INTRODUCTION

SECTION 1. Utopia and Anti-Utopia. BIOGRAPHY OF E. ZAMYATIN

1.1 Definition of genres

1.2 The history of the development of the genres of utopia and dystopia

1.3 Genres of utopia and dystopia in Russian literature

1.4 The work of Yevgeny Zamyatin during the writing of the novel "We"

SECTION 2. ARTISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE NOVEL "WE"

2.1 The meaning of the name "We"

2.2 Theme of the piece

2.3 Problems of the novel

2.4 Features of the dystopia genre in E.I. Zamyatina "We"

2.5 The idea of ​​the dystopia "We"

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

The work of Yevgeny Zamyatin "We" was not known to the mass Soviet reader, since at first it was published abroad, and its printing was generally prohibited in the Soviet Union. For the first time in Russian, the novel was published in New York in 1952, and its first publication in the USSR took place in 1988 in the Znamya magazine. Despite the persecution and "persecution" of the authorities, the work is the "ancestor" of the dystopia of the twentieth century.

Relevance of the topic: Evgeny Zamyatin, when he wrote the novel "We", tried to look into the future and show us what technical progress can lead to. And, although the text also traces the theme of the possible consequences of socialist power, we are still closer to the first of them, moreover, in the work both topics are considered as one.

At present, we are already very close to the future depicted by Zamyatin, and we can see that the author was right: technology is improving, it replaces human relations for us: computers, televisions, game consoles replace friends and relatives for us, every year it is more and more absorbs the person more. People become less receptive to what surrounds them, feelings are distorted, emotionality decreases, dependence on technological progress really makes them look like robots. Perhaps, with a similar development of further events, in our world the soul will also become a relic that can be removed with the help of a special operation. And someone can use it for their own purposes, thus becoming a "Benefactor", subjugating the entire human society, which will also be a single mechanism. And if people do not stop, then Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopia may become a reality.

Purpose of the study: to trace the features of the dystopia genre in the text of the novel "We" by Evgeny Zamyatin.

Research objectives :

Define the genres of utopia and dystopia, compare them;

Prove that E.I. Zamyatin's "We" is a dystopia;

Determine the theme and idea of ​​the work;

Consider the problems that the author raises in the novel "We";

Draw conclusions.

Object of study: dystopia by Evgeny Zamyatin "We".

Subject of study: artistic features of the anti-utopia "We".

Research methods: in the search and collection of factual material, the hypothetical-deductive method was used; when comparing the genres of utopia and dystopia - the method of opposition; and also the method of artistic analysis was applied (when considering the theme and idea of ​​the work, when searching for features characteristic of dystopia in the novel).

CHAPTER 1. Utopia and Anti-Utopia. BIOGRAPHY OF E. ZAMYATIN

1.1 Definition of genres

"Utopia(Greek τοπος - “place”, υ-τοπος - “not a place”, “a place that does not exist”) - a genre of fiction close to science fiction, describing a model of an ideal, from the point of view of the author, society "; "a work depicting fiction, a pipe dream » .

The term comes from the title of Thomas More's book The Golden Book, as useful as it is amusing, on the best arrangement of the state and on the new island of Utopia (1516).

“Literary U. is a genre in which the figures of a narrator visiting a utopian society and his guide are obligatory. Centuries-old history has added to this scheme only various details dictated by the imagination of the artists.”

The main distinguishing feature of utopia, its specificity, is that its creation did not take into account the limitations of the real world. In particular, the historical background.

Fiction is an important element of utopia. “The authors of utopian novels have always boldly used the techniques of fantastic description. But nevertheless, utopia, as a traditional and fairly definite art form, differs from purely fantastic literature or modern science fiction, which by no means always deals with the construction of a possible image of the future. Utopia also differs from folk legends “about a better future”, since it is ultimately the product of individual consciousness. Utopia also differs from satire (although it very often includes a satirical element), since, as a rule, it criticizes not any separate specific phenomenon, but the very principle of social organization. Finally, it also differs from futurological projects, as it is a work of art that is not directly reducible to a certain social equivalent and always carries the author's likes and dislikes, tastes and ideals.

In the world of utopia, they live according to their own laws and principles. But these laws and principles have a tangible impact on our lives. “Capturing the imagination of major statesmen and ordinary citizens, penetrating into the program documents of political parties and organizations, into the mass and theoretical consciousness, overflowing into the slogans of popular movements, utopian ideas become an integral part of the cultural and political life of society. And therefore, the object of study.

