the study of the novel by E. Zamyatin.

one . The 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 protagonist.

6. Relevance of the work

7. Development of the dystopian genre in modern literature.

Since ancient times, people have dreamed that someday the time will come when there will be complete harmony between man and the world and everyone will be happy. This dream in literature was reflected in the genre of utopia (the founder of the genre is T.Mor). The authors of utopian works depicted life with an ideal state 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, to put everything in its place - and here is an earthly paradise for you, which is more perfect than heaven.

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

Dystopia is a genre that is also called negative utopia. This image of such a possible future, which frightens the writer, makes him worry about the fate of mankind, for the soul of an individual.The purpose of utopia is, first of all, to show the world the path to perfection, the task of dystopia is to warn the world about the dangers that await it on this path. Dystopia exposes the incompatibility of utopian projects with the interests of an individual, brings to absurdity the contradictions inherent in utopia, clearly demonstrating how equality turns into leveling, a reasonable state structure into violent regulation 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 embodied with all certainty. And for the modern reader, E. Zamyatin is, first of all, the author of a fantastic dystopian novel that raised a high wave in the world literature of the 20th century.

"The novel "We" is a protest against the impasse in which the

European-American civilization erasing, mechanizing,

machine man,” wrote E. Zamyatin about his work.
Zamyatin managed to write a book of a topical and peculiar antithesis genre - a satirical anti-utopia, exposing sweet illusions that led a person and society into dangerous delusions about tomorrow, and planted quite often quite deliberately. A. Platonov, A. Chayanov followed in his footsteps in Russia, and O. Huxley and J. Orwell in the West. These artists were given to see the great danger that the widely propagandized myths about happiness with the help of the technological process and barracks socialism carried with them. With his novel We, Zamyatin initiated a new, anti-utopian tradition in the culture of the 20th 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 technical progress, but also those social ideals that were put forward as indisputable truths.

Zamyatin worked on the novel in the years civil war. He was a very perspicacious man, 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 modernity, but decided to use all observations for a higher goal: predicting the paths of human civilization. The writer had an engineering education, and this allowed him to successfully predict what troubles technological progress and the triumph of technocratic consciousness could turn into 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 appropriate moral laws can bring terrible harm.

The history 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 on Zamyatin, who argued that the novel "is completely imbued with a genuine fear of socialism, which from an ideal becomes a practical, everyday problem." M. Gorky, who wrote in one of his letters in 1929, did not understand the works of Zamyatin: “We” is a desperately bad, completely unproductive thing. Her anger is cold and dry, it is the wrath of an old maid. The critic J. Brown and Y. Tynyanov spoke sympathetically about the novel. But their opinion could not affect 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 firm in New York to translate the novel into English language and he accepted the offer. In 1924 the novel was published in New York. Soon there were translations into other languages - Czech and French. Only in 1988, almost 70 years after it was written, the novel was published in Russia.

George Orwell said: “It is 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 someone rebelled, believed that life was becoming too calm and comfortable. Zamyatin's goal, apparently, is not to portray a specific country, but to show what threatens machine civilization.

According to Zamyatin, any artistic image is always autobiographical to some extent. 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 during the years of the first Russian revolution was a Bolshevik, enthusiastically welcomed the revolution of 1917 and, full of hope, returned from England to his homeland - to 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 an auto-parody of its former missionary and educational revolutionary aspirations, ideals, testing them for vitality.

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

We are countless, formidable legions of Labor.
We are the winners of the space of the seas, oceans and land,
With the light of artificial suns we lit the cities,
The fire of revolts burns our proud souls.

We are at the mercy of the rebellious, passionate hops;
Let them shout to us: "You are the executioners of beauty",
In the name of our Tomorrow - let's burn Raphael,
Let's destroy museums, trample flowers on art.

We have thrown off the weight of the oppressive legacy,
Of bloodless wisdom we rejected chimeras;
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 is killed,
We forgot the smell of herbs and spring flowers.
We fell in love with the power of steam and the power of dynamite,
The singing of sirens and the movement of wheels and shafts ...

Oh, aesthete poets, 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 yearn for gigantic work,
The collective chest burns with creative flour,
We will fill the honeycomb with miraculous honey to the top,
We will find a different, dazzling path for our planet.

We love life, its exuberant delight is intoxicating,
Terrible struggle, suffering, our spirit is tempered.
We are everything, we are everything, we are the victorious flame and light,
Themselves Deity, and the Judge, and the Law.

(1917)

The title of the novel reflects the main problem that worries Zamyatin: what will happen to man and humanity if he is forcibly driven into a “happy future”. "We" can be understood as "I" and "others". And it is possible as 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". The conflict between society and the individual. “We” is the State, power, mass. Where there is “we”, there is no place for individuality, personality, originality, creativity, uniqueness, fantasies, feelings, emotions.

