We is a Russian dystopian novel written by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was published by E.P. Dutton in 1924 in New York after being translated into English by Gregory Zilboorg. The novel is set in the future, with its main character, D-503, living in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost completely in glass. The construction of the vicinity in glass helps the secret police spy on the public with ease.
The structure of the state is somewhat like the prison design idea made by Jeremy Bentham, also known as the Panopticon. The main motto of life is influenced by the F. W. Taylor theory, which is to increase productivity with the use of F. W. Taylor’s method.
People marched in sequence and wore the same attire. Numbers are used to refer to people rather than names. Society is under strict control, and the only thing that runs and is followed in society is through rigid control or reason.
Yevgeny Zamyatin
One thousand years after the One State took over the world, a spaceship named “Integral” was made to control other planets outside our solar system. D-503, the project’s chief engineer, starts writing a journal, which he intends to write in until the spaceship is completed.
Just like other residents D-503 lives in a glass apartment and is under strict watch by the secret police or Bureau of Guardians. D-503’s lover, O-90, has been tasked with visiting him on certain nights by One State.
People think that she is too short to have any children, and she is greatly dismayed by her status within society. Even though D-503 loves O-90, O-90 is in love with R-13, the best friend of D-503 and a state poet who reads his verse at public executions.
While on a walk, which the One State had assigned O-90 to go with D-503, he meets a woman named I-330. She smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and flirts with D-503; all these acts are considered illegal, according to One State.
D-503 tries not to get attracted to I-330, who invites him to the Ancient House, known for being the only non-transparent building in One State, except for having windows. Items that are artistic and historically valuable are kept there. There, I-330 introduces him to a corrupt doctor to write why he is absent from work. While leaving D-503, he promises to disclose I-330’s secret to the Bureau of Guardians but later turns down his vow to himself.
