An Architectural Reading of Zamyatin’s Intersectional Elements in The Novel “We”

Abstract

“We” was written by Russian novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin in 1921 after the Soviet Revolution. To be at the edge of the conflicts was scrutinized at the novel, in which the protagonist, labeled as D-503, having a tentative position at the well-defined ground by the power which presented itself as the truth or the law. The narration was constructed via the diary of protagonist; how D-503 perceived the paradigm, which he had lived in, what kind of conflicts and contradictions he had been living with the system was questioned. Zamyatin chose very specific architectural elements to explain and criticize the dominant paradigm of the era -early 1920’s, and the periphery of that dominancy; like Green Wall, Glass Wall, logical labyrinth, cube square, and etc. These intersectional elements were constructed as in the form of blurred voids in order to unfold the ideological positions of the written period of the novel. The materialization and meaning of the walls, could be read as dialectic conceiving of how Zamyatin scrutinized both the revolution and the paradigm. As being a dystopia, the novel “We” criticizes the idealized beliefs that were presented as transparent, lucid and conductive.