Power of the One State

Bureau of Guardians

Clock Tablet

Green Wall

State newspaper

Institute of State Poets and Writers

United State Science

Stability

Intelligence

Mathematically unmistakable happiness

music factory

Ideal unfreedom

Childcare

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 in 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 that he is only a part of "we" "... that's right: 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 with the daily march to the sounds of the musical factory: he experiences absolute unity with the rest, 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 their chests - the state number of each and every one. And I - We

four, is one of the innumerable waves in this mighty current. (record 2nd).

Note that in the fictional country created by Zamyatin's imagination, not people live, but numbers, devoid of names, dressed in unifs. Externally 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 dwellings: “We have nothing to hide from each other.” “We are the happiest arithmetic mean,” echoes another hero, the state poet R-13.

The sameness, mechanistic character distinguishes all their vital activity, signed by the Tablet of Hours. These are the characteristic features of the depicted world. To deprive people of the opportunity to perform the same functions day in and day out means to deprive them of happiness, doom them to suffering, as evidenced by the story “About the Three Freedmen”.

The symbolic expression of the life ideal of the protagonist is a straight line (how can one not remember Gloomy-Burcheev here) and a plane, a mirror surface, whether it be the sky without a single cloud or faces “not clouded by crazy thoughts”. Straightforwardness, rationalism, mechanicalness of the life order of the United State explain why the figure of Taylor is chosen as the object of worship of the number.

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

Thus, the idea of universal equality, the central idea of any utopia, turns into a dystopia of universal sameness and averageness (“... to be original is to violate equality”, “to be banal is only to do 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 is in lack of freedom,” the heroes of the novel say. "The slightest manifestation of freedom, individuality is considered a mistake, a voluntary rejection of happiness, a crime, so the 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 to feel with special force that they are a small particle of a huge “We”. Speaking with admiration about this day, the hero reflects with bewilderment and irony on the elections of the ancients (that is, on the secret ballot). But his irony turns into the author's sarcasm: absurd are "elections" without the right to choose, absurd is a society that preferred unanimity to freedom of will.

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

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

The question arises: how is "Taylorized" happiness achieved in Zamyatin's novel? How did the United State manage to satisfy the material and spiritual needs of its citizens?

Material problems were solved during the Bicentennial War. The victory over hunger was won due to the death of 0.8 of the population. Life has ceased to be the highest value: ten numbers that died during the test, the narrator calls the infinitesimal of the third order. But the victory in the Bicentennial War has another important significance. The city conquers the village, and man is completely alienated from mother earth, now content with oil food.

With regard to spiritual reserves, the state did not follow the path of satisfying them, but the path of their suppression, limitation, and strict regulation. The first step was the introduction of a law regarding the relationship of a man and a woman, which reduced the great feeling of love to "pleasant

beneficial bodily functions.

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 One State has deprived a person of personal affections, of a sense of kinship, for any connection, except for connection with the One State, is criminal. Despite the seeming monolithic nature, the rooms are absolutely disunited, alienated from each other, and therefore easily manageable.

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 Hourly Tablet, the United State took away from its citizens the possibility of 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 poetic books: "Flowers of Court Sentences", the tragedy "Late for Work". However, even having adapted art, the United State does not feel completely safe. That is why a whole system of suppression of dissent has been created. This is the Bureau of Guardians (spies make sure that 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 informers ).

Thus, this "ideal" social order was achieved by the forcible abolition of freedom. Universal happiness here is the misfortune of every person, and his 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 the weapon is the word. It is the word that can not only subordinate 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 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century.

What justifications, proofs of the truth of the happiness of numbers are given in the novel?

Most often, Zamyatin puts them into the mouth of the protagonist, who is constantly looking for more and more confirmation of the correctness of the One State. He finds an aesthetic justification for lack of freedom: “Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is not a free movement, because the whole deep meaning of the dance lies precisely in absolute, aesthetic subordination, ideal non-freedom. The inspiration in the 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 exact sciences 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 does not commit 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; the third is not given, They, boobies, chose freedom - and what: it's understandable - then for centuries they yearned for fetters. and only we again guessed how to return happiness .... The benefactor, the car, the cube, the gas bell, the Guardians - all this is good, all this is majestic, beautiful, noble, sublime, crystal clear. Because it protects our lack of freedom - that is, our happiness.

And finally, the Benefactor himself demonstrates the monstrous logic of the One State, drawing a picture of the crucifixion in front of the imagination of the trembling D-503, he makes the main character of this “magnificent tragedy” not the executed, but his executioner, correcting the mistakes of a criminal individuality, crucifying a person in the name of universal happiness.

Comprehending the monstrous logic, or rather the ideology of the United State, let's listen to its official language. From the very first pages of the novel, an abundance of oxymorons is striking: “the beneficent yoke of the mind”, “the wild state of freedom”, “our duty is to make them happy”, “the most difficult and lofty love is cruelty”, “The benefactor who wisely bound us by hands and feet with beneficent snares of happiness”, “faces unclouded by madness”, “Inspiration is an unknown form of epilepsy”, “the soul is a serious illness”.

