Class Discussion: Lingering Questions/Confusions/Ideas about ‘We’

Please use this as a place to post any lingering questions/confusions/ideas about We. Since are giving ourselves another week of class to discuss the text (and to draft/revise Essay #2), and since we of course can’t possibly discuss everything about the novel, we will prioritize what are will talk about next week using your replies to this post.

Drop a comment here to put items on our “agenda” (for our next class, Th 5/1) to discuss. List particular scenes, events, passages, excepts (please include page numbers) that confuse you, or questions more generally. If there is something you don’t quite understand about the text (and I know a number of you are having some difficulty, as this is a challenging novel), now is your chance to tell me/us about it, and to have the opportunity to go over it in class.

7 thoughts on “Class Discussion: Lingering Questions/Confusions/Ideas about ‘We’

  1. Pingback: Reminder: Post Questions about ‘We’ & Essay #2 drafts | Utopias & Dystopias

  2. “The crooked, doubly curved lips offered me the needed words with a dry grin-I nodded gratefully: Yes, Yes. … And then— what did it mean?—then he was speaking for me, and I merely listened: “Yes, and then … That’s how it was, exactly, yes, yes!”
    I felt my neck, around the collar, turning cold as if from ether, and I asked with difficulty, “But how—but you couldn’t have known—not this …”
    His grin—silent—more and more crooked …
    Then, “But, you know, there was something you’ve tried to keep from me. You named everyone you saw behind the Wall, but you’ve forgotten one. Do you deny it? Don’t your remember—for a second—a flash—you saw … me? Yes, yes, me.”
    A pause.
    And suddenly, with lightning, shameless clarity, I knew: he— he was also one of them. ..”(228-229)

    Which guardian is he talking about? Is it S?

    And where in the story did 1-330 guide D-503 to the other side of the Green Wall? I don’t remeneber reading this..

  3. Did I-330 “cheat” on D-503 with another man named “F” or who is he?

    “So now: the trampled pink coupons on the floor in her room, and on one-the letter F, and some figures…” (223)

  4. Was R apart privy to the revolution? Was he in cahoots with I-330 the whole time? What really happed on the integral? Did D-503 get punished the first time he was sent to the Benefactor?

  5. Yes, yes, I am telling you: there is no infinity. If the universe were infinite, then the mean density of matter in it should equal zero. And since it is not zero—we know that!—it means that the universe is finite; it is spherical in form, and the square of the cosmic radius, Y2, equals the mean density multiplied by … Now this is the only thing I need—to compute the digital coefficient, and then … You understand: everything is finite, everything is simple, everything is calculable. And then we shall conquer philosophically—do you understand? And you, my dear sir, are disturbing me, you are not letting me complete my calculation, you are screaming. . . .”(230).

    What’s so important about this. I kind of understand it but I don’t get the importance, and he said it was his Neighbor, what neighbor?

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