"Dystopia, dystopia, negative utopia, the image (usually in thin prose) of dangerous, harmful and unforeseen consequences associated with building a society that corresponds to one or another social ideal. A. arises and develops as the utopian is consolidated. traditions common. thoughts, often playing the role of a necessary dynamic in their own way. a corrective to a utopia, always somewhat static and withdrawn.

Sometimes next to the term "dystopia" is found - "dystopia". For a better understanding of the meaning of the meaning of the first, it is worth comparing them:

“In the mid-1960s, the term “anti-utopia” (anti-utopia) appeared in Soviet, and later in English-language criticism. It is believed that the English anti-utopia and English. dystopia - synonyms. There is also a point of view (both in Russia and abroad) that distinguishes between dystopia and dystopia. According to her, while dystopia is "the victory of the forces of reason over the forces of good", the absolute antithesis of utopia, dystopia is only a negation of the principle of utopia, representing more degrees of freedom. However, the term dystopia is much more widespread and is usually meant in the sense of dystopia.

In these definitions, dystopia acts as a separate genre. But there are other views, according to which it is only a parody of the utopian genre or an anti-genre:

dystopia (gr. anti- against, utopia- utopia) - a parody of the genre of utopia or a utopian idea; like satire, it can give originality to a variety of genres: a novel, a poem, a play, a story. If utopians offered humanity a recipe for salvation from all social and moral troubles, then anti-utopians, as a rule, offer the reader to figure out how a simple layman pays for universal happiness.

“Dystopia is an anti-genre.<…>The specificity of anti-genres lies in the fact that they establish parodic relations between anti-genre works and works and traditions of another genre - the genre being ridiculed.<…>

However, anti-genres do not necessarily follow patterns, that is, recognized sources, since the larger tradition of literary parody may generate patterns.<…>

The presence of several types of antigenres suggests that subgenres may have their own classic texts and patterns. Thus, the followers of Zamyatin turned his "We" into a model of modern "dystopia" - a type of dystopia that exposes utopia, describing the results of its implementation, unlike other dystopias that expose the very possibility of realizing utopia or the stupidity and fallacy of the logic and ideas of its preachers.

O difference between dystopia and utopia

Dystopia is a logical development of utopia and formally can also be attributed to this direction. However, if the classical utopia focuses on demonstrating the positive features of the social order described in the work, then the dystopia seeks to reveal its negative features. Thus, the difference between utopia and dystopia is only in the point of view of the author.

“An important feature of utopia is its static nature, while dystopia is characterized by attempts to consider the development of the described social devices. Thus, dystopia works usually with more complex social patterns.”

"Formally, dystopia diagnoses the future, but diagnoses it from the present and, essentially, the present."

“As a form of social fantasy, utopia relies mainly not on scientific and theoretical methods of cognizing reality, but on imagination. A number of features of utopia are associated with this, including such as a deliberate separation from reality, the desire to reconstruct reality according to the principle “everything should be the other way around”, a free transition from the real to the ideal. In utopia, there is always an exaggeration of the spiritual principle, in it a special place is given to science, art, education, legislation and other factors of culture. With the advent of scientific communism, the cognitive and critical significance of the classic positive utopia begins to gradually decline.

Of greater importance is the function of a critical attitude to society, primarily to the bourgeois one, which is taken over by the so-called negative utopia, a new type of literary utopia that took shape in the second half of the 19th century. A negative utopia, or dystopia, differs sharply from a classical, positive utopia. Traditional classical utopias meant a figurative representation of an ideal, desired future. In a satirical utopia, a negative utopia, a warning novel, it is no longer an ideal future that is described, but rather an undesirable future. The image of the future is parodied, criticized. This does not mean, of course, that with the appearance of negative utopias, utopian thought itself disappears or devalues, as, for example, the English historian Chad Walsh believes.<…>

The writing

Roman E.I. Zamyatin "We" in its genre belongs to dystopias. Such works were born in literature as a response to the utopias that existed in world culture in the time of Plato. At the heart of any utopia lay the dream of universal happiness and prosperity, as well as the idea that this can be achieved by organizing the life of society on rational principles. The utopians believed in the power of the human mind and believed that all the evil in the world came from unreason. But their dreams in the embodiment were unrealizable. A mind devoid of a good heart turned out to be more terrible than stupidity. This idea was defended by the creators of dystopias.

In the plot of the works of G. Wells, F. Kafka, J. Orwell, E. Zamyatin, we find, in fact, the same features as in the utopias of T. More, J. Swift, T. Campanella, N.G. Chernyshevsky. As a rule, a closed system is described, a state where a happy society is being built. Citizens of such an isolated country are divided into certain categories. It is logical to assume that if people do not fit into the artificial ideal system, do not appreciate the created "happiness", then they should be expelled. Dystopian writers show what happens when a person appears whose idea of ​​happiness conflicts with the general idea. Then the system loses its balance, and in an attempt to restore it, it is forced to either destroy the source of the failure, or adapt it for itself, re-educate, break it. Thus, a dystopia always contains a conflict between the individual and the system.

