Banned Book Review: “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin
The former Soviet Union chose We as its first ever banned book, and it inspired George Orwell’s 1984. How good is it as a read?
“Ultimately, Zamyatin arranged for We to be smuggled to the West for publication. The outrage this sparked within the Party and the Union of Soviet Writers led directly to the State-organized defamation and blacklisting of Zamyatin and his successful request for permission from Joseph Stalin to leave his homeland. In 1937 he died in poverty in Paris.”
For two hundred years, nameless humanity lives within the confines of green walls, going by numbers, in the land where people never dream. They wake up when they are supposed to. 50 bites of food or else. Feelings are illogical for healthy individuals. Our leading man is D-503. Whoops. He has fallen for a seductive lady named I-330, who drinks and smokes, when romantic love is forbidden. Human beings are forced into an unnatural utopia under the guise of all choices leading to disarray. Can he ever escape his dystopian future Groundhog Day?
Call me spoiled for my fav book tied with Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, The Time Machine, being short and sweet in the right page length, We was a bit long for me covering what it had to say. The best impact could have been this same work as a novelette. The most recent printed edition of We is 221 pages. That doesn’t seem like a lot when I love reading long books and watching three hour plus movies. It is when this story loses the power over some filler words.
“And Homo Sapiens only then becomes Man in the complete sense of the word, when his punctuation includes no question marks, only exclamation points, commas and periods.”
“Of course it is clear that in order to establish the true meaning of a function, one must establish its limit. It is also clear that yesterday’s “dissolution in the universe” taken to its limit is death. For death is exactly the most complete dissolution of the self in the universe. Hence: L=f (D), love is the function of death.”
My other side of my brain says, “Don’t be ungrateful.” Looking back on some of the plotless books I’ve read, vintage science fiction dystopia anything is welcomed. We all worth reading for the literary gems hidden between slower paced descriptives. The writing is almost poetic in its tones, always relatable to us in our lives during this second day of the year 2024.
Some really dislike this book.
“We is often touted as the inspiration for Orwell’s 1984. Well, there’s a reason you always hear of 1984 and rarely (if ever) hear of We. That reason? We is a monotonously painful book that’s as easy to read as swallowing a handful of broken glass.
I wanted to like this book. I really, really did, but this story was bad. I mean really bad. (I finished the book and I still don’t know who or what those things with pink ears were.)
I struggled to get through this disjointed, nonsensical mess, whose author employed the use of ellipses throughout the manuscript like he was getting paid by the dot.”
OK, yes. Those pink ears and so many bits of the reading remain without clarification. I thought I was the only person confused by some of the vagueness until seeing Amazon has plenty of reviewers lining up their remarks with my feelings.
Others love We.
“From one bibliophile to any other bibliophile reading this, I highly recommend adding this book to your reading collection.”
I fall somewhere in the middle. I mildly liked but not loved We and must agree with the lower end reviews that the book’s flow is lacking. The ideas are brilliant enough to keep you around to finish it. The creative voice of books from past times I love died when everything new became Sex and the City knockoffs. Any book published before 1970 grabs my interest. As a reader, I remain wishing that Mr. Zamyatin explored the themes of a repressive world and its gaslighting deeper. Who are those humans split off from “mankind?” What is their world like, tell me in a few chapters of sci-fi passion? What can you tell me about your own world before you fell in love, D-503? Did you not once have uneasy feelings towards life by literal clockwork ruled under The Tables? We’re left hanging. You don’t introduce people to this wonderfully scary alternate future and refuse to let us inside.
