Imagination was officially classified as a mental illness.
Day 3 · 목표 ⭐
The discovery that some citizens still possessed imagination led the One State to offer surgery to remove it, framing freedom of thought not as a right but as a pathology requiring cure.
2Reading· 오늘의 본문
We · Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1924
D-503, the Builder of the Integral, felt a strange new rhythm in his soul. It was a rhythm not of the One State's perfect music, but of a chaotic, wild beat. He looked at the Benefactor's statue, a symbol of absolute logic and safety. He had always felt loyalty, a warm certainty. But now, looking at I-330's mocking smile, a cold seed of doubt took root. Was the Benefactor's protection a cage? Was the removal of imagination, this 'surgery for happiness', a theft of something essential? The conflict tore at him. Loyalty promised peace. Doubt promised... something terrifyingly alive. He stood between the gleaming glass of the State and the shadowy, unknown world of the Ancient House, his once-unified self now a battlefield.
B2 · 128 wordsavg 25.6 w/s
The central conflict in D-503's psyche, as depicted through his relationship with the Benefactor, is not merely one of obedience versus rebellion, but a profound epistemological crisis. The Benefactor represents the apotheosis of the One State's ideology, framing absolute conformity not as oppression but as the pinnacle of rational, collective well-being. D-503's nascent imagination, however, initiates a corrosive doubt that reframes this entire construct. His loyalty is to a system that promises mathematical certainty and freedom from the 'disease' of individual desire. Yet, his doubt—sparked by I-330 and his own irrational dreams—suggests that this cure is itself a pathology, a lobotomy of the soul. The conflict is thus between the security of a pre-determined, sterile truth and the terrifying, generative potential of an uncertain, subjective reality. Zamyatin presents this not as a political choice, but as the fundamental human struggle between the safety of the known and the dangerous allure of the possible. 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
possessed
소유하다, 지니다
The discovery that some citizens still possessed imagination was shocking to the State.
surgery
수술
The State offered surgery to remove the imagination.
framing
규정하다, 틀 짓다
They were framing freedom of thought as a pathology.
pathology
병리, 질병
Individual thought was considered a mental pathology.
requiring
필요로 하는
It was a condition requiring an immediate cure.
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.