We Themes

You can't tell a story about a totalitarian regime without talking about power. The state in We controls every aspect of its citizens' lives. They're so obsessed with control that everyone actually...

Going hand-in-hand with power is the notion of repression: the state's main means of control and part of the reason why everyone lives in those Criss Angel glass boxes. They don't want people to th...

The state has all kinds of plans, and D-503 is a big player in many of them. They're building a ship to travel to other worlds and conquer them, which seems to be the central focus of the governmen...

Hey, you can't have an oppressive regime without a few troublemakers out there to stir things up. Otherwise, there's no real conflict! (And without conflict, you don't have a story.) So here comes...

In We, identity is an extension of the state's control. People don't have names, they have numbers. They are defined by mathematical constants and their lives don't extend beyond whatever totalitar...

Now here's a tricky issue: what defines happiness in this world? D-503 is happy before I-330 comes along and mucks everything up. Well, he's not happy, but he's content. And he doesn't seem to be a...

In We, the natural world represents chaos, disorder and disharmony. It's the world beyond the wall, where people grow hair and have sex all willy-nilly. It's a world where birds go wherever they pl...

Believe it or not, there is deceit in this world. Even those creepy glass apartments can't hide it. We see it most overtly in I-300 and the rebellion, but also in O-90, who badly wants a baby and i...

You will never see less sexy sex than you see in this book. Like everything else, it's controlled by the state. You have to get permission to have it, and it almost acts as a mechanical service rat...