Naturally, a personality formed by such a social

way of life, feels like nothingness compared to strength and power

states. This is how he evaluates his position main character 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 inside him. 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 annoys him because it is outside the ratio. And although the hero seeks to drive away these inappropriate thoughts, in the depths of his consciousness he realizes that there is something in the world that is not amenable to logic, reasoning. Moreover, in the very appearance of D-503 there is something that prevents you from feeling like an ideal number - hairy hands, “a drop of forest blood”. And the fact of keeping records, an attempt at reflection, not encouraged by state ideologies, also testifies to the unusualness of the central character. Thus, tiny rudiments of human nature remained in D-503, not subject to the One State.

However, turbulent changes begin to occur to him from the moment when the I-330 enters his life. The first feeling of soul illness comes to the hero when he listened to Scriabin's music 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 force 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 a cloud on the surface of the sky, and opaque doors, and the chaos inside the house, which the hero can hardly endure - all this leads him into confusion, makes him think about something that never occurred to him: “... after all, a person is arranged just as wildly, like these ridiculous "apartments" - human heads are opaque; and only tiny windows inside: the eyes." The fact that he does not inform on I-330 testifies to the profound changes taking place with the hero. True, with his characteristic logic, he tries to justify his act.

The main detail of I-330 in the perception of the hero is the X, formed by folds near the mouth and eyebrows; X for mathematicians is a symbol of the unknown. So the personality is replaced by the unknown, the joyful conventionality is replaced by a painful split ("There were two of me. One I - the former

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

paws from the shell, and now the whole was crawling out, the shell was cracking, now it will shatter into pieces and ... and then what? ”). The hero's perception of the world also develops, and his speech also changes. Usually logically built, it becomes confused, full of repetitions and reticence. There is a radical change in the attitude of the hero. The doctor diagnoses him: "Apparently, you have formed a soul." The plane, the mirror surface becomes three-dimensional. The familiar world is crumbling.

So 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 inner world of the hero changes. And if at the beginning of the novel he considered himself a part of "we", then towards the end of the work he acquires his own "I". This "I" has always been in him, I-330 tells him about it. "I knew you..." Together with the "I" the hero acquires a soul, begins to believe in God. But "we" wins both within the hero and in the state.

“I, D-503, 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 wormed into an equation.

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

I felt fear, I felt trapped.

I unfastened myself from the earth and as an independent planet, rotating furiously, rushed down ...

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

There were two me. One I am the former, D-503, and the other ... Previously, he only

sticking his shaggy paws out of the shell. And now the whole one was crawling out ... And this

the other - suddenly jumped out ...

It's so nice to feel someone's keen eye, lovingly protecting from the slightest mistake.

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

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

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

Yes, and fog... I love everything, and everything is resilient, 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 no one has it, but I have ...

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

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

And I picked up I. I tightly pressed her to me and carried her. My heart was beating - huge, and with each beat it poured out such a violent, hot, such a joyful wave. And let there be something shattered to smithereens - all the same! If only to carry it like that, carry it, carry it ...

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

I am dissolved, I am infinitely small, I am a point...

There was a terrible dream, and it ended. And I, the coward, I, the 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 do not want salvation ...

“You probably have a drop of forest blood… Maybe that’s why I…”

No one hears me screaming: save me from this - save me! If

I had a mother - like the ancients: mine - that's exactly the mother. And so that for her - I do not

The builder of the "Integral", and not the number D-503, and not the molecule of the One State, but a simple human piece - a piece of her own - trampled, crushed, thrown away ... And let me nail or they nail me - maybe it's the same - so that her old woman's, wrinkled lips - -

I think I've always hated her, from the very beginning. I fought… But, no, no, don’t believe me: I could and didn’t want to be saved, I wanted to perish, that was dearest to me than anything… that is, not to perish, but that she…

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

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

The next day I, D-503, came 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 former illness (soul).

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

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

And I hope we win. More: I'm sure we will win. Because the mind 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, nevertheless looks at him with a distant look, ironically at him, then gradually their positions come closer: moral values which 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, law-abiding. They are easier to manage. Women's images have a stronger character. To all my

behavior challenges the I-330 One State. Not accepting

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

And how many more! And that woman who rushed through the line to one of the arrested, and those thousands who tried to vote "no" on the Day of Unanimity, and those who tried to capture the Integral, and those who blew up the Wall, those wild survivors of the Bicentennial War, calling themselves Mephi.

Zamyatin endows each of these heroes with some expressive feature: splashing lips and scissor lips, a double-curved back, an annoying 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 number.

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 a person's spiritual, emotional beginning. Why didn't this happen?

