The Landscape of D-503’s Mind

Zamyatin’s excerpt “Evening…. digestible concept, by…” illustrates the landscape of D-503’s shambolic mind, in order to establish the roots as the irrational pursuit of perfection. Zamyatin begins by establishing the metaphor between the terrestrial world and a notion of paradise, in which there is perfection. The “golden milky fabric” that Zamyatin describes, suggests the notion that from below this fabric, or this divide, the unattainability of perfection is murky since it is milky, however with the golden feature of the fabric, D-503 suggests that it is a pursuit worthy of efforts because gold is unanimous with success (Zamyatin 54). This description in itself emphasizes the irrationality of this pursuit because the description of milky is juxtaposed with the description of golden, which suggests that the route to success is murky and unclear. This failure to acknowledge the flaw or implication of his statement, lead to the disillusionment of D-503 as he realizes that the path to success, which is for him the path to perfection, is unattainable. The flaw in his reasoning suggests the humanity of D-503 since humans are highly prone to oversee detail, which is the basis of accurate knowledge and perfection. This human quality makes humans prone to never attain perfection in regards to their state of mind and develop an ability to understand the world. Zamyatin furthers this his establishment of setting with D-503’s explicit statement of the “evening” that comes with a “light fog,” (54). The chronology of day and the weather are aspects of life that humans do not have the ability to control. The evening setting suggest an unknown because of the lack of light in the evening, while a light fog ensue an even greater feeling of frustration in the fabric, because fog is an entity that once individuals believe they trespass they only pass in order to find more fog, in this case even more obstacles in the pursuit of perfection.

Zamyatin’s chaotic syntax illustrate D-503’s pursuit for perfection within the landscape of his mind, in order to emphasize the negative consequence of this irrational pursuit which the development of even more confusion in the mind of the individual, in regards to their identity. At the beginning of the passage, there is a minimal appearance of ellipses, dashes, and parenthesis. As he becomes more stubborn in his pursuit of perfection, he loses his ability to develop and write his ideas clearly as seen by the abundance of clarifying punctuation that is, by the end combined. This establishes the irony perfection comes as a result of disorganization, because there is a limit to human ability and all perfection starts with imperfection, therefore disorder is the prerequisite to the betterment of an individual, but not necessarily the perfection of an individual. This notion emphasizes the difficulty of clarifying the workings of the mind, which condemns the One State for striping the ciphers of their humanity and therefore the little context they have to understand any of the workings of their minds. For this reason, D-503 fails to acknowledge that what he needs is not perfection, but rather a sense of individuality and imperfection in order to allow him to learn from his mistakes himself, and truly develop a more clear depiction of his mind.

The ambiguity on the description of D-503’s mental landscape, condemns the pursuit of a notion that is incomprehensible, such as perfection, in order to emphasize that perfection loses it’s meaning once society creates its members as already perfect. In essence, there must be an idea of imperfect to judge whether something is perfect. D-503 describes his mental state as there, “both here and infinitely far” (54). The ambiguity of his sense on his pursuit of perfection, since he compares himself to a god that represents perfection, describes the human tendency never fully understand where they are in this pursuit, however, they must acknowledge that there is a difference between the two there’s, The one described as infinitely far as perfection, while the one described as here as reality. Therefore, those who are closer to their thoughts have a better understanding of them, and thus, understand the importance if content when improving the state of the mind. The pursuit of impossible perfection makes everything unclear, and thus establishes an illustration of an illogical and suffering mind. A mind that must make logical sense out of seemigly incoherent pieces of reality.