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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
I love the context this book gives to 1984 and Brave New World. Would be a fascinating addition to a SciFi Unit or Semester long class. Is all SciFi dystopian? Why can't we imagine a better life for ourselves?
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Mixed on the book overall, but some great quotations about love are in it.
as the progenitor of a genre i’ve long held fascination for (after cutting my teeth on The Hunger Games / the general slew of dystopian lit featuring 16-year-old girl protagonists that were at the height of their popularity when i was a 16-year-old girl) – We has been on my list for YEARS. Vonnegut’s words about the book – to the effect of “Huxley ripped off Zamyatin in Brave New World, so i ripped him off in Player Piano” – remain amusing to me years after i first read them.
placing We in this context, i can’t say it disappointed – it was incredibly novel for its time. the internal logic of its world is impressive without being overcomplicated, and based on the compelling tenet that “reason must win.” i really loved that it took on the idea that there could be no “final revolution” – i doubt Zamyatin could have felt any other way, being under the Soviet regime at this juncture (unfortunately, i think Snowball and Napoleon before getting to Trotsky and Stalin, but yes – that set of events / Animal Farm shows that uprising must be cyclical)
i found the writing a little frustrating; flowery in a way that wasn’t beautiful and vague in a way that undercut its own action, both despite the narrator’s purported fondness for mathematical precision. (on second thought, perhaps the writing then serves to record his devolution away from the precise into having a soul and an imagination.) as a result, i simply didn’t feel grounded or immersed through it all.
there’s a lot more i want to do in terms of comparative analysis with later dystopian works / tracing its influence on them, but i’ll probably get to that later because this was an exhausting read. maybe i’ll finally watch Metropolis now too
placing We in this context, i can’t say it disappointed – it was incredibly novel for its time. the internal logic of its world is impressive without being overcomplicated, and based on the compelling tenet that “reason must win.” i really loved that it took on the idea that there could be no “final revolution” – i doubt Zamyatin could have felt any other way, being under the Soviet regime at this juncture (unfortunately, i think Snowball and Napoleon before getting to Trotsky and Stalin, but yes – that set of events / Animal Farm shows that uprising must be cyclical)
i found the writing a little frustrating; flowery in a way that wasn’t beautiful and vague in a way that undercut its own action, both despite the narrator’s purported fondness for mathematical precision. (on second thought, perhaps the writing then serves to record his devolution away from the precise into having a soul and an imagination.) as a result, i simply didn’t feel grounded or immersed through it all.
there’s a lot more i want to do in terms of comparative analysis with later dystopian works / tracing its influence on them, but i’ll probably get to that later because this was an exhausting read. maybe i’ll finally watch Metropolis now too
Read this for a “Slavic Sci-Fi” class, and while I certainly appreciate all of its merits, and its place in the dystopian canon, I don’t think it’s the book for me. I really liked a lot of what it was setting up, and I commend it for being a pioneer in the way of dystopian fiction, it is very obvious to see its parallels with “1984” and “Brave New World”. However, as far as personal tastes go, it just wasn’t my favorite. I thought the presentation of gender was pretty horrid, and that is with me taking into account the fact that this is a very blatant satire and the characters are meant as ideologic stand-ins rather than “actual people”, but it bothered me all the same. Additionally, the writing style was not one I got along with well. I liked the almost piecemeal, dream-like quality it had at points, but I think some of the themes and symbolism was just done too heavy handedly for my taste and it really started to grate on me.
Overall, this is one of those “classics” where I get something out of it contextually and have more of an appreciation for rather than a personal inclination towards. Either way, glad to have finally read it!
Overall, this is one of those “classics” where I get something out of it contextually and have more of an appreciation for rather than a personal inclination towards. Either way, glad to have finally read it!
as a whole very good!! however would recommend that anyone who wants to read this book get the copy with the extra reviews and essays- they definitely add to the experience.