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

A person who has not been completely killed is trying to break out of the established framework and, perhaps, will find a place for himself in the expanses of the Universe. But the protagonist's neighbor seeks to prove that the universe is finite. The Unified State Science wants to enclose the Universe with a Green Wall. This is where the hero asks his main question: “Listen,” I pulled my neighbor. - Yes, listen, I tell you! You must, you must answer me, but where does your finite universe end? What's next?
16

Throughout the novel, the hero rushes between human feeling and duty to the One State, between inner freedom and the happiness of unfreedom. Love awakened his soul, his fantasy. A fanatic of the One State, he freed himself from its shackles, looked beyond the bounds of what was permitted: "And what's next?"

The novel is remarkable not only because the author already in 1920 was able to predict the global catastrophes of the twentieth century. The main question that he poses in his work is: 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 rebellion failed, I-330 hits the gas bell, the protagonist undergoes the Great Operation and coolly watches the death of his former lover. The finale of the novel is tragic, but does this mean that the writer does not leave us hope? I note: I-330 does not give up until the very end, D-503 is operated on by force, 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 One State, where the idea of a common life was embodied in “ideal lack of freedom”, and the idea of equality was embodied in universal leveling, where the right to be well-fed required the renunciation of individual freedom, Zamyatin denounced those who, ignoring the real complexity of the world, tried to artificially “Make happy people".

The novel "We" is a prophetic, philosophical novel. He is full of anxiety for the future. It sharply sounds the problem of happiness and freedom.

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 a personality, warn that one should not bow before "we", no matter how lofty words surround this "we". No one has the right to decide for us what our happiness lies in, no one has the right to deprive us of political, spiritual and creative freedom. And so we, today, decide what in our life

will be the main "I" or "We".

Many writers of the 20th century turned to the genre of dystopia. The dystopian genre flourished after the First World War, when, in the wake of revolutionary changes in some countries, they tried to translate utopian ideals into reality. Bolshevik Russia turned out to be the main one, therefore it is not surprising that the first great dystopia appeared here. In the 1920s, Leningrad by Mikhail Kozyrev, Chevengur and Pit by Andrei Platonov. Among foreign anti-socialist works, John Kendell's Future Tomorrow (1933) and Ayn Rand's Hymn (1938) stand out.

Another widespread theme of the anti-utopias of those years is 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, inhabited by genetically bred races of superhumans and their slaves. But the NSDAP arose only a year before that! Curious anti-fascist books are 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 got it. One of the peaks of dystopia is the novel Brave New World (1932) by Briton Aldous Huxley, which depicts a technocratic "ideal" caste state based on the achievements of genetic engineering. For the sake of suppressing social discontent, people are processed in special entertainment centers or with the active use of the soma drug. A variety of sex is strongly encouraged, but such concepts as "mother", "father", "love" are considered obscene. Human history has been replaced with a fake: the reckoning is from the Christmas of the American automobile magnate Henry Ford. In general, capitalism, brought to the point of absurdity ...

Attempts to build a "new society" were mercilessly ridiculed in the classic dystopias of another Briton - George Orwell. The scene of the story "Animal Farm" (1945) is a farm where "oppressed" animals, led by pigs, drive out their owners. The result - after the inevitable collapse, power passes to a cruel dictator. The novel "1984" (1948) shows the world of the near future, divided by three totalitarian empires, which 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 inhabitants are under vigilant

intelligence control. Of particular importance is the artificially created "Newspeak", which brings up 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 drawn here.

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

Today, dystopia continues to be a sought-after direction, in many respects interlocking with political fiction. After all, Western society, despite its glossy brilliance, is far from perfect, and the prospects for its development cause reasonable concern (Koushun Takami's Battle Royale, Charles Strauss's Accelerando). In Scott Westerfeld's Freaks trilogy, the world of the future is steeped in glamour: impeccable beauty is cultized, and anyone who tries to maintain their individuality becomes a pariah. Max Barry's anti-globalization fantasy Jennifer's Government depicts a world that is almost entirely under US rule. Do you think the flowering of democracy has begun? Dudki!

In America, a particular 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, the books of Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, Burgess have not disappeared from the lists of American bestsellers. Their fears turned out to be unfounded...

What awaits us in the future? Which way will mankind go? 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 person absolutely unbearable. These questions will always be relevant.

Conclusion

This research work is an analysis of the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin. It also includes a description of the genres of utopia and dystopia. It is possible to conduct a comparative analysis of the novel with other works of this genre.