The United State of the novel "We" arose after a 200-year war and took the science of mathematics, the most abstract of the exact sciences, as the basis of its ideology. A “formula of happiness” was derived: in the numerator - bliss, and in the denominator - envy. According to her, the "size" of happiness depends on the magnitude of bliss, that is, the satisfaction of needs, the absence of suffering. However, it is never possible to fully satisfy a person, which means that one should strive not to increase the numerator in the formula - bliss, but to decrease the denominator - envy. That is, it is necessary to equalize everyone so that there is nothing to envy. Taking into account the fact that the heroes of the novel were perceived by the authorities as biological and rational beings, their needs were divided from the point of view of physiology and reason. The main physiological need for food was solved in an elementary way: oil bread was invented. Behind this metaphor is a comparison of a person with a mechanism, in addition, one cannot overeat with “oil” food, one cannot enjoy it, one can only get enough in order to be efficient. The clothes are also the same for everyone, housing is transparent, even the desire to love is satisfied for the citizens of the United State by coupons in the order of priority, that is, on the basis of absolute equality. The concepts of spiritual closeness and family are excluded, because the family, as a cell of society, assumes the existence of its own laws, and this can become a source of envy. As a result, the biggest problem is overcoming natural laws, for example, the existence of classical noses and cube noses. But they are also trying to bring them to the sameness through natural selection. The need for work is classified as physiological, so the punishment is suspension from work, and the prestige of professions does not exist, since there are no privileges and wages. The information need is realized by lectures, which are also identical for the citizens of the United State. Thus, everything is rationalized, even the optimal number of chews when eating is calculated. The need for the Beautiful is understood as the desire for order. The train schedule is considered a masterpiece of ancient literature.

Everything in the One State was united by a common goal - the construction of the Integral, a spaceship in order to “integrate” (read - “conquer”) the entire Universe. Here, the age-old contradiction of the totalitarian system was manifested - its closeness and the desire for expansion, subjugation.

And in such a society a person appears who begins to doubt the happiness bestowed on him by the state. D-503 keeps a diary, which becomes the basis of the novel. If a person feels the need to put his thoughts on paper, then he is trying to understand, first of all, himself. This is usually prompted by some problem. It is interesting to observe how the style of the hero's notes gradually loosens up, there are more and more reticences, the word "clear" disappears, which will appear only in the last chapter. These changes are related to D-503's diagnosis that he has a soul, along with the appearance of I-330 in his life. The cunning heroine deliberately uses the entire arsenal of means to unbalance D-503, to destroy his usual picture of the world. She defiantly violates the accepted routine, brings him to the Old House, dresses in a dress, drinks and smokes, in a word, does everything that is forbidden, which can destroy health and cloud her mind, but gives rise to fantasy.

I-330 is a member of Mefi's organization, whose name suggests a parallel with Mephistopheles, only in contrasting hell and heaven it is not clear on which sides to place the United State and Mefi. The United State is similar to paradise in that both there and there a choice has already been made for a person, he does not belong to himself, and Mephistopheles tempts people to choose between good and evil. The portrait of I-330 gives us associations with a snake - a whip figure, sharp teeth, blind eyes.

The tragedy of the central hero of the novel is that, being freed from the power of the One State, he does not gain the desired freedom, since I-330 begins to manipulate him already in the interests of his organization. Behind the green wall, the D-503 is again being used as a tool, a human function. The feeling of being not one of the "numbers", but a human unit, an individuality is an illusion. In the struggle between two systems, a person finds himself as between two millstones. It is no coincidence that I. Brodsky liked to say that more communists hate anti-communists.

However, in Zamyatin's dystopia there is still a hero who has gained freedom. This is O-90. She always acted irrationally, but her love was able to overcome obstacles because she had the courage to make her desires come true, and not just cherish them in her imagination, like D-503. O-90 saves a child from a loved one, at first refuses the help of I-330, sensing a rival in her. Priority for the heroine in a society of universal rationality are the movements of the soul, not the mind. And this is the restrained optimism of the author. Zamyatin's favorite heroes have always been heretics who believe not in frozen dogmas, but in the voice of their hearts.

