While finishing reading the final chapters of “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin, D-503 went through various emotional and mental changes. D-503 starts off on chapter 27 by going to the other side of the Green Wall and seeing a whole new world, and by him experiencing this first hand caused him to feel more liberated and true to self. By this point he began to separate himself from the One State and began to change his way of thinking. He went from being a member of a society in which he was just a speck among a whole to someone which had a sense of self identity “I was a separate entity, a world. I had ceased to be a component, as I had ben, and become a unit” (157). D-503 starts off in the book by being an exemplary citizen of the One State yet by beginning to feel separated from the society and with the wave of emotions he starts to feel since he met I-330, he ended up joining the people from the other side of the Green Wall which are considered as the “rebels.”
As the book progresses I noticed how D-503 changes his style of writing, he started off by being a law abiding citizen. Now he is an individual which is writing very emotional and intimate entries, which he himself consciously knows which he confesses on page 160. I find outstanding since it shows how someone of great intellectual and social status whom always followed the One State can change so much internally that he confesses his change of perspectives. D-503 also began to deny the existence and respect to the Benefactor, in which the Benefactor is the representation of the One State. I noticed this on the following quote “oh, for the sake…for the sake…” (163), this was an action in which he removed “for the sake of the Benefactor” and tried to replace it with a meaning of his own.
In the end of the book he began to go back to respect and became a member of the One State, which I find somewhat hypocritical since he went through all this change in character yet went back to being what he was in the beginning, a law abiding citizen. It seems to be that whenever emotions or a discovery of new evidence is present, it is a moment in which D-503 changes, because of I-330 he discovered another life, adventurous and the bad aspects of the One State. Yet when the Benefactor says “You, who were to have become the greatest of conquistadors” (212) along with finding out the truth behind I-330 was a big tipping point which caused him to react by returning to the “nurturing” One State. Not only did he return to the society, he proceeded with the Great Operation.
Overall I am happy to finally be done with book, honestly I did not enjoy it as much as I hoped. Yet it was somewhat interesting to see how D-503 developed throughout the book, due to emotions affecting him such as being with I-330. Although when I read the last sentence “Because Reason must prevail” (232) it took me a little by surprise since in the beginning of the book it was said that knowledge and happiness was the goal which they wanted to spread.