References:

Wikipedia. Utopia. Dystopia.
Rudenko Oksana "Happiness without freedom or freedom without happiness - is there no third way?"
Tuzovsky I.D. Bright tomorrow? Dystopia of futurologies or futurology of dystopias. Chelyabinsk Academy of Culture and Arts. 2009

D-503 (D)- male "number", the main character-narrator, the author of the notes that make up the text of the novel; the position of the hero is twofold: he experiences spiritual evolution and at the same time registers with alarm the ongoing changes as undesirable (up to a certain point) deviations from the “norm”. D is an engineer and mathematician, designer and builder of the Integral spacecraft, whose name symbolizes the ultimate goal of the United State - "to integrate the infinite equation of the Universe." At the beginning of the novel, D appears as an unconditional adherent of the totalitarian ideology - "ideal unfreedom". At the same time, attention is drawn to his hairy hands - an atavism that is clearly opposed to the general "orderliness". Hearing 1-330 play on the piano, D cannot laugh at ancient music like the rest of the "numbers" and this worries him. He calms down only in the arms of 0-90. When soon I appoints him a date, D agrees, although the heroine "irritates, repels, almost frightens" him. In the Ancient House, the hero with fear feels "captured in the wild whirlwind of ancient life." However, he refuses to offer I to skip the obligatory lecture. The next morning, in the carriage of the underground road, D meets one of the Guardians (that is, an employee of the secret police), 8-4711, to whom he tells that he was from 1-330 in the Ancient House, although he does not make a formal denunciation. In the evening, intending to nevertheless make a denunciation, the hero meets 0-90, spends time with her, and the time allotted for the denunciation turns out to be lost. In a conversation with the poet K-13, D defends "knowledge"; however, the interlocutor says: “Your knowledge is the very thing - cowardice.<...>You just want to fence off the infinite with a wall, but you are afraid to look behind the wall.

In his notes, D tells about the accepted ritual of the execution of sentences on criminals against the One State: he sees in executions an analogue of the majestic sacrifices of ancient times. D receives a letter from I, who “signed up for him” (i.e., made the required request for a sexual relationship) and invites the hero to her place. Appearing to her, D under the influence of “temptation” for the first time clearly realizes his own “bifurcation”: “We, on earth, all the time walk over the bubbling, crimson sea of fire hidden there - in the belly of the earth. But we never think about it. And suddenly the thin shell under our feet would turn glass, suddenly we would see...<...>I became glassy. I saw - in myself, inside.<...>There were two me. One is me, the former one, D-503, numbered D-503, and the other... Previously, he only slightly stuck his shaggy paws out of the shell, but now he crawled out all over, the shell cracked, now it will shatter into pieces and ... what then? » However, realizing that in 5 minutes he should be at home (it is forbidden to appear on the streets after 22.30), the hero literally runs away from I. D spends a sleepless night and admits to himself: “I am dying. I am unable to fulfill my obligations to the One State." The hero experiences a crisis of faith and for the first time sees himself in the mirror in a detached way, as some kind of “him”. K-13 tells D the idea of his poem about the “returned paradise”, in which people of the United State now live, who do not distinguish between good and evil, like Adam and Eve. The poet's idea is full of irony in relation to a totalitarian society, but D takes the parodic eulogy for the true one. I calls the hero, makes an appointment with him, takes him to the Medical Bureau, where D receives a fictitious certificate of illness; then they fly to the Ancient Home, where their long-awaited rapprochement takes place. D returns home alone as I mysteriously disappears. 0-90, who came to the hero in the evening, tells him: “You are not the same, you are not the same, you are not mine!” D, who now lives not in the "reasonable", but in the "ancient, delusional" world, understands the justice of O's words, but cannot explain anything to her.

At his workplace, on the boathouse where the Integral is being built, D. feels that he, “a poisoned criminal, does not belong here,” since the idea of the One State (and, accordingly, the ship) has ceased to be the meaning of life for him. Without seeing I for several days, D wanders around her house and misses the start of the obligatory lecture. The hero tells the meeting "guardian" 8 that he is going to the Medical Bureau. 8 accompanies him; in Bureau D he meets a doctor he knows, who tells him: “Your business is bad! Apparently, you have formed a soul. Moreover, according to the doctor, an epidemic of this disease threatens humanity. The hero goes to the Ancient House along the Green or Glass Wall, which separates the ideal world of the One State from the "wild green ocean" - the realm of the natural elements. In the House, D looks for I, but sees 8 from the window. Trying to hide from him, D enters a wardrobe that turns out to be an elevator; descends into an underground corridor and meets a familiar doctor behind one of the doors. Appearing I takes the hero out into the street, making an appointment for the day after tomorrow. D finally realizes that mathematics cannot fully explain the world: the area of irrational numbers is associated for him with the "soul".