The finale of the work is quite contradictory, as in many dystopian novels. On the one hand, it is obvious that the One State will defeat the rebels, D-503 looks indifferently at the death of I-330. But a state that deprives its citizens of fantasy, that is, of striving for something new, self-destructs, since there are no those left in it who will contribute to progress, to moving forward. Everything around will develop. The universe is infinite, it cannot be conquered, infinity cannot be integrated. Thus, "We" ends with the beginning of the end of the One State.

Other writings on this work

"without action there is no life..." VG Belinsky. (According to one of the works of Russian literature. - E.I. Zamyatin. "We".) “The great happiness of freedom should not be overshadowed by crimes against the individual, otherwise we will kill freedom with our own hands ...” (M. Gorky). (Based on one or more works of Russian literature of the 20th century.) "We" and they (E. Zamyatin) Is happiness possible without freedom? (based on the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We") “We” is a dystopian novel by E. I. Zamyatin. "Society of the Future" and the Present in E. Zamyatin's Novel "We" Dystopia for anti-humanity (Based on the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We") The future of humanity The protagonist of the dystopian novel by E. Zamyatin "We". The dramatic fate of the individual in a totalitarian social order (based on the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin) E.I. Zamyatin. "We". The ideological meaning of the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" The ideological meaning of Zamyatin's novel "We" Personality and totalitarianism (based on the novel by E. Zamyatin "We") Moral problems of modern prose. According to one of the works of your choice (E.I. Zamyatin "We"). Society of the future in the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We" Why is E. Zamyatin's novel called "We"? Predictions in the works "The Pit" by Platonov and "We" by Zamyatin Predictions and warnings of the works of Zamyatin and Platonov ("We" and "The Pit"). The problems of the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" The problems of the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We" Roman "We" E. Zamyatina's novel "We" as a dystopian novel E. I. Zamyatin’s novel “We” is a dystopian novel, a warning novel A dystopian novel by E. Zamyatin "We" The meaning of the title of the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We" Social forecast in E. Zamyatin's novel "We" E. Zamyatin's social forecast and the reality of the 20th century (based on the novel "We") Composition based on the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" Happiness of the "number" and the happiness of a person (based on the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin) The theme of Stalinism in literature (based on the novels by Rybakov "Children of the Arbat" and Zamyatin "We") What brings together Zamyatin's novel "We" and Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel "The History of a City"? I-330 - characteristics of a literary hero D-503 (Second Option) - characterization of a literary hero O-90 - characterization of a literary hero The main motive of Zamyatin's novel "We" The central conflict, problems and the system of images in the novel "We" by E. I. Zamyatin "Personality and the State" in Zamyatin's work "We".

IS HE. Filenko

Russians are maximalists, and that's exactly what
what looks like a utopia
in Russia is the most realistic.
Nikolai Berdyaev

History started by a loser
who was mean and invented the future,
to take advantage of the real
moved everyone from their place, and he himself remained behind,
in settled habitation.
Andrey Platonov

George Orwell, who not without reason considered himself the successor to the author of We, accurately outlined the main feature of Zamyatin's originality in concluding his short but precise review of this novel. “Arrested by the tsarist government in 1906,” Orwell wrote, “in 1922, under the Bolsheviks, he ended up in the same prison corridor of the same prison, so he had no reason to admire contemporary political regimes, but his book is not just the result of bitterness. This is a study of the essence of the Machine - a genie, which a person thoughtlessly released from the bottle and cannot be driven back.

It is unlikely that by "Machine" Orwell meant only the uncontrolled growth of technology. "Machine", i.e. soulless and unrestrained, human civilization itself became in the 20th century. Orwell summed up the dystopia of the first half of the 20th century. already after the end of the Second World War (the review of "We" was written in 1946, and the novel "1984" - in 1948), he knew everything about the inhumanity of the "Machine", he knew both about Auschwitz and the Gulag.

And Zamyatin was the ancestor of the dystopia of the 20th century. In modern literary criticism, there is no doubt that the appearance of his novel "We" "marked the final formation of a new genre - dystopian novel.

Both Zamyatin, who wrote "We" in 1920, and Platonov, who wrote "Chevengur" in 1929, have not yet witnessed either loud statements that "we will not expect favors from nature", or even songs about as "we conquer space and time". But already the work of the “Brave New World Machine” (Aldous Huxley’s novel “Brave New World” was written in 1932) frankly begins with the conquest of space and time. “The first thing that catches your eye when reading “We,” wrote Orwell in 1946,<... >that Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World seems to owe part of its existence to this book.<...>The atmosphere of both books is similar and depicts, roughly speaking, the same type of society.<...>". Huxley undoubtedly read Zamyatin's novel, the first edition of which was carried out precisely in English translation (in 1924).