I’m really torn about this book. Partly, I’m upset that I didn’t know how hugely it impacted Orwell’s conceptual development of 1984. There are soooo many common plot points, societal rules, characters, and motifs. It truly boggles the mind. In some ways, I feel I have to give the book credit for helping to manifest 1984, which I feel is so important, and at the same time, my opinions on the originality of 1984 are certainly diminished now from knowing this exists and being familiar with it. With that said, there are many things that make this book hard to follow and detract from its success. Though it’s very clear why an author would choose to use a letter/number combo for character names (to accentuate their dehumanizing effect), because the characters don’t have names, it took me til the very end of the book to actually understand and recall who was being spoken about in the scenes. Besides that, the casual racism used in describing a character who was supposedly the protagonist’s best friend was hard to stomach. If I wasn’t committed to reading the book for my own dystopian literary knowledge, I would have left off many times. Besides that, the audio version I listened to had several excellent essays, the best of which was Ursula Le Guin’s which came at the end and contemplated the censorship the author experienced and what censorship means and how it functions in different societies.
Timing in my life dealt Zamyatin an unfair hand: by the time I read We, I had already read both Brave New World and 1984, and had also been intimately familiar with Isaiah Berlin's philosophical explorations on pluralism, totalitarianism, and the impossibility of a Platonic ideal. The former books had an all-too-familiar plot, and Berlin's philosophical essays were much more satisfying and thorough than Zamyatin could weave into a plot-driven novel. Thus, this book didn't bring much to the table to me. I also thought Zamyatin's writing was a bit disjointed.
And yet--there is truth here. It resides in one of the novel's most central themes: that the essence of man -- of life itself -- is our freedom to choose our destiny. Happiness by formula, by reasoned calculation that admits no personal oddities nor irrational emotions, is impossible. We find that these irrational emotions at once have the power to devastate our lives, and immeasurably enrich it nonetheless. For this is why we choose freedom; this is why calculated happiness (and with it, the ideal of static Utopian societies stretching back to Plato) is nonexistent. The essence of humanity is freedom. It is only through this freedom--freedom to make badly measured choices, freedom to always lead self-revolutions and realizations, freedom to define and re-define meaning--that we weep, rejoice, find our gods, and love life for all we can make it worth.
Life resists classification into mathematically precise, logical, interrelated, perfectly locking units. Ideals and values--often held within a single individual--clash and fail to meet mutually satisfying ends. The totalitarian One State attempts to force such a calculated pattern on its subjects: "To unbend the wild, primitive curve and straighten it to a tangent--an asymptote--a straight line." Inevitably, the repression of primitive, innate human nature fails, as it always has and always will.
Add in that Zamyatin created this first dystopian novel with no precedent, with only his frightening, rapidly 'progressing' homeland Russia to garner inspiration from, and I can't deny it: I'm impressed.
F*ck future Soviet Realism. Stalin can read it and weep.
And yet--there is truth here. It resides in one of the novel's most central themes: that the essence of man -- of life itself -- is our freedom to choose our destiny. Happiness by formula, by reasoned calculation that admits no personal oddities nor irrational emotions, is impossible. We find that these irrational emotions at once have the power to devastate our lives, and immeasurably enrich it nonetheless. For this is why we choose freedom; this is why calculated happiness (and with it, the ideal of static Utopian societies stretching back to Plato) is nonexistent. The essence of humanity is freedom. It is only through this freedom--freedom to make badly measured choices, freedom to always lead self-revolutions and realizations, freedom to define and re-define meaning--that we weep, rejoice, find our gods, and love life for all we can make it worth.
Life resists classification into mathematically precise, logical, interrelated, perfectly locking units. Ideals and values--often held within a single individual--clash and fail to meet mutually satisfying ends. The totalitarian One State attempts to force such a calculated pattern on its subjects: "To unbend the wild, primitive curve and straighten it to a tangent--an asymptote--a straight line." Inevitably, the repression of primitive, innate human nature fails, as it always has and always will.
Add in that Zamyatin created this first dystopian novel with no precedent, with only his frightening, rapidly 'progressing' homeland Russia to garner inspiration from, and I can't deny it: I'm impressed.
F*ck future Soviet Realism. Stalin can read it and weep.
Okay; yes it’s a sci fi classic, will i read it again? Probably not. Will i read analysis of it ? Yes! Glad i read it but ,,, the narrator drove me crazy & also has mommy issues . U get one old ass mf who starts talking about his mom & how he sees his “mom” in every woman he has sex with but also treats every woman kinda poorly bc he is so self absorbed,,,, cooked … men never change ,,, even in a universe you create yourself </3