The hero receives a letter from O, who is ready to sacrifice her love for his well-being, as well as a note from I, which asks D to imitate a love date with her (draw down the curtains on the transparent walls). D is present at a lecture on "child-rearing" where he sees O but does not speak to her. Returning home, he finds O in his room: she is ready to part with him, but wants to have a child from him. D uses the "pink ticket" (permission for sexual intercourse) sent to him by I along with the note. A few days later, the hero again goes to the Ancient House; on the way he meets 8, who advises him to be careful. During the next mass walk, a certain woman tries to prevent the guard from beating a state criminal. D, who thinks that this woman is I, rushes to her aid; he manages to avoid arrest only thanks to the intervention of the same 8, who supposedly happened to be nearby. During a long-awaited date with I, for some reason, she asks D a question about how soon the "Integral" will be completed, and also hints at something that should happen on the Unanimous Day holiday. The hero compares this holiday, which he loves since childhood, with the "Easter" of the ancients; it is a day of demonstration of unanimity, when fictitious "elections" of the head of state - the Benefactor - are made. During elections, I defiantly votes "no"; saving her, the poet K carries I in his arms, but D, out of jealousy, tries to prevent him and saves the heroine himself. Writing down his impressions of this day, the hero reflects: “Have the saving age-old walls of the United State collapsed? Are we homeless again, in a wild state of freedom - like our distant ancestors? On the way to work, D sees "leaflets" on the walls with one word - "Mephi" (an obvious association with Mephistopheles). After work, meets with I in the corridor under the Ancient House; she leads D behind the Green Wall - into the realm of the "elements" and the forest people overgrown with wool. I introduces the hero to them as a like-minded person. Speaking to them, D, who has lost his head, shouts: "We must all go crazy, everyone must go crazy - as soon as possible!" The next day, having come to him, I reports that the city is preparing for some large-scale medical events. Looking at D's hairy hand, the heroine assumes that there must be "a few drops of sunny, forest blood" in him. To I's proposal to capture the Integral, D at first refuses, but then agrees.

Having learned about the forthcoming operation for all “numbers” to “remove fantasy”, D believes that this is the universal happiness he is looking for, however, after a meeting with I, he realizes that he “does not want salvation” without her. Before the test flight of the Integral, D sees the first column of operated patients on the street - people who have had their fantasy removed: "not people - but some kind of humanoid tractors." During the flight of the ship, D, realizing that the plot was uncovered by the Guardians, orders to stop the engines, trying to arrange a disaster, but his assistant manages to give another command, and the ship remains unscathed. The hero, who has barely come to his senses, is called to himself by the Benefactor - the head of the United State; he accuses D of preventing people from realizing the ancient dream of paradise, but the most terrible thing that the Benefactor says is for D the idea that I did not love him at all and that he was interested in the conspirators only as the builder of the Integral. The next day, an uprising begins in the city: the Wall is blown up, and the Forest advances. In the confusion, D cannot find I, but she herself comes to him. This is their last date, but the question of whether I loves him or not remains unresolved for the hero. Unable to bear the doubts, D runs to the Guardians' Bureau in the morning, where he successively tells 8 the whole story of his relationship with I; however, it turns out that he already knows everything. Deciding that 8 is also among the conspirators, D runs away and ends up in a public restroom, with his neighbor busy proving "the finiteness of the universe" mathematically, sitting with a notebook and a logarithmic dial in his hands. Shocked by "his firmness in this apocalyptic hour," D asks his neighbor for a paper on which he makes his last notes. At the same time, the question comes to his mind: “And where does your finite Universe end? What's next?" However, at this moment, D, like all those present, is grabbed by the guards; they are subjected to the "Great Operation". The last entry was made by the “new” hero: only handwriting has been preserved from the “former” one. The "new" D-503 is absolutely happy. The next day after the operation, he appeared to the Benefactor and told about everything without any moral difficulties. He calmly watched the torture to which I and the other conspirators were subjected. The hero believes that the uprising will be crushed. “I hope we win. More: I'm sure we will win. Because the mind must win."

1-330(I) - female "number", "demonic" temptress of the protagonist. Appearance features are characteristic: “thin, sharp, stubbornly flexible, like a whip”, figure, blood-colored lips, white and sharp teeth, “eyebrows raised at an acute angle to the temples”. The heroine embodies "archaic", from the point of view of the United State, ideas about love - passionate and painful. I makes an appointment with D in an auditorium where a lecture is given on the advantages of modern music; here, in front of the public, she plays the "ancient" instrument - the piano. A few days later, she invites D to the Ancient House; ironically quotes the hero's words about the "absurd, inconsiderate waste of human energy" in antiquity. Having changed, she appears before D in an "old" dress - that is, in the clothes of the beginning of the 20th century; invites him to stay with her - but he refuses, not daring to miss the lecture. After some time, I invites D to his place by letter. Half-jokingly, she tells him that since he did not denounce her in time, he is now in her hands. He puts on a seductive dress again, offers D alcohol strictly forbidden to the “numbers”. When the hero loses his temper from passion, I mockingly points to his watch: in five minutes he should be in his room; D runs away in confusion. On the phone, I again appoints him a date, takes him to the Ancient House, and there she gives herself to the hero. Then he disappears into a secret closet door. At the next meeting, I asks D if he will always remember her: she anticipates a close denouement. During the "elections" of Benefactor I demonstratively votes "against", but the poet K-13 and D save her from the wrath of the crowd and arrest. From that moment, according to the heroine, "everything known is over." I leads D behind the Glass Wall, where he introduces to the people of the forest. Later, having come to him, she says that after the Bicentennial War, part of the vanquished escaped destruction and went to the forests: “They learned there from trees, animals, birds, flowers, the sun. They were overgrown with wool, but under the wool they saved hot, red blood*. I calls his adherents "Mephi", or "anti-Christians". The heroine offers D to capture the Integral spacecraft during a test flight. D asks I to save 0-90, who is pregnant by him, and I ferries her over the Wall. During the flight of the "Integral" I with his supporters is also on the ship; when it turns out that the conspiracy has been uncovered, she accuses D of impatience of having denounced him - "fulfilled his duty." But when an uprising begins in the city, I comes to say goodbye to the hero, and for D it remains not entirely clear whether the heroine loved him or only used him as an obedient tool in a political game. When D, subjected to the "Great Operation", betrays all the conspirators, I is tortured in his presence, but she does not say a word; it is clear that, among others, she will be executed.