Dystopian space

In Russian, Zamyatin’s novel was not published during the author’s lifetime, “but the widespread circulation of the manuscript made it possible for critical responses to it to appear in the Soviet press” - of course, “mainly of a negative nature, later, in 1929, degraded to extremely simplified assessments-sentences of the novel as malicious and libelous” . Thus, without having accurate data that Platonov read "We" in handwritten samizdat, it can be assumed with a high degree of probability that he at least observed its defeat in Soviet criticism - and just in 1929, when he was finishing work on Chevengur.

One cannot but agree with the opinion of a modern German literary critic that “when comparing the novel by A. Platonov “Chevengur” with such works as “We” by Zamyatin and “1984” by Orwell, the genre structure of the Platonic novel seems much more complicated. "Chevengur" is much more difficult to classify as a dystopia, because it does not have an unambiguous satirical image of the utopian world, characteristic of Orwell and Zamyatin. But it is precisely the lack of "an unequivocal satirical image" in Platonov that makes his novel especially interesting for comparison with the dystopia of Zamyatin and his English followers. Indeed, in "Chevengur" we can observe, as it were, the natural transformation of Russian utopia into dystopia, traceable in all the main parameters of dystopian consciousness and genre.

The nature of the movement in dystopia

Any dystopia is divided into two worlds: the world where the "ideal" life is created, and the rest of the world. These worlds are separated from each other by an artificial barrier that cannot be overcome. At Zamyatin, this is a glass city behind the Green Wall, opposed to wild nature. Huxley has an entire ideal world and a reservation of savages left uncorrected. Orwell has the whole world and a group of dissenters scattered around it (that is, there is no special space where they live). In Chevengur, these two worlds are Chevengur itself and the rest of Russia, where people live in whose heads utopian thoughts are born, embodied in Chevengur. Chevengur is separated from the rest of the world by steppe and weeds: "Weeds surrounded the whole of Chevengur with close protection from lurking spaces in which Chepurny felt inhumanity".

Each of the two worlds has its own flow of time, so that a person who crosses the boundaries of the “ideal world”, goes into the “outer world”, gets lost in it (for example, Dvanov, living in Chevengur, did not notice that war communism had ended and the New Economic Policy had begun) .

In some novels, there is also a third space: the space where dissenters are exiled. In Brave New World they are referred to as remote islands, while in 1984 they are placed in a huge prison called the Ministry of Love. In "Chevengur" and "We" dissenters are destroyed.

Dystopia is characterized by a clash between the official movement (from the periphery to the center) and the unofficial (in the opposite direction). On the border with the ideal world - another world, into which entry is allowed only with passes (Huxley), generally prohibited (Zamiatin), impossible (Orwell). The state of the dystopian world can be called dynamic equilibrium: the elements can break through the boundaries of the ideal world at any moment, as happens with Zamyatin. Having broken through, the element also moves from the periphery to the center. The main character moves in the opposite direction. He leaves the center he hates to the outskirts of the city (Orwell), to the border - the Green Wall (Zamiatin), to the reservation of savages (Huxley). At the same time, the laws of life on the periphery (“Mephi”, savages, proles) are not analyzed and not subject to changes, even almost not observed. Dvanov also moves to the periphery from the center, but on the instructions of the center, but at some point Chevengur becomes the center of the universe, and all of Russia becomes a periphery.

The movements of the characters are chaotic due to a clear contradiction. Since their personal, innermost desire is a periphery, a forbidden border, beyond which there is another world, and necessity is the center, the consciousness of the heroes cannot cope with such a contradiction and the direction of movement is lost. Such are the feelings of the hero-narrator of “We” Zamyatin: “I don’t know where now, I don’t know why I came here ...”; "I've lost my steering wheel... and I don't know where I'm going..."

Time for dystopia

The "ideal world" of dystopia lives only in the present. In the "ideal world" of Huxley's dystopia, this is achieved with the help of a drug - the so-called "soma": "If a person accepts soma, time stops running ... Sweetly, a person will forget both what was and what will be." Remembering the past in Huxley's "brave new world" is not only forbidden, but not recommended, it is considered indecent and simply indecent. History is destroyed: "... A campaign against the Past has begun, museums are closed, historical monuments are blown up ... books published before the one hundred and fiftieth year of the Ford era are seized." The very story of "the Lord of their Ford" is called "solid nonsense."

For Platonov, time also stops in Chevengur: “The Chevengur summer was passing, time was hopelessly going back to life, but Chepurny, together with the proletariat and others, stopped in the middle of summer, in the middle of time ...”. In order to put an end to the past, the Chevengurs kill the “bourgeois”. After killing and burying the "bourgeois", they even scatter the excess earth so that there is no grave left. The heroes of Platonov consider the past "forever destroyed and useless fact."

