Thursday, June 10, 2010

WE: Record Two- Ballet. Quadratic Harmony. X.


WE  Yevgeny Zamyatin


In Record Two of the novel We, a dichotomy is produced. D-503 describes the spring almost poetically, 'the wind brings the yellow-honey dust from a flower of some kind. This sweet dust parches your lips'. However this poetic description conflicts with D-503's idea of 'logical reasoning'. This is also reinforced when he criticizes the poets who write about 'such stupid, sloppy, silly-lingering clumps of vapour', when he is using poetic features to describe the machine. For example, he personifies the machine: 'perforating machine curtsied, keeping time with some inaudible music'.
Also this machine D-503 so passionate about demonstrates the contrast between the unknown wild beyond the Green Wall and the One State city itself. The citizens of the One State view the world beyond the Green Wall as a 'wild' and 'invisible', whereas, to them, One State is full of 'marvellous expressions of mathematical equality', so 'absolute' and has 'perfect non-freedom'. The use of 'perfect non-freedom' is very ironic because from our (reader's) point-of-view, 'non-freedom' can never be 'perfect'; being restricted and controlled over everything we do is not our idea of a perfect world.

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