You Are, “We” Are

You’ve heard of communism right? Very popular in Russia and a few other countries. Now here’s something slightly less known: Marxism. This is a concept very harshly shown in the book “We”, by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

It was created by a man named Carl Marx. He dreamed of a perfect society where no one was rich, no one was poor, there were no classes, and everyone was perfectly equal.

In the book, Zamyatin gives us an idea of what might happen if a society was controlled by a communistic government for too long. It gets out of hand. People have no emotions; no souls, as he quite often mentions. The people in the world are emotionless, unable to love. But individuality is human nature. It can’t be erased and it’s nowhere near that in this amazing, but semi-confusing book.

Could that possibly to happen to such a free society such as the U.S.? We have freedom; we can think whatever we want to think. We can love. We can express our feelings and we have rights to live without too much oppression. And we’re definitely used to it.

In Zamyatin’s biting satire, he uses Modernist color symbolism to decorate his prose and prod his (rather slow) plot along.

The book is uptight and boring at times, and the ending is down right shocking. Does it present the future of our own society? Could we be slowling moving towards this freedom-less society?