In Orwell's "ideal world" there are no spatio-temporal landmarks: "Cut off from the outside world and from the past, a citizen of Oceania, like a person in interstellar space, does not know where is up, where is down." The goal of the authorities is "... to stop development and freeze history." The entire population of the three countries of the earth is working on the destruction and alteration of all documents testifying to the past in order to fit them into the present: "Daily and almost every minute the past was adjusted to the present." The same goal is pursued by the introduction of "newspeak". A really changing world is considered unchanged, and the Elder Brother is eternal. Party slogan: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past" - became a continuation of the story, which, according to Platonov, was started by a "mean loser" who invented the future in order to take advantage of the present.

In Zamyatin, one can find prototypes of all these confrontations with the past, described in subsequent anti-utopias. In We, the past of mankind is collected in an ancient house where you can learn history (this is not reprehensible, as in Huxley). History itself is divided into "prehistoric times" and unchanging modernity: cities surrounded by the Green Wall. Between them was the Bicentennial War.

It is similar in all the above-named novels to treat books as repositories of the past. At Zamyatin, historical monuments are being destroyed and "ancient" books are not being read. Huxley has those books locked up in the Steward's safe. Orwell translates them into Newspeak, thereby not only changing, but deliberately destroying their meaning.

Love and family - "a relic of the past"

The category of the past and therefore destroyed includes such concepts as love, family and parents. Love is abolished in all dystopias. The heroes of “Chevengur” refuse love as an element that interferes with the comradely union of people: “... There was always love for a woman in a past life and reproduction from her, but this was someone else’s and natural matter, and not human and communist ... »; "... it is the bourgeoisie who lives for nature: and multiplies, while the working man lives for his comrades: and makes a revolution." Even the proletariat will be born "not from love, but from fact."

The ideology of Orwell's world is closest to the ideology of Soviet society (no wonder, because Soviet society with its ideas has existed for 30 years already) and is, as it were, a continuation of the ideas of the Chevengurs, embodied in life: a family is needed only to create children (conception is "our party duty") ; "sexual intercourse should have been regarded as a nasty little procedure, like an enema"; aversion to sex was cultivated among young people (Youth Anti-Sex Union), even in clothing there are no gender differences. Love as a spiritual relationship between a man and a woman does not exist at all in the terrible world of Orwell, where there are no signs of sincerity. Therefore, the party does not fight love, not seeing it as its enemy: “The main enemy was not so much love as eroticism. - both in marriage and outside of it.

Why is love-eros not in demand in the communist society described by Orwell and Platonov? Orwell himself gives the answer: “When you sleep with a person, you waste energy; and then you're fine and don't care at all. This is for them - across the throat. They want the energy in you to rage constantly. All this marching, shouting, waving flags - just rotten sex. If you're happy on your own, why would you want to get turned on by Big Brother, three-year plans, two-minute hate, and other vile nonsense. There is a direct and intimate relationship between temperance and political orthodoxy. How else to heat up hatred, fear and cretinous gullibility to the required degree, if not tightly clogging up some mighty instinct so that it turns into fuel? Sexual attraction was dangerous for the party, and the party put it at its service.

Fathers and Sons

The same idea - the destruction of love as the basis of the family and the family as the connection between children and parents - pursues the same goal: the gap between the past and the future. But this goal is achieved in different ways in all four dystopias. The method of Orwell's inner party, as already mentioned, is a natural continuation of the ideas of the Chevengurs, and the methods of the heroes of Zamyatin and Huxley are the same: not to sublimate sex, but to separate it as a physiological component of love from its spiritual component. The result is the same: the inhabitants of the "brave new world" do not have the concept of "love": "... They have neither wives, nor children, nor loves - and, therefore, there are no worries ...". Sex (“sharing”) is normal and healthy. The word "love" is there, but it means "sex". If there is a need for emotional experiences, a substitute for violent passion is used (something like hormones in pills). In Zamyatin's glass world, love, as in Huxley's "brave new world", is replaced by sex. There is no family as such, only sexual partners.

The attitude of society to the concepts of "parents" and "children" is an indicator of attitudes towards the past and future. Children are, on the one hand, the future, which in an “ideal world” should not differ from the present, on the other hand, a connection with the past that must be broken. “In the worlds outlined by anti-utopians, the parental principle is excluded. ... The general idea is to start from scratch, breaking with blood tradition, cutting off organic continuity; after all, parents are the closest link in the past, so to speak, his “birthmarks”.

