WE- Journal 1, Topic C

Again, something's not right here. Again, I've been talking to you, my unknown reader, as though ... well, let's say, as though you were my old comrade R-13, the poet with African lips, a person everyone knows. Meanwhile, you -- on the moon, on Venus, on Mars, on Mercury-- who knows you?
          Here's the thing: imagine a quadrilateral-- a living, beautiful square. And this quadrilateral is asked to describe itself, its existence. But you see, the last thing that would occur to the quadrilateral mind would be to mention its four equal angles: it just doesn't see them--They're just a given, every day. Well, that's me, permanently in that same sort of quadrilateral predicament. Whether it's the business of the pink ticket or something similar: to me, it's all the equivalent of four angles, but for you, it may be more vividly evident than Newton's binomial theorem. (page 20)

I find this passage interesting because it helps to reveal deeper ideas within society than first may be assumed. When reading WE there is a strong sense of the conflict between individual and society and how the two interact. D-503 routinely states that everyone thinks and acts alike but the opposite is shown in his descriptions of other Ciphers. Each person he knows has specific attributes, many relating to their Cipher letter, and there is a distinct focus on the same features, (the mouth, for example) in which everyone is described differently. O has a round, pink mouth, R has African lips and I has white teeth. By differentiating between individuals Zamyatin may be suggesting that Individuality is not the main problem with their society. In this passage D-503 then goes on to describe how he cannot describe the society in which he lives precisely because he lives there, the connotations and experience prevent him from objectively explaining things. Because of this it may be possible that Zamyatin is speaking the impossibility of objectively judging society from within a showing an exaggerated case where no can see the problems all around them. I can definitely believe and relate to this, in America, where I have grown up I have trouble recognizing fundamental issues with the way things are designed or run, things have always been that way so I don't even see an alternative, it is as if the problem does not exist.