When D-503 fell in love with I-330, his perfectly ordered mathematical mind began to generate irrational thoughts, which he called a soul, and for the first time he felt truly alive.
2Reading· 오늘의 본문
We · Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1924
D-503 lived in a world of perfect numbers and rigid schedules. His life was a predictable equation, solved each day under the watchful eye of the One State. Then he met I-330. Her smile was not in the Table of Hours. Her questions cracked the glass wall of his logic. For the first time, he felt a strange, warm chaos in his chest—a feeling he dared to name a soul. The straight line of his existence curved. Where there was once only cold calculation, now there bloomed terrifying and beautiful irrational thoughts. Love had reprogrammed him, and there was no going back to the simple arithmetic of his old self.
B2 · 128 wordsavg 25.6 w/s
The encounter with I-330 serves as the catalytic agent that precipitates a profound ontological crisis within D-503. His identity, hitherto constructed upon the axiomatic foundations of mathematical certainty and State-mandated rationality, begins to fracture. The meticulously ordered sequences of his consciousness are invaded by chaotic emotional data—longing, doubt, desire—which he interprets as the emergence of a 'soul.' This is not merely a new feeling but a radical epistemological shift; the world is no longer a collection of solvable problems but a realm of ambiguous, subjective experience. The love he feels acts as a corrosive force, dissolving the rigid architecture of his conditioned mind and awakening a latent, fundamentally human capacity for irrationality, thereby challenging the very core of the One State's ideological edifice. What makes We endure as a work of literature is precisely this refusal to offer easy consolation — it demands that readers sit with the discomfort of a world that does not resolve neatly, and find their own position within it.
C1 · 170 wordsavg 34.0 w/s
3Vocabulary· 핵심 어휘 & 연습
ordered
질서 정연한, 정렬된
His perfectly ordered mathematical mind was his pride.
generate
생성하다, 발생시키다
His mind began to generate strange, irrational thoughts.
irrational
비이성적인, 불합리한
These irrational thoughts frightened yet excited him.
soul
영혼
He called this new, confusing consciousness a soul.
alive
살아있는, 생생한
For the first time, he felt truly and painfully alive.
Activity 1 · 빈칸 채우기5 questions
1. Every hour of D-503's life was carefully ____ by the Table of Hours.
2. The ____ of privacy did not exist in the One State.
3. Individual names were ____ and replaced with numbers.
4. The glass walls guaranteed there was no ____ for citizens.
5. The State was ____ declared to represent perfect happiness.