The gap between fathers and children occurs through the destruction of the family. In Huxley's novel, as in Zamyatin's novel, children are born artificially and brought up outside the family. In the glass world of Zamyatin, mothers who give birth without permission are killed, in the “brave new world” they are ridiculed. The words "mother" and "father" in the world created by Huxley are rude curses.

In Orwell's novel, children are born and grow up in families, but are brought up directly by society (educational organizations):

“Sex drive was dangerous for the party, and the party put it at its service. The same trick was done with parental instinct. The family cannot be cancelled; on the contrary, love for children, preserved almost in its former form, is encouraged. Children, on the other hand, are systematically set against their parents, taught to spy on them and report their deviations. In essence, the family has become an appendage of the thought police. An informer is assigned to each person around the clock - his close one.

In the near future, the party was going to finally separate children from parents:

“We have severed the bonds between parent and child, between man and woman, between one person and another. No one trusts a wife, a child, or a friend anymore. And soon there will be no wives and friends. We will take newborns from their mothers, just as we take eggs from under a laying hen.”

The Chevengur society does not provide for the presence of children and their upbringing. The Association of Chevengurians is called a family, and for the existence of this family it does not matter what the sex and age of its members are: "... What shall we do in the future communism with fathers and mothers?" Chevengur is inhabited by "others", about whom Prokofy says that they are "fatherless". Even women who came to Chevengur to create families should not become wives, but sisters and daughters of the “others”.

But it is impossible to destroy in a person the longing for kinship, the thirst for spiritual intimacy with a mother, father, son, daughter or spouse. This longing makes the Chevengurs look for wives, the heroes of Zamyatin and Orwell - yearn for their mothers: “If I had a mother - like the ancients: mine - that's it - mother. And so that for her I - not the builder of the "Integral", and not the number D-503, and not the molecule of the United State, but a simple human piece - a piece of her own ... ”, - the hero of the novel Zamyatin dreams. Huxley's heroes talk about the bodily closeness of mother and baby: “What a wonderful, close proximity of beings.<...>And what a power of feeling it must generate! I often think: perhaps we are losing something by not having a mother. And perhaps you lose something by losing motherhood.

This longing for kinship is part of the force that opens closed spaces and destroys the eternal present of dystopias; that force, thanks to which the past and the future burst into the "ideal" world. This power is the soul. Only its discovery can destroy the coherent concept of the utopian world and the utopian consciousness itself, which does not presuppose the existence of a soul. It is the discovery and manifestation of the soul that creates the plot dynamics that distinguishes dystopia from utopia.

Soul in dystopia

The soul is a special world with its own space and time (chronotope). Finding his own soul, the dystopian character becomes able to undermine the foundations and destroy the chronotope of the "ideal world" - the isolation of space and the static nature of time. In any case, to undermine ideologically.

The soul can either originate in a member of the "ideal society" (as in Zamyatin and Orwell), or come into the "ideal world" from the outside, like a savage from the reservation (as in Huxley), but in any case, the appearance of the soul is an invasion of a complex inner world into external, "ideally" simple. In the "ideal society" the inner world of a person is something superfluous, unnecessary and harmful, incompatible with this society.

In Zamyatin's novel, soul is "an ancient, long-forgotten word". The soul is when "the plane has become a volume, a body, a world." Thus, Zamyatin contrasts the “plane” of the mind with the “volume” of the soul.

There is a similar image in Platonov's novel "Chevengur": the heart (soul) is a dam that turns the lake of feelings into a long speed of thought behind the dam (and again contrasting the depth of the lake with the speed of the flow of thoughts). And in Huxley's novel, the soul is called a "fiction", which the savage "stubbornly considers to exist in reality and apart from the material environment ...".

L-ra: Russian language and literature in educational institutions. - 2004.- No. 2. - S. 38-51.

The problems of the novel

The two main problems that are raised in this work are the impact of the development of technology on humanity, as well as the problem of "totalitarianism". The remaining problems are already a product, a consequence of these two.

Let us consider what are the main problems in the dystopia “We” that V.A. Keldysh:

“Rational as a crime against humanity that destroys a living soul is one of the leitthemes of the novel. Intensively developing it, the author follows the long tradition of classical Russian literature. Another theme is especially in tune with our current environmental concerns. The "anti-society" depicted in "We" brings destruction to the nature of life, isolating man from nature."

Indeed, in this society, everyone is guided only by reason, emotions are suppressed, and what kind of emotions can we talk about if the soul itself is considered a “relic”? Let us recall at least the last words of D-503, after the Great Operation: “Did I ever feel - or imagined that I felt this?