0-90 (O)- female "number"; at the beginning of the novel - the "permanent" sexual partner of the protagonist. The appearance of the heroine is associated with her "name"-initial: she is short, "round", pink and blue-eyed - reminiscent of a child. From the very beginning, the dominant quality is emphasized in the character of the heroine: she is in the power of maternal instinct and passionately wants to have a child, which she has no right to under the laws of the One State. Having learned about D's affair with 1-330, O, in love with him, realizes that D no longer "belongs" to her; she writes to the hero that she loves him and that is why she is ready to refuse him (“remove her record”) so as not to interfere with him being with I. the table of a child in danger of falling. On the evening of that day, she comes to D and says that she wants a child from him, despite the prospect of being executed. D fulfills her request, using the "pink ticket" received from I as a "guide" document. Some time later, meeting D, O announces that she is pregnant. D decides to seek help from I; Jealous of her, Oh refuses help, but then agrees to do anything to save the child. D gives her a note to I, and O is saved. The child that is to be born to her symbolizes the hope of victory over the totalitarian utopia.

Writing

D-503, D - male "number", the main character-narrator, author of the notes that make up the text of the novel; the position of the hero is twofold: he experiences spiritual evolution and at the same time registers with alarm the ongoing changes as undesirable (up to a certain point) deviations from the “norm”. D is an engineer and mathematician, designer and builder of the Integral spacecraft, whose name symbolizes the ultimate goal of the United State - "to integrate the infinite equation of the Universe." At the beginning of the novel, D appears as an unconditional adherent of the totalitarian ideology - "ideal unfreedom". At the same time, attention is drawn to his hairy hands - an atavism that is clearly opposed to the general "orderliness". Hearing I-330 playing the piano, D can't laugh at ancient music like the rest of the "numbers" and it worries him. He calms down only in the arms of the O-90. When soon I sets up a date with him, D agrees, although the heroine "annoys, repels, almost frightens" him. In the Ancient House, the hero with fear feels "captured in the wild whirlwind of ancient life." However, he refuses to offer I to skip the obligatory lecture. The next morning, in the carriage of the underground road, D meets one of the Guardians (i.e., a secret police officer), S-4711, to whom he tells that he was from I-330 in the Ancient House - although he does not make a formal denunciation. In the evening, intending to nevertheless make a denunciation, the hero meets 0-90, spends time with her, and the time allotted for the denunciation turns out to be lost. In a conversation with a poet, R-13 D defends "knowledge"; however, the interlocutor says: “Your knowledge is the very thing - cowardice, you just want to fence off the infinite with a wall, but you are afraid to look behind the wall.”

In his notes, D tells of the customary ritual for the execution of sentences against criminals against the One State: he sees in executions an analogue of the majestic sacrifices of ancient times. D receives a letter from I, who "signed up for him" (i.e., made the required request for a sexual relationship) and invites the hero to her place. Appearing to her, D, under the influence of “temptation”, for the first time clearly realizes his own “bifurcation”: “We, on earth, all the time walk over the bubbling, crimson sea of fire hidden there - in the belly of the earth. But we never think about it. And suddenly the thin shell under our feet would turn glass, suddenly we would see... I became glass. I saw - in myself, inside ... There were two of me. One is me, the former one, D-503, numbered D-503, and the other... Previously, he only stuck his shaggy paws out of the shell, but now he crawled out all over, the shell cracked, now it will shatter into pieces and... what then? » However, realizing that in five minutes he should be at home (it is forbidden to appear on the streets after 22.30), the hero literally runs away from I. D spends a sleepless night and admits to himself: “I am dying. I am unable to fulfill my obligations to the One State." The hero experiences a crisis of faith and for the first time sees himself in the mirror distantly, as some kind of “him”. R-13 tells D the idea of his poem about the "returned paradise", in which people of the United State now live, who do not distinguish between good and evil, like Adam and Eve. The poet's idea is full of irony in relation to a totalitarian society, but D takes the parodic panegyric as true. I calls the hero, sets up a date with him, takes him to the Medical Bureau, where D receives a fictitious medical certificate; then they fly to the Ancient Home, where their long-awaited rapprochement takes place. D returns home alone as I mysteriously disappears. 0-90, who came to the hero in the evening, tells him: “You are not the same, you are not the same, you are not mine!” D, who now lives not in the "reasonable", but in the "ancient, delusional" world, understands the validity of O's words, but cannot explain anything to her.