And I hope we win. More: I am sure - we will win. Because the mind must win.”

The problem of the family is also raised in the work. There can be no talk of any love. There is only room here for pink "love" coupons, which are really only used to satisfy physical needs. Children - are given to the upbringing of the state and are "common property". In some ways, this is reminiscent of a hyperbole on the Soviet Union - "the collectivization of children."

There is also an age-old question in the novel: what is happiness? The policy of the authorities of the One State is aimed at making everyone happy, convincing them of this, even if someone doubts their happiness. " The cult of reason, demanding the unfreedom of each and all as the first guarantee of happiness"- the basis of this policy. Indeed, no one tries to doubt their serene existence - an ideal society has been created. And does D-503 become happier, getting back all his human feelings and emotions? He is constantly haunted by fear, uncertainty, suspicion ... Is he happy? Maybe a person really just needs to be made to be happy?

The question of the sole power of the Benefactor (very reminiscent of Stalin), the question of an isolated society, the question of literature (they write only "geometric" poems that are incomprehensible to readers of our time), the question of human relations, even the question of unrequited love and many other questions and problems are raised in the novel "We" .

Genre features

When reading the interpretation of the term “dystopia”, all its features can be traced in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s novel “We”: this is both an image of a totalitarian state and an acute conflict (“In order for artistry to arise, a novel conflict is needed. And it is created in the most natural way: the character must experience doubt in the logical premises of a system that strives, as the designers of the United State dreamed, to make a person completely “machine-equal". He must experience this doubt as the culmination of his life, even if the denouement turns out to be tragic, apparently hopeless, like Zamyatin's"), and pseudo-carnival, which is the structural core of anti-utopia (“The fundamental difference between the classical carnival described by M.M. Bakhtin and the pseudo-carnival generated by the totalitarian era is that the basis of the carnival is ambivalent laughter, the basis of the pseudo-carnival is absolute fear. As follows from the nature of the carnival worldview, fear coexists with reverence and admiration for the ty. The gap in distance between people at different levels of the social hierarchy is considered the norm for human relationships in A., as is the right of each to spy on the other. This is very clearly seen in the novel under consideration - people “love” the Benefactor, but at the same time they are afraid of him.), and the frequently encountered frame device (“... when the narrative itself turns out to be a story about another narrative, the text becomes a story about another text. This is typical for such works such as "We" by E. Zamyatin, "Invitation to Execution" by V. Nabokov, "1984" by J. Orwell. Such a narrative structure makes it possible to more fully and psychologically describe the image of the author of the "internal manuscript", which, as a rule, turns out to be one of the main (if not the most important) heroes of the work itself as a whole. The writing itself turns out to be a sign of the unreliability of this or that character, evidence of its provocative genre role. In many ways, the very fact of writing makes a dystopia a dystopia." The novel is nothing more than the notes of D-503 .), and quasi-nomination (“Its essence is that phenomena, objects, processes, people receive new names, and their semantics is not the same giving with the habitual.<…>Renaming becomes a manifestation of power.” After all, the heroes of "We" do not have ordinary names, but "numbers".). From all of the above, the definition of We as a dystopia is irrefutable.

The idea of ​​dystopia "We"

"We" is a brief artistic summary of a possible distant future prepared for humanity, a bold dystopia, a warning novel. “The novel grew out of Zamyatin's denial of global philistinism, stagnation, inertia, acquiring a totalitarian character in the conditions, as we would say now, of a computer society.<…>This is a reminder of the possible consequences of thoughtless technological progress, which eventually turns people into numbered ants, this is a warning about where science can lead, torn off from the moral and spiritual principles in the conditions of a global "superstate" and the triumph of technocrats.

“Zamiatina singled out a cross-cutting, relentless idea in his book about what happens to a person, a state, human society, when, worshiping the ideal of an absolutely expedient, from all sides of a reasonable being, they renounce freedom and put an equal sign between lack of freedom and happiness».

"The dystopia "We" painted an image of an undesirable future and warned of the danger of the spread of barracks communism, destroying in the name of an anonymous, blind collectivity the individual, the diversity of individuals, the wealth of social and cultural ties."

Orwell wrote: “It is quite probable, however, that Zamyatin did not at all think of choosing the Soviet regime as the main target of his satire.<…>Zamyatin's goal, apparently, is not to portray a specific country, but to show what threatens us with machine civilization.

Studying various sources describing what Zamyatin wanted to convey to the reader, one can notice their inconsistency. And not only to each other, but to ourselves. But even so, one thing is clear - warnings about the consequences of both "barracks communism" and technological progress are developed at the same level in the novel.