At his workplace - on the boathouse where the "Integral" is being built, D feels that he, "a poisoned criminal, does not belong here", since the idea of the One State (and, accordingly, the ship) has ceased to be the meaning of life for him. After not seeing I for several days, D wanders around her house and misses the start of the obligatory lecture. The hero tells the meeting "guardian" S that he is going to the Medical Bureau. S accompanies him; in Bureau D he meets a doctor he knows, who tells him: “Your business is bad! Apparently, you have formed a soul. Moreover: according to the doctor, an epidemic of this disease threatens humanity. The hero goes to the Ancient House along the Green or Glass Wall, which separates the ideal world of the United State from the "wild green ocean" - the realm of the natural elements. In the House, D looks for I, but sees from S's window. Trying to hide from him, D enters a wardrobe that turns out to be an elevator; descends into an underground corridor and meets a familiar doctor behind one of the doors. Appearing I takes the hero out into the street, making an appointment for the day after tomorrow. D finally realizes that mathematics cannot fully explain the world: the area of irrational numbers is associated for him with the "soul".

During a long-awaited date with I, for some reason, she asks D a question about how soon the "Integral" will be completed, and also hints at something that should happen on the Unanimous Day holiday. The hero compares this holiday, which he loves since childhood, with the Easter of the ancients; it is a day of demonstration of unanimity, when fictitious "elections" of the head of state - the Benefactor - are made. During elections, I defiantly votes "no"; saving her, the poet R carries I in his arms, but D, out of jealousy, tries to prevent him and saves the heroine himself. Writing down his impressions of this day, the hero reflects: “Have the saving age-old walls of the United State collapsed? Are we homeless again, in a wild state of freedom - like our distant ancestors? On the way to work, D sees “leaflets” on the walls with one word “Mephi” (an obvious association with Mephistopheles). After work, meets with I in the corridor under the Ancient House; she leads D beyond the Green Wall - into the realm of the "elements" and the furry forest people. I introduces the hero to them as a like-minded person. Speaking to them, D, who has lost his head, shouts: "We must all go crazy, we must all go crazy - as soon as possible!" The next day, having come to him, I reports that the city is preparing for some large-scale medical events. Looking at D's hairy hand, the heroine suggests that it must have "a few drops of sunny, forest blood" in it. To I's proposal to capture the "Integral", D at first refuses, but then agrees.

Having learned about the forthcoming operation to “remove fantasy” for all “numbers”, D believes that this is the universal happiness he is looking for, however, after a date with I, he realizes that he “does not want salvation” without her. Before the test flight of the Integrad, D sees the first column of operated patients on the street - people who have had their fantasy removed: "not people - but some kind of humanoid tractors." During the flight of the ship, D, realizing that the plot was uncovered by the Guardians, orders to stop the engines in an attempt to arrange a disaster, but his assistant manages to give another command, and the ship remains unscathed. The hero, who has barely come to his senses, is summoned to himself by the Benefactor - the head of the United State; he accuses D of preventing people from realizing the ancient dream of paradise, but the most terrible thing that the Benefactor says is for D the idea that I did not love him at all and that he was only interested in the conspirators as the builder of the Integral. The next day, an uprising begins in the city: the Wall is blown up, and the Forest advances. In the confusion, D cannot find I, but she herself comes to him. This is their last date, but the question of whether I loves him or not remains unresolved for the hero. Unable to bear the doubts, D runs to the Guardians' Bureau in the morning, where he tells S the whole story of his relationship with I in succession; however, it turns out that he already knows everything. Deciding that S is also among the conspirators, D runs away and ends up in a public bathroom, with his neighbor busy proving "the end of the universe" mathematically, sitting with a notebook and a logarithmic dial in his hands. Shocked by "his firmness in this apocalyptic hour", D asks a neighbor for the paper on which he makes his last notes. At the same time, the question comes to his mind: “And where does your finite Universe end? What's next?" However, at this moment, D, as well as everyone present, is grabbed by the guards; they are subjected to the "Great Operation". The last entry was made by the “new” hero: only handwriting has been preserved from the “former” one. The "new" D-503 is absolutely happy. The next day after the operation, he appeared to the Benefactor and told about everything without any moral difficulties. He calmly watched the torture to which I and the other conspirators were subjected. The hero believes that the uprising will be crushed. “I hope we win. More: I am sure - we will win. Because the mind must win."

Other writings on this work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

genre

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

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

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

About what?

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

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

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

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

Main characters and their characteristics

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

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

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

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

State in a dystopia

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

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

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

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

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

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

Problems

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

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

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

The meaning of the novel

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

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

Criticism

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

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

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

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